Stuff the semantics

call a spade a spade (ignore the fork on the right and other irrelevant facts or figures)

So if you aren't too bored already with the official explanation of why everything in the council garden is rosy, read on. Mr Mustard will try and simplify it all for you whilst also trying to bury the argument (can't have a co-writer for all that long and there are other fish to fry). This blog is by Mr Mustard alone.

OK, back to the start. The Barnet Bloggers often raise matters which would otherwise be blissfully ignored. Think of us as the conscience of the council, critical friends (sometimes more the former than the latter) unpaid external (armchair) auditors, an early warning system of what is going wrong or has gone wrong and who stop councillors from carrying out their worst excesses through the fear of being caught and exposed.

Mr Mustard is the newest of the 4 but is already 2 years 7 months and 4 days old himself so now has a fair amount of corporate council history in his brain and being a debt collector has an elephantine memory.

The unnumbered (they usually have a number) Delegated Powers Report ("DPR") in which the £16.1m payment by Barnet Council to Capita came to light refers to a meeting of Cabinet of 6 December 12 which includes the following words:

Capita’s proposal also includes (within the financial offer described above) approximately £8m investment in areas such as information technology (computer hardware and software), and customer services. This investment not only enables Capita to deliver the transformation it is proposing, but also avoids the Council having to find money in the future to fund replacement technology for systems that are at or nearing the end of their useful life.

Capita’s proposal includes a £2.3m investment in the data gathering and storage platforms required to undertake the complex analysis required to develop policy and commissioning strategies.

Capita’s proposal also includes (within the financial offer described above) approximately £15.3m revenue investment in areas such as information technology (computer hardware and software), and customer services. This investment not only enables Capita to deliver the transformation it is proposing, but also avoids the Council having to find money in the future to fund replacement technology for systems that are at or nearing the end of their useful life.

The options appraisal gave the following as one of the reasons why the services could not be retained in-house

The council has limited capability to secure and manage the significant investment, transformation and remodelling required for these service to preserve service levels, achieve strategic objectives and reduce cost.

One advantage of signing with Capita was given as:

The Council secures upfront investment in the technology and transformation required by the services which it is able to pay back over the life of the contract.

About the then estimated £17.5m investment by Capita

Capita has planned investment of £17.5m to transform the services. This investment will be made by the NSCSO for the most part in the early years of the partnership and recovered through the core service payments made by the Council.

and about funding generally

This means that for a significant proportion of the partnership the Partner will be required to run a level of working capital/project finance before becoming cash positive in later years.

So if the DPR didn't contain authorisation of a payment to Capita, per Chris's letter of 11 November 13, well neither did the Cabinet meeting unless the blue (secret) papers included figures for cash flow and statements that were directly contradictory to the public ones and that wouldn't be open and transparent, now would it?

Did the Cabinet understand what they were signing? Perhaps not, which is why Chris's office is being deluged with requests for information. Now I think that Chris remains on the Barnet payroll but I think that his deputy and team of 40 probably now work for Capita, so is Mr Mustard bothered about them having to do some work? no, not at all. Capita failed to heed the warning signs that The One Barnet contracts might be one contract too many.

The cash flow question is a very simple one which any cabinet member should be able to understand, or find the answer to in all the reports that they will have carefully read from cover to cover (just like bloggers eh Brian, reading council papers at midnight with a moist gusset - funny but not true) so if dear Cabinet member you are out of your depth, best get out of the little pond that you are drowning in.

If the bloggers had wanted to hear from the S151 officer, they would have written to him. We wanted to hear from councillors and although we write out of courtesy to them all the ones who should reply know who they are, in this case the Cabinet who decided to rule out the in-house option at the very beginning on the basis they had no money for investment and then magically found £16.1m in cash knocking about with no other plan to spend it but didn't mention this fundamental change at the time.

Now Chris Naylor is the accountant and Richard Cornelius isn't.

Chris tells us that the Council has cash in hand of £200 million, although not official reserves, which would fund the necessary investment at least 12 times over so the council have made a grave mistake in ruling out the in-house option which they could afford to invest in because if they had they could have made similar savings to capita, or if the council managed by incompetents who don't know how to make savings?

What reserves did Corny tell us we had?

Oh dear me, only £15m, what was that then Richard, a slip of the tongue or a complete lack of knowledge of the council that you run? I think you owe me, the bloggers, staff you are making redundant and every council tax paper in Barnet an explanation, don't you? It will have to be a good one.

Here are the actual reserves. Naturally they can often move from one column to another.

Chris - please stop writing to me, this is not your problem. We can discuss briefly on Tuesday. I am more interested in recovering the car that the NSL owned bailiffs took from a lady who is 6 months pregnant, with a small child and a disabled grandmother who she has to take to hospital every week and with whom the council have shown not the least sign of any empathy, understanding or compassion.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The reading age of the Cabinet?

The Reading Room

Mr Mustard thinks that a contract of 8,000 pages (+ appendices) which plays with the lives of 500 people should be read by every cabinet member before they vote at their meeting of 6 December. Accordingly he wrote to every Cabinet member, and sent a copy to all councillors, as follows:

Dear Cabinet Members & Mayor

I don't sign anything without reading it first.

It is the Mayor of Barnet's signature* which will actually put in place the NSCSO contract. I do hope that he is going to read it all first and I also hope that you Cabinet members will all do your duty diligently and read the entire thing so that you will be in a position to make an informed decision on my behalf as a council tax payer who will have to pay for any bad judgment that you make.

I need to know if you do or don't read all 8000 pages.

Please let me know how many pages you have read so far (you can express this as 3 lever arch files out of 20 if that is appropriate ).

Please tell me how many you intend to read before 6 December.

I will email you again on 6 December for a final count.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard


* (Note: The Mayor is excused as Mr Mustard now learns that his office goes on the Contract but he doesn't physically sign any longer as it detracts too much from the time needed to plant trees and cut ribbons and he/she really didn't have time to read everything properly in the past.)

Now this was only on Tuesday at 1.30pm and all Cabinet members should currently be locked away on level 7 of Barnet House (where Mr Mustard thinks the only copy of the contract is safely gathering dust untouched by human hand) being made to read the entire document and ask searching questions. Maybe they have been too busy reading to answer Mr Mustard and so to give them a little chivvy up Mr Mustard has decided to post a table of pages read by each Cabinet member and update it as extra information is received.

Here we are now with the officers' decision recommendation having been made on Thursday 22nd and the Cabinet meeting fast approaching on 6 December. How many do we know for certain of the 8,000 pages have been read?

This:

Cabinet member	Pages read
Richard Cornelius	none at all
Andrew Harper	none at all
Dean Cohen	none at all
Robert Rams	none at all
Helena Hart	none at all
Tom Davey	none at all
Daniel Thomas	none at all
Sachin Rajput	none at all
David Longstaff	none at all
Joanna Tambourides	none at all

Not looking good for an informed decision so far is it?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Long contracts are not flexible said Cllr Rajput (oh dear)

From: First Team

Sent: 20 July 2012 14:27

To: AllStaff

Subject: Weekly message from the Chief Executive

Tuesday's Cabinet meeting took some significant decisions.

Cabinet (oh dear Nick, a schoolboy error!. The Grahame Park matter was discussed at the entirely separate Cabinet Resources Committee) agreed a report proposing a range of measures to support progress on the Grahame Park regeneration scheme. This includes up to £5million for shared ownership schemes and a further £5million to improve the streetscene and infrastructure between Grahame Park and Colindale Tube Station. So £53m has to be cut from the service budget over 3 years and yet we can find £5m to get people onto the home ownership ladder and another £5m for roads and pavements in one tiny corner of the borough. Odd priorities.

Cabinet (oops, I mean CRC, Nick) also authorised further work to re-locate Barnet College from its current Grahame Park location to a new purpose-built building at the heart of the regeneration, a mark of our enhanced partnership with the College. I have written before about the need to maintain momentum on our regen schemes and this report marks an important step on that journey, supported by our robust financial position. As with any property deal in Barnet the overpowering smell is a fishy one. Here is that section of the report:

It is the shared ambition of the Barnet and Southgate College and the London Borough of Barnet to facilitate a relocation of the College’s Grahame Park campus within Grahame Park. The existing facility on Grahame Park Way is no longer fit for purpose.

9.1.24 The proposal is to relocate the College within the proposed Phase 1b, of the Grahame Park Regeneration scheme, the area known as Plot A8 (at the southern end of the site, adjoining the existing roundabout), which currently has planning permission for 57 homes for private sale, retail space, a new library, and the option for additional space for a Centre for Independent Living (CIL), which would replace the existing specialist service provided at Flightways Centre in the Concourse.

9.1.25 To facilitate the relocation, it is proposed that the Council seek consent from the Secretary of State to transfer Plot A8 to Choices for Grahame Park at nil value but explaining that the variation to the PDA enables CFGP to sell the land directly to Barnet and Southgate College at market value for the express purposes of designing and constructing a new college. The proceeds from the sale will be recycled into the Business Plan, in line with purposes of the current Principal Development Agreement.

9.1.26 This proposal ensures the retention of the College within Colindale, and particularly at the heart of the regeneration of Grahame Park, bringing additional vitality and economic activity to the area. In addition, it provides for a new college facility and releases the existing college site for residential development and, essentially, a new primary school. It is further proposed that the new college incorporates the new library and, potentially, the CIL and provision of a youth centre (currently provided on the existing College site), providing opportunities for synergies and efficiencies in provision of these services to the wider community.

9.1.27 Facilitating the relocation of the College on site 1b will necessitate a change in the Principal Development Agreement. Consultation on the proposal with local residents will commence prior to presentation to Cabinet Resources Committee.

9.1.28 All three parties to the relocation – the College, the Council and Genesis – are working actively towards achieving the relocation. It is anticipated that a Heads of Terms will be in place between the parties to effect the relocation by the end of June.

9.1.29 Locating the new college facility on Plot A8 is dependent upon the sale of the existing college site at Grahame Park Way for funding. the redevelopment of the Grahame Park Way site is therefore to be considered as enabling development. The Council has land
interests on the Grahame Park Way site which it seeks to exchange for a parcel of land within the Grahame Park Way site on which the Council would build a primary school in the future as per the Colindale Area Action Plan strategy. The commercial details of the proposal are tabled in the Exempt Report.

Why isn't the council simply selling the college the land they need, and buying back what they will have finished with, at open market value? Whoever had the idea to do the above complex swap is making money somewhere.

Cabinet (correct) agreed proposals following consultation on services for older people. The public gallery was filled with day centre users concerned (worried sick) about the future of their centre. The new neighbourhood model will mean changes but the Cabinet Member Councillor Rajput was at pains to emphasise that the council wants to now (now that the gallery is watching his every word) work with local providers on the new model.

Cabinet (right again, you are starting to get the hang of this CEO business Nick) also agreed a report setting out the finance and business planning process for 2013 and beyond (up to 2016). I'd suggest everyone takes a little time to read the report (no-one will have read this report) as it's a concise summary of the challenges we face over the coming four to five years. I shall set out more detail on the process and how we respond in future emails. (Please don't)

Cabinet also endorsed the Local Development Framework Core Strategy and our Annual Safeguarding Report. None of these reports were "easy" or uncontroversial but, stepping back, an agenda that deals with how we fund public service, safeguard the vulnerable, plan for future development, regenerate our most deprived areas and reform service provision seems to be a strong statement of the breadth and depth of the work of all parts of the council. Not "easy" as in not easyCouncil or One Barnet?

Nick

Now what has Nick missed out. Ah yes, any mention of this off message (or it is a cry for help?) answer to a tricky question set by Cllr Longstaff (he must have been hours formulating this question) as to why Fremantle Homes day centre places were not all taken up.

Now this isn't verbatim but fairly close to what Cllr Sachin Rajput said (Mr Mustard reaches his limit very quickly listening to Rajput; you can listen all day if you want, in fact this should probably be on in the background at all meetings at which One Barnet is discussed):

Cllr Rawlins asked that earlier.. just in relation to tying up of contracts for a long time. I am going to leave party politics out of it (liar) because it is more important: it is about the voluntary sector, but quite rightly if the members of a party were to tie into a long contract, as of course this administration inherited in relation to Fremantle, you will find it is not flexible and you are in a position where you can't address some of these concerns.............

The Fremantle contract (if only there had just been the usual rather vague arrangement Mrs Angry, the council could have walked away?) started in about 2002.

Now Rajput is a cabinet member and the Cabinet are nodding through every service they can into the big One Barnet outsourcing of DRS (Development & Regulatory Services) and NSCSO (New Support & Customer Service Organisation) and these contracts are for an initial term of 10 years with an optional extension.

So what can we conclude from the above:

Labour signed a deal for 10 years+ plus. Rajput thinks it was a bad idea.

Rajput won't let any more 10 year One Barnet contracts proceed. (?)

Rajput is about to defect to Labour (would they take him?)

Rajput was talking out of his @@@@ (why, hat, of course)

The Cabinet meeting was quite a short one, why would you need more than 41 minutes to dispense with 592 pages of reports? It was very enlightening though.

10 year+ contracts are a bad idea, because 

they are inflexible,

and,

you can't address some of the concerns

(official, a Cabinet member says so).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The Cabinet talks rubbish

On Wednesday at 7pm the Cabinet ( the gang of ten who make all the important decisions )  will discuss the following report.

Waste Collection Options

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 12^th 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.

http://goodcheergarden.wordpress.com

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?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Tonight's cabinet meeting

a drinks cabinet; the most useful kind of cabinet

 

Mr Mustard is unclear as to why these meetings exist. He spent some time printing out 246 pages of the report pack in case there weren't any public copies, as sometimes happens, and what with having chosen to travel by motorbike and the extra time that getting dressed in his safety gear takes, he was 5 minutes late. This meant that Mr Mustard missed Cllr Coleman berating a person who was getting ready to film the meeting for filming before the meeting started ( he wasn't, but it takes time to set up the equipment ) and calling him a failed ex-councillor (ouch!). See some film of the meeting here.

He missed Mr Reasonable's perfectly reasonable question being swatted aside like a wrong answer in trivial pursuit and arrived to find Cllr Thomas in full flow about what a marvellous job the council had done with the budget. He sat down next to Mr Reasonable and wrote "bullshit night" on the top of his agenda. Mr Reasonable nodded and rolled his eyes in a "why the heck do we bother" manner. Mr Mustard does not know anyone more reasonable than Mr Reasonable and he is starting to despair at Barnet Council.

The Cllr Rams spoke and said that the savings in the library budget had gone backwards because of the extra time given to community groups to present their ideas. There was also some nonsense about One Barnet savings in the budget. Mr Mustard didn't pay full attention as One Barnet savings just mean that the budget has been slashed to ribbons.

So 7.10pm and Mr Mustard noted that pages 1-85 of the meeting, headed Business Planning 2012/13 to 2014/15 had been agreed. So if we take away 4 minutes for the minutes of the previous meeting. the absence of members to be noted, the declaration of members interests ( probably none as they aren't interested in council business ) and public question time, that left 6 minutes for 85 pages of detailed financial documents to be considered and cross-examined.

So on to item 6. Schools with Cllr Harper, who oozes mis-placed confidence, presented his report. All; is rosy in the kitchen wrote Mr Mustard in his notes who has long since given up making verbatim notes as he pukes when he gets home and reads the real words. Cllr Rams put in a plea for leisure to be considered alongside schools. Now Mr Reasonable knows more about this subject than Mr Mustard as he actually tries, with his family, to use the leisure facilities of the borough and they are disappearing fast; almost as fast as our schools are becoming academies and can put 2 fingers up to the council ( why would you want the council to interfere in the running of your school if you can manage without all of their stupid rules? ). Cllr Harper said that more than half of all Barnet secondary schools are now academies and they saw themselves as part of the Barnet family. Mr Mustard doubts that somehow and time will tell. The question becomes why we have so many administrative staff in the schools section; I should look for another job if I were you.

So 7.18 pm and pages 86-101 of the schools report were nodded through.

On to Item 7 and Tom Davey was saying why it was so marvellous that new council tenants would not be able to sleep easy in their beds any longer, or have longer than a 5 year tenancy as he put it, or 2 years if you were under 25. Take up your bed and walk would be how Father Benjamin would put it wouldn't he Mrs Angry? The future policy is to be based upon Need not Desire. Now as it happens Mr Mustard used to do door to door debt collection on the Dollis Valley Estate and he never met anyone who desired to live there. Davey went on " if the taxpayer is paying for your accommodation then he expects you to live in the correct size of accommodation". Mr Mustard was under the impression that tenants paid rent but perhaps he got that point wrong?

Anyway let's not waste time on poor council tenants. It's 7.22pm so the 16 pages of report & new policy are approved.

On to item 8. The North London Waste  Authority - Inter Authority Agreement - purely a technical report according to Cllr Coleman so 1 minute later it is agreed. The devil is in the detail. Did anyone look at the detail?

Item 9 was a rather interesting report about the Finchley Church End Conservation Area Character Appraisal. Someone has gone to a lot of time & trouble to record the history of the area and included a lot of photographs. Cllr Coleman was so fascinated by local architecture that he called out Agreed before Mr Lustig had even presented the report. Cllr Coleman then complained that he recalled that these sort of reports had been designated to Area Environment Committees in order to save money and not waste the time of Cabinet. Cllr Cornelius did say this was something that could be looked at but Mr Lustig was allowed to present the report and it was agreed at 7.24p. Only a philistine could think that our history is not worth a little study.

So 7.25 the Referrals to Council were all noted and the meeting closed. Only 3 minutes longer than the shortest meeting that Mr Mustard had ever attended. He would have liked to have gone home at that point but there was a meeting of the General Functions Committee scheduled for 8pm

25 minutes of his life had gone for ever, to no great improvement in society.

Update Friday am

Decision making
Meetings of the council happen approximately 7 times a year. These will decide on the budget, major policy issues and plans. An executive, or cabinet, of nine councillors together with the leader of the council make most of the other decisions. Each cabinet member is responsible for an area, or portfolio of council activity.

If 25 minutes represents the entire debate by the Cabinet then every councillor present should resign as they are not doing their job properly.

If the 25 minutes meeting does not represent the entire debate then there must be another meeting or meetings in advance of this one.

Thus, democracy is being denied as the public are not privy to the earlier discussions.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Jumping the gun

Mr Mustard's attention was brought by a tweet to an item on the BBC News website here where the bloggers' friend, The Right Honourable Eric Pickles MP is reported as follows :-

Owners of second homes in England could lose council tax discounts, under new plans to be announced by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles on Monday.

Councils would have the power to reduce or remove council tax relief on second homes and empty homes. Second homes currently receive up to 50% discount.

The money would be used to keep overall council tax bills down, he is to say.

an untypical second home : possibly not in Barnet

Now Mr Mustard is fortunate to have quite a memory and he thought he had seen that this mean spirited discount removal had already taken place in Barnet. After a little digging he found this report and in the window below, go to page 17 ( 117 ) and there is a projected £1,000,000 saving from removing the second home discount in 2011/12 ( don't worry that there is nothing in the next 2 columns for savings, there would be £1m more income in both years than in 2010/11 - the way these budgets work you only see the saving in the year it occurs and then the lower figure becomes the base budget )

Oct 10 Cabinet Report Financial Business Planning 2011 14

Just go back and look at the bottom of page 1 for a moment. What's that "A Beacon Council in 2002/3 for Improving Urban Green Spaces / Libraries as a Community Resource" ( what happened? the bulb in the beacon now low energy ? ) and then in 2002-04 for "Community Cohesion". Mr Mustard thinks that it might be time that these past glories were erased from the template. Why not put 2011's fantastic achievements on? ( perhaps because there aren't any?

Fast forward one year to the next 3 year budget plan, Item 5 at the meeting coming up on Thursday 3 November and in the box below

CAB_2011.11.03 Business Planning 2012 to 2015

If you navigate to page 19 you will find an adjustment of £1,000,000 to the Council Tax base in 2013/14 as between the Cabinet meeting of 13 December 2010 and that of 14 February 2011 someone at Barnet Council realised that the previous plan would have broken the law. If Mr Pickle's plans don't go ahead for any reason then the £1m saving will have to come from somewhere else. 

It evidently isn't easy being the S151 officer although £1,000 a day possibly cushions the blow a little.

Now Mr Mustard is going to have to write to Mr Pickles as the reasoning to keep overall council tax bills down automatically leads to unfairness.

This is what next Thursday's report says :-

6.3 Demographic change poses a particular challenge. Barnet is facing significant budget reductions at the same time as the population is increasing, particularly in the young and very old. Given that 55% of the council’s budget is spent on Adult Social Care and Children’s Services, this poses a particular challenge as these services are predominantly ‘demand led’.

So if 55% of the council budhget is spent on Adult Social Care and Children the other 45% is spent on highways, libraries, rubbish collection, recycling, planning, leisure, housing, overheads etc most of which a second home owner does not use.

If a council tax bill at 50% of normal is paid then the owner of an empty property is already more than paying their fair share of the cost of local services.

This is an analogous situation to the CPZ price rises where the costs of repairing roads fall unfairly on the 5-10% of residents who live within a CPZ.

It is possible that there will be sufficient outcry to case Mr Pickles to water down or abandon his proposals.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

A large cappucino would have taken longer

Mr Mustard prefers tea but occasionally he has a coffee. If he had gone to his local coffee shop and ordered a large cappuccino and then drunk it he suspects that 22m could easily pass by.

Instead at 7pm this evening he found himself in the confines of committee rooms 1/2 at Hendon Town Hall where there was more froth than on the largest cappuccino and it was all deflated by 7.22pm

The Cabinet Resources Committee were having a coffee morning meeting and in charge of the kettle was Cllr Thomas. Boy-o does he talk fast. He also had better things to do as he went at the agenda like a mad thing.

By 7.01 he had signed the minutes, noted the absence of Cllr Coleman at an LGA conference ( no-one seemed to care as nothing was said by anyone about his absence. Mr Mustard has checked what Cllr Coleman is up to and hysterically Cllr Coleman has gone to a conference in Birmingham - oh dear that will be some taxi fare - on the subject of, wait for it, Localism Works. Mr Mustard hopes that Cllr Coleman pays full attention to the theory and then implements the practical.

Needless to say no member had any personal interest in any items on the agenda ( Mr Mustard doubts that they had any interest at all of any sort ) and no questions had been submitted for Public Question Time but then the public are tired of platitudinous replies that don't answer the question so that can be understood.

Then Cllr Thomas had the nerve to say " That brings us on to the substantial items". Public Questions are not insubstantial Cllr Thomas - you would be well to remember that. Without the public questions on MetPro where would be be ?

Then a minor tragedy; some text was apparently missing from page 6 but the whole report is just 200 pages of fluff so no-one had noticed.

When asked for questions Cllr Harper piped up about E&O budgets and then the Director of O&E spoke about parking tickets being issued by enough staff and ensuring that they were enforcing all rules. It's funny isn't it that the public have to follow rules about where they can drive but the Council don't have to follow their own procurement rules. A £60 fine for every transgression would soon have procurement in order. She went on about bus lane contraventions and lots of visitor voucher being purchased at the old price and she meant lots ( well it doesn't take a genius to work out if baked beans go up from £1 to £4 then you are going to lay in enough stock to get you through a few winters ) and then Mr Mustard's notes say "loads of waffle" - to go with the froth and the fluff he supposes.

Cllr Harper was sticking his portfolio about tonight - shame that you were not there to see it Mrs Angry - and he asked about the costs of waste and collection.  The Director of O&E had her answer ready ( was the meeting rehearsed like a bad episode of World Wrestling ) that NLWA had been releasing reserves to meet shortfalls and there will be a report in the autumn; so having avoided the ordure for now, apparently it will hit the fan in the autumn.

The leader mumbled up and asked about waste minimisation and there was the Director again saying that recycling rates were not going up ( despite all the money paid to May Gurney which Mr Mustard is going to blog about soon, honest guv, he just needs to find out which legal idiot signed the Contract ) and that they were looking at Windsor & Maidenhead for aspiration ( I think she meant inspiration but what's an ass between friends ? ) where they recycle 47% ( well done Queenie ) and across the 7 NWLA boroughs they recycle an average of 29% ( Mr Mustard aspires quite heavily when putting his recycling boxes out but knows his limits unlike Barnet council ). The Director was looking ahead - she will go far - hopefully far far away ? The levy - on landfill ? - not specified - is big pressure coming soon.

So 7.09pm the report at item 5 was agreed. Its easy being a Councillor - any idiot could do it - oh, they already do. Sorry.

7.09pm was very busy as item 6 then got agreed, no ifs no buts no nothing.

Cllr Thomas was off waxing lyrical again about item 7 - The New Support & Customer Services Organisation Business Case. He could see the benefits - everyone wins ( the staff can see the benefits coming all right - unemployment benefit, housing benefit - you get the picture ). Most prudent picture shows £2.8m of saving over 10 years ( can this be stood up - no more than a drunk at closing time ) A good piece of work, very thorough. Mr Mustard had an eye problem recently so he has to be careful not to let his eyes roll too far as they were doing at hearing this utter rubbish. No-one will be held accountable when it turns out to cost £5m more.

Now I see what The Barnet Eye means about Ramsbottom to give him the less colourful name. This report highlights what OneBarnet is all about. Council can focus on residents and customers. What by outsourcing customer services - how stupid can one person be ? The Council don't have the money to invest in customer services he said - what none of the £900m you spend every year ? I can't type any more of his idiotic drivel.

I think that it was at this point that the HR consultants quietly left the room writing their P45s as they went.

Cllr Harper then got his portfolio out again - he is always up for a question that man. He was delighted with new lower cost services for schools ( implying that the Council had been overcharging them for years - ooh, bit of an own goal there I think ) and he had no problem whatsoever with the business case ( don't look for problems and you don't find them is Mr Mustard's experience ). It was the right thing to be doing - he had obviously taken his full dose of OneBarnet blue pills that morning. Point 3.2 on page 71 concerned him - Mr Mustard does not know why as it was standard OneBarnet mantra drivel and he wanted Cllr Rams to reassure him that everything would be all right. Cllr Rams duly gave Cllr Harper his personal assurance that is was one of the key things he would keep an eye on ( so that's all right then ? ).

Cllr Cornelius, the Leader of the Council, can any reader tell Mr Mustard of any great leaders who mumbled inaudibly ? then mumbled that he was particularly reassured by points 1.2 & 1.3 that the  "authority to award Contract remains with the Cabinet Resources Committee" which makes Mr Mustard think that he might get OneBarnet nerves and refuse to jump when the fence rears up in front of him. He said the devil will be in the detail ( oh dear officers you are going to have to do some work ) and this needs much greater member scrutiny ( oh dear Councillors you are going to have to do some work ). 

Then just when Mr Mustard was starting to like the way he was talking Cllr Cornelius ruined the illusion of competence by saying that there was a typo on page 60 which proved he had read the report. No-one had doubted it Cllr Cornelius except now Mr Mustard does doubt it. Not be be outdone Cllr Harper then piped up that there was something missing on pages 74-75 and just for a minute all the Councillors got interested in the report and actually started reading it, a pleasure which they had possibly until then denied themselves. There is a sentence missing but it is in the background information section so it will just be a load of old toffee.

Cllr Thomas didn't want to be left out and he had been quiet for at least 5 minutes and so he started to say how few complaints there were about leisure facilities and how well maintained they were - Mr Mustard always wondered whose signature that was in the toilets saying they had been inspected in the last hour and now he knows - and thus Barnet Council had a good history - his visit to the Audit Committee having as permanent a record in his brain as the record of MetPro in the books of the SIA. He then thanked Unison for the critique they had sent - of which much had not even been included in the report presented to the committee meeting - and they will work with the Unions - just like farmers work with turkeys at Christmas maybe ?

So 7.19 pm came and item 7 on the agenda was duly nodded through ( not to suggest of course that Councillors were asleep at their posts - perish the thought ) and at 7.20 pm items 8 & 9 flew past and item 10 about the Grahame Park regeneration, about which Cllr Cornelius started to mumble about big ambitions in response to Cllr Harper's question about big risks led to the report being agreed at 7.22 and the public being ejected ( asked to leave ) before we found out exactly how much of our money, with which the Council are so generous, was being deferred until July 2012 from Choices for Grahame Park Ltd a company with a £20 share capital. Lets hope their finances are more secure than those for Connaught Partnerships Ltd ( in administration.) Mr Mustard has just checked and CfGP, as it is known, was worth negative £69,138 ( i.e. worth less than nothing ) at 31 March 2010. Did you check that Councillors before agreeing to lend money to it ? Schoolboys do more homework than you do.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Nick Walkley

Don't call us.........

Back on 29 November 2010 the Cabinet met to discuss "The future of the Parking Service". The entire report can be found here

http://tinyurl.com/48nwf28

My eye was caught by one particular paragraph :-

9.3.4  The Parking Service still retains control over the contact centre, which has historically suffered from poor performance.  This is in part due to the fact that when  the  contact  centre  was  created,  the  number  of  calls  was  severely underestimated  and  the  team  has  never  grown  to  accommodate  the  call levels.  The table below shows the quarterly figures and that the performance issue is still very real.

Table 3

	2009/10			2010/11
	Q2	Q3	Q4	Q1
Calls Received	70225	58547	54822	55817
Calls Answered	34928	33212	33549	32516
Calls Abandoned	35297	25335	21273	23301
% Abandoned	50%	43%	39%	42%

So the hard to contact centre has historically suffered from poor performance due to being under-staffed. 

What would be the proper response of a good manager ?

Assess what the proper staffing level would be and increase the staff accordingly ?

Barnet's response. Leave the contact centre under-staffed and then use it as a reason to justify privatisation.

Of course the "performance issue" ( why not write in plain English "poor performance " would be better understood) is still very real. Management has not taken any management actions. Doh.

"The team has never grown to ..." The team wouldn't grow would it without management action ? and in fact the size of the parking department has recently been reduced from 69 to 47 ( see Delegated Powers Report 1277).

http://tinyurl.com/6agqfpq

So management think it is OK that 105,206 calls can be abandoned by callers and nothing is done. 

"Putting the Community First" Complete codswallop.

One of the overarching aims of the One Barnet Programme is " a relentless drive for efficiency". You've driven off the road on this one Barnet Council.

New slogan

Barnet Council - Happy to waste the time and money of 105,206 people.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard