Singing for your supper

Mr Mustard doesn't know if the Barnet Homes contingent were singing on the way home after a fine evening of food and drink at the expense of the council tax payer (leaving the Mayor and his lady out of this question - the Mayor just wouldn't do that sort of thing, tired and emotional singing that is) but what he does know is that the ALMO of the year isn't Barnet Homes but Homes for Haringey and that his King Prawn Curry with egg fried rice only cost £5.10 after the Constitution Committee and Mr Mustard pays his own way.

An awful lot of management time must go into submitting awards. The council think it is a good thing because they trumpet the mere fact of being short-listed on the website and here is a little snippet from that page:

Pam Wharfe, Barnet Council’s Interim Director of Environment, Planning and Regeneration, said: “It is great news that the hard work of all the staff at Barnet Homes has been recognised in this way. I am confident that the additional services Barnet Homes will provide into the future will only serve to improve the organisation even further and confirm Barnet Homes as an innovator in the ALMO sector.”

Mr Mustard thinks that being short-listed for an award that you put yourself up for in three categories and then fail to win in the only one for which you are short-listed isn't worth more than the square root of heehaw. Will the failure to win be on the Barnet Council or Barnet Homes website tomorrow? No, I thought not. Why was the council short-listed? So that they would book a table for 10 people (oh you cynic Mr Mustard, but absolutely true. Award ceremonies are a massively profitable business).

 

How has Barnet Homes done in the last 4 years? 

Well here is a list of the awards that Barnet Homes have entered, sometimes in more than one category.

• 2009 Sustainable Housing Awards.
• 2009 National Federation of ALMOs Awards x 3
• 2009 Housing Heroes Awards.
• 2009 ASBActionNet awards x 2
• 2009 CIPRide Awards
• 2010 National Federation of ALMOs Awards x 3.
• 2010 Housing Heroes Awards
• 2010 MoneyActionNet Awards
• 2011 Housing Heroes Awards
• 2011 National Federation of ALMOs awards x 3
• 2012 UK Housing Awards x 3
• 2012 GO Procurement Awards
• 2012 Excellence in Recycling and Waste Management Awards 

So that is 22 separate awards that have been entered for. Mr Mustard has not asked how many they were short-listed for and hence how many were attended by a staff party having a good booze-up at the expense of the council tax payer. Needless to say thousands of pounds will have been spent in entering these awards which are just vanity and don't lead to one iota of service improvement.

Here are our two past winners.

2009 National Federation of ALMOs Awards - Joint winner (not even outright) Board Member of the Year (Vi Britchfield)

2010 National Federation of ALMOs Awards - Winner Most Outstanding Young Person of the Year (Rui Jorge Octavio).

A quick look at Vi Britchfield. Violet is hardly going to be the most independent leaseholders' representative is she, having worked previously for Barnet Council? Someone who hasn't had any previous association with the council would surely be better placed to represent the leaseholders' interests. Violet has been on the board of Barnet Homes since 2005 and she isn't exactly in the first flush of youth (Mr Mustard looked at the lady's date of birth on Companies House and hasn't seen a year that low for some time). The constitution of Barnet Homes allows for directors to stand down after a certain number of terms. Violet was around for some years even before that rule came in and really ought to think about giving way to someone a little younger. It looks like Barnet Homes tried to replace her in 2009 but failed, surely out of 15,000 homes one other public spirited person can be found?

Mr Mustard is sure that Rui Jorge Octavio is a fine chap (see Nutmeg here) but very oddly, if you look at his linked-in profile the words "Barnet Homes" do not appear. How can someone who doesn't seem to have worked for Barnet Homes win a prize on behalf of Barnet Homes? Answers on a postcard please.

Who ate at our expense tonight?

 

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

1 resident

Let us add some names.

Staff attending on salaries of more than £58.200 are:

Tracey Lees

Derek Rust

Pam Wharfe (LBB)

Kate Kennally (LBB)

The resident is the Chair of the Performance Advisory Group – our resident scrutiny group

You would think that all of these people could afford to buy their own dinner. Someone will have photographs. They would be gratefully received.

So there is only a 1 in 11 chance of picking up an award. Given that there are only 60 ALMOs and not all of them will be vanity driven and entering these awards the awards don't appear to be worth the bother or good value for the council tax payer. Please give them up Barnet Homes (and Barnet Council - your turn next in Building Control).

As for the audacity to enter a Procurement Award, whatever was someone thinking. Mr Mustard has barely looked at the spending of Barnet Homes but from the start he found them paying out £160,000 over the years to one supplier (Dogstar Design) without a contract.

So there we have it. Mr Mustard spends £5.10 on an excellent dinner with friends who also follow Barnet council and subsidises others to float off to the Hilton at his, and other council tax papers, expense. 

Its a dog's life.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Was Nick looking a bit shabby this morning?

Welcome

Just over 1,300 of the UK's most senior leaders (and Nick Walkley) in local authorities gathered yesterday at the Grosvenor House Hotel, for a day and evening of learning and sharing of best practice.

The momentous day for local authorities started with the inaugural day time LGC Future Thinking and Best Practice Summit; exclusive to awards attendees, the summit offered a unique opportunity to hear first-hand from the councils shortlisted for Council of the Year and Most Improved Council as they made their final presentations live to the judges. Throughout the day, presentations from previous winners, a series of big issue (has Nick been seen outside Arnos Grove tube with a bundle of papers for sale?; The Big Issue is a better read than any One Barnet report) future thinking discussions and organised networking sessions (what, no disorganised sessions?), promoted the sharing of essential best practice. After the learning sessions had taken place, the awards commenced. With a record breaking audience in the history of the sixteen year history of the awards, the winners of the LGC Awards 2012 were announced.

An evening of mutual back slapping and too much booze for some. Council Tax payers will have the One Barnet headache for the next 10 years.

Who was there, yes good old Nick Walkley and as a judge no less, and now try not to laugh, what category was he judging? "Most improved council of the year". How would he know?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-16109206

Look who the sponsor is. Is this what we get for paying Agilisys £250k+ in a month. A day out for Nick and all the booze he can drink (he may have paid for his own beer, one never knows).

Councils put themselves forward for these vanity awards and sensibly this year Barnet Council decided to keep a low profile. A good decision.

However, given that Barnet Council would win an award for Worst Procurement Achievement then Mr Mustard, for one, thinks that non-stick Nick's time would be better spent sorting out Barnet Council than gadding off to the Grosvenor House Hotel.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The Friday Joke - e-Procurement 2006

The winners, from Wakefield

On Thursday evening Mr Mustard was in the public gallery for the extra session of the Business Management Overview & Scrutiny Committee which was discussing the well known procurement problems and what was going to be done about them. 

Rewind to 2006 and deluded officers thought that procurement was so cutting edge that they merited an award. This is just vanity, it does nothing for the residents of Barnet to have officers wasting their time submitting resumes of how fantastic they think they are to the MJ 2006 competition. The time should have been spent on doing their jobs better. Officers in post now, listen. Don't enter vanity competitions.

Here is the entry information:

MJ 2006 e-Procurement Award Entry by Barnet Council

Ooh look, procurement "expert" of 2006, one Nick Walkley. Why is procurement now pants?

Also named Mahesh Patel who has surfaced again recently at Barnet and is being paid £725 a day ( almost, it is his introducer Penna Plc who get that much; is he a town hall tax dodger? )

There are some cracking jokes in this vainglorious puff. Red type by Mr Mustard.

The ITP procurement model in Barnet has moved us from an authority with a weak and failing ICT structure - to one with a weak and failing ICT structure.

Barnet Council's infrastructure had grown organically on an ad hoc basis without any strategic focus in mind. No change there then?

Our vision ... our objective... "To provide a framework which enables innovative, flexible, efficient, effective, transparent and legal procurement..."  2012 mark 0/10

This approach to capacity-building means that we have engaged in an effective and true partnering arrangement over the period of the contract. You need to know that the partner Prime Business Solutions changed its name to 2E2 Solutions Ltd and then you will recall that they are refusing to support end of life equipment but are still drawing their fees.

In the last 12 months both ICT and Procurement have shown themselves to be hopeless and the people who put themselves forward for awards in 2006 thought they were visionaries.

Jokers.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard