Contract, what contract?

At the beginning of December I applied under the FOI act to see a copy of the contract between Capita and Barnet.

"Please provide me with a copy of the contract between Barnet Council and Capita for the NSCSO project. If you cannot supply the complete contract in its entirety, please provided me with all those elements that are not strictly commercially sensitive and have already been disclosed or about to be disclosed in the public reports and answers to questions considered at scrutiny or cabinet meetings."

 Now we all know a contract exists because it has been much talked about, councillors have inspected it and you can even see a picture of it here.

Waiting until the very last day (I claim it was a day late) Barnet's response was somewhat surprising.

"I am writing to inform you that the information you request is not held by London Borough of Barnet. The contractual agreement for the provision of the New Support and Customer Services Organisation (NSCSO) has yet to be finalised and signed and therefore no final contract currently exists. The contract is expected to be signed between late January and March 2013. Following this, it is our intention to publish the contract on the council's website having redacted any elements considered to be commercially sensitive."

I note that Barnet are using this excuse with anyone else asking for information about the contract or indeed the investment proposal of Capita in IT.

Not only have Barnet refused point blank to discuss this contract with residents, Barnet deny the contract's existence until it is signed and an opportunity to flag up problems has therefore passed.

The New Year is not off to a good start. Next week are the residents forums which will again deny residents the right to ask any questions about One Barnet or any other matter which is about policy. We have the DRS contract coming up which cannot in anyway be described as "back office". There are lots of really important questions that need to be answered about service delivery, transparency, governance, contractor conflicts of interest, charging policy, to name but a few, yet the Council are mute on this and the public have been effectively gagged.

I think that 2013 is the year when many more residents are going to wake up to the huge risks such a radical and complex outsourcing contract will bring and how the details have been hidden by the Council. Sadly by then it may be too late to do anything about it.

Last Night's Audit Committee - a toothless talking shop?

Last night’s audit committee was a long and unsatisfactory meeting. I’m afraid that due to work pressures this is a rather perfunctory blog. I was aware right from the start that there was a tension in the air, referred to by Cllr Rayner as “the elephant in the room”, the subject of RM Countryside’s contractual relationship took over two hours before it made a brief and unsatisfactory appearance.

Mrs Angry and I had asked a number of questions, all successfully evaded or denied in the written responses. The one response that surprised me was the admission that One Barnet, the council’s transformation programme is “inherently risky”.

Procurement remains a running sore in Barnet and the latest date for centralising the purchasing function is June next year, almost a year since it was determined that it should take place.

I have long maintained that many of the problems identified at the audit committee last night are straightforward business issue that should never have happened in the first place. I am convinced that they have arisen because senior management have spent far too much time concentrating on implementing One Barnet and far too little time making sure the day to day business of the council is operated efficiently and effectively.

Procurement is a serious and immediate problem. At the same time, £200,000 a month is being paid to just one firm of external consultants to help implement One Barnet. If Barnet were to divert some of that consultancy spend into speeding up the centralisation of procurement I’m sure it could have been implemented by now.

Sadly, the audit committee is a bit of a toothless tiger; it may roar (or purr rather loudly) but ultimately officers don’t give a stuff because the committee has no power to call officers to account, admitted several times by chairman Lord Palmer. Cabinet members are the only people who can do anything in Barnet and, whilst that remains the case, the audit committee will remain the impotent talking shop it has become.