Capita consultation - guest blog - Kick out Capita

Dear Barnet resident.

I am writing to you as the Lead Barnet UNISON rep on behalf my members who work on the two #Capita contracts here in Barnet.

Barnet UNISON has campaigned for over a decade to oppose mass outsourcing to Capita. Sadly the outsourcing meant hundreds of redundancies as jobs were moved out of London. The issues with Capita were not just redundancies, service issues started to emerge across a large number of former Council services.

Barnet UNISON has been campaigning in the community for the past year to bring back services in-house following the collapse of Carillion and Capita’s dramatic share price fall last February 2018.

Following the serious fraud recently committed by a Capita employee the Council has reviewed both contracts and is in the process of bring back Finance and Strategic HR as from 1 April 2019.

However other Council services currently provided by Capita are now being reviewed to see if they should come back in-house.

Here are services currently provided by Capita

Phase 1 – Finance and Strategic HR (the focus of this TUPE consultation)

Phase 2 – Highways and Regeneration (review between Jan to Sept 2019)

Phase 3 – Barnet-based customised services – Estates, Social Care Direct, Safety, Health and Wellbeing , Strategic Planning, Procurement, Insight, Cemetery and Crematorium (review between Jan to Sept 2019)

Phase 4 – Revenues and Benefits, Customer Services, Information Services, Planning (Development Management) and Regulatory Services, transactional HR services (including pensions administration). Will form part of the Year 7 Contract Review of both contracts from September 2019 onwards.

Barnet UNISON is campaigning for all services provided by Capita to come back in-house.

I am encouraging all Barnet residents to take part in Barnet Councils Capita on line consultation which you can access here 

The deadline to complete the consultation is Friday 15 February 2019.

It is really important that Barnet Council hears from residents about Capita.

There are 12 questions including some multiple choice and written responses.

In order to encourage and assist Barnet residents to complete the Capita on line consultation I strongly recommend residents read this helpful guidance produced by Barnet Alliance for Public Services click on link 

I have attached a info graphic produced by Barnet Blogger Mr Reasonable showing how many millions Barnet Council have already paid Capita

Please complete the survey and let others know.

Best wishes

John Burgess

Branch Secretary.

Barnet UNISON

The tail wagging the dog

A Joint Blog from the Barnet Bloggers

Barnet's Conservative led administration has never been so divided.

Since the local elections last May, new members of the Tory group have been confronted with the legacy of their longer serving colleagues’ failure in office: the crisis over the Capita contracts, a massive budget deficit, and the exposure of fraud by a Capita manager, enabled by a failure to put in place any adequate system of financial controls.

Members of the previous administration appear not to have grasped the seriousness of the situation, or at least are reluctant to acknowledge the extent of the problems facing this borough.

After receiving payment of a paltry £4 million from Capita in ‘compensation’, Tory councillors have now voted to delay any immediate severance of ties, in favour of a long drawn out process of assessment, during which time Capita will continue its contractual partnership with this borough, and our services will continue to be left in their control.

We believe this is quite wrong, and, it seems, so do some Tory members.

At last week's Audit meeting, for example, it was revealed that BDO, the authority's external auditors, are now obliged to visit Capita's offices in Darlington, where their administration of Barnet's Local Government Pension Scheme is based. This extra work will incur an additional charge on top of the audit fee. Capita continue to administer this scheme, despite very serious concerns about standards of performance.

Also at last week's Audit meeting, there was discussion about why new systems that should have been implemented following the £2 million fraud by a Capita employee were not in use.

Grant Thornton, Internal Audit, Senior Council Officers and Capita’s Partnership Manager in Barnet had all agreed these control systems should be implemented immediately. A Capita employee, however, based in Chichester, where these payments are handled, had taken it upon themselves not to implement this critical system, a failing only identified when Internal Audit carried out a follow up check.

At least one of the Tory members had grave misgivings about the continuing partnership with Capita.

Councillor for Hale, Laithe Jajeh, said at the meeting, “I find it really worrying that someone from Capita (can do this)..it’s almost the tail wagging the dog …’ He also commented on twitter that assurance from Capita on implementation of Grant Thorntons’ recommendations was ‘not reassuring whatsoever …’

He added that Capita’s performance was not good enough and that he was not confident that promised dates for completion would be met.

Implementation of GT recommendation 15 was not completed due to a Capita employee instructing its’ staff not to undertake the instruction to do so from Cllrs, officers etc. As I put it to the Chair this evening, the tail is wagging the dog. Absolutely not good enough from Capita

— Laithe jajeh (@Laithe_Jajeh) January 31, 2019

At a further point in the audit meeting it was identified that 51% of the internal audit recommendations were not completed, the majority of which were the responsibility of Capita. Labour councillor Alison Moore suggested that such a high level of actions not implemented was a sign of an unhealthy organisation. The Head of Assurance said it was a very serious matter from the officers’ perspective.

The Committee Chairman, however, wanted to take a ‘positive’ view of the situation and suggested that we do not look at criticisms. There was a clear consensus, however, that Councillors, both Conservative and Labour, were not satisfied.

At last there is an acknowledgement, at least from councillors who were not involved with the original outsourcing exercise, that the partnership with Capita may not be the great panacea we were promised, under the lure of ‘Better services for less money’.

We are facing a review of the contract in February, yet there is a very real concern that decisions have already been made.

The dispersed structure of the contract, with Capita offices situated all around the country, makes it hard to implement change, hard to control, and hard to monitor. Different reporting lines in different organisations mean that it is difficult to pin down responsibility for actions or inaction. This exacerbates and complicates the failure in accountability between the management of local services, and the local community itself.

We call upon the council to make the outsourcing review as open and unbiased as possible, held in public, with full and meaningful consultation with residents - and with key roles for some of the new Conservative members such as Cllr Jajeh, and Cllr Prager, who seem to have a more clear sighted view of Capita’s performance - and we urge all members to look at how quickly services can be brought back to Barnet, where they can be properly managed, monitored and controlled. 

Derek Dishman

John Dix

Theresa Musgrove

Roger Tichborne

Call me a cab to get to the kerb

That is a car which has been abandoned rather than parked. The driver has received some words of advice from Mr Mustard.

That apart the PCN for being parked more than 50cm from the kerb, which would be a contravention if true, won't stick as traffic wardens just guess at the distance rather than measure it.

What Mr Mustard has done is to have the actual kerb width measured. He has then measured the same distance in the photo and the distance from the kerb to the car wheel (sometimes the mirror will be the nearest part of the car but not in this case) and so by scaling the distances he makes the car about 42cm from the kerb.

The informal challenge has already been rejected. That leaves the formal representations in response to the Notice to Owner and then the Appeal to the independent adjudicator, which will be the most likely place to get the best result despite the appalling parking.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

St Johns Wood High Street - potential PCN refunds

This is where a contact of Mr Mustard's received a PCN here but the parking sign for this place was on the side of the hoarding. The sign isn't easy to find, given the number of other signs and also, by law, it has to face the carriageway. It is under the red light if you are struggling.

If you got a PCN in this bay, also when the sign was on the side, the City of Westminster will refund you, as they did my contact.

You don't see fairness like that very often.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Barnet motorists - hefty bills - are councillors really bothered?

a large bill if ever there was one

Mr Mustard read this story in the local Times newspaper

https://www.times-series.co.uk/news/17379165.drivers-in-barnet-could-be-punished-by-air-quality-rules/

This snippet suggests that ruling councillors aren't bothered enough about air quality

What they are usually bothered about, in Mr Mustard's experience, is balancing the budget, which always includes a hefty contribution from the Special Parking Account i.e. from drivers.

Here is some procurement activity that they voted in favour of at a meeting of the Policy & Resources committee in December 18 at which councillors Cohen & Zinkin were both present

They plan to spend far more on implementing money raising levies than on air quality.

You have been warned. Best start the uprising now before they get too far into your wallet or purse & make the ULEZ look like chicken feed.

You can contact Dean here cllr.d.cohen@barnet.gov.uk 

& Peter here cllr.p.zinkin@barnet.gov.uk

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

 

There may be trouble ahead

Mr Mustard receives a pension from the London Stock Exchange. It is only a modest sum, not even enough to keep him in red wine, but he still likes to receive it in the correct sum and on time. Today in his post he received a long letter which offered him no comfort whatsoever. Here are some snippets:

Oh dear. Mercer never put a foot wrong so why change them to a notorious supplier?

Mr Mustard doubts that there will be faster response times from a company who had to negotiate a KPI of 20 seconds to answer the phone up to 60 seconds which they still couldn't manage on behalf of Barnet Council. 

So why did you choose Capita? Were they cheaper and did they promise the earth?

 Someone will regret writing this puff piece later on.

We have immediately taken a retrograde service step. Why wasn't this in the contract to be in place from day 1 if Capita are so wonderful?

Translation: We are easily impressed and don't read newspapers or Private Eye.

Mr Mustard confidently expects the change of tax office to be less than smooth.

He will be checking his payslips very carefully.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Barnet Council found to be unreasonable

In this bay Mr Mustard's client was given a PCN for not having a permit. The bay had no sign so was, as every bay must have some sort of signage (it might be adequate to have words painted on the road for a 24 hour doctor's bay) so the bay was a free bay.

Mr Mustard took over at the tribunal stage and the PCN was cancelled. Mr Mustard thought that the council's behaviour was wholly unreasonable such that costs should be paid but such awards are very rare and he didn't prevail in his application.

Still, Barnet Council are unreasonable, just not quite unreasonable enough to have to pay any money out, which would have gone to the hospice in any event.

Time the law was changed to make compensation automatic for council errors. They pounce on yours gleefully, the playing field needs a bit of levelling up.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard