Author: admin

Yesterday and today the media are reporting another story about contractors ripping off the public purse.

“private security company G4S for overcharging tens of millions of pounds on electronic tagging contracts for offenders.”

This branch has been clear from the start that if you use the private sector you need to have the skills and expertise and resources to manage them. In response to our concerns our council has responded by creating the commissioning council in order to manage the private sector using “relationship management” Who comes up with such jargon? In the real world with stories like G4S and Serco the relationship with all private sector contractors taking public money should be very clear: 

“If you are taking public money and you don’t deliver you are not getting paid and if you over charge us then the contract is ripped up and you have to pay, end of story.”

However in order to enforce this you need lots of resources to ensure robust contract monitoring team…..but the catch here is that to do this can mean the business case for outsourcing does not stack up!

So with a history of private sector failures in the public sector what has been the clever thinking? Answer—The Thin Client!

UNISON has written at length about the ‘thin client’ . To put it simply it seeks to reduce the size of the client team down (less people monitoring the contractor) and relies unbelievably upon the contractor reporting itself..?

“You could not make this up but it is true.”

So when you read about G4S (again..Olympics anyone! ) and see they only found out when they started to re-tender, then it shows the ‘light touch’ approach to contract monitoring is simply unacceptable.

“Grayling told MPs that G4S and a second major supplier, Serco, had been overcharging on the existing £700m contract, with the Ministry of Justice being billed for non-existent services that dated back to at least 2005 and possibly as long ago as 1999.”

What does the above say about the culture of the contractors who must have know what they were doing?

(Footnote “the market’s instinctive reaction – 8% off Serco’s share price and 5.5% of G4S’s more lowly rated stock.”)

Did the Coalition government promise better control?

I remember back in 2010 government minister Francis Maude saying this in regards the private sector contracts with the govern­ment:

“We will expect you to be transparent in all your dealings with us and for the terms of the contracts we sign with you to go up online.”

Oh dear, not turned out as he hoped and he is now saying

“The public rightly expects government suppliers to meet the highest standards, and for taxpayers’ money to be spent properly and trans­parently. As a result of what the Justice Secretary outlined earlier today, I am launching an immediate review into government-held G4S and Serco contracts.”

You can read more here and here

UNISON has for the last two weeks been trying to establish what plans Your Choice are putting in place for consultation with Parents/Carers.

After Parents/Carers threatened a Judicial Review Your Choice put some of their restructure plans on hold.

However, Your Choice has allowed a sixth of the workforce to go before the consultation begins. This has had a terrible impact on morale of the frontline workforce and we are now receiving news that more staff are finding alternative jobs with others applying to get out of Your Choice services. For instance 60% of staff working in Barnet Independent Living Service have already left the service.

UNISON has asked Your Choice on a number of occasions to provide details of their  consultation plans in order we can try and bring some stability to the workforce. UNISON has advised our members not to leave and wait to hear the outcome of the consultation. Many of our members have provided a quality service and built up strong relationships with services users and carers. It is UNISON’s view that this strength is being undermined by the restructure and worsened by the lack of information sharing. We are concerned that the high turnover of staff in these type of services increases the likelihood of a serious incident in the workplace.

On the Your Choice website here http://www.yourchoicebarnet.org/news/2013/06/2013/06/consultation-process-update/ it states: 

Our announcement giving the Board’s decisions on our restructuring proposals said that decisions concerning Valley Way and Supported Living changes will be postponed until a full consultation has been completed.

This will be held with service users, parents and carers of both services.  The Valley Way consultation will be for six weeks, followed immediately by the Supported Living consultation which will be for a further six weeks. The Valley Way invitation and consultation document will be sent out by 12 July, inviting families to personal meetings during the week of 22 July.

We’ll post further updates as we progress.

This provides very little useful information.

UNISON produced a response to the staff consultation which you can read here we are concerned that the stability of the workforce is being further undermined by the lack of information/communication to the workforce and the trade unions.   

Look out for further updates

The wordle below sums up the feelings and issues facing staff working for Your Choice.

 

There has been and will be a lot going on in the former borough of Barnet. Barnet Council has embarked on a mass outsourcing programme which has resulted in services being transferred out of council control. This strategy is high risk and many critics are arguing that there will be no going back in the event of service delivery failure. The loss of control of infrastructure mean it would be financially impossible for the Council to step in and take control, the costs to the tax payer would be too high and political suicide for any party wanting to take back control.

In Barnet there is a vibrant community willing and able to try and scrutinise decision making in Hendon Town Hall.

The following organisations have already taken over services in the last 16 months

·         NSL – Parking

·         Your Choice – Services for adults with disabilities

·         Harrow Council – have taken over the council’s legal department

·         Barnet Homes- taken over Housing workers

·         Two massive contracts have recently been won by Capita. However as a result of a challenge from disability rights campaigner Maria Nash the transfer of these services has been put on hold until the outcome of the JR Appeal in the Court of Appeal on Monday 15 July.

Each week we will produce the Top Ten stories from the former London Borough of Barnet picked from local newspapers, Blogs and local websites.

1. “Barnet Council Cabinet Meeting 24/6/2013 – Democracy in Action?”

http://barneteye.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/barnet-council-cabinet-meeting-2462013_25.html

2. “Barnet Cabinet – Just not listening”

http://reasonablenewbarnet.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/barnet-cabinet-just-not-listening.html

3. “The Golden Share – or: words have meanings – Cabinet meeting Part Two”

http://wwwbrokenbarnet.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-golden-share-or-words-have-meanings.html

4. “Crossovers – crossed wires”

http://lbbspending.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/crossovers-crossed-wires.html

 

5. “Barnet Council in the dock #1: CPZ Action”

http://citizenbarnet.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/barnet-council-in-dock-1-cpz-action.html

6. “Your Choice Barnet – all on hold? Yes? No?”

http://www.barnetunison.me.uk/?q=node/1236

7. “Tory councillor slams lack of scrutiny after care home contract awarded despite resident death”

http://www.barnet-today.co.uk/News.cfm?id=21047&headline=Tory

8. “Somali Bravanese Welfare Association hosts annual thanksgiving in North London Business Park”

http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/10516882.Community_centre_destroyed_by_fire_holds_thanksgiving_event/?ref=mr

9” “ ‘One Barnet’ Council On Trial”.

http://barnetalliance.org/2013/06/12/agm-one-barnet-council-on-trial/

10. “Your Choice Barnet U-Turn after receiving notice of a potential legal challenge”

http://barnetalliance.org/2013/06/17/your-choice-barnet-u-turn-after-receiving-notice-of-a-potential-legal-challenge/

 

 

 

25 June 2013

Dear Kelly  

Re: Response to your Measures letter dated 24 May 2013.

Thank you for your Final Measures letter which outlines the significant Measures to be implemented after TUPE transfer. This response also refers to previous Measures letters dated 7 January and 25 March 2013 (see enclosed).

As per the TUPE Regulations whilst some information has been provided to the Trade Union during the pre TUPE consultation, it is simply not possible for UNISON as per the requirements under the TUPE Regulations to be in a position to be able appraise the suitability of the Capita Business Case solution without detailed financial and commercial data.

In the absence of the above information it is still UNISON’s view that whilst you are seeking to relocate services out of the borough we think you should look at keeping services in Barnet.

To view full response click here 

Your Choice Barnet (YCB) has informed us of the potential Legal Challenge from carers/ parents to their proposal to restructure half the service, withdraw weekend enhancements, carry out a benchmarking exercise with the private sector. The challenge now means that YCB will carry out a consultation exercise with parents and carers on their proposals.

UNISON has requested that the voluntary redundancies be put on hold pending the outcome of the of the consultation exercise. We have said that continuing with any of the measures proposed would mean pre-empting the outcome of the consultation exercise. The numbers of redundancies anticipated through voluntary redundancy and throughout come of the first round of interviews carried out for management positions, means that there are an anticipated 27 redundancies (VR and compulsory). This equates to around one fifth of the workforce. Redundancies on this scale mean massive changes, upheaval and stress to remaining colleagues as well as service users. Furthermore it is possible the consultation exercise will revise the new structure and may have meant that people would be inclined to stay.

We have written again stating that setting a deadline of 24th of June as a final declaration of their interest for those wanting voluntary redundancy is not acceptable. Furthermore the letter to staff indicates they have already received their redundancy pay which would be unusual given that the redundancy date first earmarked is first of July.

We have also queried the outcome of the interviews for coordinator roles as it is our understanding almost half the applicants failed to secure a position in the new structure. Therefore the interview process was not about selecting a redundancy, but selecting people out of YCB. This means YCB now has additional redundancy costs as well as expensive recruitment costs. It was not our understanding this was how the interview process would be conducted.

To view flyer click here

Barnet UNISON submitted a report to Your Choice Barnet on Friday 31 May (to view our report click here)

Below is the response which came in today

“John,

Many thanks for your response to our consultation paper. I have responded below to the recommendations you have made in that report:

Recommendation 1 Return YCB services to L B Barnet – We do not believe that returning YCB services to LBB offers value for money for our customers and deals with the original drivers for the creation of Your Choice and therefore we do not agree with this recommendation.

Recommendation 2 Extend block contract – Whilst continuing on a block contract delays the need for some of the proposed changes, ultimately we do not believe that extending the block contract offers value for money, especially as this means LBB paying approximately £1million per year more than the market rate for these services. LBB appear to be satisfied the rates they have set in the marketplace deliver good value for money services and therefore our goal will be to continue to work towards delivering services at this rate. We therefore do not agree with this recommendation.

Recommendation 3 Retain enhancements for staff – We have decided to place this recommendation on hold pending the outcome of consultation with our customers

Recommendation 4 Cease the benchmarking exercise – We should be benchmarking and understanding the costs of delivering our services against our competitors in the marketplace and therefore we seek to continue to undertake this. As previously discussed we will seek to consult over any changes that we wish to make arising from this activity. We therefore do not agree with this recommendation.

Recommendation 5 Delete the post of Director of Social Care – I assume this is the Operations Director post for Your Choice, previously held by Amanda Jackson. I can confirm that this has been deleted.

Recommendation 6 Reinstate fully staffed night shifts – We have decided to place this recommendation on hold pending the outcome of consultation with our customers

Recommendation 7 Provide an undertaking that an independent forensic financial review is carried out to establish business sustainability and viability of YCB – I can confirm that we are satisfied that subject to achieving our overall target of savings, YCB is a sustainable and viable business and therefore do not agree with this recommendation.

Recommendation 8 Require Winterbourne training as mandatory for all Board members and senior management – We obviously already do provide full safeguarding training to all YCB staff and have just undertaken an external audit of our safeguarding policies and procedures which were found to be satisfactory, but I can confirm that we are willing to agree to this recommendation in principle, subject to understanding it in more detail so please lets have a further discussion about this.

In respect of the wider proposed changes I have listed an updated position in respect of these below, that we plan to announce shortly:

Senior management changes – The Board agreed to proceed with the deletion of the posts of Director of Operations at Your Choice and Deputy Manager at Valley Way.  The current manager posts at Community Space, BILS and Supported Living will be deleted to create a single, more senior post.  The recruitment process for this post is in progress.

Middle management changes -The Board agreed to proceed with the introduction of service co-ordinator roles at Community Space, BILS and Supported Living, replacing the previous management posts. The recruitment process for the eight service co-ordinators is in progress.

Co-location of Community Space and BILS -The Board agreed that, due to the poor condition of the Flightways building and the planned demolition, we still need to find an alternative venue – but that Community Space was not the right solution. We will work with families of BILS service users to identify a more suitable location.

Supported Living changes -The Board acknowledged that we had underestimated the impact on service users of the proposals to remove waking nights posts and to split the role of support workers. We therefore need to carry out consultation with families of supported living service users before this can be reconsidered. The recruitment process will be postponed until the new structures are agreed.

Reduction of Valley Way waking nights staff – The Board agreed this was still the preferred proposal but that consultation needs to be undertaken with families of Valley Way service users before this could be implemented.

We are seeking to move forward on the senior and middle management changes from from 1 July 2013, as previously planned and will obviously seek to adhere to all contractual notice periods. For the remaining proposed changes, we will put in place arrangements to consult with our customers on these immediately. Where individuals have agreed voluntary redundancy these will still be honoured, and for those services where further consideration is taking place, at the support worker and assistant support worker level, we will offer individuals the option to remain with the organisation pending the outcome of consultation or to leave as planned. If staff leave, temporary staff will be appointed to ensure service continuity.

Regards

Your Choice”

 

Tomorrow Tuesday 11th June at 7pm the Budget and Performance Overview and Scrutiny Committee meet to discuss the DRS business case. It is a public meeting so anyone can attend. I can report that over 133 questions have been submitted to this Scrutiny committee which is the largest number of questions I have ever seen submitted to a committee.

You can read the questions HERE