Barnet Council - Legal Fees

It appears that Barnet Council are getting very jumpy about the amount of money they are spending on legal fees. My moles at the council tell me that us Barnet bloggers should take a bit of an interest in the way this has gone up over the last few years.

It is sad to think how many library jobs this sum could have saved.

Oh and a big hello to Trowers and Hamlins, who have been working very late tonight visiting my blog. I hope this isn't at overtime rates and chargeable to me (the taxpayer).

ISP:				Trowers & Hamlins IP Address: 62.173.113.7

Barnet Council - Secret Legal advice for OneBarnet bidders - more analysis

Here is the next installment of our analysis of the secret legal advice for Barnet Council. My secret mole, who is a highly respectable person (with secret Trotskyite tendencies and a sense of mischief/ and a concerned and decent person who is sick of lies and subterfuge  - delete as appropriate) provided this analysis of what Trowers and Hamlins have to say :-

Trowers and Hamlins legal advice

Rog, It is no surprise to see that one of the main sections of the legal advice warns about a number of officer roles within the bundle that simply cannot be outsourced. The advice gives four examples but the list is not exhaustive. All manner of people and organisations have been raising this issue since the very start of the Future Shape /easy Council/ One Barnet programme all have consistently been ignored by the Council. 

You will remember how this legal obstacle was not taken into account at the Options Appraisal stage. It is deeply concerning to see that these issues have still not been resolved as the project approaches round two dialogue with bidders. How many times have I sat in meetings where concerns have been raised and dismissed as "detail" or be put off until "a subsequent phase".

---------------------------- 

Let me just say a word here on the subject of leaks from the council. I have been informed of some rather OTT steps taken regarding the locations of meetings to try and avoid "leaks" such as this. Happily for the people of Barnet, there are enough people with consciences who are completely hacked off to ensure that most of these steps fail to prevent the information surfacing. As you can see, this information is highly damning and should be in the public domain. My "deep throat" contact tells me that they are sick to death of the whole Barnet culture. Executives have no interest in hearing genuine concerns of people with huge amounts of experience. The only constraint I have in what I publish from the material I've been passed is the fact that I don't understand most of it and need advice as to what it all means. This either comes from a) the team of moles or b) my friends who have legal training who understand the implications. I've queried many of the passages, once analysis has been provided, only to be told "actually it's more complex than that". 

What is pretty clear to me is that it's a minefield and it will be the taxpayer who loses their shirt when it goes bang.

Barnet Council - Toxic OneBarnet legal advice from Trowers and Hamlins

Follow up on this blog - 
http://barneteye.blogspot.com/2011/09/barnet-council-exclusive-expert-legal.html

This document is an extract from specialist legal advice produced for Barnet Council by legal firm Trowers an Hamlin. It was not intended for public distribution. The Toxic One Barnet project is the right wing Tories mad scheme to outsource all of it's functions to large corporations. This document highlights the risks. I am amazed that Barnet Council have persisted with this scheme in light of this. I wonder if CEO Nick Walkley read this. If he has, I do wonder if he understood it.

As you can see they can hand over vast sums to private companies, but they retain all the risk, as any other entity is not legally recognised. For matters pertaining to Environmental Health, the authority is ultimately responsible. A whole new layer of bureaucracy will be needed, just to ensure the company does their job. the Local Authority will have to pick up the tab for this bureaucracy. It is also clear that the lawyers are rubbing their hands.

I had intended to do far more on this document, but life has got in the way. Expect more at the weekend and next week.

Barnet Council Exclusive : Expert Legal Advice on One Barnet - Are Nick Walkley and Councillor Richard Cornelius polishing their Bargepoles ?

Today I received a very odd email from the head of legal at Barnet Council. As many of you know, this is Mr Jeff Lustig. To spare Jeff any embarrassment, I won't produce the whole email, but he said one very important thing in it.

Any specific proposal recommending a change from direct service provision to a service being delivered by the local authority through another provider, will require approval by the Executive. The accompanying report would set out the relevant governance issues, including those relating to any potential conflicts of interest, for appropriate consideration.

Now this is absolutely key to the OneBarnet/FutureShape project. Earlier this week Dr Julia Hines laid out exactly what sort of "conflicts of interest" may occur. Given what Julia has described with Capita and her conversation with Martin Cowie, it is clear that the whole area is a minefield. In response to Jeff's email, I have asked for a copy of these reports under the freedom of information act. This blog is lucky enough to have the support of a couple of lawyers, who have on many occasions given me a steer on what the key points are. Once these reports turn up, I will yet again be pushing my friendship to the limit and taking advantage of my friends good nature.

I also have in my possession some rather interesting legal analysis of the OneBarnet project. This has been leaked to me by a source which I cannot disclose. It is in paper form so as to be untraceable electronically. Now due to the fact that I have a life and I don't have time until the weekend to scan the whole document, here is the front page. Let me tell you what we can conclude from this document. We can conclude that the One Barnet program has a very questionable basis for continuing. After three years of work by armies of highly paid consultants, the whole thing is still in a state we can best describe as questionable.

Let me quote just one sentence from section 5.8 "There is no definition of how much scope there is to do third part work in percentage terms, suffice to say that the majority of work would be expected to be undertaken for the authorities which participate in the company". This is part of the analysis of service delivery.

Or how about this extract from section 3.9 "Local Authority decisions, particularly those which relate to novel or innovative project, or the creation of an external entity, are particularly vulnerable to scrutiny, to determine whether or not there has been compliance with the public law framework. Auditors may need to be consulted on proposals at an appropriate juncture". What does this mean in plain English. My legal friends explained "It means that it is likely to be extremely expensive to oversee and may be extremely prone to legal challenges, resulting in huge and unanticipated costs.

I have stacks of notes on this. These are just two of the more easy to understand (for us thickies) bits. Now my friend, Jeff Lustig doubtless understands the whole thing. What is he telling Barnet CEO Nick Walkley (currently mysteriously on leave) and Council Leader Richard Cornelius? Well if he's telling them what my friends tell me, then they should be polishing their bargepoles for this expensive can of worms. They damn well should be.