The people of Barnet have been paying for the Leader of Barnet Council to have a rather expensive blog, called Leader Listens. Former Leader Mike Freer set the Leader Listens program up to allow a two way dialog between residents and the leadership. When Lynne Hillan took over in December, she did two things. She deleted all of the "interesting and informative" historical blogs by Freer and then in February, she promised to post her expenses on a monthly basis on the blog. Like most of Hillans promises, this one was broken. The February post was the last one.
I thought I'd see if Lynne Hillan had actually bothered to update it whilst I was on holiday - see for yourself what she's done with her blog, which cost over £400 of taxpayers money to set up and was meant to keep the Barnet Taxpayer up to date with what the Leader has been doing :-
http://leaderlistens.com
Yup, takes you straight to the Barnet Council website - http://www.barnet.gov.uk/ - If you click on the link from this page to Leader Listens, you stay where you are. In short, the Leader has stopped Listening.
Leaderlistens.com sums up the Leadership of Lynne Hillan at Barnet Council. Like the link, it goes nowhere. Like the blog, promises have been broken, things have been hidden and the history of the Tory Leadership has been swept under the carpet. All of this at a huge cost to the taxpayer. A blog such as this one is free to set up - Freer paid £400 for Leader Listens blog for no good reason. I earn enough for the odd pie & pint from the Adverts in the sidebar. Of course that is called good financial management, something Hillan & co just don't get. She has got to go
2 comments:
And more detail on Roger's point:
The council's "Statement of Accounts" (http://www.barnet.gov.uk/statement-of-accounts) to March 2009 states that:
"The council has recently developed a strong online presence, namely through our own social media website, whereilive.org. The council has also established a presence on facebook; twitter, flickr, and the Leader of the Council has launched his own Leader Listens website."
Has anyone been able to see "whereilive.org"? The domain name is still available, with and without a ".UK" at the end.
The "leaderlistens.com" domain name was renewed two months ago (it is not clear if our Council paid for this):
Expiration Date: 2011-06-16
Creation Date: 2008-06-16
Last Update Date: 2010-06-17
Registrant: Yellow Park, 32 Lower Range Road, Gravesend DA12 2QL.
Administrative contact: Easily Limited, 3rd Floor, Prospero House, 241 Borough High Street, London SE1 1GA. 08704 589450, 08704 589458.
The latest entry on "leaderlistens.com" (which uses the Barnet Council logo) is on 15 February 2010, when Lynne Hillan announces she will put details of her expenses on the web site every month. There are no later entries. Furthermore, the site (or its Internet Protocol entry) has recently been altered, to merely redirect to the main "www.barnet.gov.uk" web site.
Every year, under the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2003, councils in England are required to open the books for 20 working days. We can see invoices, contracts and everything else to do with money about the council year just ended.
This is more powerful that the Freedom of Information Act - they have to publicly show everything connected with the previous year's accounts. Nothing can be redacted.
There is no sign of the 2009-2010 accounts on the council's web site. Does anyone know if thay have been produced, and when the "20 working days" will apply this year?
I am still trying to work out how Barnet Council can have a £7 million IT budget.
We know there are plenty of laptops
[http://www.notthebarnettimes.co.uk/2009/10/peoples-republic-of-barnet.html]
Clearly they need a department dealing with in-house IT issues and the website, but this is larger than the entire libraries budget.
Even so, it seems an astonishingly large amount, and not set to be cut in the same way as front-line services next year.
Post a Comment