A Lamb to the slaughtered

Executive summary

Barnet Council have a plan, supposedly at the behest of the police, to make the whole of Barnet a no drinking in public zone

The detail

Here is the officer's report (an officer is an employee, in this case the report is by Paul Lamb, Community Protection Group Manager)

DPR1670 - Consultation for Creation of a Borough Wide Designated Public Place Order and here is the official notice DPR1670 Public Notice re DPPO  
and here is the link to the Barnet Council website

Mr Mustard's alter ego will be writing to say no thank you to the proposed borough wide ban. The questions that are being asked in the survey, and there is no need to use surveymonkey and give your data to some company in America - you can simply email to this stupidly long, out of date, e&o? email address

are as follows:

The Council would like to understand the views of the community before deciding whether to proceed with the proposals. Please therefore help us by answering the following questions and by explaining why you either agree or disagree.

1. What is your opinion of the proposal to introduce a borough wide Designated Public Place Order?

• I am in favour of the proposal
• I am against the proposal
• I don't know

2. Please provide an explanation for your choice:

Please respond to the following questions so that we can analyse the results of the survey on area basis.

3.  Are you...? (you can choose more than one option) 

• a London Borough of Barnet resident
• a Business Owner
• an owner of a Licensed Premise
• a representative of a Community/Voluntary/Faith Group
• a non-borough resident who works in Barnet
• Other (please specify)

2. What are the first three digits of your postcode?

---

Mr Mustard's alter ego will be responding as follows:

1. The borough wide Order is not necessary so he is against

2. You can't trust officials to enforce sensibly

3. It is not enforceable anyway

4. It doesn't fix the problem

---

Let us look at the DPR itself using the same section numbers.

2.2 One must assume that the priorities are to tackle the 3 listed priorities - the report reads like they are being promoted.

This paragraph also says that "appropriate support pathways" have to be in place. What are they? - there is no detail about them.

3.1 The report as good as says that the police won't be able to enforce this drinking in public ban.

3.2 The council's response to the problem of public drinking must be proportionate. It isn't.

4.1 this sets out the real problem. These poor people will not be helped in any way by a borough wide ban on street drinking. There is absolutely no detail about the extra support which will supposedly be offered and the report is defeatist in this regard.

5.1 One would think that £12,500 would go a long way to helping a small number of people get back on their feet. Even if it only changed the life of one problem drinker it would be money well spent.

6.2 The proposed response is not proportionate. One can be pretty sure that before long a family enjoying a picnic in the park with a glass of wine will be targeted.

8.1.1 There is not a borough wide nuisance of the type required for this measure to be introduced. It is a very bad idea.

8.1.6 Enfield and Haringey manage without borough wide Orders so perhaps Barnet should learn from them. The administrative problems that Police response teams have should not be used to support this Order, they should sort themselves out.

8.1.7 More selective statistics doubtless.

8.2.1 What about the figures for 2011/12?

8.2.2 Data presented that cannot be relied upon.

8.2.4 There are supposedly a population of only 84 street drinkers in the whole of Barnet and thus legislation affecting 300,000 is proposed. Disproportionate or what? Mr Mustard lives 100m from the Spires. There is not a group of "up to 5" urinating and intimidating people there. The report is just gossip and conjecture.

8.2.5 Enforcement across the whole borough will be impossible. The size of the SNTs has been reduced recently.

8.3.1 So what? It is perception not reality.

8.3.2 Were there any actual events to support these views?

8.3.3 There are less drunks in Barnet than the London average.

8.4.1 This table shows that DPPO make no difference. Two areas got worse and two got better in a year.

8.4.4 The statistics in this paragraph are incomplete and not easily compared. One would really like to see the figures for a 5 year period starting before the introduction of the DPPO to properly measure its effect, if any.

8.4.5 This is not important. What is important is whether they work or not.

8.4.6 The council is unlikely to find that an Order it introduced was wrong.

8.5.3 If this Order goes ahead that is going to be an awful lot of signs polluting the borough.

8.5.5 Don't stand outside the pub enjoying a beer is the simple translation of this section.

8.6.1 No problem drinker will stop drinking because this Order is made.

8.6.2 Why are we extending the ambit when the existing Orders are inconclusive?

8.6.3 Much more effort needs to be put into fixing the underlying problem.

8.6.4 The million dollar question. Is there the resource for enforcement in a borough as big as Barnet?

10.1 Mr Mustard is finding it hard to take this report seriously given that it is agreed by the Cabinet Member for Safety and Resident Engagement. Who is that? It is the actor, David Longstaff (what made the residents of High Barnet think that a small time actor would be a suitable person for the serious business of being a councillor?). Take a look at his showreel here which will be 5m 37s of your life utterly wasted. 

Why does an actor who is happy to make money by playing a drunken elf think he has the right to stop anyone else having a harmless tipple on the streets of Barnet?

Why Mr Mustard is against the proposals

1. Not necessary.

The police already have powers to deal with drunkenness, see here so this disproportionately large borough wide zone is not needed.

2. You can't trust officials to enforce sensibly

There are lots of public servants who do a good job but the number who get carried away with their own importance and lose all common sense is huge. Here are a few examples, click each one to see the whole story.

Argyll & Bute Council try to silence a 9 year old girl to stop her writing honest and balanced reports about her school dinners - NeverSeconds

Boy's pirate flag breaches advertising rules

A windbreak not allowed as it was a "semi-permanent structure"

Builder paid £10,000 compensation after being arrested for taking a photograph

PCSO described his area as a ****hole

Boy banned from playing football too loudly outside his house

PCSO drink driving and crashing after Xmas party

PCSO demands barmaid be strip searched after he was given wrong change

Boy of 9 reprimanded for climbing a tree

Sick PCSO caught running a florist's shop

If you want to see some jobsworths in action this film by Rod Liddle about CCTV certainly contains them. Barnet say that a family enjoying a picnic with a glass of wine are not intended to be disrupted but a family with a windbreak already has been.

3. Lack of resources to enforce

There won't be enough resource to enforce it as they have found in neighbouring Brent, as this report shows.

4. It doesn't help the problem drinker.

For 5 years Mr Mustard helped out at the Crisis at Christmas shelters. He saw the problems of the homeless and some of them drank too much. How will passing this law which will be an ever present threat to 300,000 residents help the 84 people who are listed as problem drinkers. It won't help them in any way. This proposal should be filed in the stupid ideas drawer and the £12,500 thus not spent used to directly and positively help as many of the street drinking population as possible.

Do you remember Mr Cornelius your article in the local paper which talked about interference in our lives by Europe? You are not keen on Europe interfering in how the council is run especially in the area of procurement (where it happens to be very poor) so if you support the council interfering in the general public's behaviour, and there will be some stupid interference, you will have to look yourself in the mirror and ask "Am I the pettifogging bureaucrat who allowed a borough wide alcohol consumption ban to come into force".

Action needed

Please write to the council, or email them, saying we do not want a borough wide ban but we do want help for troubled drinkers (Barnet Council are always banging on about targeted support for troubled families but this isn't an example of it).

Update 8.30pm

Cllr Robert Rams has kindly retweeted this superb story of council (& police aided) idiocy to highlight why giving Town Hall pravdas (copyright, Eric Pickles MP) any power at all over us is such a bad idea.

Update 19 June 2012

Boston man threatened with arrest for a poster in his window which says "Religions are fairy stories for adults".

Yours soberly

Mr Mustard

NLBP Parking Policy

A possible solution

Barnet Council don't just hack off residents and visitors to Barnet when it comes to Parking, they are now hacking off all of the staff to boot.

avoid this fashion faux pas: the Denver boot

Jacquie McGeachie has gone off to some secret project working for Nick Walkley (Mr Mustard does hope that the proper tendering arrangements were made which he will establish through a FOI request - sorry Mr Cornelius but this is the price of secrecy) and Sarah Murphy-Brookman (SMB) has stepped into her shoes (this is a figurative term) and is now spending her valuable time on parking for staff, not on important HR issues like making many of the workforce redundant. Parking shouldn't of course be a problem as anyone sensible would have taken out a lease on office space with adequate parking space to start with but this is Barnet Council we are talking about where crisis management may well be the order of the day.

So here is the sixth revision of the parking policy for staff which won't make SMB popular with staff, especially with essential car users whose car details are already on file and should have been issued with permits as a matter of course or with the staff who had to queue up for half an hour to get their permits or with the staff who were disturbed by the queue that snaked though their office whilst they were trying to work (which couldn't have been noisier if they were dancing the conga) except that their computers were up the shoot again so they couldn't work anyway.

Parking Policy February 2012

So para 1, why is parking space scarce? Bad management in signing a lease on premises where parking is scarce.

Para 4. Such bureaucracy. Who is going to want to park at NLBP who doesn't work there?

Para 4.3. Contractors and interims have to pay £25 a month by cheque. By cheque! What era are we in? This should be pay-by-phone surely?

Para 5. Permit misuse. Oh dear, two councillors have just handed their CPZ permits back because of misuse (allegedly - they don't admit it but then why hand your permit back?)The councillors have not been subject to any disciplinary action - one rule for them and another for staff?

Para 6. This is completely wrong. If an employee decides that rather than fighting their way into NLBP, or spending 15 minutes going round and round the car park looking for a space, they want to park outside and walk in then, as a member of the public, and one of the Queen's loyal subjects, they have as much right as anyone else to park on the highway (this might be none at all as we only have the right to pass along the highway but for all intents and purposes residents have no more rights than employees of Barnet Council ).. When Mr Mustard visited NLBP a few weeks ago he parked in Brunswick Park Road. He did not deprive a resident of a space. For all Mr Mustard knows said resident could have been parked in Mr Mustard's road at the same time. If we all start to get this parochial none of us will be able to leave home because we won't be able to park at our destination.

This policy needs some further thought. An employer, even a local authority, does not own the roads in the vicinity of its office and cannot forbid staff to park in them especially as it is not in their contract of employment, and don't even think of amending that. Very soon many of the staff at NLBP will be gone, contracted out to outsourced employers so the problem will diminish. Why not just ride this out?

You surely have better things to do with your expensive time than this Sarah Murphy-Brookman? Do you get a reserved space in the executive wing of the car park perchance?

How much staff time was wasted dishing out these pointless permits? Quite a bit.

To: AllStaff
Subject: New council site parking permits – collection details

As staff may know, a new permit system for parking on-site at NLBP, Barnet House and Mill Hill Depot is being introduced, to deal with the high number of permits currently in circulation and the difficulties that staff often experience in finding a parking space.

New permits will begin to be distributed from this Monday, 16 April, and staff should note the time and place of their nearest pick-up session and attend, with a completed application form as can be found at Annex 1 of the attached Parking Policy, a copy of their car insurance or MOT certificate and their LBB identity card. They will then be issued with a permit.

There is no charge for the permit for council employees, casual or as and when workers and temporary agency workers. Contractors will be required to pay £25 per month by cheque (made payable to London Borough of Barnet) to park at any of the three sites.

The pick-up sessions will run to the following schedule (on each day, the pick-up point will be staffed from 9.30am to 4.30pm and signs will direct you to where the team are located):

Monday 16 April – Ground Floor, Building 4 (track side)

Tuesday 17 April – Ground Floor, Building 4 (Atrium side)

Wednesday 18 April – First Floor, Building 4 (track side)

Thursday 19 April – First Floor, Building 4 (Atrium side)

Friday 20 April – Second Floor, Building 4 (track side)

Monday 23 April – Second Floor, Building 4 (Atrium side)

Tuesday 24 April – First Floor, Building 2 (near meeting room F10)

Wednesday 25 April – ‘wrap-up’ session (location to be confirmed)

Thursday 26 April – Barnet House (location to be confirmed)

Friday 27 April – Barnet House (location to be confirmed)

Monday 30 April – Mill Hill Depot (location to be confirmed)

Tuesday 1 May – Mill Hill Depot (location to be confirmed)

Working for an employer who has signed up to let their employees' cars be clamped is also pretty dire. Mr Mustard would park on the road every time and walk in. Find a nice road about 800m away, don't leave any clue in your car as to where you work and have a nice little walk in past the papershop etc. Job done.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Customer Services - Output specificaton

The New Support & Customer Services project is the grandly titled idea to contract out many of the first contacts with the council which will mean that they lose touch with why we are ringing. Mr Mustard thinks this is a completely stupid idea as you actually need to hear first hand what your customers think of you - even if you don't like the answer, and the message won't get lost.

There is the famous story of the British Army Commander who sent the message "Send reinforcements, we're going to advance." back to the Command Center, through a long chain of subordinates. When the message finally reached the Command Center, it had mutated to become -

"Send three and four-pence, we're going to a dance."

The reinforcements never arrived.

Here are the output specifications or some such tripe for customer services. You might want to skip straight to the end of this blog if you don't want to get bogged down in ludicrous detail; remember though that you are paying for this, probably handsomely to a consultant.

You might also like to think about going to the end of the blog and clicking the pdf/print button and printing this one out to make it easier to read.

click to enlarge; back to return

The above hogwash contains the line "substantially improved customer and resident experience of dealing with the council" at the same time as planning to outsource to some huge company. Will a Barnet resident have any experience of Barnet Council if they are put through to some call centre in Outer Mongolia or wherever it might happen to be? - no they won't. They will have an experience of the outsourcer. Will this save time or money? no, it won't. 

On page 6 it says "enable customers to resolve issues through a single point of contact within customer services" which is to totally misunderstand what residents ( customers, grr ) want. They want to ring someone who can fix their problem there and then whether it be housing benefit, adoption, council tax, litter, noise abatement, a parking fine, electoral role, a death etc etc and not speak to a call centre who won't know diddly squat.

Page 6 has another "design principle" which is "enable customers to only have to provide information once, which can be used to provide a range of related services" which worries Mr Mustard greatly that his data will be provided to every department and every contractor who deals with the council.

The final principle is to "provide a coherent brand, identity and ethos for customer services that builds a new relationship with the citizens of Barnet". People probably have enough relationship problems already without wanting one with their local council, or councillor; any takers for Cllr Coleman?; no, I thought not. Residents just want their bins emptied on time, no ethos; no brand, just a reasonable service, that is all.

4.2.3 - The partner will be responsible for all channels, except post ( Mr Mustard's emphasis ). So to defeat this stupid outsourcing we just have to go back to writing letters to the North London Business Park instead of phoning or emailing - and we keep the Royal Mail going at the same time.

Page 7 says that the provider will not deal with post fulfillment or scanning but customers' postal correspondence with other service providers should be visible to CSOI staff. Well that will depend won't it on what it is about. If it is about your care package then it shouldn't and if you mark your correspondence "Private & Confidential" then that shouldn't be scanned and available to anyone who can log into the computer. 

Page 7 envisages that "specialist teams handle more specialist enquiries grouped around customer type and episodes ( i.e. street based services, adults, businesses etc )". So if you ask anything even slightly difficult you will be passed on to a specialist team. Will you be kept holding on, yes if you can even get through. 

Ooh look even the specialists are planned not to cope "where enquiries cannot be dealt with, an automatic handover to the correct team" whoever that might be.

Looking at page 10 it is interesting to note that simple emails ( define?) will be answered by the outsourcer ( Mr Mustard wonders about his FOI requests which are simple ) but that the rest will be forwarded to services. Who is going to monitor that a reply is sent ? Will this 2 step dance make the council more efficient? No. 

Even the highest level complaints, the stage 3 complaints are going to be outsourced. The outsourcer won't have any idea how to reply. This is an idiotic idea.

On page 17 there is a key performance indicator (KPI). 75% of calls are to be answered within 20 seconds. That is so lax. 100% of calls should be answered within 5 rings would be a target worth aiming at. 

KPI - less than 10% abandoned calls. No, go for 0% abandoned calls.

KPI 85% of emails answered within 10 days - no, 99% of emails answered within 10 days would be a worthwhile target.

KPI 80% of Corporate Complaints responded to within SLA ( Service Level Agreement ) What is the point of having an SLA that is so pitifully feeble. Complaints nipped in the bud on day 1 stop you appearing in blogs. Jump to it. Richard Grice's name is on this specification - has he ever worked in industry? - he can't have. He is planning for failure. 

Page 22 - The average waiting time has been 1.57 minutes and so once privatised people can be instead kept waiting for an average of 10 minutes. A worse experience. Putting the customer last.

Page 25 - GovMetric. the council has procured GovMetric to deliver... The Partner shall provide this or a similar tool. Now the council spent good money on GovMetric in April 2011 ( DPR 1301 ) and yet it isn't going to be implemented until September 2011 and even then if the provider wants to use something else they can, which we have to pay for and throw in the bin the time & money invested in GovMetric.

Page 26 - Complex enquiries should be forwarded to Service Areas to investigate and respond to. Why does Mr Mustard get the feeling that the provider and the service areas are going to spend time arguing about what is complex and what isn't in order to avoid work or make money.

Page 27 - Customer Insight is underdeveloped and will be outsourced - goodbye Mr Markey? & his two assistants? This startling admission hasn't stopped Barnet Council from deciding to outsource pretty much everything at the same time as they don't know what customers want from the Council. Why does Mr Mustard think that any Insight produced by the provider in the future will somehow include that outsourcing is the best thing since sliced bread ( which is an abomination - use your local baker if you want to keep him ).

Page 29 - We will provide: A range of ways for you to access the service you need, in a way that is most convenient to you. Mr Mustard would like to pay for parking in case. What, he can't. Not convenient to the Council who come before you the citizen.

Page 34 - contains some shocking figures. 12% of all calls to the switchboard are abandoned. Why not simply put more people on the end of the telephone? Too simple for Barnet Council. They will need a £50,000 consultant's report to tell them what to do.
17% of all calls abandoned. Forget OneBarnet - just answer the phone and then satisfaction ratings will improve. It's so simple. Now that would be easy Council.

Finally I see from the appendix on page 36 that Engagement is going to take place on the new website, once it eventually plods up sometime in 2012, by dint of the following:

Discussions Forums ( don't put Cllr Gordon in charge of those as he prefers to subdue individuals rather than listen )
Facebook ( the page that Mrs Angry was barred from for 2 months perhaps - you can't engage if you can't access something )
Blogs - ooh competition - any blog issued by the council will simply be full of puff and any criticism will be moderated out of existence. The Famous Five Barnet Bloggers will be needed more than ever.

Sorry about the length of this posting - do print it out, it will make for easier reading.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

What on earth is going on? - An Open Letter to Councillors From the Barnet Bloggers

9 September 2011

Dear Councillor

We are writing to share with you our concerns about the recent decision of the Chief Executive Nick Walkley to erect posters throughout the council offices bearing an ‘Open letter to staff’.

The posters did not contain any new information that was not already conveyed to staff in an email on the same day. Why, therefore, were the posters necessary? What is clear is that at a time when the council is making cuts to valued services, this was an appalling waste of money.

Custodians spent valuable time putting the posters up when they should have been carrying out their normal duties. We are taking steps to find out the cost of these posters and will share the information with residents. We would welcome any light councillors can shed on this and on how the decision to approve the poster strategy was taken.

The overall effect of the posters is surely to further alienate much of the workforce from council management and bring more disastrous PR for the council. If they seemed like a good idea when the decision to use them was taken, surely seeing the effect when the entire council is plastered with identical copies of one poster – only, in different sizes – can only embarrass those who thought of them.

We hope you will agree, the whole poster episode has been ludicrous and ineffective, the impression given that the council management team is starting to panic.

What can be salvaged from this? It is time for the council to recognise that staff will not be bullied into accepting the “One Barnet” outsourcing project. (Our own view is that the programme should be scrapped.)

It is also high time that the council consulted fully and properly with residents over One Barnet. It is scandalous that the representatives of the bidding companies can meet with senior Barnet management, yet the council – neither the leading Conservative group, nor senior council executives – has never appeared in a public forum to justify to residents these plans which will have a profound impact on council services for years to come.

We invite your views on this matter.

Yours sincerely

Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne

Don't call me - I'll call you

and preferably please use another channel like the internet as despite raking in £900m a year we can't afford to provide a service is more or less what Barnet Council say.

Now Mr Mustard read the 84 page report called the New Support & Customer Services Project: Business Case. See item 7 here. For a veggie Mr Mustard sees rather a lot of tripe. One of the big One Barnet ideas is to contract out the answering of the telephone (because it is too difficult for Barnet council to manage?)

What caught Mr Mustard's eye, well both of them to be accurate, on page 48,  was the number of phone calls in a year to customer services, being: 2,574,070

Mr Mustard wondered how 300,000 or so residents could be making 8 calls each a year to the council ? Complaint calls about Cllr Coleman maybe? oh no, the number is too low! ( only joking Mr Coleman Sir, before you threaten Mr Mustard with the police again ). So Mr Mustard asked for a breakdown and here it is although the year ran to October 2010 so it was hopelessly out of date.

Service area	Total calls	Per day
Switchboard	529,509	2,037
Barnet Homes Call Centre	292,734	1,126
Parking	205,293	790
Council tax	201,159	774
Street scene	181,679	699
Schools Admissions	135,633	522
Benefit	134,344	517
Libraries	119,938	461
Housing Advice	103,198	397
Assisted Travel	99,649	383
Building Control and street numbering	68,490	263
Social Care Direct	49,630	191
Highways (Manager, Strategy and Admin)	44,235	170
Registration	44,110	170
Out of hours	41,133	158
Passenger Transport Management & Support	36,337	140
Planning	31,606	122
Customer services- planning/reception	28,686	110
Business Support: provides first customer contact for: Food safety Health and safety Private sector housing Care and Repair Scientific services Public health and nuisance Pest control	27,929	107
Student Finance	22,640	87
Greenspaces	20,640	79
Children's Social Care Duty Team	18,985	73
Hendon Crematorium	17,790	68
Non-domestic National Rates	16,038	62
FYI (information and service request)	13,806	53
Waste & Sustainability	11,254	43
EH Admin Team	11,112	43
Educational Welfare	10,090	39
Priority Intervention Team (Including Abandoned vehicles)	9,229	35
Electoral Registration	8,746	34
Connexions Service	6,222	24
Safer Communities Team	4,949	19
Children’s social services	4,795	18
Design & Development	4,646	18
Crossovers	3,445	13
Regeneration	2,714	10
Youth and connexions	2,665	10
Trading standards	1,785	7
School Travel Plan	1,447	6
Development Control	1,382	5
Canada Villa Youth Centre	1,236	5
Fostering	764	3
Planning	604	2
Drugs and Alcohol Team	594	2
Adoption	492	2
BH Unitry Development Planning	445	2
Common Assessment Framework team	263	1
Totals	2,574,070	9,900

Contract out the switchboard. Stupid idea number one. 2000 calls a day = economy of scale. Much better to have chatterbox Ethel on the switchboard who knows everything and everybody as she can correctly route 99.9% of calls within 3 secs.

Barnet Homes : Shouldn't they take their own calls? What is the point of routing those calls through Barnet Council? As most of the calls will probably relate to maintenance it might make sense to make the numbers of the maintenance contractors public instead?

Wherever possible the aim should be to connect the customer to the person who can deal with their problem with no intervening steps. Mr Mustard has sadly had to suffer a game of pass the parcel for an enquiry which could have been answered in 30 seconds and developed into a long game of email ping-pong which is as yet unfinished and which will end up with his 3 opponents ( yes a bit unfair Mr Mustard v only 3 Barnet council employees, they needed reinforcements ) being smashed off the table in a blog shortly.

Parking. Those calls should be taken by the Information Officers ( please give these people new titles Barnet Council as they aren't information officers, are they, they handle appeals against parking tickets? ). Has it occurred to you Barnet Council that if the Information Officers spoke to customers directly they might be able to deal with appeals on the fly and cancel some tickets or be able to explain to the customer exactly why parking in the wrong place led to a ticket and educate customers to avoid further trouble and cut down the workload? Education should be the goal of the parking "service" not money grabbing.

Council tax and benefits is a complex area and the outcome is crucial to the council's income. Best to keep that core activity close to the council.

Street scene : Mr Mustard thinks that these calls include you didn't collect my dustbin / recycling box. Mr Mustard forgot to put his paper and bottles bins out this week. The May Gurney man walked a whole 10m to collect them. Well done. So complaining does work. These calls should go directly to May Gurney for recycling and to the dustman ( yes Mr Mustard knows that name is out of date ) for rubbish bins.

School admissions. These calls are for a concentrated period once a year. Mr Mustard doesn't know much about schools but would think that this could be largely dealt with on-line and wonders if, with the rise of academies, this sort of call will fall away? Either way, the call is too important to be dealt with in a call centre.

Benefits. See Council Tax above.

Libraries. How can there be 119,938 calls to libraries? If each library took their own calls the number would be manageable.

Housing advice: Let Barnet Homes manage their own calls. At least they have an 0800 number.

Assisted travel: Why so many calls about this when Barnet council refer you elsewhere?

Building control : really needs to be managed locally or anything will be built.

Registration : Calls about births, deaths and marriages should be dealt with by the source directly. They are too important, and emotional, to deal with a call centre.

Planning : Let the relevant planning officer deal with planning queries. Who knows more about planning than him/her?

Hendon Crematorium : Press 1 if you are alive! For goodness sake let people call the crematorium directly; isn't the stress of burying a loved one enough?

Electoral registration : Mr Mustard suspects that only the proper officer can amend our details so why bother with a middleman in a call centre. 

Crossovers : Mr Mustard is shocked by the number of calls about these. Since Barnet Council removed the requirement for the depth of pavement to be at least the length of an average family car a large number of front gardens have been concreted over thereby desecrating the green and leafy borough. A resident of his own street converted the front garden to accept a smart car but she has a huge 4by4!

Once we reach the realm of 10 or fewer calls a day Mr Mustard cannot see why the relevant staff cannot simply take the calls as part of their normal duties.

When to call?

Nov-09	201,252
Dec-09	180,251
Jan-10	210,457
Feb-10	198,957
Mar-10	250,024
Apr-10	211,087
May-10	216,115
Jun-10	224,623
Jul-10	211,976
Aug-10	181,791
Sep-10	263,912
Oct-10	223,625

Please don't call in September; please call back in December or August when we are not so busy!

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard