Libraries - workshop on 1 December & please give generously

Here is an opportunity for you to give generously of your time and of your money.

Workshop advertised on Streetlife

A workshop to minimise the potential impact, why does Mr Mustard think that any suggestion of not making the cuts but instead raising council tax would not be acceptable feedback? Would Mr & Mrs Awkward please attend.

Fund raising for a Judicial Review

The CPZ charges campaign recently returned £100 to Mr Mustard as the case was won and fighting fund donations were returned so he has recycled that (as a permanent donation) into this equally worthy case.

Our ruling councillors have completely forgotten that what they are engaged in is public service and one of their mantras has been "deliver better services with less money" which certainly doesn't apply to the Library service (which is less money to deliver a far lesser service, in terms of hours and quality) and it doesn't apply to anything which includes the magic word, no, not 'please' but 'commissioning' which can have all the funds it needs, as Mr Reasonable has amply demonstrated and as this vacant post (anyone miss Craig Cooper?)

which the General Functions Committee will doubtless rubber stamp the extra money for, shows. 

The previous incumbent was Claire Symonds who worked closely with Chris Naylor before he moved to Barking & Dagenham, and guess what, Claire has been fortunate to get a new post there (What a waste of fees to Penna when Chris or Claire could simply have picked up the phone and done the deal for free). 

The salary merry-go-round really needs someone to put the brakes on it. Here is an idea about salaries Mr Mustard doesn't suppose that there is a cat in hell's chance of Andrew Travers showing such leadership. He is happy to be proven wrong.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Who's the daddy?

Bloggers often wonder who is running the council, whether it is councillors, officers (a poncy name for staff, or more exactly the senior management team) or Capita and the answer is probably done of them. It is a runaway horse which goes where it wants.

Mr Mustard decided to go to the first meeting of the new Community Leadership Committee even though it sounded pretty awful but he happened to have a free evening so off he trooped. First though, he banged 11 questions in.

Here are the papers:

Community Leadership Committee by MisterMustard

Mr Mustard was initially struck by the modest size of the budget, £1.9m and that 10 councillors were going to have regular meetings about this tiny sum. He also thought it showed the lack of concern for Community Leadership in the borough. Then you will note that £800,000 of this budget is to be axed, the most savage cuts to any council budget.

Anyway, what annoyed Mr Mustard first of all was the usual sloppy presentation by officers and the omission of vital facts and so he set to and asked for what was missing (one councillor also planned to do this but Mr Mustard got in first). here are the first 5 questions:

So although it was said that a saving of £200k was possible from organisation efficiency in the running of cctv (a seemingly bottomless well of future aspirational possibility) which probably means staff cuts and really the report should say exactly how (and councillors should ask how) they was an extra £8k from axing MOSAIC. Thus the total was wrong and there was a lack of detail. 

Mr Mustard asked the supplementary question if Capita would provide Callcredit (Cameo) for free. The answer was that it was part of the Contract.

At this point it was obvious that councillors were being asked to approve something which was already contracted for elsewhere so for officers to ask councillors to approve this saving on MOSIAC without telling them they had already committed the council to CAMEO was somewhat naughty. Of course David Longstaff was part of the Cabinet and so he should have known this was part of the NSCSO contract except he probably never read the 2000 pages. To be fair to "goldenarse" he wasn't very happy with the situation once Mr Mustard got stuck into his extra questions and he did answer clsoed questions with a yes or no whereas others might have tried to ride them with a load of waffle.

Mr Mustard's extra question for Q2 was for an explanation of table 2.1 as he couldn't understand why the £10k was not in the first column but was in the second. There was no heading for this table, by the way, but Mr Mustard worked out it was currently planned spend (before the axeman cometh). Here it is:

The answer given by Steven Evans, Assistant Director of Commissioning Strategy, was that the table was wrong. He doubtless doesn't regard £10,000 as material as he probably costs the council that much every month (Mr Mustard is happy to publish the actual salary band & pension cost if it is provided to him). Oh dear. How is it that errors keep on appearing in reports and that no-one spots them, or bothers to correct them, before they jump off the page at Mr Mustard. This table is just so obviously wrong.

So the answer to question 3 is basically a lie as there is already a contract with Capita as Chris Naylor the Chief Operating Officer had been quick to tell Mr Mustard on twitter. He knew he had hit a nerve when Mr Mustard has the COO asking him on twitter what is wrong with Callcredit (Cameo). Possibly nothing is the answer but given the established market leading position of Experian (MOSAIC) and the lack of complaint about it, to change is not worth the bother.

For question 4 the council had to ask Capita for the answer as the council didn't know the answer which is a terrible admission that a proper comparison had not been done before the Capita contract was signed.

It seems, from the answer to Q5 that Capita don't really have a product at all (except they add their own data into it which is of course council data) and are just badging someone else's product and you might as well cut out the middleman and save money. Mr Mustard wonders if they added more or less than £8,452 into the contract price for it. Doubtless the answer is top secret.

More questions:

The answer to Q7 was pretty pointless in talking about other data sets as the council's corporate mind was already made up. It is easy to say the sets do not vary widely when do detail is given. A typically vague council answer.

The answer to Q8 shows how hopeful this £200k saving is. They think that once the 5 years are up they can make the equipment last longer. Of course one of the reasons for replacing the cctv network was that it had become old technology and needed replacing. The same will be true of what we have just purchased. the council are also over a barrel with this supplier and will have to take whatever terms they are offered in year 6 or start over again. Come back to this posting in 2017 and see who was right.

The final question:

So the council haven't done any market testing but think they can persuade local businesses to cough up £600,000 for unknown cctv services. Mr Mustard has his doubts. The council should not go into competition with other local businesses.

So do councillors run the council? It doesn't seem so based solely upon the knowledge of the chairman of this meeting who presumably reads the agenda before it goes out and should have picked up that he was being asked to chair a meeting about a fait accompli.

Do the officers (senior management) run the council. They present vague reports which don't add up and try to pull the wool over the eyes of councillors. That isn't going to end well.

Do Capita run the council? One thing Mr Mustard doesn't like about the Capita deal is the lack of transparency about whether officers (senior staff) are employees of the council or of Capita as their raison d'etre are different (Capita's is to make money, the only reason a commercial company exists) and neither Stephen Evans nor James Mass appear in the list of highly paid employees in the notes to the 2014 Annual Accounts which makes me think they are now Capita folk. Mr Mass was previously with Impower. Mr Mustard recalls that one of his previous reports to committee about the future cctv system, which is already being cut, contained a massive blunder figure wise. Lets hope he checks his work better in the future. We can't afford to let Capita run the council as they are doing so badly on residents permits, telephones, customer service, payroll, councillors' IT etc.

Mr Mustard will keep asking awkward questions until such time as reports are complete, concise and accurate.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Talk isn't cheap

Yesterday at the Local Government Strategic Leaders Forum (no apostrophe even though there should be) there was a lot of tweeting from WeLoveLocalGov and Mr Mustard was on the tube and responding to a number of their observational tweets. Mr Mustard would love local government to be invisible, effective, cost efficient and really boring and in Barnet it isn't. Anyway, here is one tweet to which he responded something like this - if council tax hadn't been frozen for 4 years and then there was a 1% cut as an electoral gimmick (leading to 32 Conservative seats against 30 for Labour so that was a bargain then?) the amount of income available would have avoided the need for many of the dreadful cuts to provision for disabled children etc. (but in 140 characters so much briefer)

Nice and simple message from Barnet: “the money’s run out and it’s not coming back.” Stark, but true. #capitaconf
— WeLoveLocalGov (@WeLoveLocalGov) June 26, 2014

Now Mr Mustard visits the council offices at this time every year to have a rummage through the accounts during the 4 weeks when they are publicly available by law. He obtained the following invoice (Mr Mustard is a detail person but he didn't get much to chew on with this invoice - luckily he was only given the one page as 300+ blacked out pages would have been wasteful) 

So what you can see is that the council has 1,678 mobile phones and a bill for the month of £23,145

Mr Mustard thought that might be rather a lot of phones and he remembered that when he was at Policy & Resources committee on 10 June 2014 there was a report presented by Andrew "Black Hole" Travers (he spoke at the conference mentioned above so the tweet above may stem from his presentation), he is the Chief Executive if you didn't know and Chris Naylor, the Chief Operating Officer (sharpen your scalpel Chris as you need to cut the mobile phone bill and which others? management pay and numbers perhaps?) which disclosed that the number of Full Time Equivalent posts is 1,726 so there is a 97% chance of an employee having a mobile phone. Mr Mustard knows it makes sense for mobile staff but posits that the vast bulk of council employees are likely to be desk based. Mr Mustard wonders what the mobile phone issue protocol is?

Before moaning about the shortage of funds it is probably best to go through every single item of spending and ask the question; is this spending really necessary?

Mr Reasonable, a respected management consultant who before he went self-employed  worked for one of the largest worldwide firms of consultants so knows his stuff, offered to give the council a day a month of his valuable time about 2 years ago (he is currently run off his feet with work he is in such demand by sports stadia all over the world, but bloggers regularly out perform the average mortal) in order to review the cost base (he was using the 80/20 rule and was going to look at all invoices above £10,000 so would have looked at 20% of them and captured 80% of the spend - this is also known as the Pareto principle) but his offer was not taken up. The council should have snatched his hand off to obtain a free expert like that.

So WeLoveLocalGov there is a longer answer than can be tweeted in 140 characters. One reason we bloggers are up in arms about our local council and are critical is because we have evidence from many areas of spend that suggests Barnet Council really isn't very well run, despite the £6.67 million spent on Central Management (source, Council tax leaflet 2014/15).

You can comment below if you wish, unedited.

Yours frugally (unlike the council)

Mr Mustard

Stuff the semantics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One advantage of signing with Capita was given as:

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

About the then estimated £17.5m investment by Capita

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

and about funding generally

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What reserves did Corny tell us we had?

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

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

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

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Guest blog #2 by Chris Naylor (Chief Operating Officer of Barnet Council)

Dear Mr Dishman

Thank you for your email response

I don't think I have a huge amount to add to the answer I have already given about the decision making process, the relationship between the deal, cabinet decision and payment profile and the Council's constitution.

The substantive point is that we have not relieved Capita of their obligation to fund the investment from within the contract price.

I can see from your response that there remains some confusion about terminology and I think we're in danger of having a debate about semantics. I wasn't at the Audit Committee to which you refer, so let me have another go at explaining the cash flow point. I've written separately to Ms Musgrove about this but not to you all. I don't think she has yet had time to publish that response. In summary, our cash balances are not the same as our balance sheet reserves. As I've previously set out, our balance sheet reserves are unchanged as a result of the payment profile to Capita. In terms of cash, at any given point in time the Council holds cash balances in the region of £200m as reported publicly at Cabinet (and also publicly to full Council - in the annual treasury management strategy. The Council finds it necessary to place cash in the order of £50m on overnight deposit often generating no or very little return. This is a function of the paucity of investment opportunities that meet the Council's stringent investment criteria. In this context, the front loading of the cash-flow of the £320m to release savings of £0.8m makes commercial sense and is in keeping with other routine treasury management decisions that are periodically made regarding the stewardship of the Council's investment portfolio. As set out in the Council's publicly published financial regulations these stewardship decisions are delegated to officers and quarterly treasury management reports are monitored by Committee, in public. See here for the link. We will often refer to the use of our cash balances as "internal borrowing". We have not taken out an actual loan from the public works loan board in this instance.

If I've still failed to articulate the differences between cashflow, cash balances and balance sheet reserves then I can only apologise. As a fellow accountant Mr. Dix may be able to make a better fist of it! Either which way, I trust you can now all accept that no payment has been made outside the contract sum or the Council's constitution.

Again, given that your respective blog comments and correspondence with Councillors are generating a lot of enquires for my team, I would ask that you publish this response. I will be sending a copy of this email to Members in due course.

kind regards

Chris

Our minds are not at rest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Response sent to Mr Naylor

In December 2012 the Cabinet report which authorised this contract was quite clear when it said: “Capita’s proposal also includes (within the financial offer described above) approximately £15.3m revenue investment in areas such as information technology (computer hardware and software), and customer services.

This investment not only enables Capita to deliver the transformation it is proposing, but also avoids the Council having to find money in the future to fund replacement technology for systems that are at or nearing the end of their useful life”.

It went on to say: “if the Council chose not to complete this procurement, it would have to: • attempt to replicate the investment, technology and other solutions being proposed by Capita in order to drive out the future savings required”

In September 2013 Barnet paid Capita £15.2 million which Mr Naylor described as follows: “Of the total £320m, £16m of this is paid up-front for the capital investment. The remainder of the service charges are paid quarterly in advance.

The reason for making an up-front payment to Capita for capital investment, and for payment of service charges quarterly in advance is that the Council’s “cost of money” – i.e. the amount that it pays for access to cash, is considerably cheaper than Capita’s.

The Council has internal reserves, and access to the Public Works Loan Board funding which is closely aligned to the Bank of England base rate. So the up-front capital contribution and quarterly in advance payment reduce the overall cost of the contract to the taxpayer.

n August, the Council made £10.5m payment to Capita which represented the balance of the capital contribution for investment in the services, and £4.7m in respect of the service charge.”

The council have made a decision to fund the investment instead of Capita and from Mr Naylor’s response in October there is a very clear inference that this would come from reserves or borrowing.

At the audit Committee of 23rd October the council stated: “The council agreed to fund the capital costs up front because the council benefits from a lower interest rates which keeps the overall cost of funding CSG as low as possible.

The assets are Capita’s, but Capita is obligated to provide them back to the council upon contract termination for at no further cost” - again implying borrowing or lost interest on reserves. Mr Naylor says in his letter of 11 November 2013 that: “there has been no change in policy, and no radical change to the terms of the business model agreed by Cabinet on 6th December 2012”. Based on the above this would appear to be untrue.

The Cabinet report of December 2012 was very clear when it said that: “As dialogue has now closed, the Regulations permit that the Council may only request a bidder to clarify, specify or fine tune a tender, but further detailed negotiation is no longer permitted.”

Relieving Capita of the obligation to fund £16.1 million of capital investment which impacts the cost of the contract by £800,000 does not appear to fit these criteria. Clarification is needed over the specific issue of the origin of the funding source used by the authority to support the £16.1 million.

Mr Naylor asserts in his response that this was not from reserves, yet in his earlier statement he refers to ‘internal reserves’ and the ‘Public Works Loan Board funding’.

Was the funding from reserves, or not?

Was the funding borrowed, and if so, how much, and does not such an action contradict the position taken by Cabinet member Robert Rams in criticising opposition proposals to borrow money for capital investment?

Was the £16.1 million from internal reserves, contrary to Mr Naylor’s statement, or if not, why did Councillor Thomas think so?

If some of the money was obtained by a loan from the Public Works Loan Board, how much did the sum comprise, and does the use of borrowed funding not contradict Councillor Robert Ram’s stated criticism of Labour proposals to fund investment this way?

Why have our councillors remained so reluctant to address the questions publicly, and why has the Leader of the Council remained silent on an issue of such public concern? Why was the belated statement about the £16.1 million at the behest of Councillors Thomas and Rams, rather than the Leader? 

There are further unanswered questions about the authorisation signed by Leader Richard Cornelius on August 5th.

Why is a decision, which is not a decision, listed as a ‘non key decision’? Why are there no background papers listed for this document? 

What exactly are the ‘international financial reporting standards’ to which the document refers? If this authorisation was merely a technicality, why was it necessary for the Leader to approve it, rather than a senior officer acting under delegated powers?

Were the backbench Conservative members aware that the funding of the capital investment was not in fact an ‘upfront’ payment from Capita, but to be undertaken by the council? 

If they were, why have so many statements been made seeming to imply the contrary? Is the truth that although the method of funding the investment this way was arranged between Barnet and Capita, for reasons of political sensitivity the Conservative administration has failed properly to explain this to backbench members or the residents of this borough? 

Is it fair to suggest, as the Labour leader Alison Moore commented at last week’s Cabinet meeting, that the way in which the funding has been arranged would appear to involve a ‘sleight of hand’, and is this really compliant with the principles of transparency, accountability and open government, and the duty to protect the best interests of the residents and tax payers of this borough?

It is clear that there are still many serious outstanding questions left unresolved and for this reason we repeat our call for an immediate investigation into the issue so as to ensure that our elected representatives are fulfilling their roles in the proper scrutiny of the actions of this council.

Derek Dishman

John Dix

Theresa Musgrove 

Roger Tichborne

Mr Naylor is in danger of suffering from the Streisand Effect. He didn't start One Barnet or this chain of correspondence and wasn't in the blogger crosshairs, but by responding to it he has taken the place of the people who should be answering (anyone seen Richard Cornelius since that photo of him in an old folks home, perhaps they kept him?) Rams is wimbling on about tiny good things and ignoring the elephant in the room and Dan Thomas is keeping his head down to avoid the flack. It's not as if there is an election in May 14, is it?

More from Chris and then from us and from Mr Mustard and hopefully soon he will be able to blog about other matters.

Vexatious to vexing - the end (hopefully)

not Colonel Mustard with the revolver in the library

Mr Mustard has been somewhat busy in the parking ticket department (another win at PATAS yesterday for a visitor who was pounced on whilst collecting a visitor voucher) and so not had time to write up the third and final instalment of his journey to Freedom of Information.

Regular readers, and those who have read the Information Commissioners decision, will have generally got the impression that employees in the parking department and HR at Barnet Council would break down in tears at the sight of an FOI request from Mr Mustard or be signed off on sick leave due to stress. How they manage to be such complete and utter heartless b'stards when dealing with some poor soul who stayed 2 minutes too long in a parking space and due to events ended up with the bailiffs clamping their car will just have to be one of those unanswerable questions. Most staff ("officers" - bloody stupid name for them) are fine with Mr Mustard and three of them have asked him to help appeal their Barnet Council PCN - how ironic is that?

Now once Mr Mustard had the adverse decision that his questions (not him, thankfully) were vexatious he had to do something about it as no sane person would want the matter to rest like that. Now as it happens there was some lucky timing. Mr Mustard had attended the council's offices several times in June to look at their annual Accounts and see supporting information. With Black Hole Travers having climbed up to the top rung of the ladder, becoming the Chief Executive and we don't hear anything like as much about him as we used to about Nick Walkley (remember him? saddled yourself with some very difficult problems in Haringey, Nick - the bloggers of Barnet must look like light relief compared to every Fleet Street paper looking for blood) we needed a new S151 Officer (legally responsible for finance) and we got one with the rather fancy title of Chief Operating Officer and the name of Chris Naylor in January 13. Chris joined us from Tower Hamlets who have their own problems with transparency. Is there a boringly well run council anywhere in London? that is all Mr Mustard seeks from Barnet.

Now last year 3 bloggers attended together along with a well known parking expert who is the scourge of councils all over London. This year Mr Mustard attended alone as he knew the score and to help the council he gave them a list months in advance of what he wanted to see. Was it ready on his arrival? No, of course it wasn't. The council should not be surprised that they take a bashing when they are so unhelpful and stupid. One thing he asked for was the bailiff contracts for parking for the year. Mr Mustard had the suspicion that there weren't any and rather than tell him that they gave him an out of date contract 300 pages long. What a waste of paper. It didn't detain Mr Mustard for a minute. 

Now the council have to deal with his objection to the Accounts, one of 5 he has made, on which he anticipates that a verbal report will be made by Grant Thornton to the Audit Committee tomorrow evening. There is no scheduled agenda item to sign off the Accounts, which would be normal in October so it looks like at least one of the objections has been found to have merit. Chris, to his credit, says that the Audit Commission Act is there to be used.

Now one topic of enquiry was the invoices raised by Agilisys/iMpower for the year, all £3.7million of them. They were so heavily redacted that they told him nothing more than was on the over £500 spending list.

Anyway the one thing they did lead to was Chris Naylor offering Mr Mustard a meeting to have a chat about them. This was a novel idea. No-one else had dared put their head over the parapet previously and this initiative should be applauded. It doesn't mean that Mr Mustard is going to turn into a blogging version of the Tooting Twister as we don't want to do him out of a job, now do we? (oh what's that Mrs Angry, "yes of course we do", correct again of course) but he will, and already has, add in some balance to his posts when it adds to the story. So Mr Mustard agreed to a meeting but asked to change the agenda to his FOI question status. The meeting was going to be in Cafe Buzz but had to be moved to the North London Business Park as it was going to be followed by another meeting for Chris (one thing Mr Mustard mentioned was that there are probably staff who do nothing but sit in meetings and they are surplus to requirements if so).

So this meeting took place in the first week of September (Chris bought the teas) in the staff restaurant (see how open and transparent we are) and Mr Mustard offered the following compromise:

Ask up to 60 FOI questions p.a. and not write about junior staff. Most people would think that staff earning up to £56,000 a year weren't junior but that is the accepted definition. Mr Mustard hadn't asked a question since 12 July 2013 and had realised that he had so much information coming from other sources, and other pan-London questions to deal with, that 60 would be more than adequate for a year. He can still ask questions at committee meetings that won't be refused although answers can be obfuscatory and he has the annual audit visit and technically his tweets are FOI if they ask for facts like "who owns the blue bins"; answer "the council".

The counter-offer was a bit longer and here is a summary.

Chris wants 

- a "stronger working relationship" (very sensible)

- he wants the council to publish information regularly that is of use to interested members of the public and the default setting will be to publish (he has Mr Mustard's list to think about)

- he wants the council to be as receptive as possible to the insight and experiences of residents and service users (great but you should have been at this week's Constitution Committee, Chris, to see what councillors think of this. The very sensible idea to allow comments from residents to precede the business item rather than all be heard at the start of the meeting, was voted down on party lines. You may want to hear from residents but clearly some councillors don't. Cllr Thomas, for example, has never allowed any member of the public to have their 5 minutes to speak at Cabinet Resources Committee - unfixable problem? )

- a reasonable number of FOIs may be in the order of 60 p.a. (Mr Mustard having received this level will now show he doesn't need them and save his FOI for the really big issues or questions which he is asking of every London borough)

- he would welcome a monthly digest of service issues or complaints that Mr Mustard has learned about that month, both his and those of other residents (Mr Mustard isn't keen on having a monthly to do list for the council, who can read his blog and see the issues for themselves as many staff and councillors already do, and he has never been reticent about writing to senior officers, all councillors or relevant Cabinet members and the Leader but given that this proposal includes a response back he will inform the COO of the big issues. He has already asked him to find a way to take the £7m generated by parking tickets out of the budget but that is of course a political decision. Officer time may be helpful in finding savings elsewhere. The council will never be well regarded whilst it is issuing 165,000 PCN p.a. so it may be a sensible political decision to move gently away from parking income and make Barnet a nicer place to live).

So having agreed to the above arrangement the blog has gone on as per usual, more or less, and Mr Mustard has avoided having to spend days of his time reviewing 800 blog postings and removing anything that would have counted against him when reviewed by lawyers sitting in the Upper Tribunal and producing a huge bundle of documents and his arguments to the Tribunal. The council didn't think they were greatly at risk of having the ICO's decision overturned but then I didn't mention the smoking gun (not a real gun of course, but something that would have blown a huge hole in the main plank of the council's argument) that I had and which has now been put back in the drawer.

What can others who ask many FOI questions learn from this episode? The FOI legislation does not set out any limits on the number of questions one person can ask of an organisation which is where Mr Mustard went wrong by overdoing it. You would think that an organisation of 3,000 people could cope with a fairly high level of questions. 200 questions per annum, not all on parking but on varied topics, and it doesn't look very vexatious when compared to 165,000 parking tickets issued in a year. How can they cope with those? surely not because that leads to a huge income rather than a compliance cost? 

So what is an acceptable number of questions for others is not going to be either 200 p.a. or 60 p.a. because it will depend on who is asking, what they do with the information, the size of the organisation and so on, all the factors set out in the recent guidance. It would have been interesting to challenge the decision but really Mr Mustard couldn't be fagged to do so, he would have been unable to do other things that he currently wants to do.

Not asking many FOI won't stop the blog.

Our Mr Naylor got himself and the council some column inches yesterday in the Guardian, here. You'll see from the comments that three interested residents don't agree with him but at least we can talk about it like sensible adults. It may be Chris's default setting but it isn't Barnet Council's and he is going to have a heck of a battle on his hands getting everyone to see his point of view.

Now Mr Mustard being Mr Mustard and judging on actions not deeds he has set Chris a test. Last year the council developed Parking Recovery Plans when income from parking was below expectations. There was more chance of seeing a fish riding a bicycle than getting a copy of the documentation which was treated with the highest security clearance. Mr Mustard has asked Chris for a copy of those plans. 

Let us see, will he pass or fail? Watch this space.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Update  19 November 13

I met with Chris Naylor and two of his colleagues this morning. CN handed over the Parking Recovery plans for the last two years. Mr Mustard can't see why the council went to such lengths to hide them as they are deadly dull and didn't show him the sort of information he expected to see. There is some unfortunate thinking within them, like introducing more CPZ simply to generate more revenue (ah, so they are profitable)  but everyone knew that anyway. Anyway, I am pleased he passed the test. the next one will just have to be a little harder.