Helping the mentally or physically ill, the elderly & the poor to fight Council PCNs.
Writing about blunders, democracy and profligacy at Barnet Council.
What could be more appropriate when £1,000 has sailed up the Swanee River than a rendition of Swanee Kazoo. If that is too highbrow for you then here is the score for Commonwealth as purchased by Barnet Council with your money.
The copyright belongs to Barnet Council so play it all you like if you are a Barnet resident and get your money's worth. You may need to get a few friends round and once the bagpipes start the noise abatement officer will appear - once he/she realises the royal connection, yes Brian Coleman was instrumental in the selection of Tim Benjamin, the composer, the noise abatement officer will sing along.
Looks like a building from Colemanistan ( actually Harrow Civic Centre ) Depressing.
Mr Mustard had heard that the Harrow legal merger was off due to "costing errors" but it seems to be back on. If there are costing errors Barnet will pay for them later. Do Harrow really know what they are taking on?
Basically all that is happening is that the legal departments of the two councils are going to work as one team based in Harrow.
Page 18 of the Business case contains the most important detail.
The biggest potential savings relate to legal services currently provided by third parties to Barnet.
So for legal work it is cheaper to do it in-house but for nearly everything else it is cheaper not to do it.
Mr Mustard can't see the logic of outsourcing DRS and Customer Services is the above is true for legal. It's a funny old world. Maybe the answer is as simple as lawyers can't be screwed on their terms and conditions?
(in case you think Mr Mustard is being derogatory, Borat style perhaps, about places ending in "istan" he is told that it means "place" so we are in the London Borough of Brian Coleman - what a dreadful thought).
This document details the mayhem caused by the abolition of
free bays in Controlled Parking Zones as part of Councillor Brian Coleman's
parking policies.
This document details how the Barnet Police have had their
time wasted, congestion has been caused, buses have been delayed, residents
inconvenienced, and people's safety has been endangered. In short, it is the
most damning indictment of a Council policy possible.
The background information section of this document
says:
8. BACKGROUND INFORMATION
8.1 In June 2011 the
Council completed a scheme whereby all ‘Free’ parking bays were converted to
permit holder or paid for parking bays in the borough’s Controlled Parking Zones
(CPZs). As a result of the changes made to the Mill Hill East CPZ, a
proportionate level of displaced parking is occurring on both sides of Bittacy
Hill on the outskirts of the CPZ boundary.
8.2 The council has been
contacted by roads users and local residents, complaining of the congestion
being caused as through vehicles are being obstructed by the displaced
parking.
8.3 London Buses have reported to the council that the displaced
parking is obscuring sightlines and obstructing through traffic, preventing
their buses from gaining suitable access through the road, resulting in the
delay of their services. They also stated that this situation has caused major
congestion in both directions on Bittacy Hill and therefore, have had to
temporarily put some of their buses on diversion.
8.4 In addition, the
Police have also expressed concerns regarding this location, and have requested
for waiting restrictions to be introduced.
8.5 Following investigations
including site observations, Officers concluded that major congestion occurs on
the hill at this location, and in order to keep traffic moving through the
borough considered that the provision of waiting restrictions would be
appropriate given the obstructive parking which is taking place.
8.6
Therefore, proposals to introduce lengths of ‘at any time’ waiting restrictions
on certain lengths of Bittacy Hill including around its junctions with Bittacy
Close and Engle Park, were designed in order to deter obstructive parking and
improve traffic flow, sightlines and safety.
8.7 In anticipation of the
statutory consultation, Mill Hill Ward Members were consulted on the proposals
with all advising of their agreement and support of the measures for the area.
In particular, Councillors Khatri and Hart stated that they had also received
complaints on this matter or have experienced problems themselves. Councillor
Hart did raise the issue that more restrictions may cause more problems to the
wider area as did Councillor Schama.
8.8 However, Officers consider that
any displaced parking that may occur as a result of the introduction of the
restrictions can be absorbed into the local network with minimal
impact.
8.9 In mid August it was necessary to introduce emergency
temporary waiting restrictions on the eastern side of Bittacy Hill, as nearby
Devonshire Road was closed to allow for essential maintenance works to take
place, which resulted in an increased traffic flow on Bittacy Hill that
exasperated the problems occurring at the location.
8.9 Traffic cones
were placed on street to indicate the temporary waiting restrictions, and the
location was monitored by Officers. Observations showed that displaced parking
was minimal and what did occur had little impact on the area. It was concluded
that the removal of the parked vehicles at this location was very effective in
relieving the congestion normally experienced.
8.10 Additional supporting
evidence underlining the concern via photographs showing buses being obstructed
and the congestion experienced were sent to the council and a petition signed by
all residents of Bittacy Close was also submitted, asking for waiting
restrictions to be implemented at the junction of Bittacy Close and Bittacy
Hill.
8.14 Councillor Khatri and Councillor Hart have since also
reaffirmed their views and support for the proposals. In particular, they
advised of their concerns regarding safety being an issue at this location.
Councillor Hart also re-iterated his concerns for residents of Bittacy Close,
who suffer from obstruction at the junction of Bittacy Close and Bittacy
Hill.
Councillor Brian Coleman ignored all wise counsel in order to introduce these
policies.
He ignored all efforts to mitigate the problems caused.
As a result, we have a situation where ever more parking restrictions will be
required to fix a problem that did not previously exist.
To what end? To inconvenience and overcharge local residents.
It is
time for Barnet Council to have an urgent rethink. It is time to reinstate free
bays, cut parking charges on Barnet’s high streets, and, most of all, it is time
to put someone in charge of parking who is competent.
There is no way
that Barnet Council can pretend that Coleman’s parking policies are anything
other than an unmitigated disaster. Your own document says so in black and
white.
Signed:
Derek Dishman John Dix Vicki
Morris Theresa Musgrove Roger Tichborne
Footnote:
The open letter was sent by email late on the evening ofyesterday and up to now there has been read by 18 conservative councillors, 9 labour ones and 1 liberal with 1 out-of-office from a lib-dem.
It is a little early to expect a response and it should be noted that one was not specifically requested although one would think that such criticism naturally demands one.
Mr Mustard is a little concerned as the top officer name on this report is the Assistant Director, Mrs Lynn Bishop. She wrote the following to Mr Mustard about the income share on the May Gurney contract (the one that sees them getting a bonus of almost £1m p.a. just for doing their job )
Thank you for your email dated the 12th
December 2011,
As previously advised in an email to you on
13 April 2011 and again in June 2011, Barnet Council and May Gurney share the
material income 50/50. Also as previously advised, May Gurney then use their
share of the material income to reduce the annual contract price that Barnet
Council pays to May Gurney for providing the recycling service. This paragraph was complete rubbish with Mrs Bishop confusing cost and cashflow which Mr Mustard found very worrying. Above a certain figure May Gurney receive half of the money from the sale of recycled materials. So it is correct to say "their share"but completely wrong to say "to reduce the annual contract price" because they don't. What happens is that an estimate of the value of recycled materials is taken off the estimated fees for the year to give a net position which is then paid across 12 months with a settling up at year end.
The income per tonne of £33.11 that was
reported to the meeting of the Budget and Performance Overview and Scrutiny
Committee on 6 December 2011 relates to the income that Barnet Council receives.
Mr Mustard knew the answer before he asked the question. He wondered if the AD understood and found that she doesn't. A bit worrying when she is in charge of rubbish. Mr Mustard does not let mistakes like that pass him by. He asked Mrs Bishop to explain more clearly and there was a sudden delegation to CS who obviously knows what he is on about despite being much lower in the food chain and here was the real explanation.
Barnet Council's Recycling Services contract with May Gurney allows for the sharing of income from the sale of recyclable materials collected from households, schools and recycling banks. Within the contract, May Gurney retains the initial income from the sale of materials. The annual contract price that the Council pays to May Gurney for providing the services is then reduced by the same amount. 50% of the income received by May Gurney for the sale of materials above this amount is paid to the Council, and May Gurney retains 50%. There are no specific tonnage targets, but the 50% share of income acts as an incentive to May Gurney to collect a greater tonnage of household materials for recycling, and to achieve the best price possible for these materials.No it doesn't; they cannot collect recycling that is not in the bins. It is a gift. Market prices for recycling dictate the prices achieved. Not your fault CS; I know you get told to spout this apology of a reason for a badly drawn contract.
The paths of Mr Mustard and Ms Cross have hardly crossed with the only occasion being when she replied quickly and accurately to an email that Mr Mustard had written to Ms Bishop about the Summers Lane site.
Mr Mustard come write a whole blog about Mr Lai about bin collections. The most recent episode for which Mr Mustard is still awaiting a reply is why the binmen were told to conspicuously photograph Mr Mustard's black bin before and after emptying. No other bin was photographed nor was any other bin in the street put back properly. Mr Mustard also has a camera which he wields frequently.
So Mr Mustard is only 1/3rd confident that the report on rubbish will not be.
So the plan is that each residence will have three 240 litre bins (the standard size of the green bin that we have now ) and a small lidded bin ( or caddy ) for in the kitchen to put food waste into and a larger food waste bin for outdoors. Terraced houses that front the street, like those in Chipping Close opposite the market, obviously can't take part and anyone with small gardens, many Victorian houses have small front gardens, will have their gardens stuffed full of bins. Do they need to be 240ltr size? No of course but in One Barnet, One Size fits all and even if it doesn't, it does! (Think pay by phone parking).
Let us run through the bins
Green bin for green garden waste, lawn clippings and the like. There is no mention of home composting. Mr Mustard has a compost bin the size of a green bin and a set of 3 bins made out of pallets so that he can leave his waste to rot down. Mr Mustard's are a little more rudimentary than these but they all do the same job. Put that at the bottom of the garden out of the way and share with a neighbour if you get on well.
Some people could manage without a green bin at all if they composted everything green and had a large enough rear garden. Mr Mustard's compost bin came free from the council for a home he had in another borough. It saves the council more than it cost to give him the bin.
Green stuff does not grow below 5° so why not restrict collection to the 6 months from 1 April to 30 September as for the other 6 months there are hardly any green bins to be seen on the street. This would almost halve the costs of collection. Why isn't the council bagging the green waste once composted and selling it at £1 a bag to local garden centres? Let the garden centres sell One Barnet Compost at £2 a bag for 30-40 litres and help the local economy.Proprietary compost is £5 for a 60ltr bag now.
Kitchen waste. Eat it (perhaps this explains Mr Mustard's expanding waistline) or compost it. A good idea to collect kitchen waste as apparently, in many houses, this is one of the biggest sources of waste. Once you see how much food you waste you might try buying differently in order to cut down on waste. Buy 3 looses apples if that it what you need rather than a bag. They are also cheaper loose than pre-packed. Compost used tea bags, apple cores, eggshells and uncooked organic matter. Just put cooked waste food in the kitchen bin. This bin will need to be collected weekly and the lid needs to be secure to stop scavenging pets and foxes.
Co-mingled dry waste. Mr Mustard remembers he was sent a link to a co-mingled waste plant by the Pinkham Way website and here it is.
We are to get another 240ltr wheelie bin for our dry recyclables; basically all the stuff we currently put into the blue and black boxes. This will be much quicker to collect but needs an expensive building full of clever machines and people to do the sorting. If there is a plastic label on the bins with pictures and words of everything that can go in these bins then this may well increase the amount of materials that are recycled.
Black other waste wheelie bin. The existing wheelie bins will remain. One used to be able to get 120ltr black wheelie bins but the council stopped giving them out. That was a retrograde step as old people liked them as they are easier to move around and also old people tend to generate less rubbish being from the made do and mend and/or less rampant users of consumer goods. Residents should be offered the smaller bin if they ask for it or if they are the only person in the household.
There are over 130,000 dwellings in Barnet. The blue and black boxes will presumably be recycled but the blue boxes didn't appear all that long ago. What did the boxes cost as the purchase price is now going to be thrown away? Here are the values from the asset register for the last 2 years for the small bins:
At 31/3/2010 £1,836,406 at 31/3/2011 £1,322,283
so if we knock off another £500,000 depreciation for the year just ended there will be a residual write-off of £800,000 because the wrong strategy was chosen in 2008.
it will be something like this outside your property
Mr Mustard thinks that to go the co-mingled route is fine but the collection cycles are over generous. Here is his suggestion
Food waste - weekly Green waste - weekly but only for the 6 warmest months Co-mingled - fortnightly Leftover general waste - fortnightly alternating with co-mingled
Now let us look at the figures in the report. Can you follow them? The layout is a complete illogical mess. Mr Mustard would have liked the figures to have gone through the detail first and then presented a summary. He would have liked the next 5 years to be in a table showing all the costs first, then all the savings then the notional savings from costs that won't be incurred in future years due to the new plan (which aren't really savings at all).
It looks to Mr Mustard like the £206k in the table at the top of page 213 should be £201 as shown at the bottom of page 218. Let us see if that gets corrected.
A quick whizz through the report in order.
1.1 Good idea. Encourage recycling.
1.2 Bad idea. Too many litres.
4.2 The actual percentages in a table would have been useful.
4.4 More madness, signing up to something for 25 years way after many councillors will no longer be.
6.1 Figures rather than percentages should be a table. 4% is the rate of inflation so no increase at all in real terms.
6.2 It doesn't clearly say what the "impact on performance" percentages are. One could conclude that will be the percentage improvement but more likely it is the % of waste that will be recycled.
6.3 Mr Mustard would like to subscribe to the One Barnet Wave it Goodbye phase. This Wave 2 is mentioned without Wave 1 having had a mention. Did Mr Mustard miss it?
6.8 50% We'll see.
9.1.4 Utter madness to have to estimate your future rubbish for 25 years if any penalties apply to being wrong.
9.5 Mr Mustard suggested this in his blog a little while ago.
9.6.1 One of the worst laid out tables ever seen. If the 3 categories had been used as headings within the table then the first column could have been done away with and the whole table would have fitted on one page.
A face to face campaign is a good idea but it needs to be more effective than breakeven after 3 years.
Clear instructions by direct mail to every household will cost £14,000. There are 130,000+ households so say 10p per household to produce literature and mail it out. Looks a bit tight.
Barnet First magazine will be the first item into Mr Mustard's co-mingled bin. It is shoved through the letterbox which clearly says "no junk mail" on it; that means if it doesn't have his name on it, he doesn't want it.
A clear sticker saying what you can recycle, stuck firmly and permanently on the bin is a top idea.
Adopt language of communications. ??????????????
Local monitoring...Haven't bin police been outlawed?
Pledge bank - which should itself have been recycled by now.
£210,000 for 130,000 bags. Mr Mustard will check the bill. This will have to go out to EU tender.
Thank you for reading. Maybe Mr Mustard will see you at the town hall on Wednesday evening at 7pm?
As anyone half awake yesterday will have gathered my posting about marker pen sniffing was made up (the £100k spent on consultants could sadly have been completely true). The main clue was the name Avril Duper which is April Fool in French although for some reason they have "poissons d'avril" April fish instead .
Do you think he has noticed it?
Please don't take my joke of yesterday as an invitation to try getting too close to a marker pen, bad things can happen.
If you, or anyone you know has a problem with solvent abuse, then this website could help.
Mr Mustard thought you might like to see the Team Plan for the Parking "Service" for 2011/12 which came to an end last week. He will send off for the next one.
Let us start with why parking is controlled. This what the council website says.
