Sheffield Greens respond to Labour Council's tree protest ban

Sheffield Greens are very disappointed that today the High Court ruled in favour of granting an injunction aimed at preventing peaceful protesting against the Council’s tree felling programme. The injunction was taken out against Green Councillor Alison Teal, two other named campaigners, and ‘persons unknown’. It comes into force on August 22nd.

The ruling, handed down this morning, means that tree campaigners will not legally be permitted to continue standing up for Sheffield’s street trees and for local residents by preventing the felling of healthy street trees.

Reacting the the verdict, Cllr Teal has vowed to continue opposing the Council’s plans, despite the injunction, and expressed dismay at the Council’s heavy handed and unnecessarily aggressive tactics:
 

I am very disappointed with this outcome, but will continue to do all that I can to save Sheffield trees. Sheffield Greens will not stop standing up for residents and communities who do not want this disastrous and unpopular tree felling programme to go on.

I would like to thank my legal team for their excellent work, and for all the messages of support I have received. In the short term, we will of course be looking into possible avenues of appeal against this decision.

It never had to come to this. The Council say that this action was a ‘last resort’, but in truth they have wasted time and taxpayers’ money on this needless, aggressive action when all they had to do was acknowledge residents’ concerns and to mediate with us.

In this, the case of Sheffield City Council vs The People, it is democracy and the residents of Sheffield who have lost. This decision by the high court is very worrying, as the right to peaceful protest has been fundamentally threatened.

The Council’s disastrous and unpopular tree felling programme continues to be a story of national and international embarrassment for our city.

Contractors and pay through private companies at Brent Council

I know Wembley Matters readers like to make up their own minds so here is some correspondence from earlier today:

 

To Carolyn Downs, Brent Chief Executive and Miuhammed Butt , Leader of Brent Council

As you will know, after the controversy regarding the payment of Christine Gilbert and Cara Davani through private companies, Brent Council moved to putting all staff on payroll.

Can you confirm that, nevertheless, Cate Duffy, Interim Operational Director for Early Years Help and Education, is being paid through her own company Edu Cate D Limited, which was set up in June 2015 when her employment at Brent Council commenced.

Many thanks,

Martin Francis

From Carolyn Downs

Dear Mr Francis

Ms Duffy is employed as a contractor as she is on a fixed term contract. The role which she covers is currently subject to external recruitment and we hope to appoint in the next month. The contract with Ms Duffy will subsequently be terminated.

Yours sincerely

Carolyn Downs

Brent Council

Brent Council ignorant of how many of their contractors pay below London Living Wage or use Zero Hours contracts

Brent Council's commitment to paying the London Living Wage was very welcome but as pointed out in previous postings that is problematic because the Council has very few directly employed manual and service  workers now that so many of its services are contracted out. The same caveat applies to zero hours contracts, also opposed by the Council, but when some out-sourced Civic Centre security staff are employed on a zero hours basis.

The Council has urged local schools and private businesses to pay the London Living Wage and the new Public Realm contract includes a requirement that  Veolia  pay the LWW. The Council in a November press released stated:

We have also agreed to build LLW considerations into our procurement process for contracts and, over a three-year period, will review the bulk of contracts with a positive view to applying LLW.

Again this is welcome although the continued emphasis on 'best value' (often the lowest bid) introduces a tension at a time of massive funding cuts. There is increasing recognition that by lifting local wages the Council will eventually be better off as families are lifted out of poverty and thus less reliant on benefits, including Council Tax Support.

Given all this I was surprised to receive a negative response from Brent Council to my  Freedom of Information request asking for details of how many of the staff employed by the Council via contractors and sub-contractors are on zero hours contracts and paid less than the London Living Wage. After they refused the request I asked for a review and now have a response (below) - which amounts to another refusal .

What concerns me is that if the Council is concerned about the London Living Wage and poverty among Brent residents, it is surely their responsibility to ensure that those employed on their behalf have decent wages and conditions. In terms of budget planning it is also essential to know the cost of bringing those workers up to the LWW and that can only be done through  knowing how many people are involved.

If there is to be evidence based forward planning and decision making it is essential to have high quality information. I had a similar experience regarding school places when the Council refused my request for the number of pupils on Brent school waiting lists who were duplicates - i.e.the same child on waiting lists for several schools.Again essential information on assessing unmet demand and potential school expansions.

Here is the Council's ruling on my Zero Hours/London Living Wage request:

We have reviewed the decision to refuse your request for information under The Freedom of Information Act. Your request related to information that would establish how many staff who work for or on behalf of the Council through a contractor were employed on a zero hours basis and how many were paid the London Living Wage.

That request was refused as the information requested was not held by the Council. You were dissatisfied with that request on the basis that the Council had been critical of such arrangements and would not use a zero hours scheme with its own staff and had made a policy position that the London Living Wage should be paid to all Council staff as a minimum. We have now reviewed the decision to refuse the request and I can inform you of the outcome.
  
It is correct to say that the Council does not hold this information and as such can not readily supply it to you.  It may be possible to contact all of the contractors that the Council engages with but when the number of those contractors are considered and the time involved in obtaining the information you have requested is taken into account this would be a major exercise.
  
The Council would have to identify all current contracts on which staff are employed by the contractor which would, in effect, be nearly if not all of the contractors that are used. This in itself is an enormous piece of work. Once identified contact would have to be made with all of those contractors which would be hundreds of individual contacts. This again would be an enormous piece of work to accurately undertake. Collating the information would also take a significant amount of time.
  
Our view is that the time involved in obtaining the information would be in excess of 18 hours of officer time. Under the Act a request can be refused in the event that the cost of complying with it would exceed the cost limit set out in legislation. The applicable regulations provide that in assessing whether the cost limit has been reached officer time should be assessed at £25 per hour and the overall limit of cost being £450.

Given that the cost here would require in excess of 18 hours of officer time it is clearly over the cost limit set out in the Act. The Executive has taken the decision that any request that breaches the cost limit should be refused.

If the Council is to conduct a 3 year review as their November press release stated then this is precisely the information that will be needed.  Meanwhile, as residents, we have no way of knowing how many of the workers providing our services are on zero hours contracts with little or no pension or sick pay rights, or employed on rock bottom wages.

Labour councillors attack out-sourcing and call for in-house services

No, not Brent Laboiur councillors I'm afraid but there colleagues in Barnet at an Extraordinary Council Meeting last night in a lively debate on a No Confidence motion tabled by the Labour opposition regarding the Council's  One Barnet  programme that will see 70% of services out-sourced.

One after another Labour councillors made the case against out-sourcing and privatisation. They pointed to the inadequacy of private providers, the dangers of bankruptcy that had already hit some providers and therefore the uselessness of 'guarantees' provided by such companies, the use of Council Tax to fund private profit,  the concealment of financial details of deals and the lack of direct democratic accountability via councillors when services are out-sourced. They pointed to the decision to move waste management 'in-house with a stretch' as an example of the right way to go.

Tory Leader Richard Cornelius, who replaced the suspended Brian Coleman, defended the policy and pointed out the number of Labour boroughs, including Brent, who were also out-sourcing.

Despite the absence of some Tory councillors the No Confidence vote was lost, but the arguments in the motion deserve consideration elsewhere:

‘No confidence’ in Barnet’s Conservative Leader and Cabinet

Council believes that this Conservative administration has completely lost its way over the One Barnet Programme.

Council believes the process to outsource 70% of council services in two large contracts under One Barnet has been dogged by a lack of transparency. Scrutiny of One Barnet by elected councillors has been severely compromised by the administration scrapping the dedicated One Barnet Scrutiny Panel, and by preventing administration and opposition councillors outside the Cabinet from having sufficient time to scrutinise detailed financial information for the project – information which has been presented to elected members on blue exempt papers at the beginning of committee meetings, and then taken away at the end of the agenda item. 

Council notes that the One Barnet Programme has so far not made any net savings, and that we are now in the third year of the programme. In fact the One Barnet Programme has actually incurred a net cost for the Council of at least £663,000.

Council further notes that the Leader and Deputy Leader seem to disagree over the appropriateness of the preferred model for the Development and Regulatory Services contract – Joint Venture – and that therefore the project seems to be in complete disarray.

Given the level of risk involved in the procurement of these two enormous One Barnet contracts, NSCSO and DRS, and the gambling of £1 billion of council tax payers’ money that is involved, Council resolves that the Executive Leader be removed from office and that a vote be taken on electing a new Leader who can propose a new way forward for Barnet Council and appoint a new Cabinet.

It was interesting to see an Opposition group instigating a passionate and informed debate, something that is missing in Brent with the Lib Dems often caught out on not doing their homework and lying low as they delay two by-election,   waiting for more popular times. The Tories are of course invisible for months at a time. It is too often left to community groups and campaigns to provide the real opposition.