Tag Archives: barnet council

Too expensive to investigate Barnet Council- the auditor’s excuse

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Barnet Council " too expensive to investigate"

Paul Hughes, the auditor who refused a public interest inquiry into the appalling £1.3 m MetPro security staff scandal exposed by my fellow bloggers has rejected a further appeal for an inquiry into Barnet Council’s extraordinary inability to monitor  its own contracts properly.

Only last week his inaction was singled out by Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, in a speech to the annual conference of the Chartered Institute for Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) – the big wigs of the accountancy profession – for  missing the scandal altogether when his firm Grant Thornton audited Barnet Council for a £373,000 fee. Instead Pickles praised Barnet bloggers, Mrs Angry and Mr Mustard among many others, for finding out  what Mr Hughes missed. ( see my old colleague Patrick Butler in Society Guardian).http://bit.ly/pujHys Now he says he can’t really investigate because it will be too expensive for the taxpayer.

In a letter to Andrew Dismore, the  former MP for Hendon and Labour candidate challenging Brian Coleman for the London Assembly next year, he says:

“In considering whether to undertake work in connection with a public interest report we are required to balance the additional cost top the taxpayer with the nature and scale of the issue. The relevant Audit Commission rates for the level of staff  that would be required for this are up to £380 an hour (engagement lead) and £210 per hour ( manager) and there is some risk that at a cost to the taxpayer we can only repeat what is already in, or will be in, the public domain.”

” Our view remains that the most appropriate response for the taxpayers of Barnet is to allow the council to complete its own review before committing to any detailed investigation work on our part.”

He does promise that he will not hesitate to use these powers ” in the public interest” when the oucnil reports back in September if the soon to be privatised management are not ” robust” on their response.

Not surprisingly Mr Dismore is not satisfied. He writes back that  he finds his reply   “very disappointing, as I know will many other Barnet residents. Can you please set out  in detail what steps you will be taking to “monitor the situation and assess the management and internal audit review work”.

So there is no change here. The bloggers who got MetPro need to keep Mr Hughes on his expensive toes. A reminder: his e-mail is paul.hughes@uk.gt.com.

Exclusive :The district auditor’s disgraceful response to the Barnet MetPro scandal

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Andrew Dismore: Right to complain Pic courtesy: thejc.com

The scandal over  the employment of security guards by MetPro Rapid Response is one of the worst examples of a council failing to monitor outsourcing of a service – the only one I know where an authority never even signed a proper contract. See my earlier blog at http://bit.ly/ktHKbs

 So it is  outrageous that  Paul Hughes, the  district auditor,has refused a request from Andrew Dismore, the former MP for Hendon and now Labour’s challenger to Tory Brian Coleman, for a full scale public interest inquiry into the affair.

Andrew rightly decided to report the council to the district auditor and call for a public interest report into the scandal. In his letter to Mr Hughes he pointed out:” Having been at the Council meeting when the Robocop style of security used by MetPro at the request of the Council first came under criticism, the consequent investigations have revealed a catalogue of catastrophic failures by Barnet Council and its leadership.

” This poor contracting and lack of financial control  is not a one off, as the Iceland investment fiasco and cost overruns of the Aerodrome Rd bridge confirm.

“What is especially worrying, is that the internal audit found there were inadequate systems to ensure the same thing did not happen again. The “One Council” initiative will create dozens of opportunities for more to go wrong too, with consequent mammoth losses to Barnet’s long suffering tax payers, if immediate corrective action is not taken.”

Mr Hughes reply is equally instructive:

“Where the body is already taking action to remedy deficiencies the auditor may conclude that a Public Interest Report at that point would only have limited impact and may in fact have the effect of unnecessarily undermining public confidence in a public body” (my italics).

“Therefore,whilst we consider that the matters raised in the internal audit report do represent serious internal control issues, our view is that a public interest report is not required at this time.”

He goes on to say the reasons he has refused a further inquiry is because Barnet has promised to investigate further and reform its procedure and because ” the matter is already in the public domain”.

He leaves a faint hope of reconsidering his decision if the council responds by significantly delaying reforms or the failure is found to be systemic (by the council investigating itself).

Barnet has responded. It is cutting  nine more jobs in the department supervising contracts – presumably to increase the scope for more mistakes.

 As  the leader of Barnet Labour Group, Alison Moore  says:” How will cutting posts help deliver an “effective and responsive” procurement service when the council are about to embark on complex privatisations?  I suspect this decision has more to do with saving money than sorting out the service. This is a barmy proposal.”

Andrew Dismore has challenged this pathetic decision of  the auditor whose company Grant Thornton managed to miss the MetPro scandal for three years and pass Barnet’s accounts without any question.

His letter warns: “Nothing could further undermine public confidence in Barnet’s administration, which is now at rock bottom as any objective resident would confirm and as evidenced by the Council’s own satisfaction surveying.”

 “My request for the public interest inquiry was not just in the context of Metpro, but more generally into Barnet’s contract letting and monitoring processes and checks. Only this week, the Hendon Times has carried on its front page yet another example, this time in the contracting (or lack of it) for care services, where failings at the social care centre with whom the Council failed to follow proper procedures and checks and to agree a formal contract actually led to the death of a resident with learning difficulties. Barnet are serial offenders presiding over a catalogue of procurement disasters. ”

…” there appear to be more deep seated problems with procurement and contracts that throw real doubt about the council’s capacity to take on the highly risky “easyCouncil” service outsourcing.  In the circumstances, I would invite you to reconsider your decision. ”

Mr Hughes will know that a public interest report by him could have wider implications for other councils. Given Barnet boasts it is a Tory flagship council that is blazing the privatisation trail – that is even more reason to check its public probity in this area.

Of course  there might be other reasons. I am sure Mr Hughes is a man of such probity that he  couldn’t have reached his decision in the knowledge that Grant Thornton, under new audit reforms following the abolition of the Audit Commission,, would need to persuade Barnet to continue its lucrative auditing contract. I mean he wouldn’t decide the commercial profits of Grant Thornton are more important than public probity. Or that given under the present rules Barnet will have to pay for the public interest report, that he could save the council money and avoid annoying Brian Coleman by refusing to investigate.

But you don’t have to sit back. If you, and say, all the bloggers in Barnet think Mr Hughes is wrong you can demand he reconsider. I suggest you do this to back up Andrew Dismore. You can email the auditor at paul.hughes@uk.gt.com .

A judge is likely to look sympathetically at large numbers of residents demanding the district auditor investigate  the £1.3m non contract with MetPro and Mr Hughes’ decision is subject to judicial review. I hope it won’t have to come to this.

MetPro: A damning indictment of a flagship Tory council

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One of three names for MetPro security company

Barnet Council: A damning report Pic: courtesy Barnet Council

The official audit report on  MetPro out this week – the bust security company employed by Barnet Council caught out secretly filming bloggers- is one of the most damning indictments of council incompetence I have ever seen.

The council’s own internal auditors have admitted that it had no business  spending £1.3m on  the security firm – under various titles and guises-  without carrying out basic checks or opening up the tender to competition.

 Frankly some of the findings are so damning as it to be almost unbelievable. Not only were basic checks never undertaken but officials even paid out cash without noticing it was going into an unauthorised bank account from those specified in the contracts and with the wrong VAT number on them. The council is even in danger of being prosecuted by Revenue and Customs for overpayments of VAT as a result. In other cases, there is NO  record of payments made to the company at all.  Any small business caught doing this would find the heavy hand of  the revenue turning them over.

This scandalous state of affairs would never have come to light without the combined work of Barnet’s bloggers – with particular reference to Mrs Angry’s  heroic and diligent work on the Broken Barnet website. See  here for her full report.( http://bitly.com/i13ngn )

As she points out the auditors’ finding are appalling: “No procurement exercise had been undertaken to appoint MetPro, in accordance with the Council’s CPR.
No written contract between the Council and MetPro could be found.
There is no record of an approval and authorisation for the use of MetPro for providing security
services.
In the absence of a formal procurement exercise, we could not locate the following
documents/confirmation for MetPro, which the CPR require:
 Financial viability of the company
 Equal Opportunities Assessment
 Criminal Records Bureau checks
 Confirmation of company’s Public Liability Insurance arrangements
 Confirmation of the company’s Health and Safety registration
 Confirmation on the SIA licence status of the Company Officers
 An agreed specification which outlined the service to be provided
 An agreed schedule of rates for payment of invoices
 A process for monitoring performance of service delivery to establish if the Council was
receiving value for money ”

 It goes on: “Our sample testing of invoices highlighted there had been payments of invoices in the names of MetPro Group and MetPro Emergency Response Ltd where a valid VAT number had not been quoted. However a full review of all payments of invoices should be completed to identify all instances where a valid VAT number had not been quoted and the implications discussed with HMRC. There were inappropriate changes to bank account details on SAP Financial System resulting in payments to an unauthorised vendor – MetPro Emergency Response.”

