Goodbye Broken Barnet: hello Capitaville

As Mrs Angry predicted on Friday, it has been announced today that the second tendering process of the £1 billion One Barnet privatisation programme has come to an end, and that the preferred bidder for up to £250 million worth of our council services is, surprise, surprise - Capita Symonds. 

This means that the vast majority of council services here in Broken Barnet will no longer be delivered by our Tory council, but will be handed over to the grasping, sweaty embrace of outsourcing giant Capita, for their profiteering pleasure, for the next ten years - or even the next fifteen years. 

Direct democratic control of almost every council function you can think of will be lost: in the case of  DRS this will include -

• Regeneration, Strategic Planning and Housing Strategy, Highways Transport
and Regeneration and Highways Strategy

• Building Control, Planning Development Management, Land Charges,
Highways Network Management and Highways Traffic and Development

• Environmental Health, Trading Standards & Licensing, Cemetery and
Crematorium and Registration and Nationality Service.

- all of these functions will be surrended to a private company, which will use you, and me, and every other resident of Barnet, in order to generate wealth for their shareholders, while our services are run according to an agreement which your elected members, your Conservative councillors, will approve without any real scrutiny, just as they did when they rubber stamped the 8,000 NSCSO contract in December.

Once Capita won the larger contract, it was always inevitable that they would be handed the DRS services bundle, and here they are, and here we are, bound, gagged and tied, delivered to our clients as agreed. 

Who agreed, exactly? Was it really our complaisant Tory councillors? No: this was already dictated by the senior management team, of course. 

Are they supposed to be in charge of this process? 

They are not. 

They are supposed to manage the process on behalf of elected members who are supposed to make all the crucial decisions as to the direction and form of the underlying policies. It is a matter of fact, in the case of DRS, that this was not what happened, and that this is the truth has been demonstrated by Mrs Angry.


Let us travel back in time to August of last year. 

Yes, the silly season, especially in Broken Barnet, and a very good time to bury bad news, or to try to get away with something while your boss is away in his holiday home in France, perhaps.

As explained here:

http://wwwbrokenbarnet.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/one-barnet-tory-panic-and-whole-new.html

a rather sensational development in the One Barnet story emerged, by accident: while everyone in Broken Barnet was away, or, like Mrs Angry, busy making rhubarb jam and sulking, Ms Pam Wharfe, on behalf of the absent Chief Executive sent a fortnightly newsletter to staff members, casually mentioning that there had been a fundamental change to the business model of the DRS tender.  

We have decided, she said, to form a Joint Venture ...

Unfortunately for Ms Wharfe, it was soon revealed, largely to Mrs Angry's poking her nose in, that this decision had been made by senior management, in secrecy, with no knowledge or involvement by Leader Richard Cornelius, the Cabinet, or any elected member of the council.

 

http://wwwbrokenbarnet.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-lull-before-storm-brian-colemans.html

Mrs Angry made a Freedom of Information request for details of the meetings in which it was claimed this decision which was not a decision was made, or discussed. 

For eight months the council tried to defy this FOI request, withholding material, and then illegally redacting it, until such a point as the Information Commissioner became infuriated by their deliberate obstruction, hence the position of Barnet on the naughty step, and a period of monitoring by the ICO.

What was revealed by the eventual publication was that the meetings in which all sensitive One Barnet issues were debated by senior officers and private consultants were not minuted.

In short, a body which has no executive powers, ie the Directors' Group, in league with unaccountable directors of a private consultancy, paid, so far, more than £6million of our money in fees, and one of which now employs a member of the Directors' Group, made, in secret, in defiance of  the need for transparency and without any involvement by our elected representatives, a 'decision' which it was not entitled to make.

The material released - after such a long struggle - under FOI shows that, according to the minutes of CDG, the Directors' Group of 10th July 2012 were attended by: 

CEO Nick Walkley,  now departed to Haringey, and serve him right

Kate Kennally, Director of Adult Social Care and Health now bearing the ludicrous title of 'Director of People', 

Jeff Lustig, Director of Corporate Governance, shortly to retire

Maria Christofi, for deputy CEO, now acting interim CEO Andrew Travers, 

Julie Taylor Assistant CEO, and ... 

Pam Wharfe, (very long term) Interim Director of Environment, Planning and Regeneration (now bearing the equally ludicrously title of Director of 'Place')

Also present were a mystery person, name veiled in secrecy still, and a Mr Alex Khaldi from iMPOWER, and a James Mace, (seemingly a typo and meant to be James Mass), also from iMPOWER, but apparently on secondment to Barnet Council.

This group of senior officers and private consultants between them came to an agreement to'consider' the change to a Joint Venture: as the minutes report:

"The group received a paper setting out a proposal to explore forming a Joint Venture (JV) company for the delivery of the DRS contract and some of the associated commercial issues ..."

That was early July, and clearly the proposal was not a new idea, but formally presented at that stage - by mid August the decision had been made, as announced by Ms Wharfe, and accidentally revealed before the Leader of the Council had even been aware of any such plan. 

By the 19th September, incredibly, Richard Cornelius had still not been consulted by his own senior management team, over this fundamental issue, as quoted in my post written after a scrutiny meeting that night:

"Leader Cornelius sat and admitted quietly that he had not seen ANY outline papers relating to a joint venture proposal. He said this not once, not twice, but three times, with an almost disarming simplicity.

Furthermore, he explained that the proposals had in fact emerged after the bidders had been 'closeted' with senior officers. 
Everyone in the room sat still in astonishment.
I'm every bit as curious as you are, added Richard Cornelius, yes, the same Richard Cornelius who is paid to be leader of the council, and nominally in charge of a £1 billion programme of outsourcing.
After some frantic signals from the blogging side of the room, Cllr Mittra asked the question that had to be asked, the email that Pam Wharfe sent to staff. Mrs Angry twisted round to see her reaction. Keeping her head down, but smiling to herself."

Why does this matter? The matter of the JV itself is of concern, as such an option - which is of greater benefit to the commercial partners - was previously dismissed by the council as being of even higher risk than the strategic partnership approach. This was around the time when an in house option, the most obvious one of all, was dismissed out of hand, with no real consideration. Why is that, do you suppose? 

And why then did senior officers and their consultant partners connive to present the JV at a later stage, without the involvement of the council executive, the leader and Cabinet? We do not know.

After the embarrassment of this disclosure, Cornelius' naive - albeit honest - protests of ignorance were carefully covered by a more discreet veil of damage limiting statements from deputy leader Daniel Thomas, who murmured soothing words about a JV being an option they should now consider - and this has in turn, eventually, evolved seamlessly into an obedient approval by the executive. 

To do otherwise would have created an unprecedented confrontation with senior officers, and called into question the whole process by which the One Barnet programme has been conducted, at a time when - oh dear, the whole process by which the One Barnet programme has been conducted has been called into question by Judicial Review, at the High Court, the appeal for which is, as we write, about to be given a date for hearing. 

This appeal is based, of course, on the premise that the technical reason for dismissal of the application, ie one of being out of time, is unfair, and that the finding of the judge that Barnet Council had failed to consult residents on the One Barnet privatisation plans should overrule the timing issue.

As things stand, almost every one of our council services is about to be handed over to Capita with no mandate from the residents, taxpayers and voters of Barnet, with no proper scrutiny of the proposals by elected representatives - and after a process overseen in secret by a body of senior officers, private consultants and bidders, which is clearly in defiance of all principles of transparency and accountability. 

There are of course, also very serious issues of conflicts of interest which have already been highlighted in relation to this process, as revealed here in this blog. 

At the last Audit meeting, which our usual auditor from Grant Thornton, Mr Paul Hughes, did not attend, for some reason, the questions re officers' interests and declarations, which Mrs Angry had been raising for the last couple of years, were at last addressed. 

Well, no: not addressed, as such: a belated appraisal of the NSCSO process dismissed any real concerns, despite the evidence it found of non compliance with declarations, and the auditors refused to address at all the question of the DRS package, despite its clear and urgent significance. Why?

Readers may draw their own conclusions as to whether the whole One Barnet programme, and the entirely notional, aspirational, 'savings' that we are told will justify our ten to fifteen year bondage has really been promoted for our benefit, as we are so often informed.

*Update Tuesday : 

As Mr Reasonable points out in his post this morning here , which is essential reading, we were promised savings of nearly £20 million from the DRS deal: the tender with Crapita will bring in only around the paltry sum of £5 million, savings generated from inspired ideas such as increasing the number of burials in Broken Barnet (watch out for that Barnet Council van when you cross the road) an amount which could very easily have been found without privatisation - for example without wasting more than the obscene total so far of £6 million - let's repeat that - £6 MILLION  - and rising - on the bills for One Barnet private consultants Agilisys/iMPOWER ...

Capita undoubtedly will have a very profitable time over the next ten years or so, our private consultants Agilisys/iMPOWER most certainly have had and will continue to have a very profitable time.  Senior officers will come and go and continue in their careers here or elsewhere, in the public sector and in the private sector, and our elected representatives? 

If the appeal fails, and we are stuck with the £1 billion deal, and council services are run on a commercial basis, and residents begin to live in the new normal Barnet which will ensue -unaccountable service delivery, call centres in Lancashire, decline in standards, loss of control - they are not going to be awfully happy with their Tory councillors. 

Will they care? Not really. Not immediately, anyway. 

As demonstrated in graphic form by the case of Helen Michael, and the assault on her last September by former Tory Brian Coleman, and the continuing failure of any Tory councillors to condemn such an attack, our Tory councillors have only contempt for the residents who trusted them with the care of this community. 

The actions of Brian Coleman, and the indifference shown by his colleagues, are bad enough in the immediate sense, but they also represent something more profound in the pysyche of this administration, a sickness: a deeply dysfunctional relationship with their electorate, expressed in an abuse of power, a deep seated need to maintain at least the illusion of control at all costs.

Our Conservative councillors facilitated the One Barnet sell off with a shrug, and turned their backs on the duty to scrutinise and direct the process. They don't understand it, don't want to understand it. They don't see why we, the residents should have been consulted anyway, or why we should dare to challenge their policies, or their hypocrisy: what business is it of ours? 

So: goodbye to Broken Barnet - hello to the House of Fun, in Capitaville. 

The gentlemen in the parlour, waiting and sweating on the sofa: they now have exclusive rights to the pleasures on offer in this House. 

Wait for the knock on the door: and if you don't like it? 

Well, you can try fighting back. 

From Barnet, to Storyville, to Capitaville - fighting, the triumph of power over those with no defence - it's the only language they understand: but if you fight back - it's you who'll get the blame.

Saturday joke: Something for the weekend, Councillor?

Yes: ok, this is really a Friday joke, slightly belated .... but still, as the weekend rolls on, Mrs Angry thinks perhaps it would be timely to offer some discreet advice on, shall we say, precautionary measures, for certain of our Tory councillors, here in Broken Barnet, about to dabble in the heady temptations of the One Barnet House of Fun.

Indeed Mrs Angry would urge all responsible Tory councillors to consider the need to protect themselves from the unwanted consequences of such dalliance, and return to the bosom of their loving partners, the electors and taxpayers of Broken Barnet. 

Take the time, in the next couple of days, to imagine, you panting, lubricious Tory councillors, if you will, the shame you will feel, in May 2014, having succumbed to the empty promises of the House of Fun, and spent all our inheritance on a few jaded evenings on the sofa with the corporate whores from Capita, or BT.

Imagine the breaking, tragic voice of Mr Andrew 'Black Hole' Travers, the once and future 'interim' CEO, and 'interim' Presiding Officer, as he announces the results of the election, and lists the names of the fallen ...

Oh ... yes, Mrs Angry has been looking at the lists of marginal Tory wards, you see, and with the benefit of her widely acclaimed psychic powers, is now able to predict the loss, in a post One Barnet world, of the following seats:

Brunswick Park: 

Goodbye, Toyah Wilcox lookalike, Councillor Lisa Rutter. You enjoyed being Mayor, though, didn't you? Nice hats. Longest goodbye speech in the history of Hendon Town Hall. Not much else to say. Came to the Barnet Alliance debate on One Barnet, last week, which earns you some brownie points. Will it save you? Don't think so.

So long, Councillor Andreas Tambourides: going to miss chairing that licensing committee, aren't you? - the one that hardly ever meets, but pays £15,333 a year. No more complaints to the Standards Board, of course: won't have to keep any standards at all, in fact, after May 2014.

Your charm, diplomacy, and political flair will be sadly missed. 

Not by Mrs Angry, though.

Moving on.

Coppetts:

Oh dear: this is genuinely a shame - a fond farewell to the lovely Cllr Kate Salinger, unless her personal popularity, and courage in the face of disgraceful bullying by her Tory colleagues, saves her from the anti Tory backlash that will ensue in the ward where the closure of Friern Barnet library has caused so much hostility - and national publicity. As Deputy Mayor, Kate has distanced herself from any political controversies, but this may not help her chances of re election.

East Barnet:

Another Tambourides bites the dust - Andreas' wife Joanna. 

Yes: the loss of another Barnet taxpayers funded allowance for the Tambo household: and no more trips to Cyprus, to protest about the invasion, at lunch, dinner and probably breakfast too: those annual trips so popular with Barnet politicians, and where, as you always remind us in the declarations, you share a room with your husband - well done. Commendable loyalty. And there'll be lots more quality time to spend together, after May 2014.

Goodbye to Barry Evangeli, too. Or Barry Leventis, as he is known on London Greek Radio.

Mrs Angry is informed that Leventis means 'good looking'. On the radio, that must mean.

No more doggy bags of biscuits from the Town Hall buffets for Cllr Evangeli, sadly.

Oh dear: here comes the most crushing loss of all, though, when East Barnet becomes a Labour ward ...

Yes: Councillor Robert Rams will be out on his ear, in 2014. 

Stop laughing. 

What's that? Karma? Yep. What goes around, Robert. Do you want to know where you went wrong? Let's see. Let Mrs Angry count the ways.

Libraries. Libraries. Libraries. Never mess with libraries, if you are a councillor, in the London Borough of Broken Barnet. You messed with them, big time, and now you are going to pay the price. 

And museums. You shut our beautiful Church Farmhouse museum, and you emptied it of our local history collection, and then you sent it off to be flogged at auction, or gave it away.

You tried to shut Barnet Museum, but couldn't prove ownership.

You tried to shut Friern Barnet Library, but that doesn't belong to you either, and now we have reclaimed it. And at the next electoral auction, in 2014, we are going to put you up for sale: we don't expect many bids.

Golders Green:

An interesting one, this. Traditional loyalties to father and son councillors Melvin and Dean Cohen may well be constrained for a combination of factors: the catastrophic parking scheme has had a real impact on local trade, and also on residents in the local community.

The council's rather puzzling failure to support a bid for a much needed Jewish girls' school on the former Hendon FC ground, in favour of a lower bid from the tenant, has upset many local families. 

New boy Councillor Reuben Thompstone, the pompous chair of the Stalinist run Finchley and Golders Green Residents Forum, will have won himself few fans in the ward by his iron fisted repression of any free debate at meetings. 

Finchley Church End:

These councillors may not as be as comfortably placed as they think, either: Cllr Old does at least show his face at the Forums - Cllr Eva Greenspan, however, does not attend them, and Cllr Daniel Thomas once told Mrs Angry himself that he sees no need to bother. Both councillors may have made a miscalculation as to the strength of their support amongst local voters, and John Thomas' pro One Barnet pronouncements in the local press will have done nothing to endear him to the electorate.

Hale:

Mrs Angry, an Edgware girl, and former resident of Hale ward, can't wait to wave goodbye to two of the councillors here: yes, goodbye and good riddance, to the remarkably unpleasant Tom Davey, who has introduced a new morally judgemental housing allocation policy. Remember his sneering observation: 'you can't help those who won't help themselves'. Very keen on advocating aspiration to the undeserving poor, is Tom. 

Mrs Angry imagines that the loss of his council seat will serve as a useful lesson, and encourage Mr Davey in his own life's ambitions and aspirations.


The other candidate we will not be awfully sad to see disappear is Councillor Brian Gordon.

Gordon is the one who thinks it is amusing to dress up, black up, and rap to a captive audience of oaps, in the guise of Nelson Mandela ... 

He also once referred to residents lobbying a council meeting discussing the Pinkham Way incinerator as 'rabble', and was consequently censured by the Mayor. 

The mob always has the last word, Cllr Gordon, and if you insult the people who pay your allowance, don't be surprised if they throw you out of office.

Also councillor for Hale is Hugh Rayner. He is a jovial enough chap: ex army, no nonsense, usually, but happy enough to endorse the disastrous nonsense of One Barnet, despite the questions he has himself raised recently in committees. 

Hendon:

Two of the three Tory councillors here will disappear with no tears from Mrs Angry: Maureen Braun, for a start, who has a habit of falling asleep in meetings - although she has recently woken up and remembered where she lives, according to a lately modified entry on the register of interests, which is rather amusing. 

Farewell too to former Mayor Anthony Finn, who in the emails leaked this week remarked to colleague Sury Khatri, when he pointed out to Hendon MP that there is no mandate for One Barnet - 'ENOUGH ... Please can we concentrate our efforts on fighting our opponents not ourselves' ... 

Cllr Finn, who are your opponents? The residents of this borough? Your loyalty should be to the people you represent, not the party to which you belong, and the failure to understand this will be the reason you are thrown out of your seat, in 2014. 

Bye bye.

And what about Mark Shooter? Mrs Angry likes Mark, and not just because he is the only Tory councillor who has ever bought her a glass of wine in the Greyhound. He is a good guy. He stood for leader, and opposed One Barnet. He shut up, though, then, and kept his head down. This was regrettable. 

Let's see what the voters of Hendon make of that.

High Barnet:

This is a ward which is very likely to turn to Labour: an area which has had significant Libdem support, due in no small part to the personal popularity former councillor Duncan Mc Donald, but clearly in this post coalition world, former Libdem supporters are likely to switch to Labour. Mrs Angry suspects that we will see the loss of dip dyed councillors Wendy Prentice and Bridget Perry: and oh dear, will it be the end of a short but glittering career for Cllr David 'Goldenarse' Longstaff? 

A shame, in fact, as David is a nice enough man, and, luckily for Mrs Angry, one with a robust sense of humour. He has made the effort to try to engage in debate with critics of One Barnet but he has not, as yet, publicly come out against the reckless folly which he must know it to be. He will pay the price of silence, therefore, Mrs Angry suspects.

Mill Hill:

This is another ward which has traditionally has some Libdem support: not any more ... Mrs Angry does not need to explain why, does she? And so the inevitable One Barnet backlash, if backed with some well chosen Labour candidates, could see the end of one of Mrs Angry's council pin ups: handlebar moustachioed lady pleaser Cllr John Hart, (below) the waivering new One Barnet sceptic Sury Khatri, and then - oh dear, our current Mayor, Brian Schama.

Well, Councillor Schama: Mrs Angry is not very pleased with you, as you know, after failing to demand an apology from the odious Brian Coleman when he insulted the residents in the public gallery, yes, the 'sad, bad, mad and a couple of old hags'  ...  and then informing those of us who protested that we must show YOU respect ... Respect? No. I don't think so. 

Thank you, and goodbye. 

Revenge of the old hags, dear Brian.

Underhill:

The ward which was the home of Barnet FC, now forced out of the borough, in a move which is horribly symbolic of everything wrong with this borough, a culture of defeat inculcated by so many years of cynical Tory mismanagement.  

There are two Tory councillors, Andrew Strongolou, and Rowan Turner. Neither have exactly impressed Mrs Angry with their efforts since 2010. Both are young and inexperienced councillors whose largely silent presence in meetings goes unnoticed. Do they deserve to be re elected? Not in Mrs Angry's view.

So: a large number of Tory councillors with something to think about, this weekend. 

In a couple of weeks or so, the Cabinet will be asked to vote to approve the first of the One Barnet packages. 

Will they simply do what they are expected to, the turkeys, voting for Christmas? Or will they smell the blood ready to be spilt, and turn on the farmer and his men, waiting by the butcher's van? 

It's time for the Tory group in Barnet to wake up, face reality, and decide whether they want a fighting chance of being re elected in 2014.

Local elections are often won and lost, rightly or not, on the battlefield of national political issues. By May 2014, the huge unpopularity of government policies on the NHS, welfare 'reform', the economy: all this will have already encouraged voters to be less than well disposed to a Conservative council: add to that background the disastrous record of the Barnet Tory administration, the parking fiasco, the library story - and then the impact of One Barnet, a newly implemented privatisation of almost all council services ... there is no doubt that the electors of Broken Barnet will decide the time has come for a change, and punish the councillors they blame for the mess we are in. 

Mrs Angry advises the Tory councillors to be very careful, in the weeks ahead. Consider the awful fate that awaits you, should you continue to keep quiet about the concerns we know you all have. You must now put pressure on the leader and Cabinet members, collectively or individually, to call a halt to the One Barnet process. Already there is one legal challenge begun to instigate a judicial review: others will inevitably follow - they must, because what you are proposing to do is injust, irrational, and absolutely without a mandate from the people you represent.

You probably don't care about the impact on residents, in the way that you should but you undoubtedly do care about the impact on your own electoral future ... turn your backs, then, on the One Barnet House of Fun, councillors - walk on by ... Pull yourselves together, find some courage - and do the right thing.

*Update:

Please note this message if you are going to the Billion Pound Gamble film screening tomorrow:

URGENT: CHANGE OF VENUE -  

Billion Pound Gamble will now be screened tomorrow, Monday 19th November - yes, thank you Baarnett - in the Palace of Westminster Committee Room 12. Same time: 6.30 for a 7 pm start. Directions: Please go to the Cromwell Road Entrance. There will be people in the Central Lobby (house of Commons) to direct you to Committee Room 12. If you someone asks you where you are going you should say “you are going to see the Billion Pound Gamble Film in Committee Room 12.” There will be security checks, so make sure you get there early.

One Barnet: Tory panic and a whole new framework

Updated below

Mrs Angry has just seen an email sent to Barnet staff by her favourite senior officer, Ms Pam Wharfe, the former favourite senior officer of the politician formerly known as Brian Coleman, in regard to the DRS half of the two huge outsourcing dialogues currently in progress.

In case you have forgotten, this includes:

• Regeneration, Strategic Planning and Housing Strategy, Highways Transport
and Regeneration and Highways Strategy

• Building Control, Planning Development Management, Land Charges,
Highways Network Management and Highways Traffic and Development

• Environmental Health, Trading Standards & Licensing, Cemetery and
Crematorium and Registration and Nationality Service.

In other words everything from the house you live in, the roads you drive on, the shops you shop in, the rites of passage of all our lives, from birth, to marriage (if you must) partnership, and especially death, because your dear departed family members, my dear departed family members, were added to this package as a 'sweetener' to make it more 'attractive' to prospective bidders, who enjoy the thought of the steady profit there is to be made from the sheer inability of residents of Broken Barnet to stay alive for ever in this blessed borough.

As this extract shows, August is yet again being used to (try to) slip out some pretty sensational news while they think everyone is sitting on the beach. Sadly for you, Ms Wharfe, Mrs Angry is sitting in her kitchen, admiring her rhubarb jam, and forgetting to put the flour in her apricot frangipane tart.

Mrs Angry will now attempt to give Ms Wharfe a bit of a fisking, in red: oh dear - Mrs Angry has her eyes closed, of course, and is thinking hard about One Barnet, to take her mind off her uncomfortable duty as a citzen journalist ...

"Dear colleagues (aww, making'em feel like she really cares!)

Dialogue update

As with the last message, there is no specific news to report on dialogue other than it is continuing to progress well. Erm, not quite true, Pam, as we see a little later ...

This week’s meetings have included legal/commercial and technical sessions covering the bidders’ financial models, their emerging commercial development plans which provide details of new investment and income streams, insurance matters and our approach to resolving conflicts of interest in relation to service delivery. Ah, yes: conflicts of interest - Barnet is awfully good at resolving these, as Mrs Angry has often commented ... well, not resolving them, exactly - ignoring them, really.

We have also been discussing the bidders’ Service Improvement Plans which set out how the services will be delivered and enhanced over the course of the contract. Not just improvement, then, enhanced improvement, you see ... good, good ...

In addition to enhancing service delivery we also believe that the DRS project has great potential to generate new commercial opportunities, both in Barnet and further afield. (Yeah, right: first we take Broken Barnet, then the rest of the world will be submitted to our rule ...LOL ... )

AHA!

So, nothing much new to report, except ...

As a result we have decided to form a Joint Venture organisation with the successful bidder,

well, f*ck me, have you, indeed? We have decided to rewrite the whole One Barnet exercise, have we? And who is we? And on whose authority? Clearly in Broken Barnet there is no need for any electoral mandate for a massive project like the outsourcing of £1 billion of council services, but has any consultation taken place within the Tory council's own decision making process before sanctioning such a huge development? And why are you doing this?

... which provides an effective basis on which the Council can benefit from these opportunities and at the same time it gives the Council greater rights of transparency and control.

Er, but you have been telling us all over and over again that the council already has adequate rights of transparency and control. More to the point, does a joint venture really improve these safeguards?

What this means is that the successful bidder and the Council will form a new organisation in which both have an interest. This new organisation will then contract with the Council to provide the DRS services. The Joint Venture approach does not change the approach to TUPE of staff or weaken any of the commitments given - staff would TUPE into the new organisation rather than to the commercial partner. We shall provide further information on the Joint Venture in the next week however as ever you are welcome to ask any questions you may have regarding this or other elements of the DRS procurement’

the One Barnet ship is sinking, but a nice rearrangement of the deckchairs will help


Well, Pam, Mrs Angry's questions would be:

a. Why are you doing this, at this late stage of the dialogue? Are you getting cold feet? Are the Tory councillors getting worried about the publicity we are generating and focusing on this issue?

b. How much of the profit from this new venture will be returning to Barnet residents, and how much of our money will be thrown into the laps of the lucky bidder?

Ah.

Interesting, though, isn't it? At last, the cracks are appearing at the very foundations of One Barnet. And Mrs Angry predicts that the subsidence that this signifies will bring the house of Richard Cornelius crashing down around his ears.

Shame.

Ha.





Update:

The wider implications of this really astounding development are only just beginning to sink in: take a look at Mr Reasonable's post, for example:

http://reasonablenewbarnet.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/one-barnet-is-it-deliverable-perhaps.html

where he makes this very important point:

'.... when the business case for outsourcing was made, the Council's consultants actually identified that "the costs and risks associated with a JV model are judged at this stage to be higher than for a Strategic Partnership". Yet today the council have committed us to higher risks and greater costs.'

In one of the comments below there is an observation made that there could be a legal challenge of the change to a joint venture model, under procurement regulations, as smaller companies may feel they have been unfairly excluded from the tender.

One might also wonder what the shortlisted companies who did not reach the final round will make of the development too. On the other hand, if it is true, as seems likely, that this panic stricken, last minute rewriting of the One Barnet project is due to pressure from bidders worrying - quite understandably - about the massive risk for their own investment, then the other former bidders may well feel relieved to be out of the game.

Finally for now, there is another consideration: if the 'smaller' ie £250 million DRS package is in trouble, then what of the whopping £750 million customer services deal, currently being vied for by Capita and BT? Capita Symonds, along with E C Harris, are up for the DRS prize - it doesn't take a genius to guess that the former has more probablility of winning. And Capita are bidding for customer services. If one deal is being rearranged, what about the other?

And bearing in mind the fact that there has never been any risk assessment of the £1billion One Barnet outsourcing plan, what are the increased chances of massive failure of such a new and even less well designed model of privatisation? Do these fools have any sense whatsoever of the dangerous consequences of their lack of preparation for this new gamble?

Why has the senior management team sneaked this massively significant development through in such a comically understated way, with no debate, and no official announcement, in the middle of the holiday period?

Oh dear.

Is One Barnet falling apart?

What do you reckon?