Have councillors cut their allowances by 9.5%? (No)

 
Barnet UNISON Press Release: 2 June 2013

Barnet UNISON organised a strike ballot which closed on Tuesday 27 May 2014 in response to a 9.5% cut in pay being imposed on our members.

Our members working for Your Choice Barnet have delivered a 100% vote for strike action.

Background:

In February 2012 Barnet Council transferred Learning Disability and Physical and Sensory Impairment services for adults to a Local Authority Trading Company (LATC) called Your Choice Barnet (YCB). About 160 staff (145.6 Full Time Equivalents) in Adults services transferred to the LATC. Following a restructure and cuts to pay on shift allowances there are now only about 105 FTE working for YCB.

This is a resounding ballot result and vindication of why Barnet UNISON has always said the additional 9.5% cut was unacceptable both to our members and the future for these critical frontline services. It is not feasible to continually attack low paid workers and expect them to take it without a fight and our members are not prepared to put up with joining a race to the bottom that is now common practice in the social care industry. The business case for this outsourced service was flawed from the outset three years ago and to date we have yet to see any financial figures which demonstrate this service will be able to deliver new business.

Our members are taking a pay cut in order for YCB to repay Barnet Homes a loan borrowed at commercial rates of interest!

Last year Barnet Council brought back the recycling service because they felt they could do a better job, which is why we are asking them to bring this service back in house in order to ensure a safe and secure service for Adults with Disabilities in Barnet.

The last twelve months have seen a sharp increase in the numbers of agency staff and zero hours contracts being used to deliver these services. The attacks on staff have undermined morale and led to an exodus of experienced staff. For many of our members this is a last chance to save the service.

UNISON Branch Secretary John Burgess said: “Our members have always been clear they are fighting for their jobs and the future of the service. We are now seeking an urgent meeting with Your Choice Barnet to see if talks can avert having to take strike action.”

UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis:

"Your Choice Care Workers are fighting to preserve a service to some of the most vulnerable people in society and I want express my admiration and solidarity for a brave and principled group of people."

"Many of our members have said that the 9.5% cut in pay will mean they simply will not be able to pay their bills and some would struggle to keep their homes. This outstanding strike ballot of 100% for strike action shows they have the courage and determination to fight for these critical frontline services.”

End of press release.

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Care workers have no choice but to strike as otherwise where will these attacks on their terms and conditions end? If Tracey Lees, the £100,000+ a year head of Barnet Homes which runs Your Choice and the management team of both organisations are taking the same level of pay cut Mr Mustard will delete this post.

Does the General Functions Committee function ? (GFC)

Yesterday evening was the GFC.

It was a very disappointing meeting. Papers were late in being produced such that one councillor did not have the correct set and so could not have read them in advance of the meeting.

The restructure of the Internal Audit function was discussed for 10 minutes. It seems that the balance of auditors is being adjusted in favour of more junior staff. There will be 0.6 more staff ( although many less than 3 years ago )  but £15,000 less salary. The new organisational chart for audit is apparently so top secret that it was put into the exempt section of the report. How ridiculous. An FOI request will be submitted for the information ( if you weren't so stupidly secretive you wouldn't get all those FOI requests Barnet Council - sit and think about that question for a while ) or Mr Mustard's mole in the HR department will simply email him a copy. 

Despite the shortcomings that the Audit department consistently pick up and the obvious need for more resource it seems that it will not arrive. The lack of sufficient audit capacity will lead to more underperformance by the council. What a wasted opportunity.

Further disappointment arrived in the next item. The Restructure of the Barnet Education Business Partnership; their website is here. 

Here is the report on that item.

click to enlarge; back to return

There were two votes against this proposal but the day was easily carried, aided by the votes of Councillor Thomas who thought that schools have the capacity as they have generous budgets so if schools use their heads they will be OK and by Councillor Rams who echoed Councillor Thomas's words ( stop patting each other on the back when you haven't done anything original or useful please )  and said that Schools can do it, it's a better place to organise it ( so why were the council currently doing it ? ). Cllr Hutton votes against as she didn't think that teachers had the time to do this.

So did any councillor ask Sharon Glover, the Operational Manager (East/South) Youth Support Service ( by the way Sharon you spoke too fast - evidently nervous of what would happen to your report although you don't need to be as I haven't seen a report to GFC properly dissected yet ) the following questions:

How does the overall budget for the Children's service look? ( A. it is £187,000 under budget )

Now that this service will no longer take place is there a reduced need for management in the Children's service. Maybe we could manage with only the one Operational Manager ( if you are for East/South there must be one for North/West ) which would make up half of the budget needed for Workplace Training. The management team cost £795,000. Could that be trimmed.

There are 873 posts in the Children's service. Are they all absolutely essential? 

Is there a staff chart we can see please?

Of the 873 posts 125 are managers. Are they all absolutely essential?

There are 96 temps from Hays. Can some of these be removed in order to avoid making these 5 individuals redundant who are on secondment?

As usual the councillors gave the report the most cursory of examinations, asked no difficult questions and let the officer have an easy ride. Very disappointing.