We introduce various parking management measures such as parking places and waiting restrictions in order to:
ease congestion caused by inconsiderate parking one sees very little of that nowadays.
help with road safety a laudable aim
assist disabled users of vehicles Barnet do not charge blue badge holders for parking
provide parking for specific users (such as residents, businesses, or blue badge holders) this doesn't quite happen. CPZ residents are provided with a permit, not with a parking space. Often there aren't any where you need them.
increase the turnover of parking to help visitors, clients of businesses, and shoppers to park this has been achieved. Thousands of town centre visitors have been moved on to other locations.
provide facilities for loading and unloading. stay out of loading bays.
So if we now look at the plan for last year, in particular page 2 "Setting the Scene" the plan says "to reach the required income levels". Oh dear, "ambitious targets have been set". If there was any doubt that the council have set out to empty the wallets of motorists in Barnet this plan dispels it.
Mr Mustard thinks it was Brian Coleman who used to complain about vandals damaging the machines. Well up to 20% could have been out of action because the target for working machines was only 80% as it shows on page 3. How can that meet the corporate priority of "better service". 100% would be better service. Academic now, of course, but an interesting insight into the way the council tell us one thing and do another.
On page 4 there was a plan to repair signs and lines, not in order to comply with the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002 i.e. to uphold the law of the land, but because it would generate additional income and look the project was closed down because it was unproductive i.e. the council thought they were wasting money correcting deficiencies. The state of the lines that have will be handed over to NSL are worse than they should be.
Look in the second last column. What does it mean to Barnet Council if lines or signs are faulty. It means they can't issue a PCN i.e. a loss of income.
At the bottom of the page. An issue rate of 2 Penalty Charges Notices per hour ( per traffic warden ). No wonder they need scooters. That looks awfully like a target which central government frowns upon.
The percentages missing on page 5 are only 1% of tickets to be cancelled due to traffic warden error and 48% of us are expected to roll over and pay at a discount. Sod that for a game of soldiers. Appeal everything.
On page 6 we can see how much thought was put into the impact of Brian Coleman's massive increases in fees and charges. "No modelling was done".
"Mitigating action is to be taken as necessary." The council have a one track mind. If income falls action will have to be taken to get it back up to target.
The 2 tickets per CEO per hour was not an error in the document. Here it is repeated on page 8.
Mr Mustard would laugh if this was not so sad. On page 9 "Ensure that our town centres are vibrant places where businesses can thrive" Our town centres are turning into ghost towns where empty shops are starting to thrive and car parks are half empty most of the time.
When will the council wake up and reverse the destructive course on which it is steaming full speed ahead?
Mr Mustard despairs. He has discovered that another £100,000 has been wasted on consultants (the name of the consultants was, would you believe it, redacted and Mr Mustard is waiting for the results of a review), this time to investigate alternative black marker pens for Freedom of Information officers. It turns out that back in February one of the FOI officers passed out and had to be taken to hospital as a precaution after spending 3 hours locked in a small conference room redacting the secret details in a 300 page One Barnet report which Mr Mustard had requested. The council then spent all of this money on a report into alternative water based marker pens. The council thought that using water based pens would be safer for the FOI officers as they do not give off noxious fumes and less would be stolen out of the stationery cupboard by junior juvenile staff who were trying to get high on them. One person got caught who had been doing this in the toilets because they left a telltale black mark on their nostrils.
This being Barnet Council they couldn't of course just decide to use the water based markers, or to use scissors and cut out the offending passages (it would take too long apparently and could lead to claims for RSI) no, they had to send a number of redacted documents off to a laboratory for testing to see if the person getting the document might be able to wash the marking off and reveal the text underneath. Should any other council want to follow Barnet Council's very sensible idea to use water based pens which are better for the planet and are made locally in Hertfordshire by the family company U. R. Green they should send Mr Mustard an email for the contact details (mrmustard@zoho.com)
Mr Mustard contacted Barnet Council Press Office for a response and their Miss Avril Duper said:
"The council takes the health of its employees very seriously and thus the new marker pens are essential to staff wellbeing. In addition, the new pens are odourless and silent in operation and can be applied more quickly and accurately than the old ones. The cost was well within the One Barnet budget"
Mr Mustard hopes that it will be another year before another similar scandal sees the light of day.
