I'm having breakfast with Leader of Barnet Council, Mike Freer on Tuesday. He's invited me over to North London Business Park to discuss the way Barnet can help local business. I bet you're thinking "lucky old Rog T, hobbing with the knobs" and that if you write a marvellous enough blog you get special access to the Leader of Barnet Council. Well, you'd be wrong. Mike sent an invite to all of the businesses in Barnet inviting them to the same event. I suppose you'll all be yelling hypocrite at me, having criticised the "FREE DINNER CULTURE" of certain high profile Barnet Councillors, but I actually believe this type of event can be quite useful.
I speak to lots of people who run small businesses. As you may or may not know, I run one myself. I employ nine people and run a music recording, rehearsal, equipment hire and sales business. I'm very successful. Brit award winners, Amy Winehouse and Kate Nash started their careers at our studios and Kate is still a regular. We have about 1,000 musicians a week passing through. We are a supplier of services to Barnet Council, Barnet Homes and Harrow Council, although 99% of our business is private individuals.
Whilst there are many issues I'd like to raise with Mike regarding social provision in Barnet, this business breakfast isn't the forum. We are there to discuss business. I've been a good boy and I've been canvassing other small businessmen I know to find out what bugs them and what the council could do to make their companies run more smoothly. Here is a list of the things we've come up with.
1) Rates appeals. If a company's business rates are too high, there is a system of appeal, administered by Barnet Council. The process can take up to three years to resolve. The Council collects rates at the high rate until the appeal is resolved. I personally got a cheque for thousands of pounds back after my last appeal. Many firms go bust for want of this money in their cashflow. I will be asking Mike to overhaul this and set a maximum time to hear appeals of 6 months. This measure will save hundreds of jobs in Barnet.
2) Business waste collection. All businesses pay rates, which covers refuse collection. A business such as mine, produces very little and what it does produce is actually items the council can recover and sell profitably (aluminium drinks tins). Other firms have a totally different waste profile (and presumably get a better deal for their money as they produce more rubbish). Mike complained at the last Cabinet meeting about the cost of waste collection. Here's my suggestions.
a) Improve recycling operations for business waste
b) Remove waste from the business rate and charge per kilo
c) Encourage private schemes to collect waste from business, especially those which recycle valuable items
3) Future Shape. As you probably realise, I'm fundamentally opposed to the scheme for a number of reasons. As a local small businessman, the thing which greatly alarms me is that the scheme has no provision for small business and preference for local suppliers. You may say "It's a scheme to save money, why should it?". Well for a number of reasons.
a) Jobs moved out from Barnet cost the local economy money. Many of these jobs are for low paid workers and they'll move out of jobs onto the dole queue and benefits. This will cost the council money in the long run.
b) The council recieves much of it's income from local firms in the form of business rates. Why should this money be used to subsidise multi nationals at the expense of local firms.
c) Local firms have a stake in the community and as such have a vested interest in good service in a way multi nationals never will.
So what should Barnet do. Firstly they should have an online business register of every firm in the borough and what they do. Companies trading in these business areas should automatically be notified of any tenders for services which they could provide.
4. Tendering for business. The council's process is not transparent. All tenders should be published and advertised. All relevant information regarding the selection of suppliers should also be published as should the costs. Barnet Council claim that this information is commercially sensitive. This is nonsense. Firms should be able to see why they lost the bid. Council Taxpayers should be able to see why decisions were made. If firms don't want the public to know how much they charge, then they don't have to tender. I guarantee that this would deliver the single biggest saving of any measure they could possibly conceive.
The council, in my experience, never engage with local firms who could provide services (unless they are friendly with the owners, maybe?). Let me give you an example. Barnet Council have spent a fortune on renovating Canada Villa and turning it into "Rythmik Sound Studio". This provides rehearsal and recording facilities to young people aged 13-19. One of the reasons the council spent hundreds of theousands of pounds and sought lottery money, was "lack of provision locally".
This rather surprised me as my business "Mill Hill Music Complex" is less than 1 mile down the road. We have 10 fully equipped studios and have been established for 30 years. For a fraction of the cost of starting an operation from scratch, we could have provided a far superior service to the council. Did the council ask my advice as a local business who have done this for 30 years? No. You may ask when I found out about the Rythmik project? In February, when we participated in the Barnet Beat Weekend.
In principle I have no objection whatsoever to anything which improves the facilities for young people in Barnet. I don't particularly see Rythmik as competition, but for what they spent setting it up, they could have provided 10 times the amount of services at our studios. They could have also spent the money on other projects across the Borough where there really is a "lack of provision". As Rythmik are less than a mile down the road, you'd think they'd be talking to us about joint ventures. Are they? No. One of our associate companies put in a bid to Barnet to provide some courses at our studios. What happened? They were told "If you want to do that, you have to do it at Rythmik as we need to make it work". They are now in discussion with other funding providers. They have decided that Barnet are too difficult an organisation to deal with. The program will be a groundbreaking project and will deliver massive benefit to young people. The sad thing is that Barnet Council will be completely excluded, as they tried to force the development of the project down a path which was completely unsuitable.
Let me contrast the attitude of Barnet with that of Harrow Council. We've worked with Harrow for several years on the "Gig in the Park" concert. This gives young people a day out and has been developed in association with the Metropolitan Police. It has a strong anti knife crime message. As a result of our links, we were approached by the Council to assist with the setting up of a project rather similar to Rythmik. I arranged for several site visits to the project and for one of my staff to oversee the procurement of the equpment. As a result of this partnership, we were able to advise on equipment costs and have a far more professionally put together operation. They got a far better studio than they would have otherwise had. Many items which they'd hoped to procure in stage 2 were bought for stage one. They also had two qualified engineers on site to oversee the installation. This wasn't in the original budget.
I've no idea who has advised Barnet on Rythmik, but don't you think it's rather odd that they :-
a) Never sought the advice of a local business less than a mile down the road
b) Never offered a local business less than a mile down the road the opportunity to tender for any of the equipment or maintenance
c) Have never sought to engage in any joint ventures for our shared client base
d) Didn't invite us to the relaunch
Don't get me wrong, I hope Rythmik is a roaring success. After all, their client base will be our client base in a couple of years and the more people who play, the better. We fully participated in the Barnet Beat Weekend, organised by Barnet Council, with all of the other Barnet musical suppliers. I thought it was a great idea. I was just really disappointed that there was no follow up from Barnet with us, as it was clear that we staged a highly successfull day. We had a quick meeting after, I sent a couple of emails suggesting ideas and then nothing. I was especially disappointed that Rythmik never even bothered to get in touch regarding the recent Mill Hill Music Festival. We staged several events over the road at the Church. I suggested to Barnet in February that they stage something at Rythmik to coincide, for young music makers in Mill Hill. They never got back to me.
I've read the Future Shape document several times from cover to cover. It is quite clear to me from their flagship music project, that it is pie in the sky. Future Shape is all about big bucks for big business. If they treat every small business in Barnet like they treat Mill Hill Music Complex, it's no surprise that the Council Tax is so high.
Anyway, if you run a small business and want me to make any suggestions to Mike, please leave a comment.
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