15 March (Part 4) - Finance and Corporate Services Scrutiny Committee
There was a meeting at the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit yesterday
evening and as already noted Olly Cromwell and his followers impacted on the
arrangements. The six members of the public present were kept in check by the
bouncers that Bexley council had hired for the occasion. The young men sat doing
nothing for an hour and a half and were the soul of discretion, but their
bemusement by the situation was not perfectly suppressed. Those six members of
the public consisted of members of the Bexley Council Monitoring Group and me
with my pen and notebook.
Chairman Don Massey is too rude to acknowledge the presence of the public,
what else would one expect, ignoring six in the gallery must be a good deal easier than
ignoring 2,219 as he
did a month ago.
Council officer Maureen Holkham began proceedings by going forward with Bexley’s
performance against targets. In essence she read from the agenda. Councillor
Colin Tandy hoped he was not about to ask a silly question and asked her to
define the terms “quite above average” and “significantly above average”. It was
not a silly question but it may well have been a silly answer; Mrs. Holkham went
forward by saying she didn’t know but she would be going further forward with trying to
get councillor Tandy an answer.
Councillor Deadman asked why the report had “No data available” against a
large proportion of the targets. Mrs. Holkham took the session forward by
admitting she did not know.
Councillor Malik, always one for incisive questions, asked, among other
things, what the term ‘Scores on the Doors’ meant as it was included in the
report without explanation. Chairman Massey stepped in to save Mrs. Holkham from
further embarrassment. Munir Malik’s questions strayed outside the remit
of his committee he said, and he may well have been correct. But as luck would
have it, Mrs. Holkham was anxious to take that one forward. Scores on Doors
is a “food hygiene initiative”. Why can’t they speak plain English?
Next Director Paul Moore (£136,617 p.a.) told us how the vacation of Wyncham House would affect
services and save money.
Notably he did not mention its sale.
Perhaps it was an oversight; maybe its maintenance costs are not attractive to organisations which
cannot spend tax payers’ money.
Deputy Director Graham Ward gave an overview of how the Strategy 2014 savings
were progressing; the old story of green (on target), amber (at risk) and red
(in trouble) project categories. Councillor Malik asked if a total of the amount
marked amber could be given. Mr. Ward did not pretend his answer would
take us forward, for by his reckoning it was “too difficult” to quantify.
There was a discussion on the future funding of Council Tax Benefit led by the
Head of Exchequer Services, Mark Underwood. The new scheme will be dependent
on computer software which at best will be ready in the nick of time. A problem is
the different tweaks required by different local authorities which causes delay
and pushes up costs. In response to a question by councillor Malik, councillor
Campbell said he had tried for a London wide solution but there has been no
agreement. There may be some cooperation with Bromley and Croydon. Councils bicker. Residents pay.
Mrs. Holkham
then took us forward to the subject of Freedom of Information
requests which have risen in number five fold since 2005. Probably because
Bexley council keeps running foul of the Information Commissioner a new
complaints system is to be introduced, and the costs are not helped by the clamp on questions
to council. They love to shoot themselves in the foot.
The question of rising costs figured prominently and Mrs. Holkham said she had “come up
with a figure of £53 an hour”. It all seemed very casual and after hearing several
dubious statements from Mrs. Holkham councillor Mike Slaughter could stand it no longer.
He asked why £53 an hour when the guidance said FOIs were OK up to £450 and 18 hours
- which is £25 an hour. He didn’t like the fact that so many FOIs appeared to take exactly one,
two three or four hours and railed that he “simply didn’t believe the figures” and felt “we are not
telling the public the truth”. He went on about only 10% of FOIs being made by
local residents and the claim that most requests come from the media. What media
companies, councillor Slaughter wanted to know, somewhat taken aback by the
applause from five pairs of hands - mine were too busy scribbling. Mrs. Holkham
attempted to take the issue forward again but advanced only by her usual amount.
She did not know.
If councillor Slaughter had not been distracted by the applause he may have managed
the full house of questions. He missed “How many requests were turned down for
hitting the £450 barrier because Mrs. Holkham had come up with an
hourly charge of more than twice that specified for councils?”
Chairman Massey advocated putting more and more data on the website, which in
principle is a good idea, but I guess he has never tried using Bexley’s search facility.
Maybe I am being far too picky again, but councillor Campbell has in the past
advocated shaming those who make FOI requests by putting names and addresses on
the council website. He was anxious to curtail the activities of the Bexley
Council Monitoring Group who were accused of making the bulk of all requests.
The statistics that became available last night show that claim up for what it
is. When someone suggested to him after the meeting that the restriction on
questions to council wasn’t doing the FOI budget any favours, I’m told he
stormed off with the words “absolute rubbish’ hanging in the air.