Jacquie McGeachie - interim Assistant Director of Human Resources

Peterborough Lift Lock ( Ontario )

Given the number of staff who are going to have an enforced change of employer Mr Mustard thought his readers might like to know who is running the HR department and the answer is Jacquie McGeachie. She is an interim i.e. only here for now. In future posts we will look at her remuneration at Barnet, PAYE, the HR performance and other interesting topics. Let us look first at where she came from. 

Before Barnet, Mrs McGeachie worked for Peterborough City Council starting in December 05 to some time in or around November 08. She was the interim Head of HR from 27 June 07 until she left. Her "employment", (and how a Head of HR can be anything other than an employee under PAYE is a mystery. It will be a rude awakening for many councils once HM Revenue and Customs finally get their teeth into this area which appears to be a ripe one for collecting extra tax from) was not a direct one with PCC but through Anne Corder Recruitment, an agency local to P'boro. 

Payments were as follows : 

2006/07 £80,144 for about 40 weeks so around £2,000 a week

2007/08 £79,210 for about 35 weeks so about £2,250 a week

It is impossible to be exact as it would take too long to get the paperwork out and it has taken Mr Mustard 6 months and a referral to the ICO to get Anne Corder to release even this info.

What we can say though is that the annual rate of payment was in the area of £117,000 p.a. This of course was the amount paid to the agency. Mrs McGeachie herself will have been paid less than that. Staff agencies are notoriously expensive to deal with and they would have probably been taking between 5% and 25% of the fees leaving Mrs McGeachie earning something in the region of £90k to £110k p.a. Why you would give up what is a huge salary and a 2 mile commute in P'boro, the location of the McGeachie residence, to join One Barnet?

Someone please tell Mr Mustard that she doesn't drive from P'boro to N11 every day spewing CO2 as she goes. If she does, she will of course have a space in the executive section of the car park and won't have to drive round and round looking for a space like normal staff.

So that is the scene set. More on McGeachie tomorrow hopefully, and the day after.

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Not that P'boro City Council is any less stupid than One Barnet though. The footer of the first FOI response was as follows:-

The information supplied to you in response to your request is the copyright of Peterborough City Council and is protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 

Mr Mustard reproduces the relevant part of the Act for you here:

1 Copyright and copyright works.

(1) Copyright is a property right which subsists in accordance with this Part in the following descriptions of work—

(a) original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works,

(b) sound recordings, films [F1 or broadcasts], and

(c) the typographical arrangement of published editions.

(2) In this Part “copyright work” means a work of any of those descriptions in which copyright subsists.

(3) Copyright does not subsist in a work unless the requirements of this Part with respect to qualification for copyright protection are met (see section 153 and the provisions referred to there).

Never one to pass up an opportunity to save council's from their own stupidity Mr Mustard wrote the following to PCC:-

I refer to your claim to have copyright in your reply. I repeat below the first section of the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. Are you claiming that your email is an original literary work? or some other copyright work? Please enlighten me.

PCC have seen the light, although they needed another dig in the ribs first, and have amended their FOI footer.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Caption competition

"Tell me said Sooty, are you called Sweep because at Barnet Council everything gets Swept under the carpet?"

Please add your entry in the comment box. It's just for fun so nothing blasphemous or rude thank you very much, it will be deleted. 

(Mr Cornelius is always polite so we should extend the same courtesy especially when taking the wotsit regardless of what we think of benign neglect of leadership.)

Yours amusingly

Mr Mustard

Crossed wires at the crossroads

Bloggers are grateful to the Barnet Times for some amusement this week when they printed the following photograph with one of the names incorrect ( for the man at the back - why is he at the back behind Brian Coleman? ) 

The names do not show on the on-line version which can be corrected in a trice but once printed the paper is there for posterity (well someone will need reminding in 10 years time who the people are)

So at the back is isn't the Rabbi whose name is in the caption, it's not even Rabbi Blue (who is about the only speaker on Thought for the Day who doesn't force Mr Mustard to get out of bed) but it is the "Blue Rabbi" the "leader" of Barnet Council, Richard Cornelius.

Mrs Angry is the blogger's expert on body language and will doubtless tell you what this picture means. If she doesn't, Mr Mustard will go back to bed ( what's that Mrs A, another tenner earned - ha ha - must pop round to the stables to see if there is a horse I can borrow ).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The Friday Joke - pain relief

A married couple went to the hospital to have their baby.
 

Upon arrival, the doctor said that the hospital was testing an amazing new machine that would transfer a portion of the mother's labour pains to the baby's father. He asked if they were interested. Both said they were very much in favour of it.

The doctor set the pain transfer to 10%  for starters, explaining that even 10%  was probably more pain than the father had ever experienced before.

But as the birth progressed, the husband felt fine and asked the doctor to go ahead and increase the level. The doctor then adjusted the machine to 20% pain transfer.

The husband was still feeling fine. The doctor checked the husband's blood pressure and was amazed at how well he was doing.

At this point they decided to go for 50%.
 

The husband continued to feel quite well.

Since the pain transfer was obviously helping the wife considerably, the husband encouraged the doctor to transfer ALL the pain to him.

The wife delivered a healthy baby with virtually no pain, and the husband had experienced none either.
 

Husband & wife were ecstatic.

When they got home they found the postman dead on the front step.

Staff really should be given the whole picture

http://www.alleewillis.com/blog/2009/04/30/allee-willis-kitsch-o-the-day-half-a-cup-of-coffee/

If council staff are only given half the picture you can't be surprised when they come a cropper on something. Here is a message from the council intranet sent by the Internal Communications Manager. Mr Mustard presumes that councillors also read the intranet but isn't sure of this. Maybe one of them will tell him. 

Additions in red are by Mr Mustard and Mr Reasonable weighs in at the end.

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Transparency Project set to open up council data

Friday, 09 December 2011 12:00 Schroder, Johnathan

A Transparency Project has been initiated, led by Maryellen Salter, Assistant Director of Finance, Audit and Risk Management, to examine not only the data which the council releases, but also the quality of that data and how users can engage with it in a meaningful way. It isn't so much initiation as a response to a government requirement. Why spin this?

This work is being undertaken in line with the Government’s transparency agenda. The focus is to remove secrecy and extend transparency within the public sector, enabling citizens to hold government and public services to account. Whilst public sector transparency is obligatory, the government also hopes that openness of data will generate social and economic growth through the use of that data, as well as allowing the public to see how their money is being spent. As well as how it is mis-spent ( MetPro and RM Countryside Services Ltd )

With this in mind, the council’s Transparency Project is addressing the data needs of citizens by increasing the data available, as well as its accessibility and quality. This will include:

- reviewing all of the council's data with a presumption of publication unless there is a good reason not to exactly what Mr Mustard asked for - define "good reason"
- a new, more accessible internet site will be rolled out over the next few months, with a vastly improved search function good, as the existing search function is useless
- a decision that members of the public may film committee meetings they already can!
- the procurement of a new IT system for the handling of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. It is envisaged that the new system will auto-publish all FOI responses to the new website many are already on the whatdotheyknow website
- FOI requests are being analysed to highlight areas of public interest, so focus can be placed on releasing more information in areas of high demand this contradicts the presumption point above
- our quarter one performance data was recently published in machine-readable format for the first time.

In September 2011, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) released “The Code for Recommended Practice for Transparency in Local Government”. Maryellen Salter said: “Much of the work that we had been progressing within the Transparency Project aligned to the principles included within the document, especially in respect of the release of data being demand led. However, there were a number of new minimum requirements that we should be meeting and work is underway to publish this information." The start of the article infers that the Project has only recently started but Mary-Ellen talks about it like it has been going on for ages. Why not use dates? "We should be meeting" and aren't

The new Transparency Code requirements are:
- senior employee salaries (salaries over £58,200), names, job descriptions, responsibilities, budgets and numbers of staff
- an organisational chart of the staff structure of the local authority including salary bands and details of currently vacant posts this will be easier once 70% of staff are outsourced
- the ‘pay multiple’ – the ratio between the highest paid salary and the median average salary of the whole of the authority’s workforce the answer is the Chief Exec earns almost 7 times the person on the median ( middle ) salary
- grants to the voluntary community and social enterprise sector should be clearly itemised and listed
- the location of public land and building assets that is normally recorded on asset registers. The ones that have not been sold off anyway

The Information Governance Council (IGC) ( how many talking shops are there at Barnet Council? ) oversees this work, and will continue to find ways in which to facilitate open government. Suggestions from staff are always welcome, and can be made to redacted.

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and now Mr Reasonable weighs in

Oh dear perhaps there has been a data entry error when copying what the Communities Department actually said onto this email. I have set out below what they missed:

· Expenditure over £500, (including costs, supplier and transaction information). Any sole trader or body acting in a business capacity in receipt of payments of at least £500 of public money should expect such payments to be transparent. (not currently compliant)

· Councillor allowances and expenses (not yet published for last year)

· Copies of contracts and tenders to businesses and to the voluntary community and social enterprise sector (not published)

· Policies, performance, external audits and key inspections and key indicators on the authorities’ fiscal and financial position (not published in full)

Mr Schroder seems a bit remiss.

Kind regards

Mr Reasonable

and 

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Dear Craig or Andrew - please buy some calculators

Is one of these in North london Business Park? The Charles Babbage Difference Engine.

(http://www.dipity.com/) This would be more reliable than external consultants.

Here is a report presented to the Cabinet Resources Committee on 14 December. It concerns cutting the bidders for the DRS package from 4 to 2.

Mr Mustard does not comb through reports looking for errors ( and there shouldn't, in any event, be any ) but finds that they jump off the page at him. He will be reading something and a little bell goes off in his head and then he stops and looks more closely. It is a skill that is worth trying to develop.

Here is the report in full.

DRS update report to Cabinet Resources Committee on 14 December 2011

The error that Mr Mustard noticed was on page 13. To save you looking through the whole report, although Mr Mustard does recommend it so that you know what is going on, he repeats the bottom of page 12 and top of page 13 below.

So look at the last set of 5 percentages which should come to 43%. You can see immediately that they don't. How? Well taking the figures after the decimal point first, 8&7 are 15 and double that as they are there twice so that makes 30. Then add on the 9 and you have 39, move the decimal point and they come to 3.9

Take the whole numbers. 2 times 12 is 24, then add the 6 to get 30. Add the 7 & the 2 and you have 39. 

Take the 39 & the 3.9 and there is your total 42.9 but not 43!

Anyone can do this. Just take the numbers logically, or get a calculator and add them up.

This error carried through into the actual scoring. Luckily for Barnet Council this is one of their smaller errors and so won't have made a difference to the overall result, but it might have.

What bothers Mr Mustard is that 5 senior officer names are on the front of the report. Probably about 35 others contributed. Well overpaid consultants, supposedly experts, are involved. Six Cabinet members were presented with this report. The combined income of all these people is probably in excess of £4,000,000 p.a. and the fine detail was not given enough attention. 

That is what Mr Mustard does not like. He accepts that errors get made. However, they should not be found in reports that have reached the public, they should be spotted long before then. A questioning mindset needs to develop at Barnet Council.

If you can't add up then Mr Mustard questions whether you are worth £130,000 p.a.

Mr Mustard has now found his notes from the meeting.

Cllr Cornelius said "Doubts and sceptical feelings........are disappearing with this report" Perhaps they shouldn't have. Some positive scepticism would be a useful check on the headlong rush to privatisation.

Cllr Thomas said "Figures are robust and can be relied upon". Oh dear, that wasn't true was it?

Cllr Harper said "Has no scepticism whatsoever". Maybe it's time that you had some Councillor. You don't get your allowance just for turning up you know. You should have read every page of the reports beforehand.

Not an early outing for the 3 wise men then was it!

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Pettifogging

The "leader" of the council has the gall to talk about pettifogging procedures and yet he is in favour of PayByPhone parking which requires motorists to negotiate what is often reported as a slow and difficult system - Richard Wilson tried it and struggled. 

The system to buy vouchers on the council's website is a long way from the slickness of Amazon or John Lewis. 

What is pettifogging anyway? It's one of those words which people think they understand and possibly don't. Here is what my dictionary says:-

Assuming the leader wasn't talking about legal deception then he must have been talking about petty points.

Let Mr Mustard reflect. If the security contract had been properly filled under EU procurement rules then we wouldn't have had MetPro who didn't have:-

Criminal Records Bureau Checks

Security Industry Association registration

A contract with the council

An agreed sepcification

An agreed schedule of rates

A process for mornitoring performance

more deficiences could be listed but you get the picture.

Then 6 months later history repeated itself with the Parking Meter removal contract being given to RM Countryside Services in breach of the council's rules on procurement and the contract now having to be tendered again properly.

Mr Mustard doesn't think that any of the above is petty and is rather surprised that the "leader" does.

Rules are needed because if not poor value is obtained and the process is open to corruption.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard