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A report on Nutsville Blog suggests Barnet Council have been asked withdraw parking services tender or face EU Commission investigation

Here is an extract from the Blog Post

In 2008 Barnet Council undertook a trial between two pay-by-phone companies just in their car parks. The costs involved were of minimal value so did not exceed the EU threshold to trigger a tendering exercise.  In 2009 Barnet decided they were going to go with Verrus and awarded them a low value contract in accordance with their procurement code. That contract was for two years, supposedly ending in March 2011. In June 2010 Barnet had rolled out pay-by-phone on to the streets of Barnet, making the contract more lucrative to Verrus.  But from around March this year payments from Barnet to Verrus really shot up as the Council took out more of its pay and display machines, leaving Verrus as the only game in town for motorists.

From March until August this year Barnet Council have paid Verrus more than £86,000, which would put their projected spend at over £200,000 expressly in violation of EU legislation and the EU threshold limit of £156,000. Brian Coleman must have been aware he was acting illegally as he even went against Barnet’s own Contract Procedure Rules (page 129 Table 5-2 Acceptance thresholds for contract extensions and variations Greater than £156,422 Authority must be sought).

Barnet UNISON forwarded the post earlier this week and await a response.

You can read the full article http://nutsville.com/?p=3472

Westminster Council parking enforcement sub contractor are NSL Services, yet news broke out last week that they were recruiting agency staff to issue parking tickets.

It sounds unbelievable but it it really is happening.

Please note Barnet Council is currently assessing tenders submitted by contractors to take over theor in-house Parking Service.

The story broke on the Blog Nutsville

see Blog post below 

“In an unprecedented decision Westminster Council plan to recruit their own agency staff to issue parking tickets in the evenings and throughout the night.

Councillor Lee Rowley, Cabinet Member for Parking and Transportation and Councillor Philippa Roe, Cabinet Member for Strategic Finance have taken the decision to snub the councils parking enforcement sub contractors NSL Services by taking back part of the parking enforcement duties from them. Rowley and Roe say they plan to use an old pre-existing contract with Hays Recruitment Agency to find people which the Council hope to train and run as their own ‘in-house’ Civil Enforcement Officers (CEO’s)

The parking enforcement contract first ran into trouble when it came time to re-let the contract just over a year ago. One of the bidders at the time, Mouchel, who were initially awarded the contract in March 2010 ended up taking legal action against the Council when the contract was taken away from them. Westminster Council chose not to defend the legal action in the High Court and paid off Mouchel around £600,000 in a last minute out of court settlement. Rowley said at the time that handing over £600,000 was the responsible thing to do, as the Council was facing the possibility of losing £4million in compensation if the case went to court.

Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, Labour leader for Westminster, at the time branded the parking enforcement contract relet saga a “very unsatisfactory and expensive fiasco”.

It was hoped that after the Council had taken over six months and spent an estimated £1million in awarding a contract, then taking it back, launching a new expensive tendering excersise whilst fighting a legal battel with Mouchel that Rolwey had got the hang of running the parking department.

But in October 2010 we revealed how Cllr Rowley had approved spending £1.95M of taxpayers money propping up the NSL contract with 50 extra CEO’s, due to failing technology.

A cabinet report at the time revealed all;

“It is anticipated that these increased compliance levels should be achieved by using new technology. However, at the date of the report that technology has not been implemented. It is expected that this technology will be in place by January 2011 and be delivering the efficiency benefits by the end of the first year of the contract. Therefore, in order to achieve these outcomes in the interim the contractor will need to deploy a greater level of resources across the Overnight and Irregular Periods; this has been assessed to be an increases of 50 FTE.”

Cllr Rowley dismissed accusations that he did not have the authority to make the cabinet decision or that it was against the Councils Constitution, claiming that the use of the word ‘virement’ in the decision notice was simply a mistake.

The October 2010 report also went on to explain that if  NSL’s technology did not live up to expectations they would be expected to pay for any extra CEO’s to meet Council targets in future:

“If the technology fails to deliver the results anticipated by NSL, then at their cost, they can maintain higher FTE levels to meet the compliance outcomes.”

Nutsville has now learnt from NSL insiders that the parking enforcement contract with Westminster has continued not to go to plan. Staff have told Nutsville that NSL have continued to set “Beat Averages” that CEO’s must achieve, otherwise they are disciplined for “poor performance”. This has led to several CEO’s already being disciplined. CEO’s have also been told that they will soon have to take on extra duties while they are patrolling the streets because not enough penalty tickets are being issued. It looks likely that the first of these new duties will be dog fouling – which is currently something Westminster City Wardens carry out.

NSL staff have also told Nuts that the enforcement contract profit is, at best, breaking even but it is more likely that it’s now losing NSL money but they continue with it for fear that it could start a domino effect amongst other Authorities if they withdraw from Westminster.

In Rowley’s and Roe’s latest decision it states they plan to alter the current contract with NSL services to take away from them the evening and night time enforcement duties. The report goes on to explain that the initial high costs involved in recruitment and training are expected to be clawed back by the money raked in from motorists parking in Westminster, and therefore would effectively mean no extra costs to the taxpayer.

 

The branch recently received a letter signed by a ‘long suffering taxpayer’

The letter raises serious questions about the legitimacy of outsourcing Environmental health services. The issues raised are points made by UNISON & our members who work in Environmental Services.

The letter ends with

“I hope these thoughts will be of some use in the consideration of (what seems to me) to be an absurd proposal.

 Yours sincerely

 (Long Suffering Local Tax Payer).”

To view the letter click HERE

Messages of support for UNISON members who took strike action have come flooding in.

To view click here

Look at what you are paying for your pension. Half the figure and you will see just how much more the Government wants you to pay towards your pension every month of your working life. This will come into effect from April 1^st. If you do not want to be the April Fool then you should come to this meeting to hear what the proposals mean and what we mean to do about it.

We also want to give advice on Pilot Privatisation Schemes.

What does the union do for me?

We have represented and advised very many colleagues in Children’s Services. We want to do more and more effectively.

View invite here

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.

On 14 September, the 5 private sector contractors were due to submit their proposals however there has been a delay. Last Friday staff working in DRS received sent an email at 5.30 pm explaining the latest position. The email does not give the reason for the delay, maybe the private sector companies were getting cold feet or simply finding the prospect of delivering regulatory service more complex than they first thought?

This project has been ‘dogged’ by rumour and speculation that a number of regulatory services that can’t be outsourced without making complex arrangements that the point of outsourcing would simply not make financial sense. However, as we know making financial sense has not stopped the One Barnet project, so far that is……..?

An example of the ‘commonsense blindness’ which continues to blight One Barnet projects is the Registrar Service. When Registrar Service was added to the DRS bundle, UNISON & our members in Registrars insisted the Council could not outsource this service. Even when the Council received a report from the Registrar General they continued to ignore our advice. Eventually after spending lots of money on legal advice the Council, finally had to admit they couldn’t outsource Registrar service.

UNISON believes that there are more regulatory services that can’t be outsourced, the Council refuses to share the legal advice they have been given and rumours persist that at some stage the contractors are going to admit it cannot be done or not without more expense!

One of the most common responses members have given after last week’s strike action has been that the ‘residents don’t know about ‘One Barnet’.

In response to this feedback Barnet UNISON branch are launching a community campaign on Monday 3 October which we have dubbed

‘RESIDENTS MUST KNOW DAY!’ 

We are asking all our members to make a pledge to turn up and deliver leaflets & newspapers to Barnet residents at a number of tube stations & over ground stations across Barnet on

Monday 3 October from 5.30 to 7pm

We want members to go to the following stations

·         Golders Green Station

·         Finchley Central

·         Arnos Grove

·         Mill Hill Broadway Station

·         Burnt Oak

·         Edgware

·         High Barnet

·         Hendon Central

·         Totteridge& Whetstone

Please contact the UNISON office on 0208 359 2088 or email contactus@barnetunison.org.uk  to inform us which station you will be going to. You can collect the newspapers & flyers from the UNISON office.

If you want to cover a station that is not listed above please contact the branch.