The Council create extra FOI requests

Budget and Performance Overview and Scrutiny Committee 24 April 2012

and they also don't seem to be able to quickly respond to a simple enquiry about One Barnet.

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-----Original Message-----

From: Mr Mustard

Sent: 21 June 2012 11:24

To: Gowan, Ed

cc: Travers, Andrew

Subject: One Barnet Programme Highlight Report presented to B&P O&S Committee on 24 April 2012. ( my ref #1308)

Dear Mr Gowan

I refer to the final page of your report headed "Programme Savings"

Can you please tell me why the figures for 2010/11 are still provisional at this stage some 15 months after that council year finished.

Please can you give me a breakdown by council tax year of the total Base Budget Savings to date of £5.82m

Yours sincerely

Mr Mustard

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Dear Mr Mustard

Thank you for your email. We will now respond with the information you request in line with the Freedom of Information Act.

To this end, I am passing your enquiry to our Freedom of Information link officer, Mohsin Abbasi, who will lead on the collection of the data you request.

Yours sincerely,

Ed Gowan
Assistant Director, Commercial Services
London Borough of Barnet, North London Business Park, Oakleigh Road South, London N11 1NP
Tel: 020 8359 4346

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What Mr Mustard guesses is the case is that the heading on page 35 was wrong, it had been brought forward from the previous year's report and no-one involved in the production of the report noticed. Let's see if the officer can bear to use the word mistake, as in "I made a mistake". 

The next action illustrates all that is wrong with the council.

The AD for commercial transformation should know off by heart all of the main One Barnet numbers as if not he simply isn't worth employing at that level. The answer to Mr Mustard's question is almost certainly in the top secret Appendix 1 and if that had not been classified as it has when it contains figures that every resident has a right to see Mr Mustard would not have needed to make his enquiry. Mr Gowan could simply have looked up the answer to Mr Mustard's question in 5 or 10 minutes and with a quick bit of cut and paste sent a reply. Oh no, far too easy to spend 5 minutes doing some work, instead, he delegates the task to a fairly junior staff member whose replies Mr Mustard has not found entirely satisfactory in the past. 

Even more ridiculous is that what should be a simple piece of correspondence that could have been handled in 10 minutes although 10 days is allowed for correspondence has not been turned into an FOI request by the council (don't count this as one of Mr Mustard's requests) which gives them up to 20 days to answer and has to go through the FOI management software and take up the case of the 3 main FOI officers who have enough to do as it is. 

Not only is the council bureaucratic, it creates bureaucracy at the drop of a simple question.

Cllr Rayner wouldn't utter the word Stupid the other evening. It isn't a problem Hugh ( you did introduce yourself to Mr Mustard as Hugh I believe, Mr Mustard does not like to be overly familiar ) as you were referring to the well known KISS principle where stupid doesn't really mean stupid.

KISS = keep it simple stupid

a management philosophy that isn't coming to Barnet Council anytime soon.

Whilst we are on the subject of simple (no Mr Mustard isn't going to talk about councillors, you are so naughty Mrs Angry) there is another outstanding request of Mr Mustard's which has not been actioned since this email of 29 July 2011

Dear Mr Mustard

Apologies for the lack of a response, not least as I am broadly supportive of your suggestion.

I have discussed this matter with the Leader of the Council and intend to bring forward proposals as to how the Council will work to meet Plain English standards.

I note there is a cost of becoming a corporate member of the Plain English campaign and the Council will therefore need to consider the most cost effective way of achieving the standard.

Kind regards

Nick Walkley
Chief Executive

£9.2m can be found for the One Barnet programme, the Plain English campaign would more than pay for itself in time and paper savings yet has not been introduced, although of course OneBarnetspeak and Plain English are mutually exclusive which may have been the real problem.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Mr Mustard's musings #1 - Plain English

Readers might have gained the understandable impression that all he ever does is criticise Barnet Council. It is not true. Mr Mustard also sends his musings to councillors in advance of committee meetings so that they are aware of what at least one resident thinks. It is no good telling them after the meeting, that is too late. Mr Mustard also writes to officers with suggestions for saving money ( Mr Mustard is a great saver ), improving performance or changing things that seem to be simply wrong.

Mr Mustard has become bored with the language of council documents, although he still reads them closely, as they are both verbose and obtuse. He took a look around London and found that the following councils have all signed up to use Plain English:

Barking

Camden

Croydon

Hackney

Hammersmith

Havering

Hounslow

Tower Hamlets

Waltham Forest

Mr Mustard therefore wrote to the Chief Executive, Nick Walkley, suggesting that Barnet do the same.

Mr Walkley has now written back to say:

"I am broadly supportive of your suggestion.

I have discussed this matter with the Leader of the Council and intend to bring forward proposals as to how the Council will work to meet Plain English standards. 

I note there is a cost of becoming a corporate member of the Plain English campaign and the Council will therefore need to consider the most cost effective way of achieving the standard.

Kind regards

Nick Walkley
Chief Executive"

Mr Mustard has thanked Mr Walkley for his reply and suggested that the saving by making all reports 10% shorter would be several £thousands a year and so Plain English might be self financing. Barnet Council purchased over 18,000 reams of A4 paper last year.

