Barnet Council : If it's value for money, why the secrecy?

One of the many disturbing things which Barnet Councils Conservative administration are doing is looking at ways to offload the property which it owns. This property is currently owned by you and I, as taxpayers. Many of the decisions about this are being made outside of democratic control and with little scrutiny by councillors. In short we are all being kept in the dark. One of the things they are looking at doing is setting up a Local Asset Backed Vehicle (LABV) to manage Barnets property portfolio. What the practical implications of this are, I am really not to sure, but anything which involves transferring tens of millions of pounds of our assetts, to a body we don't control worries me. As ever Barnet Council have called in a team of highly paid consultants to "develop a strategy" on how this can be achieved. You can read the full story here :-

http://committeepapers.barnet.gov.uk/democracy/dp/meetingdetail.asp?meetingid=5994

First question is who are these consultants and why were they chosen. This is what the report says :-

3.2 It is recommended that the commission is placed with CB Richard Ellis as they have served as consultants on several projects for the Council over the past few years,  including advising on the Brent Cross Cricklewood regeneration. It is suggested that,  what with a wide knowledge of the Borough gained through these previous commissions,  the company is that best-placed to efficiently and expertly undertake this study.

So were other providers evaluated? Were Richard Ellis selected because they demonstrated that they could provide best value for money? This is less than clear from paragraph 3.2. It seems that the selection criteria was "They've done a bit of work for us before". So I asked myself, how much would this study cost us as taxpayers?

5.3 The cost and terms of the consultancy agreement are noted in the exempt report. In accordance with the Contract Procedure Rules, the consultant with a proven track record in this field, has been chosen through a process of reasonable selection (Rule 6 and Table 6-1, Barnet Contract Procedure Rules) whilst, normally this process would involve attaining more than one quotation, however due to the work already carried out by CBRE in Barnet and their acquired knowledge of the borough and based on the relative merits of CBRE’s quotation and previous purchasing powers for services of a similar type it was agreed that no further quotes would be sought.

So there you go. It was the only quote for the work and they won't tell us how much it costs. Please would someone from the Conservative administration tell me how they can be sure this quote was the best value? The arguement is "well they did a good job last time". If companies know that once they've got the foot in the door, other quotes are not required, will they be "keen on price"?

This report was signed off by Brian Reynolds, deputy chief executive on 11th March. In my previous blog I detailed how Mr Reynolds is paid £180,000 per annum. This enormous salary is justified on the basis that you need to pay top dollar to get the best candidates. I've run a successful small business for 31 years. I belong to the Federation of Small businesses. If you ask anyone with a commercial background how you get the best price for a job, the first answer is "shop around". I would have no issue paying top dollar if our council officials demonstrated a knowledge of how to get a good deal for the taxpayer. I see no evidence of this happening. If a contract is handed out with no commercial tender, why should the cost be "exempt" from public scrutiny. I would have thought that it would be vital to disclose the figures, to ensure that we'd got the best deal. There is nothing about the way this is being handled which fills me with confidence. Does the Leader of Barnet Council actually exercise any meaningful control over her executives? Does she care how they spend our money? Does she even realise they are spending it? The only way the Conservatives delivered a zero percent Council tax increase was to raid the reserves (funny that with an election coming up).  Until we get an administration commited to delivering value for money, by paying attention to detail and being transparent with their finances, we'll never have the prospect of real tax cuts.