13 April (Part 2) - Where the money goes
At last the summary of the Finance Scrutiny Committee meeting…
• Various aspects of Asset Management and Property Services have been combined
under a single “umbrella” which has necessitated the appointment of two new Heads of Service.
• The Deputy Director of Finance and Property who reorganised the Asset Management Team did not know how many buildings the
Council owned or their condition. (The Council’s
published Asset Register is three years out of date.)
• Councillor Bacon (Conservative, Sidcup) queried why two new property
specialists are required when the jobs have been previously done by existing staff.
The response was to the effect that the staff had been over-worked, hence the
need for more, and some were promoted which created new vacancies. In addition
several new specialist roles have been recruited, such as electricians.
• Another new recruit is a 'data implementer'. (Don’t ask.)
• Councillor Kurtis Christoforides (Conservative,
St. Mary’s & St. James) said we used to have
various teams to do all this work, we combined them and “recruited a load of
people and promoted those we already had”; how is that supposed to save money?
The Deputy Director went off on a brief tangent by which time she had forgotten
the question. Eventually she admitted that £500,000 had been set aside for
implementation and running costs would rise by about £80,000 a year but it would
“bear fruit” in the longer term.
• Councillor Read (Conservative, West Heath) asked if the staff were happy with
the changes and the Deputy Director said she thought they were because so many had been promoted.
• Councillor Chris Ball (Labour, Erith) said he was not enthusiastic about the
Council’s new slogan “Your life, your choice – working together towards the life you want”.
This is just one of five new slogans entitled “aspiration for our residents”.
• The cooling and heating system in the Civic Offices has failed and £100,000 has been spent on temporary generation facilities.
If anyone has misgivings about the competence of Bexley’s finance team and would
like to see them confirmed, listening to the webcast dated 26th March is highly recommended.