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Why the BARNET 10 chose Capita
Why have 10 Tory Councillors (aka the Barnet 10), the only members of the Council to decide Barnet's future, chosen to swell the coffers of massive private company, Capita, rather than look after the interests of the residents and businesses of Barnet? Where does their loyalty lie?
The Barnet 10, who make up the Council Cabinet, flaunt the fact that none of them have read
the lengthy contract which awards the outsourcing of most
of the Council's services to Capita for ten years with an extension clause of a
further five. Capita would be running these services far from Barnet with
contact through a call centre in Blackburn, Lancs, that could end up being
anywhere in the world together with our "local" services. Capita's
motivation: financial profit.
But we are assured there is no need for concern. Tory Leader
of the Council, and one of the 10, Richard Cornelius, explained that just like
the transaction of buying or selling a home, neither party needs to know all
the details of the contract as they are being advised by experts.
Who are these experts on whose judgement the Barnet 10 have
put their trust?
There is legal firm Trowers & Hamlin. According to Tory Cllr Hugh Rayner, the contract can be interpreted however you choose, depending on which side you're on. But if this is so, any decent lawyer would advise that ambiguity is certain to cause problems at times of dispute.
And then there are the madly
expensive firms of consultants,
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Agilisys and iMPOWER, costing taxpayers millions of pounds; one million in October alone. It is clear from the philosophy that appears on iMPOWER's website why the Barnet 10 chose outsourcing and never considered an in-house alternative, or any alternative for that matter.
"If councils can change their relationship with citizens and
customers, they have a far bigger chance of delivering to a smaller financial
envelope without ‘cutting’ in the conventional way. But citizen behaviour is
only one half of the solution – councils and their staff need to change as
well. So our approach quite deliberately starts at a service level. We don’t
subscribe to the idea that mass consolidation of back office services creates
major efficiency – these support services only account for about 10% of a
council’s cost. We focus on the 90% that is in services and in winning hearts
and minds for change at this level."
(iMPOWER website).
It is a case of asking the advice of someone you know will
give you the answer you want to hear, and paying whatever it costs to get it. And
third are the home-grown Council officers. On the advice of these three sources, the Barnet 10 have made their
decision to approve the first stage of the privatization scheme and to award it
to Capita.
With the future of Barnet at stake, you'd expect advice to
be based on evidence of Capita's conduct and performance records. It has to be
assumed that the advisers did their research. Capita's history is well-documented
on public record. So it is hard to understand how Capita's performance could possibly be regarded as acceptable, let alone desirable. Barnet is about to be tied into ten years of privatization
without an exit clause, without a safety net, and alarmingly without a mandate.
If anything goes wrong it will be the residents and businesses of Barnet who
will suffer when they are left without services, Council staff and a massive
hole in their finances. The Barnet 10 has received their advice and has acted upon it,
so the following information must have been available to them when they decided
to choose Capita as their preferred contractor.
1. Capita's record of running local government services,
e.g. Birmingham, Southampton, Sefton, Lambeth
and Harrow.
- Lambeth: "Capita was in charge
of housing and council tax services in Lambeth between 1997 and 2001, but Capita
was sacked by Lambeth Council after bringing the south London Borough's housing
benefit service to near collapse, with tens of thousands of unprocessed claims
leaving many families in danger of eviction.
"Lambeth Council dumped Capita following a scathing Benefit Fraud Inspectorate three years into a seven year contract. The council's threat to sue Capita for up to £18 million has been dropped so the service can be brought back in-house more quickly".[1]
- Birmingham controversies include the relocation of skilled local jobs to India,[2] [3]complaints of "unfair" choice of Capita for library contract[4] and this year £1 billion outsourcing "falling short".[5]
- Southampton: Just substitute the word 'Barnet' for 'Southampton' in this link.[6] The Council's initial euphoria is followed by a condemning report of the failure of Capita to run Southampton's services.
- Sefton Council were obliged to take back services from Capita after a failure to produce the savings promised.
- Harrow Council, which outsourced it’s IT to Capita, has had a couple of significant IT failures, with “thousands of emails delayed or seemingly lost in the ether” – according to Cllr Susan Hall, Leader of Harrow Conservative Group. One piece of correspondence took the Council 89 days to respond to. And that was just to acknowledge it, not to answer any questions.[8]
2. Capita has been ditched by various government departments.
- Home Office: On October 2012 'The Times' reported that the Home Office had terminated Capita's services after ten years: "Capita has lost a flagship contract to manage the Criminal Records Bureau — and some analysts believe the reason is that the company has had it too good for too long." Kevin Lapwood, at the brokers Seymour Pierce, said: “There’s a suspicion that Capita has been earning too high a margin on certain central government contracts.”[9]
- Ministry of Justice: Only yesterday (14.12.12): "A Capita-run database offering interpretation services for cases run by the Ministry of Justice has been described as "chaos" by the Committee of Public Accounts (CPA). The criticism comes as the CPA launched an investigation into the interpretation system, which was built to provide the Ministry of Justice with a system for supplying interpreters to the justice sector. However, Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the CPA, said "almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong" [10]
- Department of Work and Pensions. Capita lost the running of back office services for the Benefits Agency.
3. London Congestion
Charge: In 2009 Capita's management of call centres for the London
Congestion Charge was transferred to IBM after its first stage.[11]
4. IT: (See Harrow above). Computer Weekly
has criticized Capita's 10-year proposal for the running of Barnet's IT service as outdated, inappropriate and expensive and suggests that there
are more up-to-date methods that are far better and cheaper. [12]
5. Financial
misconduct. Capita has been fined for financial misconduct but claims that
it doesn't have the money to pay.[13]
[14]
6. Staff: Capita's
treatment of staff includes terminating the employment of established Council staff in favour of cheaper staff
outside of the borough, moves to relocate skilled local jobs overseas and paying many employees the minimum wage of £6.11 an hour while Capita Boss Paul
Pinder recently complained that he was called a "fat cat" as he "only
earns £14,500 per week. [15]
So this is why the Barnet 10 chose Capita! Just a selection of Capita's abysmal record of outsourcing which the Barnet
10 must have known about if their advisers have done their job. So why would anyone
want to touch Capita with a bargepole? Well
the Barnet 10 cannot wait. They are content to deliver the people they are
there to serve into the greedy, untrustworthy, incompetent clutches of Capita. What
irresistible web does Capita weave that entraps all comers so willingly? Whatever it is, we may never know as parts of
the contract are too "commercially sensitive" ever to be revealed.
There has been no
full Council vote on this, so there can be no opposition. Both Labour and Liberal
Democrats oppose the scheme. The right to vote has been denied them and
their objections have been ignored. But in any case, the Tories have an unbeatable majority.
We have
not been consulted and our objections have not been heard, but we can exercise the only
democratic right left to us and let the Barnet 10 know whether or not we are
happy with their choice of handing over Barnet's services and jobs to Capita by
using our vote in 2014.
If you don't know
the identity of the Barnet 10, there is a list below that gives their names and
the wards they represent.
The Barnet 10
have already started making excuses. They claim that benefits of privatization
will not be apparent at first but will be incremental over the years.
But at least we now know that they chose Capita in full knowledge that their decision could ruin Barnet for the foreseeable future with no care for the consequences to us, its people.
THE BARNET 10
aka BARNET COUNCIL CABINET
Richard Cornelius
Totteridge
Daniel Thomas
Finchley Church End
|
Andrew Harper
Garden Suburb
|
David Longstaff
High Barnet
|
Sachin Rajput
Oakleigh
|
Joanna
Tambourides
former East Barnet
|
Dean Cohen
Golders Green
|
Tom Davey
Hale
|
Helena Hart
Edgware
|
Robert Rams
former East Barnet
Advisers
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·
Consultants:
iMpower, 14 Clerkenwell Close, Clerkenwell,London, EC1R 0AN Tel: 020 7017 8030;
Agilisys, 6-28 Hammersmith Grove, London W6 7AW Tel: 0845 450 1131
iMpower, 14 Clerkenwell Close, Clerkenwell,London, EC1R 0AN Tel: 020 7017 8030;
Agilisys, 6-28 Hammersmith Grove, London W6 7AW Tel: 0845 450 1131
·
Legal advisers:
Trowers & Hamlins, London Head Office: 3 Bunhill Row, London, EC1Y 8YZ Tel: 020 7423 8000;
Trowers & Hamlins, London Head Office: 3 Bunhill Row, London, EC1Y 8YZ Tel: 020 7423 8000;
·
Officers of Barnet Council
· Initiator of 'One
Barnet' (Easy Council): Mike Freer, MP
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