14 October (Part 3) - Bexley Council sets the management bar low
One of my few remaining Council contacts emailed to say
that my suggestion that the new
Human Resources Manager, Lorraine Barlow
might be doing a good job
was somewhat wide of the mark. Clearly he read the blog before
the name was corrected but
the points he made are not rendered entirely invalid although his message has to
be tilted in a new direction.
He said that Ms. Barlow has been on the Bexley scene for 20 years working under
the hapless - hopeless? - Nick Hollier and is now facing in a very different direction under Kate Bonham.
He speculates on why she happily pursued his HR policies
and is now seamlessly embarked on a totally new strategy. One might have thought that
someone who worked with Nick for such a long time whilst harbouring doubts about
the way HR was being managed would have found a more amenable employer.
However there have been lots of reports over the years that Mr. Hollier could be
very persuasive and acquired a loyal following in certain quarters.
The latest informant says that £100 plus Long Service Awards were abandoned a long time
ago when too many people were qualifying for payment. They were replaced with ‘Stars’. Stars is
a name much favoured by Bexley Council. When BiB first started someone provided the
link to a hidden staff website called Stars so that I could see what Council
management was up to; but that also fell by the wayside.
Apparently former Chief Executive Gill Steward,
she of Press Table removal fame,
introduced a new Stars scheme which was basically nominate your mate for a
lapel badge. It faded away as soon as she did. My correspondent wonders if there
might have been no one left in post who was good enough to deserve a badge but I detect an element of
facetiousness. None is apparent when he says that the luckiest of those awarded
a badge were given a cup of tea and a sandwich too. (†)
As has been said here before,
this is children rewarded for attending Sunday School stuff.
How many poor managers are there in Bexley? The Chief Executive himself has a
questionable history in Barnet and the oneSource partnership and the Finance Director followed a
similar path. How many things has the Highways Manager got wrong? Crossings next to roundabouts, roads narrowed
resulting in accidents
and roundabouts from Welling to Ruxley via
Albion Road which buses cannot get
around. And then there is the Director of Children’s Services who has attracted
criticism from the LGO to Bexley almost countless times and defends his staff
no matter how
wrong they are. No wonder the LGO has had a field day.
But now I have to eat humble pie again. Having seen some good in what Ms. Bonham
is trying to do, @tonyofsidcup reminds me that it was she, just two months after
arriving in Bexley, who decided that making too many FOI requests was vexatious.
A decision contrary to law as belatedly confirmed by the Information Commissioner.
One can only conclude that even the better managers at Bexley Council are really
not very good at all. I recall that while attending my first Bexley Council meetings I was
struck by how poor the managers were compared to those I encountered while working
for BT. Their inadequacies will have cost taxpayers a great deal of money. As has been said several times recently,
nothing is done right first time.
Kate Bonham declares @tonyofsidcup vexatious.
† Towards the end of my time with BT an awards scheme was introduced. It offered a generous £1,000 but no pin badge. I was on the receiving end in its first year of operation for uncovering a £12,000,000 accounting fraud which no one else had noticed. The scheme soon fell foul of corruption as bosses nominated their mates. (£12 million was the official estimate of the losses. I doubted it was that high but at the most senior level, managers never seem to know anything.)