Daniel Thomas tries to explain One Barnet to his neighbours

A report from Barbara Jacobson of Councillor Daniel Thomas's appearance at a meeting of the Hampstead Garden Suburb Residents' Association to 'explain' Barnet Council's 'One Barnet' programme.

If you would like Thomas to come and explain One Barnet to you and your neighbours, drop him an email: cllr.d.thomas@barnet.gov.uk.

Meeting of the Hampstead Garden Suburb Residents’ Association

The advertisement for Hampstead Garden Suburb Residents’ Association open meeting on 5 February reads  ‘OneBarnet’,  ‘Deputy Leader to speak: outsourcing explained’ , ‘An opportunity to learn what is being outsourced and why recycling is being brought in-house’,  ‘Cllr Daniel Thomas, a Suburb resident and Barnet deputy leader, will speak’ ; we might have added ‘at long last’.  For more than two years Cllr Thomas has been one of the two Cabinet members leading the One Barnet Programme, pushing it ahead without consulting or informing the residents, and refusing to listen to the more than 8000 who have been informed by BAPS and have signed the petition for a referendum.

Elsewhere it was said that the meeting would be ‘factual, not political’. Another aspiration not achieved. At the meeting Cllr Thomas declared that he is a politician and wants to be re-elected, so perhaps it was with the election of 2014 in mind that he accepted the invitation to appear before this small gathering of his neighbours (about 40 residents of the Suburb and 10 residents from other parts of the borough) in the hope and expectation that they would approve of his version of the OBP. It was not to be.

 Cllr Thomas started confidently, extolling the excellence of Barnet’s public services – the third most efficient in London’, with one of the ‘most low-cost back-office’ operations – yet stating the need to save money because of the cuts in central government funding. That might have been deemed to be factual, but the explanation of ‘transforming the council’, of a ‘new relationship with citizens’, that Barnet was moving to a commissioning model, and the way in which the savings would be made – privatization – was purely political.

He explained that the next wave of outsourcing, the DRS, would be a joint venture (JV), that it was a ‘new concept to put these services out’, and would give the council more control –not, presumably, more control than full ownership, only more control than complete privatization. The JV would also provide scope for the council to make money, as other councils would come to Barnet to do their planning work. Current staff were not trained to be commercial, so are being replaced with people who are. He admitted that work on the JV was and would remain on hold until after the judicial review of the NSCSO contract.

He repeated the well-rehearsed lines: how much adult and children’s services cost, how much the Capita contract would save, what a small proportion of the budget the NSCSO is, that risks were mitigated by a parent-company guarantee, that the contracts would be monitored and could be benchmarked if necessary, that without these measures council tax would have to be increased by 38 per cent – again failing to say ‘over ten years’. He said bringing recycling back in-house was proof that the Cabinet was not ideologically driven. But, contradicting himself again, he said that the One Barnet Programme was a [central] government pilot. He and Cllr Andrew Harper, in attendance as the HGS ward councillor, seemed surprised to be met with nothing but scepticism and opposition.

The newly informed residents questioned the validity of the monitoring system, the risks of and lack of competition inherent in a 10-year contract, the probability of failure, the way the ‘customer services’ would work, whether procurement was being outsourced (the councilor had neglected to itemize the services, just referring to them as ‘back office’), whether councilors should have lower allowances or were needed at all. These residents told the councillors that monitoring and KPIs allowed companies to ‘game the system’ – that is, assess their own performance as compliant even when it was not – and that no private supplier of public services had delivered the savings it promised. They countered Cllr Thomas’s claim that NSL was delivering on budget, and told him about the 60% parking-ticket-appeal success rate, which he and Cllr Harper said they would have to look into. The residents were not impressed by Cllr Thomas’s explanation that private companies made savings over what he had said were the very efficient Barnet services by paying their staff less and giving them fewer benefits but offering them better career opportunities. They exposed the inconsistency in his saying Capita had up-to-date software and systems for running Barnet affairs but somehow need to invest £13 million of Barnet money in IT, which Capita would then own. They did not accept that financial penalties for failures and the possibilities of renegotiating aspects of the contract after four years were sufficient safeguards, pointing out that the council would be tied up in legal arguments by Capita to counter any penalties.  They suggested it would have been better just to hire top managers from the private sector to run council services more efficiently than to contract out. Cllr Thomas’s explanations of why the council couldn’t run the public services as well as a private company sounded like he just thought the job was too difficult for him.

Cllr Harper said monitoring would also result from feedback by individual residents. He was asked how much impact those individual’s voices would have when the Cabinet ignored a petition signed by more than 8000 residents. Cllr Thomas trotted out his ‘that’s only 2 per cent’ of residents line, and the dismissive ‘people will sign opposing petitions’; does a politician really think he’s scoring points by suggesting that his electorate are so stupid? We countered that the 8000 was not a result of canvassing the entire borough, that BAPS was trying to get only 7000 signatures. We could have added, 8000 is a lot more than the 11 Cabinet members solely responsible for the OBP.

Cllr Harper’s other contribution was to say that the Tories had frozen council tax, a comment that was almost jeered.

In reply to a question about Capita’s appearance on the Barnet website, Cllr Thomas said that Capita had started working with the council after the decision in December to award the contract. There was no opportunity to ask whether the parties should have waited until signing the contract before this work began.

The foregoing is, of course, a summary, not a verbatim account (except where quotation marks are used), so comments are not attributed to individuals. There were no voices supporting Cllr Thomas’s presentation. While there’s no knowing what the silent minority thought,  on their way out, the residents were offered the Barnet Spring March leaflet, and I think only one declined it.

It is interesting that the Cllrs Thomas and Harper did not initiate this event, and that elsewhere in the borough Tory councilors have not appeared before their constituents to explain the OBP. After this showing, they will probably be even more reluctant to do so.

“Next we’ll have people asking us to marry them to their dogs and toasters”

No, nobody really said this, but the spoof report on Newsthump of the successful vote in Parliament to introduce gay marriage (as yet only a Bill, not a Law) was horribly believable.

Of course, who might say something like that? Why, my own local - Hendon - MP, Tory Matthew Offord. He spoke in the debate in the Commons, expounding his weird theory that - well, I'll let you read it for yourself (as reported in the Pink Paper):

”The evidence from around the world is that once marriage is redefined, with a flexible definition, pressure always grows for redefinition.

“There are several advocates of same-sex marriage who openly support changing the law to permit polygamy.”

One friend quipped that Offord supports the human right of his dog Max to enter Parliament, but not equality for gay people. I quipped back who would you rather wake up next to, Max or Matthew? (That kind of day.)

Offord has fallen out over this issue with former Barnet Council Cabinet colleague and now MP for Finchley and Golders Green, Mike Freer. It was interesting to see how fewer than half of Tory MPs voted for gay marriage, although it's their own party that has brought in the bill to allow it. And how more than half of London Tory MPs voted for it. Yes, London is different.

I have decided to mark this momentous historical development by coming out as bisexual. I imagine this is as uninteresting to you as it is to me. I think most bisexuals will tell you that it is much easier to act on one side - the heterosexual side - of this self-definition than the homosexual one. Certainly, in my case, I am hardly free of one man before another one hoves into view. When will I - or they? - ever learn?

In 1978 when I was 13 (!?) the Tom Robinson Band's "Glad to Be Gay" song was in the charts. My friend rang me up in a state of great agitation the first time she heard it, via an archaic institution known as "Dial-a-disc". You rang a telephone number and the one existing (and publicly owned) telephone service played you their record of the week down the line. This week it was "Glad to Be Gay".

We thought there must have been a revolution (sexual revolution?) in London (it for sure hadn't reached West Malling yet).

I feel there are still many revolutions to go before we are anywhere near humans enjoying liberated sexuality (for which we only need to free ourselves!). But we must be creeping there.

Friern Barnet Library reborn (again!) at noon today

I popped into Friern Barnet Library yesterday with a friend. It was great to see the library still open and the campaigners preparing for its big day today. I've just finished a long set of notes on lessons of the (ongoing) campaign to save Friern Barnet Library. I'll spare you now, but will publish snippets soon. But today I would suggest as many as possible get down to participate in what should be an historic occasion: the Occupy activists hand over to the new licensees.

Long live Friern Barnet Library!

Press release for today's events by Occupy London squatters:

Handover of keys from the squatters to the licencees and red ribbon reopening, 12 Noon Midday, Tuesday 5 February 2013

CONTACTS: Phoenix 07769 791387

Friern Barnet Library Saved – handover ceremony on Tuesday 12 Noon

On Tuesday 5th February, at midday, exactly five months since the occupation began, the community will take possession of the Friern Barnet Library.

The local community – represented by the trustees of the library - are on the verge of agreeing a two-year lease with Barnet Council (LBB) to run the library with some funding from the council.

At the ceremony, squatters and supporters of the Occupy movemnet, who have been keeping the building open and enabling the local community to run a book lending service and community centre in the building, will hand it over to the trustees of the newly formed Friern Barnet Community Library (FBCL).

They have now received a licence from LBB to be in the library for two weeks with the promise of renewal of the licence if necessary to negotiate a lease and other matters (eg, who pays the utilities insurance and ongoing future repairs). LBB has shown a willingness to amend the licence to their satisfaction.

“This is a triumph for the local community,” said, one of the trustees of the new community library. “Our library was closed in April. And we were told the building would be ‘marketed’. Now we have our library back, with council financial support. We achieved this through constant campaigning, lobbying, and building a broad alliance including squatters, activists, supporters of the Occupy movement, local residents and library campaign groups."

Housing and Squatting activist Phoenix, stated: “This campaign definitely shows the success of direct action and squatting. This is a seed of change. The whole country will soon be facing 80% of the rest of the cuts. They can take some inspiration from this direct action. We have collectively helped to save this library from the bulldozer and being sold off for development.

"We would like to see more arrangements between owners of the 1.4 million empty buildings in the UK and squatter/homeless and community groups, rather than the criminalisation being carried out by this government under the new law. A law we feel strongly is unjust, undemocratic and arbitry.

“We want to make it clear that, the activists support the National Libraries Campaign and that putting in place a paid librarian is a priority. I believe consensus has been reached with the community on this point. As it stands, the funding offered by the council does not cover a full time librarian, but as the two year lease is negotiated and plans go forward, this will be kept at the front of the conversation. The activists would like to say that we are strongly opposed to austerity and all the cuts, especially to the library service.

“We are also heavily opposed to criminalising the homeless/squatters. The extreme right of the conservative party is seeking to make squatting non-residential building also illegal. This, if it was successful, would affect all our rights to protest by occupying/squatting space, and would make successful community squat occupations such as the library campaign ILLEGAL, thus further removing our rights to shelter and protest.”

NOTES: The Friern Barnet Community Library (Ltd) has been legally incorporated in the last fortnight in response to the opportunity to negotiate a lease with the council.

The library was closed by the Council in April 2012. Community activist squatters reopened it on 3 September, as a campaign to save the library and also as a protest against the new criminalisation of the homeless and squatters by the LASPO Act 2012 (enacted on 1 September).

NB squatting in non residential buildings is still legal. For more on the threat to squatters rights by criminalising Commercial squatting: http://phoenixrainbow23.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/urgent-raise-awareness-of-early-attempt.html

The Squatters Action For Secure Homes have just launched a campaign and rapidly growing petition to repeal the LASPO Act 2012. http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/44597 please sign and support.

It was the Direct Action by the squatting community and supporters of Occupy on Sept 5th 2012 that re-ignited the campaign to keep the library open.

Despite a two year campaign LBB had refused to negotiate. However at the second Possession hearing on Dec 18th Judge Pearl ordered that LBB should try and negotiate some form of licence to keep the library open, in order to protect the rights of the protesters under Articles 10 and 11 of the Human Rights Act and to preserve 'proportionality' between the rights of the protesters and the rights of the council.

It was this Direct Action combined with the placing of the building on the register as a community asset by local residents that in the end forced the council to negotiate. The supporters of Occupy also acted as caretakers looking after the building and ennabling a wide variety of events to take place in co-operation with the local community. They helped to strengthen the bonds emerging between different sections of the community so that at the meeting on Jan 29th many residents from different local groups stepped forward to thank the squatters and occupiers for their crucial help.

One local resident, Maureen Ivens, Chairwoman of the Save Friern Barnet Library group, said of all the different groups that had come together "We are here as one".

Occupy London is against the cuts and continues to support the National LIbraries Campaign and the local community in their determination to install a professional librarian.

This action by the local community in no way replaces or diminishes the responsibilty of the council and ggovernment to carry out its responsibilities under the 1964 Libraries Act.

However as a result of all the work done by an alliance of local residents, squatters, occupiers and legal advisers, the Friern Barnet Community Library (Ltd) trustees will be handed over the keys by the council for a temporary licence allowing then to keep the Friern Barnet library building open until a full two year lease is signed by both parties.

March to save Chase Farm A&E, Saturday 2 Feb

Last Saturday I joined the march to save Lewisham Hospital's A&E and maternity services. This Saturday you can join the march in Enfield to save Chase Farm A&E. Losing the A&E will have a major impact on Barnet residents, as those living near Chase Farm will no longer have that option, and those attennding Barnet General will be sharing those services with more people.

Here is the Barnet Alliance publicity about the march:

Join us on the march to save Chase Farm A&E on Saturday 2 February, meet 1pm at the War Memorial, Enfield Town. Bring banners, friends and family.

Keep Chase Farm Hospital's A&E march from at the war memorial on Chase Green, in Chase Side, Enfield.

DEMONSTRATORS are planning to march through Enfield in protest at the planned closure of A&E and maternity services at Chase Farm Hospital.

The march is being organised by the North East London Council of Action, a group campaigning against hospital cuts. It is being supported by the Save Chase Farm campaign and the London Fire Brigade Union and will start at 1pm at the war memorial on Chase Green, in Chase Side, Enfield, proceed through Enfield Town centre and end at the hospital.

This will affect us in Barnet directly as it will impact on the capacity of Barnet General hospital, therefore we will join the march in solidarity with our neighbours, to oppose cuts to any NHS facilities and to protect our own services.

Friern Barnet Library - saved?!

After a furious few weeks of negotiations with Barnet Council - and, at times, with each other - campaigners to save Friern Barnet Library think they have got a deal of sorts to keep the library open.

A licence granted to a number of them to run a library and negotiate a longer-term solution. The press release below explains more:

The trustees of FBCL have now received an amended licence from LBB  to allow them to be in the library legally. They will have 2 weeks, with promise of renewal of licence if necessary, to negotiate a lease and other matters. LBB has shown a willingness to amend the licence to their satisfaction.

There was a meeting tonight [Thursday 31 January] at 7 pm where it was agreed that Occupy will hand over the keys to the building Tuesday 5th February 12 midday - EVERYONE WELCOME

The local residents thanked Occupy for a fantastic occupation.

Occupy encouraged Friern Barnet Community Library to continue to fight for a paid librarian and said this victory was not just about a local library but about the national campaign to save libraries everywhere.

I'm fully with Occupy on the need to keep pressing Barnet Council to provide a proper library service - in all its libraries. How it can do that when it wants to axe most of the professional librarian posts is anyone's guess.

I'm also with Occupy on what I read between the lines: that they don't trust the current Tory administration of Barnet Council an inch, and that the library will have to be defended for a good while to come.

But what has been achieved does show that campaigning works! Long live Friern Barnet Library!

Sleepover at Friern Barnet Library, 31st January

What do you do when you don't know what to do? Keep your options open.

Barnet Council seem to be stalling ahead of the intended end of the Friern Barnet Library occupation on 31st January - perhaps it's not deliberate, but inefficiency. But the question remains, will they or won't they grant a licence to the community campaigners who have stepped forward for the role?

The press release below from the Friern Barnet Library occupiers points out some of the issues at stake. If you want to support the library and are free on Thursday evening, we are invited to visit for the evening and stay the night if we can - remember, possession is 9/10 of the law! I've got my sleeping bag ready!

Press release

Plans are afoot for a sleepover and celebration on Thursday 31st January in Friern Barnet Community Library, to celebrate hopefully the saving of the Library into the future. People are asked to bring some food to share for a celebration of how far we have come and the hope of a deal.

This may be concluded soon with a handover of the keys to the Directors of Friern Barnet Community Library Ltd.

The nine Trustees (as they prefer to be called) of the newly-created Community Library, which is stocked with 10,000 volumes donated by local residents, are in negotiations with Barnet Council for a lease to run the library with the community.

The library, staffed by Occupiers/squatters and the local community, is currently open six days a week, from 11am-7pm, with many evening events.

We hope for agreement with the council and that the lease should be concluded soon and a handover to the local residents enacted.

"We are in negotiation with the council", said Jeffrey Newman, one of the nine library Trustees. "We  hope to agree a two-year licence, followed by a longer lease and a sufficient grant for initial capital expenditure to put into a professional librarian to help our volunteer pool to run the library. We are all working flat out  for a signed legal agreement with the Council.

"The sleepover celebration is being held to celebrate a win-win-win-win conclusion for the local residents, for the Council, for the occupiers, for CommUnityBarnet and for the National Libraries campaigns."

There are a number of variables in our position dependant on what the council is actually offering - more information confirmed and what the whole group decides at our Wednesday night meeting..

Many of the Occupiers, local campaigners and groups feel strongly that we require clear assurances from the council that the library will be safe in the future. (No possibility of Capita (the new Company hoping to run Barnet under the 'One Barnet' council privatisation scheme, currently under Judicial Review) selling it on to a Developer, or it still being lost to a commercial bid under the Community Right to bid).

The council has still not confirmed the exact details of the lease, we are awaiting more information before a key handover can happen.

Our weds 6.30pm main meeting will be deciding our position reference the council deal being offered, the appeal and the situation on Friday.

With all the details of the arrangement to be worked out, many in the group feel we should not hand over the building on Friday until  assurances on the level of funding the council are offering as well as many other matters are agreed. Responsibilities for the large repair costs, insurance and utilities, etc.

To push for the best deal possible for this library, but also for the National Libraries campaign, who have grave concerns over the push to low funded voluntary libraries taking over paid librarians situations. The decisions we make will reverberate nationally.

We have asked the council for a 2-3 week extension to sort the details.

Apparently the Leader Richard Cornelius has finally after numerous requests agreed to meet negotiators on Thursday.

We await tonight or tomorrow morning the Court of Appeals decision on the appeal and a stay of execution of the bailiffs, which would:

a) take the pressure off of the friday situation (possession order can be enacted on Friday 1st February);

b) could give some more weeks or months for the negotiations to get the best deal possible for all future generations of library users;

c) uphold our rights to protest (ECHR articles 10 and 11 ) in publicly owned buildings that have been closed due to the cuts. This could be a majorly significant rulling.

Journalists are invited to get in touch and possibly visit Thursdayevening/ Friday morning for the very interesting latest stage of the story of the library that would not close.

Yours, the library caretakers

NOTES:

The Friern Barnet Community Library (Ltd) has been legally incorporated in the last fortnight. Members of the Occupy London movement squatted and reopened the library, as a campaign to save the Library and also as a protest against the new criminalisation of the homeless and squatters by the LASPO Act 2012. (Enacted Sept 1st, Occupied Sept 3rd).

NB squatting in non residential buildings is still legal. However an attempt has just been launched by some on the extreme right of the Conservative Party to criminalise and make non residential building squatting also illegal - we oppose this.

This if it was successful would affect all our rights to protest by occupying/squatting space, and would make successful community squat occupations such as the library campaign ILLEGAL, thus further removing our rights to shelter and protest.
http://phoenixrainbow23.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/urgent-raise-awareness-of-early-attempt.html

The Squatters Action For Secure Homes have just launched a campaign and rapidly growing petition to repeal the unfair, undemocratic, unlawful and arbitrary LASPO Act 2012.
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/44597 - please sign and support.

Occupiers have been running Friern Barnet Community Library with the community since September. The library had been closed despite strong local opposition in April last year. Negotiating the lease and accompanying grant is complicated. A "tenancy at will" is under discussion as an interim arrangement while the lease is concluded.

Burnout? Burns Night!

Ross Houston addresses a haggis

If you follow my blog you will notice a lack of prolificness lately. Sorry, perhaps I was suffering from burnout at the end of last year. I am slowly springing back into life. I seem to be busy enough, but little makes it as far as the 'pages' of the blog.

I can report, however, that on Saturday night some friends and I made it as far as the Finchley and Golders Green Labour Party Burns Night quiz. We had a good time, though quiz-wise achieved only mid-table mediocrity.

I think my sole contribution to the party was:

(1) to have been the one to suggest we go in the first place;

(2) to know that Indonesia is the country with the largest Muslim population;

(3) to name our team Barnet Old Haggis (reference joke from last year - wonder what he's doing now);

(4) a few photographs, most of which will remain confidential, on the grounds of kindness to my friends (and myself). I feel no such personal obligations to Councillor Ross Houston, who looked magnificent in his kilt and, fittingly, to whom it fell to recite Robert Burns' 'Address to a Haggis' (do violence to the Scots language?!).

Thank you, Councillor Houston.

Thank you also to Councillors Kath McGuirk and Alison Moore who did most of the wonderful cooking.

I raised a dram in honour of my great grandmother Jeannie Kirkbride (a made-up name?) who made her way from somewhere north of the border south to Wallasey around the start of the 20th century, there to marry my great grandfather John Dean. Were it not for their union... no Citizen Barnet.

Party, Friern Barnet Library, Friday 25 February

With the medium-term fate of Friern Barnet Library still uncertain - who doubts that it will remain a library in the long term?! - we are invited to one more party under the tutelage of the current occupiers. Tomrrow night, Friday 25 February.

East Dulwich's finest, Sly & Reggie of The Middle Class Sound System, performing at Friern Barnet Library (7pm), with support from local bands (& a belly dancer).

Possibly the last music event in FBL's 78yr history.

Address: Friern Barnet Road, N11 3DR.

All welcome. Thanks in anticipation of your support for FBL.

One Barnet referendum petition - presented Tuesday 22 January

At last, Barnet residents' own views on the Council's One Barnet outsourcing programme will be heard in the council chamber. Tonight, Tuesday 22 January, we will hand in the so-called One Barnet referendum petition. The text:

Hands off our Barnet! Stop the One Barnet Programme

We, residents of Barnet, are alarmed at the council's plan known as the ONE BARNET PROGRAMME, to hand over our public services to private for-profit companies. We call for an immediate stop to these measures until the issue is put to the electorate in the form of a simple YES or NO referendum on the ONE BARNET PROGRAMME.

A representative of the Barnet Allliance for Public Services will give a five-minute presentation on what the One Barnet referendum petition means to us.

We have been collecting signatures online here and on paper for a few months and a little while back topped the 8,000 we need for the right to present the petition at a full council meeting. This January date was the earliest we could present it.

It might seem as though the horse has bolted, since the Council is poised to sign the first big contract with Capita. However, in the event, the legal challenge by Maria Nash means that the deal cannot quite be sealed yet... So, as it turns out, Tuesday's presentation will be quite a dramatic moment.

A few years back, in 2008, when the local trade unions and some of the more left-wing residents set themselves against the mass privatisation plan (named 'Future Shape', then 'easyCouncil' before finally seeing the murky light of a grey day as 'One Barnet') we quite simply under-estimated how much support we would get from ordinary residents for our stance - if we only knew how to ask for it.

Barnet's Tories never believed that they needed to ask residents about One Barnet, they thought residents would not care about how services would be delivered. They certainly did not imagine that residents would oppose the bulk of council services being handed over to outsourcing multinationals. How wrong they were. And how wrong were we to leave it so late before we went big with our publicity! I think we simply spent too long rehearsing the arguments - and trying to take our objections through the proper political channels.

However, perhaps it is not too late! We have our petition! We have our council chamber debate! We have our legal challenges! And we certainly have, I believe, the support of most of the engaged Barnet residents.

Please join us on Tuesday 22 January at Hendon Town Hall, The Burroughs, NW4 from 6pm for a lobby and then inside the Council Chamber from 7pm. Follow proceedings on Twitter: @BarnetAlliance

Lawyers issue JR proceedings against Barnet Council over One Barnet

I've been very busy with work and personal affairs lately, so am only rather belatedly posting this news about the next stage in Maria Nash's legal challenge - one of two - to Barnet Council's "One Barnet" privatisation programme.

This is how Barnet Alliance for Public Services reported the news on 10 January:

Barnet Alliance for Public Services is happy to hear that Steel & Shamash Solicitors, acting on behalf of Barnet resident Maria Nash, have today issued proceedings against Barnet Council, Capita PLC, EC Harris LLP, and Capita Symonds Ltd.

Ms Nash seeks a judicial review of the Council’s decision to award the contract for the “New Support and Customer Services Organisation” or “NSCSO” to Capita plc, and of the Council’s impending decision to award the “Development and Regulatory Services” or “DRS” contract, to either Capita Symonds Ltd or EC Harris LLP. Maria Nash said:  

“Despite being involved in local issues, including being engaged in the political process in relation to issues that affect me, I have not been consulted, either individually or as a member of any of the local bodies or interest groups with which I am associated. I have been desperately concerned about the impact of the NSCSO and DRS on me and others, especially the vulnerable such as the elderly, disabled or young. What I would like to see is proper meaningful engagement with stakeholders before a decision is made to outsource services to a private company.”

And here some more details of the grounds of the case for Judicial Review.