The Golden Goodbye - bye bye Black Hole

Not bad for being 'in charge' of the election fiasco.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Meeting, what meeting?

As per usual for Barnet, the council, in this case in the form of the Chief Executive, Andrew "Black Hole" Travers, are quick to trumpet what they see as good news but don't seem prepared to engage on twitter when challenged and thus do themselves more harm than good. Ignoring bad news doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Mr Mustard looked at the link from the cabinet office, here, and couldn't find what the requirements were to be crowned as an open data champion, so he has concluded that there weren't any, except possibly a council telling Francis Maude how fabulously open they were. It rather sticks in the craw when it is discovered that Your Choice (Barnet) Ltd, the ultimate ownership of which is with Barnet Council, held a secret board meeting, on 16 January 2014.

On 1 July 14, Mr Mustard made the following request:

Dear Sirs

Please provide the following details for the Board Meetings of 18 December 13 (Barnet Homes)^ and 16 January 14 (Your Choice)

- the email or other notice in which notice invited persons were notified of the meetings
- names of persons invited
- any notice given to the public
- the agendas
- the minutes

Yours faithfully

(^ this will be blogged about at a later date)

and the response he received on 24 July 2014 was as follows:

The meetings held on 18 December 2013 and 16 January 2014 were both confidential meetings and therefore only the Board Members and appropriate officers were invited. In view of the fact that they were confidential meetings we did not issue any notices and there are no agendas or minutes available for public release.

The items discussed are exempt from publication under categories 2 and 3 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972. This is because the report refers to information that is likely to reveal the identity of an individual and/or Information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person.

In addition, the information about this meeting is withheld because it is considered that the absolute exemption under Section 40 (2) of the FOI Act applies to it.

In doing so, Barnet Homes is relying on the absolute exemption set out in section 40 (2) of the Act in regards to information that constitute personal data. We have applied the exemption because of the condition set out in Section 40 (3) (a) (i) of the Act concerning data protection principles as stated  in the Data Protection Act 1998.

I hope you find the information above useful.

How on earth being told nothing at all could be considered to be useful, Mr Mustard has no idea.

Mr Mustard asked Barnet Group for a review on 14 August, viz:

Please carry out a review as I do not accept that wholly council owned companies can have meetings that are so secret.

The result of the review, received on 3 September 14 was as follows:

Mr Mustard duly filed a complaint with the Information Commissioner on 1 October.

It took until 6 March 15 to get a decision and here is the relevant section:

Mr Mustard thought that with the passage of time these negotiations would be over. The ICO didn't know as they only consider the matter as at the date of the original request which was, by then 9 months old. He enquired of the Barnet Group if the information could now be released as presumably the negotiations, with Unison, had concluded some 15 months after the board meeting.

This is what they said, as of yesterday.

I would like to advise that the issue is still ongoing and therefore we are unable to release the information.

 

Bluntly, Mr Mustard does not believe that Unison representatives are dilly-dallying or shilly-shallying in negotiations with Your Choice and/or the Barnet Group as his experience has been they strive to be heard at every opportunity and often seem to meet a wall of silence.

What Mr Mustard does know is that their members have recently been on strike because of a 9.5% pay cut imposed on Your Choice workers. No delicate negotiations ongoing there, just a brutal pay cut.

If Barnet Council are to wear an Open Data crown, it should be this one.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Talk isn't cheap

Yesterday at the Local Government Strategic Leaders Forum (no apostrophe even though there should be) there was a lot of tweeting from WeLoveLocalGov and Mr Mustard was on the tube and responding to a number of their observational tweets. Mr Mustard would love local government to be invisible, effective, cost efficient and really boring and in Barnet it isn't. Anyway, here is one tweet to which he responded something like this - if council tax hadn't been frozen for 4 years and then there was a 1% cut as an electoral gimmick (leading to 32 Conservative seats against 30 for Labour so that was a bargain then?) the amount of income available would have avoided the need for many of the dreadful cuts to provision for disabled children etc. (but in 140 characters so much briefer)

Nice and simple message from Barnet: “the money’s run out and it’s not coming back.” Stark, but true. #capitaconf
— WeLoveLocalGov (@WeLoveLocalGov) June 26, 2014

Now Mr Mustard visits the council offices at this time every year to have a rummage through the accounts during the 4 weeks when they are publicly available by law. He obtained the following invoice (Mr Mustard is a detail person but he didn't get much to chew on with this invoice - luckily he was only given the one page as 300+ blacked out pages would have been wasteful) 

So what you can see is that the council has 1,678 mobile phones and a bill for the month of £23,145

Mr Mustard thought that might be rather a lot of phones and he remembered that when he was at Policy & Resources committee on 10 June 2014 there was a report presented by Andrew "Black Hole" Travers (he spoke at the conference mentioned above so the tweet above may stem from his presentation), he is the Chief Executive if you didn't know and Chris Naylor, the Chief Operating Officer (sharpen your scalpel Chris as you need to cut the mobile phone bill and which others? management pay and numbers perhaps?) which disclosed that the number of Full Time Equivalent posts is 1,726 so there is a 97% chance of an employee having a mobile phone. Mr Mustard knows it makes sense for mobile staff but posits that the vast bulk of council employees are likely to be desk based. Mr Mustard wonders what the mobile phone issue protocol is?

Before moaning about the shortage of funds it is probably best to go through every single item of spending and ask the question; is this spending really necessary?

Mr Reasonable, a respected management consultant who before he went self-employed  worked for one of the largest worldwide firms of consultants so knows his stuff, offered to give the council a day a month of his valuable time about 2 years ago (he is currently run off his feet with work he is in such demand by sports stadia all over the world, but bloggers regularly out perform the average mortal) in order to review the cost base (he was using the 80/20 rule and was going to look at all invoices above £10,000 so would have looked at 20% of them and captured 80% of the spend - this is also known as the Pareto principle) but his offer was not taken up. The council should have snatched his hand off to obtain a free expert like that.

So WeLoveLocalGov there is a longer answer than can be tweeted in 140 characters. One reason we bloggers are up in arms about our local council and are critical is because we have evidence from many areas of spend that suggests Barnet Council really isn't very well run, despite the £6.67 million spent on Central Management (source, Council tax leaflet 2014/15).

You can comment below if you wish, unedited.

Yours frugally (unlike the council)

Mr Mustard

Hazy Payments

a Hays (geddit!)

Mr Mustard is looking forward to his Xmas gift from Paul Hughes, the external auditor, as he has just submitted his fifth Notice of Objection and that is going to lead to even more audit fees as this is extra work which was not included within the scope of the fixed external audit fee. Mr Mustard is conscious that it is your money (and a tiddly bit of his own) that he is causing to be spent so if all of his objections are found to be baseless (surely not because they are all serious and significant matters) then he will rein himself in next year.

Here is the covering email:

29 July 13

Dear Mr Hughes

I fell over some information at the weekend that I had been searching for. That has enabled me to send you what was going to be my original objection and which relates to the cavalier way in which any old supplier has been paid as if they were a supplying agency with a contract with Hays to supply staff when they weren't. Thus there is no proper contractual basis on which Hays were paid for supplies by unauthorised suppliers. This will be a large sum of money that has been unlawfully paid out.

I attach my Notice of Objection and two lists of supplying agencies provided to me under Freedom of Information by Haringey Council who set up the contract with Hays to which Barnet Council were joined and by which terms they are bound. Prior to asking Haringey Council I asked Barnet Council for a list of suppliers under the Hays contract and they didn't have one. How any manager could sign off an invoice without that basic information is an example of shocking mismanagement.

Yours sincerely

Mr Mustard

and here is the text of the objection:


29 July 2013



Mr P Hughes
Grant Thornton
Melton St
London
NW1 2EP


Dear Mr Hughes

The London Borough of Barnet
Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2013
Fifth Notice of Objection

1 Failure to properly apply PAYE to an office holder

Payments for the interim provision of Mr Andrew Travers to act as S151 officer and Deputy Chief Executive were £82,000 through his service company Halliford Associates Ltd and Hays and to a lesser extent Comensura for the period from 1 April to 3 December 12.

I refer to these notes on the HM Revenue and Customs website

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/esmmanual/esm2502.htm

It is quite clear that Mr Travers held an office, the statutory office of S151 officer and therefore his emoluments should have been subjected to PAYE and could only have been paid directly to himself. The Accounts include payments to Hays and Comensura (for onward payment to Halliford and then for distribution by Halliford as the shareholders of that company saw fit) which are therefore unlawful and should be reclaimed from Hays and Comensura and repaid to Mr Travers directly after the application of the PAYE regulations.

2 Multiple payments to Hays which are not covered by the contract

From when the practice started, in about March 2009 of employing interim managers through service companies (although "interim" could be 2 years or more) payments were made and shown, in some cases, on the over £500 spending lists. For some reason, possibly the interest shown by bloggers, from April 11 these payments were then routed through Hays as that anonymised the payments on the over £500 lists. Whatever the reason there would need to be a contractual basis for the payments. Had the individuals been paid under PAYE as Hays's own temps there would not have been a problem. As there were service companies acting as the supplier of the individual in many cases then these service companies would need to be supplying agencies of HAYS and that is what has been overlooked by the council. Quite simply Halliford Associates Ltd was not a supplying agency of Hays and as far as I can see never became one. You'll need to check the Comensura contract, which started on 1 October 12 when the Hays one ceased, to see if that has the requisite service companies as properly authorised suppliers.

I attach the lists of supplying agencies who have contracted with Hays to supply staff as at March 2008 and 29 March 2012. Given the impending contract end date with Hays of 30 September 12 there is no reason to suppose that the service companies suddenly all signed contracts with Hays to supply staff after 29 March 12.

What this means is that payments to Hays in respect of the following list of service companies in 2012/13 were unlawful as no contract existed and the same was the case in 2011/12.

The below is not an exhaustive list, and may contain some service companies which had ceased to supply, but that is a question that can only be answered by reference to records that are not available to me as a member of the public although they will be relevant to 2011/12.

Halliford Associates Ltd
Jacquie McGeachie HR Consulting Ltd
CCMPS Ltd
Renouval Ltd
Murphy's Solutions Ltd
Chas Dowden Solutions Ltd
Advance HR Consulting Ltd
Advantage Ltd
Lesley Meeks Associates Ltd
ANZ UK Teachers Ltd
Classroom Ltd
GJR Associates Ltd
Judd Farris Ltd
Keith Baxter Ltd
Prospects Staff Bureau Ltd
Huxley Associates / Sthree Staffing Uk / Sthree UK

Please request a public interest notice under s8, The Audit Commission Act 1998. A copy of this Notice of Objection has been sent to Mr C Naylor and to Cllr Monroe Palmer, Baron Palmer of Child's Hill, OBE, FCA. I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely


Mr Mustard

Now we simply have to sit back whilst the bean-counters at Barnet Council, the legal department probably, the external auditor himself, the Chief Operating Officer who is on holiday (sorry, this wasn't deliberate but you shouldn't assume Mr COO that the council won't get any serious objections - this isn't sleepy Barking & Dagenham you know)  and the Chair of the Audit Committee, Monroe Palmer, who is a senior and highly experienced chartered accountant who knows how many beans make five (tell me next time we meet Monroe, it won't be five will it?) work out a plan of action and then execute it.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Mr Morale Booster

Mr Mustard didn't go to the Appeal Court because his fits of coughing would have disrupted proceedings.

He also fears, when he reads the next passage, which has been clearly stolen borrowed from Mrs Angry's Broken Barnet blog that if he had been caught unawares in Court with this "evidence" he would have had to be carried out of the Court in a state of helpless mirth.

We were now treated to the contents of a letter by Mr Andrew Travers, the acting Chief Executive of Barnet Council.

We were informed that he was greatly concerned about the morale of staff. Not as you might imagine from the perspective of those employees about to lose their jobs as a result of privatisation, but because of the delay in the loss of those jobs, and the uncertainty, thoughtlessly caused by those bringing this legal challenge. If you are being led to the guillotine, you want to get your head on the chopping block as soon as possible, of course, rather than pray for rescue.

Staff were leaving, due to low morale, we heard. We did not hear that staff might be leaving so as to be sure of employment, and security for their families.

So naturally once the Court case was over Andrew's thoughts turned to the staff and how he should boost their low morale and how he could make their job more enjoyable, easier, more helpful to the public and make people want to stay etc etc. Here is what he actually sent out.

Please help Mr Mustard out and tell him which part of this email shows any concern at all for the staff. It appears to be an email sent by a pure bean-counter who is solely concerned by the privatisation timetable (and the consequent knock-on effects on the budget) and shows an unseemly haste to sign a contract.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard