ICO: bite - Mrs Angry: bark - Mr Mustard: growl

Mr Mustard expects that you have read Mrs Angry's blog on the subject of her recent battle, alongside the ICO, to get some minutes, that were intended to be published, out of the grasping hands of Barnet Council. As a regular user of Freedom of Information, although hardly at all recently, Mr Mustard felt duty bound to add one of his experiences to the publicly available information.

In relation to Barnet Council now being on the naughty step, for, in essence, not following the law, it is interesting to note what the deputy Leader, Dan Thomas, told the local paper, The Barnet Press, which you can read here:

Deputy council leader Dan Thomas said: “It will be interesting to see how we can improve performance as in January to March this year our rate for responding in time was 99.5 per cent, one of the best in the UK." (Mr Mustard is not convinced)

Of course, having frustrated Mr Mustard's best efforts to get interesting information into the public domain by embarking on a series of responses that his questions were vexatious (which was apparently a spontaneous matter that no officer will admit to positively deciding), when the questions were anodyne and simple to respond to, the number of requests to respond to had been artificially depressed thus making better performance easier.

However, although the ICO said publicly that delay was the reason there are almost certainly other factors taken into account such as there being 10 live complaints with the Information Commissioner (possibly the most of any council) and a case with the First Tier Tribunal about which more later (the ICO reminded Barnet Council last week that they were behind timetable on providing the evidence packs to all parties - Mr Mustard is on time with his legal requirements) and so Dan's "we are almost perfect" remark focused only on a narrow element of FOI law. Maybe Daniel asked officers the wrong question or officers failed to mention their various other shortcomings which were not specifically raised - we can't expect Daniel to have gone into Governance and got his hands dirty taking a good look at the actual requests, can we?

Mr Mustard received an email from the FOI section this week but let us go through the history of the request in order.

3 December 2011 (yes, 18 months ago)

Question: Please provide all minutes of, reports of and briefing papers of the Council Directors Group which have been created or presented since 1 January 2010 (contrary to possible belief, when it comes to FOI the Barnet bloggers work alone - we all want the scoop!)

7 December 2011

Question acknowledged. Response due promptly (try not to laugh Mr Mustard) but in any event within 20 working days starting the day after receipt which would be about 10 January 2012 (all those bank holidays got in the way).

6 January 2012 - holding response

I can confirm that the Council holds the information you are requesting. I have been advised that the Council Directors Group meetings are held fortnightly and that the information you are requesting relates to about 40 meetings.

There is a possibility that information contained within the papers you have requested would satisfy the criteria for exemption under the FOIA and the documents have to be looked at by a senior officer in order to determine if this is the case. Due to the volume and nature of the materials we are unable to complete this exercise within the 20 working day deadline and estimate that this will take a significant amount of time. Our approach to this request will be to release the information in stages as we work through the documents.

I apologise for any inconvenience this delay may cause you.

19 January 2012 - Mr Mustard is very helpful.

Thank you for you response.

I do not wish to waste the council's time if the information turns out not to be of great interest. Might I suggest that you redact the minutes of the first two meetings (one at once if necessary) and send them to me and then I will hopefully be able to tell if I want the subsequent minutes or not.

Do you have an estimate of what a "significant amount of time" is? It might be helpful if you time yourself, or a colleague, redacting the first set of minutes.

7 February 2012 -from the council.

Thank you for your email below. Please accept my apologies for not responding sooner.

I note that you have refined your request to the first two set of minutes and I have passed this message along with your comment to time the process of redacting the set of minutes.

I will forward the minutes to you as soon as they are made available to me.

So the council are already a month behind the 20 day deadline and Mr Mustard tends not to routinely chase the council (he does have a life!).

21 June 2012 - the council wake up

Our records indicate that the information requests below which were allocated to the Corporate Governance Directorate are still outstanding,

#1031A - Corporate Governance (Deleted Posts)
#1169 - Council Directors Group
#1223 - Procurement consultants
#1170 PWC Report Names (Internal Review)

We are aware that there may also be a few requests outstanding with other services within the council.

While we do aim to respond to requests within 20 working days we may on this occasion have missed the deadline. The council is committed to improving its ability to comply with its statutory duties under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and, to this end, has implemented a new Freedom of Information case management system along with a continuing programme of raising awareness of officers’ duties under the FOIA.

In order to ensure that we respond to all outstanding requests and close off cases on the old system, we are writing to you to ask that you confirm that you are still interested in receiving a response or in the alternative to confirm your willingness to withdraw the request.

I would be grateful if you could respond to this email before June 29 2012; if we do not receive your response; we will assume that you have withdrawn your request and we will close the case on our system. (A council simply cannot withdraw your request for you!)

I look forward to your response.

2 Hours later:

I still require a response please, Mr Mustard.

later the same day:

Thank you for your prompt response. We will aim to fully respond to all the requests within the next 20 working days. (to requests that were already well overdue!).

Please accept my apologies on behalf of the council for the delays associated with your requests.

28 August 2012: Mr Mustard notices a response has still not been received and sends an email directly to the FOI officer handling his case.

I think I have been more than reasonable in waiting nearly 6 months for this simple task to be carried out.

I don't think my behaviour could be described as bullying or harassment if I were now to send this to the ICO, do you?

In response from the council governance officer:

I am out of the office until September 6, 2012; with no access to emails. Doh!

For FOI queries/advice please email foi@barnet.gov.uk (Mr Mustard thinks that emails should not be bounced back to the customer to take action - that is partly why management exist, to ensure all correspondence is dealt with in a timely manner)

28 August 2012: Mr Mustard sends the message again to the FOI inbox.

29 August 2012: A different officer (there are only 3 of them) responds: "Thank you for your email below of which I acknowledge safe receipt, and the contents of which have been noted." which means nothing at all.

27 September 2012: Still no reply so Mr Mustard sends a complaint to the Information Commissioner (ICO) as nearly a year has passed without his simple question getting any sort of a response.

14 November 2012: The ICO writes to Mr Mustard:

When considering complaints about delayed or failed responses to information requests our priority is to ensure requesters receive a response as quickly as possible (where one has not been provided) and to monitor any persistent trends which might indicate that a public authority was routinely failing to respond within the statutory 20 working days permitted under section 10 of the Freedom of Information Act.

We monitor complaints where a serious contravention of section 10 is recorded and where persistent contraventions occur we will consider placing a public authority on our monitoring programme.

The delay in this case has been brought to the attention of our Enforcement team for their further consideration.

I have written to the public authority to provide them with a copy of your original request, reminding them of their responsibilities and asking them to respond to you within 10 working days of receiving our letter.

and to Barnet Council:

Any public authority in receipt of such a request is under a duty to respond within 20 working days of receipt. As it is the case that you have not responded but acknowledged receipt of the request, we would ask that you now respond within 10 working days of receipt of this letter.

8 May 2013: The council woke up. Is it any wonder that the ICO has put Barnet Council on the naughty step when even after a prompt from the ICO they take 6 months to provide simple copy documents.

Mr Mustard was provided with 2 sets of minutes from January 2010. Here is the first one. There is a typo in the heading stated as 2009.

5 January 2010 Minutes of Barnet Council Directors group by MisterMustard

What is quite revealing about these minutes is that they contain a reference to the Judicial Review of the planned removal of wardens from sheltered housing (the very basis of that type of housing is that there is a warden!) which was all over the paper at the time which is pre Mr Mustard. The attitude of the council is not to change their policy but simply to do more consultation and then carry on as planned. We can expect the same with the New Support & Customer Services Organisation 10 year contract with Crapita.

What is also interesting is that the supposed "significant amount of time" to look at the documents appears not to have been significant at all, as there are no redactions, and the council did not tell Mr Mustard the time taken to check the first 2 sets of minutes which they doubtless would have if it was appreciable.

9 May 2013: away we go again.

Mr Mustard therefore asked for the rest of the documents and the 20 days clock in which to reply promptly has been set running again by Barnet Council. You never know, by 2015 Mr Mustard might even get them.

That naughty step is going to prove very hard to get off.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Scrutiny of the unknown

Business management timetable aka bus timetable

To be a blogger takes dedication. To sit through endless meetings listening to Cabinet councillors spouting drivel whilst not answering the question is tedious. Mrs Angry, Mr Mustard has to report, can't hack it any longer, and she tried to tempt Mr Mustard into taking an early bath (well actually a libation at the local hostelry). Mr Mustard was stuck between being gallant and ferrying her to the said destination as due to her falling over in Fenwicks on split coffee Mrs Angry can only hobble along (but then he would have had too long in the pub and he doesn't really like coke or too much orange juice), or staying and listening to tommyrot. He chose the tommyrot. Now that is dedication. As on Monday he was last out of the meeting (along with one other dedicated council follower this time).

Mrs Angry's incredible consumption of Sauvignon Blanc means that her report of last night's laughable proceedings has not yet been issued. Mr Mustard will send her a text to wake her up and then doubtless Mr Mustard's inability to write anything funny will get detailed in Mrs Angry's latest blog post.

Last night's meeting of the Business Management Overview & Scrutiny Committee was not, unlike cabinet, scripted but it was run to a timetable which hadn't even been distributed to councillors. Lord Monroe Palmer had to be furnished with a timetable, he has the air of a man who has had it with the council and it isn't as if he needs the money and Mr Mustard is sure that Monroe acts as a councillor because he usually enjoys it, he has been a councillor for Childs Hill since the war (only a saying Monroe but you have stuck at the task rather well) and he would not want to let down his residents. However Monroe once the lunatics have taken over the asylum it might be a good time to get out? You can probably do more good in the Houses of Parliament especially as bloggers fear that the Audit committee will be completely neutered under One Barnet outsourcing.

Concentrate Mr Mustard, what are you writing about? Oh yes, how nothing was really scrutinised last night and how time was restricted so as to leave no real opportunity for it in any event. 

It is possible for members of the public to address the committee for 5 minutes about an item on the agenda. We had a few of those last night. First up was Ron Cohen. Now Ron is a bit of a boffin, as well as the recipient of a dreadfully written apology from Brian Coleman, and Ron wanted to know why, when he was working on a system for his employer with millions of users and only spending £20m it was necessary for the council to grease Capita's palm with £8m for a system to be used by a few thousand at most? Answer came their none. Of course we have Captain Craig Cooper in charge of IT and computerweekly reported "he doesn't actually know much about IT" and this may partly explain the lack of commerciality.

The next speaker was Keith Martin, a local publisher and a very interesting man. His 5 minutes got cut short by the Chairman, Hugh Rayner, because it didn't fit into an item on the agenda. Keith had asked governance in advance for the rules and felt he was within them. Despite audience protestations that it was only 5 minutes and that they wanted to hear Keith, he was sent away. Here is his 5 minutes worth which will now be seen by 500 people rather than heard by 50.

Keith Martin

Next up was Barbara Jacobson, a formidable and lovely lady, who is chair of BAPS. She studies the issues and then formulates a clear speech which she belts out at rapid pace in order to pack the maximum into her 5 minute slot. Here it is.

Barbara NSCSO

Fiona Brickwood then spoke for 5 minutes. She used to be an advisor on risk management at Texaco. It seems that an oilfield only needs a contract which is at most 250 pages long and yet for Customer Services we need one with Capita which is now said to be about 2,500 pages long and not the 8,000 previously quoted. Whether the 2,500 includes the appendices is not clear, which is standard policy on One Barnet - not clear.

There was a second presentation by Barbara on the subject of Council Tax Support, which Mr Mustard also wrote about a while back, here.

Barbara Welfare Item

Barbara didn't realise until corrected by Cllr Brian Salinger that if the Council Tax for one band is increased they all have to be but she still preferred that to hitting the poorest in society.

Barbara explained to the meeting that how, even in her band G property, an extra 2.5% on Council tax for her would only be £1.14 a week and she would rather pay that than see the poorest suffer. At this point, Cllr Strongolou, a councillor for Underhill ward made his biggest ever mistake. He spoke at a council meeting which is something he very rarely does. He does sit in council meetings in sunglasses when it isn't even sunny outside, as an actor Mr Mustard supposes he is trying to cultivate an image, he might be able to get work as a Colonel Gaddafi lookalike although that seems to be rather limiting the field somewhat. He probably though he was being clever when he told Barbara she could write a cheque out and send it to the council. 

Oh dear, perhaps Barbara was a schoolteacher before she became interested in local politics as she very sternly told Strongolou that she does write a cheque out every month for her council tax and that he shouldn't make silly remarks and that if he is incapable of doing anything he should resign. Strongolou went rather quiet at this point. Residents of Underhill - you are not being well represented by this councillor. Please take the earliest opportunity to rid the council of his presence. Mr Mustard has sat through meetings where Strongolou has been present for 2 or 3 hours and not uttered a single word, he has played with his phone rather than read the meeting papers.

The ruling councillors are dead set against raising council tax even by the rate of inflation. On parking in 2011 Cllr. Brian Coleman, bless him, had no problem with raising some parking charges by 300% which even anyone who is not good with numbers will realise that the charge was increased way beyond the rate of inflation.

Aside from residents, councillors had things to say last night, mostly that they didn't know something or other. We had a full row of "Officers" some of whom are not employees but consultants or suppliers. We had the lead partner from Trowers and Hamlins, one Amardeep Gill, to whose left was a lady who didn't seem to have a name badge on the table in front of her. Probably a junior that we were paying £250 an hour for but she didn't say a word. Cllr Rayner and/or governance should have made sure that her identity was visible.

Monroe stuck the boot fairly and squarely into what is wrong with the NSCSO contract.

• He highlighted that the 3 & 6 year review dates are only for tweaking the contract, not for quitting it. 
• That the purpose of democracy has been destroyed. This contract is the opposite of localism as discussed in Westminster. How could a good conservative councillor justify this to Eric Pickles?
• If Capita mess up totally we have burnt our bridges behind us. Our work will be mixed in what that of other local authorities and anybody they like, even possibly the mafia (yes Monroe did say that, he was just being outrageous but Capita could do that)
• After getting procurement straight after a 2 year struggle when it was defective because it was spread all over the council and was now being centralised, we were now going to have it run remotely by computer. That worried him. 
• Monroe then described Swindon as that well known centre of financial excellence and it would be frustrating to deal with and robotic.
• There would be a lack of political audit.

Robert Rams then came out with some tosh about there not being any reduction in democratic accountability and contracts often go across the electoral cycle. This contract though could go across 4 electoral cycles - Robert did not defend that possibility. Robert thought there would be better accountability as date will be more up to date. Why haven't you done anything Robert since you were elected to get the council to be more up to date? Too busy playing with your One Barnet bollocks.

Then Robert came out with the funniest remark. Mr Mustard missed the first people who had been to look at One Barnet but apparently the Cabinet Office had been knocking on the door. Do you know why Robert? it is because the stench had reached Whitehall and they wanted to see what is rotting. The Cabinet office want to see the twitching corpse to remind themselves what not to do.

Robert flailed on. Other councils will do this sort of stuff. Today is Friday when we bloggers do like a joke. That gem of Robert's will be hard to beat.

Mr Mustard has a page of notes of Cllr Thomas's nervous utterings. He will spare you most of it. One interesting part was that in respect of council tax increases, which residents were not opposed to, Thomas said it was "their (as in the cabinet's) interpretation of what people want". So if you say No to a council tax increase that is fine that is what you get. If you say Yes then the Cabinet will interpret that as a No. (Ladies, if you find such a person on a dating website, run a mile)

Monroe wanted to see the exempt information about what we have to pay if we give 6 months notice (let me save you the trouble Monroe - if we quit the contract we will have to pay Capita all of the profits they would have made in the future - that is a poor deal, paying only part should have been negotiated).

Cllr Rayner stepped in at this point. He said that Monroe could have a one-to-one meeting with the legal bod from.... and at this point Cllr Rayner didn't know who the legal officer was from. After the hundreds of thousands of ££££££ that have been thrown at Trowers & Hamlins one would think that the chair of a scrutiny committee would know. He is not the only ignorant councillor at Barnet.

Cllr Thomas was forced to admit that there were risks in the contract. We will remind you later of this Dan Thomas.

There is a risk that things won't go to plan, he said. Yes that is 100% certain.

Cllr Alison Moore sprung the beartrap. Was Cllr Thomas confident that the council was retaining sufficient client side capacity and skill?

Answer, YES.

There was then some talk about member (councillor) involvement. Brian Salinger mentioned the scrutiny that the "leader" Richard Cornelius (absent from the audience in this meeting) planned to set up to monitor the contract and promises. Cllr Thomas didn't know anything about the proposed new scrutiny committee. Another ignorant councillor.

There was also talk of ward strategies that Capita were going to develop for every ward. Rams waffled on about this being written into the contract over the next 18 months and Capita would look at assets to see what could be done better. Maybe they would move a police station. Apart from the fact that the council don't manage police station resources and that many are being closed this is all jam tomorrow and Capita are interested in what they can get out of underused assets for themselves.

Brian Salinger wanted to know who the member would be on the new Partnership Board. Thomas don't know.

The votes was then taken on the two call-ins of the same contract and both were defeated which was not a surprise as the scrutiny committee has a majority of the ruling party on it.

Council Tax Support then got discussed and after the following foolish remark by Cllr Dan (John) Thomas, Mr Mustard decided not to waste any more ink.

"Just because people are on benefits doesn't mean that they can't afford to pay a small amount"

Mr Mustard needed a beer. He went and got one and bought Mrs Angry another glass of sauvignon blanc - she was right after all, the pub was a better bet.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard