Don't ask difficult questions, that is, any at all.

Mr Mustard will see you there.

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

Jobs to leave Barnet

One Barnet Pre-Scrutiny BPOSC 29 Nov 2012 - Part 2 from The Barnet Bugle Ltd on Vimeo.

Barnet UNISON Press Release: 5 December 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: EasyCouncil political dogma drives out hundreds of jobs out of London

On Thursday 6 December Barnet Cabinet Committee will decide on whether to outsource approximately 540 Barnet Council jobs to multinational company Capita.

The Committee will be voting to export local jobs to Banstead, Belfast, Blackburn, Bromley, Carlisle, Darwen, Sheffield, Swindon, Southampton.

UNISON has raised serious concerns about the economic implications about losing local jobs and the knock on impact on local residents and small businesses.

UNISON is also concerned about the deliverability of the financial savings and the implications for council tax and other services.

UNISON has published numerous examples of how these ‘too good to be true’ deals often fail to deliver.

The Council claims to have learnt lessons of other Councils however the reality is very different.

At a recent Scrutiny Committee, literally days before the decision to recommend Capita was announced, two Conservative Councillors on the Committee said:

“When the visits were carried out who went on them and what did they learn from them? None of that is contained in here, six pages is desk top research. What members here are looking for are, what have you learnt from meeting up with councils face to face?

Another said

“In fairness all we have here is a list of visits it doesn’t say whether they were for one hour, one day, one week, it doesn’t say when they were there, it doesn’t say what benefit we got from them, it doesn’t say who went, how detailed whether it was one person or a team, it’s so sketchy its absolutely useless I’m afraid”

John Burgess, Branch Secretary said: “The Cabinet Committee are going to rubberstamp this decision which UNISON believe is a bad deal for tax payers of Barnet. The Council is gambling on a high risk strategy which has not worked elsewhere. Other Councils are bringing services back in-house in order to have more control over their spend. In the last month we have learnt from figures published via the Councils website that in total, the bill for One Barnet Advice in October alone was £1,099,413.22 or £47,800 every single working day. This is political dogma gone mad.”

Councillors & public - put 7 July in your diary (please)

Councillor: I can't see anything wrong with One Barnet

 

If the One Barnet programme is robust it will be able to withstand proper scrutiny. I don't mean some feeble committee which will ask a few questions and then vote for what their colleagues have decided upon without proper understanding, real research or penetrating questions. I mean the sort of study that questions the fundamentals of something and gives them a good shake to see what happens.

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Imagine that the purchase of a table is proposed.

Under proper scrutiny one would ask what is the purpose of the table, is it the best size of table, is it the best shape of table, is the surface properly finished, can sufficient people sit at the table, will it withstand the effect of hot tea cups, can one stand on the table (tables are not for standing on but it will happen at some time so best to plan for the probability) does the table have enough legs, what could we use instead of a table, do we even need a table, have we gone out to tender for the table?...............etc (you get the idea)

If a One Barnet table is proposed the scrutiny committee would probably coo over what a lovely OB table it was, ask the officer if other tables had been considered and get the answer "Yes, but they weren't as good" and then not ask any penetrating follow-up questions and go on to vote in favour of the table.

(The next chance for the public to see scrutiny in "action" is on Monday 11th June at 7pm when Business Management Overview & Scrutiny committee meets. Be at Hendon Town Hall by 7pm and see for yourself whether you think scrutiny is wonderful or woeful)

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Many people know that the council is embarked on possibly the largest local authority outsourcing project ever seen. Other councils have started down this route, looked over the edge of the cliff and pulled back. The first section to be outsourced was parking ticket issue and enforcement on 1 May and already one of NSL's managers has had to be removed because he had tried to buy an iPhone using a fake credit card. Hardly a good start and an illustration of how outsourcing leads to lack of control.

Mr Mustard has looked at a lot of One Barnet reports and has yet to see a fully worked Cost Benefit Analysis. Mr Mustard does not mind if some services are outsourced if that would lead to economies of scale but for most services the council already has those. Take the parking contract. There were 75 people working on it. That is an organisation that is big enough to have economies of scale. Show Mr Mustard a service with just 2 employees and then he would agree that if say 10 of the councils in London got together that they could manage with less than 20 people and outsourcing might well make sense but even then it would be cheaper if one of the 10 councils took charge and simply spread the cost.

Unison exists to represent its members and can foresee that if One Barnet proceeds to the end that they may lose 70% of their local membership because their jobs could be exported to anywhere. We have already seen that 25 parking back-office staff have been made redundant and their jobs have been exported to Worthing. The council don't listen to Unison although they say they do (which is a different matter and will be the subject of a future post) and so Unison decided to commission an external consultant to study One Barnet. The consultant is called Andy Mudd and he is from APSE who say this about themselves:

The Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE) is a not-for-profit local government body working with over 300 councils throughout the UK promoting excellence in public services. APSE is the foremost specialist in local authority frontline services, hosting a network for frontline service providers in areas such as waste and refuse collection, parks and environmental services, leisure, school meals, cleaning, housing and building maintenance.

So you would think that if Unison arrange for APSE to run the ruler over One Barnet and produce a briefing that councillors (especially the conservative ones who run the council) would want to see it because it will vindicate their course of action? One would hope that was the case but sadly it isn't. Conservative councillors are showing a reluctance to attend any presentation by APSE (10 out of 63 councillors of all political hues have so far said they will attend the briefing being put on especially for councillors. The Salingers are notable, as ever, for their willingness to listen). What on earth can the rest be so worried about? Maybe that their grand project does not stand up to expert scrutiny (they can try and brush off criticism by Unison claiming ideological opposition and by Barnet's bloggers although they are possibly a bit harder to give the brush off to given the mounting readership and visibility that they are getting) but scrutiny is necessary and scrutiny is what you will get.

The public know very little about One Barnet, they have not been asked to vote on it by the local conservative candidates (although that is coming from opponents as the Brunswick Park by-election recently demonstrated) and residents are not allowed to ask questions about it at residents forums as it is a banned question, being about policy. Opponents of One Barnet have decided that if conservative councillors won't tell the public about One Barnet then they will. Surely councillors, you want to ensure complete accuracy, openness and transparency by being involved. Here is a second chance if you can't make the private screening. A public presentation by APSE, Professor Whtfield and Mr Reasonable (details copied from the Citizen Barnet blog) three men who know a lot

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Barnet Council Not For Sale

Saturday 7 July 12–3pm,

Greek Cypriot Centre, 2 Britannia Road, North Finchley, London N12 9RU

A special conference by Barnet Alliance for Public Services and Barnet Unison

Speakers include:

Prof. Dexter Whitfield, Director of the European Services Strategy Unit

Mr. Andy Mudd, Principal Consultant in the Association for Public Service Excellence

Mr. John Dix, resident and "Mr Reasonable" blogger.

Refreshments provided. (councillors like free refreshments don't they?)

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There is a small free car park at the centre for the first people to arrive but otherwise you are going to have to use pay-by-phone parking or do what Mr Mustard will do which is to drive about 250m north up the High Road (A1000) until you reach the end of CPZ zone sign and then park for free. Councillors can park for free using their any zone permit (if they haven't handed it back due to misuse) because this would be classed as on council business.

Mr Mustard hopes to see you there. This is only a mile or two from your home in Totteridge, Councillor Cornelius. Have a look in your diary and see if you can make room for this meeting. An easy walk also for Robert Rams and for Lisa Rutter who both also live in N20.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Meeting; what meeting ?

Here is some footage from last night's meeting of the Budget & performance Overview and Scrutiny Committee. It seems that Brian Coleman's presence is required but he won't show up.

How can a scrutiny committe do its work probably if a Cabinet member has no respect for it ?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard