Barnet Council - the soap opera

If you want to leave now you will be forgiven. This will be a long and confusing posting. HR are so on top of their game that incorrect FOI answers get sent to Mr Mustard and it's only because he can see through the fog that eventually he gets the right answer (possibly). It all started with this DPR

1645 - Interim HR Management Structure

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Mr Mustard has the notion that DPR should make things clearer not more muddled but they often don't seem to. Here, without the truly boring bits, but leaving in the fairly boring bits, are the two versions of the FOI answer that he received:

 

I write further to my email of 12th July 2012 acknowledging your request for an internal review into the handling of your request for information.

You have requested an internal review of the Council’s response in relation to your request for:

I understand that Jacquie McGeachie is no longer the interim Assistant Director of HR and is working on some sort of special project for Nick Walkley.

Please tell me the nature of the special project and provide the job description for it.
Please tell me when and where it was advertised and how many candidates applied and how many were short-listed. Is Ms McGeachie now on the payroll and if not through which company is she being paid?
Please tell me what salary scale applies or the daily rate paid to the agency.

I note that Sarah Murphy-Brookman is now the Assistant Director of HR (the report to the Remuneration Committee does not say if this is an interim post or not).
Is this a permanent posting or an interim one?
Has the pay scale of the post been changed in the last 12 months, and if so in what way?
Please tell me when and where the post was advertised and how many candidates applied and how many were short-listed.

Ms Murphy-Brookman previously filled the role of Head of Business Partnering and Change.
Please provide a copy of the job description for that post including the pay scale. Has the pay scale of the post been changed in the last 12 months and if so in what way?
Please tell me who is now filling the post.
Please tell me if that person is now on the payroll under PAYE or are provided by an agency and which one.
If paid through an agency please tell me the daily rate.
If an employee paid under PAYE is the posting an interim or permanent one?
Please tell me when and where the post was advertised and how many candidates applied and how many were short-listed.

This request was replied to on 24th May 2012, the response is copied in below, and you were provided with a copy of the Role Profile for the Head of Business Partnering and Reward. You found this response unsatisfactory and requested an Internal Review which we received on 30th June 2012.
The response you received was:
Please tell me the nature of the special project and provide the job description for it. An HR consultant role has been created, there is no Job Description.  Please refer to DPR no. 1645 for the detail. http://barnet.moderngov.co.uk/ieDecisionDetails.aspx?ID=123

Please tell me when and where it was advertised and how many candidates applied and how many were short-listed. Is Ms McGeachie now on the payroll and if not through which company is she being paid?

The HR Consultant role was not advertised.
Ms McGeachie is not an employee of the London Borough of Barnet
The AD Consultant role has been filled on a temporary basis through Hays
Please tell me what salary scale applies or the daily rate paid to the agency.The DPR sets out the salary scale. The day rate paid to Hays is £575
I note that Sarah Murphy-Brookman is now the Assistant Director of HR (the report to the
Remuneration Committee does not say if this is an interim post or not).Is this a permanent posting or an interim one?This detail is set out in the DPR
Has the pay scale of the post been changed in the last 12 months, and if so in what way?
This detail is set out in the DPR

Please tell me when and where the post was advertised and how many candidates applied and how many were short-listed.

The post was not advertised
Ms Murphy-Brookman previously filled the role of Head of Business Partnering and Change.

Please provide a copy of the job description for that post including the pay scale. Has the pay scale of the post been changed in the last 12 months and if so in what way?

A copy of the Job description is attached
The pay scale for this post is set out in the DPR
Please tell me who is now filling the post.The post has been filled on a temporary basis through Hays
Please tell me if that person is now on the payroll under PAYE or are provided by an agency and which one.

The post has been filled on a temporary basis through Hays

If paid through an agency please tell me the daily rate.The daily rate paid the to Hays is £532
If an employee paid under PAYE is the posting an interim or permanent one?Not applicable
Please tell me when and where the post was advertised and how many candidates applied and how many were short-listed.

The post was filled through HaysInternal Review

I have undertaken the Internal Review and the outcome of my review is set out below. I have processed this review request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

I have looked at your original request and the answers provided. Whilst some of the information provided and answers given were correct, I do agree that some of the information provided to you did not directly answer some of the questions you had asked. Additionally, I am afraid that some of the answers to the questions were slightly incorrect, in that the answers given referred to a different post (the Head of Business Partnering and Reward) rather than that specifically asked about (the Head of Business Partnering and Change). This appears to have been caused by a genuine misunderstanding of the detail of your question. The Role Profile sent to you was similarly incorrect in that instead of it being for the Head of Business Partnering and Change it was for the Head of Business Partnering and Reward. I apologise for any inconvenience these errors may have caused.

The corrected answers and information to answer your FOIA request, with clarified numbering, are:
I understand that Jacquie McGeachie is no longer the interim Assistant Director of HR and is working on some sort of special project for Nick Walkley.

1. a) Please tell me the nature of the special project and b) provide the job description for it.

1 a) Ms McGeachie is assisting the Chief Executive with HR and associated issues arising in the current restructure of the council’s senior mangers (sic). If there was a recruitment drive we might get a better officer for less money?

1 b) There is no Job Description available, therefore the Council does not hold this information.

The post is a HR consultant role, which was has been created, under DPR no. 1645. This may be obtained at the following link:http://barnet.moderngov.co.uk/ieDecisionDetails.aspx?ID=123

2 a) Please tell me when and b) where it was advertised and c) how many candidates applied and how many were short-listed.

2 a), b), c) and d) The post was not advertised therefore the Council does not hold this information.

3 a) Is Ms McGeachie now on the payroll and b) if not through which company is she being paid?
3 a) Ms McGeachie is not a London Borough of Barnet employee and so is not on the Council’s payroll

3 b) Ms McGeachie is paid through Hays on a temporary basis. Where temporary means forever, 3+ years so far, since January 2009, and not a single penny of PAYE paid?
4 Please tell me a) what salary scale applies or b) the daily rate paid to the agency.
4 a) The salary scale is as set out in the DPR, in section 5 under HR Change Consultant

4 b) The day rate paid to Hays is £575

I note that Sarah Murphy-Brookman is now the Assistant Director of HR (the report to the Remuneration Committee does not say if this is an interim post or not).

5 Is this a permanent posting or an interim one?

5 This is an interim post, please see section 8.2 of the DPR which refers to an interim structure which will be reversed at outsourcing. At which point doubtless she will slip seamlessly into another role. She doesn't put interim in front of her title like others do. She also doesn't tax dodge as far as Mr Mustard is aware.

6 a) Has the pay scale of the post been changed in the last 12 months, and b) if so in what way?
6 a) Yes.
6 b) It has been reduced from spinal column point (scp) range 247-250 to scp 243.

7 Please tell me a) when and b) where the post was advertised and c) how many candidates applied and d) how many were short-listed.

7 a), b), c) and d) The post was not advertised therefore the Council does not hold this information Aren't all posts meant to be advertised?

Ms Murphy-Brookman previously filled the role of Head of Business Partnering and Change.
 

8 Please provide a copy of the job description for that post including the pay scale.

8. The Role Profile for the Head of Business Partnering and Change can be found at this link. Please note that this post was previously called Head of Business Partnering and Employee Engagement, and when the role was changed to Head of Business Partnering and Change the title on the role profile was not similarly amended. Now you know it is wrong why not correct it? You have had a month and not done it. No-one cares about detail.

9 a)Has the pay scale of the post been changed in the last 12 months and b) if so in what way?
9 a) the pay scale for this post has not been changed as such, but as can been seen in the DPR (link provided above in 1 b)) this post has been temporarily suspended.

9 b) please see 9 a) above

10 Please tell me who is now filling the post.

10 As can be seen in the DPR the post has been temporarily suspended, so there is no person in post.

11 Please tell me if a) that person is now on the payroll under PAYE or b) are provided by an agency and c) which one.

11 a)b) and c) As can be seen in the DPR the post has been temporarily suspended, so there is no person in post, therefore the Council holds no information on this.

12 If paid through an agency please tell me the daily rate.

12 There is no person in post, therefore the Council holds no information on this.

13 If an employee paid under PAYE is the posting an interim or permanent one?

13 There is no person in post, therefore the Council holds no information on this.

14 Please tell me a) when and b) where the post was advertised and c) how many candidates applied and d) how many were short-listed.

14 a) b) c) and d) the post has not been advertised, therefore the council holds no information on this.

Is that all clear for you? There are 3 senior temporary posts which are in the DPR apart from the McGeachie one and for which Mr Mustard has sent for details which he will bring you in a few months time.

 

Just to show you what a soap opera these jobs are, with even the council getting confused by their own changes, in which they seem only to change the tile of the post and nothing substantive, you need to see this blog post so that you can see that HR have been tiddling about since at least 2009.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Staffing up for Library Volunteers

Always advisable to put your specs on before doing anything important like driving or signing a DPR.

Executive summary

Bill Murphy does not read the documents he signs.

Delegated powers reports don't tell you exactly what is going on.

Management can't run One Barnet and manage business as usual.

Work is being pushed down the staff chain to free up management time for One Barnet. This cost will not appear in the One Barnet budget.

Volunteers are not free.

The full version

Mr Mustard is not keen on the council having any secrets so whenever they issue reports with secret appendices he thinks about asking to see them. It might take 6 months or more to make the request, get refused, ask for a review and then send the second refusal off to the Information Commissioner but Mr Mustard is not easily put off. He follows due process to the bitter end.

Here is a DPR that was issued in May 12 having been signed off in March.

DPR 1686 - Libraries Management Structure

Mr Mustard was very disappointed that a DPR of such inaccuracy could have been physically signed by an Assistant Director and so he emailed him

6 June

Dear Mr Murphy

I often struggle to make sense of the DPRs which the council issue.

In the case of 1686 which you have physically signed it is even harder than usual as in the third paragraph of the final page ( I can't give you a section number as you have 9 twice and 9.1 twice and no number for the paragraph I am referring to) you refer to section 5.2  which doesn't exist in the document itself which jumps from 5.1 to 5.4 with only one paragraph between them. Something is missing somewhere.

I also can't make head nor tail of the content which is of interest to me.

You point out that 2 posts will be left unfilled and yet there are costs of £33,312. Presumably these are after the savings have been taken into account? What are the total costs please, what are they being spent on exactly, and what are the savings from the two unfilled posts?

How are 2 days for each of the three divisional managers going to be freed up? Is it by the staff below them in the structure doing more work or by some other method?

Does this DPR allow for the use of consultants?

If you have some before and after staff charts, or some other document, which makes the whole thing clear ( as it certainly isn't how it is written) then I would be pleased to receive it/them.

Yours sincerely

and the following day came a brief reply

7 June

Dear Mr Mustard,

Thanks you for your e-mail. I have asked the Head of Libraries to draft a response. However this was simply a sorting of some anomalies in the existing structure and has nothing to do with use of consultants. However, we will provide you with a fuller reply.

Bill Murphy
Assistant Director, Customer Services

Mr Mustard would have preferred to hear from the engine driver and not the oily rag especially as it was the engine driver who got his pen out and signed the DPR which was a complete mess but he can't make Bill do some work, he is far too busy sitting in high-falutin meetings to do any of that. There was also another snag as although he wrote only 47 words of substantive text Bill managed to add further confusion to the already muddled picture. Mr Mustard does like to have things clear so he emailed back.

7 June

Dear Mr Murphy

Thank you for replying so soon.

I am now even more confused as you say the Head of Libraries will draft a response and yet section 5.1 of DPR1686 (and 1487)  says that post is being held vacant.

Hopefully all will become absolutely clear in the delegated reply.

Yours sincerely

Mr Mustard

7 June

Dear Mr Mustard - the council has an interim arrangement where we have a joint Head of Libraries and Customer Services - hence sharing the post as part of the savings - so yes - we did not fill the head of libraries post as a stand alone post. (hence the Head of Libraries who I mentioned earlier does not exist as such but I can't admit to yet more error)

Bill Murphy

Mr Mustard had to wait 2 weeks before a proper reply was received.

21 June 12

Dear Mr Mustard,

Many thanks for notifying us of these anomalies. The published DPR was an exempt report which had specific information removed so individual members of staff could not be identified. This, unfortunately, corrupted the numbering system. Following your email we have submitted a new version of this report, which should now be clearer.

The vacant posts are indeed the two temporarily vacant Head of Service posts.

Regards,

Lauren Doody

Head of Customer Services and Libraries, Chief Executive Service
London Borough of Barnet, North London Business Park, Oakleigh Road South, London N11 1NP

Tel: 020 8359 7009 / Mobile: 07500 817968

Having pointed out the complete horlicks that Barnet Council had made of the report, which no-one at the council had noticed, you would think, would you not, that a copy of the new version of the report would have been attached to Ms Doody's email? You would be wrong if you think the council would be that helpful. Mr Mustard had to wander over to the council website to find it for himself.

DPR 1686 v2- Libraries Management Structure
Mr Mustard read the new DPR and then wrote again.

Dear Ms Doody

Thank you for your email of today.

I wrote in the first place because the DPR made no sense. You have corrected the errors in the numbering which is good but the content still does not make clear what is happening nor does it address the specific questions that I asked on 6 June 12 so please do respond to those now especially the organisational before and after charts.

There is no detail in section 5.1 "The proposed changes to the libraries management team" are not specified. Please now provide the detail requested.

Section 5.1 also says that the "full-time Head of Service Post is to be reinstated." Earlier there is reference to two vacant heads of service posts. Which one is to be reinstated? Is there a plan to delete the other post?

Yours sincerely

Mr Mustard

He waited patiently until 4 July.

4 July 2012

Dear Mr Mustard,

Apologies for the delayed response.

Please find attached the before and after structure charts that should hopefully make things clearer. No posts will be filled by consultants.

It is expected that the temporary Head of Customer Services and Libraries post will be deleted in December. Following this, the Head of Customer Services post will be reinstated. It was expected that the Head of Libraries post would also be reinstated but this has been superseded by the senior management restructure. The Library Service will now report to the Head of Youth and Communities in the Children’s Service. (? Are adult customers going to become low priority?) The exact structure of the management team will be decided once this post is appointed to.

Kind regards,

Lauren Doody

Here are the before and after charts. One has to ask oneself why these were not published with the DPR and instead made into state secrets as they don't contain any revolutionary material.

Libraries Structure Pre DPR

Libraries Structure Post DPR

Mr Mustard was busy and so he didn't write again for 2 weeks but he was still puzzled at to what was going on. It should make senior management at Barnet Council reflect upon the clarity of the reports they issue if they cannot be understood by anyone who happens to pick them up.

Mr Mustard wrote again and now having received an email reply, in the interspersed format, he just about understands what has gone on.

Sent 18 July Reply 24 July

Dear Ms Doody

I am starting to understand what is going on but am still struggling with section 8.3 which says that the realignment of staff will create 2 days per Divisional manager per week.

Now there are 3 Divisional Managers (DM) so using a 7 hour day they want to free up 3*2*7 = 42 hours.

This was an approximate estimate of the kind of time that the arrangements would save.

An additional 1/2 librarian has been added so that is 18 hours of work that can be passed down by the DM Adults to the team leaders and then some of their duties down to the librarians.

Yes, this is correct. 

Moving the 3 bookstart team members away from a direct report to reporting through the bookstart coordinator must also save a little time. How many hours have been allocated to that?

As before, an approximate calculation was made but it is the equivalent of about 2 days per week of a Divisional Managers time.

The final time saving to come to the 42 hours is from the DM Ops who is going to pass some of their work down to the sole support officer whose work will instead by done by a volunteer. How many hours will the volunteer work for please and has the volunteer been found yet? Is there a job description for this volunteer? and if so please can I have a copy.

This is not correct. There are no volunteers involved in this scenario. The administration post is a paid temp who will assist with the volunteer project (arranging interviews, managing CRB applications etc) This frees up time from the 4 members of the volunteer project team who are all within the wider management team.

 

One other small point. Section 8.1 says there are around 100 FTE staff. I note that there are over 120 posts on the chart. Is the difference because a number of the posts are not full time?

Again this was to give a general idea of the size of the service. This number includes part time staff. Mr Mustard is not keen on approximation as vital detail can be hidden in that way.

 

Thank you for your help.

Yours sincerely

Mr Mustard
 

Now that was interesting. Mr Mustard misunderstood the job title of someone and in the explanation which corrected his misunderstanding he found some very interesting information.

 

There is a project team of 4 people to manage volunteers. Now they may of course be doing other things as well but it gives you an idea of the scale of the backup and management team that is needed to accommodate volunteers within libraries. Volunteers are not a completely free resource (and not a substitute for qualified librarians).

Food for thought here. Are volunteers worth the money they don't get?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Why was this DPR top secret?

GCHQ - possibly less secretive than Barnet Council

When Mr Mustard sees that a Delegated Powers Report has been issued and it is entirely exempt from publication he firstly thinks "what a load of tosh; it can't all be secret" and then he thinks "I will have to ask for that under FOI" thus a secretive council can expect more FOI requests.

So having seen that the DPR to reorganise, once again, the departments which are now called Environment, Planning & Regeneration, the second game of musical chairs in 12 months, he wants to see the document. Here it is.

1499 Reorganisation of EPR

So now you have seen it, was it really worth keeping secret?

Feel free to explain in the comment box why this document was so secret that only it's existence and the overall subject matter was known.

Naturally you would think that having released the document under FOI it would now be in the published list of DPRs? No, it is still showing as exempt.

Yours openly

Mr Mustard

Behind the ball

A day's pay for Mr Travers in an unusual form?

Mr Mustard continues to boggle at the number of routine jobs that don't get done at Barnet Council. Dazzled by their own supposed brilliance at implementing the bonkers One Barnet behemoth, the vital little jobs just don't get done. Here is another fudged DPR

DPR1569 - Renewal of Heywood AXISe Pension Administration System

Please note that I redacted your signature for you Mr Travers, I put it into a sort of black hole where it will be at home.

Look, it is claimed that there is a single source of pension software. Now that isn't really true is it? What you mean is that you really don't want, for obvious reasons, to be changing software supplier too often as it takes time and costs money and we all saw what a bosh-up was made when the Council Tax software was changed last year. So if you don't want to keep changing software supplier. What you should do is either change the rules for software supplies, or go out to tender and make it a 10 year tender. This software costs over £50,000 a year and so if the contract is to run for 4 years or more you have to go out to tender anyway so save yourself work and follow the rules and go for 10 years.

Mr Mustard has looked at the Heywood website. You aren't even using their latest product. That is the new generation product called Altair which, according to Aberdeen City Council, provides a number of benefits: increased efficiency, reduced costs and improved service. That would fit with Better Services for Less Money. Why on earth haven't you already moved across?

Now as you were so dilatory about renewing in September 2011, in fact as the contract you have signed is renewed automatically this DPR is just a paper exercise, and as you have to give 12 months written notice you could start planning now for a tender that would take effect from 31 March 2013. Heywood would then have to sharpen their pencil and not rely on council apathy for their income. 

Here is a business tip from Mr Mustard. It is easy to forget ( especially if you are an incompetent or if staff turnover is high ) about automatically renewed contracts as a year is a long time. The simple answer is when you sign a contract of that type you give 12 months notice on the same day as you sign. That way, the supplier, who does want to retain your business, has to remind you when the 12 months is coming up and you get the chance to go elsewhere or beat the supplier down on price to stay.

It's a measure of how slowly the wheels turn at North London Business Park that even when a problem is spotted it takes from 2 December 2011 to 2 February 2012 to solve.

Para 7.2 is the usual fudge. Mr Mustard googled for Pensions Administration Software and found plenty of suppliers. 

Of course what this fudge is really all about is that Pensions administration is going to be bundled off to someone else to manage and so this less than nimble footwork is to try and smooth things over until then.

How many more of these expired contracts are there? Does anyone know? Perhaps Mick Stokes knows, this article says he is going to transform procurement, looks like he has managed to transform it from bad to worse?

Update Tuesday 08.49

Since drafting this posting Mr Mustard has stumbled over the pension pot paid for the £1,000 a day Chief Financial Officer, Andrew Travers, for his time at the LDA which Mr Reasonable kindly blogged about. It was £437,797. Mr Mustard hazards a guess that that was one action that was certainly done on time.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The third interesting Christmas Eve DPR - hidden signs

Mr Mustard had to look hard to find this DPR numbered 1498.

DPR 1498 Dollis Valley Walk Signage

Now why was this DPR hidden so far back in the lists? Go to the DPR page here and then page down 3 times and then under the date of 31 October ( which does not appear anywhere on the DPR control sheet ) one finds this DPR. Anyone would think that the council didn't want the public to find it?

The DPR details yet another failure in the directorate of Ms Pam Wharfe, EPR, to follow simple rules and then the attempt to regularise the situation looks, to Mr Mustard, to be inadequate. Here are the rules:

Contract Procedure Rules

So back at the start of 2011 Barnet Council tried and failed to find more than one supplier of signs and map boards ready, willing & able to make signs and maps for the Dollis Valley Greenwalk. This is not the hardest thing to do. There are loads of makers of signs and map boards ( just google those phrases ) and perhaps if the council asked 5+ potential suppliers instead of just 2 ( para 8.4 of the DPR ) then they would get 2 or more positive responses. In Mr Mustard's decades of experience in business there is rarely a shortage of willing suppliers.

Table 6.1 of the rules says that a minimum of 2 quotes must be returned and if not REPEAT COMPETITION which has yet again, as for RM Countryside and the removal of parking meters, not been done.

Ms Wharfe has, the report says, managed to get the "Commercial" Director Craig Cooper to agree that "the market has identified a single supplier for this requirement" so this must surely mean that every single sign in the whole of the countryside has been made by Fitzpatrick Woolmer? No! what really not, are you sure? So this attempt to correct the rule breach by virtue of para 6.11 of the rules is just not playing by the rules; it is a breach of the constitution. Just because you both get paid £132,480 p.a. does not mean you are able to simply do as you please.

What do the rules say? They say that is there is an oversight of this nature caused by urgency that approval should be sought from a Cabinet Committee (Mr Mustard can't see them causing trouble) under rules 5.7 & 5.8. Please could all Directors read this rule and implement it in the future.

One final point. Para 10.1 of the DPR. Should it not be "retroactive" authority rather than "retrospective" authority?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The second interesting Xmas Eve DPR

Here is the DPR to implement annual inflation increases for the Environment Planning & Regeneration directorate starting on 1 February 2012.

1508 EPR charges 2012-13

Mr Mustard notices that this increases the price of a Resident's CPZ Permit from £100 to £105 despite Cllr Coleman saying at the recent Cabinet Resources Committee ( 14 December 2011 ) that these were being looked at again. Maybe they are but the proposal to increase them by 5% has still been published. Keep your eyes peeled.

Maybe this is procedurally correct but somehow Mr Mustard doubts it as this DPR is signed by Pam Wharfe who has form for signing DPRs that don't accord with the constitution e.g. RM Countryside and the removal of parking meters.

Barnet Council regulation issue DPR signing kit

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

BarnetOneSpeak

I have already spent too long reading Delegated Powers Reports which are not written in plain English. Most DPR's are full of

Barnet

Obfuscation

Language

Leaves

Our

Citizens

Knowing

Sod-all

A more informative blog will follow soon.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard