Thursday, 26 September 2019

The Thursday Local News Roundup - Hadley FC, Luciana Berger for Finchley and an Apology from Barnet Council

Flowers at the Mill Hill Village Green Earlier this year
Welcome to a new regular feature. Many people have spoken to me recently saying that they like the regular features I run. Environment Monday, The Wednesday Poem, The Friday Joke, The Saturday List and the Sunday Tweets of the week. They know to check the blog on particular days when things of interest to them are published. A criticism of late has been the lack of local news. Since the demise of the local papers, with no one getting local news through the door (the Barnet Times is still online and can be collected at the libraries), there is not a great central source of local news. So Thursday will be our local news roundup. Here are a few stories that have caught our eye.

Hadley FC through to third qualifying round of the FA Cup

Our local football team, Hadley FC have made it through to the third round of The FA cup qualifying competition. They face a trip to Portsmouth to play Havant and Waterloovile.

This is an amazing achievement for a team in the Essex Senior League. Hadley FC play in Brickfield Lane, the road opposite The Gate Pub. Hadley beat Bedmond FC 3-0 to get through.

Lucian Berger to stand as Lib Dem candidate for Finchley and Golders Green.

 Many people in the Borough will have been appalled by the treatment of Luciana Berger and fully understood the difficult decision she had to take to quit the Labour Party. She s wiidely recognised as an excellent MP and a decent human being. Following her decision to leave Labour, she decided to join the Lib Dems and locally we are delighted that she has been adopted as the candidate for the party in the forthcoming election in Finchley and Golders Green. This will offer the people of the constituency a real choice. Sadly, many members of the community, who have previously not wanted to vote Tory have felt politically homeless. Now they have a candidate who gives them a real choice, is principled and they can trust to represent the whole community.

Councillor Gabriel Rosenberg defects to the Lib Dems.
Gabriel Rosenberg has long been recognised as one of the most decent and thoughtful councillors in the Conservative group in Barnet Council. The antics of Boris Johnson have pushed Gabriel to the point where he has felt that he could no longer remain in the party. He has joined the Lib Dems. Gabreil explains why in this tweet.


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Barnet Council issue apology to the Barnet Eye for wholly inadequate FoI Response

The Barnet Eye has received an apology for a wholly inadequate response to a  Freedom of Information request concerning the Mill Hill Neighbourhood Forum. The Barnet Eye complained to Barnet Council and an internal review has concluded that the initial response was wholly inadequate.

The Barnet Eye had sought to establish how much taxpayers money had been spent by the council on the now wound up Mill Hill Neighbourhood forum. Sadly, the council have now admitted that their accounting systems do not log time of council contractors on such matters. It is simply 'part of the bill'. We believe that this lack of oversight of what Capita are spending their time doing explains many of the problems we are having with the company. We have now established that the council gave the forum a grant of £750. The council has not sought copies of the forum accounts to establish whether this was properly spent. Whilst the council is not legally required to, we believe in transparency and felt it would be better for all concerned if the council had received and published MHNF accounts. We see no reason fro secrecy. Here is the council response.

Request for review
For Q 1 Barnet Council have referenced a document that does not provide the information was requested. The specific reason for the request was because the document referred to did not contain the required information.For Q2 Barnet Council have stated that they are not required to financially support production of Neighbourhood Development Plans which is misleading and not what was asked. Please read the question properly and provide a response to what was asked. Barnet Council should confirm whether they provided a grant, yes or no, and if yes, how much;For Q3 Barnet Council have again provided a misleading answer saying they not required to oversee any accounts which is not what was asked. Barnet Council should confirm whether they received any accounts from MHNF, yes or no, and if yes, provide the copies. Please ensure that before responding you read the request properly
I have undertaken the internal review and the outcome of my review is set out below.

Response
I have taken each issue you raise in turn.

For Q 1 Barnet Council have referenced a document that does not provide the information was requested. The specific reason for the request was because the document referred to did not contain the required information.
I concurr that the document provided was unhelpful and that the rest of the response was ambiguous to the extent of not answering the query. The original response stated that "To date the primary cost to the Council associated with the MHNP application has been officer support time. This has been absorbed by Re and thus contained within
existing budgets."

The use of the word "primary" here is misleading, as this would suggest that there are additional costs that are not mentioned, with officer support time being the foremost. I have established in my discussions with the service that this is essentially mistaken, and that officer time was the only cost. As stated, the officer time spent was provided by Re staff under the existing contract, so no additional cost was incurred by the council itself. The relevant officer time has not been quantified, in any case, so it would not be possible to establish a figure for the costs incurred by Re.

For Q2 Barnet Council have stated that they are not required to financially support production of Neighbourhood Development Plans which is misleading and not what was asked. Please read the question properly and provide a response to what was asked. Barnet Council should confirm whether they provided a grant, yes or no, and if yes, how much;  
I concurr with your request for review of this point. The reponse provided attempts to answer a simple query with a non-sequitur that does not begin to address it.

I have contacted the relevant officer and have ascetained that in January 2017, MHNF was awarded a one-off grant of £750 from the corporate grants programme to defray the cost of space in its publication, 'A Guide to Mill Hill', dedicated to council-related messaging. This is the forum's one and only corporate grant.

For Q3 Barnet Council have again provided a misleading answer saying they not required to oversee any accounts which is not what was asked. Barnet Council should confirm whether they received any accounts from MHNF, yes or no, and if yes, provide the copies. Please ensure that before responding you read the request properly
Again, I concurr with your request for review. Whether or not the council is required to oversee accounts has no impact either way on whether copies of accounts are held. Not all information held by the council is due to a requirement, statutory or otherwise.

I have contacted the relevant service and have confirmed that no such accounts are held.

In conclusion, the initial response to your request was wholly inadequate, with responses that did not address the questions asked. I apologise on behalf of the concil for this failure in upholding the standards we hope to set with our FOI responses.

I hope this review has managed to clarify the issues and provide the answers you originally sought.
As you can see the council has admitted it's failure.

Thameslink offer for the Troy "Myth and reality" exhibition at the British Museum.

If you travel by Thameslink, there is an amazing 2 for 1 offer to get into the Troy Myth and Reality exhibition. Click this link for details. This will be an amazing exhibition and runs from 21st November to 8th March. It is just around the corner from St Pancras, easily accessible via Thameslink.

Mill Hill Rugby Club looking for new members

Fancy getting fit and meeting new friends? Why not try out the training at Mill Hill

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