One Barnet parking NSL contract failure

When it comes to parking, zero tolerance is show by the council (intolerance shurely, Ed), acting by their agents NSL, to a perceived parking contravention. Traffic wardens are required to issue a PCN to a vehicle seen in contravention. Is the same attitude displayed by the council when NSL are in contravention of the One Barnet parking enforcement contract?

On 24 May 12 it was minuted that 864 bus lane PCN had not been issued. At £130 each with an estimated 50% of the PCN paid at 50% and then 20% at full price the loss to the council would be £50,440 or one month of anticipated contract savings.

Mr Mustard went through the 2012/13 Accounts and no deductions were made from sums paid for that year and he wasn't made aware of any when he did the Audit Commission Act inspection as a member of the public.

NSL should be made to pay for any errors (and doubtless they will point the finger at Civica the software supplier).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Why bother having KPI if you don't enforce them?

KPI review meeting in full swing

Sharp eyed readers will have noticed Barnet getting a mention in the Standard again yesterday in an article about targets for the issue of parking tickets. Barnet doesn't have an explicit target for an absolute number of PCN but the contract does include KPI (Key Performance Indicators) which are likely to drive up the number of PCNs issued, such as (these are extracts from the contract)

KPI.2 : effectiveness will be assessed by ... PCNs issued.

KPI.11 : The service provider will maintain....the industry average for the recovery of a PCN at £45 and work to increase the value of this recovery rate for the duration of this contract.

Mr Mustard raised objections to the Accounts of Barnet Council for both of these somewhat doubtful KPI to the external auditor Paul Hughes of Grant Thornton. His reply, which for Mr Mustard's four objections about parking, ran to 8 pages which actually said very little apart from some little gems hidden away, was that everything was cushty (Mr Mustard may be paraphrasing the champion pen twiddler's reply here, you'll doubtless be familiar with Mrs Angry's descriptions on the Broken Barnet blog of the high esteem in which the external auditor is held by Barnet's Bloggers) and that he wouldn't be doing anything, apart from giving us a hefty extra invoice (actually this last bit Mr Mustard gleaned from the agenda for the Audit Committee meeting of 28 January when Mr Mustard had a snooker team to captain, which won 7-5 since you are asking, and to be fair to Mr Hughes he is at some future date when everyone has forgotten what happened going to have a closer look in the council's records at what Mr Mustard had to say, although he'd probably be well advised to sub-contract it to Mr Mustard and his fellow bloggers to ensure a thorough job does actually get done).

Mr Mustard supposes we should be grateful. When it came to paying MetPro over a million pounds, there wasn't a contract. Was that something that the external auditor picked up during his audit? oh bless me no. Mrs Angry was the lead auditor that day with her army of armchair auditors all offering their assistance, advice and publicity. Well, at least with NSL Ltd there is a Contract. 

So why is Mr Mustard unhappy? Simples, because the Contract terms aren't being enforced.

The KPI are meant to be recorded every month. As part of his armchair audit, under the Audit Commission Act 1998, Mr Mustard asked to see actual KPI in July 13 for the previous year to March 13. The actual measurements were not available even though within the Contract they are clearly specified (despite NSL thinking they had yet to be agreed - the numpties) and accordingly each month has to be considered as not met. Therefore the "Bits" - bonus payments or deductions - had to be heading downwards to the floor and Mr Mustard calculated, & he is quite good at maths, that a refund of £137,343 was due to the council (on behalf of Mr Mustard and every other resident). Somehow he feels that if a bonus of that amount was due to NSL they wouldn't have wasted any time in submitting their invoice. This refund has not been made.

Let us now look quickly at the average recovery value of a PCN.

Year to 31 March 12, when Barnet Council ran the whole show:

Income / number of PCN issued
£7,227,652 / 134,801 = £53.61 average PCN income.
 

Year to 31 March 13, NSL were appointed on 1 May 12 (so 11 months of this year is theirs and their figures will have been boosted by the council handling the first month)

£5,834,877 / 165,569 = £35.24 average PCN income.

From this we can see that the income achievement of NSL (and Mr Mustard doesn't want PCN used as revenue raisers) is only 65.7% as good as the council's. Quite simply, their performance is mediocre (Mr Mustard is being polite here, Private Eye would say they are piss poor)

Now the bloggers have got sadly inured to council procurement being awful. Which cretin, or cretins, agrees a KPI for £45 when the current council performance is £53.61. So some complacement idiot is content with a KPI performance level that is 84% of the current performance. If the person who agreed this hasn't yet left the council please would they now do so now and don't put your hand out for a pay-off. The first rule of negotiation is that you don't give anything away for nothing.

What is also clear though is that at £35.24 NSL are performing at 78% of a woefully reduced expectation.

Clearly KPI.11 has not been met, ever.

If a KPI that measures incoming revenue isn't a revenue raising measure then Mr Mustard doesn't know what is (no matter how satisfied our apparently easily satisfied external auditor is).

The parts of the Paul Hughes letter that Mr Mustard did find interesting are these, thanks Paul: 

In appointing NSL Ltd, the Council had an expectation that recovery rates would improve so these figures do represent underperformance to date in recovery of PCNs.

There is a clear acknowledgement from the Council that management of the NSL contract has not been acceptable.

We are aware that remedial actions are being put in place by the Council, including a recent performance meeting with NSL, resulting in a high level performance plan.

the overpayment to NSL ... remains the subject of performance discussions with the contractor.

What Mr Mustard notes from the above remarks.

Once a contract is signed even if your performance is only 65% of what it ought to be, not much will happen.

The council is unable to properly manage outsourced Contracts, as the Famous Five Barnet Bloggers have been saying for ages.

Every blunder simply results in a "lessons will be learned" improvement plan. We had one after MetPro; it evidently hasn't worked; they are just a sop.

Some 10 months after the year end, and 22 months after the contract started, the contract terms have not been implemented. 

What is the point of having contract terms that the Council don't implement.

The wider picture

The NSL contract is a simple procurement of one service, parking enforcement.

Scale it up 40 times to the level of NSCSO (customer services) or DRS (development and regulatory services) which bundle together a myriad of services with many more KPI and it is clear that the council doesn't have the skill or the will, or both, to properly enforce the contracts that they sign.

The commissioning council is going to be an unmitigated disaster, no matter how much hot air is spouted by councillors in Hendon Town Hall. 

You councillors don't have the grasp of details that the bloggers have. 

You did pick this contractual failure up before Mr Mustard, didn't you? 

Silence.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

FOI and outsourcing - a buffer to FOI?

An outsourcing contract acts as a buffer against FOI requests

This post is in response to a tweet about the release of the Capita NSCSO One Barnet Contract which, on the face of it to the outside world, appears to be a good thing. The contract is worth £320m over the 10 years.

Sensible move by Barnet to proactively publish contract with Capita http://t.co/VVjOcjXOkC Wish more authorities were as bold
— Jon Baines (@bainesy1969) September 23, 2013

@_MrMustard did they withhold the whole contract? Ask them specifically for clauses that relate to FOI @bainesy1969
— FOI kid (@FOIkid) September 23, 2013

Right, for non-Barnet people our council have decided to contract out for 10 years to Capita the following services which they obliquely describe as back office:

Customer Services
Estates (Asset Management, Building Services, Property Services)
Finance
Human Resources
Information Systems
Procurement
Revenues and Benefits

Revenues and benefits is council tax and business rates collection to you and me, not what one would exactly describe as back office. The contract for these services is 2,084 pages in length and has been published in multiple pdfs on the council website, here. A classic case of hiding the detail in full view. Rest assured that the Barnet Bloggers will, between them, read the whole thing. Has any ruling councillor read the whole contract, especially one from the Cabinet who committed us to this deal? probably not. None of the Cabinet admitted to reading it, Mr Mustard did ask them all and the silence was deafening.

Mr Mustard thinks that the reason the council published the final contract was that they were going to get multiple FOI requests for it and it was actually quicker to post it online. Mr Reasonable had asked and goodness knows who else (not Mr Mustard as he is in self imposed FOI exile for now.) He wasn't "banned" (questions automatically found to be vexatious) from asking about One Barnet; only on parking, parking tickets and CPZ's which is now history.

Now let us simplify matters to a contract for Parking Enforcement. That was signed with NSL to start on 1 May 2012 and is worth about £2.5m a year and is for an initial 5 year term. Mr Mustard does admit to being very interested in parking and he helps people pro bono (free of charge) to appeal their parking tickets and currently has a 97% success rate after 65 appeals. The council will either just throw in the towel in future on his cases (as they are a flea bite out of the 165,000 PCN issued a year) or they will put extra resource into fighting him. Currently they throw in the towel when faced with reasoned and logical argument and occasionally they are kind to him and exercise their discretion in favour of old folks who have got a bit befuddled with their blue badge.

There was considerable doubt in the mind of Mr Mustard about the status of bailiffs in the year 2012-13. So the first month was managed entirely by the council (there was a one month delay in getting the parking contract off the ground - pension issues caused by NSL Ltd having another firm to do the scanning). As Mr Mustard couldn't ask any FOI questions about parking he took a different approach. Once a year it is possible to interrogate the Accounts of the council. This right is established by Section 15 of the Audit Commission Act 1988. (ACA1988) Mr Mustard asked to see bailiff contracts for 2012-13 (he was given a 200 page expired contract to look at, he didn't bother). It turned out there wasn't a bailiff contract for 2012-13, Mr Mustard was told there was no bailiff derived income for that year. Putting aside the incompetence of not collecting PCN in a timely manner (and they should be cancelled if left moribund for 6 months at any stage) Mr Mustard was a little surprised. The first month could be understood as it was anticipated that the NSL contract would have started on 1 April 12 but not the other 11 months as the contract with NSL included:

"The Service Provider will engage with a suitable number of bailiff companies to enforce County Court Warrants and comply with the Barnet Code of Practice."

Mr Mustard has not requested the Barnet Code of Practice under FOI. He also notes the interesting word "engage" as opposed to contract, appoint, instruct, etc

Now under the ACA 1988 Mr Mustard, as a resident, is entitled to see any contract that the council takes out. They didn't take out the bailiff contracts, NSL Ltd did. Let us have a look at the contract terms, Mr Mustard has a redacted copy of the contract with NSL (sorry about the white on black, a technical issue)

Foi Section of NSL Contract by MisterMustard

So from that it seems to be up to the council to decide if something is to be disclosed or not.

Did the council hold the bailiff contracts? (they jolly well should as they have a duty of care in respect of bailiff behaviour but that is a fine theory not usually borne out in practice) Here are minutes of meetings between NSL and Barnet Council managements (these were easily obtained by another party and given to Mr Mustard as his questions were, at the relevant time, too vexatious to be answered).

On 5 October 12 the minutes show the following:

Redacted requested copies of SLA and contract made with bailiffs.

Now the minutes only make sense if the redacted initials are those of a Barnet Council employee as it was NSL who signed the contract so they will have a copy. (SLA is Service Level Agreement, by the way). Now, if the SLA and contract had been supplied to Barnet Council then Mr Mustard thinks they are disclosable under FOI.

The plot thickens. Someone else asked for the bailiff contracts, the response was given the reference 293065 but doesn't appear in the published list of FOI responses. Does that make you think that the responses published on the council website are selective? Luckily Mr Mustard has the response, as follows:

I am writing to inform you that we have searched our records and the information you requested is not held by London Borough of Barnet.

1. These 3rd party sub contracts are held on the council's behalf. They are contracts between the contractors and the 3rd parties and the council has no proprietary rights in them.
2. There is no statutory obligation on the council to hold copies of these 3rd party sub contracts.

So, copies were requested in October 12 but hadn't been received by July 13 and the parking client side, who are paid to oversee parking enforcement are either utterly hopeless at following up action points in the minutes, or bailiff contracts don't actually exist, or the FOI response is bunkum. The lack of clarity has led Mr Mustard to object to the signing off of Barnet Council's Accounts for the year. The response is due in about 10 days.

Mr Mustard thinks that by now @bainesy1969 might be reviewing his opinion of Barnet Council, we'll see. He'll either tell us in the comment box or email mrmustard@zoho.com to have his view added to this post.

So to get back to the question in hand for all the FOI experts who read this. If NSL take out the contract on behalf of Barnet council but don't give them a copy, is it subject to disclosure under FOI? Mr Mustard thinks not. One possible lever is that only a creditor can instruct a bailiff so Barnet Council can instruct the bailiff and NSL can't (let us avoid, for now, the red herring that NSL also own a bailiff company called Task Enforcement Ltd and have used them to chase unpaid PCN for Barnet Council as that is a conflict of interest blog for another day) so any contract that NSL sign is as agent for Barnet Council and not as the principal? Mr Mustard isn't a lawyer but wonders if that changes the position in terms of the document being subject to FOI?

NSL Ltd aren't subject to FOI as a contractor. This removes any contract they sign on their own behalf but for the benefit of the council out of public scrutiny and on NSCSO that is potentially £320m of contracts we can't see. Doesn't look so open and transparent now does it?

If you think you can get current bailiff contracts please ask for them (foi@barnet.gov.uk). Don't tell Mr Mustard you have done so and it isn't on his behalf. We don't want you accused of being in concert with him.

Now @FOIkid, tell Mr Mustard, is there a solution or should FOI be extended to apply to all contracts funded by the public purse?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

@_MrMustard parking contract refers to subcontractors. Council admits that bailiff contract is held on its behalf. Def FOIable @bainesy1969
— FOI kid (@FOIkid) September 25, 2013

Comment; So it looks like the council got it wrong. It will be up to the original requestor to ask for the review. It also occurs to Mr Mustard that he can go back to the council and suggest that they should have released the bailiff contracts under ACA 1988 on the same grounds that they are held on behalf of the council.

Hazy Payments

a Hays (geddit!)

Mr Mustard is looking forward to his Xmas gift from Paul Hughes, the external auditor, as he has just submitted his fifth Notice of Objection and that is going to lead to even more audit fees as this is extra work which was not included within the scope of the fixed external audit fee. Mr Mustard is conscious that it is your money (and a tiddly bit of his own) that he is causing to be spent so if all of his objections are found to be baseless (surely not because they are all serious and significant matters) then he will rein himself in next year.

Here is the covering email:

29 July 13

Dear Mr Hughes

I fell over some information at the weekend that I had been searching for. That has enabled me to send you what was going to be my original objection and which relates to the cavalier way in which any old supplier has been paid as if they were a supplying agency with a contract with Hays to supply staff when they weren't. Thus there is no proper contractual basis on which Hays were paid for supplies by unauthorised suppliers. This will be a large sum of money that has been unlawfully paid out.

I attach my Notice of Objection and two lists of supplying agencies provided to me under Freedom of Information by Haringey Council who set up the contract with Hays to which Barnet Council were joined and by which terms they are bound. Prior to asking Haringey Council I asked Barnet Council for a list of suppliers under the Hays contract and they didn't have one. How any manager could sign off an invoice without that basic information is an example of shocking mismanagement.

Yours sincerely

Mr Mustard

and here is the text of the objection:


29 July 2013



Mr P Hughes
Grant Thornton
Melton St
London
NW1 2EP


Dear Mr Hughes

The London Borough of Barnet
Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2013
Fifth Notice of Objection

1 Failure to properly apply PAYE to an office holder

Payments for the interim provision of Mr Andrew Travers to act as S151 officer and Deputy Chief Executive were £82,000 through his service company Halliford Associates Ltd and Hays and to a lesser extent Comensura for the period from 1 April to 3 December 12.

I refer to these notes on the HM Revenue and Customs website

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/esmmanual/esm2502.htm

It is quite clear that Mr Travers held an office, the statutory office of S151 officer and therefore his emoluments should have been subjected to PAYE and could only have been paid directly to himself. The Accounts include payments to Hays and Comensura (for onward payment to Halliford and then for distribution by Halliford as the shareholders of that company saw fit) which are therefore unlawful and should be reclaimed from Hays and Comensura and repaid to Mr Travers directly after the application of the PAYE regulations.

2 Multiple payments to Hays which are not covered by the contract

From when the practice started, in about March 2009 of employing interim managers through service companies (although "interim" could be 2 years or more) payments were made and shown, in some cases, on the over £500 spending lists. For some reason, possibly the interest shown by bloggers, from April 11 these payments were then routed through Hays as that anonymised the payments on the over £500 lists. Whatever the reason there would need to be a contractual basis for the payments. Had the individuals been paid under PAYE as Hays's own temps there would not have been a problem. As there were service companies acting as the supplier of the individual in many cases then these service companies would need to be supplying agencies of HAYS and that is what has been overlooked by the council. Quite simply Halliford Associates Ltd was not a supplying agency of Hays and as far as I can see never became one. You'll need to check the Comensura contract, which started on 1 October 12 when the Hays one ceased, to see if that has the requisite service companies as properly authorised suppliers.

I attach the lists of supplying agencies who have contracted with Hays to supply staff as at March 2008 and 29 March 2012. Given the impending contract end date with Hays of 30 September 12 there is no reason to suppose that the service companies suddenly all signed contracts with Hays to supply staff after 29 March 12.

What this means is that payments to Hays in respect of the following list of service companies in 2012/13 were unlawful as no contract existed and the same was the case in 2011/12.

The below is not an exhaustive list, and may contain some service companies which had ceased to supply, but that is a question that can only be answered by reference to records that are not available to me as a member of the public although they will be relevant to 2011/12.

Halliford Associates Ltd
Jacquie McGeachie HR Consulting Ltd
CCMPS Ltd
Renouval Ltd
Murphy's Solutions Ltd
Chas Dowden Solutions Ltd
Advance HR Consulting Ltd
Advantage Ltd
Lesley Meeks Associates Ltd
ANZ UK Teachers Ltd
Classroom Ltd
GJR Associates Ltd
Judd Farris Ltd
Keith Baxter Ltd
Prospects Staff Bureau Ltd
Huxley Associates / Sthree Staffing Uk / Sthree UK

Please request a public interest notice under s8, The Audit Commission Act 1998. A copy of this Notice of Objection has been sent to Mr C Naylor and to Cllr Monroe Palmer, Baron Palmer of Child's Hill, OBE, FCA. I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely


Mr Mustard

Now we simply have to sit back whilst the bean-counters at Barnet Council, the legal department probably, the external auditor himself, the Chief Operating Officer who is on holiday (sorry, this wasn't deliberate but you shouldn't assume Mr COO that the council won't get any serious objections - this isn't sleepy Barking & Dagenham you know)  and the Chair of the Audit Committee, Monroe Palmer, who is a senior and highly experienced chartered accountant who knows how many beans make five (tell me next time we meet Monroe, it won't be five will it?) work out a plan of action and then execute it.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Second objection to Accounts - One Barnet implications

It seems that the External Audit of local authorities relies so much on trust these days (not like the old days where everything was checked and reconciled within an inch of its life) that a mere 6 figure overcharge by a supplier doesn't appear on the radar of external auditors, nor the internal ones come to that.

Fortunately armchair auditors don't sleep much and they spot stuff that is wrong and raise it with the external auditor who will probably find a convenient carpet to sweep it under, although Mr Mustard would be delighted to see Mr Paul Hughes prove him wrong. Here is Mr Mustard attempting to save council tax payers a collective £137,343


23 July 2013

Mr P Hughes
Grant Thornton
Melton St
London
NW1 2EP




Dear Mr Hughes

The London Borough of Barnet
Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2013
Second Notice of Objection

I refer to the parking enforcement contract with NSL. It contains KPI that lead to a number of "bit" payments each and every month. There is a chart which explains the way in which the bits work included in the contract. Put simply the KPI payment, or deduction, is, after the first two months, never static. The bits start at +2 in months 1 & 2 to allow time for the contract to settle down and then month 2 performance provides the basis of payment in month 3. If targets are achieved then payment goes up one bit, if not, it comes down one bit. It never stays the same unless it is at +6 or -6 bits.

If bits fall below zero, then 2 bits are deducted each month going down to -6 at the worst.

I asked to see the actual KPI measurements for the entire period. I have been informed in an email from Mark Taylor that NSL have not met its KPI targets, and bits must therefore reduce. There was a deduction of one bit for one month which proves what I say but after that the matter has not been pursued. This is wilful misconduct and the council have overpaid the contract value by £137,343 (in round pounds) according to my attached calculations which should be the object of consideration by you under section 8 of the Audit Commission Act 1998.

A copy of this Notice of Objection has been sent to Mr C Naylor and to Cllr Monroe Palmer, Baron Palmer of Child's Hill, OBE, FCA.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

Mr Mustard

Now there are implications for One Barnet contracts with Crapita. This NSL contract is tiny compared to NSCSO & DRS and relatively simple to manage. Scale up this lack of management and the failure to hold the contractor to account when 25 times as much money is involved and you would be looking at a loss to council tax payers of more like £3million, which would wipe out lots of those juicy aspirational savings and be a real loss to boot. 

This is why Mr Mustard is opposed to the big One Barnet contracts (and the parking one due to loss of control). It is because the council management simply don't have the ability in procurement or commissioning, the vision, the flexibility, the manpower, the organisational skills, the desire or the tenacity (unlike those pesky bloggers) to properly manage and enforce the contracts that they have signed.

NSL is our very own Serco / G4S mess.

Mr Mustard fully expects a mention in the 2013 Armchair Auditor Awards (oh no, they don't exist as we work for free and don't have council tax payers money to pour down the drain on self aggrandising vanity awards nights out in Park Lane; a pint in the Black Horse it is then, much more fun).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Bogged down at the Annual Audit

British Toilet Awards

Barnet Council love putting themselves forward for awards and Mr Mustard thinks they are in training for the British Toilet Awards. Otherwise why would they be going to the trouble of escorting any of the bloggers to the toilet when they visited North London Business Park to inspect the Accounts of the council when they are opened up for audit once per year as required by law. The 3 bloggers Mr Reasonable, Mrs Angry and Mr Mustard were joined by a parking expert who was acting on behalf of a local resident. It is the case that one can simply turn up between 9.30am and 4.30pm and ask to see whatever documents relate to the year ended on 31 March. The bloggers had quite a list and being generally quite businesslike had sent their list in a week or even two weeks ( Mr R is so organised) in advance so as to cause the minimum disturbance.

Now for those in the know we were in Training Room 6 about 25 metres up a busy corridor from the cafe which overlooks the lovely courtyard. The toilets are situated at the other end of the cafe. Now one would think that we could have been treated as if we were respectable residents (no-one was wearing a hoodie, carrying a knife or sporting love and hate tattoos on their knuckles) and allowed to walk 25m on our own to the toilet and to pick up a cappuccino on the way back but no, if we headed for the escape hatch door, a young and embarrassed employee would appear at our elbow and escort us to the toilets and then stand outside looking embarrassed until we had adjusted our attire and reappeared. It transpires that no other guests have been treated that way in the past and hopefully they won't be in the future.

When he returned to Room 6 after his second coffee, Mr Mustard found the following text appear on his mobile phone

"Is this a fascist state? - no, just Barnet Council"

which was sent by an employee called redacted

Mr Mustard really wonders what Barnet Council think and he thinks they are bereft of ideas for dealing with the bloggers. It would take more than some perfectly polite young man walking with him to the toilet to upset a debt collector of 25+ years experience, maybe you could buy a ball and chain for the next visit or Mr Mustard might even turn up in a convict's uniform. The council were somewhat short of manners when it comes to receiving guests as well. The norm in any business meeting is to offer tea and coffee. If the audit had been taking place at Grant Thornton Mr Mustard can guarantee that there would be a tray of drinks and biscuits in the room 2 minutes before the meeting started and if the meeting went through lunch a tray of snadwiches and fruit would arrive. Mr Travers was not in the building, he was probably on the beach in East Sussex. Would you be so good Andrew as to slip one of your minders a tenner out of your £1,000 a day so that your guests can be properly accommodated. Don't you have to be in Barnet though when the statutory Audit is going on being as how you are the part-time S151 officer?

If any councillors want to meet with Mr Mustard to explain perhaps why One Barnet is such a good thing Mr Mustard will personally put the kettle on and willingly make you a tea or a coffee because that is polite before he then tries to put a hole in your argument.

If any senior officers want to pop round perhaps because they think have been unfairly reported of in this blog as, say, being piss-poor at procurement and that henceforth you should be known as the Prince of Procurement rather than Captain Chaos then you too would be most welcome and given tea or coffee after which we could study a list of what has gone wrong in procurement and what has gone wrong. The first list will be much longer than the second.

Now having got the housekeeping out of the way we moved to the documents themselves. Mr Mustard wanted to look at the invoices of 3 suppliers of agency staff and of PATAS. He limited one of the enquiries, about Hays, to just one month in order to limit the workload. He was not presented with a file of original invoices as he expected but with copies which had been redacted and he has now taken home the copies of copies that were made for him and which look like they are set to become exhibit A in his formal complaint. Barnet Council had crossed out anything that he wanted to see such as the names of consultants, hourly or daily rates, number of hours or days worked, the project they were working on (sometimes) and this is just utterly and completely wrong.

Here is the invite to pop along and inspect the accounts. Do turn up without notice if you fancy looking at any invoices at all for the year ended 31 March 2012

S15 Audit Commission Act 1998 says that information about "a member of staff" can be redacted. Mr Mustard did not ask to look at such information; he plays by the rules. He does expect to be able to look at the invoices for supplying a senior consultant, or even a junior consultant, from Agilisys or iMpower, and that has been denied to him and will lead to a complaint. These people are in effect deciding who will provide our services in the future. They must be accountable to residents.

Mr Mustard wanted to take a look at the invoices from PATAS (the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service) and again he only asked for 3 months worth in order to save time of council staff. The time of the legal department was wasted in redacting all the unit prices. Now not only are Barnet Council wasting time but they are wasting time on redacting information that is in the public domain on the London Councils website as it is they who manage PATAS and they charge each borough a fixed annual fee based upon the number of parking tickets issued in a previous year and a fee for each case that is appealed to them. Mr Mustard is shocked at how little the redactor knows about their world of work. The fees of PATAS will be the subject of a future blog post.

S14 of the Audit Commission Act says that

(3) A person who has the custody of any such document and—
(a) obstructs a person in the exercise of a right under this section to inspect or make copies of the document, or
(b) refuses to give copies of the document to a person entitled under this section to obtain them,
is guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.

Mr Mustard will have to consult his solicitor but he thinks that the redaction of a price from a London Councils' invoice is an obstruction. A level 3 fine is £1,000 so one day's pay lost is no big deal for black hole but the loss of face would be enormous.

Our time was also wasted whilst the legal department finished off the redaction of some documents on the grounds of supplier request. Another completely unacceptable way of going on. Both the lateness as they had at least a week to prepare and the fact that suppliers were consulted. 

Barnet Council need to get out of this fortress mentality. If they don't want to be criticised the best way is to behave in a way that does not allow them to be criticised. Mr Mustard has long advocated that he wants them to become a boring council and leave him with nothing to write about. There is no sign of that happening for some time.

Mr Mustard needs to go now and draft his email of complaint to Andrew Travers. It will not contain any criticism of the staff who will just have been doing what they are told.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard