Saturday 18 June 2011

The Barnet Eye Saturday Quiz - Great Prizes

We are proud to announce the launch of the Barnet Eye Saturday Quiz. We have a great prize, an all expenses paid holiday for two at the lovely Sandbanks Hotel. Just cut and paste the questions below into an email, knock up an invoice for the amount of the holiday with the name "Metpro Security Response" on the top. Add 20% to it for spending money (detail it as VAT) and email it to Andrew.Travers@barnet.gov.uk (actually please don't as it's illegal, not that it seems to stop anyone round here). The quiz is actually just for fun

1. Metpro Group got paid over a million quid whilst operating without required licenses or accreditation Who spotted this?

A) Andrew Travers (Barnet Council Cheif Finacial Officer on £1000 a day)
B) Grant Thornton (Barnet Council Auditors with massive contract)
C) Lord Monroe Palmer (Head of Audit Committee - allowance £15k per annum)
D) The Bloggers of Barnet  (Free of charge, guvnor)

2. When the Council became aware of the serious problems with Metpro, and the fact that the company had been providing services without the legally required checks, did they?

A) Call in the Police to see if there had been any criminal activity?
B) Set up an independent inquiry to get to the bottom of the issue, with power to discipline individuals for wrongdoing?
C) Suspend all work on outsourcing until the Council systems for contract management were given a clean bill of Health?
D) Set up an internal inquiry, with no power to do anything except "Inspire the Council Officials" (to quote Maryellen Salter)?

3. Having established that there was no audit trail of the Metpro Contract, Invoices were paid to unauthorised bank accounts, VAT was paid in contravention of VAT rules and EU law on contracts was not followed, how many Council officials have been suspended or dismissed from post?

a) 0
b) 1
c) 2
d) 3 or more

4. Every member of the Audit Committee expressed their disgust at what happened. It is clear that the duty of care they owe Barnet Residents has not been discharged properly. The MP's of Barnet , Theresa Villiers, Mike Freer and Matthew Offord are elected and paid to look after the residents interests. Additionally Freer was head of the Council when Metpro started to work for the Council. Offord was Deputy Leader. Which of these MP's has gone on record to  express their dismay at the situation?

a) Villiers
b) Freer
c) Offord
d) None of them

5. What percentage of Vendors did the Head of the Audit Committee say that Barnet Council monitored until recently?

a)  100%
b) 10%
c) 1%
d) 0.1%

Please send your answers to nick.walkley@barnet.gov.uk along with any comments you may think appropriate. You may wish to CC the Leader of the Council cllr.r.cornelius@barnet.gov.uk

It is your money. Over £1 million of it. Please do not sit on your hands, contact these guys and tell them what you think

5 comments:

Mr Mustard said...

You are Chalky White(wash) and I claim the £5

baarnett said...

And as a bonus:

EYE-SPY !

Send Roger a snap of any new branding (that's sticky-backed plastic to you) on the sides of the ex-MetPro 'fleet' that you see about the streets of Barnet.

The company's name change was registered with Companies House (link, but website closed on Sundays) on 2 June.

No doubt there are 'special rules' that HM Revenue & Customs impose, over the collection of VAT from an as-yet unregistered company, when it subsequently changes its name, before registration with the original name is acquired.

Such a fuss, I know, but governments are like that, over the collection of taxation.

Note: It is expected that photographs may be a little blurred, due to the high-speeds (but legal) that 'Evo' vehicles are said to use.

Don't Call Me Dave said...

As a serious point, it seems to me that Grant Thornton should also be investigated for their failure to spot what was going on. These guys get paid a fortune. We want our money back.

Jaybird said...

DCMD far from being chastised at the Audit meeting, they were allowed to avoid the question as to why they had failed to pick this up and it was suggested that they should instead be engaged for more hours to help get the Council out of this parlous situation.

You may be interested to know that one of the departments which only received a limited assurance was Treasury management, the dept which gambled and lost £30 million odd on Iceland. They were given this partly because there were Priority 2 (significant concerns) that they were still not following the investment guidelines, something Maryellen Salter noted but which Nick Walkley did not accept but mainly because they had ALL the Councils bank details on unencrypted laptops which they were taking off site.

MickeyN said...

I was the Head of Internal Audit for a couple of prominent organisations. Internal Audit is a relatively new profession in its current appraisal, review, assurance and challenge role. In theory, it is independent and with a supportive and courageous Audit Committee, it can strengthen corporate governance by reporting to the very top of the organisation. However the practice is very different; no Senior Executive Team wants to hear bad news – especially if it affects their own short term bonuses and advancement opportunities. Audit Committees make supportive noises, but they are very rarely courageous or independent enough to shake up the cosy consensus and to hold the executive to account. The Metpro report is the most critical report (outside of a fraud report) that I have seen in 20 years of Internal Audit. I saw the same tactic used by management/the Audit Committee on Thursday as was used on a number of occasions when I presented critical reports; it goes something like this:
1)listen intently to the audit presentation with your briefing papers pristine in front of you (because you have not bothered to read them);
2)commend Internal Audit for their diligence;
3)express disappointment and surprise at the findings (even though audit has been giving only limited assurance before);
4)praise the concept of Internal Audit as a means of strengthening corporate governance;
5)bemoan the under-resourcing of Internal Audit (even though resourcing IA is one of your responsibilities in the first place);
6)discuss how lessons should be learned from Internal Audit – usually directed at more work for IA in following up old recommendations which management should have implemented;
7)listen to top management praising themselves for having the foresight to have such an important tool as Internal Audit and how important IA will be for future operations;
8)ensure that IA have a lot of things to do for the next meeting;
draw the meeting to a close saying how timely this has been as it helps everyone move forward;
9)remember to take your pristine papers with you;
10)wait for the papers for the next meeting;
11)return to step one.