You’ll find below a press release from Barnet unison’s local government branch.

The Barnet Alliance for Public Services (of which the union is part) has already held standing-room-only public meetings to organise against cuts in Barnet.

Barnet is one of the controversial London Tory boroughs. It’s known as EasyCouncil because of its plans to take money from residents who are prepared to pay move to the head of queues for services. It lost some £27m on bad investments in Icelandic banks. It has spent millions on a yet-to-be-delivered councilwide outsourcing programme called Future Shape. Tonight, the council’s cabinet committee will sign off a budget which proposes massive cuts across frontline services.

Council trade unions and residents from Barnet Alliance 4 Public Services will hold a lobby of a full council meeting tomorrow night outside Hendon Town Hall: Tuesday 14 December 6 to 7 pm.

The lobby should be pretty fiery if the earlier ones are anything to go by.

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These are video cuts from last night’s public meeting in Barnet.

There was an impressive turnout. Most people said they were Barnet residents (there was a show of hands towards the end).

Haven’t edited the vids, so there are rough moments.

First video: Shirley Franklin, Defend Whittington Hospital Coalition.

Talks about government attempts to close accident and emergency departments in London hospitals.

Nick Grant from the Anti Academies Alliance (not Alasdair Smith! – he went to another one. h/t vickram7).

Speaks about BBC giving in too easily to spending cuts rhetoric and the ‘class war’ in education. Says academies are about decentralising schools management. ‘The government has lied on its website,’ and deliberately overstated finance available to schools.

Next: John Lister from London Health Emergency.

Talks about hospitals that have lost their accident and emergency departments since the election – Queen Mary’s in Sidcup, Chase Farm, etc.

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Over at the Grauniad today talking about the importance of strike action.

Hope we see more of this sort of thing – people really need to know that striking is the only option a lot of people have. Strikers aren’t lazy or greedy – quite the reverse. They usually have work at the centre of their lives and are desperate for it to continue.

Regarding the Fremantle careworkers – I have it on good authority that it was the union’s regional office that ended that strike. It wasn’t the strikers themselves. They wanted to continue.

Tory Barnet council – known as EasyJet council because of plans to permit residents to pay to jump queues for services  – will lose up to £6m as a result of an arbitration finding.

Catalyst Housing, partner of private carehome services provider Fremantle Trust, had demanded an extra £8m from the council to cover what it called a ‘care fees deficit’ in its income. The council disputed the demand and took Catalyst to arbitration.

Catalyst’s demands for more money have taken place over the same period that the Fremantle Trust has made vicious cuts to careworkers’ salaries, and terms and conditions to improve the Trust’s financial returns on its carehome contract. Barnet council outsourced its carehome contracts to the Trust in 2002.

Low paid careworkers have suffered under the Trust’s cuts regime. They lost weekend enhancement pay: Barnet Unison estimated that the takehome pay of some careworkers was reduced by 30% as a result. Workers’ wages were frozen at about £8 an hour, with new starters beginning at around £6. Leave allowances were cut by 11 days and sick leave reduced to the statutory minimum.

The careworkers had been promised their terms and conditions would be protected when they were transferred to Catalyst and Fremantle from the council’s employ. They launched a strike campaign, which lasted nearly two years. The Trust later admitted the cuts had failed to deliver the expected returns.

Barnet Unison has described Catalyst’s demand for an extra £8m and Fremantle’s attempt to improve financial returns at the expense of carehome staff and services as examples of private sector greed.

The total cost of the Catalyst award to March 2010 will be included in the council’s 2009/10 accounts prior to final signoff by auditors. The value of the award to March 2010 has not been finalised, but will be up to £6m which will be funded from the risk reserve.

The cost will be funded from the risk reserve (currently £17.7m), leaving a reduced balance to manage other risks – risks which include the council’s cover of problematic deposits in Icelandic banks. The council lost £27m in investments in Iceland when Icelandic banks collapsed in 2008.

Meanwhile, Barnet council must cut £4m from its in-year budget to meet coalition government demands for in-year savings from local government. Charities and other service providers are expected to be targeted for cuts.

The council is considering the future of the Catalyst contract. Papers discussing the care contract are exempt from public examination and discussion at council meetings.

The council report on the findings is here (Item 1.3).

From Liberal Conspiracy, 15 June 2009

More on sheltered housing warden cuts in Barnet – an example of the sort of Tory public service cuts we’ll see more and more:

We go now to a brutalist council building in Barnet’s Totteridge and Whetstone, where yours truly is holed up at a cabinet meeting in a large committee room, watching Cllr Mike Freer, the spiritual void who runs Barnet council, brush aside the concerns of elderly sheltered housing residents who are about lose their cherished onsite warden service in Freer’s latest cost-cutting wheeze.

As reported here recently, Barnet council and its financial team – that group of fiscal legends best known for investing (riskily) £27m in Icelandic banks, where the whole pile tanked – claim they need to find £12m in savings to balance books compromised by inadequate central government settlements (ie, it’s Labour’s fault – a point that Labour rubbishes, for what it’s worth), inflation, and a desire to keep council tax increases below three percent as local and national elections loom.

The council believes it can save £950,000 (re-forecast to £400,000 in a rapidly revised proposal for this evening’s meeting) by removing onsite residential wardens (whose tasks include dealing with health and security emergencies, organising GP visits, organising social activities, and checking on residents at least once a day) from sheltered housing scheme. They’d be replaced with a ‘floating’ support service where support workers based at hubs would visit elderly people who met eligibility criteria. Continue reading →