One Barnet – NOT Learning LESSONS from failure

NOT Learning LESSONS from failure

It was simple but clear request from the cross party Business Management Overview & Scrutiny Committee. They asked the Lead Cabinet Member Councillor Rams responsible for One Barnet Programme to bring evidence of when they visited other Councils, who visited them and what they learnt.

What they got was a list, but listen for yourself here http://youtu.be/_UQ17yFYeIs

The short clip is under 3minutes long. Have a read of some key extracts

Former Leader Councillor Brian Salinger tried to obtain details of the visits

“When the visits carried out who went on them and what did they learn from them? None of that is contained in here, six pages is desk top research. What members here are looking for are, what have you learnt from meeting up with councils face to face?

To Councillor Rams he asked “Which of these have you visited?

Councillor Rams replied

 “I haven’t visited any of the sites, just by not visiting does not mean you are mot learning from your officers and desktop research”

Chair of Business Management Overview & Scrutiny Committee Councillor Hugh Rayner intervened and said:

“In fairness councillor Rams all we have here is a list of visits it doesn’t say whether they were for one hour, one day, one week, it doesn’t say when they were there, it doesn’t say what benefit we got from them, it doesn’t say who went, how detailed whether it was one person or a team, it’s so sketchy its absolutely useless I’m afraid”

He followed again by saying:

“I think the most important thing is to know what you learnt from each of them, for instance if you went on a visit and you found contracting out wasn’t a good idea maybe that should be noted, that they considered it was not a good idea and but here we don’t know.”

After four and half years of Future Shape/EasyCouncil/One Barnet, millions spent on consultants, Ten Conservative Councillors are on the brink of making the biggest political decision since the creation of Barnet Council in 1965, and the Council has still not provided any evidence of lessons learnt.

That is why this REALLY is a BILLIONPOUNDGAMBLE.