NSL - another staff fraudster

councillors sleepwalking into trouble

When Mr Mustard read about the Operational Support Manager ("OSM") who had been assigned to the Barnet contract by NSL who tried to buy an iphone with a fake credit card and received an 80hour unpaid work sentence Mr Mustard got to wondering how important the job of OSM was at NSL. Naturally, he turned to the Internet and from a link on the NSL website he was redirected to Totaljobs and found a vacancy in Birmingham, salary not stated, for which the main job elements are as follows:

The role will require you to support the Contract Manager in the implementation and maintenance of quality systems ensuring the best practice is identified and disseminated throughout the operation. The successful candidate would have to ensure effective communications both within the operation and with outside parties, representing the Company as appropriate.

The ideal candidate would have to:

• Provide management information/reports as and when necessary for the Contract Manager.
• Deal with all written customer enquiries and complaints in accordance with set standards and the customer care policy, logging each occasion against the appropriate case record.
• Maintain adequate levels of all controlled and uncontrolled stationery
• Prepare the monthly enforcement plan and to monitor the success of those on-going on a daily basis.
• Assist in developing Quality Assurance systems and procedures in the service area
• Receive and administer the implementation and removal of parking suspensions
• Undertake the duties of the post in accordance with the Quality Assurance systems and procedures within the service.

This looks like a routine administration post which has an overblown title.

What happened in July 2011? Well an OSM called Bruno Inegbese received a sentence at Blackfriars Crown Court (case no. T20107575) of 40 months in jail because he failed to process the fact that 19 staff had left and continued to pay them. He then, with the help of family and friends, laundered their pay through 4 bank accounts and defrauded his employers of £48,000 (Mr Mustard wonders which council contract he was on and if NSL have credited the salaries back to the relevant council as they don't have to pay for ghost workers?)

He didn't work on the Barnet NSL contract because it didn't exist then but that is two Operations Support Managers, out of not all that many, that NSL have managed to find dishonest people to fill. One has to wonder about their recruitment systems and you need to realise, Barnet councillors, that by outsourcing the people you have not outsourced the problem. 

One Barnet = loss of control.

In Barnet, Unison, on behalf of their members have expressed concern about data security and NSL have made the usual bland and unconvincing corporate response; you can read it in the local paper here. . Have they actually done an audit of what their fraudulent employee got up to? Mr Mustard doubts it. 

Mr Mustard particularly likes this piece of puff which issued from NSL:

He had no access to information or data owned by members of the public

Now look at his job duties again:

Deal with all written customer enquiries and complaints in accordance with set standards and the customer care policy, logging each occasion against the appropriate case record.

Can you deal with an enquiry and edit a case record without having access to data or information? No.

Councillors. You are sleepwalking us all into trouble. Wake up and stop this outsourcing nonsense. You can, if you set your minds to it. Make the officers do some real work & make all of the savings yourself. Get all consultants out of the building and look at what you do and how you do it. Scrap processes that you do not have to do and devise methods of doing what you do have to do in the most effective way. It is How you do the job not Who does it that leads to savings as Andy Mudd of APSE (independent non-profit specialist in local authority service provision)  will tell you very soon (sorry Andy if I have stolen your thunder but you have much more to tell councillors than the message Mr Mustard took home as the essence of your recent presentation).

You will find Unison to be more amenable to in-house cooperation than complete outsourcing. John Burgess is an intelligent man, you need to talk to him more Richard (Cornelius).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard