We wrote to you last week in regard to the announcement
by Pam Wharfe, Barnet Council’s ‘interim’ Director of Environment, Planning and
Regeneration, that a decision has been made to abandon the One Barnet Strategic
Partnership proposals for the outsourcing of
£275 million worth of our local services in favour of a ‘Joint Venture’.
You have since contradicted her statement, saying:
“No decision
has been made. No case for a jv has been made beyond the suggestion that there
might be such a case. The decisions will be made by elected members in due
course.”In a subsequent message to staff Ms Wharfe has informed staff that:
“...the
project Board recommended to Corporate Directors Group that this be formally
advanced in discussion with bidders and indeed is currently our preferred
option.”
Neither the DRS project board nor the Corporate
Directors Group includes any elected members of the council. Membership of the
DRS project board, we understand, is restricted to a small number of senior
council officers and two consultants from Agilisys/iMPOWER, the company working
as ‘implementation partner’ to One Barnet, at an average cost to local tax
payers of £250,000 per month.
It would appear that Barnet Council is preparing to
commit the financial security of this borough to a new model of outsourcing – one
that its own consultants’ advice identified as more risky and costly than the
one originally chosen, and that this decision has been made by senior officers
before any consideration or approval by the elected members of the council.
Ms Wharfe’s own comments about the new Joint Venture
seem to suggest that senior management are not at all concerned by the
increased risk of failure that this new commitment will entail, or the
increased responsibilities for the authority that this option would involve, as
a result of guaranteeing more favourable terms for the successful bidder at the
conclusion of the dialogue process.
As residents, however, we are concerned: and we
believe that you should be too.
We would ask you and your colleagues to consider the
real possibility that in the event of the new Joint Venture failing, the
council will still be left with the duty to provide the affected services,
whilst the successful bidder may simply walk away with no obligation.
We believe that councillors have clearly not been
fully informed as to the details of the Joint Venture, and that the scale of
risk that the One Barnet programme presents is simply not fully understood by
members. It seems that the need for members to be fully informed of
developments and involved in the formation of policy at all stages of the dialogue
process has been deliberately overlooked.
Perhaps as well as a decision to pursue a new model
of outsourcing, the council is committing itself to a new form of local government,
in which the democratic process is set aside for a bureaucratic dictatorship,
entirely controlled by the senior management team.
If Barnet is indeed determined to bypass the
democratic process, and to give the role of policy and decision making to
senior officers, rather than to the political leadership of the Conservative
group and the Cabinet, we would suggest this makes the role of the elected members
completely redundant, although of course it may well offer a new opportunity
for cost cutting exercises in the withdrawal of members’ allowances.
Failing that, may we ask you to assert your
authority as leader of the council, recognise that the outsourcing programme
has been totally discredited, and instruct your own officers to follow a course
of action which is the result of proper consultation and policy formation rather
than one shaped by the motivations of their own agenda.
Yours sincerely,
Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne
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