How NOT to arrange a depot move - PPPPPP

Mr Mustard wrote "plan" rather than "arrange" in the heading and then realised he had the wrong word so he changed it back to "arrange". Let us pretend that Barnet Council did indeed have a plan and here it is.

Step 1. Sell a perfectly good depot and arrange to vacate in the future.

Step 2. Look for another depot site eventually and fail to find one.

Step 3. Commercial Director tries to slip depot expansion plans onto leisure sites

Step 4. Local Councillor Robert Rams steps in and gets leader to squash step 3.

Step 5. Discover that hardly any management live in Barnet and so don't know where to put a depot.

Step 6. Appoint commercial agents to look around your own patch to find a depot site.

Step 7. Receive another deserved flaying on local blogs, twitter, local papers etc.

The proof that those were the steps are set out in the below DPR

1488 Oak Hill & Copthall Depots Expansion - Barnet Council

The plan that Barnet Council put in place back in 2009 follows:

Bittacy Hill Mill Hill Disposal

The motivation seems simple enough.

With the depot being almost opposite Mill Hill East the site can be sold for housing development. If councillors think that they & the NLBP management numpties are smart enough to swim in the same pond as huge property developers then they don't have any idea how far out of their depth they are. So they sell the depot with no idea as to where the new one will be located. they think they can plonk it in Pinkham Way, an unsuitable site close to housing which is very heavily opposed by local residents.

http://www.pinkhamwayalliance.org/
http://pinkhamwayincinerator.blogspot.com/

The Mill Hill depot

So now the panic is on and if Craig Cooper the £132,480 p.a Commercial Director is to get himself out of this pickle he needs help. That will come from our pockets at a cost of up to £75,000

1520 appoint External Agents to find a depot - Barnet Council

This DPR is full of the usual tosh. 

Para 2.1 talks about the lack of internal resources in the Commercial Department. One wonders what all the many staff who work there actually do; certainly not run procurement properly ( MetPro and RM Countryside Services Ltd running for years and £millions without contracts ) or Information Services ( computers ) with the new website a year late and costing £650,000

The table at para 3.2 is particularly amusing. If fees exceed £75,000 the council might walk away from the purchase, even if the perfect property is found? Cutting off your nose to spite your face is not a good plan.

Para 8.1 shows that it was always known that Pinkham way as well as being unsuitable is too small for depot relocation.

Para 8.2 shows that the search for new premises has been started far too late. Now let us take a look at the search area., One would think that the extent of the search would the the Barnet borough boundary and one would be wrong. Although in para 8.3 the report says there are more suitable properties to the east of the A10, the Great Cambridge Rd,  but that is too far from Barnet so the eastern search limit is stated as the A1055 which is even further east than the A10 ! The A1055 goes through Ponders End and Brimsdown and is just to the west of the Lea Valley reservoirs. Here is yet another example of an unchecked report being issued. Mr Mustard should not find major errors in DPRs as they shopuld have been spotted. Pam Wharfe must have lent the DPR signing kit to Craig Cooper ( or maybe they are standard issue ).

 

Let us see what happens between now & December 2015

Mr Mustard nearly forgot. What is the PPPPPP in the title. It is (look away now ladies)

Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard