Permits figure differences - Mr Mustard has some of the answer

Mr Mustard finds that in his not as yet dealt with FOI responses he had some weekly figures for permits. The visitor vouchers and annual car permit vouchers are included in one column with bay suspension income and all types of vouchers and permits but the two main strands of income are visitor vouchers and annual car permits.

It is easy to see that the reason why income is over budget in the first 2 weeks of the year is because residents were taking the final chance to buy concessionary visitor vouchers at £1 before the £4 price made them a penal rate. After that sales fall off a cliff and even the fact that 90% of residents are forced to renew their annual permit at extortionate cost does not make up for an even larger fall in the sale of visitor vouchers.

Mr Mustard feels some sympathy for the parking manager in this situation as he was never going to be able to make the budget (which will have been closely related to the previous year) once Brian's bonkers "brainwave" came into effect.

	Permits & suspensions
Dates	Budget expectation	Received	Variance	Cumulative variance
1 - 9 Apr 11	£11,111	£34,895	£23,784	£23,784
10 - 16 Apr 11	£39,216	£48,446	£9,230	£33,014
17 - 23 Apr 11	£82,316	£38,866	-£43,450	-£10,436
24 - 30 Apr 11	£76,092	£17,338	-£58,754	-£69,190
1 - 7 May 11	£61,632	£18,601	-£43,031	-£112,221
8 - 14 MAY 11	£35,451	£40,885	£5,434	-£106,786
15 - 21 May 11	£61,775	£52,536	-£9,239	-£116,025
21 - 28 May 11	£47,939	£39,998	-£7,941	-£123,966
29 May-4 Jun 11	£44,323	£28,268	-£16,055	-£140,021
5 - 11 June 11	£46,296	£49,822	£3,526	-£136,495
12 - 18 June 11	£87,462	£63,115	-£24,346	-£160,842
19 - 25 June 11	£76,571	£54,846	-£21,725	-£182,567
26 Jun - 2 Jul 11	£74,628	£46,364	-£28,265	-£210,831
3 - 9 July 11	£65,334	£43,205	-£22,129	-£232,961
10 - 16 July 11	£57,504	£47,492	-£10,012	-£242,973
17- 23 July 11	£75,916	£48,062	-£27,855	-£270,827
24 - 30 July 11	£64,155	£44,273	-£19,883	-£290,710
31Jul - 6 Aug 11	£60,269	£37,532	-£22,737	-£313,447
7 - 13 Aug 11	£56,352	£48,088	-£8,264	-£321,711
14 - 20 Aug 11	£76,648	£54,860	-£21,788	-£343,499
21 - 27 Aug 11	£63,623	£39,829	-£23,794	-£367,293
28 Aug - 3 Sept 11	£62,413	£30,982	-£31,430	-£398,723
4 - 10 Sept 11	£43,442	£39,614	-£3,828	-£402,550
11 - 17 Sept 11	£62,352	£30,145	-£32,207	-£434,757
18 - 24 Sept 11	£51,916	£31,707	-£20,209	-£454,966
25 Sept - 1 Oct 11	£55,095	£52,821	-£2,274	-£457,240
2 - 8 Oct 11	£49,959	£30,936	-£19,023	-£476,263
9 - 15 Oct 11	£44,155	£40,668	-£3,487	-£479,750
16 - 22 Oct 11	£72,803	£51,137	-£21,665	-£501,416
23 - 29 Oct 11	£65,516	£42,335	-£23,181	-£524,597
30 Oct - 5 Nov 11	£61,434	£49,000	-£12,434	-£537,031
6 - 12 Nov 11	£63,499	£47,325	-£16,174	-£553,205
13 - 19 Nov 11	£62,776	£41,616	-£21,160	-£574,365
20 - 26 Nov 11	£55,455	£39,415	-£16,040	-£590,405

So the price of not standing up to Brian is a hole in the budget of £590,405

This makes his taxi bills look like small potatoes.

The role of the Chief Executive

It is the case that councillors decide on policy and officers have to execute it but as ever life isn't that simple. Nick Walkley should have seen that the excessive permit and voucher increases were going to end in tears and as part of the requirements set out in the role summary of the Chief Exec. is "Commercial acumen is also essential" he ought to have had a quiet word with Brian Coleman (is that possible?) to challenge the decision and save embarrassment for the whole council, officers and members alike. Mr Mustard doesn't know the full career history of Nick Walkley but he does know that it involved spells in local and national government and possibly as a lecturer. If it doesn't include any spells in industry then perhaps the members chose the wrong man for the job.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Group Hug and now you're fired.

Here is one of Nick Walkley's messages to staff ( stick with me here )

It is a masterpiece of communication, tactful, empathetic and shows his human side; he really does care. He is a highly skilled modest executive worth every penny of the £200,000 that he is paid.  He completely understands budgeting, works all hours, is politically neutral, is good at blue sky thinking and is a role model for other council chief executives to aspire to. Every council should have a Nick Walkley.

Later today, the council will publish next week’s Cabinet papers, including the budget proposals for 2012/13 through to 2014/15. Cabinet will debate the proposals next Thursday (3 November) and their decision will be put out for consultation until early January. 

The papers propose savings in service costs of £13.6million in the coming financial year with Council Tax frozen for the fourth year running.

92 members of staff have been identified as ‘at risk’ of redundancies for the coming financial year. Last year, the final number of redundancies was around 40% of the ‘at risk’ posts.

Managers will be briefing those individuals who are at risk of losing their job during the day. 

This is always a difficult time for the wider organisation. The likelihood is that you all know at least one of the people who have been told their post is at risk. At times like this, we all need to be supportive to staff who, whatever fine words senior managers use, will be feeling “Why me?”. The larger financial challenges of the council and the economy as a whole will seem a long way off at this moment. 

As those of you who have attended the budget briefings will be aware this council is dong all it can to minimise redundancies, including holding vacant posts open. I hope we can reduce that 92 number and I hope many individuals can be redeployed. I obviously hope to work with the trade unions during the consultation to see how we can minimise redundancies. 

We have tried to identify our budget proposals as early as possible this year, to give individuals six months to plan their future and managers time to plan different models of working before we make any changes to services.

In the meantime, the work of the council goes on. The same Cabinet that will debate budget proposals will be discussing how we provide thousands of new primary school places and changes to council house tenancies.

All of the work that we do is important, and all of the people doing it are important. I hope you will all be supportive of those who will undoubtedly be feeling less valued today.

Nick

Now normal service will be resumed. It has occurred to the bloggers that if we keep pointing out how poor the management of Barnet is, then no other council will give any of the management a job and we will be stuck with the ones we don't want ( except that they provide plenty of good material ) so my complimentary paragraph at the top is for other council's to consume and believe even though Mr Mustard doesn't mean a word of it. Like those mis-quoted reviews outside of theatres non-stick will be able to cut and paste my praise into his CV. Imagine.

The decisions will go out for consultation but they aren't likely to change.

Managers will be giving the bad news to 92 people. How many will the Chief Executive bother to go and see and thank personally? Zero is Mr Mustard's guess.  Mr Mustard does have experience of being made redundant and he thinks that it would be better to have about 14 days notice of redundancy rather than 6 months of worry.

Doesn't it make you feel better that it's not personal, it's the economy which is at fault, not the fact that Barnet Council have been faffing  about with the OneBarnet project for years and have employed an army of consultants, temps, interims & contractors as well as setting off along the discredited road ( in Suffolk at least ) to privatisation.

So managers have yet to plan different ways of working so they don't yet know how many staff they will need but 92 of you are heading towards the scrapheap. Genius.

How many consultants will be going as a result of budget cuts and how many Assistant Directors are going? Probably none at all. Far too important.

So do hug your colleagues who are at risk and help them look for a better job either in the council or elsewhere. There is more to life than Barnet Council.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

53 temps = over budget - Surely not

I am sure that readers will be familiar with my earlier post about the ridiculous number of temps that were in the Revenue & Benefits department. If not, click here.

News now reaches Mr Mustard of an email sent to staff in Revenues & Benefits some of whom were working to rule and some of whom went on a half day strike and got locked out of work for a whole day and a whole day's pay is to be deducted. That action of deducting an entire day's pay when the strike was planned to start at 1pm upsets Mr Mustard's sense of justice and fair play. Mr Mustard would be ringing the union or his Solicitor if he happened to be an employee in this department. Mr Mustard isn't working these days and has experience of finance so he might just stick an application in with Hays and see if he can get some temp work so he can find out first hand what is going on.

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/Pay/DG_175878

Anyway, back to the email. What did it say. One element was this :-

due to the need to operate within a balanced budget ...........

there will be no more Saturday or evening overtime working for the forseeable future.

Let's get this right. The management employ 53 temps at a cost of £9,000 a day and then suddenly find that they are over budget. The village idiot would have seen that one coming. 

Have the temps left now?

Are the temps still being offered overtime working?

Why are the staff not being offered overtime as they must know more about the benefits system than a bunch of temps? 

It is of course nothing to do with them working to rule or going on strike. No, absolutely not, how could you even think that Mr Mustard, you naughty man.
How will the query arrears be dealt with?

Stupid, vindictive and incompetent management at Barnet Council. Never.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

How long is a period of 9 months in Barnet ?

Strangely Mr Mustard has discovered that 9 months last nearly a year! How can that be?

Well take a look at this delegated powers report no. 1088.

click & click to enlarge and then the back key to return

So that seems straightforward does it not ? There is a specific task to do which will take 9 months to achieve. Does it end up taking 9 months ? Mr Mustard sent in a Freedom of Information request to find out and here is the answer.

DPR 1088 approved appointment of the Contact Centre Consolidation Manager from June 2010 to March 2011. However, the post was not filled until September 2010.

The postholder has remained in post beyond 31 March to complete the nine months work originally envisaged and thereafter to complete implementation of processes initiated during that period.

This work comes to an end at the end of August 2011.

So the council was unable to fill a post at nearly £50 grand a year for 3 months. Why aren't people queueing up for jobs at this salary even if they are fixed term posts? 

Now the post has been filled it will run from September 2010 until the end of August 11. Mr Mustard has run out of fingers and thinks that far from being a 9 month appointment the post will last for 11 or 12 months. 

Mr Mustard makes that an overspend of 22 to 33%. It appears that delegated powers reports are just pieces of paper that can be ignored. If all One Barnet projects overspend at the same rate then we are in big trouble.

Now looking at the job description itself the title of Contact Centre Consolidation manager seems to be a poor description of the role as much of the job seems to be for day to day management and yet the report was contributed to by The Head of Customer Services ; what do they do all day? What happens when the role ends at the end of this month? Mr Mustard hazards a wild guess that someone else will be recruited because the council are in the throes of trying to outsource this hideously underperforming "service". The cost will be buried deep in the One Barnet budget.

So there we have it : in the One Barnet parallel universe 9 months last for a year.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard