Excuses instead of action (From Harrow Times)
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Excuses instead of action
10:11am Thursday 18th September 2008 in Your MPs By Gareth Thomas MP
Six months ago the Audit Commission published its report into how Harrow Council was run, rating the authority as the worst run in London – worse than Hackney, Lambeth and Bexley. Worse than authorities with larger budgets and those who have lower budgets.
Since the report was published the response of the current council leadership has been to confirm they won’t be able to raise the council’s performance in key services. There has been no apology, and worse, no attempt to talk to Harrow residents to find out what their experience of council services has been, so that improvements can be made.
Indeed Harrow Council’s current leadership is continuing to mishandle a series of crucial services and decisions:
- Harrow Town Centre – instead of thinking through carefully the future of key parts of the town centre the council is set to approve plans for 3,000 flats that will fundamentally change the character of central Harrow. Little thought has been given to the impact on schools, GPs and other services.
- Harrow Leisure Centre – Harrow’s premier leisure facility is being redeveloped but at the cost of being slashed in size, which will make it harder for people to enjoy sports like badminton and squash.
- Cuts to youth services – if young people have nothing to do, then some will be at risk of those encouraging crime and anti-social behaviour. Alongside more police, which the Government has delivered, proper well thought-out activities for young people are key to helping prevent crime, yet Harrow Council has cut its budget for youth services.
- Environmental services – many Harrow residents in my advice surgeries have complained to me about Harrow becoming dirtier and shabbier over the last two years. More than £5 million has been cut from council cleaning services, reducing the number of times council cleaning teams visit every road in the borough, leaving us to put up with more litter and mess and fewer plants.
- Adults’ services – cuts in home help and other support to elderly vulnerable and disabled people have hit particularly hard. These cuts, rejected by almost every local charity as being deeply damaging, have not been reversed. Harrow now provides a lower quality of care for vulnerable, elderly people than all but four other local authorities across the whole of the UK.
The council’s ruling leadership could have asked for help in turning round its performance. It hasn’t. It could have put in place a “turnaround plan” bringing in experts at turning round poor performance – it hasn’t. Instead we continue to get a series of excuses – with everybody else being blamed and the council’s political leadership not taking responsibility.
Comments(16)
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
12:23pm Fri 3 Oct 08
• Invested £750,000 in improving street cleaning in Harrow after years of cuts.
• Funded a new police team for the town centre, which has cut crime like pick-pocketing and shoplifting as well as increasing the uniformed presence making people feel safer.
• Children’s services in Harrow have improved to “good” (three out of four) according to Ofsted and the council has submitted a strong case to go to “excellent” (four out of four) next year – when we took control children’s social care was judged as one star out of a maximum of three with “uncertain capacity to improve”.
• Paid for nearly 15,000 children to swim for free over the summer.
• Housing services is expected to go from a two star to a three star service this year.
• Increased the reserves the council has from £1.3m to £4m.
• Brought the council’s budget under control going from a £3m overspend to an underspend, which is necessary given we have one of the lowest levels of reserves in London.
• Invested £100,000 in planting trees.
• Increased, with residents’ help, the borough’s recycling rate from one of the worst in London to the second best in London.
• Improved the performance of the planning department from second worst in London to one of the top five and one of top 15 per cent nationally based on CLG figures for 2007/08.
Gareth just can’t say ‘Well done Harrow Council’ can you Gareth? The words obviously choke you....
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
12:26pm Fri 3 Oct 08
The new mayor of London has inherited exactly the sort of financial shambles bequeathed to this administration by Cllr Shah when he was leader – budgets overrunning and out of control, next to no reserves and, yes, a black hole of £9m. That is not my figure alone, but the amount presented by officers to cabinet back in August 2006, when we – as a new administration – had to find such huge savings as a matter of urgency to avoid bankruptcy.
Gareth just can’t say ‘Well done Harrow Council’ can you Gareth? The words obviously choke you....
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
12:47pm Fri 3 Oct 08
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
12:52pm Fri 3 Oct 08
You must be so proud of your government’s achievements:
Rampant MRSA in our hospitals.
A robust pension system (as long as you don’t retire)
Boom and slump in housing
Boom and bust in the economy
Northern Wreck. Bradford & Bingley, Alliance &Leicester
ID cards and its Olympic bill.
Student fees
The 10p fiasco
Erosion of marriage
Record fuel and gas prices (how much is tax?)
Doubled council tax – your MP friends have done absolutely nothing for the people of Harrow.
A benefits system creaking at the seams
Uncontrolled immigration
The most unpopular PM in living memory.
The ever popular congestion zone and its insidious spread.
Big brother, Biometric passports……….
Loss of MCA (remember that all you married couples?)
Loss of MIRAS
A 10% hike in NI which everyone thinks is a 1% hike because the country’s maths is so appalling. So much for ‘Education, Education, Education’.
Green taxes such as the tax on flying.
A new pastime for those outside London – ‘Spot the NHS Dentist’.
Parking charges in hospital car parks
New road tax increases which are suddenly made retrospective (good one Gordon – rake it in why don’t you?).
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
1:24pm Sun 5 Oct 08
Just how much worse can things get now?
How about an extra 1m unemployed? And UK PLC in deep recession.
Carry on digging Gordy - hope you tunnel your way to New Zealand.
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
4:14pm Tue 7 Oct 08
The FTSE 100 posted its biggest ever points fall yesterday, down 391 at 4,589, and at 7.85 per cent its biggest percentage fall in 21 years, reducing the value of British blue-chip companies by £93 billion.
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
4:23pm Tue 7 Oct 08
Brown: ‘Darling – what should we do?’
Darling: ‘Brown – I dunno what should we do?’
Brown: ‘Darling – I dunno what do YOU think we should we do?’
Darling: ‘Brown – I dunno, YOU tell me’
Brown: ‘Darling – ok what should YOU do?’
Darling: ‘Brown – I dunno what should WE do?’
Brown: ‘Darling – I dunno what do YOU think we should we do?
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
6:05pm Tue 7 Oct 08
Brown: ‘Darling – I dunno what do YOU think we should we do?’
The tealady enters……
Brown: ‘Ah Mavis tea – great…..urmmm Mavis what do YOU think we should do?’
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
1:19pm Wed 8 Oct 08
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
9:43pm Sat 11 Oct 08
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
6:01pm Tue 14 Oct 08
The regulators and the Bank of England were silent like their boss.
While Gordon fiddled – the crisis silently developed.
Two banks come to mind as having escaped the inferno that has erupted, e.g Santander and HSBC.
These banks were better managed and in the case of Santander – the Spanish regulators actually did their job. Banks don’t fail overnight. Northern Wreck happened over a year ago. But still Gordon fiddled.
How many pensions have been ruined? How many people have seen their savings invested in shares destroyed? Gordon has not only delivered record public debt that will have to be repaid by future taxpayers – he has also delivered the biggest economic disaster ever to hit these shores. Far from being an American import – this has been a present to Britain from noolabour and from Gordon – the Wealth Destroyer
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
6:04pm Fri 31 Oct 08
Everyone outside labour knows the only reason that labour had a cabinet with a token non-labour presence was because it was a hung council.
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
6:09pm Fri 31 Oct 08
Mavis 'Do what you always do - chuck money at it...
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
2:15pm Mon 3 Nov 08
12:00pm Monday 3rd November 2008
By Tristan Kirk »
HARROW has improved dramatically and is now ranked sixth best in London, an independent report has revealed.
In an independent review of councils across the country, finance company PricewaterhouseCoope
rs has marked the borough out as one of the most improved in the capital after assessing a range of different services, including benefits, planning, community safety and transport.
Councillor David Ashton, leader of the council, hailed the report as a sign it is moving forward as a local authority.
He said: “This is the highest ranking Harrow has ever had.
“Two years ago, we were about the sixth worst, but everyone must agree we are definitively moving in the right direction.
“I am not saying things are perfect, far from it.
“But to move from what we inherited is a substantial improvement and something we are very proud of.”
The study, which is the latest indicator of how councils are performing, ranks Harrow as 37th in the country, and will come as a relief to the Tory administration who have endured criticism since they took over in 2006 for the council’s performance.
They are keen to highlight this report as a clear sign the council is improving, after being rated only two star in the last round of Comprehensive Performance Assessments in April.
The council’s benefit service was singled out for particular praise, as it is now the best in the capital on the back of a string of benefit cheats being caught and prosecuted.
The planning department also performed well, having shot up 25 places to fourth when assessed on national targets including processing planning applications within eight weeks.
While Cllr Ashton was keen to highlight to areas the council is doing well, he concede there are several areas still to work on, including its culture performance, which fell two places and is ranked 23rd out of 32 in the capital.
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
8:51pm Thu 6 Nov 08
Oh and Gareth - the country under labour is in great shape isn't it? Pensions, housing, stocks, gold reserves, the currency and now peoples savings - all trashed by your government.
Richard_at_Harrow
says...
10:35pm Thu 22 Jan 09
Price Waterhouse Coopers Performance Benchmarking:
Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), gave a presentation on
Comparative Performance Analysis for 2007/08. Cabinet were informed that there
were currently 84 local authority members of the PWC benchmarking service.
During the presentation, PWC reported that
• Harrow was the 6th highest performing authority in London;
• in relation to all upper tier authorities, Harrow was ranked 37th out of 150;
• some previously poorly performing indicators had improved but some of the
better performing indicators had slipped;
• a chart showing performance against net expenditure indicated that Harrow
demonstrated good value for money;
• the new national indicators should be positive for Harrow;
• they did not see their analysis as a rival to the Comprehensive Performance
Assessment (CPA). Some elements of CPA suffered a time lag effect, for
instance on satisfaction data, which the PWC model did not;
• their results were based on the unaudited data available from local authorities
and their analysis could assist authorities in understanding their position;
• the Audit Commission were aware of their work and individual relationship
managers were keen to see what authorities did with the data;
• Capital Ambition were positive about the benchmarking service and PWC
hoped for agreement to implement it fully across all London councils.
Members and officers asked questions and made comments in relation to the
presentation including that:-
• the previous years’ data on performance versus net expenditure was
requested by the Leader of the Council;
• in terms of Environment Services, the CPA block did not reflect the Council’s
good work in this area;
• the Adults and Housing indicators were improving but this was not reflected in
the CPA score. It was pleasing to see that the PWC model had addressed this
issue;
• there was an aggressive transformation programme in Adults and Housing and
for the first time in 7 years there had been an improvement in the Commission
for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) rating for prospects for improvement;
Cabinet thanked PWC for their presentation.
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