Helping the mentally or physically ill, the elderly & the poor to fight Council PCNs.
Writing about blunders, democracy and profligacy at Barnet Council.
As readers will know, especially if they read the Miss Feezance blog as well as this one, if Barnet Council are unwilling to accept your appeal you can go, at the end of the process, to PATAS, the Parking & Traffic Appeals Service, to argue your case and it doesn't cost you a bean.
Barnet's bean-counters won't like it though as it costs them a whole heap of beans, which reduces the "profit", probably called a surplus to make it sound better, on the Special Parking Account.
The costs of PATAS, which is run by London Councils, have 2 elements. A fixed cost so that a building, staff, computer system etc can be in place and then a variable element which is paid each time an appeal is decided. The variable cost broadly pays for the parking adjudicators who are all legally qualified (and must by now know every arcane little detail about parking). The fixed cost is base on the number of parking tickets issued 2 years ago so that the numbers from year 1 can be calculated towards the end of year 2 to set the figures for year 3.
London Councils publish the figures in their minutes and they are on their website. Mr Mustard has received copy invoices for the year just ended in order to double-check them.
The fixed cost for Barnet for the year to 31 March 2012 is £71,019 based upon 143,386 tickets having been issued in the year to March 2010 and 49.53p out of each one going to the fixed costs of the final appeal system; let's call it 50p to fixed costs. Every ticket Barnet Council have to cancel costs them 50p in addition to their own wasted time in-house.
The variable cost is £46.73 for every appeal decided upon in the year. In the year ended March 12 there were 1,548 cases decided for which Barnet Council ( on behalf of you and me ) had to pay £72,338
Together with a few sundry charges the total invoiced by PATAS to Barnet Council was £146,872
Dividing this by the 1,548 cases gives an average overall cost of £94.87 per ticket. As the average ticket income is £98 ( a weighted average of bus lane, higher and lower level penalties ) for Barnet Council to have to pursue you all the way to PATAS is not profitable for them, which is the very reason why you should appeal to the very end.
Barnet Council issue lots of tickets in doubtful circumstances. I see from reading this post on the Barnet Eye that the targeting of Cafe Buzz continued on Saturday and the traffic warden issued a parking ticket whilst still wearing his crash helmet and that is against the rules; he is not properly attired in accordance with the uniform rules. The traffic wardens routinely behave in this wrong way.
The ticket should be challenged on that basis in addition to the other reasons that the lady had to stop there, perhaps to set down or pick up her passengers. The observing bloggers probably suggested some grounds to her?
The whole parking system racket is heavily weighted against the motorist. Let's start to level the playing field out a bit. Only 1% of people keep appealing to the very end and reach PATAS. As PATAS reverse 50% of Barnet's decisions then if we could get the 1% up to 2% there would be another 750 happy people in Barnet and a £100,000 hole in the special parking account. Getting to 2% is only the first step.
If absolutely everyone appealed to PATAS the systems of NSL, Barnet Council and PATAS would all come to a grinding halt and a review might be undertaken of the necessity to issue quite so many parking tickets.
They are not about keeping traffic flowing and making sure that fire engines can get through. They are just a money-grubbing scheme to fleece the motorist and fill the coffers of the town hall. They also have the effect of snuffing out trade in our High Streets; Barnet Council are promoting their own short-term gain at the cost of long-term decline but they are so blinkered that they cannot see it.
Do you remember that Mr Mustard got something wrong and it was picked up by Cllr Rawlings. He wasn't home at the time but within 24 hours Mr Mustard had posted a correction and issued an apology. It is not difficult and you feel better for it unless you are the deputy leader apparently.
Let Mr Mustard start at the beginning.
He was in Portugal going round and round the racetrack in Portimao for 3 days when word reached him, via the bloggers early warning system that he was being maligned in the press, here is a link to one of the articles. He was also receiving emails and phone calls about this.
So in the evening instead of having a beer with his mates in the bar Mr Mustard had to get his laptop out and defend himself.
Once he was back Mr Mustard decided to get to the bottom of the supposed £40,000 figure. He wrote to Cllr Thomas as follows on 6 October
I believe that you were referring to my requests although I can't agree the number of 175 without further enquiry.
I do not believe that my requests can possibly have an average cost of £225 being 9 hours work at £25
Below is a typical request and response.
27 September 2011
Dear Mr Mustard
I am writing regarding your request, received by the London Borough of Barnet (the Council) on30 August 2011 for access to the following information:
“Please provide the cost of hall hire for the Finchley & Golders Green Residents' forums on the following occasions:-
5 January 2011
9 March 2011
23 June 2011
14 September 2011
Please provide the cost of hall hire for the Chipping Barnet Residents' forums on the following occasions:-
17 January 2011
22 February 2011
23 June 2011
20 September 2011
Please provide the cost of hall hire for the Hendon Residents' forums on the following occasions:-
18 January 2011
15 March 2011
23 June 2011
12 September 2011
If any of these meetings are followed by an environment sub-committee please provide the total cost of hall hire for that evening ( i.e. you do not need to split the cost of hall hire across the two meetings but just state the total fee due or paid for that evening ).”
We are processing your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the FOIA). My response to your request is below.
Response
I can confirm the following:
The cost of hall hire for theFinchley & Golders Green Residents' forums on the following occasions -
5 January 2011 - Avenue House - £180.00.
9 March 2011 - St Michael’s Church Hall - £50.00
23 June 2011 - Greek Cypriot Neighbourhood Centre - £120.00
14 September 2011 - Trinity Church Centre - £106.00
The cost of hall hire for the Chipping Barnet Residents’ forums on the following occasions -
17 January 2011 - East Barnet School - £105.00
22 February 2011 - Chipping Barnet Library - £168.00
23 June 2011 - Coppetts Wood School - £247.50
20 September 2011 - All Saints Art Centre - £30.00
The cost of hall hire for the Hendon Residents' forums on the following occasions -
18 January 2011 - Sangam Centre - £175.00
15 March 2011 - Barnet Multicultural Centre - £100.00
23 June 2011 - Sangam Centre - £200.00
12 September 2011 - Copthall School - £420.00
Your Rights
If you are unhappy with the way your request for information has been handled, you can request a review by writing to the FOI Officer at: The London Borough of Barnet, North London Business Park, Oakleigh Road South, London, N11 1NP (email foi@barnet.gov.uk).
If you remain dissatisfied with the handling of your request or complaint, you have a right to appeal to the Information Commissioner at: The Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF (telephone: 08456 30 60 60 or 01625 54 57 45; website: www.ico.gov.uk).
There is no charge for making an appeal.
Yours sincerely
Mandy Byfield
Governance Officer
Corporate Governance Directorate London Borough of Barnet, North London Business Park, Oakleigh Road South, London N11 1NP
Tel: 020 8359 7072
Barnet Online: www.barnet.gov.uk
Let me first of all observe that this simple request took exactly 20 working days to answer. The Information Commissioner says that answers should be sent promptly. The 20 working days are the maximum time that a response should take. Barnet Council treat the 20 days as a target to hit, not one to beat.
I think that to answer the above question/s about hall hire would be about 15 minutes work at most. Do you agree?
Firstly, I need to know if you counted the above request as 1, 3, 4 or 12 questions ?
Secondly, as you have used an average of 9 hours for a response time in order to arrive at your figure of £225 then, given that many questions were much quicker to answer than that, some must have taken more than 9 hours to answer. Please tell me which questions did take more than 9 hours to answer.
Please provide a list of all my 175 questions so that I can check them.
publicservice.co.uk implies that I should not have submitted so many requests because of the administrative burden it places on the council.
Do you think that I have done anything wrong ?
Yours sincerely
Mr Mustard
Now the council's standard for answering correspondence is 10 working days. Having blabbed to the papers you would think that Cllr Thomas would be keen to reply as it's obviously an important manner. Not so, Mr Mustard had to nudge him on 27 October to reply. A reply did come on Sunday 30 October, as follows in sea-sick blue (teal!) and further comment by Mr Mustard in red
I think that to answer the above question/s about hall hire would be about 15 minutes work at most. Do you agree?
The information you requested does appear basic enough to obtain quickly however there will be factors I'm not aware of such as the number of records/invoices to search (the Council deals with many property matters) and officer prioritisation of workload/more urgent matters.
That's a yes then. 15 minutes work. I also don't have any idea about the council's procedures.
Firstly, I need to know if you counted the above request as 1, 3, 4 or 12 questions ?
The questions regarding hall hire were treated as one request as demonstrated in the list attached.
Fair enough.
Secondly, as you have used an average of 9 hours for a response time in order to arrive at your figure of £225 then, given that many questions were much quicker to answer than that, some must have taken more than 9 hours to answer. Please tell me which questions did take more than 9 hours to answer.We do not keep a record of the amount of time spent dealing with a request. The 'typical cost' figure of £225 is derived from research into the costs of FoI requests carried out by UCL.
No question, or set of, took 9 hours to answer so no question cost £225 to answer.
Please provide a list of all my 175 questions so that I can check them. See attached list.
Mr Mustard isn't going to burden you with the list but he did ask the 175 questions. Even though Mr Mustard numbers his requests in order the council didn't quote those numbers or get the list in the same date order.
It is a legal duty of the council to respond to Freedom of Information requests. I accept that I have sent in quite a few. That is necessary because the council is not open and transparent enough for my liking and the website is difficult to navigate. The response that you made, as reported by publicservice.co.uk implies that I should not have submitted so many requests because of the administrative burden it places on the council.
Do you think that I have done anything wrong ?
Members of the public are entitled to request information and I, of course, do not see anything wrong with that. I also see nothing wrong in publicising the costs of responding to such requests in the interests of transparency.
No! Good, you can expect many more requests when Mr Mustard has the free time. Please make sure that you don't identify Mr Mustard in the future.
The more information the Council can publish on a standard basis the less need there will be for FoI requests. This Council was one of the first to publish spending on items over £500. I gather in June you were invited to suggest areas to be added to our publication scheme but officers have not yet received a response.
Please see the previous blog post on this subject.
Mr Mustard felt that he & the situation had been misrepresented and so he emailed Cllr. Thomas today as follows :-
Dear Councillor Thomas
Thank you for your email of 30 October 2011 from which it is apparent that you simply cannot support the following made to www.publicservice.co.uk
"Thomas said one of the bloggers had submitted a total of 175 FoI requests between April and September of 2011. This meant a total nearing £40,000 was spent by the council responding to this one individual, based on a typical cost of £225 in dealing with each request"
Now I may have submitted 175 requests as per your attached list but the council hasn't answered 175. I have added a notes column. There are 9 that have been aggregated for cost purposes and then refused. The total cost to answer the 9 requests, counted as 140 line items, was estimated to be £1,400 which would make each individual line item £10 to answer if they had been answered ( and your £40,000 estimate was overstated by 9 * £225 = £2,205 ) .
2 questions were only answered today and so were late, as is often the case. At the time that you made your statement they had not cost the council anything to answer.
3 questions have been refused. ( £675 of your estimate not spent )
7 await an answer and are late. ( £1,575 of your estimate not spent )
I have not looked in detail at every line, I have just annotated the questions which sprang readily to mind.
There is no evidence that the typical cost of answering my requests is anything like £225 although there is evidence from the council itself that it isn't a typical cost.
In summary, both the number of items and the cost estimate are wrong and you should now issue a correction to www.publicservice.co.uk
Yours sincerely
Mr Mustard
Did this prompt an apology. No. This response arrived 17 minutes later and from this you can gather that the question of an apology has been given insufficient consideration.
Dear Mr Mustard,
Thank you for your observations and assumptions.
I disagree that requests not yet answered or where answers were refused have cost the Council 'nothing'. Requests currently worked on or refused still receive officer time.
Thank you for your feedback.
Regards,
Cllr Daniel Thomas
This reply talks about feedback. Mr Mustard did not give feedback. He asked for a correction to be sent to www.publicservice.co.uk - It has not been forthcoming. Mr Mustard has been misrepresented in the press and thinks the councillor is being churlish in his failure to acknowledge that the requests made did not cost anything like the £40,000 he stated without any substantiation whatsoever.
This standard of behaviour is below the one that we should receive from councillors, especially one who is the deputy leader.
If you think Cllr Thomas should correct the misleading impression then please email him on cllr.d.thomas@barnet.gov.uk and if you think Mr Mustard should drop the matter then please email him at mrmustard@zoho.com
I am writing regarding your request to the London Borough of Barnet (the Council) under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the FOIA) for access to the following:
- a list of all the posts that exist in order to implement the "One Barnet" project (previously "Future Shape") together with the salary range scale in money terms including any that have only just been recreated and are not yet filled.
- an organisational chart of the One Barnet Team
My response to your request is below.
Posts in existence for the implementation of ‘One Barnet’ together with salary range scale.
One Barnet Programme Manager £63,681 - £68,574
Project Manager x 6 £41,610 - £50,790
Assistant Project Manager £35,418 - £38,070
Business Support Officer x3 £29,601 - £31,761 3 Vacant
Please find attached an organisational chart for the One Barnet Team.
The 3 posts are vacant because they were only recently approved in a Delegated Powers Report ( 1321 ) on 26 April 2011.
What does this alternative One Barnet FC cost ? In round numbers, at mid-point salaries, about £472,000 and that is without adding national insurance and other overheads like office space & computers, which probably double the cost of this team.
Of course these 11 people cannot on their own cope with all of the projects that are ongoing and listed in the blog post One Barnet Framework #8 so the probable total team cost of about £1m p.a. doesn't come anywhere near explaining how much One Barnet costs. Reserves set aside for One Barnet in 2011/12 are £5,928,989 ( £6m would have been a moreless sensible figure for understanding of quantum - the spend cannot be predicted to £1 in £6m ! )
