Listen up councillors

The bloggers of Barnet sent this joint email to every Barnet Councillor today.

This blog also contains a video recorded by John Sullivan explaining why his daughter Susan has launched a legal challenge against Barnet Council over its One Barnet programme.

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Dear Councillor,

Susan Sullivan is launching a legal action to secure a judicial review of the One Barnet programme.

As concerned Barnet residents, we believe that it is vital for the financial wellbeing of this borough that this programme is halted. We have seen no evidence that justifies the claims of savings, and plenty of evidence that signing 10-year contracts is highly risky. We do not believe that anyone knows where the economy will be in five years, let alone 10 years.

To illustrate the point, in 2007, nobody would have predicted the Credit Crunch, and RBS were embarking on a reckless takeover of ABN AMRO. The markets and the private sector trumpeted this deal as good value for the shareholders of RBS, but it brought the organisation to its knees, and the company would have gone bankrupt had it not been bailed out by the taxpayer.

BT, Capita and EC Harris, who are bidding for the One Barnet contracts, have nothing like the market capitalisation or financial strength that RBS was perceived to have in 2007; it cannot possibly be claimed that there is no risk.

Gambling, speculation and risk are matters that should not be entertained in the provision of services to vulnerable people. Yet they are precisely the values at the centre of the One Barnet programme. As such, we fully support Susan Sullivan in her action.

Her father John Sullivan has been interviewed and gives his reasons for opposing One Barnet and helping his daughter to launch her action.

We urge all Barnet councillors and every resident of Barnet to listen to John, as he eloquently sums up the reasons why One Barnet should be abandoned.

Link to youtube

Signed,

Derek Dishman

John Dix

Vicki Morris

Theresa Musgrove

Roger Tichborne

Faded white lines and spot the white van

One of the contract terms is that the NSL traffic wardens are meant to check that lines and signs are in accordance with regulations before they issue a parking ticket (stop laughing at the back, and the front and the sides - yes, of course they don't - it is just puff put into the contract to make people think the council give a damn).

Mr Mustard was wandering down the High Rd in N Finchley the other day, on his way to have a lovely cup of tea at Cafe Buzz, when he took a photograph of this bay.

The yellow lines are lovely but the white ones are hard to see

The lines are actually clearer in the photograph than they are to the naked eye. Let us hope that NSL have noticed these lines are poor and need to be painted again. Why should NSL have noticed these lines in particular? well, simply because they are outside of the office where the traffic wardens are based. That is an NSL scooter parked at the far end which is fine as two wheelers can park for free in any resident or pay-by-phone bay.

Mr Mustard drank his tea and decided to go to his office and do some work as it was 9.15 and he walked back up from Cafe Buzz up towards Solar House where he had parked in side turning in a 2-3pm bay. Just as he was strolling along a white van pulled up and what with this office block advertising that it has 15,000 sq ft of space to rent, and with the demise of Furnitureland there are precious few vehicles ever parked this far out of town. 

sorry about the finger intrusion.

Mr Mustard noted that an NSL employee got out of the little white van and strolled into Solar House. Nowadays one can't tell if a vehicle has paid for parking or not because the little ticket no longer has to be stuck in the windscreen but Mr Mustard would suspect that NSL don't pay for parking even if they should as they doubtless have a database of registration numbers in their handheld equipment that they know better than to give a ticket to and they can cancel it themselves if they do make a mistake.

Time for a little competition thought Mr Mustard. Look out for this little white van, a Vauxhall Connect CDTI, with the registration number of 

HN59TPO

Please look out for it around the borough and send me photographs of the driver leaving it on double yellows whilst he does his shopping, gets a takeaway, or pops into the bookies, parks dangerously at a junction, or anywhere else that is dodgy such as with 2 wheels on the pavement.

The best photograph will win the owner a Mr Mustard T-shirt or mug (these are very limited items with only a score of each in existence).

Have fun.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Spot the words "One Barnet"

Last Thursday evening the "Leader" of the council, Richard Cornelius said at the packed One Barnet Question Time event that One Barnet was in the election literature for 2010. Mr Mustard's has long since been recycled, and he isn't in Totteridge Ward, so he has emailed Richard and asked him for a copy; let's see if it has all been conveniently lost.

In the meantime feast your eyes on the campaign of Friern Barnet library closer Robert Rams (you won't see a mention of his plan to close FB library in his publicity either) and see if you can spot the words "One Barnet". There is no prize today otherwise Mr Mustard would be looking at a Hoover free flight disaster.

If Richard's memory has got bad then maybe the time has come for him to stop being a councillor, where there is a mass of facts and figures and people to remember, and retire gracefully before he gets us all into trouble.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Could this £65,000 have been better spent?

http://www.consciousaging.com/

I write in response to your follow up request, below. We have processed your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). Under the Act you should have received a response within 20 working days. I apologise for the failure to meet this deadline. (The question was submitted on 3 February and answered on 13 September 2012!)

Response

1. Project Overview

iMPOWER, as one of the Council’s strategic implementation partners, has worked with the council to develop a range of opportunities to improve waste and recycling performance and reduce costs through a focus on resident behaviour change.

The intention of the project was to inform the development of a new strategy for improving waste and recycling performance based on analysis of both demand-side (customer behavioural change insight) and supply-side (service delivery) opportunities, both in the short and long term.

Using the Values Modes model, discussion groups of customers provided insight into the drivers for waste and recycling behaviour, enabling the development of demand-side solutions as well as changes in the service delivery model. The project identified opportunities and brought these together into a clear strategy, supported by the evidence generated.

There is a clear ambition - consistently held by both members and officers - to improve significantly upon Barnet’s relatively low recycling rate of around 33% (15th of 33 boroughs in London in 2011/12). In the majority of cases this is motivated by financial drivers with disposal and treatment costs set to increase, but environmental and reputational concerns are still important to consider.

We have explored a number of opportunities for improvement and assessed their likely impact on performance and budget.

2. Breakdown of Activity

Activity	Description	iMPOWER work/input	LBB work/input
Stakeholder engagement	Meetings with councillors & senior officers	Conducted interviews
Customer insight	We conducted 120 telephone interviews and ran 6 discussion groups with Barnet residents from both flats and houses. We segmented individuals into three ‘values modes’ groups - settlers, prospectors and pioneers - for these discussion groups.	- Telephone survey / recruitment to focus groups - Discussion Group topic guides - Facilitation of focus groups
Financial modelling	The building of a robust financial model to analyse a range of opportunities leading to a range of scenarios.	- Research into a range of initiatives around the country - Development of assumptions Opportunity assessment - Development of 10 year financial model Scenario modelling	Provision of data Challenge and quality assurance
Reporting	Reporting findings to various audiences	- Presentation to the Leader, the Deputy Leader & the portfolio holder - Presentation to overview & scrutiny committee Contribution to cabinet paper - Writing summary report on findings	Writing cabinet paper

3. Other relevant information

Please see Cabinet Report available on the council’s website here.

What are Values Modes?

Values Modes explain emotions, attitudes and motivations that inform demand.

Values are beliefs that are tied inextricably to emotion – not objective, cold ideas – and, as such they operate largely subconsciously.

They are a motivational construct – referring to desirable goals people strive to attain. They can change over time. They serve as standards and criteria for choices of all kinds.

How does it work?

By analysing responses to a series of multiple choice questions, the model calculates value mode.

At the simplest level, there are 3 value modes: settler, prospector and pioneer (the model also sub-divides these into 12 categories).

Where does the model come from?

The model is run by a specialist values data firm and is based on over 50 years of international research and over 37 years of British research. The Values Modes are an articulation of the Maslovian hierarchy of needs.

Data inputs include a 2008 British Values survey that asked questions of 8500 representative respondents.

What do you think?

So for £65,000 we have purchased a pretty report in order to help develop a strategy, we didn't even get a strategy for that huge sum, and not a single extra piece of recycling has been generated (except from the people who were interviewed or who came to a discussion group), although copies of the report once it has gathered dust for a while can go into the black box.

Does anyone agree with Mr Mustard that for £65,000 the council could have employed two people who walked around the borough for a year preceding the recycling lorries and knocked on doors where there is no evidence of recycling and simply asked "why?" which would have nudged some people into starting?

Stuff the theory, do the practical. All you need to know is why specific individuals aren't recycling and encourage them to.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Risk upon risk upon risk

If you had a risk register of 156 items spread across 58 pages wouldn't you be feeling a little nervous about signing a 10 year contract. You should be. Mr Mustard would be. He has written to the Cabinet so that there is no doubt before they vote on NSCSO and DRS that they realise what they are getting us into.

The pdf is sideways in the following window and you will be better off downloading a copy from scribd so that you can turn it around on your screen or print it out (which is easier to read and digest).

The One Barnet Risk Register

and you need the key to the codes

and finally Mr Mustard's email to the Cabinet

Dear Cabinet Members (and other councillors for information)

It has taken me to 10 months to prise the attached document out of the steely grasp of officers and now you can see why.

There are 58 pages containing 156 risks associated with the One Barnet programme which is self evidently far from robust.

Are you absolutely positive that it is completely safe for you to sign us up to NSCSO & DRS for the next 10 years?Yours sincerely

Mr Mustard

Link to Risk Register in scribd

artist : Tim Sanders

Footnote: NSCSO is the New Support & Customer Service Organisation with a 10 year contract estimated to be worth £700m and DRS is Development and Regulatory Services worth about £275m over 10 years. Both contracts will see jobs go out of the council to private providers with no guarantees that jobs won't be exported all over the Country or abroad.

Free event - Weds 14 Nov 12 @ 7pm - Will Self

Desparate for cash

That is a description of Barnet Council. There is some dastardly plan to get parking tickets back up to the "expected" amount. A target but not a target. Mr Mustard thinks that the plan, which unusually hasn't yet been leaked, or provided under FOI (where he is seriously in governance's bad books for being so prolific and they have hatched a cunning plan which will blow up like one of Baldrick's boils in their faces). The plan to get PCN numbers up doesn't for once revolve around CPZs and car parks but on out of hours enforcement when people make a small and understandable mistake in the dark. Here is a traffic warden dishing out a ticket in the parade of shops near Barnet Odeon. The slip road is called Western Parade.

The handbrake on the blogger bus was engaged; traffic lights at red.

This was on Mr Mustard's way back from Cafe Buzz on 1 November from an extra showing of the short film about Barnet - The Billion Pound Gamble. In the centre of the picture you can see a traffic warden (still wearing his helmet which is a contract breach, no penalty charge notice should be issued by a traffic warden wearing a crash helmet) dishing out a PCN at 8.10pm. Mr Mustard couldn't see what the problem was so popped along there today - he did not park in the same spot!

Here is what he found.

Now to be fair to the motorist lines should be clear and unambiguous. These cannot be described as clear. They are alongside a dropped kerb which is helpful in identifying that feature but at night, under all those leaves, which were worse the other day when Mr Mustard drove along this parade but did not stop, could easily be missed by a motorist. The terminating T line appears to be defective to boot.

The crossover is there to help people cross the road to the bus stop on the opposite pavement.

Now would anyone agree that there is a coherent set of double yellow lines here? They look like ones which are being left to fade away as no longer required. It is no surprise that cars at both ends are over these lines although they have left the crossover clear.

 So the only answer in the dark is

Hey, let's be careful out there.

Don't let the sneaky baskets fill their coffers by giving you a parking ticket on a dropped kerb. There is no parking any time of the day or night on a dropped kerb like this one.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard