Chasing the One Barnet cheese ( £1bn special)

Mr Mustard doesn't plan to enter the cheese rolling competition preferring to buy his at Waitrose. The first prize is the cheese weighing 6 or 7lb, the second prize is £10 and the third prize is £5. Lots of info here.

Some large companies have entered for the One Barnet £1bn competition but the course is starting to look a little steep and entrants are starting to worry about damaged reputations and if the prize is worth the candle. On that topic Mr Mustard has a message for you, BT, Capita and EC Harris (no-one else left in the running is there?) that he will be checking your invoices every single month for the entire life of the contract. He will be vetting every single item, doubtless as a double act with Mr Reasonable, and making sure that the client side at Barnet Council do the jobs they are paid for and penalise every single contract breach. You will probably wish you had never bid and won. Stop and think now before you go on. Also remember how incompetent Barnet Council are and how what you supply will be that much more difficult to achieve than what a well run council can manage.

These contracts are complex and Barnet Council haven't even managed to stick to timetable despite being overrun with supposed expert (definitely expensive) consultants to do all the hard work whilst the senior officers struggle on at the same time with business as usual and don't manage to do either properly.

Here is a recent message from Craig Cooper, the unCommercial Director (sorry Craig I have been a bit slow getting this one into print, had other more pressing items to deal with, bloggers have to prioritise as well you know)

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From: Barbour, Helen - On Behalf Of Cooper, Craig

Sent: 21 June 2012 - 12:39

To:

Subject: New Support and Customer Services Organisation (NSCSO) and Development and Regulatory Services (DRS) Project Timescales

Dear Colleague

As you will have read already in the fortnightly messages, the project teams have been working hard to finalise the NSCSO and DRS project timetables to make sure that both of these projects run smoothly in the final stages of transfer and that they don't both go live on the same day.

We have now had approval from Council Directors' Group on the new project timings and I would like to update you on what this means for you.

We have tried to set a realistic timetable with some level of flexibility and contingency built in which means we are confident we can work within these timescales. We have planned both projects to allow enough time for a thorough evaluation and a 12-week mobilisation period, to ensure a smooth handover to the new providers. Although the two mobilisation periods will overlap, we have agreed that NSCSO will go live slightly before DRS.

Here is the timetable for awarding the contract to the new provider, the mobilisation period and the final transfer date:

NSCSO

Week beginning 28 November meeting papers for Cabinet Resources Committee, with a recommendation of the preferred bidder for NSCSO, will be published on the council website. This means you will know who the evaluation team are recommending as the new provider. There will be staff briefings on the preferred bidder recommendation during this week.

Week beginning 6 December 2012 Cabinet Resources Committee will make the final decision on the new provider for NSCSO.

Week beginning 12 December 2012 the Overview and Scrutiny Committee will meet and following this, the letter to bidders informing them of the decision will be issued.

Week beginning 8 January 2013 mobilisation of staff will begin. This will include three-way meetings where the new provider will consult the unions on their proposed measures, staff briefings and one-to-one meetings with the new provider. We will tell you more about what the mobilisation period will entail at staff briefings in the autumn.

Week beginning 1 April 2013 all in-scope staff will transfer to the new provider

DRS

Week beginning 7 January 2013 meeting papers for Cabinet Resources Committee, with a recommendation of the preferred bidder for DRS, will be published on the council website. This means you will know who the evaluation team are recommending as the new provider. There will be staff briefings on the preferred bidder recommendation during this week.

Week beginning 14 January 2013 Cabinet Resources Committee will make the final decision on the new provider for DRS.

Week beginning 21 January 2013 the Overview and Scrutiny Committee will meet and following this the letter to bidders informing them of the decision will be issued.

Week beginning 11 February 2013 mobilisation with staff will begin. This will include three-way meetings where the new provider will consult the unions on their proposed measures, staff briefings and one-to-one meetings with the new provider. We will tell you more about what the mobilisation period will entail at staff briefings in the autumn.

Week beginning 6 May 2013 in-scope staff will transfer to the new provider.

I hope that having some more clarity on the timescales is useful. We will continue to tell you as much as we can as early as we can, but I do appreciate that this is a period of uncertainty which can be extremely difficult for staff. As we get closer to the decision on the new providers, and to transfer, we will remind you of the key dates above and will continue to communicate with you through the email updates, staff group, staff briefings and the intranet.

If you do have any questions about the timescales, or anything else regarding the NSCSO or DRS projects, please send an email to onebarnet@barnet.gov.uk or speak to your manager or staff group representative.

I would also recommend all staff to attend one of the TUPE workshops and the Change and Me Workshop, if you haven't already done so.

Craig Cooper

Director of Commercial Services

London Borough of Barnet, North London Business Park, Oakleigh Road South, London N11 1NP

Tel: 020 8359 7082

Mobile: 07979 973042

So the Commercial Director is pressing on with the bonkers idea of outsourcing two major chunks of work at more or less the same time instead of trying one and sitting back for 6 months to see how it goes before outsourcing the other chunk and also signing up for 10 years which will make getting out very hard (without paying a huge sum of money). 

What Craig doesn't mention in his email is the horrific slippage that has occurred in the timetable. Let us go back to a chart which was produced in October 2010 

This chart is part of a short report which cost £19,000 and you can see that mobilisation should have happened 6 months ago and will be at least a year behind. As Mr Reasonable has just pointed out that just means more fees for consultants.

Perhaps the officers don't know what they are doing. 

Perhaps the expert consultants aren't so expert after all.

Perhaps the councillors don't have a grip on officers and what they are doing(no perhaps needed)

Perhaps we need to call a halt and get someone independent in to do a thorough cost-benefit analysis and see if any money is really going to be saved. Take a look at what has just happened in Bournemouth, 35% of the projected saving has been removed. In Barnet the savings are all lovely projections, will they come to pass? Mr Mustard doubts it. 

Come on councillors, start poking in all the dark corners and challenging all of the figures. Apply some rigorous scrutiny before it is too late.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Can the excuse of issuing the annual bills run for a year?

http://chill-info.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/worst-excuses-to-avoid-having-sex.html

Mr Mustard has blogged previously about the message that you get when you email the Council tax section (Revs & Bens as it is known)

The auto-acknowledgement is still the same as it was 2 months ago..

Thank you for your email enquiry to the London Borough of Barnet Council Tax Team. Clear and polite.

Following the issue of council tax bills for the new financial year, which were issued at the end of March and in early April we are currently experiencing a high volume of enquiries what, still, in June? and may be unable to deal with your email within our normal 10 working days very true. We will respond to you as soon as possible and apologise in advance for any delay. Again very polite but no substitute for an answer.

Information about Council Tax can be found on our website at http://www.barnet.gov.uk/council-tax Please go away and answer your own question even though it is not your area of expertise, it is ours.

Payments can also be made on line at http://www.barnet.gov.uk/pay It is very unlikely that the email sent in was "how do I pay" as it tells you on the bill.

Please remember to always quote your Council Tax account reference number in the subject line of all further emails to assist in speeding up a response. One would hope that everyone does this. Unfortunately the council rarely quote my reference when they write to me. Why not?

Make life easier – pay your Council Tax by Direct Debit Make the council's life easier, paying by direct debit can easily mess yours up. If you let the council help themselves when you like and why they like the possibility of you paying something that you don't owe is increased. At this very moment Mr Mustard has his account for the empty property he is still refurbishing (decided as no-one was showing any signs of buying at the right price to get rid of the horrible Everest double glazed windows and fit double glazed sash in wood made and installed by local firms - one makes and one fits) under query and if he paid by direct debit he would probably have had some instalments collected that Mr Mustard does not think are due. As soon as he is satisfied he will pay the account.

What has gone wrong this year? Last year it was the enforced change of software which led to some people being billed twice (including those who pay by direct debit) and this year it is the fault of senior management who have decided upon a massive reorganisation of One Barnet when they don't really know what they are playing with. They "let go" the expert who has kept the service running run for years, Dave Sharpe, when he was exactly the man they needed, the staff respected him (they tell Mr Mustard) and they are pushing staff who don't want to go there into a call centre. Staff are already slowly starting to leave as they find other posts. I am sure that all of the surrounding local authorities will be keen to take the Barnet employees who have performed so well.

