Barnet claim £100 million saving

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!’