Barnet UNISON

Speaking from experience nothing is more painful than seeing your own mother having to go into a care home. The feelings of guilt and fear are intense. Leaving strangers to look after your mother is very scary. This happened to me two weeks ago after a nightmare 12 months I had to witness my mother move into a care home.

I am a social worker so I have been on the other side, supporting service users and their families, but nothing prepares you for when it happens to someone close to you.

“Why am I talking about this?”

There are many reasons. We are living in an age on the brink. We have seen the ‘Fall and Rise of the Financial Empire’, bankers are back to their old ways paying out bonuses, the Coalition attempts to control their excesses have proved to be empty rhetoric. If I am honest at the moment I am sceptical that Labour would be any better (prove me wrong!).

We are on the brink of the dismantling of the Welfare State, something that was built at a time when we were in a far worse state than we are in now. Then we had politicians under pressure from citizens for a better future for their children. This was a time when public services began to develop and grow.

Now we are facing the destruction of public services, by that the opening up of privatisation of all public services. The Private sector companies increasing those based outside of the UK are chomping at the bit to take on lucrative contracts. Profits will be made out of public services.

There are many who see this as progressive, modernising but many more know and understand the private sector is in it for the profits first and their exploitation of public sector management is now legendary. How many more times must we hear about project overspends, poor procurement, councils trapped in partnerships with the private sector that don’t deliver the savings promised. This is public money, this YOUR money.

Earlier this week we heard that already £79 billion of public money is tied up in contracts with the private sector. There is no scrutiny or oversight of these arrangements, the audit trail is stopped by the words ‘commercial confidentiality’.

I have a view, ‘if the private sector want to deliver public services then they have to open their books for public scrutiny, if not take a hike!’

The bankers took £1,3 trillion of public money and have shown to be unrepentant, the coalitions governments privatisation plans of the public money is presenting the private sector with unrestricted, unregulated access to £billions of public money.

In Barnet, recently we have seen a catastrophic failure of the commissioning model for older peoples services that has cost the tax payer and exposed residents, services users and staff to exposure to Legionella bacteria.

Read on.

Background information to the privatisation of former Council care homes.

Barnet Council, 23 October 2000 approved the selection of Ealing Family Housing Association (now part of the Catalyst Group) to take a transfer of the majority of the Council’s elderly persons residential care homes and day centres on the basis that these would be replaced with modern purpose built facilities and achieve an ongoing revenue saving for the Council from the commencement of the contract.

Cabinet Resources Committee, 3 September 2007 noted the disagreement with Catalyst in respect of its Deficit Claim and also agreed that the dispute with Catalyst in respect of the Perryfields/Claremont Road and Merrivale/Child Guidance Centre sites swaps agreements, and the Project and Abortive Costs claims arising there from, be referred to arbitration and/or independent expert as appropriate.

Fast forward to Cabinet Resources Commitee 2 March 2011.

The Council lost the case at the Arbitration Court.

The cost of the claim and associated costs has been significant and can be summarised as follows:

Final Award to Catalyst (incl interest and costs) £8.674m

Council’s final estimated legal costs £2.000m

Outstanding issues (land swaps) £0.110m

Total cost £10.784m

Legal costs paid in previous years (£1.660m)

Provision for deficits since April 2007 £0.046m

Provision Required £9.170m

The total cost has been offset slightly by net income from Catalyst of £532,000 in respect of overbillings and the Single Status agreement which was agreed early in the Arbitration process by both parties legal teams. Hence, the resultant cost to the Council has been £10.252m.

£10.252m, that’s right £10.252m of public money on a contract that was supposed to (rewind back to 2000) ‘achieve an ongoing revenue saving for the Council’

Under the Equalities section it says:

The referral of the deficit claim to arbitration has not affected the residential and day care services being provided to older people. The service is inclusive and provided to all older people eligible for residential care or requiring day care. There are specialist units for people who have dementia, people who have learning disabilities and a unit for Asian people. However, any substantive changes to the care home contract for the provision of day care and / or residential care will be subject to a full equalities impact assessment.

“What has happened since this report was published?”

Three weeks ago our members working in Fremantle Care homes were told there had been a Legionella outbreak in two of the care homes Apthorpe and Dellfield Court. Our members received minimal information. Our union wrote to Fremantle asking a number of questions to which we have yet to receive a reply.

Barnet UNISON issued a number of questions and a petition calling for an independent inquiry.

Our questions are as follows:

1. When and where in each of the affected homes did they discover Legionella bacteria?

2. Have any residents/service users, staff, or members of the public contracted Legionnaires disease to date?

3. Who is responsible for monitoring the safety of the water supply in these settings?

1.    Is it Barnet Council

2.    Is it Catalyst Housing?

3.    Is it Fremantle

4.    Is it another organisation?

4. When was the last time each setting was checked and who has the records?

5. Does Barnet Council include issues like Health & Safety in the contract monitoring process? If not why not? If yes when were these last reviewed?

6. Are risk assessments on health & safety carried out in all of the settings?

7. As part of the contract monitoring by Barnet Council are these risk assessments reviewed? If not why not? If yes when were they last reviewed?

8. As part of good safeguarding practice have other residential care homes provided by Catalyst and Fremantle been informed about the outbreak and if so have the checks been carried out in those settings?

9. How was this allowed to happen?

10. What was the cause of this outbreak and what controls have been put in place to secure the safety of the residents, staff and visitors?

11. Was a risk assessment carried out after the Legionella bacteria was discovered? If yes, what did it say and what control measure were put in place? If not why not?

12. Have the carer’s/relatives of residents and service users using these services been informed that a ‘service improvement notice’ has been issued?

Since we launched the Petition we have learnt that Catalyst Housing Group have been issued an ‘improvement notice’ this action taken by the council indicates there seriousness of the situation and reinforces the need for an independent public inquiry.

“What is an improvement notice?”

Section 21 HSWA¹ states that, where an inspector is of the opinion that a person is contravening one or more of the relevant statutory provisions, or has contravened one or more of those provisions in circumstances that make it likely that the contravention will continue or be repeated, s/he may serve an improvement notice. The notice should:

• state that s/he is of that opinion;
• specify the provision(s) in question;
• give particulars of the reasons why s/he is of that opinion;
• require the person to remedy the contravention or the matters occasioning it; and
• specify the period for compliance, which should be not less than 21 days from the date of service of the notice, being the period in which the recipient of the notice may lodge an appeal with the employment tribunal.

“Just what is going on in these homes?”

I have worked in social services for over 20 years and in my opinion older peoples services are always undervalued, it says something about our society when you hear in discussions about social care and health needs for older people the words “burden as in burden on the state”.

Most of us will reach old age and most of us will develop physical and mental conditions which will require services. When that happens believe me, you will want to have a conscientious well trained member of staff caring for you. You will want your home to be a safe place to live and feel secure in the knowledge that someone is looking out for you.

My question to anyone who is reading this is “What would you do if your mother, father, close friend was living in a care home where there had been an outbreak of legionella?”

·         Would you want to know if it was safe to stay in the home?

·         Would you want to know how this happened?

·         Would you want to know who was responsible?

·         Would you want an independent inquiry?

If you answer yes to any or all of these questions then please sign our petition here and send a message of support to john.burgess@barnetunison.org.uk

The ink is barely wet on the redundancy letters and members are contacting the branch to say that staff who have been made redundant are now back working as Consultants!

Unfortunately this is not a new phenomena in Barnet, over the years this has been almost an unofficial policy.

I have raised this issue with councillors and senior officers. During this year’s Budget consultation Barnet UNISON raised it as in our Budget proposal which you can view here

Here is what we said about the use of consultants

“The issue of Consultancy and Agency spend has been repeatedly raised at previous Council Budget consultations. Over time promises have been made that this information would be provided. It is true that information is produced but it is the robustness and quality of the information that is of concern to the Trade Unions as it is to the local tax payer.

The issue which appears to challenge the Council is providing a definition of a consultant and an agency worker. Each year we have offered to put together a policy which we could jointly agree. It is important that during consultation the Employer seeks to provide easily understandable and accessible information to the Trade Unions in order to ensure all attempts have been made to mitigate making staff redundant.

The Council through its industrial relations machinery produces Agency figures, more often than not these are repeatedly inaccurate. The reasons behind the inaccuracy of the agency data have changed over time but the problem remains the same.

“How can an organisation afford not to know how many Agency workers they employ?”

Furthermore, since the publication of the Council spend over £500 we have requested confirmation about Agency & Consultancy spend in the understanding that there was likely to be a high number of redundancies this year.

We carried out an exercise whereby we extrapolated the Consultancy spend data based on figures released in August; the result of which the Council was looking to spend £38,733,307.98. We carried out the same exercise in relation to Agency workers and found the Council was looking to spend £8,309,206.92. These two figures when understanding that staffing spend takes up a large part of Council spend are not insubstantial figures.

Recommendation

The Council undertakes as a matter of urgency a review of all payments to staff not employed directly by the Council.

Furthermore we recommend that the Council refer to the HMRC Guidelines in particular the advice to be found here that explains that “It’s your responsibility to correctly determine the employment status of your workers – that is, whether they’re employed by you or self-employed. This depends on the terms and conditions of your working relationship with each worker.

It’s important to get your workers’ employment status right because it affects the way tax and National Insurance contributions (NICs) are calculated for them. And it determines whether or not you have to operate PAYE (Pay As You Earn) on their earnings.”

Read full details here

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/paye/employees/start-leave/status.htm ”

Needless to say we did not get a response to our report. Feedback from members would be most welcome.

Unusually I found myself at home and able to watch the Dispatches programme on Channel Four ‘Britain’s Secret Fat Cats’

For those who missed the programme I strongly suggest you watch it on catch up TV here

The thing is that the Public know so little about what has gone on and the serious amount of public money going into the coffers of private sector companies. Whilst Town Halls have become the target of community groups and angry residents and trade unions as a result of massive cuts to budgets, private sector companies are revealing massive profits for shareholders all paid for from public money from ME AND YOU!

Whilst I maybe the last to fight the corner for senior officer pay rates, at least this is subject to public scrutiny. If these companies are allowed to take over the rest of public services the audit trail will disappear altogether.  

I am positive that 99.9% of UNISON members would be shocked, angry and disgusted about how public money can hived off for private sector companies at a time when public services and local communities are being decimated.

A thought which has often crossed my mind, is how much longer will the community continue to put with this nonsense?

Almost every person I speak to either officially and unofficially admit the private sector are in for themselves and whatever happens they never lose, they don’t take the consequences when it all goes wrong.

Worrying was the admission in the programme that ‘privatisation is one way street.’ The collapse of Connaught’s was covered in tonight’s programme (with regards Norwich) and all the things the Norwich councillor claimed, were allegedly taking place in Barnet. Last summer as rumours circulated about the future financial viability of Connaught’s, Barnet UNISON lobbied Barnet Homes asking for the service to be brought back in-house before service collapsed. Needless to say our request was not taken up. Connaught’s went bust, now we have Lovell’s and they are not even waiting 6 months before looking to attack member’s terms and conditions.

No wonder the big private sector companies are getting excited with the prospect of even more lucrative contracts where they make massive profits at no risk to themselves. I saw an article in the Daily Mail; please note I am not a reader of the Daily Mail

“They are private companies but they are also the creation of the Government’s drive to outsource services. The lion’s share of their turnover – and of their executives’ enormous pay packages – comes from the public purse. But there is little in the way of public accountability.

These outsourcers already account for £79 billion of state expenditure every year, a figure which is set to grow if the Government fulfils its pledge to put nearly all state-run services out to contract.

A White Paper on the subject is due soon and the companies with their foot already in the door are delighted.

Over the past few weeks big outsourcing companies have given extraordinarily upbeat assessments of their position.

Paul Pindar, the chief executive of Capita – which does everything from collecting TV licence fees to placing social workers – is gleeful about the prospect of a public-spending squeeze.”

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1365695/Revealed-The-new-public-service-Fat-Cats-theyre-immune-cuts.html#ixzz1Gc4gWD8e

“Trade Union members, friends, work colleagues, families, community groups and residents from Barnet are going to march together as a community.”

Join us on Saturday 26th March 2011 and say NO to unfair and unnecessary spending cuts!

We’ll be marching in March to defend our public services from cuts & privatisation:

·         Hospitals

·         Libraries

·         Day centres

·         Youth services

·         Schools

·         Pensions

Meeting places in Barnet:

·         Finchley Central Tube Station—9am -9:15am (sharp)

·         Brent Cross Tube station—9am -9:15am (sharp) UNISON Contact Louis Smyth 07909156552

UNISON’s final meeting place is outside the * Savoy Hotel Strand London, WC2R 0EU from 9:30am till 11am nearest Tube Leicester Square.

March Starts around 11am on from ‘The Embankment’

UNISON contacts John Burgess 07738389569, Helen Davies 07940189807

We require volunteers to help take equipment to the March, carry during and bring it back to the UNISON office. Pick up will be the week prior and drop of ASAP after. If you can help please contact Lorraine on 020 8359 2088 or email: contactus@barnetunison.org.uk

* = Scene of Peasants Revolt 1381

Barnet UNISON & Barnet Alliance for Public Services (BAPS) have organised a Public Meeting and have invited Professor Dexter Whitfield as the Guest Speaker.

 

The meeting takes place on Tuesday 15^th March at 7pm in the Greek Cypriot Community Centre, 2 Britannia Road, London N12 9RU.

 

Barnet Council last week passed a Budget making £54 million in cuts/savings which included cuts to frontline services and increases in fees and charges to Barnet residents.

 

Barnet Council is embarking on policy called One Barnet Programme formerly known as Future Shape and more widely referred to as ‘easycouncil’. This programme has already begun, 24 out of 25 council services have already been told they are to be privatised. Up to £4 million has been spent on consultants and other staff resources in the last three years with no discernable savings for Barnet residents. A further £9.2 million has been put aside for consultants to help deliver this mass privatisation programme.

 

Dexter has been commissioned by the Council Trade Unions to produce a series of critiques and proposals on the Councils Future Shape Programme (now rebranded One Barnet) You can view all his analysis/reports on the following link here

 

Dexter will be addressing in his speech the following:

• Costs and consequences of Barnet council policies.
• Community needs decided by multinational companies.
• The effect on jobs, terms and conditions.
• The erosion of democracy and transparency.
• Implications of the governments White Paper on public sector reform

This will be followed by a Q& A session

Dave Prentis, UNISON General Secretary addressed members at our AGM last week and said “the council that couldn’t cut more and couldn’t care less, the council that is in the vanguard of Tory ideology”.

 

More recently Professor Dexter Whitfield had an article on PFI published in the Guardian newspaper & in the Barnet Press

 

End.

 

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

 

Background

 

Dexter Whitfield is Director of European Services Strategy Unit (continuing the work of the Centre for Public Services founded in 1973) and is Adjunct Associate Professor, Australian Institute for Social Research, University of Adelaide.  He has carried out extensive research and policy analysis of regional/city economies and public sector provision, jobs and employment strategies, impact assessment and evaluation, marketisation and privatisation, modernisation and public management (www.european-services-strategy.org.uk).

 

He has undertaken commissioned work for a wide range of public sector organisations, local authorities and agencies and worked extensively with trade unions in the UK at branch, regional and national levels, and internationally. He has advised many tenants and community organisations on housing, planning and regeneration policies.

 

Dexter is the author of the following books:

• Global Auction of Public Assets: Public sector alternatives to the infrastructure market & Public Private Partnerships (2010);
• New Labour’s Attack on Public Services: Modernisation by Marketisation (2006),
• Public Services or Corporate Welfare: The Future of the Nation State in the Global Economy (2001),
• The Welfare State: Privatisation, Deregulation & Commercialisation (1992)
• Making it Public: Evidence and Action against Privatisation (1983).

He was one of the founding members of Community Action Magazine (1972-1995) and Public Service Action (1983-1998). He has published many articles in journals and delivered papers and advised public bodies and trade unions in Europe, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Our report highlighting significant risks & weaknesses was submitted to Barnet Council Cabinet Resources Committee on Weds 2 March.

Our report was ignored.

See summary of Key Risk below.

1. Delivering Savings – Relentless drive for Efficiency

There is a significant risk that the Council will not achieve the forecasted £100 million savings for following reasons:

• Over reliance on the private sector to deliver savings without a proven record.

• Poor understanding of outsourcing models as reflected in the scoring.

• No evidence based economic assessment & financial projections for each service delivery model.

 

Somerset CC has decided to renegotiate the strategic partnership contract with IBM. Just three years into the ten-year £400m contract, the Council has decided to bring some services and functions back in-house, change the governance of the JVC, and simplify the contract (Cabinet Member Decision, 21 February 2011). The Council considered terminating the contract but this was ruled out because of early termination financial penalties and significant transition costs. Planned savings have already plummeted by a third.

2. Value for Money

There is a significant risk that the council will not achieve value for money for the following reasons:

• No assessment of costs and benefits for each service (business) delivery model.

• No forecast of affordability and no financial projections for each service delivery model.

• No analysis of business risks for each service delivery model.

• Little or no recognition of interdependencies between services resulting in a flawed options appraisal outcome.

• Issuing an OJEU notice in the absence of in depth business case and Gateway review.

 

The recent Catalyst dispute, which resulted in the Council bearing an additional cost of £10.3m illustrates the risks.

3. Challenge

There is a risk of external challenge for the following reasons:

• No evidence that service users have been consulted about the design of the Customer Services Organisation.

To view our Interim report click here

To view Petition signed by staff working in Reves & Bens click here

To view our Final report click here