Barnet Council - They can't organise a booze up in a brewery - Official

Barnet Council is a shambles. There is no accountability, there is no understanding of finance, it is like a truck driving towards a cliff, where the driver is too busy checking Twitter to see the impending disaster. Why do I write these blogs? Three reasons. 1. I pay tax and the less tax I pay, the more beer I can drink, and when they waste money it means my beer budget is smaller. 2. I know plenty of people who rely on Barnet Council for all manner of services and what they do is important. If the council does this badly, people I know suffer. 3. Because I live in Mill Hill, I plan to die in Mill Hill and if Barnet Council screws up, it makes Mill Hill a worse place to live in and we see more potholes, graffiti, litter, crime, begging, old ladies starving or freezing to death, children getting a bad education.... I could go on. 

I started this with blog with a very bold claim. But the sad thing is that as far as I can see is that it s completely true. Recently one of Barnet's top councillors Ammar Naqvi was exposed as having lied on his CV, pretending to have jobs and qualifications that he hadn't. He was the fiannce chief for Barnet Council. When the truth came to light, he was booted out of the Labour party, resigned as a councillor and has forced a by election in Burnt Oak. Labour has a huge majority in Burnt Oak which is there safest ward. The Tories always said that you could stand a donkey with a red rosette in Burnt Oak and win. So even if there is a huge shock, it will make little difference to the way the council is run. Councillor Naqvi has been around for years, how did they not know that he'd embellished his CV? Are no due dilligence checks done before someone is put in charge of Council finances?

Finances? It is something that myself and the other Barnet bloggers have historically taken a keen interest in. My fellow blogger Mr Reasonable has recently exposed the reasons for a £41 million shortfall in the finances. Whilst I accept that Mr Reasonable is right to call out the historical mismanagement of Barnet finances by the Tories, which is the root cause of the problem, he is far to lenient on Labour. They took over in 2022 and should have thrown the books open, exposed the mismanagement they had presided over and put together a properly costed and funded four year plan to try and recover the situation. Speeding up the insourcing of mismanaged services by Capita would have cut costs radically and given the opportunity to improve services. As Mr Reasonable stated, they also failed to put taxes up. When you take over, you get a small window, where you can blame everything on the previous administration, if you have the evidence. After nearly three years, you have to take responsibility yourself. 

There is one thing that Barnet Council could and should have done on day one, was dissolve the Barnet Group, who run Barnet Homes and oversee the council house stock. There is a whole layer of management, on fat salaries, that replicates similar roles in the Council There are duplicate IT systems and huge waste. They also employ shoddy and dangerous contractors. Have a look at these posts on Facebook.

Not only do Barnet Homes cost the taxpayer a fortune, they employ shoddy contractors who do substandard work and even cause fires in tenants homes. It simply isn't good enough. This particular tenant is supposed to be having his kitchen renovated.  The work was supposed to take one week. It is still not done. The tenant has over 100 official complaints with Barnet Homes, for shoddy work and problems with the property. 

The tenant also had problems with Barnet Homes where they were paying their rent and Barnet Homes were saying they hadn't and threatening them with court action and eviction. I got involved and started to do some digging. My digging seemed to identify and issue with a poorly designed payment portal. I wrote to the CEO, I did not get a satisfactory answer to my query. So I put in an FoI to Barnet Homes, asking about the number of such misdirected payments. I submitted the request on 29th October. By law, I was supposed to get a response within 20 days. There is a requirement on the authority to be helpful! 

This was the first response I got, on the 14th November

Dear Mr Tichborne,

 

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request, which was received by Barnet Homes on 29 October 2024.

 

Unfortunately, due to an administrative error there has been a delay to our Complaints and Information Team acknowledging it. I am very sorry for this.

 

Whilst Barnet Homes provides support, the London Borough of Barnet is ultimately responsible for the suspense account and your request therefore needs to be directed to the council’s FOI team. For expediency, I have included the council’s team in this email so they can process your request (@Freedom of Information Act).

 

I apologise again for the delay; I will take this up with our team.

The next response came on the 12th December

The Complaints and Information Team is presently very short-staffed and therefore you may experience a delay to our usual response timescales. We will provide you with a response, where needed, as soon as possible. We are very sorry for any inconvenience and we thank you for your patience. 

This could explain why the poor tenant, who's home has been trashed by dodgy contractors gets nowhere with his complaints.  

Having not got a response by January from Barnet Council, I warned them that I would report them to the ICO who regulate FoI requests.

On the 15th January, I finally got this response

Dear Mr Tichborne,

 

London Borough of Barnet apologises sincerely in the delay in providing you the requested information.  Please see response below.

 

Your request:

Please can you supply me with the closing balance for the suspense account, where misdirected payments, including rent payments with incorrect payment reference numbers are directed, for the following dates 

1st January 2024

1st April 2024

1st October 2024 

Please can you also supply me details of the total number of payment transactions directed to this account for the month of September. 

Response:

Please see the totals for Council Tax below.

 

Please can you supply me with the closing balance for the suspense account, where misdirected payments, including rent payments with incorrect payment reference numbers are directed, for the following dates

 1st January 2024 - £275,712.91

1st April 2024 - £0.00

1st October 2024 - £513,295.92 

Please can you also supply me details of the total number of payment transactions directed to this account for the month of September - 924

Kind regards,

I was horrified at this. This indicated that nearly 1 in ten tenants payments were being misdirected. So I emailed the leader of the Council and the CEO of Barnet Council to explain. 

To my amasement, the next reply I got was this. It wasn't from Barnet Council. It was from Elliot Sweetman, the CEO of Barnet Homes

Dear Mr Tichborne,

 

Thank you for your email which Cllr Rawlings has asked me to respond to.

 

Just to clarify, the figures in terms of values and transactions you have been provided in response to your FOI request relate to the council tax suspense account, not council tenant rent payments. We’re still investigating why different information was provided to that requested. However, in respect of council tenant rent payments, Barnet Homes undertake daily checks to identify incorrectly assigned rent payments and advise that on average circa. six rent payments per month are identified in the suspense account and reallocated to the correct rent accounts.

 

We will come back to you with the further information you have enquired about as soon as possible.

 

Kind regards,

 

Elliott Sweetman

So here we are. It is nearly three months since I first made the enquiry. I still don't have the information I requested, although Mr Sweetman has provided some rough fugures, that his organisation originally said they couldn't provide! We also now know that last September, nearly a thousand council tax payers payments went astray. If that is representative of the year, that is over ten thousand council tax payers who are paying and their account isn't being properly credited. There is another issue that the response highlights. The balance on 1st April was zero £. As there was a quarter of a million in January and half a million in September, why was there a zero balance in April? I asked the question for a specific reason. That is when the council is finalising its annual accounts. It is pretty clear that the cash was transferred to other accounts to balance the books for year end. I have emailed the Section 151 officer for an explanation. The Section 151 officer's job is to ensure financial probity. I've not had a response, so far and have emailed the officer again to ask for confirmation of receipt.

It interests me that Barnet Council Leader, Barry Rawlings did not respond to my email. Despite Barry assurring me, on the night he won the election, that he welcomed critical scrutiny, it is clear to me that the Labour Administration are not interested in such things. 

I will give Mr Sweetman and Councillor Rawlings the opportunity to provide a guest blog, unedited to explain themselves. It is clear to me that neither organisation are up to the job. The emails are there, what do you think?

By the way, this is what I was talking about here.