What exactly are Barnet spending this £374,000 on?

Barnet Council are at it again. They are planning to spend £374,000 of our money, to buy a load of gear for a play scheme to put into storage. Once they've bought it, they will spend another £10,000 per annum on storing it. You can read the full sorry story on the council website here - http://committeepapers.barnet.gov.uk/democracy/reports/reportdetail.asp?ReportID=10913 -

I've loaded it up onto Scribd and here it is in it's full glory.
Youth Spending

You may wonder how Barnet Council can be so profligately wasting our money in this time of cuts. The answer is simple. They are so disorganised that they have been unable to organise a proper use of the money, that if they don't spend it by March they'll lose it. The tragedy of this is that there are all sorts of
local youth groups which would hugely benefit from some of this cash.

My son belongs to a local scouts group, which did a bagpacking exercise at Waitrose in Mill Hill before Xmas. They raised £2,000 towards replacing the troop's camping gear, much of which was over 30 years old, smelly and falling apart. Why on earth didn't the council contact such groups and ask if they needed some equipment. There are all manner of youth groups.

As it is, they are going to buy over 1/3rd of a million quids worth of equipment and store it. This is absolutely criminal.

The financial tale of woe is in section 5. It says :-

5. FINANCIAL, STAFFING, ICT AND PROPERTY IMPLICATIONS
5.1 Staffing
The proposal set out in this DPR will not have any impact on staffing levels within
the Youth Support Service. Oversight of the equipment will be maintained by the
Youth Support Service.
5.2 Finance
The Playbuilder’s funding has been allocated to LA’s to develop and provide
activities for children and their families. We propose to use the £374,000 capital
funding to purchase equipment which will support community groups in delivering
Positive Activities. This funding must be spent by 31st March 2011
5.3 Property
Equipment will be the property of LBB and stored at existing Youth Support Service
or provider/partner property.
5.4 Sustainability
Purchasing this pool of equipment will support a more sustainable approach to
Positive Activities. By Barnet supplying high quality equipment and relevant
training, the cost to the third sector in establishing engaging and innovative
programmes will greatly reduce. Any hiring charges made to groups will support
ongoing maintenance costs. Ongoing running costs (c£10k) will be met out of the
Positive Activities Budget.

They give the game away in section 8.

8. BACKGROUND INFORMATION
8.1 The service has developed the ability to reach large numbers of young people
through a range of engagement methods including positive activities. However, the
Youth Support Service currently has very few resources that can be loaned out to
groups within Barnet. By making available a central pool of resources it will enable
the service to target needs within the community and to quality assure the activities,
ensuring agreed standards are met.
8.2 The Local Authority has been working with third sector partners to identify
appropriate equipment that will best enable them to meet the needs of children and
young people. This includes equipment that will support the delivery of activities
such as tools, sports and media resources to reduce economic disadvantage by
increasing young people’s knowledge, skills and increasing employability.
8.3 Equipment will be allocated and agreed by the Positive Activities Steering Group.
The Positive Activities steering group brings together a range of partners such as
the police, schools and the voluntary sector to share information and data to ensure
that we focus the resources at targeted groups.
8.4 The Youth Support Service is committed to supporting capacity building within the
third sector. As well as making available a central pool of equipment it will deliver a
training programme to support the use of the equipment, facilitate the Positive
Activities steering group, and identify, train and support a group of young people to
become ambassadors for Positive Activities across the borough. This group have
already supported in identifying relevant equipment to be purchased.

I've highlighted section 8.3 in red. The reason? Well it is clear they are buying all of this equipment before they actually know what people need. In other words, they are trying to second guess what all of the diverse groups in Barnet may actually need. They will buy the gear and store it. We could have the ridiculous situation where Barnet Council have spent £374,000 on such equipment. They could then contact a group like Edgware Scouts and say "We've got £374,000 worth of equipment for young people, can we help you?" The Scouts would then say "Yes, we need tents for 20 boys for our camps" and Barnet would say "Oh sorry, we didn't buy any of them".

What is most bizarre is that Barnet is a Tory regime. One of the big criticisms the West always aimed at the "planned economies" of the Soviet Bloc is that a bureaucrat would draw up a "masterplan" for producing items for the economy without taking into account what the economy actually needed. This resulted in tractors being built and allocated for areas where there were no farms and beach chairs being built for areas that there were no beaches in. This blog has charged Barnet Council with being Stalinist on a few occasions. We hadn't realised that the Stalinism had spread to procurement in this way.

The tragedy is that there are so many groups who could have spent the cash on something really useful, yet the stuff will all be put in storage. Even worse, they will have to employ a team of bureaucrats to decide how it will eventually be allocated. Needless to say that the "positive action steering group" mentioned in section 8.4 will all be on nice fat salaries, which you my friend will be paying.

Sadly this £374,000 seems to be more about jobs for the boys than toys for the children. Needless to say, all of this was in a delegated powers report, that you'd never have seen if it hadn't been for the bloggers of Barnet.

Barnet Council Tories can afford publicly funded political assistants but not Childrens Centres

On our future shape leaks website, we tonight publish in full a press release from the Barnet Council Conservative Political Officer, Richard Robeson. This man is paid for by your taxes to help Barnets Conservative Councillors with their "political needs". He gets a salary twice or even three times more than carers and teaching assistants.

His job is purely political, he's Barnets Tory Spin doctor. When you read of all the cuts he's trying to justify, what sane person can wonder how they can afford a luxury like him?


http://barnetfutureshape.blogspot.com/2010/12/barnet-tories-publicly-funded-political.html

It really makes me sick.

Barnet Council : Conservatives wasting your money wisely

Barnet Council is leading the way in London. Barnet has "spearheaded" a joint study with five other North London Councils into the lives of black and minority ethnic communities.

According to a press relase on the Barnet Council website, this "has revealed some interesting discoveries" - pray what might these discoveries be? Over to Councillor Richard Cornelius, Cabinet Member for Community Services

"The report shows that members of all communities want to work, save money and buy a property"

 What does Mr Cornelius conclude from this TWO YEAR study?

"Barnet's priority must be to avoid getting in the way of this journey to home ownership"

 And how did they reach these conclusions? They

"looked at a wealth of already existing data, such as school and council records, census data and social landlords' letting details, as well as holding a series of focus groups between June and December 2008 with 130 people from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds."

I really am speechless. What did Mr Cornelius think people from ethnic minorities wanted? Did he think they wanted to be unemployed, have no savings and live in holes in the road? How much money did Barnet spend on this? Let me give some advice to Richard Cornelius, Mike Freer, Lynne Hillan and any other Barnet Tory politician of the best thing they can do to help ethnic minorities and everyone else have homes, jobs and savings. Stop wasting money.It really is quite simple and you lot being Tories should understand this without a swivel eyed Trotskyite to tell you. Every penny in tax you waste on surveys such as this, is a penny that the Taxpayer can't save up, invest in a house or spend on a bus to the jobcentre. Lets just remind Mr Cornelius of some of the cash wasting cock ups his colleagues in the Barnet Tory Junta have inflicted on our wallets since Mike Freer staged his Palace Coup against Brian Salinger, just after the last Council elections.

* Money Lost in Icelandic Banking scandal £27.4 Million
* Overspend on Aerodrome Road Bridge replacement £11 Million
* Money spent on obsolete laptops computers, many of which are in storage £1.4 Million
* One of highest rates of non collection of Council Tax in London
* Inflation busting rise in Council Tax

They say if you can't be trusted with little things, how can you be trusted with big things. Here are a few other smaller extravagances which the Barnet Eye has heard about :-

* Cost of Plasma screen tellies for Council officers desks - approx £15,000
* Cost of sending Council officers to South of France for a "property development conference" approx £5,000
* Cost of allowance for Conservative Council group chief whip £3,000

Even the Taxpayers Alliance, regarded by many as a front for the Conservative Party, has no time for The Barnet Tories.

And then we have the Easycouncil. Now in my book this should be called "Stealth Council" In reality this is a scam to pretend to keep taxes low, by simply charging extra for everything. The council will recruit a whole load of Bin Inspectors to check you are not putting too much rubbish in. They say that if they can save £200 on your rubbish processing by cutting the amount you put out, then they'll give you £100 back. What if you generate three times the average? Lets get this clear, if you are a profligate waste monster, you get a discount. If you are a good citizen they'll rob you of £100???? A bizarre method of accounting and a strange way of treating good citizens.

Another cunning plan from Mike Freer

Thanks to Barnet's most sensible Tory, Don't Call Me Dave, for drawing my attention to Barnet Council Leader Mike Freer's latest bonkers proposal. Mr Freer said the following on radio 4 yesterday.

“Mr Resident, that full wheelie bin is costing you, the taxpayer, £300 a year in landfill tax. Tell you what. Have a half size bin, recycle more and over the year if we find that you are not putting out side waste at the end of the year we’ll give you £100 or £200 back.”

Yet again Mr Freer exposes his great weakness as a leader. What on the face of it sounds like a great idea, soon fails once you start thinking it through. Once you bring this scheme in, it's not just a question of saying "here's your new bin, now sign up for your discount". Let's consider the costs & problems

1. You need a whole department to administer it. You'd need a database containing details of every dwelling in the borough and what size bin they've got. To maintain this database, you'd need a team of people, office space for them, management, HR etc. As people move in, move out, get married, divorced etc the names need updating. It cost the council £45,000 to send out a healthcare survey to all the borough's residents - that's a one off flyer. How many letters will be sent out for this scheme.

2. Who qualifies for the money? Is it the householder? What happens in a shared dwelling, such as a shared flat? Who get's the refund when a couple divorce?

3. What happens when you have 2 binfuls of waste? Do you get charged double?

4. What happens when your neigbours put rubbish in your bin? We've all seen what happens to skips. We had one and I caught a neighbour filling it up at 4am.

5. What about the environmental impacts and social nuisance caused when everyone starts having bonfires to burn all the rubbish they were putting in their bin?

Now if Mike really was a sensible Tory, he'd have come up with a sensible scheme to cut waste. Where does all of the waste come from? The supermarkets. Make every resident in the borough register with their favourite supermarket and then make the collect the rubbish. The supermarkets have loyalty schemes. They have delivery services and databases. The residents would have to pay the supermarket a fee, but the shops could refund this via their loyalty programs.

I'm not a Tory, but I'd bet anyone a million pounds that if Tesco's and Sainsburys had to collect the crap they make us buy to get our sausages it would save us all a packet and be far better run than anything Freer could cobble together. They'd also have a vested interest in not supplying the rubbish in the first place. Simple rule, you run a multinational chain of supermarkets, you have to clean up your mess.

How much has this cock up cost?

Barnet Council has just announced that it is cancelling Local Resident Forum meetings due to the forthcoming Euro elections. Now given that the date of these has been known for months, if not years, surely the Council should have booked the residents forum meetings around them? Is it that hard? How much money has been wasted booking, publicising, then cancelling them?

Sure in the scheme of things it's a small amount, but isn't it indicative of a culture of sloppiness & waste?

Future shape - Role of the Council in future

For those of you following the future shape debate, here is another installment of my analysis of the report to be debated. As ever It is pasted from the Council's briefing document with my comments in BOLD ITALIC


9.3 The role of the Council in the future
9.3.1 In order maximise the value to citizens of Barnet’s public services, the Council should focus its energy on the activities where it alone can add value. It should therefore enable other organisations to do those things that they can do as well or better than the Council. Fundamentally, the Council should conduct those activities that only the Council can. This implies a number of principles on which to base the future shape of the organisation:

Only a consultant with no experience of real life could write such a load of rubbish about the functions of a Council. Let us think about the following statement "the Council should focus its energy on the activities where it alone can add value". In effect this statement says that the Council should abolish itself. There is no aspect of any Council activity which couldn't conceivably be provided by another organisation, be it Central Government, the GLA or Barnet-is-us-outsourcing.com - If we abolished elections and got recruitment consultants to pick the cabinet, who is to say they wouldn't come up with better candidates? Of course in a democracy, we don't do that, but surely that is the logical conclusion of this statement. Ridiculous as that may sound, with the future shape, in effect this is what we'll have as the people responsible for running the day to day council function will be working for private companies (SPV's as Barnet likes to call them). I have no idea what Councillors will actually do in the new order.


1. The democratic legitimacy of councillors places on the Council the responsibility for establishing a new contract with citizens that jointly defines our ambitions and shares responsibility for achieving them.

So if there is going to be a new contract, do we the citizens get to sign it? That is required in law for a legal contract. Will Future shape be opened up to a referendum. If it isn't, then "establishing a new contract with citizens " is a meaningless platitude, designed to disguise the truth of this proposal. Will we, the citizens, get proper, sound legal advice before we sign up to this new contract. If a contract is not fair and reasonable in law it is null and void. I hope Barnet have a few pounds in the budget for this legal challenge.

2. The future Council should be strategic rather than operational, focused on convening and working with its partners to prioritise and commission the public services that should be provided in the borough, rather than delivering services itself.



Yet again, this statement has the hallmark of a wet behind the ears, freshly scrubbed Consultant, sitting in his bath, planning to take over the world. We elect ward councillors and we expect them to sort out issues when the council fails to deliver. They our our local representatives. Let's imagine that a tree owned by the Council falls on my house and I can't get out of the door. What will happen in the future shape world. I will ring the Barnet Council Call Centre in Bangalore, after waiting for 30 minutes in a queue, having selected problems with trees. I will be kept waiting for an age as it has been windy and there are lots of trees down, eventually they will take my name and address. They will inform me that the problem will be logged and someone will call me back within 24 hours, which is the service Level agreement for dealing with priority 1 tree issues. I will then ring my local Councillor John Hart and tell him that I am stuck in my house and I want him to get the Council to sort it out. He will inform me that at the next Council meeting he'll discuss the priority of my problem and the cabinet will devise a strategy for getting me out. The actual situation happened to my family in 1975 and the Council sent around a team of tree surgeons. We were out of the house within 1 1/2 hours.

3. The Council must remain democratically accountable for outcomes and for all of the services it funds to achieve those outcomes.

I can't argue with this aspiration. I'm not sure how they can achieve it if a company has a contract to provide the service. If there will be a watertight clause that the council can instantly terminate any contract where the democratically elected Council decides for any reason (eg change of party in charge, Palace Coup to elect a new leader who is more sensible) to stop the contract, I really can't see a firm signing up.

4. The Council should be responsible for making policy, setting priorities, annual budget and Council Tax, and working with its partners to commission for outcomes for citizens.

So amazingly, several thousand years after the Greeks first invented the idea, a Consultant working for Barnet agree's that democratic control is a good idea for the council. I am interested that they use the term "should be". Has the democratically elected council accepted responsibility for losinjg £27.4 Million in Iceland? I am disturbed that the "partners" have equal say in the "commision for outcomes". That sounds to me like "off you go and write your own contract".


5. Senior officers in the Council should be the ‘senior officers of the whole borough’ working across current organisational boundaries, leading
programmes of work relating to key problems and challenges rather than service departments.


This seems to be saying that there will not actually be senior officers responsible for making sure departments work properly. I guess this means that if, for example, the Finance Department screw up and lose £27.4 Million pounds gambling on dodgy investments, then there will be no one responsible within that department. Mind you we'll have a senior officer allocated to deal with the key problem.

6. The Council must ensure that local public services provide value for money.

You may think that on the face of it, this statement sounds hard to argue with. Mind you, how would you assess whether a department has delivered "value for money". Lets take the case of baby P in Haringey. Did Social Services there deliver "value for money". Would we expect social services to say "Well we could intervene, but would it deliver value for money?" These type of statements are all very well, but how can you possibly assess what represents "value for money" in such a case. Had baby P been taken into care, then that would have placed an ongoing cost on the social services department. Leaving him with the Parents was far cheaper. Departments such as Social Services and Education have tough decisions to take every single day. How can these be assessed as being value for money, many services will never be "value for money", they are done because they have to be done. You give them the appropriate level of funding necessary to do the job.

Future shape of the council - Update

The above diagram is taken from the BarnetCouncil cabinet briefing paper, due to be debated on 3rd December. This is available HERE to download the full document.

What the big oval saying "Joint Venture" means is that these services are no longer under direct control of the council and there is no democratic accountability. A contract will be signed and that is that. Barnet Homes is run along these lines and we've all seen the stories about what happened there.

To help understand what this means, I've pasted a description of how this will work, from the document with a few comments of my own (Italic Bold)

9.6 Proposals for a model of service delivery: A Special Purpose Vehicle and the reconfiguration of services

9.6.1 To build capacity to work with delivery partners and to free up the Council to focus on strategic activity, it is proposed that we explore the feasibility of developing a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to help us to do this. The SPV could be a joint venture (JV), between Barnet Council and one or more private, public or voluntary sector partners. A JV is proposed because it creates a means through which the Council could attract expertise and innovation from other sectors, as well as one in which it has a major stake.

Barnet Council say that they can't attract "expertise and innovation" from other sectors? What on earth does this mean - do they want Louis Hamilton to drive a dustcart? Surely they should be concentrating on running the basic services properly. If there is a specific problem which needs addressing, then deal with it. I am intrigued by the idea of outsourcing "citizen access". Does this mean that if you need to query why your bin hasn't been emptied, you'll ring a continent on the other side of the world? My wife once tried to book a train ticket from London to Sheffield using the Midland Mainline call centre and was asked "What is a Sheffield?".



9.6.2 This SPV would take the outcomes defined by the Council and its partners and develop them into programmes for implementation. The SPV would have the capacity and expertise to change the way public services are currently configured in the borough and to re-order them to achieve the aims of the Council and its partners. It could attract expertise from the private, public and voluntary sectors and work closely with markets to test and develop models of service delivery. It would not deliver services itself but would be responsible for managing the alliances procured. In time it would be able to sell its services to other public sector agencies and thus a JV would provide potential for future income generation for the Council.


"test and develop models of service delivery"? I saw what happened when they tested and developed an outsourced meals on wheels service for my mum. Late or no delivery at all, Cold food, poor nutritional value. They are talking about providing vital services for vulnerable people, not launching a new brand of lipstick. In effect it is saying the council hires the SPV and then the SPV hires someone else to do the work. How on earth can it be efficient to have an extra layer of bureaucracy and an extra layer of contracts? I should imagine that the lawyers will be rubbing their hands.



9.6.3 Services might be combined and provided differently in order to achieve priority outcomes. For example, in many cases, public services might be better configured around critical challenges or processes rather than within traditional service boundaries. So instead of the Council, the PCT, and Jobcentre Plus all having customer access functions, there could be a single public service access organisation. Equally, in order to encourage citizen self-reliance and drive service improvement from citizens’ perspectives, the JV could procure a self-help and citizen advocacy service for the borough. Elements of adults and children’s social services and housing could be combined to create an organisation whose role is to build the resilience and support the independence of vulnerable people.


This is truly bizarre. Combining the PCT (ie healthcare) with the Jobcentre? So you go to the Doctor if you are unemployed? As to supporting the independence of vulnerable people. We have seen many cases of seriously mentally ill people falling off the radar due to care in the community. How on earth do you support the independence of a six year old child in care. Send them up the Chimney?

9.6.4 These are examples of a possible future shape of public service in Barnet (see figure 2 below for a more comprehensive picture). In order to further develop the model and its potential costs and benefits, it is proposed that the feasibility of reconfiguring services along these lines should also be investigated as part of the next phase of the programme, alongside exploring the feasibility of a SPV.

This really makes me sick. In effect this is PwC (or whoever drew this bit of the report up) recommending that they do more work for the council, drawing up more of these reports, written in meaningless jargon. How much per day do these consultants cost? All I see is very woolly examples of completely mad concepts being described. Is there no one in the Cabinet of Barnet Council with the guts to say "This is rubbish"? I've worked with consultants in the past and the one thing you can guarantee is that they always recommend is more reports and more expense. What we need is less layers of management, less layers of contracts and more people on the ground doing the work. Any scheme which introduces yet another layer of highly paid people in the middle of the decision chain is wasteful and expensive. I've been a director of various companies for many years now. I'm a member of the Federation of Small Businesses. I know how to achieve cost savings and efficiency and introducing the need for more middle managers, more lawyers and more accountants is not the way. Surely there are some competant businessmen in the Barnet Conservative Party who can have a quiet word in Mike Freer's ear?