Auditors - is anyone listening to them ?

The audit committee met 5 times in the Council year ended 31 March 2011.

The Councillors currently on the audit committee are :-

Chairman - Monroe Palmer OBE, BA, FCA

Vice-chairman - Brian Schama

Members

Alex Brodkin

Geof Cooke

Tom Davey

Sury Khatri

Graham Old

Jack Cohen

Substitutes

Susette Palmer

Alan Schneiderman

Mark Shooter

Agnes Slocombe

Andreas Tambourides

These meetings come with huge amounts of information to be digested and Mr Mustard has looked at the amount of time being spent on this business in the committee meetings, and his findings are as follows :-

Date	Pages	Minutes	Secs. per page
21/06/2010	98	147	90
21/09/2010	79	172	131
07/12/2010	249	164	40
17/02/2011	104	88	51
24/03/2011	144	110	46
16/06/2011	268	tba

so there we have it, as little as 40 seconds is spent in the meetings on each page of the agenda and report pack.

Now Mr Mustard thinks there might be the odd conscientious Councillor who reads everything sent to them and sends in a list of questions in advance so that they can be dealt with at the meeting. He doubted however that would be the case for most of the Councillors who seem content to let the Officers do as they please. So he asked the vastly more experienced Mr Reasonable if Councillors do their homework and with permission he now reprints one of Mr Reasonable's blogs.

One Barnet - The numbers don't add up!

Last night Mr Reasonable attended the Cabinet meeting to ask a question about the costs and benefits of the One Barnet programme. Having read all of the details (or should I say lack of details) it strikes me that there are some huge gaps in the thinking about One Barnet. Last night I asked if Cabinet members had checked the figures to which I got a charming but evasive response from the Leader. I then asked why none of the figures stated in various documents actually reconcile against one another. I gave the example of the E recruitment programme where the figures in three separate council documents are all different - "so which one is correct" I asked. A very neat pass to the Deputy Chief Executive who looked a little flustered and said he would look into it. Disappointing especially as the next agenda item which was considering the privatisation of a raft of council departments contained a £1.25m error (Page 33 section 6.3). We, the council tax payers of Barnet, are paying a fortune for all these highly paid council officials. We are paying a fortune for a host of assorted and highly paid consultants. Why then can we not get a single, clear and evidence based set of figures on the costs and benefits of One Barnet. 

The Councillors receive generous allowances and the Officers get stratospheric salaries or consultancy fees. Mr Mustard thinks it is high time that you all pulled your socks up, did some proper work and abandoned the whole OneBarnet idea and every other stupidly named hare-brained scheme that has been trotted out recently. All the residents want is decent services - no spin, no frills, no "no contract" situations, no trips to the Sandbanks Hotel, no flying off to USA with BT, no huge TV's etc etc . Back to basics boring commonsense Council.

Mr Mustard is just going to highlight one aspect of these reports, you can find them all on the Council website at the following location :- http://s.coop/1xxd

Select the year you want, then meeting type of "other" then "Audit Committee" to obtain your selection and then click on each date and then each item - tedious but the best that Barnet Council can do.

Each quarter the Internal Auditor reports on the completed audits they have carried out that quarter and an annual report at the end of the year. These appear to have been planned audits so the departments due for audit really ought to pull their socks up beforehand and get everything spick & span - the fact that there are then unsatisfactory outcomes is a very poor performance. School audits have been ignored as Mr Mustard concentrates on the Council itself.

These are the assurance levels that the Council measures the systems of the Council by.

Substantial	There is a sound system of internal control designed to achieve the system objectives. The control processes tested are being consistently applied.
Satisfactory	While there is a basically sound system of internal control, there are weaknesses, which put some of the client’s objectives at risk. There is evidence that the level of non-compliance with some of the control processes may put some of the system objectives at risk.
Limited	Weaknesses in the system of internal controls are such as to put the client’s objectives at risk. The level of non-compliance puts the system objectives at risk.
No Assurance	Control processes are generally weak leaving the processes/systems open to significant error or abuse. Significant non-compliance with basic control processes leaves the processes/systems open to error or abuse.

Mr Mustard prefers a more simple way of thinking of these categories:-

Substantial = Exemplary

Satisfactory = OK-ish but could do better

Limited = Exertion required

No assurance = Extremely bad.

Now here is a table of all the reports completed in the year ended 31 March 2011

Systems Audits	Assurance
Housing Benefits	Substantial
Performance Management – Children’s Services	Satisfactory
National Indicator (NI) 179 – Value for money	Satisfactory
Stroke Grant	Satisfactory
Project Governance – Pothole Elimination Scheme	Satisfactory
Council Tax	Satisfactory
NNDR Business Rates	Satisfactory
Compliance with Financial Regulations	Satisfactory
Environmental Health	Satisfactory
Fire Safety	Satisfactory
Cashless Parking	Limited
Debit/Credit cards	Limited
Council Tax, NNDR and Housing Benefit replacement	Limited
Independent Provider Performance – BRSI	Limited
Independent Provider Performance – SEN	Limited
Business Continuity (Council wide)	Limited
Reviewing (learning disabilities)	Limited
Safer Recruitment	Limited
Special Education Needs Placements	Limited
Cash book control and reconciliation	Limited
Equalities	Limited
Grant arrangements	Limited
LG Pension Administration	Limited
Budgetary Control (Children’s Service)	Limited
Capital Programme/funding	Limited
Freedom of Information	Limited
Corporate Procurement	Limited
Data Quality (Adults Social Services)	Limited
Recruitment, HR, Payroll	Limited
Sustainability	Limited
Treasury Management	Limited
Waste Prevention	Limited
Income and Debt management	Limited
Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (Information Services)	Limited
Member Allowances	Limited
Street Lighting – PFI	Limited
CRB checks	Limited
LAA Grant	Limited
Risk Management – Children’s Services	Limited
Parking Service	No
Environmental Health – compliance	No

There are two other Satisfactory audits mentioned in the text of the report but they do not seem to have been listed.

So in summary there are the following audits findings :-

Status	No.	%
Substantial	1	2
Satisfactory	11	26
Limited	29	67
No	2	5

So that is 72% ( or 7 departments out of 10 if you prefer ) that are below an acceptable standard. 

72% of the management should be ashamed or you could just get your coats.

The previous year the below satisfactory departments were 67% which was bad enough but then with all the concentration on OneBarnet the day to day management appears to have been neglected.

So Councillors and Officers, are you listening ?

The bloggers will be listening most attentively on Thursday evening.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Bad is good ! £1,000 a day is very good indeed.

So here we have the weekly message sent to Barnet Council employees last Friday the 10th June after a week of bad publicity. As ever Mr Mustard will comment or translate in red what the Barnet OneSpeak might really mean.
 

Two things cropped up this week which are a good illustration of just how far we have come over the last year or so in dealing with the challenges facing all local authorities, and just how far we still have to go. What are the two things. The email doesn't seem to say. There is a very long way to go to get the basics correct.

The Local Government Chronicle ("LGC") ran a piece this week which seemed surprised how far One Barnet has progressed so quickly and remarked just how far ahead of other councils we seem to be in facing up to the challenges ahead. Did they, that is not how I read it. Let us see what they actually said:

Barnet takes off as other plans stall


Barnet LBC is set to put millions of pounds worth of back-office services out to tender, amid claims its transformation plans could lead to the outsourcing of 70% of its 3,800 workforce.

The news comes with high-profile reform projects at other front-running councils facing uncertain futures.

The Barnet tender, expected to go out later this month, will include bids for its IT, human resources, finance and procurement functions, which cost in the region of £45m a year.

A £290m tender is being published for Barnet's development and regulatory services and plans for a council-owned company to take on its adult social care services have also been rubber stamped.

Unions have accused the council of a mass outsourcing. Dexter Whitfield, director of the European Services Strategy Unit who has been lobbying against the plans alongside unions, said: "Barnet, despite claims ... [that] One Barnet [was] not a mass outsourcing project, is engaged in procurement to outsource 2,600 jobs, 70% of non-school staff".

A council spokesman rejected the claim, stating the calculations included "double counting".

Robert Rams (Con), cabinet member for finance, added: "The flaw in Dexter Whitfield's logic is that he sees the One Barnet programme as simply outsourcing. It is much more complex.

"The arm's-length company is one example - we are looking at partnerships with other parts of the public sector and outsourcing, so there is a range of options," Cllr Rams told LGC.

Meanwhile, Suffolk CC's new leader Mark Bee (Con) has turned his back on its radical reform project while victory for the Green party at Brighton & Hove City Council has raised questions about its reforms.

Their fate is likely to be closely watched by a slew of authorities, including Sutton LBC, Wakefield MBC, Shropshire Council and Swindon BC, which are also attempting ambitious projects.

Those in favour of reform admit progress has been slow. BT consultant Max Wide, who has played a key role in Barnet's and Suffolk's projects, said progress had been "modest".

However, he added that "they are doing this in the best tradition of pioneering public service, not because it is easy but because it is right".

Then Mr Travers didn't mention the other piece in LGC. I am a few days behind Mrs Angry of Broken Barnet fame in getting this out but then as she said she wasn't "burning up the autobahn" with Mr Mustard on his motorcyle when the cat came out of the bag. So what article did Mr Travers not mention ?( what's that I hear - a Travers-ty of good communication ) . This one :

Barnet panned over £1.4m contract fiasco

Barnet LBC failed to comply with its own rules when handing out a million pound contract exposing the council to 'significant financial and reputational risk', according to the council's audit committee.

The damning report said no procurement exercise was undertaken to appoint security firm, Metpro, for which the council has paid £1.4m over five years, and that "officers cannot ...give assurances that this will not happen again".

It said: "The council has failed to comply with its Contract Procedure Rules (CPR) and financial regulations, exposing the council to significant reputational and financial risks.

"No procurement exercise had been undertaken to appoint MetPro, in accordance with the council's CPR.

"No written contract between the council and MetPro could be found. There is no record of an approval and authorisation for the use of MetPro for providing security services.

"Although we cannot rule out fraud, there have been no allegations of fraud and there is no evidence to suggest that there should be a fraud investigation."

The council is currently in the process of tendering for contracts for its back office services and regulatory services collectively worth over half a billion pounds - see LGC tomorrow for more.

The report follows media reports last month that Metpro was to be investigated by a government watchdog after it emerged that it was not properly licensed.

Barnet cabinet member for resources and performance Daniel Thomas (Con) said: "Contract management is an area we need to tighten up on which is exactly why we have this report.  We now need to put in place a clear programme of improvement to match those we ran in these other services."

The staff of Barnet Council aren't fooled. The union and bloggers keep them properly up to date with the news.

But, less positively, two reports, to go to Audit Committee next week, covering our procurement procedures found real failings in how tightly we manage contracts. When I say "how tightly" I mean that we don't know who all of our contracts are with as we don't have a register of them. We also have suppliers who don't have a contract at all and we gave them over £1m so really instead of "tightly" I should have said "loosely".

One covers the Metpro security contract in Barnet House (and other buildings) and the second covered our procurement procedures in general. Both of these found failings in how we control contracts.  Both are very solid pieces of work by the council’s own internal audit unit. It is very important that our internal control and governance arrangements are robust and challenge us to improve where that is necessary. I have been the Chief Finance Officer for over a year and although I am paid £1,000 a day I don't know what goes on here otherwise, of course, I would have sorted it out.

While One Barnet is progressing, we need to make sure that we stay focussed on our day to day procurement and that we meet consistently all of the standards expected of a public body. We have to juggle two balls at one time; oh dear, there seem to be two balls on the floor.

We will announce plans next week on just how we propose to do this. Mr Mustard can't wait.

Andrew "Andrew who" will be what many employees say.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard 

MetPro - Licence to Bill

There has certainly been a spy movie in the MetPro drama but no Bond, well no performance or surety Bond as there wasn't a Contract to support. Plenty of actors though pretending to be licensed security guards. MetPro must have thought that they had won Thunderball when they submitted invalid invoices and they were paid. Lots of senior officers at Barnet Council probably now trying to beat The Living Daylights out of each other in order that Tomorrow's excessive pay packet Never Dies.

There has also been a disaster movie - in the Accounts Payable department which will henceforth be known as Casino Royale as its a gamble as to what will happen when an invoice is submitted ( that is probably not true; I expect that 100% get paid; they say Never Say Never Again to the thought of not paying - the remittance advice which goes with each payment is probably headed From Barnet with Love )

Let us have a look at what Barnet Council think a valid invoice looks like as below is one they have paid. Think of it as A View To A Bill ( sorry!)

click to enlarge

So what might be missing from this invoice ? the red shading is rightly there to cover the bank details which Barnet Council redact to prevent the risk of fraud - there are evidently a load of stand-up comedians at Barnet Council - so the Talent & Performance Manager is doing something to earn his keep - the goings on at Barnet Council are a performance and a half. I digress - back to the joke - how Mr Mustard laughed until he remembered that it was his money that Barnet Council chuck around with gay abandon - TO PREVENT FRAUD - you have already been defrauded Barnet Council. Your name isn't even on this invoice which is a basic requirement of Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs Service ( not Secret at all - the requirements for a valid vat invoice are on the revenue & customs website for all to see ) and Mr Mustard cannot see a VAT number either - it must have been For Your Eyes Only - so VAT should simply not have been paid until a valid VAT number was supplied and the invoice checked against the Contract - ah, that's Mission Impossible isn't it. What a Carry On ( Carry On Regardless of course )

Mr Mustard is amazed at the administrative burden that they have created for themselves by having someone write on every invoice the words "Shopping Cart No." ( Mr Mustard now has visions of Councillors and Officers in a huge trolley dash for goods and services, just chucking them in any old how, grabbing supplies off the shelf in a hurry and not checking what they are for - oh, and in this trolley dash nothing is free sadly ) and the number itself and then what looks like "u/Order number" but he can't be sure as if you remember getting lines at school by the time you wrote line 100 your hand had gone numb and your writing was terrible - brains have also gone a bit numb at Barnet Council - and then the number itself and then "G/receipt number" and then the number itself. The Chief Finance Officer is paid £1,000 a day. Is this the most efficient system one can get for £1,000 a day ? - you must be joking - another stand-up comedian at NLBP.

Mr Mustard has just checked the Companies House website for company number 07491321 and on 2 June 2011 MetPro Emergency Response Ltd changed its name to Evolution Emergency Response Ltd. Well they were not going to get any nice juicy Council Contracts ( or arrangements ) under the old name now were they ?

So the Audit Report for the meeting of 16 June 2011, the next production of Barnet Council which Mr Mustard thinks will be full of drama - he hopes to be able to buy a ticket ( who bought what for whom at the Council to get this nice little MetPro earner off the ground is a question that may yet come to light ) but he doesn't take a Quantum of Solace from the Council's assurances that things can only get better. Well they certainly couldn't get any worse. Except that they will if OneBarnet keeps on going.

Remember Barnet Council, The Bloggers are Watching

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Better Services for Less Money - The Barnet Mantra exposed by Auditors - The MetPro debacle

The Audit Committee meets on 16 June to consider, amongst other items, the report of the Assistant Director of Finance - Audit & Risk Management into what went wrong when the Council purchased a security service over many years from MetPro - the improperly licensed security company.

Lets look at the two parts of one of the One Barnet mantras.

Better services - these were not obtained from MetPro. An unlicensed security company cannot by its very nature be supplying a better service than a properly licensed Company because quite simply it is operating outside of the law. Bloggers have also seen with their own eyes that the new security presence is more courteous & professional and hence better ( see Mrs Angry's Broken Barnet blog for a description of MetPro's approach; there is a link in my blog roll on the right of the page - on her site search for the word metpro ). Why the Council waste so much of our money on excessive numbers of security staff is a question for another day - bloggers are civilised protesters who rely on the power of the written word to make their point.

Less money - the replacement security company is cheaper than MetPro so all the time that MetPro was used, all £1,361,000 of it, was "Worse Service for More Money" and a portion of the funds provided by the Council Taxpayer were wasted. If a proper tendering exercise had been carried out it might be that the eventual price obtained from the winning bidder would have been less than from both MetPro and the urgently drafted in replacements. That hopefully will be established in the future if the Council manage to carry out a proper tendering exercise in accordance with EU procurement regulations.

If you want to read a catalogue of incompetence then the full report is available here :-

http://s.coop/1rt4

Put the kettle on, it will be a long and disappointing read. You would also find it instructive to have a look at Mr Reasonable's blog for further insight into the serious financial issues at Barnet Council. Again, there is a link to the right.

Here is the overall message from the report, with my comments added in red :-

· The Council has failed to comply with its CPR and Financial Regulations, exposing the Council to significant reputational and financial risks. No one gives a hoot about rules or reputation; just the size of their pay packet ( whether pay or consultancy fees ).

· Internal Audit cannot give assurance that this non-compliance is an isolated incident, due to a lack of an accurate and complete centrally held contracts register and effective monitoring arrangements. There are other failures in the supply chain; how many ? who knows. We don't know who we have Contracts with and even if we have a Contract it isn't monitored. And for this the Chief Finance Officer invoices £1,000 a day; is he good value - does he provide a better service for less money.

· We recommend that all spend over the stated threshold in the CPR be reviewed and matched to a central contracts register (in development) in a timely basis. Someone needs to unbolt the stable door and run like the devil after that runaway horse. Perhaps one of those high powered MetPro motorcycles would help ?

So what was missing from the documents that should have existed in accordance with the Contract Procedure Rules ("CPR"). This little lot :-

In the absence of a formal procurement exercise, we could not locate the following documents/confirmation for MetPro, which the CPR require:

·           Financial viability of the company

·           Equal Opportunities Assessment

·           Criminal Records Bureau checks

·           Confirmation of company’s Public Liability Insurance arrangements

·           Confirmation of the company’s Health and Safety registration

·           Confirmation on the SIA licence status of the Company Officers

·           An agreed specification which outlined the service to be provided

·           An agreed schedule of rates for payment of invoices

·           A process for monitoring performance of service delivery to establish if the Council was receiving value for money

It is an incredible list but unfortunately it is a true one.

It is time for the senior officers who presided over this mess to leave of their own accord and show they have at least some sense of decency. 

So what are you doing on June 16th at 6.30pm. If you can make it to the Hendon Town Hall for the meeting of the Audit Committee you would find out a lot about how badly your Council, they spend your money remember and they could easily spend less of it if they were at all prudent. After that some questions for your local Councillors about what they are doing to ensure the Officers carry out the policies of the Councillors would be good. A suggestion that One Barnet ( the ridiculous name for a ridiculous policy ) should be shown the door, along with all of the highly paid consultants who are getting fat on their huge fees, and a reversion to commonsense Council serving the public in a boring but reliable & frugal manner would help all of Barnet's residents.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

No justification for the CPZ price increases

As you doubtless all know a judicial review is planned by a group of residents, led by the Solicitor David Attfield, to fight the unjustified and excessive price increases for Car Permits and Visitor Vouchers in Barnet  borough which came into effect ( for now at any rate ) in April 2011.

Please go to this link http://barnetcpz.blogspot.com/

and donate to the cause as another £6,000 is needed for the battle with the Council.

How do we come to the situation where the Council have increased Visitor Vouchers from £1 to £4 and the permit for the first car in a household from £40 to £100 ? i.e. way above inflation.

Well firstly, the Government this year wanted Councils to freeze Council Tax and they received extra money if they did so, so that was a powerful incentive. ( see link below about the Council Tax Freeze )

http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/corporate/1746641

Secondly, there was less money in the pot and so some services have to be cut over the next 3 years.

Thirdly, the surplus from parking can only be spent on certain categories of expense such as Highway Maintenance, the Freedom Pass ( £11m ) and like items and whatever amount is not raised from Parking has to come from Council Tax in general.

So, if the parking charges had not been put up by the projected £2million+ then either Council tax would have to go up by about £10 per household ( which was not politically expedient ) or some other service would have to be cut by another £2million ( although that should have been the proper course of action - Mr Mustard could easily find you £2m of One Barnet consultants & schemes to chop as well as all those non-job people )

The timing of the Council is unfortunate as the categories of spending on which the Parking Account Surplus have to be spent are as follows :-

Activity	Actual	Actual	Actual	Actual	Budget	Budget
	2006-7	2007-8	2008-9	2009-10	2010-11	2011-12
	(£,000)	(£,000)	(£,000)	(£,000)	(£,000)	(£,000)
Safer Routes	44	176	189	130	89	tba
Highways Investment Programme	2,522	2,719	2,347	1,970	1,600	2,032
Carriageways & Footways Planned Maintenance (Capital & Revenue)	3,045	4,663	4,780	3,286	1,851	1,872
Concessionary Fares	9,747	10,453	10,138	8,366	11,162	11,185
SEN Transport	1,565	1,625	1,780	1,610	1,593	1,293
Highways Maintenance	1,793	2,137	2,682	2,676	2,438	845
	18,716	21,773	21,916	18,038	18,733	17,227

  and the totals in chart form

So there it is: a reduction in spending on qualifying purposes and an increase of over £2million that a small percentage of residents, who just happen to live inside a CPZ, have to pay. Absolutely unjust and hence the Judicial Review.

Please, if you enjoy my blog, or if you live in a Barnet CPZ, donate at least £10 to the cause and help bring justice & democracy back to Barnet.

Barnet CPZ blogspot Paypal account

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

( who has put his hand in his pocket and sent £100 to the CPZ cause. )

Gravy Train - Column 3 of 8

Column 3 of the chart covers Children's Services which are important. There are 5 senior employees listed. Starting at the top :-

Director of Children's Services - Mr Robert McCulloch-Graham

on a salary of £165,504

This is what he said in September 2010 ( see the full article in the Barnet Times )

http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/topstories/8369022._Armageddon__warning_for_children_s_services/

CHILDREN'S services in Barnet are facing “financial armageddon” as the council prepares to lose £18 million in grants to help look after youngsters.

The council is limited in what it can provide, with an estimated overspend on this year's budget of more than £840,000.

Robert McCulloch-Graham, head of children's services, told members of the budget scrutiny committee: “These are very difficult times we're entering into. We've called it financial armageddon in children's services as everything has come at the same time.

We've had the general reduction everyone is facing but we're also expecting to lose £18m of grants while facing an increase in demand at the same time.

All this coming together does make it particularly challenging for us.”

Armageddon does not seem to have affected his salary, funny that ! Come on, 20% off leaves you on £132,403 - you could manage on that surely ?

Deputy Director - Children's Services - Jay Mercer

on a salary of £124,354

Acting Assistant Director - Children's Social Care - Marion Ingram

on a salary of £91,215
now replaced I think by Ann Graham in a permanent capacity. Salary to be confirmed.

Assistant Director - Schools & Learning - Mick Quigley

on a salary of £91,215 ( an obviously popular salary )

Assistant Director – Policy, Performance and Planning - Val White

on a salary of £86,823

It is the position and the salary that matters more than the person so if any of these people have moved on recently Mr Mustard will update this blog.

So there we are, just the top tier of management in this service costs £559,111 ( + on costs ) each year. The next layer of management can be found under "Pages" at the top right of the blog.

There are no little Mustardlings so Mr Mustard will leave it to others to comment upon the size and value of this service.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard 

MetPro and Barnet Council: contract failures call One Barnet Programme into question

On 16th June the Audit Committee of Barnet Council will meet to discuss the findings of its audit of the circumstances surrounding the MetPro Rapid/Emergency Response scandal. The signatories of this statement believe that, while it is far from a suitable way to address the issues raised, the audit is likely to expose shortcomings in Barnet Council’s ways of working that will lend force to our call for a full, independent investigation into the Council’s relationship with the MetPro companies.

Those responsible for the failure to regulate the Council's relationship with MetPro are in many cases the same people assisting with the review. As such they have a vested interest in the outcome. We believe that this review is therefore not likely to be sufficiently objective, however useful its findings might be. 

Despite assurances from Lord Palmer we are not satisfied that the audit will cover all the problems revealed by the MetPro case, particularly those pertaining to breaches of residents’ data protection rights and their potential exposure to harm through contact with inadequately regulated security staff.

Furthermore, we believe that the MetPro case proves conclusively that there is systemic failure in Barnet Council’s purchasing and vendor management systems and processes.

Given this, we believe that it would be grossly negligent to allow a major outsourcing programme such as the One Barnet Programme to proceed.

We suspect that, far from being an isolated case, the irregularities in the Council’s relationship with the MetPro companies are likely to be an indication of serious mismanagement on a much larger scale. We call for a full investigation not only into the general process of contract tendering and allocation but also into the role played by respective responsible Directors. Our own investigations so far suggest that this would result in major cost savings for Barnet Council and Barnet Council taxpayers.

With regard to the MetPro audit, we have identified the following significant areas of concern and we ask the audit committee to address these questions:

1. Does your audit review show failings that have been identified and reported to the Council officers previously by Internal Audit ?

For example, the Head of Internal Audit reported to the Audit Committee (29 September 2009, Item 8, pages 30-31) that the then Director of Major Projects (Mr Craig Cooper) had confirmed that an effective spend analysis monitoring and monthly vendor monitoring processes were in place. See link below to access the report:

http://committeepapers.barnet.gov.uk/democracy/reports/reportdetail.asp?ReportID=8541

Committee report 29 September 2009

2. Did the Directors agree to take actions to address reported failings ?

3. Did the Directors fail to take actions to address reported failings ?

4. Why did the Directors not take actions when they were supposed to ?

5. What will the Audit Committee do to stop recurrence where Directors fail to address reported failings on time ?

On the wider subject of the systemic failings of Barnet Council, we ask that the CEO Nick Walkley immediately institute the following measures:

I.      A moratorium on all One Barnet Programme work, until such time as system failings can be shown to have been addressed.

II.     A full investigation into the tendering process and the role played by the relevant responsible directors.

III.    A review of the payment process including any transaction where purchase order was raised after receipt of an invoice.

IV.    A process where all retrospective purchase orders are sent to executive level for sign off and review.

V.     A full review of the democratic oversight process, to ensure that similar serious irregularities cannot occur in future.

As concerned residents we believe that these measures will go some way toward restoring public confidence in Barnet Council and, moreover, will save the taxpayers of Barnet a significant amount of money.

We ask all Councillors, regardless of Party affiliation, to support all of the above measures.

Letter to Councillors signed by:

Derek Dishman

John Dix

Vicki Morris

Theresa Musgrove

Roger Tichborne