Eric Pickles Special : Thank you for listening to the Barnet Eye about transparent local Goverment

I wrote an open letter to Eric Pickles MP, the local Government Minister on Tuesday the 8th May. You can read it here  :-


http://barneteye.blogspot.com/2011/02/open-letter-to-secretary-of-state-eric.html

The final paragraph stated :-

The problems in Barnet could have been avoided by proper financial management and sound husbandry of taxpayers money, Transparency as implemented by Windsor and Maidenhead would go a long way to preventing Councils such as Barnet playing fast and loose with Taxpayers money. Whilst I agree with the concept of localism, it cannot possibly work if councils shroud themselves in secrecy. As such I urge you to use your powers to agree to meet Barnet Councils defecit, on condition that they appoint a new cabinet made up of people who actually know what they are doing. I would also insist on a fully open and transparent policy of management to be enacted to ensure that "difficult problems" cannot by hidden in the books in future.

It seems like Eric Pickles has got the message. There is a BBC report today which Pickles states the following

He said: "Fifty years ago, Margaret Thatcher changed the law to make councils open their meetings to the press and public. This principle of openness needs to be updated for the 21st Century. More and more local news comes from bloggers or citizen journalists telling us what is happening at their local council."Many councils are internet-savvy and stream meetings online, but some don't seem to have caught up with the times and are refusing to let bloggers or hyper-local news sites in." He added: "Opening the door  to new media costs nothing and will help improve public scrutiny." 

 It is nice when people actually listen to sensible advice. Pickles is right. People like me write blogs because we see that things could be improved. Most of us have things we'd rather do with our time, but are not prepared to see the Council, waste our cash, trash our services and treat us with disdain. Since the inception of the blog, I've bumped into many readers. After chatting for a while, I often hear the same thing "Until I started reading your blog I hadn't got a clue what the Council were up to". Here's a confession, neither had I. The sad thing is that in many ways, I still haven't.

Let me give you one small example of how bad things are. Have a look at this document on the Barnet Council website. It is a report for the One Barnet Overview an Scrutiny panel. There are many things which are amiss with the project, but have been "airbrushed" to look good. It's only when you get to page 24 and look at this table, you see how badly wrong it its going. Here is the income and expenditure table :-

Look at expenditure commitments - Forecast £983,000 - revised forecast £2,087.850 - in other words over 100% and over £1 million pounds over budget. Program management office. Forecast £148,280 - revised forecast £367,147 - nearly 150% over budget and well over £200,000 over budget. And how is it being financed?  From the contingency. The "LAA reward grant" (whatever that was) has disappeared, so it is yet more debt.

Future Shape has been running for three years and delivered no savings so far and cost millions. It is well over budget, as demonstrated here. What is the next milestone? (Bottom of page 23) - "Project plan with system build milestones to be finalised" - Yup, all this cash squandered, with no plan and no milestones. This is why it is so over budget.

This is why the Barnet Eye wrote to Eric Pickles. This is why Eric Pickles is right to urge openness and public scrutiny. This is your money they are wasting. The cash wasted on this could have kept several childrens centres open. It could have reduced your taxes. It could have saved the libraries of Barnet. Sadly your cash has just been squandered on waste of money consultants reports, with costs spiralling ever out of control.

That is why Barnet is having to make cuts. That is why we need to stop this blatent waste of our cash