Traffic wardens 67x/67y - proper novices

On 16 October in the Finchley Central CPZ Mr Mustard's client, let us call them Ms T, received a PCN at 10 in the morning on a single yellow line which starts at 2pm. Mr Mustard noticed that the traffic warden had a high badge number, 67x, where x is a number he is not going to tell you, and so Mr Mustard surmised that new traffic wardens were being sent out with inadequate training or supervision, or both. Mr Mustard lodged a complaint, the PCN was cancelled and the traffic warden given more 'guidance' whatever that is.

Roll forward to 23 November and the same thing happens again, a PCN given out by a different traffic warden 67y, where y is a number known only to Mr Mustard & his client, the same mistake at the same place by another newbie traffic warden who clearly needs the same guidance as the others.

Another complaint by Mr Mustard, another cancellation and a second letter of apology.

The additional training needs to be before the traffic wardens (CEO) are let loose on the street issuing real, painful, expensive PCNs.

There was of course no question but that the council would not pay compensation to Ms T. This is exactly the sort of case where compensation of a fixed sum, say 50% of the PCN value, should be paid as a matter of course.

Study your PCN very carefully if the issuing traffic warden has a badge number above 669.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Bye bye Barnet Council (as was)

NSCSO - BT & Capita

Cartoon by Tim Sanders

How committed are the bidders to Barnet Council staff? Here are their recent A4 flyers.

What do staff really want to know?

Will I have a job?

Will my job be moved out of Barnet?

Will my pay & pension be the same.

In BT's case there will be no compulsory redundancy for 2 years. There could be voluntary redundancy though. If you have 25 years of working life & mortgage left to go having 2 years guaranteed work isn't a great comfort. 

In the case of IT that is definitely going to South Tyneside so if you currently work on the helpdesk; goodbye to your current job! No mention of where everyone else's job is going. 

EC Harris offices are in the following locations. Who knows which one you will get sent to.

• Basildon
• Belfast
• Birmingham
• Bristol
• Cardiff
• Edinburgh
• Exeter
• Glasgow
• Hull
• Inverness
• Leeds
• Leicester
• Liverpool
• London (N1)
• Manchester
• Marlow
• Milton Keynes
• Newcastle
• Nottingham
• Sutton
• Teeside
• York

If you take a new post within BT your terms and conditions can change.

It is quite plausible that after 2 or 3 years as many services as possible will move off the NLBP site.

Do Capita offer any more comfort? 

Bid process update: We looked at sending jobs off-shore but it wouldn't save enough money so we won't do that. There is no guarantee that all the jobs won't be moved to anywhere else in the UK.

Expanding on our People Approach: Capita uphold TUPE - well, it is the law so no big deal and no great comfort either. There is nothing to stop you being made redundant after TUPE as the parking back office staff can tell you.

Confirmation of Commitments: This won't contain much.

Addressing Effective Delivery: Mr Mustard has already written about awards, they mean very little. Just because West Sussex have decided to sign a 10 year deal doesn't make it the best choice for Barnet.

These two leaflets are masterpieces in printing a lot of words and saying sod all.

(Feel free to email mrmustard@zoho.com with any information whatsoever about Barnet Council using a disposable email address to protect your identity if you wish.)

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

DRS - Staff view of the bidders

Doesn't really need any great further comment from Mr Mustard, the lack of trust by the staff in their potential new employers is obvious.

DRS - Evaluation of Meet the Bidders Presentation - ALL Questions Final

Outsourcing partly outsourced; what sauce!

BT or Crapita are going to bring home the bacon.

From: Schroder, Johnathan On Behalf Of onebarnet
Sent: 16 March 2012 12:23
To: onebarnet
Subject: NSCSO message


Dear colleague

The project team and the leads of the services have been busy preparing for the second stage of dialogue, which begins on 29 March, and will end in the autumn. Our Commercial Lead John Newton (he is a consultant) has designed the process that we will go through to develop a contract with both BT and Capita, and how all the different stakeholders will be involved in the discussions and contract development. Meanwhile our project manager Alison Woodcraft is busy working out what this means in practise (*tut tut, see below) and creating a detailed plan. Service leads have been focussing on refreshing the output specifications and data about each service for the secure online data room which will open next week for BT and Capita to read through. Service leads have also been developing the key performance indicator targets that bidders will need to meet in order to get a portion of their monthly payment (the balance which will be the overwhelming bulk they will get no matter how hideous their performance is).

You will all have now received your invites to one of the four ‘meet the bidder’ days (two for each organisation), and the project team is delighted with how many people have already signed up to one of the sessions. Both bidding organisations have been keen to meet with you for months, and from your response so far it is clear that you are also looking forward to meeting your potential employers face to face. The bidders are not at all keen to tell you where the service will be run from and that if you don't like the new location you will be kissed goodbye (without the pleasurable feeling though).

If you have not yet signed up, please do so by emailing NSCSO@barnet.gov.uk. Email through to that same address if you have any questions for BT prior to the day, as they have asked for questions to be sent in by staff. Please email them to us by 22 March.

The Q&As arising from the service business case briefings have now been finalised and can be found here. You can also find the business case presentation on the intranet and an update on the project so far, which went out to all staff via First Team.

If you have any other questions about the project, please feel free to get in touch. Don't ask us the future work location as we won't answer.

Kind regards

Kari

Kari Manovitch

Service Lead, New Support and Customer Service Organisation project, Commercial Services

How hard is a consultant going to look for flaws in an outsourcing project when he himself is a consultant? The outsourcing has been outsourced. It's just plain wrong. What did Warren Buffet say once "Don't ask the barber if you need a haircut".

* Now just for Johnathan Schroder. You have muddled up "practise" the verb and "practice" which is used as a noun and a verb.

So please repeat "I am a practising Christian" and

"The idea of putting the OneBarnet theories into practice is completely bonkers and will lead to financial meltdown."

Mr Mustard hopes that these two phrases will prevent you from making this mistake in the future.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard