The Friday Joke - Mr Mustard is a cyberstalker

Sex up that dossier

The above paragraph is from a decision of the Information Commissioner not to release information about who carried out the evaluation of the Invitation to Submit Outline Solutions for the Development and Regulatory Services tender. This is information which every resident of Barnet ought to be told - who is deciding, the act of doing all the donkey work, who, what and how will be outsourced. It is possible for Mr Mustard to appeal to a tribunal but that would be to take a lot of his time away from the blog so he isn't likely to do so.

You do have to laugh at the way the council writes as "information provided under the FOIA" is of course information that is properly available. You can be sure that Barnet Council haven't given Mr Mustard anything he isn't 101% entitled to see. If if doubt, they say no with a capital N.

Note that people "felt" they have "been stalked". Has Mr Mustard been following staff to work, sitting outside the gym they exercise at, taking long range paparazzi pictures of them on holiday on the beach, sending anonymous hate mail or love notes to them at home? 

(oh, he did post Brian Coleman an email to his home but only because he said he didn't want to receive round robin emails - hence the personal one just to him with a signed post-it note - did Mr Mustard misunderstand? Brian is not an employee, and he is of course big enough and ugly enough to look after himself. Brian can write about Mr Mustard in his own somewhat turgid blog now - bling bling) 

no, of course he didn't. What did Mr Mustard do? Well he simply did what everyone else does when he sees a name, he puts it into google which gives you results from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other places and he puts the information together to see what sort of an employee we have been blessed or burdened with.

Funnily enough Mr Mustard's alter ego, a debt collector, gets friend requests on LinkedIn & Facebook from debtors who owe money. He turns them down. Twitter followers he usually allows.

Whoever wrote that somewhat embellished account to the ICO didn't know that a different governance officer had previously checked out Mr Mustard on google and Mr Mustard will bet everything he owns that at least one (a safe bet, but probably dozens) of council staff have googled him and his alter ego. Remember Barnet Council that all bloggers have tracking software installed, know the ISP address of the council's computers and know what search terms you use to land on the blog. You also forget that when a posting was written about Dogstar a member of staff at Barnet Homes saw it as he duty to tell them, thus encouraging them to check out Mr Mustard (except it isn't cyberstalking, it is just curiosity)

NLBP self inflicted damage

Now today Mr Mustard read Roger's blog about the Friern Barnet library squatters, here. He noticed that the Barnet Council representative was called Heather Wills. Mr Mustard had not heard of her so he googled her, oh yes he did. Off you go and do it and see what you can find out and then compare to Mr Mustard's findings.

First stop, Barnet Council website, put her name in the search box and get this page of a report showing that she has inherited a disastrous Library project.

Next stop google. That leads you first to LinkedIn where 4 pages of blurb show you that Heather is not shy & retiring and surely won't mind the extra publicity here. She is the "Libraries Strategy Programme Manager (interim)" and has been since February 12. It is funny because customer services and libraries have been bolted together and to "save money" one of the Heads of Department posts has been left unfilled, see this blog. The interim post is not in the establishment list for Libraries and we can be sure that the cost of this will be more than the post left vacant. Not exactly complete or honest then the DPR was it?

Previously Heather was the Divisional Director Corporate Policy and Public Affairs and the Head of Community Cohesion and Equalities at Barking & Dagenham Council where there is a joint venture between the council and, wait for it, Agilisys. What a coincidence that she should move from one Agilisys linked company to another.

Prior to that she was the Idea Stores Programme Director at Tower Hamlets Council where one of her achievements was 

- 4 ground-breaking library and adult education service built and opened to the public.

Don't go getting ideas Heather about opening 4 libraries in Barnet. In this borough they get closed.

The goods news is that she has been a senior librarian and has an MBA and is a Bachelor of Library Science from the University of Wales (a 1st, no less). She will still have to do what councillors want which is closing libraries.

Oh, one of her listed specialities is "Libraries & heritage". No need to mention the heritage part in Barnet, Heather, as one museum is closed and its contents being auctioned off and the other one will be closed as soon as the council can work out how to do so.

Heather was flavour of the month in 2005 when she was at Tower Hamlets and was visited by the Commons Committee for Culture, Media and Sport. You can find the report on the Internet and her are some little snippets.

Ms Miranda McKearney, from the Reading Agency, argued persuasively that libraries’ role should be about reading, as an activity, rather than a focus on books themselves as physical objects for lending. She said “To me their role in encouraging reading is about…active intervention at key life stages in a way that connects to policy and helps build the kind of society that we want”. Ms Wills, from the Idea Store programme in Tower Hamlets, agreed saying “at the top of my list [would be] a contribution to ‘life-long learning’ in its widest sense” from support for the under-fives to adult evening classes.

We recall the Secretary of State’s evidence in 2003 that “the best libraries are undoubtedly the libraries that, when you walk into them, you do not know whether you are walking into a job centre, an Internet café, a juice bar or a library.” This was likely to have been, at least in part, a reference to the Idea Stores in Tower Hamlets which have precipitated something of a renaissance in Bow. Ms Wills told us that, despite all the improvements in environs, book stocks, facilities and opening hours, if the building still had “library” on the door, “we probably would not have achieved the significant results that we have.” We recognise and support the importance of listening to the results of consultation with service users—and we were extremely impressed by all the Idea Stores had to offer (inside and out)—but we regret that the word “library” seems to have accreted such negative overtones. We would far prefer to see the re-invigoration of what libraries mean to the public (by improvement of the services) than the rebranding of institutions.

Do you suppose that Heather would love to hear from Friern Barnet residents about how they would like to have reading groups in the Friern Barnet library building? You can email her at heather.wills@barnet.gov.uk (assuming the usual mail format applies).

Heather gets a mention in "The Network Newsletter: tackling social exclusion in libraries, museums, archives and galleries" issue 33, June 04 in respect of an LGUI briefing "The latest issue contains a short piece by Heather Wills, Tower Hamlets’s Idea Store Programme Director, on how the setting up of Idea Stores has turned round library usage – “The Idea Store has very quickly become the place to be for the local community.” Readers will rapidly link to the problem of exclusion of the less mobile of Friern Barnet who cannot easily get to Tally Ho.

Heather appeared again in Parliament, here, in January 2010, when she was a witness on the matter of Preventing Violent Extremism. That "expertise" won't be needed in Friern Barnet either where the library occupiers are peaceful, they offered Mrs Angry a cup of tea which she declined (she would probably have accepted a glass of Sauvignon) and where local residents simply want their library back, which is hardly an extreme act.

No twitter account could be found. If you know otherwise do let Mr Mustard know.

Oh dear Facebook is such a giveaway especially now the new privacy settings are such a complicated mess tending towards openness and transparency. Mr Mustard is on it but minimises the information he puts on there. One of Heather's friends on Facebook is one Bill Murphy, the AD of Customer Services and Libraries. Now Bill was at Barking & Dagenham from 2007 to 2010 which overlaps with Heather's time there. Perhaps Agilisys isn't the reason why Heather has suddenly landed in Barnet (and the job she has now seems lower status than the one she had at B&D) but Bill is. This world of interims is far too small and cosy for Mr Mustard's liking.

Moving on to Companies House free Webcheck service we find the formation of a Heather Wills Ltd on 13 March 2012 which is suspiciously soon after her arrival in Barnet. It seems that someone is suggesting that interims become Town Hall Tax Dodgers, it is more virulent than E-coli, and it would be good to know if it is the idea of other Town Hall Tax Dodgers (© Eric Pickles MP) or if it is Hays HR. If you know, do tell. Heather's date of birth is recorded as 16 June 1967 (please don't accuse Mr Mustard of being ungallant, Companies House insist on the date, not him) and her occupation as Local Government Manager, the sort of description that applies to a person who should be paying PAYE. Maybe she does but the formation of this company would suggest she has stopped since joining Barnet Council.

The other thing about Heather is why, if she is a Libraries Strategy Programme Manager she is running off to Friern Barnet Library to deal with its occupation by Dave, Phoenix and friends from Camden. That doesn't sound to me like the sort of blue sky thinking she would be involved in, more the act of a line manager with a problem. This again smacks of her being an employee who should be on PAYE.

Heather gets a credit in a film in B&D (no, not that sort of film) and here it is. She does not appear, the credit is in the text at the bottom.

Might Mr Mustard suggest a sequel that you could fund in One Barnet. The Marvel of Sticky End (as there is no One Barnet plan B and no other outcome is possible).

It is late and Mr Mustard doesn't really want to know any more about Heather Wills; she isn't that interesting except that Mr Mustard, along with every other Barnet resident, has to pay an inordinate sum for her to strut her stuff in Barnet, possibly PAYE free.

Finally, a little gem. Heather was quoted in the Guardian on 11 July 2004. You can read all about it on the link but lets just see what heather said:

This is the result of a poll of residents, whose biggest complaint about the old libraries were that they weren't conveniently located. 'People wanted them to be in the high street, where they could pop in while shopping,' says Heather Wills, who is in charge of the programme.

So Heather, to Friern Barnet, there is as you know an (almost) empty building in the heart of the community next to the British Legion and near the shops. Best start planning for the grand reopening. Mr Mustard is sure that local residents could put a play on for you.

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

Wave goodbye to service

Customer Services Transformation moves up a gear

Monday, 23 July 2012 14:20 Schroder, Johnathan 

Over the past couple of months, our Customer Service Transformation (CST) project team has been busy planning the transfer of a number of services into the Customer Service Organisation (CSO). The services are transferring over three waves running through till October 2012 and the majority of the services included in the first wave have been successfully implemented this week.Are they now waving or drowning?

The planning has been made more complex by the requirement that business as usual should not be negatively affected during the transfer. Really? but it has been. Call handling in CSO for Revs & Bens has gone from awesome to abysmal according to anonymous, from 85% answered to 15% of calls answered.

As a result, the CSO has successfully transferred call and email contact handling for Registrars, Youth Services and most recently the Revenues and Benefits service. The final stages of transferring Education Welfare contacts are currently underway and this is imminent. This equates to approximately 26 staff and team leaders joining the CSO. Poor sods.

This is a significant achievement, and the single biggest critical success factor has been the professional, enthusiastic and collaborative working between the CSO and the services themselves. Both groups of stakeholders are passionate about their service and wanted this transfer to work and have pulled out the stops. What a pity we couldn't press the stop button instead.

The ‘go live’ was planned around taking small pragmatic steps, using tried and tested methods, diligent review of the existing services, recruiting customer-focused staff, testing and training and the development of various systems and processes. The majority of the services transferred did not include staff transfers so it was even more important to get this part of the planning right. So now we have left all that knowledge behind in the services. Presumably, the services themselves are now over-staffed and will make loads of redundancies and knowledge will waft out of the front gate.

From an IS perspective, complex call and email routing rules had to be designed and put in place to effect the seamless migration of contacts from existing sites and teams into the CSO at NLBP. IS = Information Systems? Oh no, complexity. That leads to cock-ups. Systems so complicated that once the person who designed them leaves no-one knows how to change them. If the services had been left to handle their own customer service enquiries none of these complex routines would be needed.

During the actual ‘go live’, the CSO was able to call on colleagues from within the services themselves to help support the launch by providing floor walkers and subject experts ‘on the floor’ to provide assurance, feedback and knowledge over the early days of the transfer. Staff had been recruited with enough time to allow them to receive comprehensive training which was jointly designed and delivered. A safety net had to be employed as the new people didn't, of course, know enough or have enough experience. Comprehensive training won't replace 10 years experience.

The innovative training programme also included sending CSO staff to the services’ place of work to allow them to experience, first hand, a typical ‘day in the life of’ the services. CSO staff could therefore empathise with both the customers of the service, the nature of their queries and the service itself. CSO managers also presented to the services their vision of how the service would work at team meetings and during consultation.

To support the successful launch and to provide a sustainable service, the team also developed a new knowledge management system that provides prompting and scripting for staff. This knowledge base is so comprehensive that much of the content within it is to be utilised by the services on Barnet’s re-launched website. The CSO staff are also providing feedback to the webmasters on appropriateness of content and encouraging customers to visit the new website to support their information and service needs. Oh no. A computer system which tells you what to say. Scripts are just awful. Many callers don't know the script and so don't get the answer. Square peg / round hole. Also trying to make the customer do the work themselves. Hang on, you are customer service, service, service, service, service (do you get it?)

For Revenues and Benefits, the complexity of the transfer was compounded by the fact that staff were transferred into the CSO after a statutory consultation period. The professional staff that joined the CSO received comprehensive training in customer service skills and during a period of unprecedented change successfully went live on 11 July. Again, a Herculean effort involving staff from the retained services, IS and the CSO project team meant that ‘go live’ happened with very little incident. Why does Mr Mustard think that professional staff already had customer service skills? Perhaps Bill would like to share with us on the intranet the number of pieces of work in arrears on 11 July 2011 last year and the number now. Mr Mustard already knows that the recent number is much greater than the one for last year. Facts never seem to make it into these messages.

