Barnet Council: Open, Transparent, and Proactive
Just to update the previous post:
After complaining about the remarks made by Councillor Anthony Finn, at the last Pensions meeting, the matter was investigated by Cllr Peter Zinkin, who is Chairman of the Tory group. He told me he thought Cllr Finn had apologised by email - but sent it to an old account. I suggested that he resend it to my current account: he agreed.
Eventually, after two weeks, I received an apology.
This describes the incident in rather benign terms, the reference to my not shooting myself apparently demonstrating a touching concern for my welfare - he merely wanted to know how Capita deals with such cases ... and to say that the word 'critical' is wrong when used in financial circumstances, and someone hasn't put a gun to their head.
Well, no: painfully insensitive metaphorical language set aside, 'critical error' is, in fact, an audit term.
Councillor Finn is Chair of Audit.
Oh dear.
I did ask for a donation to be made to the Samaritans, in recognition of the real impact that 'critical errors' may have, when resulting in financial hardship: but this seems to have been overlooked.
Ah well.
Moving on: Capita, of course, have not dealt with my case 'expeditiously', as I had made clear at the meeting, and ' how Capita deals with such cases' was explained by me, at some length, but Councillor Finn appears not to have heard.
The arguments over the 'critical error' in my annual statements have been going on since last August, and despite admitting the cock up, Capita have ignored the letter from the Ombudsman, sent more than six weeks ago.
So: after a week of hearing nothing from the Director of Capita HR's Public Sector, who had promised to look at the case, I wrote to him, via his Linkedin account. He has now replied, saying he is looking into the matter.
Let's see.
And then: there was a Pensions Board meeting last night, to which I had submitted some questions.
They were sent last Thursday, but I was informed, after a day or so, that they had been barred, on the grounds that I missed the deadline.
I missed the deadline by 4 hours, as there had been important data missing from the agenda reports, noted as 'To Follow', and I had thought, as had happened with the previous committee, that this rule had been suspended.
I did not know the missing data had been published, in the last few minutes before the five day limit - the item itself still had 'Data Cleanse Summary (To Follow), see below ... and my questions were therefore written without sight of the updated statistics.
After appealing to the Chair, he was told, via governance, that he still could not allow these questions.
You may think, as I do, especially after what happened at the last meeting, that this is unreasonable.
Even more so since I have now discovered that over an hour after the questions barred from the meeting were sent by me, the governance officer, and yes, I have seen the email, had actually contacted fellow blogger John Dix to see if he wanted to submit any questions ... he didn't, but the implication seems to be that his would have been accepted, whereas mine were out of time.
I pointed this out too, to the officers and Chair, but - made no difference.
I didn't bother going to the meeting.
Here are the questions: all perfectly reasonable, you might think - but we still do not know if there are other scheme members affected by the same errors as in my case, or what compensation might be made available - if any ...
All addressed to the Data Quality Update.
1. According to the report, at Point 5.1 .1 Corporate Priorities and Performance:
"The Local Pension Board supports the delivery of the Council’s strategic objectives and priorities as expressed through the Corporate Plan, by assisting in maintaining the integrity of the pension Fund by monitoring the administration and compliance of the Fund".
Quite clearly Capita's administration of the Fund has consistently failed in terms of compliance, and in regard to the unacceptably high number of data errors. Does the Board not agree that the risks posed by continuing to leave the administration of the Fund with Capita represents a real risk to the integrity of the Fund, and if so, what measures can, or will, it take to ensure that the administration returns to the more efficient and safer hands of the council's own in house service?
2. The Data Error issue appears to interest (most of) the Conservative Pensions Committee Conservative members purely in terms of the triennial valuation, rather than the impact on scheme members. The Chair of the Pensions Committee claimed that there was no personal effect of the data errors, despite evidence given by me and by the Chair of this Board in regard to personal difficulties caused by such errors. Does the Board accept that the impact on scheme members should be better assessed, and if so, what can be done?
3. Has the 'exercise' regarding inaccurate points of qualification on annual statements, announced after I pointed out to the Section 151 officer that this has happened to me, been completed, and if so, what was the outcome?
4. Does the London Borough of Barnet offer compensation to victims of any critical 'data error' that affects their pension entitlements compensation? If not, why not?
It seems that Barnet wishes to refer to the Constitution only when it suits: vital reports, as we have seen recently, have been withheld in breach of what are in fact statutory rules on publication dates - but absolute stringency regarding deadlines is applied to anyone wanting to ask politically awkward questions, and to hold their elected representatives to account.
Maybe they ought to rethink the stated principles greeting visitors to council offices at North London Business Park:
'Open, Transparent, and Proactive'?
I don't see much evidence of that: do you?
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