Helping the mentally or physically ill, the elderly & the poor to fight Council PCNs.
Writing about blunders, democracy and profligacy at Barnet Council.
Mr Mustard receives a pension from the London Stock Exchange. It is only a modest sum, not even enough to keep him in red wine, but he still likes to receive it in the correct sum and on time. Today in his post he received a long letter which offered him no comfort whatsoever. Here are some snippets:
Oh dear. Mercer never put a foot wrong so why change them to a notorious supplier?
Mr Mustard doubts that there will be faster response times from a company who had to negotiate a KPI of 20 seconds to answer the phone up to 60 seconds which they still couldn't manage on behalf of Barnet Council.
So why did you choose Capita? Were they cheaper and did they promise the earth?
Someone will regret writing this puff piece later on.
We have immediately taken a retrograde service step. Why wasn't this in the contract to be in place from day 1 if Capita are so wonderful?
Translation: We are easily impressed and don't read newspapers or Private Eye.
Mr Mustard confidently expects the change of tax office to be less than smooth.
Mr Mustard isn't all that prone to using bad language and hence he has resorted to the use of the $ symbol in the blog title.
Words do pretty much fail him though that a local authority could take a PCN all the way to adjudication (note the time and cost of sending a council representative to a personal hearing) when the motorist has suffered a personal catastrophe arising out of his medical state. Councils think that parking is more important than life and death; they are wrong. We really do need a body which supervises their day to day decisions and makes them behave more reasonably.
Full marks to the adjudicator, Mr Martin Hoare, who is obliged to apply the law, and found a way to do so to the benefit of the motorist.
Normally Mr Mustard wouldn't give you a complete article from Private Eye but merely a teaser and tell you to buy the magazine but he is so slow at reading this fortnight, thanks to having to mop up so many glaring errors made by NSL in the Barnet parking contract that it was only yesterday that he found out that NSL's outstanding customer service in the patient transport area looks, if Private Eye is to be believed and it usually is, to be outstandingly bad.
Why is Mr Mustard not surprised?
Why oh why were they chosen to issue parking tickets by Barnet Council?
Anyway that was issue 1373, 22 August to 4 September, so there must be another out already which is probably lost under a sea of parking tickets. It is a bargain £1.50, contains more than you can read in a fortnight and brings you real stories. Why not subscribe and then you can write to the letters page cancelling your subscription, not.
Mr Mustard works from home and so many neighbours have their parcels delivered to Mustard Mansions. Delivery drivers and the postman are so well acquainted with Mustard Mansions that they also go straight to Mr Mustard if a signature is needed and the intended recipient is out. So it was no surprise yesterday when, after having already delivered Mr Mustard's post (which included a PCN evidence pack of 100 pages that was in a cheap standard weight envelope that was splitting, come on NSL you could spend a few pounds on reinforced envelopes) the postman knocked 2 minutes later and Mr Mustard signed for an envelope that was post-marked Coventry. Ah, said Mr Mustard, that will be parking vouchers or a permit; I wondered, said the postman, as there are lots of them today. Perhaps Capita have now started to work through the backlog of permit applications.
Having paid Capita the substantial sum of £16.1m for investment in computer hardware the least we can expect is state of the art permit / voucher software and a same day turnaround? You would think so but Mr Mustard can reveal that the capital investment that has been made in the permit system, and he had to sneak into the Coventry office of Capita to get this exclusive photograph, is this:
The price of biros has evidently increased markedly.
Mr Mustard really did expect more for his £16.1m Here is part of the address (mustn't breach the neighbour's data rights)
There isn't, of course, a Camarvon Rd in the London Borough of Barnet or even in the country, the road is called Carnarvon Rd. A local employee would probably have known this, a Coventry based one won't and this is part of what you lose when you deal with somewhere 100 miles away (Mr Mustard has nothing against Coventry per se but would prefer to retain local employment and knowledge).
We might be within the London Borough of Barnet and have an outer London phone number but we have an Enfield postcode and Hertfordshire is our postal county so to write London on this envelope was just plain wrong.
I can't show you the name but that had a single letter where a double was required.
So, a mere 3 errors in 4 lines. Remind Mr Mustard why Private Eye call Capita "Crapita".
Finally, Mr Mustard may not be being entirely fair. Maybe we did get more for our money than this lousy biro,
The Swiss Chalet, Church Passage, Chipping Barnet, 4 April 14
With due deference to Private Eye Mr Mustard brings you the Order of the Brown Nose (OBN) which makes nauseating appearances at every full council meeting and is it any wonder that the average member of the public takes no part in civic affairs? Luckily, Mr Mustard is otherwise occupied this Tuesday evening, playing snooker so that then he doesn't have to listen to sycophantic questions from the Conservative councillors who haven't otherwise been heard or to condescending and dismissive answers to opposition questions.
Look at this OBN one:
Question 73 Councillor Lisa Rutter
Does the Cabinet Member agree that the transition of our planning function to Capita seems to have gone very smoothly? (appearances can be deceptive)
Did she manage to write this all by herself or was it suggested to her. Actually probably all by herself as it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. The planning function of Barnet Council has not officially been transitioned to Capita, although it might have been in practice, but, according to the council website moved to the rather stupidly named Re (Regional Enterprise) Ltd (the abbreviation Re being so capable of misunderstanding that it has to be spelt out inside parentheses) which company has 99 shares of which 50 are held by Capita Symonds and the other 49 by Barnet (Holdings) Ltd on behalf of the Council, the Directors are Richard Cornelius and Andrew (Black Hole) Travers.
Answer by Councillor Joanna Tambourides:
Yes, the transition has been very smooth. In particular, the Planning Department has continued to maintain its high performance when making planning decisions and is now in the top four Local Planning Authorities in London (34 planning authorities in London) for speed of decision making (based on Communities and Local Government performance tables).
There has also been an extension to the scope of enforcement actions taken, in so far as, a number of direct planning enforcement actions have been taken against unauthorised development, subject to enforcement notices, where illegal developments have been physically removed by contractors employed by the Council (some of these actions were against “beds in sheds”).
The Planning Service has also been able to accelerate delivery of the Council’s regeneration and major developments programme. Now let us look at what has happened on the ground. A property developer decided to make inappropriate changes to a building inside the conservation zone. There were howls of protests from locals who like their area as it is, including from the Barnet Society. The matter ended up with the planning inspector at Bristol who decided the building should be restored to its former state. Such a simple decision to implement.
Except that Barnet Planning can't seem to manage to, or don't want to, enforce the decision.
Instead of the straight removal we have this from the principal planning enforcement officer (who seems to be principal but not sufficiently principled)
As far as I understand a smooth render will be applied to the boards now in place. Other than there being a smooth rather than rough render the external appearance should be as previous. If the gaps in the boards are patently obvious or there is an uneasy relationship between neighbouring properties the owner will be asked to rethink. Essentially we would like this building to be rather inconspicuous so as not to compete with the old library or church, if this is achieved we might be able to overlook some variation from the previous form.
No, no, no. Put it back as it was. No shilly shallying. The planning inspector said to put it back as it was not something like it used to be. Like this.
credit: Barnet Society
No ifs, no buts, exactly as it was before the illegal works commenced. It is our town (Mr Mustard is a resident of High/Chipping Barnet and looked at this view out of his office window for 20 years).Listen to the Barnet Society who are trying to keep it as it should be.
Mr Mustard sat through the entire JR proceedings and had predicted the result. Mr Mustard was very impressed with the Judge, who certainly isn't anything like the Judge Cocklecarrot of Private Eye fame. The result is a different matter but justice is a fickle beast.
The council have issued some of their standard flummery but an organisation with 3,000+ employees and annual revenues of £900m really shouldn't be going around not consulting with the disabled, whom they are meant to help, and mouthing off at what the process has cost. It is the price of democracy Richard (Cornelius) and Mr Mustard is sure it was not money well spent by the council. The cost of consultation would have been far lower and you didn't do it because you were doubtless afraid that the answer would be the opposite of what you were planning?
What were the chances of winning? The answer is in the Guardian here and shows us that it is rare indeed for a JR to succeed. In 2011 out of 2,213 (non criminal and non asylum) applications for Judicial Review only 527 were allowed to proceed. Of those just 87 were found in favour of the applicant and so that is a mere 4% of the applications make it across the winning line. Mr Mustard does believe he has heard Cllr Thomas saying how the council had so far won two JR as if this was a fantastic feat by the council and was a ringing endorsement of everything they have done. Mr Mustard wonders if anyone told him that succesfully defending a JR is the norm? Winning a JR is nothing for a council to be proud of, the opposite in fact as no-one puts themselves through the stress for nothing and the standard of decision-making is pretty poor if a hearing is granted.
Mr Mustard has picked out a few snippets for you in case you don't want to read the entire judgment (and they are always hard work).
"Opponents....believe that private-sector organisations cannot evince the public service ethos which is so important in the delivery of the Council's service" (well said Judge Underhill).
"I will also follow the preferred usage of local authorities, though arguably it is not very apt, of describing the other party to an outsourcing arrangement as a 'partner'." (Bang on the money again)
"I am bound to say that I did not find this statement very helpfully structured or written." (This was in relation to a statement by Craig Cooper although he won't have written it all. His i.e. the council's, legal advisers must take most of the blame for this criticism)
The judge quoted from a 2008 Future Shape report. "Fundamentally, the Council should conduct those activities that only the Council can." (That wouldn't leave much).
"this is on any view outsourcing on a very large scale" (masterly understatement from the Judge who is very sharp).
"... the decision to outsource the functions.....have been controversial since they were first proposed."
"The reference to 'contracts with service providers' could be a reference to outsourcing, though it hardly leaps from the page"
"there is no real dispute that it did not constitute consultation about outsourcing as such."
"it is clear in the present case the Council did not make any attempt to consult on the specific question of whether the functions and services covered by the NSCSO and DRS contracts should be outsourced."
"Because here the Council never set out to consult about its outsourcing programme at all, the present case is not a good occasion to offer guidance on the form that such a consultation might have taken. The essential is simply that the representatives should have been given the opportunity to express views or concerns about outsourcing the functions or services in question..."
"It follows that if the application for judicial review had been made in time I would have held that the Council had not complied with its obligations under section 3(2) of the 199 Act in respect of the decisions taken in 2010/11 to outsource the performance of its functions and services, covered by the NSCSO and DRS contracts."
and now contrast what the judge had to say with what Amardeep Gill of Trowers & Hamlins had to say at the Business Management Overview & Scrutiny Committee of 13 December 2012. Mr Mustard has learnt how to fast forward to 07:45 as that is where it gets interesting.
Supposedly all statutory requirements have been adhered to. If Mr Mustard was buying legal advice for a local authority he would start looking around for a choice of legal advisors.
Round 2 is yet to come if leave to appeal is granted. We'll see.
Mr Mustard doesn't watch live TV, he doesn't own a TV set and any TV he does watch is on iPlayer or on the TV of friends - he did catch a lovely programme about the preservation of steam trains yesterday evening (don't be surprised) after he had carried out a parking ticket consultation for a resident who is in front of PATAS later this week.
Mr Mustard now realises that he met a Capita employee a few months ago as, having shredded unopened a score of TV licensing letters, the inevitable visit from a doorstep enquiry agent arrived. There was at the time a notice on Mr Mustard's door saying that he didn't need a TV licence and that callers without an appointment should go away, as Mr Mustard does have a business to run and constant interruptions for people who work from home cost money. Needless to say the poor Capita employee knocked and was told simply to read the sign and then go away. They did. (If this employee happens to be reading - it wasn't personal, but Mr Mustard questions the wisdom of a system which starts from the premise that everyone is trying to wrongly avoid buying a licence they don't need. Mr Mustard doesn't have a pilot's licence either but no-one ever writes to him about that.)
So this week is Crapita week for Barnet Bloggers - so nice to have a theme although the Friern Barnet library story is hot this week (read all about it on Mrs Angry's blog or on The Barnet Eye, see the sidebar to the left).
The choice of blogs that one could write about Capita, or Crapita as Private Eye have named them, and which for the heading Mr Mustard has given a French twist, that being the language he has himself studied for the last 20 years, would actually fill a year and in late 2013 Mr Mustard predicts, the Barnet blogs will be full of tales of woe about Capita, with them being explained away by the council as teething troubles. One would think that a company turning over £billions would have learnt by now how to implement change without having to go through trial and error at our expense. Anyway, the story that appealed to Mr Mustard was the one about the Court interpreting service which he has been following in Private Eye all year.
Mr Mustard will let you read about the background elsewhere from other articles.
Most shocking of all, however, was the finding that some of the MoJ
staff understood that ALS would be unable to comply with the mandatory
quality requirement of the contract in time for the ‘go live’ date, and
therefore “agreed with ALS in December 2011 that, on a temporary basis,
un-assessed and unmarked interpreters could be used in the justice
system as a last resort.”
What is the point of entering into a Contract on commercial terms and then allowing a variation without a commensurate reduction in price. Mr Mustard does not want to see this in Barnet but expects that he will as Mr Mustard doesn't trust senior officers to buy a paperclip without overpaying.
Next up, the Law Society Gazette on 30 October 12. From that we have the "it's not our fault defence" which is usually used, In Mr Mustard's experience of commercial dispute, as a water muddying device. It looks like it didn't wash with Margaret Hodge MP and the rest of the committee. You can see from this report that the company was given a Notice to improve. This simply gives a failing company the time they need to sort themselves out. If you want action you have to withhold payment for services not supplied and have proper penalties in the contract so that failure hurts the provider more than it hurts the customer. Will Barnet Council have any such penalties in the NSCSO contract? No, only 8% of fees are at risk for failure to meet KPI. Big deal, less than the profit margin on the contract.
Finally from the Evening Standard of last Friday, a report of a risible (laughable) fine of £2,200 for "total chaos". Far too many contracts are written in a one-sided manner and given that none of our Cabinet have admitted to reading any of the 2,500 pages (the latest estimate of how many there actually are in the Contract) as none of them answered Mr Mustard's email asking how many pages they had read or intended to read, and our council "leader" Richard Cornelius doesn't even see the need to read it they won't know until too late how little protection has been negotiated for them.
Look forward with trepidation to Barnet Council and Crapita appearing in Private Eye, local and national newspapers next year when the latest chaos hits us.
In the last fortnightly issue of Private Eye, which Pam Wharfe, the interim Director of who knows what, purchased only a week after the previous issue (note to employees in EPR, if you want a fortnight's holiday, just book one week and come back after two as Pam Wharfe's latest email about the JV shows she doesn't know a week from a fortnight) Mr Mustard turned straight to the Rotten Boroughs page as Barnet Council appear so often. Sadly, there are so many rotten councils that you need a top drawer story to get on the page (it says a lot for democracy and the abuse of power that Private Eye don't ever struggle to find enough stories to fill an entire page) and Barnet Council avoided further ignominy this week and were rather busy with the JV or not to JV issue.
Anyway, opposite Rotten Boroughs in issue 1321 is Medicine Balls which are also a good read and not just for the medically qualified. You doubtless have your own copy (and if not, why not?, it is only £1.50) but just in case you have put it down somewhere or lent it to a friend here is the Medicine Balls article, sub-titled "Imbalance sheets" which includes a reference to Barnet:
Nowhere is ropey NHS financial management more in evidence than at the Croydon Primary Care Trust.
All looked well when the trust's 2010/11 accounts were signed off with a healthy £5.5m surplus. Except it wasn't, as whistleblowers pointed out. In fact the trust's books were a shambles representing a particularly poorly run Christmas club. A recent review from accountants Ernst & Young listed errors such as "invoices being held off-ledger and credit notes being posted without being matched to invoices" - big no-nos for any bookkeeping, never mind public finances.
The result was that "the true underlying financial performance of NHS Croydon...was not accurately reported to the Department of Health". The trust is now thought to be facing a £45m shortfall.
The dodgy accounting continued undetected for reasons including a lack of "scrutiny and challenge by the board" and "significant deficiencies in the financial management arrangements and operational control environment". Which might be thought bad news for the chief executive who had been in charge for eight years, Caroline Taylor.
Not a bit of it though. She has moved on to better things across the Thames and is now chief executive of NHS North Central London, in charge of healthcare across Haringey, Enfield, Barnet, Camden and Islington.
Barnet Council, in line with all others, now have a greater role in healthcare so at some point she will come across our Chief Financial Officer, Andrew "black hole" Travers. It looks like the two of them will get along fabulously.
Update for ruling Barnet Councillors - " a lack of scrutiny and challenge" could well describe your level of interestand/or involvement in the One Barnet programme. What if those figures are also £50m out?
A warm hello to our friends in Cheshire West & Cheshire (Dickheads! - language Timothy - oh no, it was Mike)
and in Carmarthenshire, who currently beat (nicely, with a rolled up copy of Private Eye!) us in the most appearances in Private Eye, although Mrs Angry is expecting the Police helicopter to drop in overnight which will be an arrest to make that of Jacqui Thompson look a bit tame.
Also in Private Eye today (thanks to our local electricity supplier cutting off the power without warning Mr Mustard is still up at 1am rebooting computer servers and workstations) David Potts in South Tyneside (always good for a laugh)
Kirklees Council who are having more trouble with their cemetery than we are faced with
Edinburgh where you have to walk because the trams are years behind schedule
and Hounslow where independent members of the standards committee have resigned en masse.
Only £1.50 a fortnight and worth every penny.
Please buy Private Eye and not just because Mrs Angry, Mr Reasonable and Mr Mustard are in it (although that does make it something of a collector's item in Barnet).
although he is not quite as gluttonous as Mr Creosote.
How much do you have to pay for a good dinner? Well, one of Mr Mustard's favourite local restaurants is Chez Tonton which has been serving fine French food in Barnet since the late 80s.
If you visit mid-week you get the benefit of the fixed price menu which is a bargain £17.95 for 3 courses. Mr Mustard always skips the garlic bread which is offered whilst you choose your dishes as otherwise he finds he doesn't have room for coffee and a wafer thin mint at the end of the meal (glass of port more likely - Ed). Even with a gin and tonic to kick off, a bottle of wine each and a glass of port to finish you will struggle to pass the £50 a head marker. That is as good a dinner as you need of an evening.
Now what does give Mr Mustard indigestion is an average meal at an elevated price. Meals in Park Lane hotels come into this category. As it happens Mr Mustard was one of the team that helped to sort out a Park Lane hotel which the bank foreclosed on. He didn't know until then that rather than there being a whole battery of chefs in the kitchen cooking fresh food for you, the dinner is often bought in with maybe just the pre-prepared vegetables being cooked from raw on-site. Your starter, main and dessert may all come from different suppliers of pre-prepared food. You might as well get a ready meal from Waitrose. Not only that but you pay £120 a head for the privilege. OK that includes a glass or two of champagne in a reception ( a quarter of a bottle which probably cost the hotel £13 or less ) and some wine with the meal but you always end up buying more wine at inflated prices.
Mr Mustard gets double indigestion when Barnet Homes decide to reserve a table for 10 at a total cost of £1,200. Here is what Barnet Homes have told him.
The question:
How many staff (including Board Directors) of Barnet
Homes are going to the Housing Awards 2012 at the Hilton Hotel, Park Lane on 27 June
2012?
Who is paying for their tickets and how much do they
cost?
Has any hotel accommodation been booked for any of them
and if so how many and at what cost?
The answer:
We have arranged a table of 10 to attend the housing awards at a cost of £1,200 (this includes wine and dinner for all 10 guests). This is to recognise that we have been successfully shortlisted in the ‘ALMO of the year category’.
Attending will be:
2 members of Barnet Homes Executive Team 3 Board members 2 London Borough of Barnet senior staff The Mayor and Mayoress of Barnet(fair enough, it's the job of the mayor to eat for the borough - a gym membership should be included in the mayor's perks ) 1 resident (no problem with a resident going)
No accommodation has been booked; all guests will be making their own way to the awards ceremony,(how they get home wasn't mentioned, crawling, naked or otherwise, up the Edgware Road probably, except for the Mayor & Mayoress who will travel home regally in the mayoral limo - do please go round Brian)
Do you think that it's bloody marvellous that Barnet Homes were shortlisted for an award? (they have not won anything yet mind). How did they get to be nominated in the first place? Well, the usual thing seems to be that you nominate yourself. "I would like a good night out in the West End paid for by the public and we do manage a few homes so please enter us in the ALMO category" or words to that effect.
These awards are just a money making machine. They don't exist because the magazine has any particular legal right to dole out awards. They are so that they tie people to their magazines and make everyone feel good about them. Last year 700 people attended the awards and so Inside Housing grossed £84,000 (at this year's prices) from ticket sales alone. These are not their only wards. they also sell sponsorship of the event, sponsors are usually firms who want to gain more business or at least to keep their name in the frame and they get the chance to rub shoulders with 700 possible customers.
Who takes a table. Well the 6 shortlisted companies do because as sure as eggs is eggs if they don't take a table they almost certainly won't win an award. Let us suppose that there are 6 short-listed entrants for each category. Each of them uses this as a justification to take a table. So that is £7,200 in the bank for the organiser. Who owns Inside Housing? It is Ocean Media Group. They are not some philanthropic organisation who are dedicated to making social housing better but a commercial company (nothing wrong with that) who just want to make money. They do it by printing magazines and organising conferences. Take a look at their website.
Look at what else they also publish. Back Street Heroes magazine. Mr Mustard has come across this magazine before as he will read most things about 2 wheels.
Is an award for housing from a company which promotes custom motorcycles really worth much? It is a vanity award in Mr Mustard's opinion. You are only offered an award, a moment in the spotlight, so that you take a table at The Hilton Park Lane and boost the profits of Ocean.
What we don't know is how many of the 60 ALMO's that exist entered the ALMO of the year section. Maybe it was only 6 and so they all got short-listed? Maybe the best ALMO is modest and doesn't put itself forward for awards? Maybe the winner is simply the one chosen out of the only 6 who put themselves forward and agreed to take a table at the Hilton as after all it wouldn't be much of a night if none of the winners in any of the 14 categories were present.
Mr Mustard's question is - does this award make Barnet Homes a better ALMO? No, of course it doesn't. It makes them into an ALMO with £1,200 less in the bank and 7 staff who will probably be a bit shabby on the morning after the awards and not working at full effectiveness.
Have Barnet Homes got money spare that they can spend on drinking and dining at public expense?
This is part of what Chief Executive Tracey Lees said when taking about the short-listing
"our vision of great service at great value" £120 for dinner is not great value.
Mr Mustard's vision of great value is that staff earning over £58,200 p.a., as 7 of the people attending the dinner do, should buy their own dinners and drinks. Please each pay £120 into the pot which can be used for any maintenance backlog.
Listen up Barnet Homes and Barnet Council. Stop entering vanity awards and save us all from this waste.
Buy your own drinks in future.
Yours frugally
Mr Mustard
p.s. Mr Mustard has just been googling Barnet Homes and finds that they were shortlisted in the GO Awards for 2012/13 in the section of GO Best Customer Engagement Initiative of the Year Award, ( link here ). The GO awards celebrate "Excellence in Public Procurement". Mr Mustard recently found out that Barnet Homes have been using the same design company for years, and have paid them ( Dogstar Design ) over £163,000 without a written contract being in place so procurement is evidently not an area of expertise for Barnet Homes.
Barnet Homes and Barnet Council would have to fight it out for the Private Eye Piss Poor Procurement Award. You haven't got a clue about how bad you are.
An annual subscription only costs £28 which is a bargain as is the magazine bought by the fortnight at only £1.50. It will take you nearly a fortnight to read it all. An added bonus is that Barnet Council's disgraceful and shambolic ways of going on means that they are in there sometimes, like today
click to enlarge; back to return
Happy crisismas to the senior management at North London Business Park and if you think I have been hard on you during the last 9 months, here is my Xmas message for you.
Tough, suck it up and behave better in the future.
Ooh Mr Mustard is ordering us about; he doesn't normally do that. What reason can there be? Well it is because today he is in Private Eye issue 1302.
Hello Barnet Council
So that is a good reason to buy the magazine today.
What good reason is there to buy the magazine on any other day?
Well, for a start, it is a bargain £1.50 and there is so much material in the magazine that it will keep you amused until the next issue comes around.
The front page cartoons are legendary. The whole magazine is hilarious (except when it is being serious - not very often) it will shorten your commute.
You will be better informed about what goes on in the country.
Why not ask your partner to get you a subscription for Christmas. Only £28 - there will be enough money left over for some socks as well.
