Beware if you want to do business with Toxic One Barnet Council

Yesterday the Barnet Eye posted details of a DPR assigning a contract of not more than £74,999 to Addleshaw Goddard, a legal firm.This is what Addleshaw Goddard say about themselves

Welcome to Addleshaw Goddard. If you want to find out more about us, you should find it here. Our key facts give you a snapshot about us and our external profile, our Client Serviceswill tell you what we do, who we do it with and how we've helped them, and our international pages talk about our global capability. 

I was interested to see that the Barnet Eye had about 20 hits yesterday from the Addleshaw Goddard domain. This isn't surprising, given that we'd mentioned them in a blog. Most companies are very keen to see what is being written about them and hope that all coverage will be as positive as possible. According to the Barnet Council DPR, the firm had advised Barnet on a contract to replace street lighting and were again being engaged as this contract had run into issues with European tendering rules. Barnet have re-appointed the firm to advise on the issues raised. The Barnet Eye asked the question as to whether they were the best firm to take forward the case, given their previous involvement. It may come as no surprise to Barnet Eye readers that we have our own legal advisers (who give us free advice in exchange for the odd beer). They called yesterday to inform me that this was actually quite right and proper in this case and would be the most cost efficient way forward. The reason being that they are fully conversant with the contract and could hit the ground running. Another firm would have to start from scratch and incur a huge cost to the taxpayer, coming up to speed. Such legal issue crop up all the time and firms are not instantly dropped whenever there is a problem. If they were, then nothing would ever get done and legal costs would be enormous.

This seems to be a reasonable explanation as to why the firm were used. As was also pointed out, we have no idea at this stage whether the issue is a minor technicality or a major problem, that will presumably only become apparent as the complaint is processed.

What the issue does highlight is the way that the One Barnet project has become toxic for all involved. Barnet has a team of five highly committed political bloggers who pore over every One Barnet related DPR and other council paper. They have a huge team of informants within the council (and it's suppliers) who point us in the direction of the things Barnet don't want us to know. We use FoI requests to glean information and have become adept a making sure no stone goes unturned. We also get bundles of secret paperwork delivered to our doorsteps. Sadly Barnet Council consider information that other more open Tory Councils such as Windsor and Maidenhead put in the public domain, to be to important to share with the taxpayers.

Companies spend a fortune on PR and advertising, to ensure that potential clients and business partners know that they are good firms and do a good job. What any firm wishing to get work from Barnet Council on any One Barnet related outsourcing project should realise is that there is an enormous amount of public scrutiny in Barnet. Any firm involved in any project which goes pear shaped is extremely likely to find itself mentioned when the problems come to light. In this day and age, any sensible customer will at least do a quick google search on potential suppliers to see what sort of public image they have. This blog typically gets a very high rating, as you'd expect with over half a million hits and links to it from the Guardian, the BBC and a stack of other respected media outlets. Every blog we post gets displayed promenantly on the Guardian's London pages. The Barnet bloggers have dozens of other hits on a daily basis from various local, regional and national news organisations. Over 30 stories broken on this blog have been featured in other established media. Two of these have been on Prime Time TV - The parking protests on an ITV Tonight documentary and the Friern Barnet Library protest on the One Show on BBC 1.

Barnet Council has never released details of the business case for the One Barnet program. In fact, their own accountants said there wasn't one. Every major detail of the program which the Barnet bloggers have analysed appears to be flawed. The Association for Public Service Excellence described the project as flawed and risky. If you are involved in a company bidding for work on the project - Capita Symonds, BT, EC Harris, etc, you run the risk of all manner of bad publcity. Do not for one second believe that issues will be swept under the carpet, because they won't.

The Barnet Eye knows for a fact that Barnet Council has had to have many meetings in the offices of it's legal advisors for fear of leaks to bloggers. What does this tell you? Surely if the case stacked up, they would be shouting about it from the roof tops. The Barnet Eye believes that the One Barnet project is toxic and the reputational damage which firms face should be a primary consideration for these companies when bidding on it.

It is worth also making the point that the Street Lighting contract which Addleshaw Goddard advised on was not a One Barnet outsourcing project. It was a small (in comparison) deal of several million pounds. The One Barnet deals are £250 million an £750 million. The sad truth for all companies working on all outsourcing projects is that they are likely to be tarred with the same brush. Mud sticks

Another Barnet Outsourcing cockup rears it's ugly head

A very interesting DPR has emerged on the Barnet Council website. It appears that Barnet are in the soup again, with another outsourcing cock up. Before we get into that though, I noticed another interesting little detail on the report. It appears that Jeff Lustig is no longer in charge of Barnet Legal, as the report is signed off by "Sheila Saunders, acting head of Legal". Has Lustig been pushed out? It is public knowledge that he has not been too happy with Nick Walkleys proposal to flog Barnet legal services off to Harrow's Labour council. 

Anyway, enough of that. The DPR details how Barnet Council have had to appoint a specialist legal firm "Addleshaw Goddard Solicitors" to handle a forthcoming legal challenge against the way the street lighting contract was tendered. The e deal with the legal firm is not expected to exceed £74,999 (presumably the figure at which they'd have to tender this contract as well). Given the way previous legal challenges etc have gone, I will be most interested to see how this goes. It is worth noting that Barnet spent nearly a million pounds on legal fees surrounding the reopening of Partingdale Lane and a similar amount on the enquiry into the sale of Underhill Football ground to Barnet FC. I will bet a years supply of pot noodles that the figure of £74,999 is nowhere near the amount these services will ultimately cost. 


Even if I am completely wrong on this and it comes in well under the figure, this is still a huge sum. It is nearly enough to have run Friern Barnet Library for a year. Why are we in this pickle (yet again)? Because yet again Barnet Council have cocked up a procurement process. This is the council which wants us to believe that they have the expertise to outsource the whole caboodle. Rather bizarrely, they are commissioning this firm of solicitors to advise them, even though it appears from section 8.7 that they were the original advisers, whose advice has landed us with this challenge. Rather oddly section 8.6 states that the circumstances require appointment of this particular firm of solicitors and no other firm. There are many obvious questions about these two paragraphs. Perhaps the most obvious of the lot is this "wouldn't  a fresh pair of eyes be appropriate in this case". But then I'm not a lawyer, so I clearly haven't got a clue how these things should be handled, have I. 


As with all outsourcing contracts there is a huge hidden cost, that appears in no business case. This is the cost of all the legal fees arising from when the contracts get cocked up. Many of these we never see, because they are dealt with by the in house legal team.

So my question is this. It is one Dexter Whitfield asks in the film "A Tale of Two Barnets". It is "If Barnet can't manage outsourcing contracts of several million pounds properly, how can they expect to manage outsourcing contracts of fifty times that value?".

If you want to see the full details, click this link. I've put the extracted highlights below.

http://barnet.moderngov.co.uk/documents/s4608/1654%20-%20Appointment%20of%20Addleshaw%20Goddard%20for%20Street%20Lighting%20PFI%20Contract%20Energy%20Saving%20Measures%20-%20Infraction%20Process.pdf

5.2 The estimated contract value is not expected to exceed £74,999. 

8. BACKGROUND INFORMATION  

8.1 DPR 1330 identified and authorised the measures  required to vary the Street Lighting PFI Contract, by deferring the installation of a number of Core Installation Programme assets, in order to fund the commencement of the installation of a Central Management System (CMS). 

8.2 The Council received an e-mail, dated 3rd  April 2012, from Martin Leverington, Procurement Policy Division, Energy Reform Group (ERG), informing the Council that his department was acting on an infraction process notice from the European Commission in respect of the procurement of the energy saving measures. 

8.3 The EU Infraction Pilot file states a complaint has been received regarding the procurement of energy saving measures and alleges that the London Borough of Barnet has infringed EU public procurement 

legislation  by not tendering the ‘contract’. 

8.4 The Council have been provided with a Timeline for the Infraction Pilot Response and it must adhere to this timeline.  A draft response to the complaint has been submitted to the Cabinet Office ERG.  It is important to urgently appoint legal advisers to provide legal input into the process on behalf of the council. 

8.5 The Director of Commercial Services has been consulted and has confirmed that the circumstances requiring the appointment of Addleshaw Goddard solicitors are urgent such as to justify the direct appointment of those solicitors. 

8.7. The decision to appoint Addleshaw Goddard Solicitors is being made based on urgency, on their expertise in the specific field and in light of their significant, previous, input and advice as Legal Advisors to the Council with respect to the original Street Lighting PFI Contract.   

As ever, with these cock ups, the question is "who picks up the bill". As ever, the answer is "we, the taxpayer do". The truth is that this is chickenfeed compared to the legal bills which will be racked up by the One Barnet project. At a recent cabinet meeting, Councillor Richard Cornelius stated that Barnet should learn to walk before they can run. Mrs Angry asked a question which agreed with this. She stated that surely this appoach applied to One Barnet. Deputy Leader Dan Thomas reassured her that the council was getting the finest possible advice to ensure that no further cock ups will happen. In light of this DPR, do you have any confidence in his statement?