One other thing. A Delegated Powers Report has been slipped onto the council website ( not at the top of the list as one would expect but as the seventh item in the list - who will notice that - apart from bloggers of course ). It is number 1426. It also relates to the Children's Service. It is for the reduction of posts in the High Incidence Support Team. It is exempt. Looks like less to manage in the Children's Service everyday. Time for the management to be restructured?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Mr Mustard's musings #2 - Why are there 63 councillors ?

Mr Mustard is the new boy amongst the Barnet Bloggers so has less knowledge of the history of the Council and so he sometimes asks the obvious questions and doesn't accept the "we've always done it this way" line. So Mr Mustard thought to himself, whilst watching a councillor take no part in a meeting except to put her hand up for votes on party lines, what was the point of her being there? That led Mr Mustard to wonder why there are 63 councillors and why there are 3 for each ward (a small local area).

So Mr Mustard did some research. He found variations in the number of councillors for each council and in the number of councillors per ward.

Mr Mustard found that in 2009/10 Mansfield Council started with a clean sheet. They worked out how many councillors they needed to run the council effectively and then re-organised themselves. That is the process which Mr Mustard thinks should take place in Barnet. 

So Mr Mustard acted pro-actively and wrote to the leader of the council, Cllr. Cornelius, as it needs him to get the ball rolling.

Here is what he wrote:-

Dear Cllr Cornelius

I expect that you are aware of the changes that took place in Mansfield Council in 2009/10 to reduce the number of Councillors.

Whilst Mansfield & Barnet cannot be directly compared lessons can be learnt from what they did. I attach 2 pdf documents about this. ( due to a 10mb limit only one was attached in the end - you can find lots of information about Mansfield here.)

In my view 63 Councillors is far too many. Having 3 for each ward is confusing and it would be better if each resident had just one Councillor for their local matters.

The approach taken by Mansfield was to start with a clean sheet and work out how many Councillors were necessary to run the Council in an efficient manner. I think that Barnet Council should consider doing the same and that system could then hopefully be up and running by the next local election.

It would also save money and be administratively easier for democratic services to deal with.

Please let me know what you think.

If the matter has been considered by Council in the last 5 years please do point me at the publicly available paperwork.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Mr Mustard recently heard back from Cllr Cornelius as follows:-

Dear Mr Mustard

Thank you for the suggestion of cutting the 63 councillors. 

With the current level of meetings and ward work my feeling is that we can`t work with fewer councillors. 

However as the borough grows, any growth in the number of members needs to be carefully considered and if central government changes the role of a council again numbers need reviewing. 

Whatever one`s political view it is important that we have democratic oversight of what the council is doing and I would be very loath to reduce numbers to such an extent that it would be impaired.

Yours sincerely

Richard Cornelius

This reply does not answer all of the points but at least it is a clear and polite no thank you after some consideration of the idea. Some of Mr Mustard's emails to other councillors get deleted unread or receive intemperate replies and so it is a bit sad that being responded to in a businesslike manner causes Mr Mustard to comment upon the matter.

Mr Mustard has written again and although he doesn't expect an answer he is going to send Cllr. Cornelius a link to this posting so he can add his view if he wishes, or Mr Mustard will add a footnote for him if he is not au fait with blogging.

Dear Councillor Cornelius

Thank you for your reply. 

Thank you for thinking about the matter. We have opposite views. I will give my idea the oxygen of publicity and see what happens. If you get lots of residents writing to you the idea may need further consideration.

I do not believe that all councillors are overloaded with work and I have grave doubts that some of them even read the agenda papers in advance of the meetings. If all members did so there would surely be no errors in reports for citizens to find. See for example: Mr Reasonable's blog

You have no need to comment further unless you wish to.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

So here is some of Mr Mustard's reasoning and then he rather expects some lively debate in the comments box. 

Sadly the former leader is off on sick leave and not attending meetings and has been for some months. This has proved that the council can manage with one fewer councillor.

Cllr Cornelius did not give any reason why 3 local councillors are needed per ward. We do not have 3 MP's for each constituency or 3 dentists each. Mr Mustard does not think that in his ward at least ( High Barnet ) there is all that much ward work and it would be more transparent if there were just one councillor per ward. The wards would be smaller in size and with less residents per councillor.

Cllr Cornelius implies that the current level of meetings and ward work is high. Mr Mustard thinks it will be for him but if he swapped with a councillor who has only one committee to attend in addition to the main council  he would see the level of work in a different light. Mr Mustard has seen Mr Reasonable asks more questions, and better ones, than most councillors. Mrs Angry attends more meetings than most councillors.

Mr Mustard does not want the borough to grow. It is already one of the largest in London. It is green and pleasant; we are one of the green lungs of London. Concreting over large parts of the borough for housing & shopping is a bad idea. The State of the Borough report says that 8% of the population changes each year, that is one person in 12 or about 26,000 people. Please do not think Mr Mustard is zenophobic but is the point of Barnet to be a gigantic transit camp for London? We need some stability if proper provision is to be made for schools,care homes, health care etc.

Democratic oversight! Mr Mustard will leave that for Mrs Angry to well and truly trash. Mr Mustard has sat through enough committees now to see that there is very little questioning and some chairs just want to get through the business in the shortest possible time and pressurize councillors to curtail or not ask questions. The shortest meeting Mr Mustard has been to lasted for 22 minutes and they all have 100 or 200 pages of A4 to consider. It simply is not possible to do it justice in that time.

So whether you agree with Mr Mustard or Cllr Cornelius do please add comments below and if you think we don't need 63 councillors please email Cllr Cornelius on this link.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

CPZ - Councillors pay zero ( not Labour ones though )

Mr Mustard has been busy this morning. Despite the rain he was out in High Barnet along with other volunteers raising money to pay for the legal costs of the judicial review that David Attfield, a Solicitor who lives within the East Finchley CPZ, has started on behalf of all CPZ residents. 

As you would expect the residents of High Barnet are very interested in the outcome of the case and generous to boot.

Barnet Council have a slogan "Better services for less money" which appears to the residents of High Barnet who live within the CPZ not to be the truth as they are expected to pay at least £100 for car permits in this financial year whereas it was only £40 last year. 

Is the Service better ? No, the service has got worse. The free bays have been removed, the ability to pay with cash into a meter is disappearing, and it is easy to wait 20 minutes to get through on the telephone to the parking department. Lip service is what you get from Barnet Council not real service.

Are we paying less money ? No. Visitor vouchers, a lifeline for the elderly, have been raised from £1 to £4 even if your visitor is only stopping for 15 minutes.

Do Barnet Council make the Borough a better place? Not judging by this article.

Parents live in fear of parking wardens at nursery

The CPZs were introduced on the basis that the charge to residents would only be enough to cover the costs of the CPZ and at the start, some 20 years ago Mr Mustard recalls, the charge for a car permit was £5. With inflation at say 5% the current charge should be £10 not £100. Did Mr Traversty, the Chief Finance Officer, the contractor who is paid £1,000 a day ( he can easily afford a car permit but he doesn't need to as he lives in Haringey ) let his finger dally on the zero button on the calculator when working out the budget?

So although fund raising is going well this is just a little nudge for you, if you live in a CPZ, to visit the CPZ Action Group website, click the Paypal Donate button and send what you can afford to help the cause.

Barnet CPZ Action Group

Just think about this. If you expect to live in the Borough for another 20 years and have one car you will pay at least another £60 * 20 = £1,200 to Barnet Council during that time for the dubious pleasure of trying to park somewhere near your home.

Mr Mustard has just realised that CPZ can also stand for Councillors Pay Zero which, unlike you, is the amount they pay to park anywhere in the Borough.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

MetPro - Urgent Questions for Barnet Councillors

This letter is being sent to all of Barnet's Councillors today. Responses will be posted after a few days.

Dear Barnet Councillor

Many Barnet residents have been disturbed by recent revelations that Barnet Council paid the MetPro security companies more than £1.4 million without making checks on the status of the company, or even having a contract.

The authors of the Barnet blogs, recently praised by Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, for their work uncovering this scandal, are writing to you now to ask you to complete the survey below.

The results will be posted on our blogs to allow voters to see how seriously our councillors are taking their responsibilities. We will post the results ward by ward; we will also note non-response.

As councillors are accountable to the electorate, we think it is right and proper that you engage with the electorate and keep them informed of your views and opinions. This survey will help you to do that on a matter of keen public interest.

Questions:

1. Are you aware of the issues concerning the MetPro security companies and Barnet Council ?

Yes / No

2. Are you satisfied that the Council has managed the issue properly ?
Yes / No / Neither / Don’t know

3. Do you agree with the comments of Lord Palmer, chair of the Audit Committee, that Barnet Council’s Internal Audit is under resourced ?

Yes / No / Don’t know / No opinion

4. Have you personally spoken to the Leader of the Council about your views on the MetPro scandal ?

Yes / No / I am the Leader of the Council

5. Besides the MetPro scandal, do you believe that there are other serious problems with purchasing in Barnet Council ?

Yes / No / Don't know

6. Do you think a halt should be called to the One Barnet Programme while investigations continue and basic procedures in procurement and contract monitoring are improved ?
Yes / No / Don’t know / No opinion

7. Do you believe that as a councillor you have a responsibility to prevent such scandals arising in future ?

Yes / No / Don’t know / No opinion

8. Have you read the internal audit report into the MetPro scandal ?

Yes / No

9. Are you happy with the decision to remove nine staff from Barnet Council’s procurement team, as proposed by Craig Cooper at the General Functions Committee on 30 June 2011 ?
Yes / No / Don’t know / No opinion

Thank you for your time. We look forward to receiving your answers to these questions. Of course, we would be happy to hear any comments you would like to make on the matters raised.

Yours faithfully

Derek Dishman, John Dix, Vicki Morris, Theresa Musgrove and Roger Tichborne