What do consultants do for their money in Barnet?

The various reports about the Future Shape scheme to privatise the council detail a figure of £650,000 being spent on consultants to draw up reports. As if this wasn't bad enough, they are paying for them by sacking wardens for the Borough's Sheltered housing (saving £450,000). In short, the council are cutting back on poorly paid front line staff, who's focus is helping the vulnerable to pay for expensive outsiders to draw up management reports. How much do we pay these "consultants". I've really no idea, but former Tory Councillor Richard Weider sneered when I suggested £1,000 a day in the car park of Broadfields school at a Hendon Residents Forum meeting "You're out of touch, it's much more than that".

I have a few friends who work for some of the big consultancy firms. One of them told me a rather interesting story about his first assignment. At the time, the consultants were getting into IT and had recruited him from a large, bureaucratic organisation, where he was a technical guru. For his first assignment he was told he was being sent for a month to a large customer who were having performance problems with their IT systems. He was told that his brief was to produce a report detailing performance enhancements. He was told to look for "other business opportunities" for the firm. He turned up and the IT mangaer detailed the problem. My friend listened and then explained that he'd seen exactly the same problems at his previous employers. He said that a simple adjustment to the Cache memory would immediately fix the problems completely. The IT manager was impressed. My friend explained that the change could be done in flight (ie immediately). The IT manager was even more impressed. He said that he would get an administrator password and they could see if it worked. Within 1/2 an hour all of the problems had been cured. Users who had been pressing a button and waiting five minutes, suddenly got an instant response. The IT manager took my friend for a celebratory beer & lunch. He informed him that he inform his boss that he'd done a fantastic job, in a tenth of the anticipated time. The IT manager said he'd recommend my friend for a bonus.

Next day, my friend turned up back at his own office. What greeted him rather shocked him. His manager and a director called him into an office. Once the door shut, the director started swearing at him "are you a F******* imbecile, are you a moron, I'll tell you what you are, you are C***". My friend reeled back. He said "You asked me to sort the problems out, I did. What did they say". The director spat back "You are a C***. You just don't get it, do you?" My friend enquired what he'd done wrong. The director said in an extremely patronising fashion "OK, I'll spell it out, as you seem to thick to grasp it for yourself. We sent you there for two weeks. That means two weeks income for the firm. You stayed one day. We asked you to look for other business opportunities. You fixed all of the problems, so no more work, all the doors shut". My friend said "But it was a simple problem, what was I supposed to do?". At this, another tirade followed, the director then said "You had two weeks. You should have suggested a partial fix. They would have seen an improvement and been impressed. We could have got another month's revenue out of them. Your job is to generate revenue, not fix things". My friend decided that the job was not for him after that.

I've no idea how typical that is, but I can assure you I've heard many similar tales, if not quite that bad. The mantra Barnet Council Leader Mike Freer repeats every time he has to justify the cuts to the warden service is "We can't carry on doing things the way we used to. We have to change" I prefer the mantra "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".

I can give you three famous examples of businesses that made pots of money and then decided to transform themselves. Marconi, Northern Rock and Enron.

I ask you this. Take a simple Council function, one we all use - Refuse Collection. How on earth can a consultant transform that. You can privatise it so the staff earn less, the drivers don't stop when they bash into cars, for fear of the sack & the directors of the contractors make a pot of money. Barnet tried this in the 1980's and it failed miserably. Even staunch Tories got fed up with the lousy service. This was one reason why the Lib/Lab regime came to power. This council have shown that they cannot manage contractors. Aerodrome Road, with it's £11 million cost overrun proves this.

I don't know what Mike Freer expects the consultants to deliver, but I'll wager £50 to his favourite charity, that one of the main recommendations is that there is a further round of consultancy. We all know how much satisfaction Mike Freer would take from getting that cheque, so I await his call with bated breath !!!!!