Barnet UNISON

To Read Press release click here

Sorry but you have been April Fooled

Feeling nobody is listening to what you are saying? Do you feel sometimes like you are banging your head against a brick wall?

Why not have your very own brick wall. Well times are hard so why not have your very own CORPORATE STRESS BRICK.

To order your very own Corporate One Barnet Stress brick do not email us at donotemailus@thisisnotaproperemailaddress.org.uk 

The Parking project has raised a serious concern about the transparency of the procurement process specifically in relation to financial evaluation procedure. UNISON had hoped that they would receive an explanation as to how the Council use this evaluation process. To date this has not been provided. There is a fundamental issue here about the purpose of the Evaluation process. In the absence of a response to our concerns the evaluation process is appears to be meaningless. As a long as an organisation provides a Bond it doesn’t matter what state their finances are in. We will be reporting more on this matter in due course.

On Thursday evening UNISON submitted a report in response to the proposal to transfer our members to NSL. You can read our report here

Basically our report sought a delay to the decision to transfer because of our serious concerns about the financial evaluation of NSL which you can read here . UNISON had used NSL latest publicly available accounts and used the Councils own Financial Evaluation criteria. The results were alarming see Appendix C of our report here

Before I was allowed to address the committee I was informed that I couldn’t talk about the serious financial concerns raised in our report. I was only allowed to talk about staffing issues only.  I responded by saying our financial concerns were directly related to staffing issues. Our concerns about the financial evaluation did give cause for concern about the TUPE commitments and the future welfare of our members working on this contract. UNISON was simply seeking an explanation about the outcome of the financial evaluation carried out by the Council on the winning contractor.

Only the two Labour councillors and the Lib Dem Councillor asked any questions, which is quite worrying considering the issues and questions raised in our report which you can read here.

After responding to a number of questions one of the Conservative councillors made a request that the Councils section 151 officer respond to the email ( see Appendix A of UNISON report here) sent by UNISON on 15 March. This was accepted by all councillors. Furthermore it was agreed that the senior officer responsible for Parking respond in writing to all the questions raised by UNISON in our report. This was accepted by all councillors.

Finally a Labour Councillor made a recommendation to defer the decision to transfer the staff until the concerns raised by UNISON had been addressed and reported back to General Functions Committee.

Sadly, the party political battle lines were drawn. The two Labour councillors and the one Lib Dem councillor voted for this recommendation but they were over ruled by four Conservative councillors.

The Committee then voted on the original recommendation to transfer staff to NSL and RR Donnelly.

The vote went as follows

Cllr Scannel, Cllr Thomas, Cllr Rams, Cllr Prentice (all Conservative) voted to transfer staff to NSL

Cllr Farrier, Cllr Hutton (Labour) and Cllr J Cohen (Lib Dem) voted to oppose transfer to NSL.

Parking…..you couldn’t make it up!

It has been a roller coaster of a week for our members working in parking specifically those working in the back office.

On Tuesday, I attended TUPE consultation with NSL and RR Donnelly (a sub contractor). At the meeting UNISON was informed that on 1 May (date of transfer) back office staff would be requested to attend a meeting at Solar House in Finchley (new site for the enforcement team). The staff would be given ‘at risk of redundancy’ letters and consultation would begin. However NSL announced that consultation would be for two weeks instead of 30 days. This was a significant change from what UNISON and our members had obviously been told. I made the point that two weeks pay was a significant loss especially for staff facing redundancy especially in the current economic climate. Both NSL and the Council were insistent that it was two weeks.

On the same day two hours later a member of staff produced an email which has previously sent out to all staff which stated

 “One of the questions clarifies that you will now be paid for the whole of May at the end of May as you are salaried rather than hourly paid staff.”

I attended a meeting later that day with members where it was confirmed that staff would now be paid for the month of May as previously agreed.

Dear members of General Functions Committee

 

Please find UNISON response  HERE to General Functions Committee, 29 March 2012, AGENDA ITEM: 7, TUPE Transfer of Parking Services staff to NSL Ltd.

 

Recommendation

Before General Functions Committee approve recommendations 1.1 and 1.2 of the report, UNISON is requesting General Functions Committee to consider our report and provide responses to the questions therein.

 

Questions and Request for Information

 

1.    Please provide UNISON copies of the financial evaluation on all the bids to ensure that the contractor is an economic operator and therefore the interest of the employees has been safeguarded.

 

2.    Is the current Civica CE system fully functional to complete a full statutory end to end Civil Enforcement process, including the generation of charge certificate notices, instructions to bailiff and effective debt recovery?

 

3.    Please provide UNISON a copy of the financial risk assessment to the Pension Fund on the application for AMS by RR Donnelly.

 

4.    When were Barnet council first notified that there was a subcontractor being used on the contract?

 

5.    What Due Diligence was carried out on the first subcontractor (Parseq) and what was the outcome? Please provide copy of the evaluation.

 

6.    What Due Diligence has been carried out on RR Donnelly and what was the outcome? Please provide copy of the evaluation.

 

7.    Can the Committee confirm that the Council has secured a Bond which adequately protects the Barnet Pension Fund?

 

8.    In light of the ongoing issues about contract monitoring which have been raised over the last four years why recruitment for critical positions have not been made for this important function?

Best wishes

John Burgess

Branch Secretary.

Barnet UNISON

BBBREAKING NEWS!

The big issue coming out of this Briefing is the location issue. UNISON members are already fully aware that the two Bidders (EC Harris and Capita Symonds) for the DRS contract  also in Dialogue Two made a public statement that they will be delivering the services within the borough of Barnet for the life of the10 year contract and beyond.

The evidence is for all Barnet staff to read here on the intranet

Click here to view the EC Harris and Capita Symonds presentations from the Meet the Bidder Days

However at the NSCSO ‘Meet the Bidder briefing’ the response from Capita is that they are unable to answer this question at this stage, the reason being they are about to enter Dialogue Two. Furthermore they are not the ‘preferred bidder’ so until that point (approx 5 month time) they will be unable to answer this question.

I left the briefing with the following questions ringing in my ear “why are they refusing to answer this question, if they can do it for DRS why can they not do the same for NSCSO?”

I wonder what BT have to say this Friday?