Campaign to stop Veolia getting its tainted hands on £145m of Brent's money

 Brent and Harrow Palestine Solidarity Campaign is to step up its campaign to get Veolia excluded from the current Brent Public Realm contract procurement process. The contract covers street cleansing, waste management, recycling and parks and BHP grounds maintenance and is worth £145m over 9 years.

The campaign has been escalated following the Procurement Panel's decision after considering detailed evidence from the PSC not to exercise its discretion and exclude Veolia from the process. The evidence gave legal grounds for exclusion on the grounds that Veolia's activities in the Occupited Territories of Palestine constituted grave misconduct.

A letter from Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on the West Bank and Gaza Strip,submitted to the North London Waste Authority, where Veolia withdrew from the bidding process, was sent  to the Panel. It said:

It is my view that Veolia’s violations of the UN Global Compact principles and its deep and protracted complicity with grave breaches of international law make it an inappropriate partner for any public institution, especially as a provider of public services.

....I urge you to follow the example set by public authorities and European banks that have chosen to disassociate themselves from Veolia and take the just and principled decision not to award Veolia any public service contracts. Such a measure would contribute to upholding the rule of law and advancing peace based on justice. 

Brent has chosen not to take this 'just and principled decision' and has so far failed to provide Brent and Harrow PSC with the detailed grounds on which it based its decision not to exercise its discretion to exclude.

Petitions will be circulated calling on Brent Council to exclude Veolia and public meetings and lobbies are being arranged.

A copy of the petition can be downloaded below. Please circulate it in workplaces, trade unions, communities and places of worship.   A borough committed to social justice and serving a diverse community should not be handing residents' money over to a company such as Veolia.

Further information can be found on the Brent PSC website HERE

Labour Brent's public realm privatisation too high risk for Tory Barnet

Barnet Today LINK is reporting that Barnet Council has decided that the proposed four borough waste, recycling, street cleaning and parks maintenance super contract was 'too high risk' and will approve having the services in-house.

So Labour Brent Council has turned out to be more of a privatiser than right-wing Conservative Barnet Council!  Barnet is presently in turmoil after Cllr Brian Coleman and former London Assembly member was suspended from the national Conservative Party. Coleman is in trouble over alleged racist slurs and an assault.

The Barnet Today report states:

 The council had been exploring the possibility of procuring its waste management services in partnership with Brent Council. But while the neighbouring borough agreed to pursue that avenue earlier this month, Barnet’s council officers ruled that it was too high-risk.

The decision will be seen as a departure from the council’s controversial One Barnet model, which will see a raft services, including planning and customer services contracted to private companies via two outsourcing projects worth around £1billion.

Council leader Richard Cornelius said providing the services in-house represented the best option for driving down costs and improving services.

“The One Barnet programme has always been pragmatic and this was the pragmatic way to go,” he said. “The rubbish collection in this borough is well done. It can be improved but we don’t want to muck it up.”

Brent Council press office today refused to answer my request about the future of the contract on the grounds that I was not an accredited journalist.

Brent Council warns governors on headteachers' pay and procurement

Brent Council has written to governors, clerks to governor bodies and school leadership teams warniong them of the need to comply with regulations on the pay of headteachers.

Clive Heaphy, Director of Finance and Corporate Services, wrotes that the Council's recent survey has:

...revealed that a significant proportion of (Brent) Governing Bodies have approved salaries for head teachers that exceeds the levels permitted by the school's head teacher group as defined by the school's pupil numbers...

He goes on to say that schools that have set an Indiivudal School Range above the headteacher groups are:

 ...on average remunerating headteachers in excess of an additional 10% per annum - much more in many cases. While some schools have provided acceptable reasons for paying above the cap, the review has demonstrated that a large number of Governing Bodies have allowed incremental increases in head teacher pay either without good reasons or  factors outside the  criteria set out in the School Teachers Pay and Conditions guidance.

 Heaphy says if the Governing Body becomes aware that this is the situation it is incumbent on them to take appropriate action to remedy the situation within a reasonable period of time.

He concludes:

I apologise if this letter is direct but the situation within Brent schools is a serious one and I need to be sure as the person ultimately responsible for all school spending in the Borough, that Governors, Clerks and Leadership Teams are fully aware of the framework under which you operate.

Last week Heaphy and the Brent Audit Team experienced close questioning at the Children and Families Overview and Scrutiny Committee over this issue and the problem of excessive and exploitative procurement and leasing agreements entered into by schools.

Clive Heaphy frankly told the meeting that he was not confident of schools' capacity to take action on these issues. Stating that he was 'not happy with the state of things'  he said he would continue to put pressure on schools.In future he would be requiring local authority schools to make an annual return on headteacher pay. Brent had no statutory authority over academies or free schools.

Cllr Michal Pavey asked if this amounted to a admission that before these actions the authority's monitoring had been 'inadequate'. Heaphy denied this stating that other local authorities, uncovering similar issues, were coming to Brent for advice. Lesley Gouldbourne for the teacher associations welcomed the 'very full' report given to the Committee and congratulated the council on its proactive approach. She warned if the impact of financial mismanagement on both on schools' reputations and on taking money away from children's learning resources. Gouldbourne asked for more resources to be devoted to auditing but Cllr Mary Arnold (lead member for Children and Families) said Brent already devoted more hours to school audits than other boroughs.

Several councillors declared an interest at the beginning of the meeting as they were governors of various schools in the borough. Cllr Michael Pavey was particularly forensic asking if the headteacher's responsibility to advise governors on the regulations about headteacher pay was not in itself a conflict of interest.

It emerged that no secondary school and only half of Brent's primary schools now use Brent Council's  in-house payroll system and so early clues to over-renumeration could not be spotted through HR officers' monitoring when glaring discrepancies, such as a head of a small school being paid more than the head of a much larger one, became apparent.

Additionally in the Copland case, as a  grant maintained school it had appointed its own auditors and checks had been much less in-depth than those of the Brent Audit Team. The Copland case, involving additional payments, was different from the headteacher pay scale issue. Members expressed concern that, as more schools became academies. or free schools were set up, the possibility of further such cases in terms of both pay and procurement would increase.

The second major issue, procurement and leasing,  produced more searching questions from the Committee members. They were told that a small number of schools had entered arrangements with Finance Companies and that the amount involved was 'very material' in a small number of schools. In five schools the amounts were such that it could affect their financial future.Brent Council was taking group legal action on behalf of a number of schools over leasing arrangements in a process that could take 10 months.

Asked about what action the Council could take on such issues officers replied that when schools went into deficit the Council would agree a Deficit Reduction Plan requiring the school to return to a balanced budget within a reasonable period.. Challenged on what action could be taken if a governing body were uncooperative or did not agree with what had been requested Simon Lane explained that the Council did have powers but these were draconian, employing a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The governing body could be removed but this needed the permission of the Secretary of State,  or delegated financial powers taken away from the governing body with the council running the finances. The schools could challenge the latter and  the council didn't  have the resources to run the budget themselves.

There was further discussion about financial training for governors and whether that should me mandatory, at least for chairs, and on recruiting governors with financial expertise. No information was produced on how many governors had taken advantage of the financial training on offer and whether all schools had been involved.

In terms of a time line Simon Lane from the Audit Team said that headteacher pay should be regularised within 3 months; the legal case resolved in 10 months and that individual school investigations were ongoing but an update would be produced in six months.

It was good to see a Scruitiny Commiitee doing its job thoroughly. I  fact time ran out and the very important issue of Children's Safeguarding was postponed until a later meeting. 

Serious concerns must remain over financial mismanagement, particularly as council staffing is reduced, schools become more autonomous, and out-sourcing become more prevalent. I think what concerns me most about this is that these issues take way from the main function of headteachers, governors and schools: improving teaching and the learning of pupils.

How local firms lose out in procurement process

Spawning frogs Fryent Country Park March 1st

We should soon hear the results of the Council's internal deliberations about the possible privatisation/out-sourcing of the Brent Parks' grounds maintenance service.  The Council have refused to answer my Freedom of Information request about the matter but I hope the results will be subject to meaningful consultation.

If the result is a decision to out-source several issues need consideration. Firstly, such decisions often leave the current workers at a disadvantage. Although they have expertise in the actual job they are unlikely to have it in the arduous and complicated task of putting in a detailed bid at the procurement stage if they decide to make a bid as a group of workers. They may also not be able to give the financial guarantees that a large firm will be able to provide. Large firms, used to procurement, will have the back office expertise to make a bid as well as low pay rates that will undercut an internal bid.

Secondly, we need to ask about the quality of external contractors: their skills and the empathy they have with the local environment.  Brent rightly has great pride in its Green Flag winning parks and particularly the precious Welsh Harp and Fryent Country Park spaces.   Having seen some of the grounds maintenance work done by contractors on our housing estates, as well as some undertaken in the Country Park, I am very concerned that maintenance will be of the 'cut and slash' variety. Rather than pruning and reducing trees sympathetically to encourage balanced regrowth, they will be sawn back. Shrubs will become rectangular and cut back at convenient times for the contractor rather than at the appropriate seasonal time. There is a danger that habitats will not be nurtured and will be subsequently lost.

Maintaining and enhancing biodiversity is one of Brent's priorities and success stories. We must make sure this is not lost in the rush to save money.

Similar issues arise with attempts to use local small firms for building projects in schools. With high levels of unemployment in Brent it is essential that we try and give them work. However they again often lack the back office staff and financial guarantees necessary to meet the procurement demands of Brent Council and contracts instead go to large companies, often multinationals, with workers travelling from outside of Brent. As part of a strategy to combat unemployment in Brent we need to look at  how we can support small building and construction businesses that are part of a community and will want to deliver a good job for that community.

Veolia knocked out of WLWA multi-million contract

Human Rights campaigners in West London were celebrating today following the news that controversial multinational Veolia had failed to be short-listed for the lucrative 25 years residual waste management contract covering the boroughs of Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Ealing, Richmond and Brent.

More than 600 residents had written to the West London Waste Authority  requesting that Veolia be excluded on the grounds of racist practices in recruitment and grave misconduct through its active participation in violations of international and humanitarian laws and norms in the illegally occupied territories of Palestine. Last month Brent and Harrow Palestine Solidarity Campaign held a well-attended public meeting on the issue at Willesden Green Library.

Although, as is usual in these cases,  Veolia's failure to be short-listed cannot be directly attributed to the campaign, the WLWA joins a growing list of unsuccessful contract bids by Veolia.

The ground now shifts to environmental issues with the WLWA's consideration of 'solutions' submitted by the remaining 4 bidders to dealing with West London's waste.These will include possible new processing sites and environmentalists will be watching closely to see if any incinerators are planned,

Here is the statement from the WLWA website released yesterday:

The West London Waste Authority (WLWA) has short-listed four bidders for a long term West London Residual Waste Services contract covering the boroughs of Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow, and Richmond upon Thames.

Cory Environmental Ltd, E.ON Energy from Waste leading a consortium with Tata Chemicals Europe Limited with significant sub-contractor Grundon Waste Management Limited, SITA UK Ltd and Viridor Waste Management Ltd will now be invited to develop detailed solutions as the next stage in the competitive dialogue process that is being employed.

The contract involves treating up to 300,000 tonnes of residual waste per year generated by a population of 1.4 million people, and covers all aspects of treatment including any necessary transport, the operation of transfer stations, and contracts for outputs such as energy, refuse-derived fuel, recyclates etc.

Bids were invited from “single entity” companies, consortia, or joint ventures. The WLWA has offered its three waste transfer stations at Brentford, South Ruislip and Park Royal as part of the procurement but also welcomed proposals involving sites within bidders’ control or which they intend to acquire.

The next stage of the tender process will be the submission of detailed solutions by the short listed bidders in spring 2012. Two final bidders will then be selected to submit final tenders in autumn 2012. The preferred bidder will be selected in spring 2013. The new services will start in April 2015, but WLWA is exploring with bidders the opportunity for an earlier start to begin diversion from landfill as soon as possible.

West London already recycles or composts almost 40% of its household waste, more than any other sub region of London. The new contract will allow continued flexibility to increase recycling up to at least 50% by 2020 and WLWA will focus even more on waste minimisation schemes in the future.

Veolia's contract with the London Borough of Brent ends in 2014.