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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!’

Every year the Council produces a Budget and each year redundancies are issued. One of the duties the Council has when considering making staff redundant is to make sure that they have looked at all spend before issuing redundancy notices. Over the last few years the Agency & Consultancy spend has become a major issue facing public sector bodies and central government. On 4 June this year Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said:

“Getting council business out in the open will revolutionise local government.  Local people should be able to hold politicians and public bodies to account over how their hard earned cash is being spent and decisions made on their behalf. They can only do that effectively if they have the information they need at their fingertips”

According to the Figures produced online it appears the Council spend on Consultants is

Total for Q2                                            £8,720,573.32

Total for Q1                                            £10,646,080.67

Total for Qs 1&2                                     £19,366,653.99

Extrapolation for the year                       £38,733,307.98

In relation to Agency spend the Council spent

Total for Quarter 2                                  £2,022,422.60

Total for Quarter 1                                  £2,132,180.86

Total for Quarters 1&2                            £4,154,603.46

Extrapolation for the year                        £8,309,206.92

The above spend is something the Trade Unions are taking up with the Council especially in light of number of jobs and services at risk identified in the Strategic Budget proposals.

The following services and assets are down for auction to the lowest bidder.

You can see all the reports online here

• Planning Services
• Environmental Health Services
• Registry Service (Births, Deaths, Marriages & Citizenship)
• Hendon Cemetery and Crematorium
• Land Charges
• Highways Services including Road Safety
• Parking Services
• Allotments
• Adult Social Services (Day Care, Residential & Independent living services)

And the bidding starts at £……..?????

Last Thursday over two hundred six form students marched to the offices of MP Mike Freer last night in a protest over the decision to allow university tuition fees to rise. You can read the report online here.

The previous week a large delegation of students from Middlesex University travelled down to central London to protest about the university tuition fees increases.

The previous months a number of sheltered housing residents (average age 70 y/o) protested outside Hendon Town hall as they began their campaign to oppose the removal of their wardens.

Over the last two months Barnet residents have been running community stalls at the weekends and leafleting streets in Barnet opposing cuts & privatisation proposals.

On 23 September 250 residents and staff turned up at the launch of Barnet Alliance of Public Services

In the last six weeks almost 4,000 people have signed the Save our Libraries petition.

In the past few months 500 council staff attended two Lobbies at Hendon Town Hall

Is there something in the drinking water or are Barnet residents and staff finally waking up to the implications of the Spending Review?

This is an excellent piece of work which I hope all UNISON branches will use to counter the propaganda that we must attack public services and those in need of public services

to view click here

Ex Barnet senior Manager Roger Jones now working for Ealing Council is in the process of bringing Highways Services back in-house. Multi national company Mouchel are currently providing the service but the contract comes to an end early next year.

 

The news that this service is returning in-house and can deliver savings of almost £1 million a year is clearly at odds with the anti in-house message staff are witnessing here in the Council.

 

Click here to read the Service Improvement Plan which went to Committee earlier this year.

Barnet UNISON members

 

Super Council?

You would have woken up to news of a proposed merger of London Councils into a Super Council promising savings of £100 million a year!….I listened to the Leader of Hammersmith Council and did not hear the Private Sector mentioned once!

 

I will report on this proposal after obtaining details from the three UNISON branches involved, after all it is important to drill down and study the details of any Press headlines.

 

SouthWestOne – Somerset

Two weeks ago I sent round details of another Strategic partnership failure in Liverpool. As Strategic Partnerships are the basis on which easyCouncil will be delivered please read on:

 

I am forwarding an article which appeared in the Local Government Chronicle today. Many of you will have seen the Southwest One ITV West documentary made 18 months ago detailing the IBM takeover of services in Somerset. The project was beset with controversy.

 

Somerset UNISON fought a campaign to expose the secrecy surrounding this Project and surprise surprise the branch secretary was suspended for almost six months. I am pleased to report he is back in the UNISON office.

 

For those of you who saw the ITV West documentary will know the project was shrouded in secrecy and very few people actually saw the Business Case for the Project. I have a copy of the documentary if anyone would like to view it.

 

Bridgewater MP Ian Liddell-Grainger (Con) has been campaigning against Southwest One for over two years and fought hard to try to gain access to the Business Case.

 

I imagine Somerset County Lib-Dem councillors wish they had demanded to see the Business Case as the Lib-Dem’s were later ousted by the Conservatives in the last elections.

 

Interestingly a contingent from SouthwestOne paid a visit to Barnet during the summer. I don’t know what they discussed but after viewing this latest news I really, really hope they haven’t been advising Barnet Council on the benefits of partnerships with the Private Sector

 

Professor Dexter Whitfield was the consultant providing expert advice for Somerset UNISON Branch. Dexter said at the time “The Somerset strategic partnership with IBM was a classic example of ideologically driven outsourcing. Somerset UNISON warned about the declining level of savings and higher contract management costs. The increasing annual losses of the joint venture company serve to illustrate the high risks involved in these contracts.”

Dexter has and continues to provide expert advice for the branch.

Take a look at this report From Local Government Chronicle

Somerset joint venture loses £16m in its first year

21 October 2010 | By Ruth Keeling

A controversial joint venture between Somerset’s councils, police force and IBM has made a multi-million pound loss for the second year running.

Southwest One posted an operating loss of £16.1m in its second year of operation, according to accounts lodged with Companies House earlier this month.

The 2008-09 accounts state that the loss – a significant increase on the £2m it lost in its first year – “was larger than originally budgeted” because its investment period had to be extended and because it failed to attract new customers. A credit facility from parent company IBM means it will continue to operate for the “foreseeable future”, according to the accounts.

The joint venture was set up in September 2007 by IBM, who own three-quarters of the company, and Somerset CC and Taunton Deane BC to provide back office services including HR, finance, estates management and IT. Avon and Somerset Police later joined the partnership but it has been dogged by arguments from the first.

Most recently, it emerged that the two councils would be fined because of the extra checks that the Audit Commission had to make on their accounts prepared by the firm. Taunton Deane said it would pay its £15,000 charge itself while Somerset CC, whose leader is currently considering an internal review of the Southwest One contract, said it would pass the charge on to the company.

The contract, worth £585m over 10 years to the company, was set up with the aim of finding efficiencies for the three customers, although those savings have been downgraded from the £200m originally quoted to £144m “pipeline” savings listed in the most recent accounts.

In a statement, Southwest One emphasised that the 2008-09 figures were “a reflection that first of a kind ventures like this require up-front investment in the early stages” and stated that there had been no negative impact on the service. In fact, it added, a new customer contact centre had call waiting times for residents.

Southwest One’s accounts blamed its failure to attract new partners on the “adverse UK economic environment, coupled with a high degree of political uncertainty”.

However, the company said it was in discussion with a number of potential customers and argued that the spending review and the communities secretary’s enthusiasm for shared services would provide “significant opportunities”.

It stated: “South West One, as a pioneer in this field, is ideally-placed to help public bodies respond to this challenge”.

But Bridgewater MP Ian Liddell-Grainger (Con) branded the partnership a “failure” and questioned whether they would have any success in attracting new partners. “They’re such a tarnished outfit that short of changing their name there is no point in talking to anybody,” he said.

Somerset CC said it had no further comment to that provided by Southwest One.

Private Eye reported the same story with a little extra

 

They included a report that Somerset Council are making £75 million in cuts and have issued 1,500 redundancies…..it still amazes me why some people don’t understand why staff and residents are not worried about easyCouncil.