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| Guess which box Mr Mustard thinks the council are in (no prize) |
Mr Mustard does to lots of council meetings. He reads lots of rubbish reports which should not have reached the committee. The committee pass them anyway even if they are utter tosh. Mr Mustard decided to do something about it. Here is what he wrote to the leader of the council and copied to very councillor so that they can be in no doubt of the standard he expects to see.
To make sense of it you need to see all the questions and answers from the meeting
and now what Mr Mustard wrote:
Committee
Room 1 - the Den of Incompetence
I expect you will recall Richard,
from Constitution Committee of 10 April, that I commented for 5 minutes upon
the disappointing way in which the previous meeting had been handled.
I also asked 29 questions as there
were that many points which required clarification in just 2 sections of the
constitution, the ones relating to procurement.
The conclusions I have drawn from
attending many meetings are:
1 Chairmen
are in too much of a rush.
2 Some
councillors make no input whatsoever
3 Not
all councillors read all of the papers in advance
4 Reports
are strewn with errors
My comment concluded with me
asking to see more and longer scrutiny meetings and self evident proof that
every councillor has thoroughly read the papers. The way in which I expected
that to be demonstrated was by councillors coming to committee meetings armed
with questions which they want answering and with the Chairman having gone
through the report before it is published so that all glaring errors and
inconsistencies are removed. There should be little left for the public to ask
about if reports are clear, concise and accurately written in plain English.
Now roll forward to Cabinet
Resources of 18 April 2013 and the situation was still dire.
I looked in detail only at the
CCTV item. The report had been prepared by James Mass, an iMpower consultant
who has been seconded to the council and for whom we are doubtless invoiced a
pretty penny.
I asked 9 questions and some need
further discussion.
Q1 The answer revealed that the numbering of the appendices was
incorrect. Seemingly no councillor attending had noticed this nor had any
officer or if they had they couldn't be bothered to do anything about it. Could
the reason possibly be that they don't read very carefully, if at all?
Q2 This answer is not exactly clear, accurate or helpful. The
document which has now been produced refers to an Options Appraisal undertaken
in November 2011 and is the very document I asked to see and should now be sent
to me please. The point of my question was to look at the thought process and
methodology at the earliest stage so I could see how we had got to where we
were. What the document produced shows me is that in procurement the council
allows the tail to wag the dog. The final question in the soft market testing
report asks the supplier what contract length they would find ideal. What the
council should be doing is deciding what length contract the council would find
ideal, probably the lifetime of the equipment, and telling the contractor that
is the contract period they can bid for. We are nowhere near out of the woods
with procurement disasters if this is the typical way of going on.
Q3 The answer should simply have been "No". In answer
to my supplementary question, Cllr Thomas had to admit that a one third
reduction in staffing was a possibility.
Q4 Councillors should have had this information made available to
them in the main report if they want to make considered decisions about
options. Now take a good look at the answer given in writing. I only had 2
minutes before the meeting to study these and prepare my supplementary
questions. A pity as the answer I have been given is wrong. You only have to
glance across the rows and then look at the total for the in-house option to
see that it is wrong. It jumped off the page at me today.
No councillor thought to ask why
the contingency for the in-house option was £346,385 and £zero for outsourcing.
Doesn't a contingency of £346,385 when spending a capital sum of about £947,000
(there is not a clear table of capital costs) strike you as a bit over the top?
It is 36% and seriously skews the options in favour of full outsourcing; anyone
would think that the report had been deliberately slanted that way with
in-house costs over-stated to make the in-house option look unattractive.
You will recall that Mr Mass said
that the extra £20,000 on consultancy was to pay an additional expert in
specifying the CCTV and setting it up. Surely if we are paying an expert
£20,000 we won't need a contingency of £346,385? Once that is taken out of the
equation and Table 4 is updated with the correct figure for implementation
costs it starts to look rather different, viz:
|
£
|
Out-source
|
Half
way
|
In-House
|
|
Transition
costs
|
215,250
|
215,250
|
322,875
|
|
Contingency
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
Income
|
(350,661)
|
(304,060)
|
(304,060)
|
|
Expenditure
|
6,577,821
|
6,881,390
|
6,552,547
|
|
TOTAL
|
6,442,410
|
6,792,580
|
6,571,362
|
|
CURRENT
COSTS
|
7,255,920
|
7,255,920
|
7,255,920
|
|
Implementation
costs
|
247,000
|
220,000
|
214,000
|
|
NET
(BENEFIT) / COST
|
(566,510)
|
(243,340)
|
(470,558)
|
A 1.5% saving (the difference
between projected outsourcing and in-house costs is only £96,000) does not seem
enough compensation for the loss of direct control, data security risk and loss
of flexibility which goes hand-in-hand with outsourcing.
The answer given by James Mass to
my supplementary question was that there were an extra £20,000 of consultancy
costs for the in-house option. Now go to page 56 of the report pack (page 18 of
the CCTV section) and read this "Option 3: 250,000 additional consultancy costs to
support specification of system".
No councillor spotted this £230,000 sized error and nor did any officer who
touched the report before it was issued. Sloppy work all round I would say.
Mr Mass is on secondment. Can we
send him back to iMpower because we don't seem to be getting value for money?
I consulted Mr Dix about this
report. This is what he had to say:
I don’t get the reason for the additional £107k transition costs
for the in-house team - it is counter intuitive and not supported by any clear
evidence. The contingency issue is fundamentally flawed because, subject to the
judicial review, Capita will be responsible for procurement and, if anything,
they claim to offer the best possible procurement opportunity because of their
centralised resources. As such there is absolutely no rational for the
contingency. They have also included £250k in option 3 expenditure for system
specification yet in the document they have specified exactly what they want.
Perhaps a small budget to fine tune the details but £250k seems completely out
of proportion. That is the balancing figure with the contingency and transition
costs that makes the in house option the least attractive instead of the most
attractive. Without a doubt this is the most biased and unsound analysis I have
seen and, based on the incorrect figures given at the CRC in reply to
questions, incompetent, on the basis that they can't add up. Richard Cornelius
should be utterly embarrassed that officers put out this flimsy business case
in the name of efficiency and best value.
Q9. Given that I showed that it might be possible to perform the
service Sussex style for about half the cost in-house I think that what
councillors should have done at CRC was to have asked for the Outline Business
Case to be updated with more accurate figures and have it brought back to the
meeting. Is it any wonder that the council ends up in so many judicial reviews
when it is so cavalier with the money of residents?
Summary
Now how can councillors be giving
due regard to their duties and value for money when they are galloped though an
agenda of 171 pages in 44 minutes flat. I wrote down the time from my mobile
phone that items 5, 6 & 7 were agreed at. They were all at 20:12
Item 8 at 20:14
Item 9 at 20:17 and so on.
You need to slow that Cllr Thomas
down and every councillor needs to start asking questions. The subject matter
is more important than an early dinner.
I will tell you this to your face
Richard but officers and consultants are incompetent, reports are riddled with
errors and councillors aren't doing the job that they get well rewarded for.
You all need to pull your socks up to the point where no member of the public,
in their spare time, can make you look to be such a blisteringly incompetent
shower. I do hope that the next report I study is 100% accurate.
Have a nice weekend.
Best regards
Mr Mustard
