Third objection to Accounts - natural consequence of JR judgment

Following the judgment in the High Court that Barnet Council had been fund raising from CPZ residents contrary to the law, Mr Mustard thought he had better point out to the bean counters that the official Accounts of the council would need some adjustment. Let's see if they agree.

24 July 2013



Mr P Hughes
Grant Thornton
Melton St
London
NW1 2EP



Dear Mr Hughes

The London Borough of Barnet
Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2013
Third Notice of Objection

In the judgment of Mrs Justice Lang, DBE in the parking charges judicial review and in particular paragraph 64 of the judgment which says, inter alia, "the 1984 Act is not a fiscal measure and does not authorise the authority to use its powers to charge local residents for parking in order to raise surplus revenue .............the Defendant's purpose...was to generate additional income.......... This purpose was not authorised under the RTRA 1984 and therefore the decision was unlawful."

The judicial review was brought to challenge the increase in car permit charges in April 11 from £40 for a first car to £100 (and other charges for 2nd & 3rd cars) and the increase in Visitor Voucher cost from £1 to £4. These increases are clearly unlawful and I would expect the subject of this objection to have already been picked up by yourself and the council and a suitable provision made to refund the unlawfully gained income. I think that the Accounts for 2011/12 will also need to be reopened and provision made for a refund in that year also.

I require you to make a report in the public interest under section 8 of the Audit Commission Act 1998. A copy of this Notice of Objection has been sent to Mr C Naylor and to Cllr Monroe Palmer, Baron Palmer of Child's Hill, OBE, FCA. I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely



Mr Mustard

Second objection to Accounts - One Barnet implications

It seems that the External Audit of local authorities relies so much on trust these days (not like the old days where everything was checked and reconciled within an inch of its life) that a mere 6 figure overcharge by a supplier doesn't appear on the radar of external auditors, nor the internal ones come to that.

Fortunately armchair auditors don't sleep much and they spot stuff that is wrong and raise it with the external auditor who will probably find a convenient carpet to sweep it under, although Mr Mustard would be delighted to see Mr Paul Hughes prove him wrong. Here is Mr Mustard attempting to save council tax payers a collective £137,343


23 July 2013

Mr P Hughes
Grant Thornton
Melton St
London
NW1 2EP




Dear Mr Hughes

The London Borough of Barnet
Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2013
Second Notice of Objection

I refer to the parking enforcement contract with NSL. It contains KPI that lead to a number of "bit" payments each and every month. There is a chart which explains the way in which the bits work included in the contract. Put simply the KPI payment, or deduction, is, after the first two months, never static. The bits start at +2 in months 1 & 2 to allow time for the contract to settle down and then month 2 performance provides the basis of payment in month 3. If targets are achieved then payment goes up one bit, if not, it comes down one bit. It never stays the same unless it is at +6 or -6 bits.

If bits fall below zero, then 2 bits are deducted each month going down to -6 at the worst.

I asked to see the actual KPI measurements for the entire period. I have been informed in an email from Mark Taylor that NSL have not met its KPI targets, and bits must therefore reduce. There was a deduction of one bit for one month which proves what I say but after that the matter has not been pursued. This is wilful misconduct and the council have overpaid the contract value by £137,343 (in round pounds) according to my attached calculations which should be the object of consideration by you under section 8 of the Audit Commission Act 1998.

A copy of this Notice of Objection has been sent to Mr C Naylor and to Cllr Monroe Palmer, Baron Palmer of Child's Hill, OBE, FCA.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

Mr Mustard

Now there are implications for One Barnet contracts with Crapita. This NSL contract is tiny compared to NSCSO & DRS and relatively simple to manage. Scale up this lack of management and the failure to hold the contractor to account when 25 times as much money is involved and you would be looking at a loss to council tax payers of more like £3million, which would wipe out lots of those juicy aspirational savings and be a real loss to boot. 

This is why Mr Mustard is opposed to the big One Barnet contracts (and the parking one due to loss of control). It is because the council management simply don't have the ability in procurement or commissioning, the vision, the flexibility, the manpower, the organisational skills, the desire or the tenacity (unlike those pesky bloggers) to properly manage and enforce the contracts that they have signed.

NSL is our very own Serco / G4S mess.

Mr Mustard fully expects a mention in the 2013 Armchair Auditor Awards (oh no, they don't exist as we work for free and don't have council tax payers money to pour down the drain on self aggrandising vanity awards nights out in Park Lane; a pint in the Black Horse it is then, much more fun).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Objection

Mr Mustard is taking the unusual step of posting a blog quite late at night. The reason for this is unless he tells you what he is up to right this minute by 9am tomorrow morning the story may have moved on and his Notice of Objection to the Accounts of Barnet Council to 31 March 2013 may well have been swept away as immaterial by the external Auditor. Mr Mustard's objection was emailed at 22:11 Does anyone want to bet whether it will still exist by Wednesday evening when Mr Hughes plans to sign off the Accounts (Audit Committee meets on Wednesday evening).

22 July 2013



Mr P Hughes
Grant Thornton
Melton St
London
NW1 2EP


Dear Mr Hughes

The London Borough of Barnet
Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2013
Notice of Objection

I am told by Barnet Council that not a single Penalty Charge Notice was recovered by them, or by their parking enforcement contractor NSL Ltd, through a bailiff collection in the entire year ended 31 March 2013. In the prior year approximately 6,500 PCN were sent to bailiffs.

For the first month of the year i.e. April 12, prior to the start of the NSL contract, which was delayed by a month from the expected start date, the council itself did not receive any PCN income from a bailiff.

For the next few months, up until at least September 12 a bailiff tender exercise was being carried out by NSL and so there was not a bailiff contract in force during that period.

It is unclear which bailiffs were appointed by NSL, as agent for Barnet Council, and with what start dates but it seems that even if a contract was in place no funds were received via a bailiff for any PCN.

It is clear that the failure to recover funds from even a single PCN during the year has led to a loss. The council will doubtless claim that they can send these PCN to a bailiff in the following council tax year but that is to ignore the effect of para 170e of the London Councils Code of Conduct on Civil Parking and Traffic Enforcement which clearly states that a delay of 6 months should lead to the cancellation of a PCN. I attach a copy for your convenience.

Accordingly I make this Notice of Objection to the Accounts on three grounds:

1 a loss or deficiency has been incurred by the wilful misconduct of a person

2 any balance in the balance sheet for PCN should be adjusted to remove the value of any PCN which have been left unactioned for more than 6 months at any stage prior to the appointment of bailiffs (whose warrant is only valid for 12 months) over and above those already written off by Delegated Powers Report number 2065.

3 NSL Ltd have been paid a fixed contract price for various services which included sending instructions to bailiffs and they were not ready to provide the contracted service on 1 May 2012 as tendered for and so a loss has been incurred in that regard in respect of both their fees and the consequentially lost PCN income.

A copy of this Notice of Objection has been sent to Mr C Naylor and to Cllr Monroe Palmer, Baron Palmer of Child's Hill, OBE, FCA.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely



Mr Mustard

Whether or not Mr Hughes finds the Objection to have legs or not Mr Mustard expects that readers will find this incompetent state of affairs to be absolutely incredible. There is no need as this sort of procurement failure is quite normal in Barnet.

If this is how a commissioning council operates under the One Barnet model, and we have much larger contracts waiting in the wings to be snapped up by Capita, there will be multiple massive service failures that do not get picked up, corrected or paid for.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Dear Richard - Dear CPZ

So today Justice Lang DBE decided that the hike in CPZ charges (first car permit from £40 to £100 and visitor vouchers from £1 to £4) was unlawful as it was a change intended to revenue raise and not form a good traffic management purpose. You can read the full judgment here.

In the local paper, here, the Leader of the council, Richard Cornelius, says that the council they are minded to appeal. He needs his mind changing! If you are one of the 8% or so of residents who live inside a CPZ and have to suffer extortionate charges, why not send Richard an email and tell him why the council shouldn't appeal.

His address is cllr.r.cornelius@barnet.gov.uk

I am sure he will be delighted to hear your view. You might as well send a copy to the Cabinet member in charge of parking cllr.d.cohen@barnet.gov.uk

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

PATAS appeals soar

On this glorious day when David Attfield won, on behalf of all CPZ residents, his Judicial Review appeal against Barnet Council (and he was well supported and funded by the community) it is fitting that we have a look at another aspect of parking, parking ticket appeals.

Thanks to another enquirer using FOI, Mr Mustard has put together a little table of third stage appeals, to the independent adjudicator at PATAS, and the results.

Year / period to	Appeals	Won	%
31 Mar 11	1222	504	41
31 Mar 12	941	524	56
31 Mar 13	2217	1571	71
15 Jun 13	681	395	58

From which you can see that there was a surge in numbers in the year ended March 13. The curious coincidence is that NSL took over ticket issuing duties on 1 May 12 and final stage appeals have more than doubled since they did so. Mr Mustard would posit that this is thanks to more marginal tickets being issued and less appeals being upheld at the two earlier stages.

The 681 appeals for this year if multiplied up pro-rata to a complete year suggests that about 3,270 appeals will reach PATAS.

As more and more people go to PATAS and find that it is a convenient forum (on the Northern Line) staffed by decent human adjudicators who do try to be fair and that there is a more than evens chance of getting your parking ticket cancelled with no downside (28 days to pay if you lose) then Mr Mustard thinks that the number of appeals will just keep climbing. You can download Mr Mustard's simple guide to the process form the left hand side of the site.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Open letter from the Barnet Bloggers

Were Barnet's Tory councillors secretly whipped? 
Barnet bloggers call for an investigation.

At Barnet Council’s full council meeting on 16 July, Councillor Brian Coleman alleged that Barnet’s Conservative members are ‘entirely whipped’ when attending scrutiny and other Council meetings, including those dealing with the highly controversial One Barnet privatisation programme.

According to the Council’s constitution, any whipping arrangements must be declared, but we believe that no such declarations have been made at any of the relevant recent meetings. Such actions would be in breach of the constitution and therefore unlawful.

If Councillor Coleman’s allegations are true, this clearly has very serious implications and casts into doubt the legality of many of the highly significant decisions which have been taken by the current administration, most importantly the decision to grant two massive contracts to Capita and Capita Symonds in the outsourcing of a large number of our local council services.

We therefore call on the Leader of the council, Councillor Richard Cornelius, to instigate an immediate and independent public inquiry into the claims made by his former colleague, and we also ask that the authority’s external auditors at Grant Thornton should as a matter of public interest hold an urgent inquiry into the allegations. Residents need to know whether decisions have been made legally and whether Tory councillors have acted constitutionally.

Signed:

Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne

19 July 2013

Mr Morale Booster

Mr Mustard didn't go to the Appeal Court because his fits of coughing would have disrupted proceedings.

He also fears, when he reads the next passage, which has been clearly stolen borrowed from Mrs Angry's Broken Barnet blog that if he had been caught unawares in Court with this "evidence" he would have had to be carried out of the Court in a state of helpless mirth.

We were now treated to the contents of a letter by Mr Andrew Travers, the acting Chief Executive of Barnet Council.

We were informed that he was greatly concerned about the morale of staff. Not as you might imagine from the perspective of those employees about to lose their jobs as a result of privatisation, but because of the delay in the loss of those jobs, and the uncertainty, thoughtlessly caused by those bringing this legal challenge. If you are being led to the guillotine, you want to get your head on the chopping block as soon as possible, of course, rather than pray for rescue.

Staff were leaving, due to low morale, we heard. We did not hear that staff might be leaving so as to be sure of employment, and security for their families.

So naturally once the Court case was over Andrew's thoughts turned to the staff and how he should boost their low morale and how he could make their job more enjoyable, easier, more helpful to the public and make people want to stay etc etc. Here is what he actually sent out.

Please help Mr Mustard out and tell him which part of this email shows any concern at all for the staff. It appears to be an email sent by a pure bean-counter who is solely concerned by the privatisation timetable (and the consequent knock-on effects on the budget) and shows an unseemly haste to sign a contract.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard