Barnet UNISON

Incredibly this income generating service has been included in the privatisation of Development & Public Health Services despite the fact that a full Options Appraisal which included staff and Trade Unions clearly demonstrated the in-house service was by far the best value for money option.

I was involved in this Options Appraisal, interestingly this is the only Options Appraisal the Trade Unions (TU’s) & staff have been involved in. All the other Future Shape projects have been shut down in terms of TU & staff involvement. This is a service that generates income to the Council. In these times it is vital that any income produced should be directed back into front line services, literally every pound earned is precious.

So why is the Council prepared to give away this income with the private sector whilst at the same makes decisions to cuts services and jobs?

I can still remember the Westminster Cemeteries fiasco as I used to work for Westminster Council. I was chasing after the Leader of the Council Shirley Porter along with the BBC Panorama camera crew as she was entering the Town hall.

For those unfamiliar with the Westminster story:

“The decision to sell three cemeteries for five pence each was taken when the council was led by Dame Shirley Porter, the Tesco heiress, during the 1980s. She was later surcharged by the District Auditor for her part in the “homes for votes scandal”, in which council property was sold off in the hope of importing Tory voters to marginal wards.

Westminster bought back the graves at Mill Hill, Hanwell and East Finchley cemeteries in June 1992 at an estimated cost of £4 million. However, the owners kept all the unused land.”

You can read the full article here

The following is content from a local Barnet Blooger who goes under the name of Mr Reasonable.

I think it is apt to publish his Blog at the same time the Council is expecting residents to believe the last claims coming out of the OneWhichBarnet Council,.

Here goes Post Number One

“Barnet Council very kindly put up on their website a list of supplier payments over £500. Mr Reasonable spent a great deal of time going through those figures and some appeared very strange indeed. I posted some of my analysis following my one to one with Cllr Thomas and had a reply back from one of those suppliers Calco Services who stated that no they had not received £1.3 million they had only received £54k. Concerned that there may be a fraud being attempted Mr Reasonable contacted Barnet Council. This afternoon I have received a note saying the figures were wrong and they have now published a new supplier list. Going through the top 104 invoices by value (all £100,000 or more) I find that 32 payment details have been changed. These amount to £11.1million of changes. Frankly I have no confidence in the figures and I defy anyone to make a sound contribution on where budget cut should fall if we are not clear what is being spent. The odd error maybe but so many and of such scale and they would have gone completely unnoticed except for Mr Reasonable’s intervention. What a shocker!”

Post Number Two

“In between trying to earn a living I have carried out a comparison between the two sets of supplier details. It would appear that approximately 3,120 of the 13,563 entries have been changed in the amended supplier payments list. So the original list that was published wasn’t just a bit wrong it was overwhelmingly wrong. Now being a reasonable chap I know people do make mistakes but what I want to know is why did nobody check this before it was first published and is the April to June list also wrong. Is this indicative of an underlying lack of quality control. When the council discuss their budget cuts at the budget meeting in December I sincerely hope someone will have checked the numbers then. “

One Barnet Framework report going to Cabinet on 29 November claims that the OneWhichBarnet Programme will deliver over a 100 million in savings.

I have seen the headlines in the local press here and the response from the opposition here . I was asked by the local press for a comment and several hours later when I had finished!

Seriously it is very easy for politicians to make statements and claims about their policies it is another to deliver.

The EasyCouncil sound bite seemed to work for a while; it courted national media attention, but inevitably the details of what it all really means has now come to light. The innovative policy easy Council which had policy anoraks excited can now see it is not delivering anything innovative. Commissioning Council is nothing new. Adult Social Services took this approach many years ago and it doesn’t work. For staff has led to a dramatic erosion of terms & conditions e.g. UNISON Head of Local Government Heather Wakefield quoted in a meeting I attended that 85% of Home Care across the UK has been privatised. Furthermore the terms and conditions since leaving the Council had significantly deteriorated to the point that all the gains for Equal Pay for women workers have been eradicated by the Commissioning Model. I haven’t even started about training and development, security of employment for care workers. It is nothing less than shameful how care workers have been treated. Yet all our members, their friends & family will at some stage come across the services of a care worker.

So for those reading this who wonder why we are campaigning so hard for our members, this is why, we do not ‘buy into the commissioning model for council services.’

The Trade Unions have and continue to promote an alternative model, a model which trusts in the skill and expertise of its workforce and the innovation and experience of its residents.

The Trade Unions believe that savings could be delivered quicker and cheaper than the Commissioning Model which is why we wanted to learn from the Newcastle model for delivering savings and improving services.

Back to £100 million pound saving!

My first reaction is that the figures have been made up…plucked out of the ether. Why would I say that? For the past two and half years I have had to listen consultants wax lyrical about how they will be able to ‘save the council money’, whilst at the same time they keep racking up the bill to the Council for their services!

“What have the Council saved for all this advice which in my reckoning must be over £4 million if you include officer and consultants time in the last two years?”

The above report states that the Council will have to commit a further £9.2 million to recover over £10 million in the next three years!

Programme Risks

The paragraph 4.3 of the covering report omits the following risks:

• Programme objectives not achieved cost effectively over time if the sufficient flexibility in a controlled manner is not built in to reflect changes in environment, client needs, technology during the life of the contract.
• Savings not achieved in the absence of adequate, effective and independent scrutiny.
• Programme delivery not on time or within budget in the absence of adequate expertise (Para 7.1) and capacity (Para 6.3).

Finally there is not mention of the assumptions and boundaries applied when preparing these savings/estimates. Further specific questions include :

• Were interdependencies identified?
• Were savings from interdependencies identified?
• Have the savings estimated excluded double counting these interdependency savings?

Yes, is the answer for those members wondering what we are going to do next. Yes we will be submitting reports to Cabinet articulating our views on this report and I beleive a number of staff will be joining me at the meeting on Monday 29 November…get their early…I hear it coudl be ‘standing roon only!’

Every year the Council produces a Budget and each year redundancies are issued. One of the duties the Council has when considering making staff redundant is to make sure that they have looked at all spend before issuing redundancy notices. Over the last few years the Agency & Consultancy spend has become a major issue facing public sector bodies and central government. On 4 June this year Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said:

“Getting council business out in the open will revolutionise local government.  Local people should be able to hold politicians and public bodies to account over how their hard earned cash is being spent and decisions made on their behalf. They can only do that effectively if they have the information they need at their fingertips”

According to the Figures produced online it appears the Council spend on Consultants is

Total for Q2                                            £8,720,573.32

Total for Q1                                            £10,646,080.67

Total for Qs 1&2                                     £19,366,653.99

Extrapolation for the year                       £38,733,307.98

In relation to Agency spend the Council spent

Total for Quarter 2                                  £2,022,422.60

Total for Quarter 1                                  £2,132,180.86

Total for Quarters 1&2                            £4,154,603.46

Extrapolation for the year                        £8,309,206.92

The above spend is something the Trade Unions are taking up with the Council especially in light of number of jobs and services at risk identified in the Strategic Budget proposals.

The following services and assets are down for auction to the lowest bidder.

You can see all the reports online here

• Planning Services
• Environmental Health Services
• Registry Service (Births, Deaths, Marriages & Citizenship)
• Hendon Cemetery and Crematorium
• Land Charges
• Highways Services including Road Safety
• Parking Services
• Allotments
• Adult Social Services (Day Care, Residential & Independent living services)

And the bidding starts at £……..?????

Last Thursday over two hundred six form students marched to the offices of MP Mike Freer last night in a protest over the decision to allow university tuition fees to rise. You can read the report online here.

The previous week a large delegation of students from Middlesex University travelled down to central London to protest about the university tuition fees increases.

The previous months a number of sheltered housing residents (average age 70 y/o) protested outside Hendon Town hall as they began their campaign to oppose the removal of their wardens.

Over the last two months Barnet residents have been running community stalls at the weekends and leafleting streets in Barnet opposing cuts & privatisation proposals.

On 23 September 250 residents and staff turned up at the launch of Barnet Alliance of Public Services

In the last six weeks almost 4,000 people have signed the Save our Libraries petition.

In the past few months 500 council staff attended two Lobbies at Hendon Town Hall

Is there something in the drinking water or are Barnet residents and staff finally waking up to the implications of the Spending Review?

A number of former Council Homecare workers with Housing 21 are in the process of being TUPE’d from Housing 21 to one of four private sector home care agencies for a one year contract only. In 2011 they are due to be TUPE’d again for a third time when Barnet Council reduces the number of provider agencies. 

Our members, some of whom have up to 20 years service to residents of Barnet, face an uncertain employment future through no fault of their own.

As a result of the reduction in size of the contract, 6 office staff including managers were made redundant.

This is more evidence of the detrimental impact of the ideological war that is being waged against public sector workers, resulting in continuing deterioration of their terms and conditions.

The Connaught Saga is I hope coming to an end. The issue about redundancy was resolved a long time hence and I am pleased to report that the new contractor Lovells has confirmed in writing that they will be seeking to have “Admitted Body Status” thus enabling these former council workers to remain in the Pension Scheme.

The only remaining issue which I have been attempting to resolve is the non–payment of overtime worked for Connaught’s throughout the summer. The new contractor Lovells took on responsibility from 1 September & any payments before this date had to be claimed from KPMG the liquidators for Connaught’s.

It is important to note that we are not talking about a relatively large sum of money for a big organisation. The amount in total owed to our members is less than £13,000. However the overtime payments due to our members does mean a lot to them and in light of the difficult times ahead every penny counts.

Our members wrote to KPMG. KPMG have written back explaining that they must go back to Lovells.

I will not let this matter drop until every worker has been paid.