Call yourself a library ?

Below is part a Press Release sent out this afternoon (19 April) by the council’s Press Team - Mr Mustard's extra remarks are in red. The bit about Hampstead Garden Suburb has been cut, you can read it on Robert Rams's blog if you really must which will be a whole lot quicker than trying to find it on the new Barnet Council wobbly website.

Live link to BBC article : The model for the Arts Depot library?

Barnet Council’s new interim library service is set to launch in North Finchley next week.

Based in the artsdepot building at Tally Ho Corner, the library is being opened in response to public demand (Did you demand this? Did anyone demand this or was it only dreamt up by Robert Rams? Mr Mustard has seen huge demand for a library in Friern Barnet but the council see no need for a library to be opened there; how odd.) for a service while plans are developed for a permanent Landmark (to be defined) Library.

The interim service is set to open on Tuesday 24 April and will be open Tuesdays and Fridays, 2pm – 5pm and Wednesdays and Thursdays 10am – 1pm. Tough luck on the workers. The council hopes to extend the activities beyond these core hours over the summer with new services supported by volunteers, particularly focussing on activities for children. You have left the word "by" off of your blog Robert. Volunteers will be needed as a sole librarian will be at the artsdepot. How many libraries do you know of in Greater London with a sole librarian? They won't even be able to go to the toilet without leaving the room unsupervised; oh well, there is always the Friern Barnet bucket.

A book loan service, containing approximately 10,000 items will be available as well as magazines and newspapers and also a study space. This will be shortly followed by a programme of activities for children and young people. 10,000 books sounds a lot. Let us say they are 2cm thick on average. That makes 20,000cm of books if put in a line = 200m of shelves. Put the shelves 5 books high and you have just 40 linear metres of shelving. Not much of a library. 

The new Landmark Library will merge Friern Barnet and North Finchley libraries, specialising in arts and culture as well as activities for children. There has been talk about the definition of a Landmark Library (you asked this question I think Councillor Rawlins) and the answer was to be found in the library strategy.

Landmark libraries: 

1000 – 2000sqm sites, 

open 56.5 hours per week including Sundays.
These libraries will be located in the busiest centres and will be on good transport routes where people regularly go. 

Additional services will be available from One Barnet partners from benefits advice, CAB sessions, to additional ICT and learning lessons. 

They will have:
A wide ranging, quality and comprehensive book stock
High quality children’s and young people’s activities, programmes, and spaces
A wide range of events and activities – reading groups, author events, learning sessions

High quality community meeting rooms and spaces

Spaces to study and relax

Unless the eventual Arts Depot library meets all of the above criteria a complaint will be made to the Trading Standards authority.

Quotations are now currently being sought from architects to complete a feasibility study for the redevelopment of the artsdepot to create a landmark library. This is estimated to be completed by the end of June this year. Can't an Assistant Director of Customer Services and Libraries, trousering north of £100,000 a year, work out where a few shelves have to go without chucking thousands at a consultant architect? It isn't clear if the feasibility study will be completed by June or the landmark library itself, probably the former.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Friday Joke - The latest Robert Rams blog

Rams, of course, is deadly serious, and the real bloggers were helpless with laughter when they read the latest utterings. Mr Mustard knows that he warned you not to read the ridiculous ramblings of Rams but will now break his own advice and re-print them here with the added musings of Mr Mustard in red.

I’ve just seen the latest version of the draft design templates for the new Barnet website and I’m very pleased with how the site is developing. This would be the well overdue website then would it? You may be pleased but what will be more important is whether residents will be pleased. You didn't mention the cost.

I’m confident that the new website will be easier to use and simpler to navigate than the existing site as the new design is cleaner and the content has been structured in a more straightforward manner. The designs are currently still in draft form but I will share them once they have been fully signed off and approved. We will see whether it is easier in due course. You should beta test this on the market with the biggest users of the website if you want to really know how it performs and avoid serious rewriting.

One of the main reasons for redeveloping the website is to make online transactions easier to access and simpler to use. The focus on bringing transactions online is a reflection of the changing way residents access both public and private sector services. The main reason is the council think it will be cheaper for them to make everyone use the internet. If this ends up with another fiasco like the cashless parking I wouldn't plan to be a councillor any longer than the next election in 2014. Some residents will want to do everything on-line but many won't so there had better be some choice.

It wasn’t that long ago that banking transactions had to take place before 3.30pm on a Friday but nowadays I can do my banking 24 hours a day, on the move or at home and I’m able to use a device that simply didn’t exist two years ago. On-line and telephone banking are available but are susceptible to fraud, especially telephone banking.

We can provide a better, more efficient service for residents by allowing them to access more services online, at their convenience. Only some services and only some residents. Remember, not everyone has access to the internet at home or the skill or the inclination to use it.

But as well as providing a more efficient transactional website, the redevelopment of Barnet Online will allow the council to focus on becoming more open and transparent. Now this was the point at which Mr Mustard started to lose it, he started to laugh and it was a long time before he stopped. All the council are focused on is how they can save money, what services they can chop, which libraries to close, where they can build as many extra properties as possible, which museums they can close and flog off etc etc. Ask yourself this question, how many meetings have there been to discuss openness and transparency? There has been one to allow filming several months after the infamous MetPro bullyboy council meeting and after central government had said to allow it. 

Ask yourself also how many exempt reports are there at council meetings, how often do the public get excluded. All the time.

Did the council try to stop filming at the Tambourides standards committee. Yes they did and they failed. 

Does the council delay or refuse to answer Freedom of Information requests on matters which really ought to be public knowledge; yest they do.

Are the over £500 lists complete and accurate. No. Where are the £1,000 a day payments to Halliford Associates Ltd for the services of Andrew Travers, the Chief Financial Officer in these lists. Nowhere to be seen in this financial year.

Are there meetings about One Barnet to which even councillors are not invited? Yes there are ( this is being reviewed this month )

Does Mr Mustard think he will be going to 2012 to meetings of an Openness and Transparency Committee. Of course not.

Barnet Council simply cannot be described as Open or Transparent and nothing will change until something happens at the top..

As has been discussed elsewhere, the council receives a large number of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and responding to them takes up a lot of officer time, time that would be better spent on the core activities of their jobs. We can greatly reduce this burden on council time and resources by publishing more council data and making it easier to find. Every council receives these questions. The law says that councils must answer them. What is the core activity of a Freedom of Information Officer? Stone the crows - it is answering Freedom of Information requests. What does Rams think it is? If the council is so committed to Openness and Transparency then they should write it into everyone's job descriptions. 

We may also encourage more residents to actively engage with the council. At the moment, being an armchair auditor requires a dogged determination. There aren’t many people who would want to spend their social hours trolling through committee papers and expense reports looking for anomalies. Roll up, roll up. More bloggers needed in Barnet. Plenty of room on the bus for more. As Barnet Council hack off more people with their idiotic behaviour more bloggers will just appear. Bloggers don't go looking for anomalies; we fall over them; was MetPro not having a contract and being paid £1.4m one of the anomalies you were thinking about?

By making more information – previous FOI requests, details of allowances and expenses, copies of contract and tender documents, committee minutes and decisions, performance data etc – more freely available we will allow those residents with less free time to find out more about how the council, councillors and council run services are performing.
Now would those contracts that you plan to publish, well the ones that you have managed to get in place so far, several hundred were missing at the last public count, will they be the heavily redacted versions that are currently issued or will they be 100% complete?

And contrary to what you might have read elsewhere, council services are performing extremely well:

81 per cent of resident are ‘most happy’ with refuse collection If 19% of Mr Mustard's customers were unhappy he would have gone out of business years ago ( he is in year 25 ). There are over 300,000 residents in Barnet. 57,000 of them are unhappy. Oh dear.

73 per cent of residents with experience of secondary schools describe them as ‘good or excellent’ and 27% don't. There are 27,000 children in primary schools alone of whom over 7,000 are not satisfied. Never mind the secondary schools where the numbers are larger. 

Adult Social Services are rated as ‘excellent’ by the Care Quality Commission. Would that be why there was legionella in 3 care homes recently?

Children’s Services are rated as ‘excellent’ by Ofsted. With the caveat that Ofset said there is room for improvement in children's home and childminder settings.

..and in many ways these are the key services residents care about. Not parking, or use of unlicensed security guards, or libraries closing, or museums closing, or being unable to ask policy questions at residents forums, or parks losing their assigned keepers, or the Pinkham Way proposed depot....?

Barnet has nothing to hide, so I’m very keen that we make as much information about the council as easy to access as possible and the new website is the ideal vehicle to deliver on this transparency agenda. So allow any question whatsoever at Residents Forums and don't duck Mr Reasonable's questions at committee meetings "What are you afraid of" was what he felt compelled to ask recently. You also need to stop a certain Cabinet member from saying he won't answer emails that are from residents outside of Totteridge. If you are on the Cabinet you are answerable to all residents.

In the New Year we will be looking at how we can better present performance data in ways that is genuinely helpful to residents. If anyone has an opinion on how information should be presented, I’d be interested in hearing your views. Don't you already have enough consultants working on this website.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

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Rams-bling

Mr Mustard notes the launch of the Barnet Council iPhone app which does interest him except that he is one of the vast majority of the populace who don't have an iPhone so he will have to, for now, stick to his quill pen and vellum.

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Council services available ‘app’ the touch of a button

Borough residents now have access to the council's wide range of services at their fingertips, with the launch of Barnet Council’s official Smartphone application.

Available to download on iPhone via the Apple App Store, the free application which has been designed and created in-house, allows users to find out local information wherever they are and whenever they want.

The app also allows users to find useful information, see the latest council jobs, contact their local councillor, find answers to common questions and get involved in local consultations.

Residents can also pay for their council tax, sign-up for pay-by-phone parking or search an interactive map of local activities via the application.

Councillor Robert Rams, Cabinet Member for Customer Access and Partnerships said:

“By launching the official Barnet Council’s app, we are not only increasing the number of ways residents can contact and engage with the council, but are achieving this in a cost effective way, proving excellent value for money to the taxpayer.

“Smartphone applications are now widely used by many companies, but as far as we are aware, Barnet is one of the first local authorities to design and launch its own unique version.”

The official Barnet Council’s app is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and the iPad. An operating system of iOS 4.3 or later is required. An application for Android supported Smartphones is currently being developed and will be launch in due course.

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Mr Mustard thinks that the press release should say launched and not launch - does no-one read these before release?

Mr Mustard has just noticed the punny heading for the press release. App the touch of a button. There aren't buttons on an iPhone - isn't that the point of them?

Do Councillors really believe these Press Releases that go out in their name, or think that we will believe them? See the section in bold above and then see the two following links of earlier council apps, from January 2010 and from September 2009 ( Barnet Council missed that particular bus ). So Cllr Rams words are not app-licable or app-osite or app-propriate or ( stop now Mr Mustard! )

"As far as we are aware" - you aren't at all aware, Cllr Rams. Please stop making this sort of stupid claim - it only makes you look silly, not clever.

As to how cost-effective the app is, we will have to wait and see when the cost information gets released. It is good to open up this modern day channel but early reports on screen layout are critical in that they have not been optimised for the screen size.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Iceland not all bad news for Barnet

Following on from the comment made by Mrs Angry on a previous blog and in the vein of Roger Tichborne "99% not the Barnet Eye" Friday jokes Mr Mustard thought that, after 2 evenings spent at Council Meetings this week, which is probably more time than most Councillors spent on Council business, it was time for some humour.

Mr Mustard found the following information on a BBC website so it must be true.

If you ever should find yourself at a Thorrablot, you will probably see a lot of scary things on the table in front of you. Iceland is not famous for its delicacies, considering the main purpose of traditional food preparation was to preserve it (they have preserved our money !). You could keep some of those dishes for months behind a radiator or under your bed and they would still be safe to eat (though this is not recommended).

If you are a foreigner, it's likely that drunken Icelanders will wave scary alien things at you and dare you to have a bite. If you are ever caught in this situation, here is a brief guide to the things they will be waving at you. 

Hrutspungar (Sour Ram's Testicles)

Ram's testicles, pickled in whey, put in gelatin, pressed either into a cake with garlic, as a jam, or as a kind of pâté that tastes sour and spongy, with a texture reminiscent of pressed cod roe. Guidebooks comment: 'Not bad if you don't think about it too much, especially in pâté form.' Or you could just take their word for it. 

Selshreyfar (Sour Seal Flippers)

The flippers of those adorable animals, made sour in milk and salted. They taste sour, salty and slimy. These are rare, except at some family feasts where the participants have hunted the seals themselves. Quite revolting.

Mr Mustard is delighted to be vegetarian.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

For and on behalf of 99% Not the Barnet Eye

This text in blue is from the blog of Robert Rams. Mr Mustard has commented in red.

Last night (29 June), the business case for the New Support and Customer Service Organisation project was approved by Cabinet Resources Committee. Mr Mustard was there. For a start its Services not Service.

This decision gives the council permission to proceed with the procurement process to find a strategic partner to deliver back office and customer services. Although Councillors Rams & Harper patted each other on the back about how marvellous this project is Councillor Cornelius, the leader of the Council said that "he was particularly reassured that the Contract had to come back to the Committee under paras 1.2 & 1.3" and that "The devil will be in the detail" and that "It needs much greater member detail". So in Mr Mustard's eyes the Leader is certainly not sure about this idea.

The private sector is well placed to provide support services at a lower cost than the council ever could. Unsubstantiated rubbish. The Council spends £900m p.a. so it has leverage.

Specialist suppliers provide these services as their core business; they have access to industry expertise, they can take advantage of economies of scale, and they can access the latest and best technology to help them deliver better services. So could an outfit the size of Barnet Council.

Barnet’s customer services need significant investment to improve resident access to council services but the council simply doesn’t have the money. Tripe. Just let residents ring each service directly. A central point is the worst solution.

The private sector can provide the financial support we need to improve and modernise customer services. And then they will send you the bill.

I don’t believe residents are concerned about who provides back office services to the council. Mr Mustard is a resident. He is concerned about all the spending of the Council and the way they waste money.

Indeed every time we, or other councils, ask residents how they want us to deal with a reduced budget, we are asked to reduce back office costs. One would have thought you might have done it by now then. Your solution, OneBarnet is idiotic.

Residents seem far more interested in Barnet doing what councils are supposed to do – delivering the best quality front line services. Mr Mustard will settle for an acceptable service at an acceptable price.

Over the life of the contract, we will make significant savings, which will free up resources for our highly rated core services. Guesswork.

You can read the business case on the Barnet Council website. Mr Mustard has. It lacks detail. It has been taken apart by Dexter Whitfield.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard