Search Results for: one barnet

What is a ‘thin client? This is a good question and something the Council is spending £££thousands of tax payers money on for the One Barnet Programme. Back in 2008 the Audit Commission said  that contract failure with the private sector was often because local authorities underestimated the size of the client.  In the case of One Barnet they are reducing the client size to what I would describe as the One Barnet ‘invisible client’.

The One Barnet invisible client basically operates like this. The council hands the contract and money to the private sector and says

“we want you to monitor your performance and we want you to notify us when you fail to perform so then we can fine you!”

Does anyone see a flaw in this plan? 

This Saturday  26 May from 11 am to 1 pm Barnet UNISON along with other Council Trade Unions are going to be joined by Barnet Alliance for Public Services (BAPS) and a host of other local campaigning groups including the Save Friern Library campaign to leaflet residents in Brunswick ward. Their leaflet warns residents about the One Barnet mass privatisation policy which is currently being rolled out across all council services.

All who value public services are welcome to join us outside Osidge Library, Brunswick Park Road, London, N11 1EY

The proposals to restructure a services which is part of the larger NSCSO One Barnet project has generated an unprecedented level of concern from members

To view latest questions please click here

Last week our members had a meet your new employer session, where a number of key questions were repeatedly raised by staff

·         Why does the back office have to move to Croydon when the Council have free office space in NLBP until 2015

·         Does NSL operate a ticket target quota for parking wardens

·         Will I get redundancy of I cannot travel to Croydon

·         Do you offer Argos bonus points if staff meet ticket quota targets?

When UNISON first heard that NSL were the successful bidder, our regional Head of Local Government wrote (December 20111) to the NSL Chief Executive asking a number of key questions. However because of some delays about formally declaring NSL the successful bidder we have had no response to our questions. Now that NSL have been officially announced as the new Parking provider we are seeking urgent talks.

Our members are asking that UNISON seek to negotiate

·         The Back office continues to run from the current location on NLBP until the * break clause is activated in September 2015

·         The Back office is run from the offices NSL are looking to purchase in Barnet.

·         The extra costs of travel to Croydon for Council staff are paid by NSL

·         That in the event staff are unable to travel to Croydon, staff are offered the following:

Redeployment to a NSL workplace nearer Barnet (keeping their Council terns & conditions) or Redundancy.

Keep a look out for further updates on Parking

* The one Barnet programme has made it clear to all bidders for the One Barnet projects that the NLBP offices are available for the successful contractor to use until the Council can invoke the #break clause stipulated in the Lease.

Barnet UNISON Press release: 07 February 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

On Thursday 9 February hundreds of *UNISON members working for Barnet Council will be taking strike action.

A decision has been made that a team of UNISON strikers will leave the pickets lines to donate their labour to the ‘Larches Community’ a local Charity in Edgware which provides services for adults with Learning Difficulties. Our members are committed public servants and have this to say

“We have withdrawn our labour from the Council but we have not withdrawn our commitment to our community which is why a team of UNISON strikers is heading off to donate their labour to help out a local charity providing services for adults with learning difficulties in Barnet!”

What is happening in Barnet is what is likely to happen across NHS services as Private Sector companies fight to win lucrative guaranteed contracts, all funded by the tax payer.

For many of our members this will be the fourth day of action in response to the One Barnet Project which seeks to transfer the majority of the staff out of the Council. The total cost of these projects will look to exceed £2Billion which is why the Big Private Sector Fat Cats are all lined up to try and win the contracts!

John Burgess Barnet UNISON Branch Secretary said

“Doing nothing is not an option for our members. I am proud of our members for taking what is always a difficult decision to go on strike. Furthermore their decision to want to go an help out a local charity demonstrates their commitment to their community. I am asking the Leader of the Council to donate all strike pay deductions to be donated to the Mayors Charities.

Barnet UNISON is asking for the One Barnet programme to be put on hold.

 

 

* Council services taking action will be in the following Trading Standards & Licensing, Land Charges, Planning & Development, Building Control & Structures, Environmental Health, Highways Strategy, Highways Network Management, Highways Traffic & Development, Highways Transport & Regeneration, Strategic Planning & Regeneration, Cemeteries & Crematoria; Parking Services, Revs & Bens, Social Care Direct

 

End.

 

Contact: John Burgess Barnet UNISON on 07738389569 or email: john.burgess@barnetunison.org.uk

 

Useful Links

 

1. UNISON strikers donate their Labor to local charity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GQN8q0nQms

 

2. List of Private Sector contractors involving in the bidding process

 

• Capita Symonds
• EC Harris and FM Conway
• SERCO,
• Capita,
• BT,
• HCL Axon
• NSL

 

 

3. UNISON response to transfer of Housing workers out of the Council

http://www.barnetunison.me.uk/?q=node/749

 

4. UNISON response to transfer of social care staff out of the council

http://www.barnetunison.me.uk/?q=node/750

 

5. UNISON response to transfer of Parking staff to NSL

http://www.barnetunison.me.uk/sites/default/files/2011.12.13.UNISONPARKINGresponsetoCRC.pdf

 

 

On Wednesday 14 December Barnet Cabinet Resources rushed through two major outsourcing contracts in less than 10 minutes

It appears Speed Dating concept has been adopted by One Barnet Programme

 

Dear member of the Audit Committee

 

UNISON has produced a report ( see attached ) on the Greenwich Leisure contract following the revelation in a report to Cabinet Resources 27 September 2011 that officers were seeking:

 

“1. That approval is granted to negotiate termination of the current leisure contract with Greenwich Leisure Limited (“GLL”), such negotiations being subject to final approval by this committee

and

 

7.2 An external legal firm, Bevan Brittan, carried out an analysis of the current contractual arrangements and the proposals for varying the contract. Having done so, Bevan Brittan, have advised that alteration of the contract, in the manner proposed, would, for the purposes of European procurement law, constitute a material change to the content and nature of the original opportunity such as to amount to a ‘new’ contract. Without a competition, in accordance with the European procurement rules, such a material change would carry a risk of challenge from tenderers who were unsuccessful when the contract was tendered, previously, as well as from others, currently in the market.”

 

Barnet Council commenced a 15-year Leisure Services partnership/contract (annual value £1.7m) with Greenwich Leisure Ltd (GLL) on 1 January 2003. It is now considering terminating the contract.

 

I am bringing our report to your specific attention because our report found that serious concerns about this contract had previously been brought to the attention of the Audit Committee.

 

UNISON is concerned that  nine years into the contract there was:

• Poor financial controls

• No Partnership Board

• No effective contract management

• No proper risk assessment

• No key performance indicators or targets

• No checking of management fee/contract variations from GLL

• Decline in the condition of the Council’s leisure assets

 

Our report raises a number of critical key questions for Councillors in particular those members sitting on the Audit Committee:

 

1. Was there an expectation when the contract was set up that Greenwich Leisure would ensure adequate maintenance of the leisure facilities stock to last the lifetime of the contract?

2. Did GLL spend the allocated money on planned maintenance?

3. What was the annual cost of variation orders issued on this contract since January 2003?

4. Has this programme of work been audited and scrutinised?

5. If it was inadequate or ineffective, what remedial action was taken?

6. What is the current condition of the Council’s leisure facilities?

7. What has been the total cost of this contract to date?

8. Why were Audit recommendations not implemented?

 

Barnet Council’s catalogue of contract management failures on relatively small contracts has grave implications for the large multi-million One Barnet contracts currently in procurement.

 

UNISON believe that you should consider seeking independent assurance from external audit on:

·         contract monitoring and

·         long term procurement and the associated high level risks.

If councillors have any questions or concerns about the content of this report please do not hesitate to contact me.

 

Best wishes

John Burgess

Branch Secretary.

Barnet UNISON

0208 359 2088

www.barnetunison.me.uk

Barnet UNISON “Watch it & Share it”

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The Council have been rolling out the LEAN approach across a number of Council services. UNISON has repeatedly raised with a number of senior managers that this initiative is at odds with the One Barnet approach to delivering services.

Writing on the Conservative Home Blog “Benefit claims are too complicated for call centres and computers” John Seddon writes:

“Plans for the Universal Credit will create the same failures as we are seeing in HMRC: millions of unanswered calls, backlogs and errors – costing the taxpayer billions. The proposals – a website service and a national call centre – would work if peoples’ needs were simple and unvarying; taxation and benefits are anything but.

The move represents ministers’ wrong-headed belief in economies of scale; ministers think that these ‘lower-cost channels’ (web and phone) will mean a lower-cost service. In fact, because of the inherent variety in demand (people’s problems are different) the plans will increase the volume of transactions, just as these ideas have in HMRC.”

Full article here

Benefits too complex for a Call Centre model

John Seddon letter to: Rt. Hon. Iain Duncan Smith MP and Lord Freud 31st January 2011

“It would appear to be a simple proposition: take costs out of service provision by putting the provision online and/or in a call centre.  That these ‘channels’ represent cheaper transactions is not in doubt.  But it does not follow that overall the service will be cheaper to deliver.  The crucial factor is the complexity of the service.  When what is being delivered is simple and unvarying, moving it to telephone or internet channels may be effective.  When it is complex and variable, however, it is an expensive mistake, driving costs up and the quality of service down.  We can show many examples to prove this, of which the most relevant is housing benefits, of which more later. Housing benefits are not simple and unvarying; even less so will be the SUC.”

Full article here

Take a look at John Seddons evidence to the Treasury sub-Committee investigation on HMRC here:

“HMRC’s failure to pick up high volumes of calls to call centres are likewise indicative of high levels of failure demand, which will cause increasing costs and reflect poor-quality services for users

3.3.2 The assumption behind standardisation is that it will reduce costs. This is false. Management is concerned with reducing transaction costs – the cost of a telephone call or other discrete process – but the true costs of service are end-to-end from the taxpayer’s or agent’s point of view. Standardising work simply prevents the system from absorbing variety. It increases the volume of transactions (causes failure demand) and thus drives overall costs up.

4.2 Call centres, back offices, shared services, standardisation, specialisation, transaction-cost management, people management, IT-dominated processes – all these features of today’s scale approach to service reform can be shown to drive overall costs up.”

Barnet UNISON Comment

We agree that the Call Centre model will lead to an increase in ‘failure demand’ which will drive up costs. The Private Sector will recognise this as a bit of a ‘cash cow’ 

“Dear Colleagues

A big thank you to everyone who took part in the strike action on Tuesday 18 October.

A special big thank you to our excellent in-house photographers and our own in-house Film Director who has already produced two short videos with more to come.

I am enclosing a thank you letter from Larches Community the organisation we supported after picket line duty which you can view here

As I have said many times before, taking strike action is never an easy decision to make. Our branch has made a commitment to provide as much support and advice to all of our members.

Lastly I want to apologise for the not providing an update earlier I hope the wait was worth it.

Photographs

Please find UNISON pictures on our Barnet UNISON Flickr account ALL can be viewed here or here http://www.flickr.com/photos/28819825@N02/sets/72157627931108726/

Radio

On Tuesday we managed to be interviewed live on Radio Four Programme You & Yours (1.4 million listeners) you can listen to the brief interview (2mins) here or here http://www.flickr.com/photos/28819825@N02/6260819671/in/photostream

Video

Finally you can view our street theatre, which provided a Star Wars satirical view of the One Barnet programme. Well done to the actors taking part.

You can view their performances here

Best wishes

John Burgess

Branch Secretary

Last week I attended a meeting with UNISON and non UNISON members to talk about the latest One Barnet project for Housing workers as earlier this month Cabinet has agreed to ‘fast track’ proposals to transfer Housing staff into Barnet Homes.

Ok, ok, Cabinet asked the One Barnet project to carry out an options appraisal and business case at the same time and come back early 2012 in order the transfer can take place by March 2012. Whilst One Barnet apologists will insist no decisions have been made, the staff are not convinced. They are understandably angry that their service is being given special treatment to transfer them out of the council. I was surprised about how strongly staff felt about not working for Barnet Homes. Many of those I have spoken to are convinced that there will be redundancies soon after transfer.

For those who still remain unconvinced that the decision has not already been made, I need to explain that the proposal which went to Cabinet last week was meant to go to an earlier Cabinet Committee. UNISON was given an embargoed copy of a report months ago, however a decision was made to withhold the report until a later Cabinet committee

Maybe I am an old cynic, but could the reason for the delay have something to do with giving staff and UNISON less time to respond to the proposal?

UNISON members in Housing want to remain council employees and those non union members expressed the same view. In the last few days I have been impressed as to the speed at which our new reps have started to recruit new members. We have a target and we are working towards it.

If you work in Housing and want to remain a Council employee then make contact with the local rep or contact the branch for advice on what you can do for the campaign.