Historical note: Hercules had the help of Hermes and Athena, sympathetic deities who showed up when he really needed help. Who is going to help CSO later?

A big thank you goes out to all the teams both within the services affected as well as the project teams from within the CSO and IS that worked tirelessly to make the 'Wave 1' launches a resounding success. Wave service goodbye.

Bill Murphy, the Assistant Director for Customer Services, said: "This is a really significant milestone. I feel proud that we have achieved this and things are going so well." Oh, no.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The Longstaff Letters

Just before the BAPS conference on 7 July I invited Cllr Longstaff and my other two ward councillors (why do we have three when two don't say much?) to attend as it is vital that public debate takes place about One Barnet if it is to be considered an open and transparent council (which it patently isn't currently).

Cllr Longstaff had a prior engagement and so couldn't attend and he went to the trouble of sending me his thoughts on the matter of One Barnet and it is good to see this one councillor, the Cabinet Member for Safety & Resident Engagement starting to engage in open debate ( his email to me of July 11 ago was much less engaging ) . I say open debate as he sanctioned the appearance of his response on the Robert Rams blog.

I have now had time to compose a response and all three emails are below. Perhaps this is the start of a proper debate on the £1bn One Barnet outsourcing plan. I have left my real name on the emails for once as One Barnet is a very real question.

---

From: Derek Dishman

Sent: 03 July 2012 10:39

To: Longstaff, Cllr David Conservative;

Prentice, Cllr Wendy Conservative;

Perry, Cllr Bridget Conservative

Subject: Conference on Saturday 7 July 12noon to 3pm

 

Dear Councillors

 

You represent me.

 

I am planning to attend the conference whose details follow and I am hoping that at least one of you will do the same, even if only for some of the time.

 

There is huge and growing opposition to the concept and execution of One Barnet (£10m put aside in next year's budget for transformation costs, Ten Million Pounds - what is going on; is value for money being obtained?) and as 3 of the backers of the scheme you need to know what it is that residents don't like rather than take decisions in a vacuum. I do hope to see at least one of you there.

 

Barnet Council Not For Sale

Barnet Unison & Barnet Alliance for Public Services Special Conference

Saturday 7 July 12-3, The Greek Cypriot Centre, 2 Britannia Road N12

 

I won't make the start but hopefully will see you later in the afternoon and you can perhaps explain to me, amongst other questions, why exporting jobs out of Barnet is such a good idea (the parking back office is now in Worthing) and why in-house bids have, so far, not been allowed.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Mr D R Dishman

---

From: Longstaff, Cllr David Conservative

Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2012 8:37 AM

To: Derek Dishman; Prentice, Cllr Wendy  Conservative; Perry, Cllr Bridget Conservative

Subject: RE: Conference on Saturday 7 July 12noon to 3pm

Dear Mr Dishman,

 

Thank you for your email.

 

You're quite right in pointing out that I represent you, but I should point out that I also represent 15,000 other residents in High Barnet.

 

On Saturday I won't be attending the conference as I'll be at a 60th Wedding Anniversary Party, which has been in my diary for quite some time.

 

On the points you raise:

The number of jobs 'exported' isn't clear cut. A substantial number of Barnet Council NLBP staff do not reside in the Borough. One might argue that they should, but that would be flouting several laws and limiting our choice of candidates.

 

When you say 'in-house' bids, do you mean a management buyout or do you mean re-organisation of the internal structure to compete with the outside companies? Would the in-house bid be for the whole of an entity (like DRS) or part of an entity? Would an in-house bid, of whatever kind, have the necessary financial back-up?

 

As for good ideas: Balancing the budget is a good idea. As a debt collector you must know the perils and heartache that come from unsustainable debt. Ask the Labour representatives, especially former Labour MP, Andrew Dismore, why Labour didn't keep public expenditure inline with tax revenue. Ask Unison why they didn't lobby the government as spending spiralled out of control. Surely someone in the Labour Party or Unison must have realised there are terrible consequences associated with debts accrued to maintain Revenue expenditure? The nation now spends about as much on interest payments as it does on the NHS!

 

Getting the best possible value for all Council Tax payers is a good idea.

 

A relentless drive for efficiency is a good idea.

 

Keeping the Council Tax increases to zero or less than inflation is a good idea. Approximately 80% of Barnet Council expenditure is met through Government funding. The financial consequences of not meeting Government targets are substantial. Several hundred pounds would have had to be added to each Council Tax bill in 2010, followed by inflationary + increases in 2011 and 2012 to maintain services at 2010 levels. The demand for statutory services (1300 extra primary school places in the last three years) is increasing and would have outstripped those inflationary increases in Council Tax bills, see 'Graph of Doom'. Do you think pensioners and struggling families would welcome that? Would anyone welcome it (see K2 tax avoidance scheme)?

 

I would recommend reading http://tiny.cc/bewvgw and then reflect on possible options for Barnet. The Barnet Alliance for Public Services stated aim is no cuts to any Council services, Education, Welfare Services or staffing arrangements.

 

At the conference, with the Barnet Alliance for Public Services aims in mind, consider the 'Graph of Doom' scenario, work out the Council budget and future projections for the next fifteen years, produce a detailed alternative and present it.

 

On the 18th June you sent out an email championing Sir Terry Leahy on what he had to say about local government management. What you didn't mention is that in his new book, 'Management in 10 Words', he also advocates relentless change in the form of technological and methodological improvement.

 

He also goes on to say that organisations are terrible at confronting the truth. The Conservative administration at Barnet Council is confronting the truth regarding future demand on statutory services and the amount of money available to pay for it. We have produced a strategy to deal with the issues.

 

Regards,

Cllr. David Longstaff

---

Since sending it I have tidied up a couple of minor grammatical errors in the next email.

Friday 20 July 2012 at 22:19

email sent to Longstaff, Perry & Prentice

Dear Councillor Longstaff

Thank you for your email of 5 July. It has taken me a little while to reply because I also had a party or two to go to and other pressing matters.

Export of jobs

The number of jobs exported on the NSL contract is clear. The parking back office is 25 people. Those jobs are no longer in Barnet but in Worthing as is clear from the address printed on parking tickets, the council website and from the answer to Cllr Jack Cohen's question at full council a little while ago. I do know that EU law prevents the council from specifying where the work is to be carried out and that is one of the disadvantages of the way in which you have chosen to carry out the tendering exercise. If an in-house bid had been allowed then it would almost certainly have been the case that the business would have remained within the borough. There would be more Barnet people in work and spending their money at local businesses which helps the borough in general.

Current employee residential locations

I have noticed that the more senior management travel huge distances to work at Barnet Council. I don't know the situation for junior staff except for the ones I happen to know personally who are local. There are disadvantages for the council of employing people from further away. During bad weather and transport strikes those people are less able to make it into the office. Always assuming that you have two equal candidates it makes sense to employ the one who lives nearer. It is the policy that I followed from the early eighties when I was a credit manager at a business in N11 and for 20 years in my own office in High Barnet. Staff who have to travel in from places like Peterborough and Southampton are not going to be as perky as those who have caught a local bus to work. The council has had a parking space problem at NLBP; that also would have been alleviated by having more local employees who could walk, cycle or use the bus.

In-house bids

I have no fixed view on the form that an in-house bid could have taken. What I do know is that for parking enforcement, Customer Services (NSCSO) and Development & Regulatory Services (DRS) the only option that has been presented has been to out-source. Staff were never allowed a chance to compete. This limitation was foolish. One usually finds that the staff actually doing the job know more about the way in which the department runs than the management do. If they had been allowed to bid they could have presented an alternative costing against which to measure the bids of BT, Capita or EC Harris. The way in which services have been bundled together in the cases of NSCSO and DRS are by their very structure impossible for the staff to bid against as they bundle together a large number of disparate services across directorates which make absolutely no sense from a business standpoint. They are also going to lead to double handling of enquiries. Is your enquiry about council tax a level 1 or a level 4 enquiry? The customer does not know. They will get in touch with either Revs & Bens or Customer Services and may well want the other one.

As an example of senior management knowing less than their staff I cite Bill Murphy the town hall tax dodging Assistant Director of Customer Services and Libraries. He told Lord Palmer, at the last Audit Committee that people could telephone Customer Services to contest a parking ticket. Absolute codswallop. Any appeal has to be in writing to a Worthing address or completed on-line on the council website.

Currently the staff are very unhappy. One has said to me that he objects to being treated like a commodity. If you had allowed an in-house bid on a level playing field and the in-house bid came in 5% higher and so did not win at least the staff would feel happy that they had received a fair hearing and accept the loss with good grace "The better man won on the day". Instead they feel betrayed. Is it any wonder that staff are leaving in droves to join other councils with less crackpot ideas than One Barnet.

As to financial backup, if the services had been split up into smaller bundles then each one would need less funding and this would be available to small companies with a guaranteed income stream as they would have. Thanks to quantitative easing there is a glut of money available for small businesses to borrow.

Balancing the budget

I agree that everyone must live within their means. I am not a member of the Labour party. I do not propose to ask Mr Dismore anything at all unless it relates to his role as my assembly member. I voted for him because he wasn't Brian Coleman (I am sure that does not need any further explanation).

Unison

I am not a member of a union. I cannot speak for Unison. I do know that John Burgess wants to have a dialogue with the leader about One Barnet, but somehow Richard Cornelius cannot seem to set a diary date.

Value for money and efficiency

I agree that obtaining the best value for money for council tax payers is a good idea. MetPro's services were procured without proper procedures being followed. When finally the council was forced to stop using them because of our scrutiny and the fact they also went bust, and the council managed to trade with a phoenix company, the contract was let and Blue 9 were better value. The history of procurement at Barnet Council is not a happy one. The pricing problem with MetPro (leaving aside the CRB & SIA problems) was that their price was not tested against the competition. In the case of One Barnet projects the prices are only coming from large private sector companies. The value for money should be established by working out the true costs of the department or section concerned and then testing it against an in-house bid, a joint venture with one or more other local authorities, a public-private partnership and an ALMO and then you would have a true cost-benefit analysis. Two multi-nationals competing are not likely to enter a fight to the death for the business. I expect that the same bidders keep meeting at many local authorities and may be quite friendly with one another and not inclined to cut-throat competition (without suggesting that any illegal collusion is occurring you understand). The staff move around a finite number of large companies such as Capita, BT and iMpower and the council employs senior management who have previously worked for these companies or have moved on to work for them. It isn't open and transparent. The declarations of interest by senior officers on the NSCSO and DRS contracts are feebly worded, issued rather late on in the project and not sufficiently numerous.

Efficiency: Have you enquired how NSL are doing on the parking contract? I have been following the success and failure rate at PATAS ( Parking and Traffic Appeals Service ) and despite it now being more than 11 weeks since they took over the paperwork that is necessary to argue the council's case is still not arriving at PATAS in the vast majority of cases. I have written a blog post about that here.

Imagine you had a clean sheet and were creating an organisation to provide services like bin collection, parking control, recycling, social care, schools, parks, street lighting, libraries etc to local residents. Would you create an organisation that had:

63 policy makers, people who put themselves forward and who don't have to have any qualifications to do the job and who get £1.2m between them. Some of them are powerless as the 63 are organised in tribes and the tribe with less numbers gets left in the cold.

95 senior management to carry out the policies who are collectively paid £9.5m (see GFC item 6 on 23 April 2012)

A firm of consultants ( Agilisys/iMpower ) paid £2.1m (in the year ended March 12 per the over £500 spending lists)

A number of Boards: so far I have found Barnet Partnership Board which meets twice a year and 6 other Boards which meet 6 times a year. There may be others.

Now I would think that you could all happily talk amongst yourselves for the whole year, be very busy in meetings and not achieve much, don't you agree?

No-one with any sense would organise municipal functions that way. I think you were at the meeting of Cabinet on 17 July when the Leader himself complained about the chart at Appendix 1 of the report on safeguarding children. He wanted simpler charts and presumably simpler structures. There is bags of room for a ruthless drive for efficiency as it would be hard to imagine a less efficient structure than the current one.  Your fellow councillor Hugh Rayner has also suggested the KISS principle; Keep It Simple Stupid and it is one of the most sensible things he has ever said.

Council Tax increases in the range of zero to inflation

I half agree with you, not the freeze but the 2.5% increase. I know that central government were adding extra grants to councils who froze council tax for the last 2 years but not all councils were convinced it was a good idea. I was not. Holding prices down artificially will end up with a sudden large increase which people will find harder to budget for. It doesn't hurt the poorest in society as they receive benefits which will take account of the increase. I would much rather pay a 2.5% increase each year (per the BBC website inflation is 2.4 to 2.8% at the moment depending on whether you refer to RPI or CPI ) than three lots of 0% and one of 10% (and it was the extreme increase in car parking permit prices of 150% which set me off down the road to blogging - blame Brian Coleman and his colleagues of the time who failed to rain in his policy excesses). I do of course expect my money to be wisely spent and I don't think it is. I see from the Finance & Business Planning Process for 2013 to 2016 report presented to cabinet on 17 July that increases of 2.5% are planned for the entire period. Now all that remains is to spend it in the right way.

The awfully named "Graph of Doom"

The head of Age UK in Barnet asked the Leader not to use that phrase as it denigrates the elderly who still have a lot to contribute but I do know which graph you mean (she said the phrase was deeply inappropriate and offensive).

Here is the content of an email I sent to another blogger at the time.

It is the most stupid graph I have even seen.

Even the journalist says

The graph should not be taken too literally: by making no provision for Barnet's anticipated rise in income through regeneration schemes, for instance, it overstates the bleakness of the outlook.

and here is my comment from the Guardian website

The horribly named graph of doom ignores many parameters. Use your commonsense; income stagnant for the next 20 years, how unrealistic is that?

There is an important debate to be had and the increasing cost of care is going to escalate due to demographics but this chart should have come with a health warning. The council themselves say it was to stimulate debate; a pity that a health warning was not applied to the slide at the time (please do that to future non-factual slides Barnet Council)

Now that the council has decided to increase council tax by 2.5% for 3 consecutive years the graph will look markedly different.

The graph was used unaltered in the Finance & Business Planning Process for 2013 to 2016 report on 17 July and income is shown as static. The graph was out of date. I note the following at para 9.3.1

Modelling has been undertaken to understand the impact of growing demand on the council’s budget resulting from demographic change, taking into account a range of factors including population increase, inflation and likely legislative changes.

Well, the effect of inflation on income has not been taken into account. The effect of a future increase in the number of buildings in the borough has not been taken into account which will bring with it an increase in the population of council tax papers and hence more income.

As modelling goes this was pretty poor. I don't deny that there are increasing elderly and young and the demographic change is something that needs to be addressed. I am not in favour of steadily concreting over the borough and building rabbit hutch flats. I think the Leader said the same about flats during the Boris Talks event at the Peel Centre.

Alternative budget

I would love to have the time to plough through every item of spending of Barnet Council but that is the first problem. I am already fairly fully occupied. Blogging occupies the spare time that I don't have, I have a very full social life and work 80% of a full week on the first business and also have a second business which sometimes occupies 40%. I wish it wasn't necessary to blog but until Barnet become the "boring Council" i.e. everything they do is tickety boo and sensible I will continue. The other problem is that the council hate giving me information. For proof, take a look at this blog post. Barnet Council wouldn't let me see the content of an invoice from London Councils that London Councils themselves supplied within 3 working hours of being asked.

Terry Leahy

I agree with relentless technological change and methodological improvement.

Pay-by-phone parking seems an obvious technological change to mention. I agree with it. Don't get too excited yet. I agree with it as a choice of payment. Its use will slowly increase with time as the number of mobile phone users increases. As a choice, along with credit card on the spot and cash and vouchers, it would have worked. Brian Coleman unfortunately went for the big bang approach, ripped out all parking meters and left almost no other possibility of paying for people who do not have a mobile phone or a bank card. This discriminated against the poor, the elderly, those with basic bank accounts, and those people who don't like their credit card details held by faceless corporations possibly in India and other countries far far away. My own credit card was recently cloned by someone abroad and it is a nuisance to sort out.

Barnet Council has some ridiculously out-of-date practices. How do they compile their statistics about customer correspondence standards. Well, the guide given to all staff recently, entitled "Think Customer", says on page 7, the page about email "make sure you log every email you receive using CRM / your department's email spreadsheet which has been created for this purpose".  Does a departmental spreadsheet and a Customer Relationship Management package together sound like the best methodological system to you because it certainly doesn't to me. If the council answered everything as fast as London Councils do it wouldn't need to measure the speed of response at all which would free up hundreds of hours of staff time. How many other administrative tasks does the council undertake that it could usefully scrap?

Confronting the truth!

Oh you do make me laugh. Truth is that three quarters of respondents were against parks being hired out for private parties. Result. They will be. The truth counts for nothing at Barnet Council.

Yours sincerely

Derek Dishman

---

For contrast we need to take a look at the BetterBarnet website (you can use this website to email your 3 ward councillors directly and easily) where we will find the recent spartan responses of Cllr Maureen Braun to one of her constituents Adam Langleben who happens to be a keen member of the Labour party. If you are a member of the ruling conservative group of councillors who are trying to foist the £1bn One Barnet programme onto residents for the next 10 years then your defence of the programme needs to be more robust, especially to a Labour party member.

If it is the best thing for Barnet shouldn't every conservative councillor be out there at every opportunity telling residents how absolutely wonderful it is?

What does the fact that they don't and they haven't these last three years tell you about One Barnet. The silence speaks volumes.

If Mike Freer MP is reading this then could I just remind him that he promised me his explanation of One Barnet a few weeks ago and now that the parliamentary recess is upon us hopefully he will have time to write it.

Yours frugally

Derek Dishman aka Mr Mustard

When sorry seems to be the hardest word

So the video (Mr Mustard is very grateful to Dan at the Barnet Bugle)  above is of the Audit Committee on 21 June and 5 minutes into the recording Bill Murphy is heard to clearly say ( well what passes as clearly for mumbler Bill ) that people can "come into" ( i.e. telephone ) customer services to "challenge their penalty notice"

Now Mr Mustard knew that this was complete and utter nonsense and as Bill obviously didn't know the answer he should have said so, as he had done to an earlier question. Maybe though he didn't want to appear to be so ignorant of the workings of his own department. If could of course have been a new policy of the "better service for less money" kind, or "putting the community first" but are only empty phrases. Thus on Saturday 23 June Mr Mustard sent Bill "Bullshit" Murphy an email:

Dear Mr Murphy

At the Audit Committee on Thursday evening chaired by Cllr Lord Monroe Palmer ("Monroe") you answered a short series of questions about scanning and parking documents in general.

When Monroe enquired about other outsourced parking services you told him that people can still call customer services to challenge a parking ticket/PCN and that this was going to be outsourced. The website at this page does not inform the public that they can challenge parking tickets by calling customer services at the council and it would be most informative if it did.

I have sent a copy of this email to the other Mr Palmer as I believe he is in overall charge of the website.

He received a holding reply the same day (no Dear Sir / Yours etc - this is the entire message )

Thanks. I will look into it. Have a good weekend.

and then on 5 July this


Dear Mr Mustard,

I am sorry I did not get back o (sic) you last week but I'm afraid I was not available. In answer to your question:-

Residents can appeal or query a PCN by writing to the following address:

Barnet Parking Service
PO Box 4894
Worthing
BN11 9WT 

Mr Mustard knew this.

They can also appeal against a PCN online via the following page on our website:

http://www.barnet.gov.uk/info/930111/parking_tickets_pcn/516/parking_tickets_pcn
and this

or via the link below:

https://live.esd.ce.civicahosting.co.uk/barnet/Notices/ChallengePcn.aspx
and this

Quite a few people do phone in on 0208 359 7446 - where we then advise them of the process for appealing (so there is demand for a telephone based appeal service about which you will probably do nothing). So you are technically right that we do not actually process the appeal by phone - but we do provide advise on how to appeal. No you don't - you provide advice. Mr Mustard's bold emphasis.

I hope this is helpful.

Bill Murphy
Assistant Director, Customer Services

As an aside those web page addresses, known as URL, Uniform Resource Locator, are far too long. They appear in the Notice to Owner and people are expected to copy them into their browser one character at a time. Barnet Council says they are customer centric. If you were customer centric you would provide a short URL (permanent ones are available) like this one http://v.gd/ourbarnet which is a link to the last blog that Mr Mustard wrote. Come on, Barnet Council, wake up and get with the programme.

Now let us consider Bill's mealy mouthed reply ("technically correct" my foot). He said that one could appeal a ticket by phoning in and then he lists the ways that appeals can actually take place which do not include phoning in. You were wrong Bill and you have mislead the committee. Your reply is below the standard that one would expect of an Assistant Director who we have to pay £570 for, every single day that you work, to Hays HR.

You should look in the mirror and ask yourself. Is the council tax payer getting good value for his £570? Mr Mustard would say not.

Ask yourself if you know enough about Customer Services to be in charge of it and making massive organisational change? No, again Mr Mustard would suggest.

Mr Mustard does hope that you have written to the committee to apologise to them for having given them the wrong answer as, if not, you should already be getting your coat and leaving Barnet.

Remember for future meetings that a public gallery full of bloggers might well know more than you do so before bull-shitting again, stop and consider your words carefully. We don't want another episode like this one, now do we? 

(You might need to practice giving straight and accurate answers as there is always the chance that you will get called for a grilling about "town hall tax dodgers" by the Public Accounts Committee. I can't see the rapier-like Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP letting you off with any nonsense answers)

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard