Talk isn't cheap

Yesterday at the Local Government Strategic Leaders Forum (no apostrophe even though there should be) there was a lot of tweeting from WeLoveLocalGov and Mr Mustard was on the tube and responding to a number of their observational tweets. Mr Mustard would love local government to be invisible, effective, cost efficient and really boring and in Barnet it isn't. Anyway, here is one tweet to which he responded something like this - if council tax hadn't been frozen for 4 years and then there was a 1% cut as an electoral gimmick (leading to 32 Conservative seats against 30 for Labour so that was a bargain then?) the amount of income available would have avoided the need for many of the dreadful cuts to provision for disabled children etc. (but in 140 characters so much briefer)

Nice and simple message from Barnet: “the money’s run out and it’s not coming back.” Stark, but true. #capitaconf
— WeLoveLocalGov (@WeLoveLocalGov) June 26, 2014

Now Mr Mustard visits the council offices at this time every year to have a rummage through the accounts during the 4 weeks when they are publicly available by law. He obtained the following invoice (Mr Mustard is a detail person but he didn't get much to chew on with this invoice - luckily he was only given the one page as 300+ blacked out pages would have been wasteful) 

So what you can see is that the council has 1,678 mobile phones and a bill for the month of £23,145

Mr Mustard thought that might be rather a lot of phones and he remembered that when he was at Policy & Resources committee on 10 June 2014 there was a report presented by Andrew "Black Hole" Travers (he spoke at the conference mentioned above so the tweet above may stem from his presentation), he is the Chief Executive if you didn't know and Chris Naylor, the Chief Operating Officer (sharpen your scalpel Chris as you need to cut the mobile phone bill and which others? management pay and numbers perhaps?) which disclosed that the number of Full Time Equivalent posts is 1,726 so there is a 97% chance of an employee having a mobile phone. Mr Mustard knows it makes sense for mobile staff but posits that the vast bulk of council employees are likely to be desk based. Mr Mustard wonders what the mobile phone issue protocol is?

Before moaning about the shortage of funds it is probably best to go through every single item of spending and ask the question; is this spending really necessary?

Mr Reasonable, a respected management consultant who before he went self-employed  worked for one of the largest worldwide firms of consultants so knows his stuff, offered to give the council a day a month of his valuable time about 2 years ago (he is currently run off his feet with work he is in such demand by sports stadia all over the world, but bloggers regularly out perform the average mortal) in order to review the cost base (he was using the 80/20 rule and was going to look at all invoices above £10,000 so would have looked at 20% of them and captured 80% of the spend - this is also known as the Pareto principle) but his offer was not taken up. The council should have snatched his hand off to obtain a free expert like that.

So WeLoveLocalGov there is a longer answer than can be tweeted in 140 characters. One reason we bloggers are up in arms about our local council and are critical is because we have evidence from many areas of spend that suggests Barnet Council really isn't very well run, despite the £6.67 million spent on Central Management (source, Council tax leaflet 2014/15).

You can comment below if you wish, unedited.

Yours frugally (unlike the council)

Mr Mustard

Another £100k up the swanny river

The Suwannee River

Mr Mustard despairs. He has discovered that another £100,000 has been wasted on consultants (the name of the consultants was, would you believe it, redacted and Mr Mustard is waiting for the results of a review), this time to investigate alternative black marker pens for Freedom of Information officers. It turns out that back in February one of the FOI officers passed out and had to be taken to hospital as a precaution after spending 3 hours locked in a small conference room redacting the secret details in a 300 page One Barnet report which Mr Mustard had requested. The council then spent all of this money on a report into alternative water based marker pens. The council thought that using water based pens would be safer for the FOI officers as they do not give off noxious fumes and less would be stolen out of the stationery cupboard by junior juvenile staff who were trying to get high on them. One person got caught who had been doing this in the toilets because they left a telltale black mark on their nostrils. 

This being Barnet Council they couldn't of course just decide to use the water based markers, or to use scissors and cut out the offending passages (it would take too long apparently and could lead to claims for RSI) no, they had to send a number of redacted documents off to a laboratory for testing to see if the person getting the document might be able to wash the marking off and reveal the text underneath. Should any other council want to follow Barnet Council's very sensible idea to use water based pens which are better for the planet and are made locally in Hertfordshire by the family company U. R. Green they should send Mr Mustard an email for the contact details (mrmustard@zoho.com)

Mr Mustard contacted Barnet Council Press Office for a response and their Miss Avril Duper said:

"The council takes the health of its employees very seriously and thus the new marker pens are essential to staff wellbeing. In addition, the new pens are odourless and silent in operation and can be applied more quickly and accurately than the old ones. The cost was well within the One Barnet budget"

Mr Mustard hopes that it will be another year before another similar scandal sees the light of day.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

RIO = Stuff the motorist

Sorry it doesn't mean that. It means Revenue Income Optimisation. That is what it means in OneBarnet speak. In plain English it means put prices up.

Last year Barnet Council commissioned a report to look at Parking Enforcement - or so the report says. In fact it isn't about enforcement at all ( I do need to tell readers from outside of the borough this is completely normal in Barnet Council, the mis-use of normal meaning - a phrase like "putting the Community First" could be translated as "Putting the Boot In" - to motorists, the elderly, crossing patrols, old peoples homes, council house tenants, Pinkham Way residents, oh the list goes on and on ) - in fact when the world of blogging is quiet at Xmas, to amuse Mr Mustard he might do himself a list of every group of residents that the council have upset during the last 18 months to see if there is a single resident left in the borough who hasn't been nobbled in one way or another.

Mr Mustard digresses. You want to see the report don't you? Fair enough. We paid for it. Here it is. You can make the pages larger by clicking on them but if still too small please send an email to mrmustard@zoho.com for your personal copy.

Now that is very interesting is it not? This report is from 2010. I am not sure the exact date nor the cost although it won't be cheap ( he will tell you that in 20 working days time - do remember to pop back ).

So this report on "enforcement" is supposedly a supporting document for the charges to be increased in Barnet following details work by council officers. Hmm, let's see.

Mr Mustard is not keen on being seen as an opportunity. The opportunity for the council to put it's hand deeper in his pocket and take out extra money for absolutely nothing in return. That would be a bad bargain. So the simple plan set out on page 1 is to charge more for:

parking in a CPZ,

residents parking permits - to go up to £60 ( this seems to have got lost in translation )

parking for visitors ( what is that sign you see as you enter Barnet "Not welcome to Barnet" )

parking at Brent Cross ( no longer free )

free spaces - make them standard price. 2,700 spaces removed at a stroke. Nasty.

Car parking inflation to be 10% in Barnet.

Page 2 sees the idea of charging for parking at Brent Cross mooted. The council hope to get £2.9m from this source but don't know if they are contractually entitled to do anything ( will that stop them from trying? ) They kindly suggest giving a share to the owners of Brent Cross on page 6. Mr Mustard thinks that John Lewis will have something to say about Barnet Council turning down the flow of shoppers and it may even be in their contract with Brent Cross that parking remains free.. Mr Mustard thinks that some conditions have been put into the Brent Cross redevelopment scheme but will let others tell him what they are in regards to parking. Bluewater are going to do very nicely out of this.

Page 3. We haven't seen anything yet in this report that justifies the use of expensive outside consultants. Teenagers on a business course at school could have prepared a better report than this one, and for free. This page is full of untested assumptions so the figures cannot be relied upon. It looks like there was a plan to put 2 PD ( pay & display - so old hat for Barnet the clueless cashless borough ) machines into each zone where the free bays were removed. £5,000 to put each new machine in.

Page 4. Visitor permits at £2 each instead of the £4 they became. Still a hefty increase from £1. Don't believe that nonsense about the number in circulation. Mr Mustard has loads tucked away in the desk drawer as well many sensible residents who purchased at £1. That number 196,340 is probably the number issued in 12 months. The report envisages that if you double the price of something demand stays the same. What utter rot.

Page 5. Comparative boroughs. Lambeth ( otherwise known as Lambert later in the report - the Borough of Lambert does sound much posher ). You simply cannot compare Lambeth to Barnet in terms of parking, Lambeth is an inner London borough. It touchs the south side of the Thames at Waterloo. Haringey is only like the most southerly parts of Barnet, it is sheltered from the M25 by the whole of Enfield and wikipedia says that in some places Haringey is considered as an inner London borough. There isn't a third classification but if there was Haringey would be a mid London borough and Barnet would still be outer. Croydon is an interesting choice. In many ways it is most like the City of London with all those dreadful tower blocks. The tram system also offers a real choice for better travel. It's nothing like Barnet. 

The comparisons for visitor parking should have included Enfield, Hertsmere, Harrow, Brent.

The other comparisons for residents' and visitors' permits do at least show some fairer comparisons but Camden?

Page 6. Shopping centres. No mention of the Galleria at Hatfield, the Howard Centre at Welwyn, the Harlequin at Watford, Costco, retail parks everywhere e.g Edmonton around the north circular and so on.

Risks. Mr Mustard's summary for Barnet Council. "We have no idea"

Page 7. Do some work.

Page 8. A spreadsheet. Completely unreliable as all based on assumptions.

Page 9. More numbers that were too low so Brian Coleman made up his own mind.

Is our money well spent on this sort of report which then gets ignored. No.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Consultant or employee - which costs more?

and another over £500 list error, which are so common that they mean that one can't really place any reliance on the published lists.

So Mr Mustard looked at the over £500 lists for the year ended 31 March 2011 and picked out payments to Anna Klonowski Associates Ltd as being worthy of a bit of research and here is what was in the list along with some extra detail from the Freedom of Information response ( thank you to some of the ladies and gentlemen in the FOI section of governance who are starting to realise what their role is and that Mr Mustard is not the enemy of the less senior staff - one day the senior management and ruling councillors might realise that bloggers help them to stay on the straight and narrow - as if they diverge from the true path, we will find them out one day ).

Date	Ref	Value £	Days	Other
			at £675
12/05/2010	5000256666	13,838	22
17/05/2010	5000257246	13,838	none*	Duplicate entry
07/06/2010	5000259604	14,850	20.5
07/07/2010	5000263626	11,813	17.5
14/07/2010	5000264374	1,500		Coaching across Finance dept
29/07/2010	5000266475	12,825	19
07/09/2010	5000271688	1,884
18/10/2010	5000276825	3,375	5	Coaching for health to the business

Mr Mustard did not ask for and was not told the daily rate, he worked it out for himself. The first entry of £13,838 was for work in April which has 30 days of which 22 were working days giving £675 per day and as all the other months divided by £675 it looks like the logical answer.

So there are 260 working days in a full year. Let us remove 10 for bank holidays and 25 for holidays and so a consultant would in a full year invoice 225 * £675 = £151,875

There is a problem about to land at Barnet Council. All temporary staff will after 12 weeks of work get many of the same rights as permanent staff, rights like holiday and sick pay which mean that in effect they will cost 10% more. Mr Mustard wonders if the Interim Assistant Director of Human Resources, Jacquie McGeachie, is busy going round chopping re-negotiating downwards the ridiculous daily rates that are paid. You will have to start with your own daily rate Ms McGeachie as you pay yourself through Jacquie McGeachie HR Consulting Ltd rather than submit to PAYE like a normal employee. Your company was paid £140,803 in the year ended 31 March 2011. Shall we say £125,000 for the year ahead which is still at least £25,000 too much. It will be interesting how you deal with your boss Mr Andrew Travers on £1,000 a day. It would be interesting to see you tell him that really he needs to reduce that down to a trifling £900 a day; how will he get by?

Now here is a bit of luck. A picture of Andrew Travers on the right and Jacquie McGeachie on the left (ignore the lady officer in the middle for today)

who chose the earwax flavoured Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Bean?

Back to the comparison. In the high salary list published by Barnet Council there is now a permanent Assistant Director of Financial Services ( Barnet Council are always tweaking titles slightly ) who gets paid only £84,543 a year (oh it's tough almost at the top) but you can't compare that directly to a consultant's invoices.

For an employee paying PAYE as they all should, employer's National Insurance needs to be added. That is £10,680 for the year. 

Also, the small matter of payments into the council's under-funded pension scheme. So, for the moment, 24% of payroll has to be paid in. That is another £20,290

So we have £84,543 + £10,680 + £20,290 = £116,000 for round numbers to employ someone

as against £151,000 for a consultant, which is 30% more. 

How many consultants are there in Barnet? too many to mention. Agilisys were paid £214,072 ( and 20p!) In October 2011 alone.

It's time for a musical interlude.

So there we have it. Loads of money spent on consultants and 30% of it is avoidable expenditure.

Just looking back at the list in the table at the top you will see there are two entries for £13,838. This was explained to Mr Mustard as "April 2010 miscoding transferred (see above 5000256666), not another invoice paid, this was a journal transaction". Ignore the spin. The extra entry was a blunder. The published information was just plain wrong.

Mr Mustard feels a Freedom of Information enquiry coming on about that subject. Bye for now.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Outsourcing is not the solution - Suffolk's experience

Commonsense in action. How long before Barnet Council play catch up and pretend they were never in favour of outsourcing after all, and will it be outsourced consultants who tell them that ?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics

Will the councillors also like to put back into the pot the £10m spent on one Barnet which will unltimately be wasted?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Permanently temporary !

Where does the money go ?

Well much of it goes on temporary help including some that the permanent staff don't want or need.

Mr Mustard asked, under FOI ( one of his favourite laws ), the following :-

Temporary employees from Hays & other agencies in Revenues & Benefits

Please tell me the number of temps in use today and the total cost for today (to the nearest £1,000)

Here is the staggering answer:

On the 5th of July 2011 there were 53 agency staff working within Revenues and Benefits. Based on the hours worked and the hourly charge rates, the total estimated spend on this specific day was just over £9000.00

Forget the .oo as it is pointless. So that is £9,000 a day or £45,000 a week or £2,340,000 p.a. for temporary help that the department itself says it doesn't need but management says it does. How can the staff possibly get their work done with 53 temps in their way. Who tells them what to do ? 

Please bear in mind that this is only one department with 53 temps. How many are there in use in total?

Just close two libraries, every museum, sack the school crossing patrols, cut grants to voluntary bodies, increase the sums that the disadvantaged have to pay but whatever you do don't get rid of consultants or interims or temps. 

That's One Barnet that is, it will save zillions ( One Barnet - One Day - just not sure which millennium we will be in )

Who believes this One Barnet tosh?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard 

Reverse spin #1 - The Finchley Carnival

Mr Mustard is rather bored with the spin press releases that come out of Barnet Council so he will apply some reverse spin which balances things out nicely. Sadly, balancing the books is something that Barnet Council really haven't got the hang of yet. So here is their latest press release in the Barnet corporate colour of seasick blue with the reverse spin entries in red.

Finchley carnival goes with a bang

The past tense to describe a future event - how novel.

 
Barnet Council is all set to help Finchley Carnival go with a bang this weekend.

For the other side of the story see the website below.

Finchley Carnival

The popular carnival, which has been running for more than 100 years, will feature a funfair and run from Thursday 7th July to Sunday 10th July at Victoria Park, Finchley.
A funfair and fireworks do not a Carnival make.

The Carnival’s highlight will come on Saturday night with a spectacular free firework display for residents paid for by the Council with proceeds from the funfair.
If that's the highlight Mr Mustard does not want to see the lowlights. The fireworks are not free; Mr Mustard thinks that the proceeds from the funfair are about £3,500 so that will be the likely cost of fireworks and Mr Mustard doesn't think that will amount to a long display. It is not paid for by the Council; it is paid for by all of the Council tax Payers most of whom are not in Finchley.

The Worshipful the Mayor of Barnet, Councillor Lisa Rutter, will set off the first firework for the display from 9.30pm.

Mr Mustard hopes that Cllr Rutter has been on a health and safety course.

Councillor Brian Coleman, Cabinet Member for Environment, said: “I am delighted that Barnet Council has been able to keep the traditions of the Carnival going and include a firework display which so many people have enjoyed over the years.
The Carnival Committee have been held over a barrel with a last minute rent increase from £140 to £3,500. So, the traditional features of a carnival are not there as the next sentence says.

“I hope that next year we can restore many of the other traditional features of the Carnival which our residents have looked forward to so much in the past.”

And that is all they can do this year - look forward. The Carnival has been replaced with a pantomime.

So there we are with Barnet Council needing to save £50million+ over 3 years and so what do Barnet Council do; they explode £3,500 which they could have put into the bank ( not an Icelandic one obviously - don't be silly now  ). They should just have had the funfair and not spent the proceeds on fireworks. Balancing the books is easy if you are sensible and apply some commonsense. If you look after the £thousands the £millions will look after themselves.

You need a rocket Barnet Council.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Sandbanksitis - extremely hard to eradicate - at epidemic levels in Barnet

What again, The Sandbanks Hotel ?

What is it with this hotel ? Is the beach at sandbanks made of quicksand and it traps everyone there ? or are there sirens off the coast ? they will lure the good ship OneBarnet to founder on the rocks of overspending.

Is there anything wrong with hotels in Barnet or Enfield or Hertsmere ? They are local businesses and should be supported. You are taking money out of the Borough, Barnet Council - is that Putting the Community First ? - certainly not the hotel community - it is a very bad idea to keep going to Poole. Mr Mustard is starting to get cross.

Which Councillor would you like to see on the rack ? 

For more pictures click here

You are causing traffic congestion and/or extra travel costs for using the train. 

You are causing the carbon footprint to be unnecessarily increased. 

Head teachers will have to leave early on the Wednesday to get to the conference on time causing a loss of working hours.

This is not a 2 day conference as it is described - it finishes at lunch on the second day. Oh let's see, Friday afternoon, finish at 1.30 - doubtless after a good lunch - and then oh dear me, it's too late to get back to school. We will all just have to go home.

Bring back 6 of the best for the organiser !

Head teachers get paid enough to go on their own breaks to Poole.

Will this nonsense ever end ?

A message to local hoteliers. Please start marketing to Barnet Council.

Oh, one final point. Barnet Council's slogan is going to be "Pooleing our resources" - remember that you read it hear first.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

10p or not 10p ; that is the question

I expect you have all seen the 16 page piece of puff called Barnet First magazine which gets shoved through the letterbox of every home in Barnet once a quarter and in Mr Mustard's house then gets recycled immediately into the black box as he is a law abiding citizen who cares about the Big Society.

I suspect its Barnet Council's way of ensuring that paper recycling targets are met.

In the magazine, and I use the term loosely, it says that each one costs "a little over 10p" to produce. Most people would expect that also means a little under 11p ?

Here's what the Jan / Feb 11 issue cost

Design £800 ( in-house estimated cost )

Printing £9,475 ( Woodford Litho - see over £500 list )

Distribution £7,700 ( Impact Distribution - see over £500 list )

Total £17,975

143,000 copies printed = 12.57p each

The June / July 10 issue was for some reason more expensive

Design £800

Print £10,325

Distribution £7,700

Total £18,825 = 13.16p per copy which is 31% more than Barnet Council claim it costs.

I don't think residents sit at home waiting for it to drop onto the doormat ( unless they are short of material to line the budgie or guinea pig cage ) and if it just stopped the London Borough of Barnet would not grind to a halt.

What would happen is that about £70,000 would be saved off the annual budget. A worthwhile saving.

Why not have your say in the poll alongside.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard