A Barnet resident,
Maria Nash, has instructed lawyers to seek Judicial Review of the One Barnet
Programme. A pre-action protocol letter
was sent to the Council today, prior to the Cabinet meeting tonight which plans
to approve the appointment of Capita plc as preferred bidder for the first of
the One Barnet contracts, worth £320 million.
The letter details the grounds on which a Judicial Review will be
sought:
1. Breach of the Council's
duty to consult Barnet residents, businesses and community organisations about
its plans, the result of which is that it has spent millions of pounds – the
Agilisys contract alone has cost over £4m and is likely to rise to £6m – on
professional consultants helping it to run the procurement process, but has not
once asked local people for their views.
2. Breach of councillors'
duty to the residents in their area, to make sure that their decisions
represent the best available value for public money. In order to be sure that
they are getting best value out of this or any other contract the Council must
compare the costs, benefits and risks of outsourcing with the costs, benefits
and risks of retaining services in house but reforming the way they are
provided to optimise value. Despite having been urged to do this, and despite
the fact that it has been done by other local authorities, like Edinburgh,
Barnet has refused to do it.
3. Breach of the public
sector equality duty: the Council must take issues of equality into account
when making important decisions which affect people’s lives, like making
radical changes in the way Council services are run. The “equalities impact assessment” done in
the One Barnet case was a pure paper exercise, which took no account of the
views of people who would be affected by the changes.
4. Breach of public
procurement law, which requires that this contract be awarded to the company
submitting the “most economically advantageous tender from the point of view of
the public body”, i.e. the provider that gives the “best value for money” ,
taking into account the council’s responsibilities. Lack of consultation with local
people, lack of consideration of equalities and lack of an in-house services
comparator means the council cannot state that Capita gives the best value for
money. Such a breach of the public
procurement rules leads to cases like West Coast Main Line.
5. Breach of councillors’
duty to make up their own minds: Individual councillors must by law make up
their own minds how to vote after informing themselves on the issues. They are not allowed blindly to follow the
party line. Councillors have been starved
of information and have not had the opportunity to understand the highly
complex proposals for the contract, so they cannot legally vote to do anything
other than defer a decision so that they can inform themselves and come to a
proper view.
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This is a press release from Barnet Alliance for Public Services (BAPS), for more details
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