The damage done, Or: The King of Bling has left the building

I arrived late for the extraordinary Barnet Council meeting at Hendon Town Hall this evening, but found a seat in the overflow room with other tardy members of the public. On the end wall, like a painting over a grand fireplace, was a screen showing a sort of bird's eye view of the Barnet Council chamber where the session was in progress. A pigeon in the rafters sort of view of the proceedings.

When I arrived Labour councillor Kath McGuirk was speaking to the Labour Group's motion of no confidence in Tory Leader Richard Cornelius.

With 22 votes to the Tories' 37, Labour couldn't win this vote, not even with the tenuous support of the 3 Lib Dems, but it was important to put this motion to challenge Cornelius's 'One Barnet' programme.

Lib Dem Lord Monroe Palmer laid into the mass outsourcing plan as well, and he is the chair of Barnet Council's Audit Committee so he knows full well about the council's recent bad record in procurement and contract management.

The vote was taken and Labour lost (Brian Coleman abstained, for the record), but in the debate some good arguments were made. Unfortunately, I had not heard most of them and will have to wait for the video footage, that I'm sure Barnet's citizen filmers are editing as I type, to see it.

After a break, and the extraordinary council meeting being over, the ordinary council meeting began.

There were a lot of questions to the executive, raced through. Then there was another break. Public and councillors milled about in the corridors.

Earlier in the evening, I understand, the Conservative Group had met and kicked Brian Coleman out of their number. I'm not sure quite how this works; he was suspended by the national party last week. But I know Coleman wasn't happy about this latest rejection. In the break he was having a row with Cllr Anthony Finn, who is replacing Coleman in some of his committee positions, in a side room. I was too busy looking for a lost telephone, twitching about behind the velvet curtains, to hear what was said, but I know that Coleman was basically accusing Finn of betraying him.

When the council meeting re-convened, Coleman was not in the council chamber. (He is still a councillor until the electors of Totteridge boot him out in 2014. I wonder how delighted they feel about that.)

I know, as Richard Cornelius is always reminding us, that Coleman is innocent until proven guilty. But whatever about his impending trial, this evening's council meeting was a curious showcase of just how disruptive one individual can be.

A large part of the evening was given over to a Labour motion for some periods of free parking in Barnet's high streets at Christmas time. This has to be done to help mend the damage done to local trading by Barnet's disastrous meddling with the parking regime, hiking prices, and removing parking meters so that shoppers have to pay by mobile. Of course, Coleman was the architect of this policy.

Today it was announced that the Council, thanks to the sterling campaigning efforts of Cafe Buzz owner Helen Michael, is introducing various measures to try and woo shoppers back to the shops in North Finchley, and during the evening they announced that they were talking with the shopkeepers of other high streets in Barnet.

Throughout all of this Brian Coleman sat nibbling his fingers and taking no part - for he is now without a group or responsibility - only taking an active part in the proceedings during question time (when he seemed to have asked an inordinate number of questions!).

Later in the evening, after he had left, there was an item of business reporting on how Brian Coleman had - finally, late and grudingly - paid the penalties handed to him by the Standards Board for insulting two Barnet residents by email. Another Brian Coleman sour misdeed.

And, finally, near the end of the evening, again without him there to hear it, it was announced who would replace Coleman as chair of the various committees that he was still in charge of, and that - the greatest ignominy for him personally, I imagine - he was no longer to be considered as a part of the Conservative group.

Alison Moore, Labour Group Leader, was quick to ask whether the Tory Group being lighter by one member would impact on the allocation of committee places, which is done in proportion to the groups' numbers. The Director of Corporate Governance, the soon-to-be retiring Jeff Lustig, said he would look into it.

So the evening was punctuated by reminders of the damage that Brian Coleman has done to the lives of Barnet residents and to the reputation of the Barnet Tory Party.

The Barnet Tories might be happy to be rid of him, but how will they fare now he is merely a glowering presence on the fringes of their group? To be honest, I think they will still fare ill. There was plenty of evidence of it tonight.

A number of residents had arrived to hear the Labour motion for the Council to re-open Friern Barnet Library, or at least to negotiate with campaigners. The motion talked about the fiasco of the now-never-to-be Landmark Library at the Arts Depot which Robert Rams, the Cabinet member responsible, has now admitted is not going to happen. Rams continually blamed the Arts Depot for the failure of negotiations around the library.

