Mr Mustard offers a forensic examination of Barnet council’s Future Shape claims and very interesting it is, too. See how he compares the council’s claims for Future Shape with its results to date.
And the outstanding Mrs Angry itemises the council’s shambolic contracting systems as the council heads into another audit committee meeting. Just the council you want in charge of a Tory mass-privatisation programme. Might go for a contract with them myself. No paperwork and a great little earner.
Update: 13 October 2011: council workers will strike again on 18 October in protest at the council’s mass-privatisation plans. This is the second strike action in a month. The story below explains why staff have been striking.
On 13 September, 400 Barnet council staff plan to strike in protest at Barnet council’s fatally misguided plans to mass-outsource council services to the private sector.
If the council goes ahead with its plans to outsource (and Barnet Unison has reported that people in 24 out of 25 services have been told they will be moving to the private sector), workers stand to lose jobs and/or hard-won conditions of employment. They’ll no longer work in a sector which puts need ahead of profit, either.
Nobody wants it. Nobody ever wants it. Involving private companies in public services yields appalling results. Costs spiral out of control so regularly and so spectacularly that you wonder why nobody involved is in jail. Private companies poke round for contract loopholes which allow them to press councils for extra funds. Staff – especially low-paid staff in services like care – are forced to take appalling salary cuts as their private sector employers shift cash from workers to shareholders. Staff suffer and services suffer. And at Barnet, the council’s internal auditors have raised serious questions about the council’s ability to manage big contracts. The council’s plans, at least as they are outlined in council reports, are incoherent, or even non-existent: teasers like “it is recognised that all activity required to deliver the benefits of the programme cannot be anticipated at this stage” pepper report pages. On the council bullocks, though. Privatisation is the only game around.
Barnet council steams ahead
Some Barnet council departments have been working to rule for months in protest at the council’s plans to mass-outsource services, but people want an all-out fight now. They want that fight because the council has shifted its plans to move services to private companies to high gear.
In June, the council agreed to proceed with a “support and customer services project” – a project which will involve the council engaging a private company to deliver council estates, finance, human resources, information systems, procurement, revenues and benefits and project management services.
This will be a nice little earner for whichever private company wins the contract to deliver those services – the council has set aside £750m for that partner. It won’t be such a laugh for workers on the frontline, though. Unison estimates job losses of between about 190 and 250 as a result of this outsourcing and “efficiency savings.” Unions say workers are stretched to deliver those services as it is: there is simply no room for further cutting.
Clouds gather over other council services, too.
The council is planning to move adult social services (learning disability and physical and sensory impairment services for adults) into a profit-focused, local authority trading company – a company designed to create an annual surplus for the council of 8% by year four – “which is not,” as Unison reports rightly observe, “justifiable in terms of social justice, nor sustainable for the services concerned.”
That’s because the surplus will very likely be achieved through the standard methods of salary and service cuts, once the council shunts responsibility for both to an arms-length LATE company which it does not control. TUPE protection will mean as little for staff as it usually does. When companies take council services over and get control of staff and salaries, they dismantle “protected” salaries and employment conditions whenever that’s viable. Little wonder workers want to strike. There’s not much to lose if they do.
—————-
A history of rubbish
Like many councils, Barnet has played with weird and not-so-wonderful ideas for service provision for years, and paid an awful lot of money for external advice about them.
Its mass-privatisation project began life several years ago as a contorted proposal called Future Shape. I normally wouldn’t bore you with the details, but they could be useful on this occasion, because they’ll give you insight into the sort of ill-thought-out, unproven garbage that council “thinkers” flubber piles of your money away on even as they cry poor and yabber on about reduced local government grants.
The idea behind Future Shape – it’s an idea which has been on the circuit for years and always sounds brilliant in theory – was to set up a sort of council-centred, one-stop-public-services-shop which would give residents a single point of access to different public services.
The idea is usually called something like “One Public Sector” – “proposals to work more closely with other public sector partners to provide residents with a single point of entry to public services in the borough,” was the way Barnet put it at the time. The aim was to involve private companies in this construction (unions felt the council’s aim was to outsource services to private companies and reduce the council to a small base which administered contracts) and to allow residents who wanted to jump the queue for services to pay to do that, as you might on easyJet or RyanAir.
There was also a lot of weird chat about fashioning in-house service “hubs” and “bundles” – or “proposals for more cross-service work with skilled hubs of in-house experts supporting services through the council” and “….services will be presented as “bundles” related to clearer outcomes”, as the council had it then. The idea – as far as anyone could grasp it from the council’s impenetrable language on the topic – seemed to be that knowledgeable council officers could advise the rest from little in-house pods. You’d think that was what they did anyway, but the “hubs” and “bundles” language cast the structure in a new-age light.
Anyway, both ideas proved less than brilliant in reality. It’s easy to understand why when you think it through. To make a one-point-of-entry public services idea work, councils need to convince PCTs (while they exist, that is), schools, the police and other councils and public sector organisations they want involved to abandon their existing locations, IT and HR arrangements and contracts, and hoof staff and even services to mutually agreed territory somewhere.
The thing would be a logistics nightmare. What if, for example, the local police had their own longstanding arrangements for IT provision? What if schools had already signed ten-year contracts with HR companies? What if the thing was simply too expensive to consider? What if democratic representation was lost when services were merged – would the anti-democracy minded argue, for example, that three councils were no longer required if they were all providing services out of one company and one location? What if the idea was patently absurd?
Public sector expert Dexter Whitfield once described this public services hub idea to me as “rubbish” (that was several years ago when I was a trade union activist at then-Labour Hammersmith and Fulham council. H&F councillors had started to yap on about building one of these regional public sector hubs. We brought Dexter in to shoot their plans down, which he duly did. He is good and it wasn’t hard). The hub idea has proved expensive rubbish for some councils, too. Bedfordshire county council, for example, had to pay millions a few years ago to break its partnership with HBS. One of the reasons that relationship bombed was that HBS failed to deliver promised public services hubs, or regional business centres as they were called then.
Barnet council quietly dropped the public services hub/Future Shape/whatever idea last year sometime – having blown £3m or so (estimates vary) on consultants and advice for the project (money is no object in the austerity era – it’s only a problem if you want it for services). The council also took a very public smacking for its failure to produce a business case for Future Shape.
The council was soon back on the horse, though. By the end of 2010, it was championing a loopy proposal called One Barnet, which it continues to plump for today. With One Barnet, the council aims to provide public services by setting up consortia/strategic partnerships with private companies which will, somehow, help do the providing. As we have already observed, the council has agreed a pricey starter in the form of that £750m support and customer services project.
One Barnet will also dole out smaller contracts to other private companies to help deliver…other things. The details can be hard to pick from the council’s own torturous descriptions. “One Barnet is a medium-term transformation programme providing the framework to enable future phases of projects to come forward,” comes one report.
“The council will provide a more sophisticated customer-centred service, will provide information and services in a more convenient manner and will offer residents more choice. In return, we expect residents to do what they can for themselves, their families and the community,” reads another.
Unions are pretty clear about the council’s intentions. Barnet Unison branch secretary John Burgess describes One Barnet as a mass-privatisation and cuts project.
“Their [the council’s] aim is to move services to private companies. They will transfer the cuts work to private companies – private companies will cut services and salaries after they have been transferred.”
Which brings us to the strike action council workers will take next week. That £750m support and customer services project would see a private company take charge of delivering these council services: trading standards and licensing, land charges, planning and development, building control and structures, environmental health, highways strategy, highways network management, highways traffic and development, highways transport and regeneration, strategic planning and regeneration, cemeteries and crematoria, parking services and revenues and benefits. There is good reason to worry.
Updated 12 August 2011
Spent last week talking to people in Tory stronghold Dorset, where cuts are beginning to take shape. So much for early claims that Dorset, Poole and Bournemouth fared well in December’s local government settlements.
Bournemouth daycentres for people with learning disabilities are in the council’s sights: at a late July meeting, the cabinet agreed to shut the Darracott Day Centre in Pokesdown and the Malvern Day Centre in Moordown by the end of this year.
The council describes its plans as “modernising day services in line with the government’s transformation agenda for social care, including giving more choice and control to service users through the allocation of personal budgets.” Not all service users are in love with the modernising idea: they and their representatives turned up to the July cabinet meeting in the hope of a last-minute reprieve for their daycentres. Staff will be made redundant as well.
Down the road in Dorset, staff and service users are standing by for a Dorset county council consultation exercise which will consider three options for day services for the elderly and people with disabilities – cuts, privatisation, or the creation of an income-focused, arms-length local authority trading company.
Contacts I spoke to last week say staff and service users doubt the council’s intentions are pure. The council introduced charging for some daycentre users in July, which people expect to affect attendance rates, which could in turn be used as a justification for reducing the service. If fewer people attend daycentres because of the cost, the council could argue daycentres for the elderly are no longer popular and cut them – a shortsighted option, given that Dorset has the highest proportion of people over retirement age in the country. Daycentres for the elderly are needed more than ever and at the time of writing, the council acknowledged this openly on its website: “we cannot guarantee (daycentre) attendance because we have many requests for day care and have to give priority to those most in need. We allocate day care places by balancing the needs of people and the resources available.”
People I spoke to want to see the service developed, not mothballed.
The council has agreed a budget cut of £31m. Earlier this year, the council asked unions if they’d agree a five percent pay cut for staff to meet that budget – 12 days of unpaid leave a year.
The council is also cutting funding to The Waves, a child protection charity for children who have problems with bullying and family relationships. Roy Koerner, who manages the programme, told the BBC that: “what we have found is there’s an increased demand for the mediation service and we are not coping with all the families we should. “Demand has gone up for all sorts of reasons but increased financial hardship increases conflict in the family – in some cases children might feel they want to run away.” This is – just to note – the sort of youth support service we lefties are talking about when we rattle on community projects which might help keep young people out of trouble.
More to come on this and the fallout for Dorset’s most vulnerable service users. These councils have been cautious in rolling out cuts plans and consultation exercises, especially compared with some London and northern councils. It’ll be interesting to see who these largely Tory councils target.
Guardian article today by me on Shropshire council’s closing of The Grange, a daycentre for people with disabilities.
I’ve just been speaking to Sally Bercow. On Wednesday, Tory Shropshire council stopped her from going into The Grange – a daycentre for people with physical disabilities which the council revealed in December it would as part of its austerity plans.
The Grange daycentre is an adapted community facility used by people with conditions like multiple sclerosis, severe epilepsy and cerebral palsy. Many have had debilitating strokes. The Grange has computers people can use, community projects they can take part in, a lot of social events and experienced staff on hand if they’re needed. Without it – “I’ll be at home staring at the four walls,” centre users told me when I visited the centre in December last year. They talk about the part the centre plays in their lives in the video at the end of this post.
Local campaigners have spent six months trying to beat the council back, but the council plans to shut The Grange soon all the same. Sally Bercow turned up at the centre last week at the invitation of centre user Eddie Davies. She told me that her aim was to draw press attention to the worries of centre users – except that the council decided not. Bercow said that the council told her it couldn’t let her in, because it had a duty of care to service users and she hadn’t given prior notice of her visit (more on this soon).
Bercow said the council suggested another visit at another time if she wanted to see the centre as a guest of the council – although Bercow told me that she has no desire to visit the centre as the council’s guest. “Going on a council tour? – I don’t want that. I wanted to see it as guest of the person who invited me.” In the end, she, Eddie Davies and other service users met outside the centre in the carpark – after listening to a council staff member read a prepared statement on the prior notice issue. The local press enjoyed the fight hugely, as it would and should.
So. There are those who think that the council was quite right to throw Bercow out and, to get down to it, that Bercow is a Labour-party publicity-hound who’d happily put in a day trip to Shropshire if it came with a chance to splatter Shropshire Tories (you’ll see comments along those lines at the end of this local story).
I neither know, nor care about political motives here – or anywhere, to be honest. Political point-scoring is the least interesting offshoot of the local government cuts debate, not least because all parties are on the same page on the subject. Certainly, Labour councils have put the boot into frontline service users. Bercow’s is simply the latest in a long line of stories about council attempts to throttle coverage of cuts. I know this because I’ve been there – and in Shropshire, as it happens. The council tried to stop me talking service users in December last year and its “we can’t let you in, because we need prior notice” line to Bercow sounds an awful lot like the rot it was guffing out when I tried to get in.
The official line that day was that my visit would upset service users. Service users had their own views about their robustness for interview – they were so keen to talk to me about the impending loss of their daycentre that they were prepared to meet me in the carpark in the snow to chat. The thing is – I’m neither a member of the Labour party, nor, as I say, a fan of it. I have no interest in party turf wars, or the tribal posturing of the rest. I’d struggle to tell you which party I find most inferior. I’m just a hack who has spent a lot of time on the prickly end of council touchiness about cuts reporting.
Here are The Grange service users I talked to in December last year. They really were very upset about losing their centre, which is the main point. There is no shrouding that point in political fingerpointing, either:
From Barnet Unison:
This Wednesday (29 June) Barnet council’s cabinet resources committee will sign off a contract for a new support and customer services project worth up to £750 million to whichever private company wins the contact.
The contract could be worth over £1b if the option of five or ten year extensions is taken up.
Barnet UNISON commissioned outsourcing expert Dexter Whitfield to critique the business case going to this week’s cabinet resources committee. You can read the full report here.
The report found the following problems with the council’s business case:
– Key procurement risks have been omitted such as Judicial Review if unequal treatment
– Key transition risks omitted such as loss of critical skills before or at transfer
– Key operational risks omitted such as high level service user complaints
– Key contract management risks omitted such as effectiveness of performance assessment regime
– Key financial risks omitted such as hidden costs emerge
– Key democratic governance risks omitted such as accountability and reporting failure
– Key employment risks omitted such as pensions
Up to 253 staff could lose their jobs before, or shortly after, the CSO-NSO contract commences.
There is a full list of key risks here.
This contract is one of many that the council has put out to tender in the last five months with more planned later in the year.
Already, the combined total costs of contracts stands at more than £1 billion of public money.
Barnet ‘easycouncil’ has been making headlines for a number of ‘cock ups’ in procurement and failings in contract monitoring.
The latest was the official audit report on MetPro – the bust security company employed by Barnet Council. The report made shocking reading, especially for a council which aspires to outsource all services to the private sector.
Some of the key findings from that audit report:
– There was no procurement exercise in line with Barnet’s Contract Procedure Rules (CPR) and there was no written contract with the council
– There was payment of some invoices with no VAT number quoted and some invoices were from companies had different names – MetPro Group and MetPro Emergency Response. Internal Audit found inappropriate changes to MetPro’s bank accounts
– MetPro was not registered with the Contractors Health and Safety Assessment Scheme, making the council vulnerable to prosecution or civil claims.
See Barnet Unison’s recommendations here.
“It is now three years since the Future Shape/Easycouncil/One Barnet programme started. In that time I have dealt with two chief executives, three council leaders and hundreds of consultants. While the consultants pedal outrageous unsubstantiated claims to deliver £100 million in savings, all I see is £millions going into the pockets consultants for a further three years – £9.2 according to the last council budget. In that time I have seen hardly any savings. What worries me is how ‘consultancy dependent we have become!” John Burgess Barnet UNISON Branch Secretary.
Contact: John Burgess Barnet UNISON on 07738389569 or email: john.burgess@barnetunison.org.uk.
So – we know Southampton council workers are striking and working to rule as Unison and Unite finally permit local government members to take action against the government’s horrific job and service cuts, plans to mass-privatise services and so on.
Other Unite and Unison members at other councils are starting to follow suit – hopefully a sign that action is starting to spread and that Unison general secretary Dave Prentis means it when he says his members will be kicking up rough this autumn. We’ve heard fighting talk from Prentis before, of course, but who knows? – this time, he might have to do more than talk. Which will be a bit late for the thousands of people who have already lost jobs and services, but, you know – better really, really late than never, etc.
At Barnet council, staff are already working to rule in environmental health, highways (four departments), land charges, registrars, building control, revenues and benefits (which has got to worry the council – revenues is council tax collection), and cemeteries and crematoria. Workers in regulatory services have been working to rule for 13 weeks.
Council workers at Somerset county council have also just voted to work to rule in protest at savage council cuts to redundancy payments – exactly the sort of assault on salaries and terms and conditions that has so angered Southampton staff. Lincolnshire county council staff voted to work to rule last month.
These are small actions, of course, but they’re worth noting. They may just be bigger than they seem. Industrial action is notoriously difficult to take in the UK and Unison is notoriously strike-shy (and aggressive towards activists who want real action) – Prentis still seems to hope negotiations will save pensions. He’s dreaming – which is why small work-to-rule actions could be important. Services might be saved if those actions ignite.
Article in the Guardian today by me on Lancashire county council’s plans to close respite care units for children with disabilities.
And today – am over at Rog T’s place, joint-posting on the coalition government and sexism, of which there is PLENTY.
An article in the Guardian by me today on the closing of the Tamworth supported living hostel in Hammersmith and Fulham.