Download  the full report at http://bit.ly/kqWmR0 .

There are much wider implications from this damning indictment of this flagship Easycare council.

With the government pushing councils to contract out – there must be proper supervision or literally millions of pounds could go astray. And there need to be questions asked of  Barnet’s external auditors, Grant Thornton, who consistently give such an incompetent shower of officials a clean bill of health. The firm can’t be value for money if it misses such a  big black hole.

Sadly the signs are in the name of  localism this could proliferate. Current plans for audit reform by Grant Shapps, the local government minister, intend to encourage a light touch.  This will be good news for incompetents and crooks across the nation but very bad news for council taxpayers everywhere.

Assetco and MetPro: Stains on London’s political masters

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Coleman and Assetco: stain on London fire Brigade

Metpro-stain on Barnet Council

Politicians at the London Fire Brigade and Barnet Council should be hanging their heads in shame for awarding multi-million pound contracts to two private contractors, MetPro and Assetco – one of which is now bankrupt and the other only valued as junk  stock .

Both scandals have featured on this site before but the situation is going from bad to worse.

An extraordinary statement from Assetco -owner of London and Lincolnshire’s fire engines and a strike breaking auxiliary force for London’s firefighters – basically admits that it does not have the cash any more to meet capital repayments needed to run its contracts with London, Lincolnshire and the Middle East.See http://bit.ly/mP5WFa .

The key paragraph reads:  “The main issue that the business is facing is the capital repayment profile not matching the long-term nature of the Company’s contracts. Whilst the Company is cash generative and can meet its interest costs, it does not generate sufficient funds to meet all the repayment of capital as currently scheduled. The banks are supportive regarding the short-term financing situation and are awaiting our proposals on a financial restructuring but in the meantime we are in breach of our banking arrangements.”

This sorry state has been brought about by its former founder John Shannon who last month was summarily dismissed by the company.

Shannon had landed the company in court facing a winding up order for millions of pounds of unpaid taxes from Revenue and Customs-something they don’t do lightly- and a huge £1m unpaid legal bill from Nabarro’s.

No sooner had these been settled by diluting the share price in a £16m offer to new investors then more grief was to follow. The share price  is now down to a junk figure of 4.65p a share –  when it once sold at 66p. Market capitalisation at £11m is now less than the value of its PFI contracts in London and the Middle East.

Yet Shannon and his former co-founder are trying to recover £1.1m from the collapsing firm while facing a counter-claim from Assetco for £8m for ” breaches of fiduciary duties”. A bloody legal battle  is on the way distracting it from its business.

 All this might not matter if they did not own all the fire engines  in the capital and Lincolnshire. But the London Fire Brigade has reacted to the crisis with breath-taking complacency. Gareth Bacon, performance management chair, believes there is no serious problem.

 Brian Coleman, who was wined and dined by Shannon as well as receiving a gift of a £350 Harvey Nicks Christmas hamper, is silent about the fate of his dining companion.

Yet consider this.Would it be appropriate for a public body to avoid paying taxes and be so reckless with its finances so it can’t repay its capital loans to banks? And for the authority to be in a such a bad way that it has had to hire financial staff to sort out the mess. Heads would roll.

Barnet Council is in a similar mess over the bust private security firm MetPro who owed £250,000 to Revenue and Customs for unpaid tax, VAT and even pay roll tax deducted from its employees.

 The fate of this company would not have come to light if it had not been so reckless by filming bloggers and members of the public without their knowledge or permission as they came to watch the council implement cuts.

But now Barnet have admitted they were UNAWARE of the financial plight of the company which got £1m of business and glowing references from them on its website  (now finally removed) and appears to have avoided any public tendering process to get the business.

There is a link to both these scandals and he is called Brian Coleman. He has been the key advocate of the government’s privatisation agenda and cheerleader for the company -particularly the disgraced John Shannon. He is also the big wheel on Barnet Council- Cabinet post for the environment- and must have had some knowledge of the bankrupt MetPro. And there is even a bit part for the complacent Gareth Bacon in all this – his division at  Dutch consultants MartinWardAnderson has made £75,000  (£12,600 a month) over just a six month period in 2010 – providing temporary finance staff for Barnet.

Can anyone do anything about this? Yes- firefighters employed by the London Fire Brigade could ask for a due diligence investigation by the district auditor Michael Howarth-Maden over the handling of the PFI contract, alleging the authority had employed a company involved in proven tax avoidance

 Similarly residents of Barnet could demand an investigation by its external auditors,Grant Thornton into the hiring of MetPro. Here the crucial question should be -how they got the contract in the first place.

It is really time action was taken – the scandalous behaviour of both firms is a stain on London’s politicians.

We filmed bloggers and Barnet residents for Tory council-Private security chief

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 Update: Barnet bloggers have called for full independent public inquiry into Barnet Council’s handling of the MetPro contract.

They say:

The only way that trust can be restored in Barnet Council, following the MetPro debacle, is to hold a full public inquiry. We the undersigned call on Nick Walkley, CEO of Barnet Council, and Lynne Hillan, Council Leader, to immediately engage an independent investigator, enjoying the confidence of Barnet residents, to look into the relationship between MetPro Rapid Response/MetPro Emergency Response and Barnet Council. We demand to know what Barnet Council asked MetPro Rapid Response/MetPro Emergency Response to do and what Barnet Council has done with any information about residents it has had access to as a result of MetPro’s work. Contact for more details: Vicki Morris vickimorris@btinternet.com

Did Barnet authorise the filming?

 

Or did the private security firm do it?

A former director of  a security company now bust with £400,000 debts – has  admitted that he equipped his security staff with security cameras so he could film protestors,bloggers and  residents – who came to Tory Barnet council’s meeting which approved cuts.

A scoop by Georgia Graham – a reporter on the Hampstead and Highgate Express  –  following up exclusives on this site and by Broken Barnet -(See this link to Broken Barnet for the latest story http://bitly.com/i13ngn )  got an admission from Kevin Sharkey, one of  the directors of MetPro. See http://bit.ly/frWGO1

In an interview today with me, he said: “Our staff normally wear clothing  with cameras so we can document what is happening for both sides. It is normal practice at football matches and where there are large crowds.” He said he was doing the filming for people’s safety and for his own staff’s safety to make sure nobody was hurt.

” In this day and age nobody would act without authorisation and we were asked to do this by Barnet Council. We were preparing for the worst but hoping for the best. In the event nothing happened unlike at Camden and Haringey councils.”

 He  said the main reason why people could not watch the meeting was because they had arrived late and said that he knew people who were there were up ” tricks ” to get other people into the chamber which would have breached fire regulations.

” We know what tricks people got up to like saying they were going to the toilet to free a place and then coming back.”

He also amounted an extraordinary defence of the ” dire state ” of his company – saying he was an employee not a director – despite being registered at Companies House as a director.

 He put the blame for the collapse on his partner Luigi Mansi saying ” he  was running the company and he is going to have pay back a lot of money for a long time.”

 ” Me, I haven’t got a penny to my name and I am living in rented accommodation. I am part of the community myself. I was working 130 hours a week to keep the company going but it owed a lot of money in tax.”

Barnet Council yesterday insisted that it had not ordered MetPro to do this. In a statement the authority said:

“MetPro has gone into liquidation and the council has terminated its contract.  At no point has the council ever authorised security staff carrying lapel cameras. 
 “Unlike some other London boroughs, the setting of the budget in Barnet at cabinet and council was held with the public present and at the advertised time and place. Every resident who arrived at Hendon Town Hall by the start of the meeting had a place in either the public gallery or the overflow room.”

Whoever is right this is a damning indictment of local democracy at Barnet Council. They have employed people who are equipped to film people at a public meeting. They have banned bloggers and residents from filming, tweeting or recording their own council against the  advice of Eric Pickles, the communities secretary. They also have paid over £275,000 to a private security firm that has ended almost owing all that in unpaid tax. They either don’t know what they are doing or don’t care.

Private security firm that banned bloggers goes bust

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gone bust Pic courtesy MetPro Rapid Response Ltd

The row over  Barnet Council’s ludicrous decision to defy Communities

Some of the fine lads working for MetPro, the blogger busting co. Pic courtesy: Reasonablenewbarnet.blogpsot.com

Secretary Eric Pickles and ban bloggers and film makers from covering their cuts meeting has taken an extraordinary twist.

In order to enforce the ban the Tory council used MetPro Rapid Response – the council’s main private security contractors – to stop some residents and bloggers from entering the public gallery to see the council vote through cuts.

See footage on Broken Barnet website here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ3CsC7wrNg

Full story on Broken Barnet website. Link is http://bitly.com/i13ngn Mrs Angry also reveals that the company may have done covert filming of residents and may be monitoring Barnet bloggers and this blog. The council says it is ” not aware” of any blog monitoring.

The company  has received £275,889  for work from the  council taxpayer according to Barnet’s documents released on the Openlylocal website.  See http://bit.ly/eitGCW

It has also  received glowing tributes from the council. On MetPro’s website they quote Barnet Council as saying: ” MetPro has removed all of our safety worries at work thanks to their rapid response officers here in our building.”

 But now the company has just gone bust and is being run by a Liquidator, Mike Solomons, who according to the law firm handling the liquidation, Beavis Morgan, has put Barnet’s security staff contract up for sale.

Closer investigation of the MetPro has revealed some extraordinary facts. Its two directors, Kevin Sharkey and Luigi Anthony Mansi appear to have run a  string of companies which have gone bust before.

 The address of the firm until recently was a rented  multi million pound mansion in Totteridge Lane, Barnet owned by the  brothers Cyril and Edward Frey, aged 86 and 89, and a former lawyer from Finer and Company predecessor of Finers, Stephens, Innocent ( the firm defending the Wikileaks founder). The Land Registry entry confirms that the three owners can be contacted through them, though the law firm which handles multi million pound estates, says it does not manage the property.

Contrary to the glowing references from Barnet, its staff have received libellous comments on a security officers chat site. They are not surprisingly  hardly popular with a string of Barnet bloggers.

All this suggests that Barnet Council may  have more to answer than banning bloggers – and some explanation is required about what is going on and how this firm got the contract in the first place.

A Council spokesperson said: “Barnet Council is urgently reviewing MetPro Rapid Response’s position and will be liaising with the liquidators involved.”

Praise be Pickles: Pity about your party activists

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eric pickles- the bloggers friend; Pic courtesy cyclingsilk.com

 

Lynne Hillan- Barnet Tory leader- Queen Canute rather than Iron Lady. Pic courtesy: Barnet Times

Normally I don’t approve of the judgements of Eric Pickles, the  communities secretary, the man Westminster jokes is so much larger than life that he can be spotted on Google Earth. However in a  blog for Conservative Home last week http://bit.ly/i1cKAV the scourge of local government  bureaucrats penned an article backing the idea that councils should open the doors to bloggers and citizen journalists who should be able to tweet and film  to their heart’s content. He of course cited outrageous Labour councils who had banned this. He also praised the work of Maidenhead and Windsor council .

 He wrote: ” Conservative-run Windsor and Maidenhead recently decided to allow members of the public to video local meetings. This week, I wrote to councils encouraging them to follow suit, opening up public discussions to all forms of multimedia. Citizen journalists have as much right as anyone to attend and to share their views, and council ‘monitoring officers’ shouldn’t hide behind bogus concerns about ‘data protection’ or ‘human rights’.

He goes on to describe this new freedom right back to the Blessed Margaret Thatcher who introduced the right  of the press and public to attend council meeting way back in 1960.Isn’t it then doubly ironic that tomorrow night (March 1) Barnet Council, whose citizens returned the former Tory leader to Westminster, should be doing the very thing that Eric Pickles deplores.

 This Tory controlled council has banned videos by the public of the public council meeting saying it is ” against the council’s constitution” and I am told people can be ejected if they are caught tweeting , even though councillors are free to do so.

Indeed bloggers are not welcome at all. Lynne Hillan, leader of the council,  told the Barnet Times:

“The only thing we will do is consider responsible media requests, and they are the only thing we would allow at this stage. If we had a request I would expect an officer to approach me about it. I do not think we would consider a request from bloggers . Only respectable media would be considered.”

This dinosaur attitude from a Queen Canute  is breathtaking. Her ignorance about how the modern world works is absurd. Presumably her next step as Barnet leader will be to table a motion condemning Lady Thatcher for allowing the public by law to attend council meetings.

The best riposte to her comes from the mouth of Eric Pickles himself. ” When councils make these sorts of petty decisions, at best they look foolish and out of touch; at worst they look like they have something to hide.”

 Need I say more. You can. E-mail her with your views at leader@barnet.gov.uk or phone her direct on 0208 359 2059. Her fax is: 020 889 7464.

Update: Barnet kept its word in blocking bloggers and filming at the council last night by employing some rather heavy looking security guards to limit who could get a seat to hear the council introduce cuts and higher parking. According to Mrs Angry, a blogger who did get in, they appeared to be able to overrule local police officers. See her report and pix of  the heavy bouncers employed by the Tory council on her blog at http://bit.ly/i13ngn