Barnet Council - Highways - a song and dance act.

 

At a meeting tomorrow evening Barnet council should take another step in the tortuous unwinding of the dreadful 10 year contract that was signed on behalf of us all by councillors who hadn't read much of the detail (possibly even none of it). Barnet bloggers reported on it at the time, recognising a bad bargain from the outset, and Mr Reasonable has been the most thorough long term critic of the stupid bloated expensive deal.

If voting goes the way that Officers (staff) suggest, some services will come back in-house and others will get an extension (another monumentally stupid idea). It is no good just bringing them back and operating them in a Crapita manner, service to the public needs to underpin new methods of working. Here is a terrible example of how tedious it is to deal with Highways.

This is a public announcement. It was a repeat of the same order made in 2019.

Mr Mustard didn't want, in these Covid safe times, to visit an office and be near lots of people, even whilst wearing his mask, so thought he could save time for everyone by asking for a copy of the relevant drawing, which had been around since 2019 when the earlier Order was made and which presumably is electronically filed in an easy to locate system, that being the reason why one files things, so one can find them easily.

It must have been coincidence as Mr Mustard asked for the drawing the day bafore the second Order was published, but it did mean that it should be on top of the paperwork pile at Highways, something current that Mr Mustard was asking for, not an Order which started in the 1970s and was still going, and it would be held in digital form so it would be easy to search for.

It was only 5 days later that a response was received. Here it is

Mr Mustard didn't understand, and he clearly wasn't the only one, why was he being asked to pay £234.96 for a single drawing which should be in the public domain for free? Mr Mustard was obliged to email back.

Three days later, 21 October, the request was acknowledged. It was given a new reference number. Does that start time again so that the previous request can be closed and marked as dealt with in time?

Every email is a drain on the time of Mr Mustard, a commodity which is limited and which he would rather spend on helping people with their PCNs.

All was then quiet until 16 November when this unhelpful email arrived.

What Mr Mustard doesn't understand is why he has to do all of the running, why not simply forward his request to highway.searches rather than make Mr Mustard do it? All of these emails ask for his feedback on the 'service', rating it from 1 to 5, except it doesn't, it uses descriptions not numbers. Mr Mustard duly obliged.

Mr Mustard doesn't want the staff to be his friend, his answer was related to their unhelpfulness. It should also be 'getting in touch'.

Mr Mustard duly did the work of Highways and sent Highways yet another email

Finally, on 19 November, Mr Mustard got what he asked for and an apology.

If this is what happens to a simple request which should have been five minutes work on the day the first request landed, what happens to something complicated?

Clearly, the whole way of working in Highways needs to be carefully looked at. Maybe, in the future, there won't be a reliance on blunt Key Performance Indicators, but on actually serving the public?

Here is the drawing, it was far too late for Mr Mustard to use it in the tribunal about a PCN which was the reason for his request but he won anyway, because the council (NSL probably) had been incompetent in a different way, but that is another story.

The end, thankfully.