Giving it (not very) Large: Barnet's new interim, part-time, temporary Monitoring Officer steps into the breach. Sort of.

Our new, part-time, interim, temporary Monitoring Officer, Peter Large, on loan from Westminster City Council (hours to be negotiated), clearly looking forward to his association with Broken Barnet. Pic courtesy of Nutsville.com.

So ... as our former Monitoring Officer would begin all her remarks ... So: where were we?

Ah yes: our former Monitoring Officer, see? Gone, but not forgotten. Gone where, Mrs Angry, I hear you ask? Not sure, but it is 'by mutual consent'. 

All the best things happen by mutual consent, don't they? In the bedroom, in the boardroom, in the free world, where life continues without the bondage of contractual obligation, or the frisson of fear that comes from that imbalance of power between partners, personal, or corporate.

Between the boundaries of Broken Barnet, however, the ties that bind are usually stretched tight as tight can be, and consent is neither sought, nor granted. When push comes to shove: off you go. 

Bye bye.

Who knows what happened in the case of Ms Maryellen Salter, sometime Monitoring Officer, now replaced by an 'interim' MO, although not replaced, we are told, until Thursday, 9th October, after the most almighty reaction to the events that led to that damning report, by Claer Lloyd-Jones, into the collapse of governance and legal services in this benighted borough. 

Of course we like 'interim' consultants, here in Barnet. 

We like them a lot, and we recruit them as often as possible, for our senior management posts, via the discreet offices of a third party - an agency, so as to confound the investigative zeal of the local blogosphere. 

These interims and consultants blow into town, wafted on a cloud of mystery, landing at NLBP, staying as long as possible, on terms and conditions beyond the scope of public scrutiny, before moving on to pastures new - very often, it seems, to Haringey, to work for former Barnet CEO, Mr Nick Walkley, the real architect of One Barnet, the massive programme that outsourced most of our council services . 

Walkley is of course also the man who oversaw the restructuring of the governance and legal services department here, with a post of Monitoring Officer newly defined, for some reason, with no requirement for any legal qualifications - which is how we ended up with an auditor instead of an experienced lawyer, with predictable and disastrous consequences.

Mrs Angry can guess what you are wondering: will Ms Salter end up in Haringey too ... or is it true she has just accepted a post as the events manager for a local micro-brewery? 

Who knows?

We do know, however that our new Monitoring Officer, or rather the 'interim' MO, comes with an interesting CV: from Westminster Council, tripping with ease from one former Tory 'flagship' authority to another: both fine examples of Tory councils, of course, with many similarities. 

A keen interest in social engineering, for example, from accusations of 'gerrymandering' in Westminster in the eighties, to the social cleansing housing 'regeneration' of Broken Barnet in 2014 -  and an enthusiasm from both Conservative run authorities for milking endless streams of revenue from hapless residents exhibiting the gross impertinence of trying to park their cars on the streets where they live, work, and shop.

Mrs Angry gets an awful lot of blog visits from Westminster City Council these days.

Welcome, new friends. 

Hope you enjoy the new entente cordiale, between your authority and ours. 

The entente between your authority and the Barnet blogosphere, we must warn you, will be strictly limited, on an interim basis, and may be less than cordiale, at times. 

But here is a curious thing. About our new Monitoring Officer.

Our new Monitoring Officer is not our Monitoring Officer, exactly, - and he is not leaving Westminster City Council. 

We are sharing the attentions of Mr Large with his current employers. Despite the claim made in a statement last week that the new MO had been seconded to Barnet, which rather implies that he is working exclusively for us.

Yes: despite all the criticisms levelled at Barnet by Claer Lloyd-Jones' report in regard to our shared legal services, we have now engaged a part time Monitoring Officer - and on a temporary basis only. 

We find ourselves, in short, in the position of, say, an MP's wife who wakes up to find her husband in the papers for further extra-marital misbehaviour, having been told, following an unfortunate incident involving paisley pyjamas, that it will never happen again, darling.

I feel so betrayed, don't you, readers? And as always, yes, as always, the last to know.

Mrs Angry understands that, rather astonishingly, the appointment of Mr Large to his role in Barnet was not divulged to Labour group members in Westminster, until the day after the deal was agreed, and that the news only emerged through other sources, which, if true, would be a pretty extraordinary state of affairs, would it not?

It seems Westminster's MO has been helping Barnet, 'assisting' us, for a period of two weeks before an 'urgent' situation arose, ie on the 9th October, which suddenly required the immediate appointment of Mr Large to a formal, if rather limited, role in Barnet. 

Oh. Why was it sudden? Did they not foresee the outcome of a report that delivered such a damning indictment of our legal services and governance? Or did they really not predict the level of censure and criticism that the report has provoked? Clearly, by sitting on the report and sneaking it into tomorrow night's committee, they had hoped to keep it quiet for as long as possible, but still ...

And then: it seems Westminster opposition members have been reassured that their Monitoring Officer's Saturday job in Barnet will not 'impact' his duties at Westminster City Council. 

Really?  

So ... either Mr Large is:

a. not exactly rushed off his feet at WCC, or:

b. has no intention of working up a sweat on our behalf, here in Broken Barnet.

What on earth is going on? 

Does anyone actually know? 

Questions that must be asked:

• When, exactly, did Maryellen Salter leave her role as Monitoring Officer?

• How long has  she been absent?

• In her absence, who was the nominated deputy, as required by the law? Or were we just bumbling along, taking informal advice and 'assistance' from Mr Large? What was HBPublic Law's role during this period?

• Is the truth that Barnet, criticised by Ms Lloyd-Jones for being in a position now where it does not know what it does not know, has been operating without anyone formerly confirmed in what is a statutory role?

• Does such a possibility not raise the risk that further legal and governance decisions have been wrongly actioned?

• How can a failure in competence on the scale identified by Ms Lloyd-Jones' investigation be addressed by an authority relying on a part time Monitoring Officer?

• Why was the appointment of Mr Large only made at the end of last week, a week of intense media speculation, but apparently little political reaction from the Tory leader and his group?

• If members of Westminster City Council was not aware of the arrangement, why not, and why were such negotiations kept secret? 

• Was Richard Cornelius aware of the appointment and involved in the decision, or was he - yet again - presented by a fait accompli by his senior management team?

• How much longer can the Chief Executive remain in post?.

• Ditto the Barnet Tory 'leader'?

• Who wants to start a sweepstake?

As Mr Reasonable explains here: 

http://reasonablenewbarnet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/a-critical-week-in-barnet.html

... there are tonight two council meetings during the course of which a restructuring of senior management will be discussed, supposedly to make savings, but actually creating more pointless and costly senior posts, with the usual self aggrandising job titles. 

As Mr R suggests, there is a better case, now, for deleting the post of Chief Executive, and merging his functions with that of the Chief Operating Officer (sorry, Mr Naylor: without any unwarranted increase in salary). Will this happen? Probably not. But that is not to say that the current CEO is safe in his post.

Tomorrow night sees the Policy and Resources Committee to which Claer Lloyd-Jones' devastating report will be submitted. 

So, yes: another interesting week ahead, in Broken Barnet ...

The truth is more complex - revealed, at last - a cataclysmic failure of governance, in Broken Barnet

Clare Lloyd-Jones             pic courtesy of the Marston Group

*Updated Wednesday: see below

1.3 The voting on ‘wrong’ reports, and the subsequent unraveling of the decision-making structure caused Barnet to be mocked in the local press with headlines using words such as “disgrace” and “chaos”.  No Local Authority would wish to be subject to such avoidable public criticism.

The truth is more complex.

In the last post, you may recall, Mrs Angry raised a question about the long awaited report by lawyer Claer Lloyd-Jones, who had been asked to conduct an investigation into Barnet's governance service earlier this year, but whose findings were as yet unknown. 


By coincidence, or not, but only by accident, it was discovered by local bloggers yesterday that her investigation had not only been concluded, but the findings submitted to the authority last month. 

No announcement of this report, nor the very serious implications for the governance and legal compliance of our local democratic process, had been made by the authority, and quite clearly the matter was being kept under wraps for as long as possible. Until Monday, that is, when someone found out about it, rather than being made known in a formal announcement to the residents and taxpayers of this borough, in an admission of failure on an almost apocalyptic scale,

The findings are simply staggering, and expressed in blunt terms by Ms Lloyd Jones. 

Take for example these observations: 

• There is no-one who understands local government law in depth at Barnet. 

• Barnet employs no lawyers. 

• There are staff in key roles in the Governance structure in Barnet who are inexperienced in governance matters.

• There was no clear protocol for clearing council reports throughtaking external legal or other specialist advice.

And here is the damning conclusion:



7.1 Barnet Council was ridiculed in the local press for finding itself in the position of having misapplied the political proportionality rules and thereby failing to keep member decision-making safe from challenge. The Chief Executive was subsequently given advice that committees that were not properly and lawfully constituted, an could not continue to meet and make decisions prior to the next Council meeting on July 15th. Leading Counsel’s opinion was taken and he advised that although the political proportionality rules had been misapplied, the committees could continue to meet and make lawful decisions due to the savings provisions in the Act. Leading Counsel’s opinion was preferred. 

7.2 The facts leading up to these events demonstrate that there was no clear protocol or process between Barnet Governance Team and HBPL for providing legal clearance of council reports to ensure that they were correct. In the case of both the political proportionality report and the members allowances report, legal advice was asked for from HBPL. It was not forthcoming, and the absence of legal advice in the reports was not escalated nor chased by Barnet Governance Team. 

7.3 The risk of either of those reports being wrong was therefore high, given that Barnet does not employ any lawyers itself, and the relevant governance staff responsible for these reports are relatively inexperienced.

 7.4 This high reputational risk to the council was multiplied by the change to alternative political management arrangements, ie a return to the Committee system. This risk was further aggravated by a very close election result. 

 7.5 Mitigation of the risk would necessitate early consideration of the legal principles, and close and careful attention being paid to the compilation of reports, in draft, and when submitted to council for decision. This would require at the very least, close collaboration between HBPL and Barnet Governance Team. 

7.6 All parties involved were capable of spotting that something was wrong with the reports, but no-one did. To those members involved, the perception was that no-one was in charge. 

7.7 I find that Barnet’s Governance Team were responsible for the reports being sent to print in their incorrect form and subsequently voted on by members at June 2nd Council meeting. Members were not advised that the reports had no legal clearance, and the form of the report gave no indication of whether the report had been cleared or not. 

7.8 I also find that Barnet’s Governance team were jointly responsible with the shared Legal Service, HBPL, for those reports going to print containing misapplications of the correct law, and allowing members to vote on them as though they were correct. Copies of the reports had been sent to HBPL at an early stage. They gave no comments or advice. The Harrow MO attends Barnet Council meetings in order to advise the Barnet MO and Chief Executive. 

 7.9 In order to prevent the risk of some other governance failing attributable to the absence of legal advice or misapplication of legal advice, a number of changes need to be made to both the IAA and to Barnet’s internal governance arrangements 

You can read the full report here: 

 http://barnet.moderngov.co.uk/documents/s18278/Appendix%201%20-%20First%20report%20of%20Claer%20Lloyd-Jones.pdf …

 
This investigation had been prompted by a catastrophic failure in the creation and implementation of the authority's new committee system, a sytem to which our Tory members, in their wisdom wished us to return, but failed to ensure that the correct establishment and processes were in place when the change was made. 

The Monitoring Officer of Barnet Council, also the Director of Assurance, since April 2013, is - or at least as far as we know, still is - Maryellen Salter, the former head of internal audit (previously employed by our external auditors, Grant Thornton). 

Will no one think of the Customer? 

Apparently not: we were the last ones to know, weren't we, Mr Naylor?

From the start of the new Tory administration, it was clear that something was badly wrong. The political proportionality of the committees was incorrectly balanced, and it emerged that the committees themselves, therefore, and any decisions made by them, were possibly unlawful. All council meetings were cancelled. It was then announced that they were lawful, after all, and could go ahead, or that they may be unlawful, but any decisions made were not - but no one seemed quite sure. 

The first Full Council meeting of the new administration was an absolute shambles, directly as a result of the incompetent organisation of the new system - and the plotting of Tory councillors, terrified of the implications of their slender majority, intent on excluding Labour members from all opportunities to exploit their vulnerability.

The situation was, in short an all round disaster, and the administration eventually agreed that there was need of an independent investigation.

In the meanwhile, the life of the administration carried on, as if all were well. 

The Tory group launched a series of policies and actions which raised serious questions about the legality of their basis, and the consequences that ensued. 

The new Mayor, Hugh Rayner, was accused by AM Andrew Dismore of a number of very serious allegations relating to his business activities and apparent failure to make declarations of pecuniary interest. The Monitoring Officer disallowed a number of the allegations, which Dismore - who, unlike the Monitoring Officer is a lawyer - fiercely disputed. 

Rayner escaped unscathed from the politically weighted panel hearing, cleared of all charges.

Earlier in the year, a Labour councillor was falsely accused of 'taxdodging' in regard to her council tax. The fact that this was not true, and the false charges due to failures by the council and Capita, did not stop her reputation being smeared, and she had been referred to the police with all speed by the authority within hours of an initial interview about the unfounded claims.

The case of the Tory Mayor, by contrast, involving far more serious allegations, but was not referred to the police.

Bearing in mind the criticisms in the report regarding the provision and quality of advice and support since Barnet outsourced its legal services to HBPublic Law, questions must now be raised about the management of both cases.

There are in fact many decisions and actions which must now be subject to review, and challenge where necessary: including the deeply dubious allocation of 'dispensations' that our Tory councillors have obliged the Monitoring Officer to give them, so as to allow them to take part in meetings and decision making even when they have pecuniary interests: a clear defiance of the Nolan principles that are supposed to govern those in public posts, and, prima facie, an arguably unlawful move, in breach of the localism act, and legislation which makes the non declaration a criminal offence. 

The  status of such dispensations in regard to the authority's own regulations is certainly questionable: a statement made on the subject on behalf of the authority said that it was assumed the dispensations were constitutional. A statement that is an example, we can now conclude, of the lack of legal oversight described by Ms Lloyd Jones in her report. 

False assumptions can be very costly, can't they?

But these are only a few instances of what is clearly a terrible failure in governance, and law, by Barnet Council. 

The report makes clear that this disastrous situation is a result of the ill conceived outsourcing of legal services, and the removal of the post of head of governance, (or democratic services, as it used to be called when there was at least some semblance of democracy in Barnet). It should also be remembered that the Tory administration sanctioned the cutting of several posts within the governance service.

The Monitoring Officer may well be set up as the solitary scapegoat for this mess: but that would be unfair, as clearly the responsibility for governance and law is ultimately borne by the Chief Executive and Chief Operating Officer - and of course the real culprits here are the Tory leader and his senior colleagues, who decided on this course of action, and were happy to approve both the abolishment of in house legal services, and the post formerly held by the most senior lawyer, who also ensured the proper process of governance.

Tory councillors are this morning gathering in a panic at the council's headquarters at North London Business Park in order to discuss this unprecedented state of crisis.

Apart from the disastrous findings of the report, one must ask why members appear not to have been informed of the findings until now; and why the report was not made public, but was sat on, and then sidelined, sneaked into the agenda of a policy and resources committee agenda? 

The final version was apparently published on 14th September, the original date, it seems, of the report, was in August.

In the time since the investigation has begun, hugely significant decisions that affect not just members, or employees, but the daily lives of every man, woman and child in this borough, have continued to be made, even after the report was submitted - despite the serious questions now raised about the very constitutional basis of the council. 

Once the report and its findings were made known to those who commissioned it, no press release was made, no statement given, until bloggers broke the news, stumbling upon the report, hidden in plain sight, in the unpublicised agenda of the Policy & Resources committee. 

Only when the findings had been uncovered in this way did the council respond. 

This is simply not good enough.

Mrs Angry tweeted the following question to Mr Chris Naylor, the Chief Operating Officer, and enthusiastic supporter of open government, this morning: 

 Mrs Angry ‏@BrokenBarnet 4h4 hours ago

If the default mode of @BarnetCouncil is 'open gov' @publicnaylor why has the damning report into governance not been openly acknowledged?

He replied:

Chris Naylor ‏@publicnaylor 52m52 minutes ago

@BrokenBarnet do you mean the report published on the web, that is going to a public meeting and that we're talking to the press about?

To which Mrs Angry's response was:

 Mrs Angry ‏@BrokenBarnet 25m25 minutes ago

@publicnaylor Oh come off it: a report with such serious findings should have been put in the public domain with a statement asap, not sat on

(He's still arguing on twitter, by the way, and getting some well deserved impertinence in response).

It is clear that there is urgent need for an emergency council meeting to discuss this report, and the fullest scrutiny given, in public, to the implications.

Perhaps one question that might be asked is this: was the requirement for legal qualifications removed from the job description of the post now held -maybe - by the current Monitoring Officer? 

If so, who removed it, and why? 

Was there a risk assessment of the consequences in failing to have a lawyer in this statutory post?

How many decisions by the authority since the new structure was in place are now potentially invalid, and subject to legal challenge, and how much cost to local taxpayers will there be, as a result?

What does this latest failure in outsourcing tell us about the risks presented by the two massive Capita contracts which our Tory councillors have committed us to for a period of no less than ten years? 

Let's look again at one of the findings of the report by Claer Lloyd-Jones:

7.6 All parties involved were capable of spotting that something was wrong with the reports, but no-one did. To those members involved, the perception was that no-one was in charge.

There, in short, you have the most damning observation of all. 

Don't be fooled by the tradition of Broken Barnet in which all major cockups, from the Icelandic fiasco to every other mess that has occurred, are blamed on one individual, and addressed by the sacrifical offering of that person's job.

The incompetence of senior management, the inexperience of one senior officer, the lack of professional support from our oursourced legal service: factors which contributed to the perfect storm we now see wreaking havoc in the administration of our local authority, but the truth is that, ultimately, this is a political failure by the Conservative leader, and his party. 

Richard Cornelius takes a hands off approach to governance, and has left all the boring day to day management of the council to 'Travers', as he refers to him, in the manner of the master of Downtown Abbey flinging his coat on the floor for his valet to pick up. 

But Cornelius had ultimate responsibility for this awful situation, and must accept that. 

He should now consider his own position as leader, even if the Chief Executive remains in post, safely enveloped in the protection of that black hole he carries everywhere with him.

The investigation by Claer Lloyd Jones tells us some of the story: the rest is unknown. 

What is clear is this: our council is being run by a bunch of incompetent fools, with a catastrophic  disregard for the due processes of law, as well as the need for transparency, and accountability. 

And while we disport ourselves in the wake of these revelations, those who are waiting offstage, waiting to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the Tories next round of privatisation will be standing by, grinning, and rubbing their sweaty hands with glee.

More later.

Updated Wednesday:

A statement has at last emerged from the Barnet Labour leadership:

Labour calls for no confidence vote in Council Leader after damning report on governance failures

Labour councillors have called for an Extraordinary Council meeting after a damning independent report was published yesterday into June’s shambolic Annual Council Meeting and the constitutional crisis that followed where the decision-making process in Barnet ground to a halt because committees were not properly constituted at the Annual Meeting.

The independent report states that: 

• There is no-one who understands local government law in depth atBarnet. Barnet employs no lawyers.

• There are staff in key roles in the Governance structure in Barnetwho are inexperienced in governance matters.

• There was no clear protocol for clearing council reports throughtaking external legal or other specialist advice.

• Barnet was moving to a very different Constitution at the Annual Council and needed to have given detailed consideration to the implications of moving back to the Committee system. It is not just a question of making amendments to the Constitution.

• Legal Advice was requested on both the reports, but was not forthcoming on either in time for them to be printed. No-one at Barnet queried this or noticed anything was wrong.

Barnet’s legal service was outsourced through a shared service agreement with Harrow Council under the One Barnet mass-privatisation programme in April 2012 on the basis that it would save money and provide greater flexibility and capacity to manage the council’s legal work more efficiently. But the independent report suggests that Barnet does not have “access to pro-active professional and expert advice at all relevant times” and that “the clienting of the HBPL service has had no professional legal input looking at the quality of legal advice given for 18 months”. Last month’s performance data also shows the outsourced service is currently overspent by £138,000 or 7.7% of the overall budget.

The Cabinet Resources report from the Leader of the Council that recommended the outsourcing also states that “Governance arrangements will be developed to enable this council to have strategic oversight of the Joint Legal Service…”, but the independent report findings show this hasn’t happened. 

The council was supposed to have appointed a legally qualified person to monitor the contract with Harrow Council according to the Inter Authority Agreement but this did not happen either.

Authorisation of the Inter-Authority Agreement with Harrow Council was delegated to the Leader of the Council and Deputy Leader of the Council.  This authorisation was formally published in an officer delegated powers report which was exempt from call-in by scrutiny.

Legal services were outsourced within a very short timescale – only 4 months after the proposal first appeared on the One Barnet Programme highlight report in December 2011.

Leader of the Barnet Labour Group, Cllr Alison Moore said: “The current legal and governance service is clearly not fit for purpose, but it was the Leader of the Council who proposed outsourcing legal services in the first place, who authorised the final detailed agreement with Harrow Council, and who proposed and has presided over the introduction of the council’s new committee system.

“In addition, the Chief Executive needs to answer for the failure to ensure that there was sufficient in-house legally qualified oversight of the outsourced legal service, and the failure to ensure that councillors and the council were provided with correct legal advice.

“In my view both should go, but the buck has to stop with the Leader, so we have called an extraordinary council meeting to debate this issue - it is too important to be left to a single committee and all councillors should have an input into the way forward.” 

Love in a cold climate, or: in the dark, and on the road, in Capitaville

One of the inescapable truths about life in Broken Barnet is this: the things we do not do, or cannot see, are more dangerous, and more interesting, than what is clear, and present, and visible.

The power of the negative shape between, the telling absence, and the sins of omission: this is the defining characteristic that best describes our borough, and the conspiracy of cunning fools tasked with the responsibilities of local governance here.

The default mode of Barnet Council, we are told, is open government. 

Or rather, the readers of the Guardian were told this by our Chief Operating Officer, who lives in a lovely, glass walled cell in North London  Business Park, with a view of the new outpost of Capitaville, filtered by magic glass, that reverses the colours of the landscape, and returns a beautiful image of an ugly world, where a regime of craven Tory councillors obey the prodding of their senior management, as piece by piece, the monstrous mouth of Capita swallows us up, and spits us out, and grinds our bones to dust.

Since the Tories managed to retain control of the council, by the skin of those mascerating teeth, the rampant appetite of Capita has grown and grown. More money, more services, more profit, more bones, more flesh: stomp, stomp, stomp, the monster prowls around the boundaries defined by two massive contracts, but cannot be contained and is hungry, very hungry.

We must feed the beast : and we must ransack the last of our supplies, in a frantic search for more of our public services, to keep it happy. Of course other outsourcering beasts may want to feast on the carcass that is left, but Capita will have first pickings. 

In the last post, we saw how educational services are to be staked out, like bait, to tempt a new set of privatising bidders. It is of course entirely coincidental, and devoid of any conflict of interest that Capita is in charge of the procurement, has been used to market test the proposals, and has a former senior manager from its own educational section working for Barnet since September 2013.

There is a problem, it must be acknowledged, for those wishing to ease the transit of more of our services, and jobs, out of the direct control of the people who own them, that is to say, you and me, into the grasping hands of private enterprise.

The first two contracts were hidden behind the discreet wall of tosspottery known as One Barnet, the ideologised excuse for the giveaway opportunity involving so many of our council's functions.

One Barnet became a toxic brand, however, under the glare of scrutiny from residents and local activists, just as the authority's compliance with the requirement of the localism act's rulings on open government - the real thing, not the lipservice, was to be put to the test.

One Barnet flourised in a swamp of confusion and obfuscation, bereft of any programme of consultation, decisions taken that were not decisions, at a time ill defined, lost in the process, and making it impossible to challenge in court, until it was too late.

The next tranche of outsourcing proposals is more tricky, and so much harder to manage, for the simple reason that those who oppose the very principle of privatised local services are wised up, hardened veterans of the war against the profiteers. We've served one round of service in the trenches, and now we know what to expect.

In the earlier programme of privatisation, residents and voters were kept entirely in the dark as to the implications of what the Tory administration, its senior management and coterie of consultants had planned. There never was any mandate from the people for what happened, as election material gave no hint of what was to come. The need for consultation, as the findings of the judicial review confirmed, was ignored, and any opportunity for debate carefully smothered, by such means as refusing local forums to discuss any issue relating to council 'policy'.

Since the election, Barnet has changed to a new system of governance, or rather reverted to the committee system. With predictable ineptitude, the Tory group failed to ensure the proper rule of governance was in place to monitor this change, and make sure the system was constitutional. 

Which reminds me: what happened to the independent investigation into that particular cockup? Gone awfully quiet, hasn't it?

The Tories decided upon this course of action before they found themselves clinging on to power with the most slender of majorities - and now they find themselves in the most perilous circumstances, needing to micro-manage every committee and every councillor, to ensure there is never a loss of political control, or mistake in voting. 

If only the opposition was so vigilant, some might say: because the naivete of some Labour members is often exploited by their Tory colleagues, and used, in their knavish way, in order to facilitate their own agenda.

And here we go again.

After the fiasco of the new group leaders' panel, the risible, politically biased replacement for the previous standards committee, one might hope the Labour leadership would not have been duped into falling for another Tory trick, and allow the opposition to take part in another example of their absolute defiance of the principles supposedly embedded in their own party's policy of localism, and yes, open government.

We are talking about a new range of secret meetings, coyly referred to as 'working groups', a new idea in which elected members and officers discuss forthcoming policy proposals relevant to a committee, in a body that is not constitutionally recognised, has no regulations or guidelines as to procedure, is not advertised with the other council meetings, and which the Tories - and certain officers - wanted to remain private, with members of the public barred from attending. 

We are told that no decisions will be made at these meetings. Whether or not this is true you must judge for yourself, after reading about the outcome of the Environment group oon Thursday night.

These meetings are not minuted, no papers are available to the public, if they should by some means know they are taking place: clearly this new procedure was deliberately designed so as to circumvent the need for transparency and accountability in the decision making process of the authority at a time when more outsourcing is being planned.

Last year Eric Pickles made it clear in new guidelines that he was serious about opening up the process of local government to residents and taxpayers, as well as the press and citizen journalists.

Quite evidently the new 'working group' strategy is deliberately directed so as to be in defiance of the spirit - and possibly the letter - of the law regulating local government procedures, as defined by the localism act. Last year's guidelines made it clear that only 'informal briefings' or meetings that contain material which is exempt due to confidentiality may be held without the right of public access to the meeting, and the relevant papers and information. 

The 'working groups' are not informal meetings: they are part of a new and well organised process, which will be used to influence the outcomes of the committee meetings. At a time of controversial new proposals in regard to further outsourcing, and associated redundancies, it is even more important that such discussions take place in public, as part of a full programme of consultation.

Already briefings given on the subject of the possible privatisation of educational services have tried to persuade opposition members that a joint venture is both likely and inevitable. It is not, and is not.

So now we have meetings that are not part of the democratic process, and yet will direct the evolution of policy decisions affecting the future of our local public services, with an impact on the lives of all residents. Meetings that exist, but do not exist, an empty space in the calendar: a negative shape - all in the tradition of Broken Barnet.

Mrs Angry thought it would be appropriate to attend one of these meetings: and on Thursday went to the Environment 'working group'. 

This meeting, which was not a meeting, was nominally chaired by Tory Dean Cohen, whose responsibilities for environmental matters, you may recall, is particularly focused on the environment of his own ward, to the tune of £1.1 million pounds worth of expenditure in the year before the election, on roads and pavements on his home ground, while Labour wards went without - completely, in the case of Colindale.

The person who appeared to be directing the meeting, that was not a meeting, however, was the senior Barnet commissioning officer Declan Hoare, who had clear views on the way in which the session was going to take place. Any papers for the public? No. Anyone from governance to ask for copies? No. Any minutes being taken? No. Is this compliant with the guidelines on public access to council meetings, as defined in the amendment to the localism act? Yes, he said.

Mrs Angry tried hard to remember other examples of this sort of body, as sanctioned by our transparency averse council. Ah yes, during the tendering process of the first massive contracts, the senior management team would meet as Corporate Directors Group, but strangely, whenever it met in order to discuss anything of a 'sensitive' nature, called itself something else, and did not minute the meeting, so no material existed that could be FOId relating to the decision making process which led to, for example, the announcement that 'we' had decided to change the business model of what is now Capita run 'Re', without the knowledge or consent of the leader of the council and his cabinet ...

That was then, and here we were now, a handful of residents, bloggers, and a local reporter therefore sat in the few seats allocated for anyone insisting on attending the meeting that was not a meeting and looked on, unable to follow the secret agenda, or read the information given to members in the reports. 

Two Labour members, Alan Schneiderman and Devra Kay objected to the arrangements, but neither Mr Hoare or the Tory members, Cohen and Brian Salinger, who sat with his back to the public, were sympathetic to the idea that the meeting that was not a meeting should follow any rules of access or transparency. 

Mr Hoare gave us a short lecture on the way on which the meeting which was not a meeting would be held. It was 'a briefing', just, he said pointedly, for members - it was not constitutional, and therefore they could not make any decisions, or recommendations

Mrs Angry decided, that as there were no rules, and the meeting that was not a meeting was not constitutional, she was therefore entitled to join in with helpful contributions to the 'discussion', when appropriate, as a resident, and taxpayer. 

This view was not welcomed by Councillor Dean Cohen, sitting self importantly, as he always does, like a schoolboy left to mind the class while the teacher has been called away to see the headmaster. In fact, Councillor Cohen kept snapping at Mrs Angry and told her she could not speak, which of course she happily ignored, if only to annoy him even more.

Even though members of the public were clearly not welcome, it transpired that a resident had been invited, by whom we did not know, to sit at the table and talk about the Friends association which now oversees much of the activities in a park in Childs Hill. Presumably the Tories thought that this was a good example, Big Society style, of where they can show that dumping council responsibilities on residents with a minimal amount of encouragement was a marvellous thing, and hope no one would notice it was just an excuse to try and cut costs.

It was pretty clear that as she began to speak, however, that the woman was no fool, and was determined to inform the members that expecting volunteers to take overall responsibility for the park was not a viable proposal. Grounds maintenance, she pointed out, depends on a continuous and reliable stream of funding by the authority.

What was interesting was that the park's friends' group, in marginal Childs Hill, previously a Libdem seat, targeted by Tories and Labour, returning two Tory and one Libdem councillor, received £50,000 in funding, last August, around the same time that the Highways bonus of £4 million was spent on certain wards. This may have been part of a regular budgetary handout, or it may not, but one wonders how many parks in less advantaged and less marginal wards received similar payments.

It also emerged that the various resident run park associations are not brought together in any one body, but act in isolation, along the old Barnet divide and conquer strategy. There was some sort of proposal to this end, but allowing them to join together would of course be a breach of the riot act, and might lead to unity of purpose, and a pro park lobby which could oppose their fiendish plot to commercialise our parks and open spaces, which of course, in Broken Barnet, must be made to generate income in order to justify their right to existence. 

Now Crapita has its hands on our council services, and even pursues us in death, as in life, at the Easycrem crapitorial post life facililty, the air we breathe, and every leaf of every tree, every blade of grass, and even the chirruping of birds in the sky must be harnessed, and put to the plough. Seems only reasonable, doesn't it?

Next up - ah, Highways maintenance. A sad eyed welshman from Capita, with a teddy boy haircut, stood forlornly at the end of the room and pointed dispiritedly at a powerpoint presentation of charts and diagrams that appeared to signify an apocalyptic future for our road structure.

One of the charts was headed: The Public's Really Simple Asset Management Plan.

The chart consisted, as far as Mrs Angry remembers, of a giant For Sale sign, and a picture of a cashpoint, with the word 'kerrching' written underneath. 

Her notes may not be entirely accurate, of course.

We have too many roads, in Broken Barnet, it seems. The ground covered, we heard, would go all the way to Leeds and back, or was it that all roads went to Leeds and back, whether or not that was where we meant to go? Mrs Angry was confused.

There should be resurfacing of roads, we heard, once every hundred years. Oh. No: by the rate in which they are currently being resurfaced, it would be once every hundred years.

Apart, suggested Mrs Angry, from roads in Councillor Cohen's own ward, in Golders Green. Councillor Cohen suggested she should be quiet. Mrs Angry smiled, recalling that in some parts of Golders Green ward, the roads appear to be resurfaced, and the pavements replaced, more like once every 100 days, while, as the recent 'investigation' confirmed, the highways and byways of everywhere else that is not in a Tory ward,  must wait in line.

The sad eyed welshman said that in order to maintain the roads, Barnet's residents would have to fork out £13 million alone for the backlog.

The road ahead, in this presentation, was becoming clear, and we were not headed for Leeds, after all, but doing a u-turn, all the way back to Capitaville.

Not all roads are the same, of course, he said. Mrs Angry agreed, thinking of the difference, say between Princes Park Avenue, in Councillor Cohen's ward, or the quiet residential roads in marginal Tory Hale, and Aerodrome Road, in Colindale, which Labour held ward that received no funding at all last year, while PPA alone was given £500,000 of funding in two years.

All roads are equal, but some roads are more equal than others. 

We should be prioritising the need to resurface, not, it seems in order of political allegiance, but according to need. Real need, not the definition used by Tory politicians, but concentrating on areas around hospitals, and, you know, where the poor people hang out, because their buses and clapped out old cars wear the roads out too quickly, in their typically selfish way.

The sad welshman continued. He cheered up a bit with the thought, expressed largely to himself, that we, ie Re, ie Crapita, have 'different treatments in the toolbox' in order to fix the many highways of despair, in Broken Barnet.

Here was a nice image of what looked like the flag of a newly independent Balkan state, the ones you can never remember in the picture round of that quiz down the pub, with a scribbly line ominously scratched across it. 

If we had consistently bad weather, we were told, we could cope better with these challenges. 

In a cold climate, as he put it, we know where we are. 

In the course of a cold, cold winter, things fall apart, and the surface cannot hold, but we can patch that up - or seal it - with Mrs Angry's rhubarb jam, (also available under the new Re-surfacing label, at Waitrose, North Finchley, all proceeds to the Broken Barnet charitable trust and pension fund).

In the glare of our summer sun, sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines, and the roads of Broken Barnet melt, like chocolate, and require a different treatment from the toolbox, so lovingly administered now by Crapita. And that meant the toolbox is not big enough, and we need to buy a new one, because Crapita can't afford it, apparently.

Which is odd, isn't it? We heard that 'efficiencies' need to be made from the Highways budget, and all our roads, even those that do not go to Leeds and back, must be resurfaced over a shorter than hundred year cycle, yet those savings promised us by those advocating the Capita contracts with such enthusiasm, are not available to cover these costs, which surely must have been or should have been assessed before the contracts were negotiated?

We have to find an immediate saving of more than £5 million. Yet last autumn, according to the line given to excuse the pre-election highways spluge in Tory wards, the £4 million they spent was only forthcoming as a result of the new contract. Why did they indulge in that spending spree, when they knew there would be a shortfall in funding after the election? How could such expenditure possibly be justified? This truly is a scandalous use of taxpayers' money.

And it gets worse: because, as Labour's Alan Schneiderman revealed, the efficiencies we are now told are necessary will require staff redundancies - and further outsourcing.

In other words, the lovely new pavements and road surfaces of Tory held wards are being paid for by turning loyal Barnet highways staff out of their jobs.

No wonder that they wanted to hold these 'briefings' in secret, is it? 

But you know: this is what we signed up to. Or rather the Tory councillors signed up to: being used as a cash cow by Capita - and this is how they make their profits. 

Look at this news from Birmingham, where it has just been revealed that in 2013, of the £102m spent on their own joint venture, the City Council handed over a staggering £23m in dividends to Capita, despite the dire financial straits in which they now find themselves:

http://www.birminghampost.co.uk/business/business-opinion/david-bailey-service-birminghams-63000-a-day-7870124

Quick, change the subject. 

Oh. Not the best subject: the controversial issue of street lighting, and a terrifying proposal to turn off the lights of Broken Barnet at night, in order to, yes, make efficiencies. 

This is, of course, the very same light which emanates from the entirely new stock of streetlamps replaced over the length and breadth of the borough only the other year.

Had the police given their opinion, as to the impact on crime? Conveniently no one could answer. 

Mrs Angry gave her unasked for views on the risk to the safety of women and elderly, and even the perception of risk which would affect residents' quality of life. This will be maximised should another proposal on the table, to leave parks unlocked at night, be adopted by our idiotic councillors.

Fear, they acknowledged, was a potential result of such a drastic step. But fear and loathing, in Broken Barnet, are qualities our Tory councillors seem happy to encourage, as you may have noticed. 

And then: oh dear. The next item, on the secret agenda, was a formal proposal from the handlebar moustached octogenarian Tory John Hart, on the subject of ... trees.

Councillor Hart is very worried about the trees of Broken Barnet, at least the ones that line our crumbling highways. 

He wants them all removed, because they are too big, he thinks, and must be replaced, on a boroughwide programme, like all our streetlamps. The replacements should be small trees, colourful ones of which he approves, not ones, he said, with heads like lavatory brushes, which he does not like. 

After an incomprehensible anecdote about when he worked for the Board of Trade, with what he called the Abominable No Men of Whitehall, he enlarged on the reasons for this Amazonian scale schedule of deforestation. 

Not only are the trees too big, they fall on people, or cause subsidence, and then our 'darling residents', as he described them, complain about cracks in their houses.

The poor officer from Open Spaces tried valiantly to address these barking proposals with some semblance of restraint.

There are some 300,000 trees lining the streets of Broken Barnet, she said, patiently, as if talking to a particularly obtuse child. The savings from subsidence claims would be negligable, and the cost of replacing them prohibitive. There would also be an impact on the ecological life of the borough, such as the loss of honeydew for bees.

Those of us who were sniggering at the foolishness of such a suggestion were informed tersely by Tory councillors: at least he made the effort. 

And there we were, at the end of the meeting that was not a meeting, and Labour councillors were still asking about the very terms of reference under which the 'briefing' and discussion had taken place.

Labour's Devra Kay had asked - why shouldn't residents attend these meetings? They are in public, she was told - but of course 'public' in this case means only to those members of the public who did not have to rely on the meetings which are not meetings being listed on the calendar, or advertised in the press, or advertised anywhere except hidden away beneath a series of baby rhyme times, or knit and natter sessions, in our no doubt soon to be offloaded libraries.

In fact, despite no visible listing on the council's website, there is another 'working group' arranged for tomorrow night - but the Labour members due to attend have rightly decided to boycott the event.*Updated: since this development, the meeting that was not a meeting will now not meet at all, as it has been cancelled.

Tory Brian Salinger banged on, as he always does, about having been a councillor for 33 years, and always having private briefings and ... he was interrupted, possibly by Mrs Angry: Be quiet and listen to me, he said, jabbing his finger about. Pointy finger, pointy finger, said Mrs Angry, tutting. 

As the non meeting ended, Alan Schneiderman raised questions about the status of members, as opposed to officers. This was an important point, as a visiting stranger, who may have wandered into the town hall, and up the stairs, and into the committee room and found the meeting which was not a meeting, might have concluded that Mr Hoare and his colleagues from Crapita were in charge, and not the elected members of the London Borough of Broken Barnet.

No decisions, of course, are meant to be made at these sessions, yet clearly when even the Chair appeared to want to back away from the lighting proposal, it seemed the officers had the last say in what 'went forward' to the actual committee. Mr Hoare would be passing on his views on what had been discussed at the 'briefing', even thought, we were told, there were no minutes, and no recommendations.

In other words, members' opinions would be marginalised in the process, and yet some report finalised by non elected officers, which might well suit the purposes of Capita and senior management, but is clearly a distortion of what is supposed to be a democratic process, open and transparent, and accountable to the community, and their elected representatives, would go on to the committee stage.

This is where the road takes us, not to Leeds, but always back to Capitaville, and here we must remain, enclosed by boundaries we feel, but cannot see, in the shadows of the night, where the glare of scrutiny is dimmed, and the underworld of private enterprise, like thieves in the night, robs us of what we hold dear, and fear to lose, at the cost of our liberty, and our democracy. 

Put out the light, then put out the light.

This is the history of Capitaville, Year Two. 

Only eight more to go.