21 March - Better paid jobs for the boys - and girls
The General Purposes Committee meeting was hidden away in a back room and not without good reason, there was little in it of which Bexley council could be proud. It was witnessed by two members of the Bexley Council Monitoring Group, a man who has a job interview today and wanted to see if the Head of HR is a prize chump or not, and me.
The
meeting didn’t begin well with me and the two BCMG members being slung out
of our chosen seats for no stated reason. We moved, it made no difference to me,
but Mick Barnbrook is a bit deficient in the aural department and was concerned
about being placed further away from the action.
Chairman Geraldene Lucia-Hennis basically said “tough” but in a very
friendly and good natured manner. She will never get
the Mayor’s job. Why she cared where the public sat did not become clear to
me but as the meeting commenced Mick took the opportunity to retake his original seat. No one
said a word. I think I had the better view, maybe that is what Geraldene was anxious to offer.
I had been looking forward to going to this meeting for a week or so because the
way I interpreted the Agenda, they were planning to sneak through a £5,000 a
year pay rise for two deputy directors. I wanted to see if I was right and what the
councillors would have to say about it.
Well I was right but beyond that I didn’t learn a thing. Not a single councillor
mentioned the subject. No official reminded them that more taxpayers’ money was
being thrown into the trough. Clearly an extra £10k.destined for some friends’ pockets is not worthy of comment.
The history goes back to November 2010 when the council’s management structure
was last rearranged. Mr. Tuckley drew up a scheme involving two more deputy
directors than were actually in post and that is the way things have been since
then. The posts were never filled and the world didn’t end. This would appear to
be the ultimate proof that Will Tuckley’s management skills are as bad as you would expect from someone who
wrote to the police to suggest that I should be
prosecuted for a council crime. Or it may mean that the amount of work
expected of a deputy director is so small that doubling the load makes not a lot
of difference. Or maybe it’s both.
Whatever the case, the status quo has been recognised and the two deputy director posts
never will be filled and the spoils are to be handed out to those who are deemed
to have done the extra work. The lucky pair is Graham Ward, Deputy Director of
Customer Relations and the relatively unknown, Tariq Bashir, Deputy Director of Property.
There
is a mystery surrounding Antonia Ainge, the Deputy Director of Leisure and wife
of her boss Peter Ellershaw, Director of Wellbeing. I can follow the dubious logic of
Ward and Bashir getting a leg up for doing what they have always done, but Mrs.
Ellershaw is lumped in with them as equally due a pay rise. There is absolutely
no reason that I can find to justify it however perverted the logic becomes.
Perhaps being Deputy Director of Leisure and Director of Wellbeing is being taken far too literally.
The whole dubious farrago is being portrayed as a £200,000 (two deputy
directors) a year saving. Mickey Mouse economics again. Mr. Tuckley makes another bad
management call, luckily it is never implemented and voilá, £200,000 a year in the bank.
Maybe if he was even more stupid than he is and made a lot more mistakes from
which we can be saved in the nick of time, council tax could be abolished altogether.
With council services being farmed out to private industry and other councils -
Kent and Bromley in the last year or so - one might wonder why director salaries
are not being nudged in the opposite direction. An honest council might do that. Does such an entity exist?
Lower down the food chain, the plebs have seen their numbers decimated and their
responsibilities increased and have been rewarded with a three year pay freeze,
but the top brass are engineered another lump of gold on the pretence that they
are having to work harder when in fact not a thing has changed for the past (nearly)
three years. Even councillor Alan Deadman who is normally pretty astute when it
comes to pay injustices was totally silent; maybe he doesn’t see it as an
injustice and recalls what his party leader, Chris Ball, said. According to him, in connection with
the petition, Tuckley is worth more than his quarter million pounds.
If you swallow that £200k. saved story, don’t overdo the celebrations, another part of the agenda reveals…
Sneaking in pay rises was not the only purpose of the meeting. Mr. Tuckley reported on the situation
mentioned here only yesterday,
Bexley’s poor record on child care. It was almost inevitable that in the short time taken by the
Chief Executive there would be a surfeit of platitudes. “We want a service we can be proud of.” The
situation requires “a fundamental reappraisal.” “We need the right process and
to measure performance in the right way.” I could have done as well myself after a 15 minute read of the agenda.
His final two minutes were more revealing. “Our IT system is just not up to it.”
“IT is absolutely central to professional practice.” “We need fewer management layers” and “there will be additional staff in the structure”.
Various people including councillors Alan Deadman and Colin Campbell debated the
pros and cons of employing agency staff. Both admitted Bexley does not pay its agency care
workers as well as any neighbouring boroughs - £2 an hour less than Bromley
according to an agency care worker of my acquaintance - and this leads to
problems. Councillor Campbell said he didn’t like spending money but the child
care problem is an emergency and he is going to find an extra £1.2 million
drawn from emergency reserves. It was he said, essential that Bexley recruited
the right people. Head of Human Resources, Nick Hollier said he was “thinking
carefully about recruitment” which is good to know. How much do we pay these mediocrities?
During the course of the meeting, councillor Campbell made an aside about Eric
Pickles making announcements “dreamed up over breakfast” and indicated pretty
firmly that he was not a Pickles’ fan. Who is? The man manufactures ideas good
and bad at a rate of knots and doesn’t follow through on any of them. If he did
I may have been able to show you a picture of the back of Campbell’s head taken
at last night’s meeting but Bexley still defies Pickles’ photographic
aspirations. Councillor Campbell said he was going to ignore his
latest ideas too. Then he said something about not being around in two to three years time
to see the end of the child care improvements if they took that long. What he
meant by it remains a mystery. He has already moved house outside the borough. I’d
be much happier if his boss was eyeing up the exit.
The meeting concluded after 54 minutes.