Election costs and Value for money?

It is the norm in London that the Chief Executive of the borough is the Returning Officer (i.e. responsible for the smooth running of the voting process) for that borough. That gives them easy access to a pool of staff who can act as polling station clerks etc plus school and other council connected premises to use as polling stations.

The work of returning officers is overseen by the Electoral Commission. Their website tells Mr Mustard that one of their jobs is to give guidance and support to Returning Officers, so they can run the election well, which Mr Mustard hopes includes some oversight and audit of spending to ensure that value for money is being obtained. After all, the sums involved are not trivial. The total cost of the 2018 elections in Barnet were £666,312 (including vat where applicable). A heck of a lot of money.

Mr Mustard decided to have a look at one of the major costs, the hire of the premises used for the count. He obtained information from 4 boroughs and here it is.

On the face of it, the premises chosen for the count look to be poor value. Even if vat was excluded from the Croydon cost it would only rise to £28,890 so there is a potential saving to be had of at least £11,700 which any decent returning officer would seek to save. All returning officers should take note of the much more reasonable sum that the returning officer of Enfield paid and look to follow suit. Mr Mustard will be asking the returning officer, John Hooton, to justify his choice.

Have you got a large hall that might be suitable for use as the election council venue. If so, email john.hooton@barnet.gov.uk and ask him to consider your venue for the next election count, coming up in May 2021.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

n.b. Each elector could cast 3 votes which explains why votes cast sometimes exceeds the number of people eligible to vote.

That £16.1m "investment" by Capita

Some stories never go away. Readers will recall that one of the (completely bogus) justifications for entering into the out-sourcing deal with Capita was that the council couldn't afford the upfront investment that Capita were going to make. Seemingly 10 minutes later (on 5 August 13) when the ink was still drying on the contract a cheque for £16.1m (it would have been a BACS payment but let's not be picky) was handed to Capita by the council to fund the investment.

One of our finer citizens, John Sullivan, has been mulling this over as he claims not to understand finance but he does know when he's been shafted and he has made an excellent protest song on the subject, and here it is:

A great voice that John has.

Whilst on the subject, has anyone seen the fruits of this £16.1m? Certainly it hasn't been spent on a new switchboard as that was broken last week, nor on upgrading the well out of date SWIFT & Wisdom (lack of) software in Adults & Communities which store client records and documentation on currently well out of date platforms (physical computer equipment) as that took a kicking at last week's Audit Committee.

Has anyone got a list of what the £16.1m has been spent on? 

(It is probably impossible to find out without the council's help as the over £500 spending list does not contain any really useful details, and Capita's contract is mainly based upon providing outcomes rather than inputs, and so it is mostly up to Capita to decide what to spend the loot on and they could be spending it on systems which serve more than one client and thus it is their spend and not the council's. Outsourcing leads to less openness and transparency).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard