Corporate Governance - performance overview

Hello Mr Lustig, you seem to have been having an easy ride in blogs - is it because you are the only Director who performs?- oh dear, apparently not. Here is the report for your Directorate for April to June 2011 - also known as Quarter 1 of 2011-12

click to enlarge & back to return

If the ridiculously undemocratic residents forums are one of your successes then the failures must be truly catastrophic. Have you been to one of them Mr Lustig?

Issues.

The current committee papers system is awful. Let us hope that the new system will be better. What is it going to cost? You are already 3106,000 over budget.

The formulation of governance arrangements for One Barnet. What, that wasn't decided ages ago?

FOI replies are late. Bloggers knew that already. 

It is no wonder that the legal budget is overspent. Barnet Council gets into more fights than the average council. The £92k lost on a S106 agreement would benefit from further explanation.

FOI failure. Strangely every blogger could have told you that the target was being missed.

Another report where the headings were left stranded on the previous page. It really is poor presentation. Yet more red ink. Management at Barnet Council really doesn't seem to manage. Mr Mustard wonders if it is impossible given the constant change that stems from One Barnet and if that was slowed down a little whether the management might be able to get its breath back and perform. Here is a performance indicator that hasn't appeared. The rate of turnover of staff. That would be interesting as good employers hang on to their staff for a long time and Mr Mustard thinks that Barnet Council might well be suffering a large rate of staff turnover which always ends up in reduced performance.

A shocking number of Human Resources cases in Corporate Governance. Not a happy place it would seem.

Look at the feeble excuse in the top line. We were rubbish at doing performance appraisals but not as rubbish as the rest of the council. Here is Mr Mustard's appraisal for you - you are all under-performing. Your excuse is the equivalent of being stopped for speeding at 35mph in the 30 zone and telling the policeman that is OK as everyone else was doing 45. Pathetic.

Now we can see from the box on the right what is going on. Governance tell officers when reports are due and officers fail to deliver "this area remains an issue" or problem in Mustard-speak i.e. plain English.

Ah yes, late reports CG0005. Mr Mustard has noted these jumping onto the website on the day of the meeting thus frustrating the ability of the public to ask questions in time.

Improvement initiatives. Well you could start with the Residents Forums, Mr Lustig. Mr Mustard hasn't seen you at his one but if you did attend then you might find out how undemocratic they are considered to be. All they do currently is cause reputational damage for the council. I am sure you will have read Mrs Angry's blogs on the subject. You will also find negative coverage of them on all of the Barnet Bloggers' blogs - use the links to the right.

And did you do better than last quarter? Yes on some things ( capital budget & performance rating ) and worse on others ( revenue budget & HR ). Overall movement?

swings

and roundabouts

Mind that you don't end up on the slide!

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard