A blog you should read about how much we are paying Capita for their services

If you are a citizen of Barnet and you've ever wondered whether Barnet Council are being efficiently run, I would strongly recommend that you read John Dix's Reasonable New Barnet Blog. Mr Dix has put together a very detailed blog detailing the difference between what we were told Barnet would be paying Capita and what we actually are paying. Mr Dix does a blinding job of exposing just how the taxpayers of Barnet are being taken to the cleaners and reminding us of how the Conservative administration of Barnet have done everything possible to hamper anyone from shining a light on what is going on. Please have a look.

Mr Reasonable: Just what we pay Capita - How they billed £555 million to one council 

Mr Dix sums up by saying

To all of this you may say "So What?" My concern is the lack of transparency about so much of the goings on in Barnet, something they have been making even more difficult as the years go by. We are gagged at meetings, and the amount of information they used to produce has been reduced. For example, Barnet used to produce a quarterly, one page summary of the benefits the Capita contract had generated (Benefits Realisation). When I started asking questions about the numbers, Barnet's response was to stop publishing it. I used to analyse the senior council staff salaries from data they published. One day they just stopped publishing it. I never published staff member names even though it was available only ever their title. Now we haven't a clue other than for the top handful of staff. Even worse they removed years of historical salary data that had already been published.  

I do this because someone has to try and hold the council to account!

Reading Mr Dix's blog and final comment, it is great to see ordinary citizens holding the council to account. Why didn't someone think of that sooner!