He said talks had been going well, when Arts Depot management seemed for some reason he could not understand to have changed their minds.

It strikes me that you are a very poor politician indeed when you are in charge of the libraries in a major London borough but can't hold an adult conversation with the management of the local arts venue.

When I first heard that the Landmark Library had fallen through, I tweeted Robert Rams that the attitude of Barnet Council when they cut the borough's fairly small grant to the Arts Depot had probably soured relations. The Council sat and watched as the Arts Depot management had to cast about to plug the gap in their finances. Now, is it any wonder if the Arts Depot don't feel like pulling Robert Rams's chestnuts out of the fire?

On a personal note, I found this evening dis-spiriting. The public gallery had mostly all left through ennui by the end, even though major crimes against justice and reason continued to be committed in the council chamber.

When the motion was put to approve the appointment of Andrew Travers to replace the scurvy knave Nick Walkley as Chief Executive I couldn't help reminding people loudly that the Conservative Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles regards people like Andrew Travers as 'town hall tax dodgers', because they have been employed long-term as personal contractors rather than being on the payroll, which incurs higher taxes.

As the meeting broke up a few people smiled indulgently at me, the mad loon who can't refrain from shouting from the public gallery when things get too much for her. I felt quite embarrassed about my outburst. Later on, around a table in the Lido noodle bar, it was pointed out to me that Travers had been sat at the front of the council chamber and heard it all when I publicly impugned his character. And suddenly I felt a whole lot better.

Barnet council - "obviously we are not in a good place"

Barnet council's assistant finance director Maryellen Salter, who wrote the Internal Audit Opinion on Barnet for 2010-11, summed things up well this evening - "obviously we are not in a good place". 72% of the areas of work considered in the audit are run less than satisfactorily. The situation has declined slightly since Barnet's previous audit committee meeting.

Well, that's shit, isn't it? Everyone in the meeting agreed that it's shit. The councillor members of the committee, the two independent members, the chair Monroe Palmer (I'm sorry, I don't do honorifics - not in my own blog, I don't), all the senior officers called to answer questions, the council's internal audit team itself, and the external auditors Grant Thornton all thought it was shit. Certainly the residents present in person and in the Twittersphere thought it was shit.

The question is, what will be done about it? My own question for public question time (which, despite the best efforts of Labour and, to be fair, Palmer, was limited strictly to 30 minutes), concerned who would take responsbility for the years and years of failings? Failings that previous audit committees have sometimes identified, but whose recommendations have made little difference.

I asked the question specifically in relation to the council's relationship with the MetPro security companies. Who decided to take them on? Do we know, will we ever know? How were they allowed to earn £1.4 million from the council in spite of no contract ever being awarded? Why did no one ever check whether they had CRB checks, SIA licences, etc? Shouldn't someone carry the can for this litany of embarassing and potentially dangerous failings?

It is not a question, certainly not on my part, of wanting to see people sacked. I just think that senior officers, heads of departments whose staff were not complying with the council's own Contract Procedure Rules, rules flouted systematically for years, such high-paid individuals should stop being high-paid individuals at Barnet council.

These are often the same people who preach the necessity for cuts to services, smoothe the path for closing libraries, shut youth clubs, cut grants to voluntary organisations, close the musuems, put up charges for social services, put up the charges in the Controlled Parking Zones. All this they do very assiduously.

And at the same time in their very own departments money is being squandered because work is given out on a basis that no one understands to companies that no one monitors. Useless!

The Chief Executive Nick Walkley turned in a particularly cheesy performance, I thought. He criticised the bad culture in the council, how not enough people 'buy into' audit and the lessons it tries to teach the council. The problems of this bad culture went back years, to, oh, as long ago as 2006 (before you were in charge then, Mr Walkley? Yes, we've got the message - you bear no responsibility for any of this).

The Internal Audit investigation that was reported tonight was separate from the MetPro report, and the work for it undertaken long before MetPro came to light. But what chance did its findings have of getting any attention had the MetPro issue not arisen alongside it? Scarcely any, I reckon. Especially given this 'bad culture'.

Committee chair Palmer did his best to make the bloggers and other residents feel welcome at the meeting and I do believe that he has found our questions and work useful. However, he seemed to think that we were only interested in MetPro, which is wrong: MetPro was simply one very egregious example of what is wrong across the board. We know that there is a lot that is wrong across the board.

It's clear audit does not have enough resources to do as much as it needs to do. The MetPro report was almost presented as an unwelcome distraction from the other work of the committee, taking up valuable staff time. That is totally the wrong way to look at things. If MetPro has brought the wider workings of the audit to the attention of more residents, the work we have done has served a very useful purpose indeed! Scrutiny goes on with and through residents, not in spite of them!

Unfortunately, many things that should have come out of tonight didn't:

- no senior officer said yes, I've fucked up; maybe I should go and work somewhere else and you can pay my enormous salary/consultancy fees (in the case of the Deputy Chief Exec Andrew Travers, £1,000 a day) to someone less smug and complacent;

- there is no commitment to put the One Barnet (mass outsourcing) Programme on hold;

- there is to be no inquiry into the neglected aspects of the MetPro scandal, to investigate whether residents were put at risk through the use of this unlicensed company.

However, a number of senior officers had to eat a small slice of humble pie and some of them looked pretty hangdog about it. The senior officers have committed to work very hard at carrying out Internal Audit's recommendations. And a dozen or so residents got a crash course in the wonderful world of audit. Why, we might almost understand more than the leader of the council himself, Richard Cornelius, and his new Cabinet colleagues.

Cabinet member Daniel Thomas did appear to say, in answer to a public question about whether Barnet was in any fit state to go down the road of mass outsourcing, "yes, we are: this audit committee report is fantastic - very timely, it shows us where we have been going wrong. In any case, we have some really great outside consultants (Agilysis) to advise on drawing up the monster contracts we want to offer for running key council services. What could go wrong?!"

Other than Thomas, however, I didn't see any senior Barnet Tory. This is pathetic. You have discussion of a report revealing that the council's own contract controls are in a mess, more honoured in the breach than the observance, and the new council leader can't be arsed to turn up to the meeting? It shows just how seriously the administration takes the recommendations of the committee, and how little pressure, apart from that coming from a handful of residents who have now sat through the whole discussion (and who helped to initiate it), will be put on senior officers to deliver on their promises.

What chance is there that Barnet will become a better place on the strength of this showing?

Here are some choice and alarming quotes from this evening:

Hugh Rayner, Conservative member of cttee: The recommendations seem so fundamental I wonder why weren't they being done already?

Maryellen Salter, internal audit: We can't make management [management, note] do what we recommend. We can only try to inspire people.

Nick Walkley: I agree that too often things go around and around and are not dealt with.

Richard Harbord, independent member of cttee: We can't defend the indefensible. The controls are there, the problem is making sure that they are done.

The problem [MetPro scandal] was found out by error, not by any process of the council. The internal audit can't give any assurance that this is an isolated case.

Nick Walkley: A process of devolution [of decisions on procurement] has gone too far. We need to bring back control. That will require a shift in the culture, which will be difficult for officers. There must be greater levels of direct responsibility for all senior officers.

Debra Lewis, independent member of cttee: It's a shocking report. Question for Andrew Travers and for [external auditor] Grant Thornton whether you are happy signing off the accounts given this big black hole that's been revealed?

Monroe Palmer: How will we audit services that have been outsourced has been a question at past committee meetings. We need to identify how outsourcing is helping or not helping us in internal audit.

Sorry for the long post, but I felt I had to do the content of the meeting justice.

Disclaimer: I am a layperson and writing here sometimes about things that I'm not fully au fait with, so if you don't quite understand something or disagree with something leave me a comment and perhaps we can all become more enlightened together.

Barnet council and MetPro: evidence of small victories

Just before Easter, a clutch of Barnet residents, including some of its bloggers, sent off a letter to the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles.

We were renewing our call for an independent inquiry into Barnet council's dealings with the MetPro security firms. The reasons outlined, barring a few tweaks and embellishments, were those Rog T outlined in a recent blogpost.

It being Easter and likely a whole fortnight where things would move quite slowly, I expected that interest in MetPro would drop off slightly. However, that doesn't mean the issue has gone away.

Monroe Palmer, chair of the council's audit committee investigation of this issue, tells Roger the committee will meet in June. That's too late. He had hinted to Times series journalists that he would bring the investigation forward to April or May. That idea has been shelved, has it? It shouldn't be! We cannot wait till June!

The most alarming discovery of residents' and supporters' various investigations is that there are no records of any council contracts with MetPro: the council and the company merely had an "arrangement". The second most alarming discovery is that the council seems not to have monitored this "arrangement" once made. Since the council is hurtling into wholesale contracting out of services, any gaping holes in its competence in the matter of contracting need to be exposed as quickly as possible! Not in June!

I am waiting for a response from the Information Commissioner's Office about Barnet's handling of the data issue, when - only through the efforts of others - they found out that MetPro had been filming residents. I am also putting in an official complaint to the council on this matter.

With many of these measures, people tell me "don't hold your breath!", meaning nothing will happen quickly. And, even if it does, any remedy probably won't satisfy you. They could be right. The real value, however, is in propaganda. Going down the official routes yields fruit if accompanied by a publicity campaign.

That's what I and fellow bloggers and other residents intend to keep up.

To remind myself why I'm doing this, I visited the website of MetPro Emergency Response, the company that bought the assets and business of MetPro Rapid Response - you know, the company that went into voluntary liquidation on 14 March with debts of around £400,000, including £245,000 owed to HM Revenue and Customs ("the tax man").

I only had to visit the "Testimonials" page on MetPro's website to remember why it is all worth it. Whereas a few short weeks ago, Barnet council featured prominently as one of MetPro's most satisfied customers, today there is not a word about or from Barnet council. That is as it should be, but how was it possible? Only because of the campaign led by Barnet residents and bloggers. Only because we shone a light on MetPro and shamed the council into ending their relations with them. No one should ever forget that, least of all Monroe Palmer.

Open letter to Councillor Lord Monroe Palmer re MetPro audit

Councillor Lord Monroe Palmer (phew, what a mouthful! I notice that the Times series can got the honorific right but mis-spelled his name - excellent! I might follow that approach...) has moved to reassure the public of Barnet that his audit into Barnet's relationship with the MetPro security companies

"will be done under the full glare of anyone who wants to watch.”

Cllr Lord Palmer, appointed to the House of Lords in January, denied there would be a cover up by council officers looking to protect colleagues.

He said: “At the end of it all somebody’s going to have to say who did this and who made the contract.

“I’ve asked the chief executive whether I’ve got his support for this being done and he’s in favour of that. We’ve got carte blanche to say who or what’s responsible.”

Dear Councillor Lord Monroe Palmer, I have a number of matters for your consideration. Presumably the audit is being undertaken to reassure the public about the nature of the relationship between Barnet council and the MetPro security companies. In that case, it is imperative that you:

hold the audit sooner than June! If that can't be done, any "special meeting[s] to discuss the issue" held earlier should also be in public and widely advertised.

You should tell the public well in advance what is the scope of the audit and invite suggestions on how it might be widened. Leave no stone unturned!

If you do not tackle some aspect that has alarmed residents, eg, who was in charge on the night of the council meeting of 1 March - police, MetPro, council officers, councillors? - we will not be reassured.

And say whether you will be prepared to put this affair in the context of wider politics, namely, admit if it calls into question Barnet's ability - as I'm sure it will - to monitor private contracts properly. This is alarming with the looming prospect of mass outsourcing.

Appoint some truly independent "judges" onto your panel. Having seen Conservative councillors "in action" (to be accurate, that should read "Conservative councillors' inaction") on scrutiny committees in the council, I have no faith that the three Conservative members on the panel can be truly objective. They will be under enormous political pressure to investigate as little as possible, and to spare the administration's blushes.

I have to believe that you - a lord! - can rise above party coalition considerations and be objective. Or I wouldn't bother writing to you. Still, that's three against three at the end of the day, if it comes to any vote that might censure the current administration. The audit bears the risk of being considered, at least to some extent, a whitewash.

You know what would also be nice and honest: some acknowledgement from you, your audit committee, the administration and chief executive Nick Walkley that it was independent public scrutiny by the residents of Barnet, chiefly its often reviled bloggers, that brought any of this to light in the first place. The first lesson that Barnet council needs to learn is to let residents into more of the council processes, not seek to shut them out [see the Broken Barnet blog for Barnet Tories' indefensible attacks on council democracy].

In the absence of all of this, I and I'm sure other residents will continue to call for an independent public inquiry into the MetPro affair.

Best wishes, Vicki Morris