Mr Mustard predicts that the March 2013 statistics for council tax recovery will be worse than for March 2012 and he can already hear the twistometer being cranked into life and excuses about the recession being lined up. Bill Murphy and John Gregson and all the other town hall tax dodgers and consultant cronies will be well up the road by then ruining another high performing council somewhere else but don't worry as Mr Mustard will make sure news of your failings follows you to the next council.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Dear Marge - #1

Dear Marge

Hello everyone, it is Friday, the day when bloggers have a laugh and tell jokes and doughnuts (a  Citizen Barnet speciality) and publish poetry and all sorts of stuff that is not necessarily true.

Well today Mr Mustard is evoking the spirit of the late Marjorie Proops (and giving away how old he is) and publishing a letter that might have been sent to her by a One Barnet consultant.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Dear Marge

I hope you can help me as I feel that no-one loves me.

I am a very important consultant who is paid lots and lots of money every day but I just can't face going into work unless my nails are perfectly painted and my hair isn't out of place. I am doing what I am told is a really important job in Barnet but I think the staff talk about me behind my back and use a codename when they talk about me. 

They pretend to be nice to me but I don't think they are. 

They say they want to put the community first but all they want to do is keep their jobs and it's my job to make lots of them redundant because they are a lazy lot and there are 20 of them too many.

My boss keeps saying to take the money and shut up and that this gravy train won't last much longer before we have to move on. He says we are like the emperor with no clothes - I don't understand him as I always have very nice clothes.

What shall I do?

Yours in hope

Miss P

Dear Miss P

Be Human

I can see the problem. You are obviously working on the toxic One Barnet programme and don't worry as everyone has doubts about that.

You have a simple decision to make about yourself. What is most important to you? To be loved or to be rich (well at least not poor and relying on help from Barnet Council). If it is to be rich then carry on but sadly you won't become rich at Barnet Council as your boss is right. The gravy train is about to come off the rails and you will never be happy as you have to make so many other people miserable to do that.

If you want to be loved then give up the fancy clothes and the expensive make-up as it is only a mask. Go to Africa and help to feed starving children and villages that don't have access to clean water to dig a well.

Then you will see what truly matters in life, you will be happy and everyone will love you.

Yours in hope

Marge

Mr Mustard didn't realise quite how fantastic Marge Proops was. She is now at rest in the Hoop Lane Cemetery, Mr Mustard might pop round himself to see her grave quite soon and she is at peace as Barnet Council cannot sell the cemetery off as they don't own it. Mr Mustard read this obituary in the Independent. It is well worth a read.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Another £100k up the swanny river

The Suwannee River

Mr Mustard despairs. He has discovered that another £100,000 has been wasted on consultants (the name of the consultants was, would you believe it, redacted and Mr Mustard is waiting for the results of a review), this time to investigate alternative black marker pens for Freedom of Information officers. It turns out that back in February one of the FOI officers passed out and had to be taken to hospital as a precaution after spending 3 hours locked in a small conference room redacting the secret details in a 300 page One Barnet report which Mr Mustard had requested. The council then spent all of this money on a report into alternative water based marker pens. The council thought that using water based pens would be safer for the FOI officers as they do not give off noxious fumes and less would be stolen out of the stationery cupboard by junior juvenile staff who were trying to get high on them. One person got caught who had been doing this in the toilets because they left a telltale black mark on their nostrils. 

This being Barnet Council they couldn't of course just decide to use the water based markers, or to use scissors and cut out the offending passages (it would take too long apparently and could lead to claims for RSI) no, they had to send a number of redacted documents off to a laboratory for testing to see if the person getting the document might be able to wash the marking off and reveal the text underneath. Should any other council want to follow Barnet Council's very sensible idea to use water based pens which are better for the planet and are made locally in Hertfordshire by the family company U. R. Green they should send Mr Mustard an email for the contact details (mrmustard@zoho.com)

Mr Mustard contacted Barnet Council Press Office for a response and their Miss Avril Duper said:

"The council takes the health of its employees very seriously and thus the new marker pens are essential to staff wellbeing. In addition, the new pens are odourless and silent in operation and can be applied more quickly and accurately than the old ones. The cost was well within the One Barnet budget"

Mr Mustard hopes that it will be another year before another similar scandal sees the light of day.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Who is deciding our future council tax bills?

2 useful short planks or boards

Overseeing the huge outsourcing jamboree that is Development and Regulatory Services there is, finds Mr Mustard following FOI enquiries, a DRS Project Board made up of the following 8 people:

Pam Wharfe, Interim Director of Environment Planning and Regeneration

Craig Cooper, Director, Commercial Services

Martin Cowie, Assistant Director Planning

Ed Gowan, Assistant Director, Commercial Service

A N Other employee earning less than £58,200 p.a.

A N Other #2 employee earning less than £58,200 p.a.

2 are employed by the Council’s partners (i.e. employees of external companies). The Council does not hold information regarding their salaries. We are unable to disclose their names as this information is exempt under section 40(2) of FOIA. (Mr Mustard will be challenging the use of this exemption)

What is the role of the DRS project board? Mr Mustard does not actually know. He is going to put in for the terms of reference. Presumably they are making many decisions which will affect all of us for the next 10 years. If they cock it up we are all in trouble.

Mr Mustard is surprised that there are no councillors on the DRS Project Board and some resident's representatives would also be a good idea as it is their money that is being spent (in theory of course the councillors are our representatives but they seem to have abdicated almost all responsibility in favour of officers).

Mr Mustard has mentioned Ms Wharfe before. Her handling of the simple task of awarding a contract to remove parking meters was possibly the most botched job of 2011.

Craig Cooper has been mismanaging procurement for some years. The MetPro £1m+ was paid out during his watch. Craig told the audit committee that there were not any other similar cases and then along came RM Countryside and then Iris Gardening and then.....watch this space.

Mr Mustard is not filled full of confidence with the Board so far.

Mr Mustard does not know anything about Martin Cowie & Ed Gowan and expects that information will land in his inbox if there is anything interesting to say about them.

The two lower paid employees will at least know how their own processes work and better than the handle management will have.

What irks Mr Mustard is the 2 consultants who are playing a vital role in the outsourcing ( not likely to say don't outsource are they? ) and he is denied their names and there was an attempt to mislead him. Here are parts of the exchange.

Mr Mustard

Please tell me who the members of the DRS project board are giving their job title and name ( assuming they earn over £58,200 )

Mohsin Abbasi, Business Support Officer ( he doesn't seem very proud of his title as he never puts it ) One Barnet Programme Office

We have interpreted your request to mean “names and job titles of council employees on the DRS Project Board.” (Mr Mustard was not born yesterday and smelt a rat)

I confirm that there are eight members of the DRS project board. Four of whom are within the scope of your request i.e. earn over £58,200. Please see below their details (see above)

Mr Mustard

I would like to know the details of all people on the DRS project board no matter who pays them or who they work for please (apart from the 4 lower paid council staff that you mention) i.e. are there any consultants on the board?

Then he got the information which is above.

So Mr Abbasi made a ham-fisted attempt to hide the fact that there are two consultants on the Board. Mr Mustard will find out who they are and the rate their employer is paid in respect of their services.

This will be the fifth request for a review of an FOI answer this week which has come about as a direct result of the unsatisfactory answers of Mr Abbasi.

Now Mr Mustard is wondering about Mr Abbasi and whether he is himself a consultant? Next task, send in an FOI request about him. (Mr/Mrs/Miss/Master Mole may send the information sooner than it is available under FOI).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

RIO = Stuff the motorist

Sorry it doesn't mean that. It means Revenue Income Optimisation. That is what it means in OneBarnet speak. In plain English it means put prices up.

Last year Barnet Council commissioned a report to look at Parking Enforcement - or so the report says. In fact it isn't about enforcement at all ( I do need to tell readers from outside of the borough this is completely normal in Barnet Council, the mis-use of normal meaning - a phrase like "putting the Community First" could be translated as "Putting the Boot In" - to motorists, the elderly, crossing patrols, old peoples homes, council house tenants, Pinkham Way residents, oh the list goes on and on ) - in fact when the world of blogging is quiet at Xmas, to amuse Mr Mustard he might do himself a list of every group of residents that the council have upset during the last 18 months to see if there is a single resident left in the borough who hasn't been nobbled in one way or another.

Mr Mustard digresses. You want to see the report don't you? Fair enough. We paid for it. Here it is. You can make the pages larger by clicking on them but if still too small please send an email to mrmustard@zoho.com for your personal copy.

Now that is very interesting is it not? This report is from 2010. I am not sure the exact date nor the cost although it won't be cheap ( he will tell you that in 20 working days time - do remember to pop back ).

So this report on "enforcement" is supposedly a supporting document for the charges to be increased in Barnet following details work by council officers. Hmm, let's see.

Mr Mustard is not keen on being seen as an opportunity. The opportunity for the council to put it's hand deeper in his pocket and take out extra money for absolutely nothing in return. That would be a bad bargain. So the simple plan set out on page 1 is to charge more for:

parking in a CPZ,

residents parking permits - to go up to £60 ( this seems to have got lost in translation )

parking for visitors ( what is that sign you see as you enter Barnet "Not welcome to Barnet" )

parking at Brent Cross ( no longer free )

free spaces - make them standard price. 2,700 spaces removed at a stroke. Nasty.

Car parking inflation to be 10% in Barnet.

Page 2 sees the idea of charging for parking at Brent Cross mooted. The council hope to get £2.9m from this source but don't know if they are contractually entitled to do anything ( will that stop them from trying? ) They kindly suggest giving a share to the owners of Brent Cross on page 6. Mr Mustard thinks that John Lewis will have something to say about Barnet Council turning down the flow of shoppers and it may even be in their contract with Brent Cross that parking remains free.. Mr Mustard thinks that some conditions have been put into the Brent Cross redevelopment scheme but will let others tell him what they are in regards to parking. Bluewater are going to do very nicely out of this.

Page 3. We haven't seen anything yet in this report that justifies the use of expensive outside consultants. Teenagers on a business course at school could have prepared a better report than this one, and for free. This page is full of untested assumptions so the figures cannot be relied upon. It looks like there was a plan to put 2 PD ( pay & display - so old hat for Barnet the clueless cashless borough ) machines into each zone where the free bays were removed. £5,000 to put each new machine in.

Page 4. Visitor permits at £2 each instead of the £4 they became. Still a hefty increase from £1. Don't believe that nonsense about the number in circulation. Mr Mustard has loads tucked away in the desk drawer as well many sensible residents who purchased at £1. That number 196,340 is probably the number issued in 12 months. The report envisages that if you double the price of something demand stays the same. What utter rot.

Page 5. Comparative boroughs. Lambeth ( otherwise known as Lambert later in the report - the Borough of Lambert does sound much posher ). You simply cannot compare Lambeth to Barnet in terms of parking, Lambeth is an inner London borough. It touchs the south side of the Thames at Waterloo. Haringey is only like the most southerly parts of Barnet, it is sheltered from the M25 by the whole of Enfield and wikipedia says that in some places Haringey is considered as an inner London borough. There isn't a third classification but if there was Haringey would be a mid London borough and Barnet would still be outer. Croydon is an interesting choice. In many ways it is most like the City of London with all those dreadful tower blocks. The tram system also offers a real choice for better travel. It's nothing like Barnet. 

The comparisons for visitor parking should have included Enfield, Hertsmere, Harrow, Brent.

The other comparisons for residents' and visitors' permits do at least show some fairer comparisons but Camden?

Page 6. Shopping centres. No mention of the Galleria at Hatfield, the Howard Centre at Welwyn, the Harlequin at Watford, Costco, retail parks everywhere e.g Edmonton around the north circular and so on.

Risks. Mr Mustard's summary for Barnet Council. "We have no idea"

Page 7. Do some work.

Page 8. A spreadsheet. Completely unreliable as all based on assumptions.

Page 9. More numbers that were too low so Brian Coleman made up his own mind.

Is our money well spent on this sort of report which then gets ignored. No.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Outsourcing is not the solution - Suffolk's experience

Commonsense in action. How long before Barnet Council play catch up and pretend they were never in favour of outsourcing after all, and will it be outsourced consultants who tell them that ?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics

Will the councillors also like to put back into the pot the £10m spent on one Barnet which will unltimately be wasted?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Mike Freer to "advise" Minister on savings - and Consultants in Government.

Mr Mustard is looking forward to reading later about the savings of £1bn that Mr Freer claims to have identified in Central Government. We have a small problem of £54m to find over 3 years. That is evidently chicken feed for Mr Freer and if he were to pop along to the council for an afternoon he could find those excessive back office costs and keep front line services then his seat is guaranteed for life by the people of Barnet. How about it Mr Freer? The below is what appears on the Finchley & Golders Green Conservatives website. Type in red is illumination added by Mr Mustard.

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Mike Freer MP is to meet with Francis Maude, the Minister leading the Coalition Government’s cost saving program, to advise on what central government can learn from Barnet Council’s experience. ( and yet Barnet Council are in a £54m hole! ) 

Following an exchange in the House of Commons, Mike Freer said “Ministers have made an excellent start identifying waste and inefficiency. Cutting this fat means the bones of front line services are saved, but I believe there is more that can be done. The lessons I learnt at Barnet Council are directly applicable to central government, and that is what I will be putting across to the Minister.” ( Mr Mustard looks forward to seeing the meat of these savings. Mobile phone costs will be one item, for sure, but what are the rest? )

The Government’s Efficiency and Reform Group has already identified £3.75bn of savings through better procurement and by lowering overheads. Using Written Parliamentary Questions, Mike Freer has identified an additional £1bn of potential savings, based on ‘back office’ reductions made during his leadership of Barnet Council. ( If you would like to see the written questions, click here, but don't forget to come back. Is that £1bn in a year or 10 years? ) 

Below is the exchange yesterday in the House:

Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green): What estimate he has made of the savings to the public purse arising from the work of the Efficiency and Reform Group in 2010-11?

The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude): The Government saved £3.75 billion in their first 10 months after taking office by stopping unnecessary and wasteful spending. We saved £800 million by renegotiating with the biggest suppliers to Government. We cut spending on consultants by 70% and on advertising by 80%. This is just the beginning; there is much more to be done. ( There is an awful lot of unnecessary and wasteful spending in Barnet of which some like the publication "Barnet First" existed in Mr Freer's time. Ooh look, spending on consultants cut by 70%; how many million would that come to in Barnet? )

Mike Freer: I thank the Minister and welcome the initial savings of the Efficiency and Reform Group. He will be aware, however, of the £1 billion of additional savings that my own research has identified. Will he agree that I could meet the chair of the Efficiency and Reform Group to discuss these savings further?  ( Please publish them Mr Freer once you have discussed them. Do you have a date for the meeting yet? )

Mr Maude: The chair of the Efficiency and Reform Group is me, so I will be delighted to meet my hon. Friend, who, when he was leader of Barnet council, showed how much can be done. We do, absolutely, have a huge amount to learn from what is being done best in local government, particularly the sort of savings that can be made by much better use of office accommodation. ( Has the current management forgotten what Mr Freer's legacy was - how to make easy savings? Office accommodation, there is lots of that, NLBP, Barnet House, Hendon Town Hall, how many other buildings? - shedloads.  )

Whilst looking through written questions Mr Mustard came across this very interesting one to Francis Maude MP.

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Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby, Labour)

To ask the Prime Minister how many senior civil servants in his Office at each grade had worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst and Young, Deloitte or KPMG immediately prior to taking up their appointment in each of the last four years; what consultancy agreements his Office had with those firms in each such year; and how many consultants from those firms have advised his Office in each such year. ( The same question in relation to consultants would probably be a good one at Barnet Council )

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Francis Maude (Minister for the Cabinet Office; Horsham, Conservative)


The Prime Minister's Office is an integral part of the Cabinet Office and therefore the answer provided is for the whole of the Cabinet Office.

Appointments to the civil service are made on merit on the basis of fair and open competition in accordance with the Constitutional Reform Act 2010.

The information requested for the Cabinet Office is not readily available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

In May 2010 the Government announced a freeze on new consultancy expenditure. Any exception to this freeze (where the estimated value is over £20,000) must be approved by the relevant Minister. In the case of the Cabinet Office, the Minister for the Cabinet Office approves any exception to the consultancy freeze. Expenditure on consultancy is only allowed if the consultancy is deemed to be operationally necessary, or the work can not be done by in-house staff. All consultancy contracts are subject to a review every three months, for a maximum of nine months. Where contracts go beyond nine months, they must be submitted for approval to the Efficiency and Reform Group for consideration by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Minister for the Cabinet Office.

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Mr Mustard is shocked to find that a very sensible policy that is being applied in central government is not being applied in Barnet Council.

Are any councillors reading this blog? please do something.

Mr Mustard has just found a blog post by The Barnet Eye about Mr Freer's mobile phone questions here. Take a look.

His Wikipedia entry is here if you want some background information.

Yours sincerely

Mr Mustard