Mr Mustard also sees that he tried to enlist the support of his ward councillors on the same issue. Councillors Perry & Prentice performed to their usual standard - they did not reply. Councillor Longstaff sent the following email

"I'm all for plain English.

Do you have a particular example I could see?

Regards,

Cllr. David Longstaff"

Well your own recent email to Mr Mustard is a good example councillor ( see Was it something I said). Nothing could have been plainer. Well done.

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Mr Mustard thought he would have a look at last night's report of the rocket propelled Cabinet Resources Committee (CRC). The meeting occupied less time than it took to drive there from High Barnet. Mr Mustard looked at the proposal to sell Church Farmhouse as it says on page 25 of the report pack. On page 26 it is called Church Farm Museum ( sic) & on the map on page 29 it is called Church Farm House Museum. The usual lack of attention to detail was evident. One small point; it cannot now be described as a museum; former museum is the best/worst you can use.

The report could have been shortened to paragraphs 1.1 to 1.3 as the matter only took 3 minutes of committee time. If you have 22 minutes free you can watch the entire meeting as recorded by the Barnet Bugle and Mrs Angry has just posted her report.

Mr Mustard then looked at a sample paragraph to see if he could simplify it. He chose this one.

9.2 The property is bordered to the east with residential uses, the north by Sunny Hill Park, to the west by a Public House and Hendon St Mary Parish Church, to the south Greyhound Hill Road. The site is located on the north side of Greyhound Hill at its junction with Church End. The site is some 0.6 miles from Hendon Central tube station.

Oh dear. Look at the map ( and given the existence of the map this paragraph could have been deleted so that would be a 100% saving on that paragraph ) the residential use to which the report refers is 12/14 Greyhound Hill which are to the west of the site. The public house is to the east. It is the Greyhound, a Young's house, and excellent it is too as the bloggers resources committee which took place there yesterday evening can confirm. That took a lot longer than the CRC. The Church is also to the east. 

It is 0.6 miles from Hendon Central tube station if you can fly; otherwise it is nearly a mile. Barnet Council are turning into estate agents. Sorry to insult you with such a comparison estate agents.

Mr Mustard has continued doubts that councillors read the agenda papers as surely if they did they would have picked up these sloppy errors and mentioned them at the meeting or beforehand and had the record corrected for the benefit of all.

Be assured readers that there are still plenty of examples of profligate waste to come. Mr Mustard has not gone soft. He does try to be even-handed.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

One Barnet - One Voice - The Style Council

The Style Council

Lyrics of You're the best thing that ever happened to me.

You're the best thing that ever happened to me or my world
You're the best thing that ever happened, so don't go away

and then of course there is Barnet Council ! 

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Mr Mustard came across another interesting item in the disclosure log. It is the Text style standards of Barnet Council. Here it is:

click & click again to enlarge then back to return

So Mr Mustard's naughty co-director said it must therefore be OK to write to a resident and tell them to 'Eff orf as long as it is correctly styled !

What makes Mr Mustard think this document has not been updated for a while? Perhaps its the references to Leo Boland, Mike Freer, Tony Blair, the Labour Government, Nick Walkley as Director of Resources? and the € not being used.

I am sure quite a few readers will have something to say about the guidance; Mr Mustard does not like the guidance under Numbers - "Nine and 10 year old horses" just looks all wrong to him. Please add your own comments at the bottom about any of the style advice.

Mr Mustard found this to be the most useful piece of advice: 

"Plain English - Try to write in Plain English at all times. Imagine you are writing for an audience of 12-year-olds and only include words they would understand". 

Why does Mr Mustard think that no-one at Barnet Council has read this document? If you are a new employee at Barnet Council, did this document feature in your induction programme? Do tell. Not a single report to committee that Mr Mustard has read nor any delegated powers report has ever been written in language that a 12 year old could understand. Let us take the example that Mr Mustard's fellow blogger vickim57 has recently written about, Church Farmhouse Museum. This is what the report to committee says:-

The Corporate Plan 2010-2013 commits the Council to delivering ‘Better services with less money’. A key principle of the medium term financial strategy is to continually review the use of Council assets so as to reduce the cost of accommodation year on year and to obtain best consideration for any surplus assets to maximise funds for capital investment and/or the repayment of capital debt. The sale of the Church Farmhouse would provide a capital receipt which would support the Council’s priorities and bring this currently unused area of land back into use.

In Plain English that is "We are flogging off the family silver"

And from the Barnet Bugle website this epic sentence from Kate Kennally ( paid £145,000 p.a. and doubtless worth every penny if not every word ) 

"Throughout this process we have been in contact with services users advising them in advance of any changes to their contribution, requesting further information where appropriate and undertaking reviews of service users contributions and care packages when requested or queries have been raised. 

221 home visits have been undertaken by our visiting officers who provide support to individuals in the completion of the financial assessment form and ensure that a person’s benefits are maximised."

So that is a 43 word sentence, hardly what one would call short. Can you find a longer one from Barnet Council? Mr Mustard feels sure that you can. Will the longest sentence have 100 or more words in it? 

Mr Mustard also notices that Ms Kennally started the second sentence with a number thus breaching the advice to "Never begin a sentence with a number".

Mr Mustard also observes that in her email Ms Kennally refers to the subject group of her emails as : "People" "Service Users" "Individual" and "Person". How confusing is that when they are all the same?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard