Top Secret Board Meetings at Barnet Homes & Your Choice

Regular readers will recall the mantra of the Chief Operating Officer of Barnet Council that the default position of the council is to be open and transparent a phrase that gets thrust back at him every time the council fail to reveal or partially reveal something of interest. If a council was completely open and transparent there would be no need for bloggers to root around for information and Barnet is a hotbed of bloggers (and activists) which tells you all you need to know about the actual transparency achieved, or not, by the council.

Barnet Council owns 100% of the Barnet Group, an umbrella body created to hold shareholdings on its behalf in Barnet Homes (who "manage" all of the council's social housing stock) and Your Choice (a misnomer of a company) for providing vital social care and which thinks the best way to balance its is to cut the pay of its not highly paid workforce by originally 9.5% and now 8.31% (both of which threatened cuts have led to ballots for strike action which have had votes in favour of 90%) rather than charge the council the actual cost of the services provided.

Anyway, whilst Mr Mustard was thrashing about their dire websites he came across two Board meetings which he hadn't seen advertised anywhere so, rarely for him nowadays, he fired off a simple Freedom of Information request in the full expectation of a refusal. Here it is with the answer which was provided in 22 calendar days (Mr Mustard told Barnet homes off for always replying on working day 20 in the past and they have decided not to delay this time)

Good afternoon Mr Mustard

Thank you for your request for information received on 2 July 2014, under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the Act”). I set out your request and Barnet Homes’ response as follows:

Please provide the following details for the Board Meetings of 18 December 13 (Barnet Homes) and 16 January 14 (Your Choice)

- the email or other notice in which notice invited persons were notified of the meetings
- names of persons invited
- any notice given to the public
- the agendas
- the minutes


The meetings held on 18 December 2013 and 16 January 2014 were both confidential meetings and therefore only the Board Members and appropriate officers were invited. In view of the fact that they were confidential meetings we did not issue any notices and there are no agendas or minutes available for public release.

The items discussed are exempt from publication under categories 2 and 3 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972. This is because the report refers to information that is likely to reveal the identity of an individual and/or Information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person.

In addition, the information about this meeting is withheld because it is considered that the absolute exemption under Section 40 (2) of the FOI Act applies to it.

In doing so, Barnet Homes is relying on the absolute exemption set out in section 40 (2) of the Act in regards to information that constitute personal data. We have applied the exemption because of the condition set out in Section 40(3)(a)(i) of the Act concerning data protection principles as stated in the Data Protection Act 1998.

I hope you find the information above useful.

How the Dickens could a lack of information be useful?

Mr Mustard notes the complete failure to issue any public notices of the upcoming meetings (these are private companies although ultimately council owned). Should the position have been that the meetings were advertised, the public could have attended and then as soon as the meeting opened it went into private session and the public were excluded?

Should the agenda have been published with the substance of the item to be discussed written without any personal data within it?

Should the names of the actual Board members who were invited have been released? The response says "the Board Members" but was the whole Board invited? how do we know?

Shouldn't the names of senior officers who attended be released?

Shouldn't there still be minutes showing the start and finish times, the matters discussed (without personal data) & any votes or decisions taken?

Should councils be allowed to hide things by the expedient of having wholly owned private companies?

Should I ask for a review or let the matter rest? Would suitable experts please comment below.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

CADDSS aim at cads aka Barnet Council's ALMO Your Choice / No choice

How big is the loss - Your Choice!

The point of asking questions at full Council meetings probably isn't to get answers as just like at committee meetings the answer is something that the questioner has no control over. It was Brian Coleman (quiet at the moment isn't he) who told a questioner you may not like the answer but it is the answer. The knack is to carefully phrase your question to allow no wriggle room and to have a killer follow-up question ready. Here is a recent question which Mr Mustard decided to explore further as he felt the answer was a bit woolly:

Mr Mustard doesn't suppose you are much clearer now? The year in question is the one ended 31 March 2013 in case you were wondering.

So let us go back to 2011 when the idea of putting the social care services into a Local Authority Trading Company was a twinkle in someone's eye. Here are some budgets from 2011 from the "original Business Case".

So you can see that after 4 years of trading Your Choice would still be loss-making.

That must have displeased someone because the numbers got sexed up a bit and by the time they were agreed by Cabinet Resources Committee in February 2012 they looked like this:

Now those projections are whole lot better aren't they? The trouble is they are only on paper and evidently pie in the sky. A projected profit being made of more than 10% in year 2015/16 out of the most vulnerable people in society. What sort of council has been elected in Barnet? Aren't they there to provide a safety net for the vulnerable using the resources given by the better off and the working well? Mr Mustard can't see any excuse for the projections being massively out as this is not a new venture just a spin-off from the council and all the historic financial records would surely be in the "wonderful" SAP system or in spreadsheets kept by managers.

The above two sets of figures were from the 14 February 12 board meeting of Your Choice. The next set are from the 12 September 12 meeting. The board meetings are public. You can just turn up at Barnet House at 6pm although Your Choice weren't very welcoming when Mrs Angry and friends turned up for the last one. The next one is on 22 May 13 at 6pm. Do please go along and support any bloggers and carers who just might be there. Barnet House is the old Ever Ready building in the High Rd at the junction of Totteridge Lane, N20. Ignore the suggestion on the Your Choice website to phone first as it isn't as if they provide a buffet and need to sort out the catering arrangements; it is a public meeting which means anyone can wander in off the street without notice.

As ever Mr Mustard finds fault with the figures but only because they are toffee. In para 5.1 it says the loss is £19,000 and in para 5.6 it says it is £58,000 - only one of those figures can be correct. Whichever is correct is is unsurprising that a start-up company is in loss. Mr Mustard wonders if sufficient regard was given to transition costs. On the new arrangements for cctv that are currently being discussed transition costs are more than £200,000 and implementation costs are also over £200,000 and together for the in-house option they come to £556,000 just to replace a few cameras, nothing like as complicated as services to disabled residents.

So here we go with a summary of what year end profits or losses we have been presented with during the last 2 years, profits in black and losses in red. Then you will have to decide for yourself what you believe. The early numbers should have been rounded to the nearest thousand as you can't predict the future to the nearest pound.

Year to March 2013	Profit £
Original business case	282,260
February 2012 minutes	85,337
September 2012 minutes	-229,000
Senior managers	-209,000
Rajput	-60,000

Mr Mustard will hunt down the final position and let you know what it is.

On Thursday 25 April at 7 pm (Greek Cypriot Centre, 2 Brittania Rd, London, N12 9RU with free parking in the road at that time) is the first organising meeting in regard to Your Choice and the significant issues it raises for people with disabilities in our borough. Do go along if you are interested.

If you enjoyed this blog you should also read what Roger has got to say over at the Barnet Eye.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard