Silvio Berlusconi has announced that he is resigning - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15646536 . His position has become untenable, due to a succession of cock ups (pardon the pun) and scandals. I never thought I'd suggest anyone should follow Berlusconi's example, but I think the time has come for the CEO of Barnet Council, Nick Walkley to take a lead from his book.
Under Walkleys reign, Barnet has become a complete basket case. Scandal has followed cock up and cock up has followed scandal. The latest one, exposed by this blog, was the fact that in the middle of the Metpro crisis, Barnet decided that the best way to deal with a blogger who was trying to help Barnet Council uncover its own ineptitude was to report him to the ICO. Not only that, but when the ICO rejected the complaint, out of hand, they clearly got an expensive legal opinion and went back to argue. At the subsequent audit committee meeting, we found out that the reason for the cock up was under resourcing of the audit department. They only had the resources to monitor 173 out of over 9,000 suppliers.
Yesterday this blog printed an FOI response from Barnet which demonstrated how better training and more resources has lead to a massive increase in cash recovered from crooks. Have they learned the lesson and beefed up auidt? Not a chance. We've seen report slating the IT infrastructure, we've seen countless reports showing that Walkleys pet project - OneBarnet - is completely mismanaged. Millions have been spent on consultants and nothing has been delivered. The SAP procurement project was meant to cost £8 million and they've spent £26 million on a project which has failed to address the simple issues of mqaking sure suppliers were managed.
Come on Nick, move over and let Barnet get someone who is up to the job
But who will take him now Roger after the publicity that Barnet has had?
ReplyDeleteShould he go or be pushed then let's hope that a suitable candidate can be found from the 300,000 Barnet residents ( there must be loads of good senior managers living here ) and at a more reasoanble salary.