Friday 15 April 2011

The Friday joke - sponsored by MetPro

Governance is ‘the highest standard of
transparency
integrity and
accountability
in the way in which the Council and its partners operate, embodied in a set of rules and procedures’.
Phnar! Among the documents accessible via the governance and democracy pages on Barnet council's website is its Contract procedure rules. I'll be poring over these this weekend (in between running an anti-cuts street stall in Burnt Oak, shopping and gardening, obviously).

Why? A resident has just had this reply to his Freedom of Information questions:
a) “How many companies tendered for this [council security] contract?”

b) “If any others did, what were the companies called?”

c) “What were the reasons that 'Met Pro Rapid Response' won the contract.”

Answer: We have searched our records and have not located any recorded information falling within parts (a) to (c) of your request.

2 comments:

baarnett said...

Maybe we can get records of the council's payments to the two Metpro companies, and who gave authority for setting the accounts up.

It would be more serious if the buggers failed to answer those questions - serious for them, that is.

baarnett said...

The owner of the FoI request could perhaps (through another FoI request even) get a written record of all enquiries made, that resulted in not answering the questions.

That would include emails from the FoI dept. to senior officers, of course.