LDL proves it is out of touch with 10th anniversary barbecue
I'm all in favour of employers praising their staff when they do a good job.
But Liverpool Direct Limited risks showing just how out of touch with reality it has become, by throwing a big barbecue to celebrate its 10th anniversary.
Around 400 guests have been invited to the bash at the Marriott Hotel.
The council and LDL have tried to defend the event saying that joint venture partner BT will be picking up the tab, hardly the point.
How will the 1,200 workers who will end up losing their job at the city council feel to see such an event being held? Once more LDL seems to be showing that we are not all in it together.
So far LDL has escaped any job cuts, although the minutes of LDL's May staff forum minutes ominously state: "LDL has offered a substantial price reduction to Liverpool City Council and the reduction will have an impact on LDL.
"The exact impacts of the reduction are yet to be identified."
If LDL is forced to cut jobs, having held this type of event in advance of any announcement will look insensitive to say the least.
Read the full story HERE.
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David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
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The LDL statements quoted, and this demented barbecue, sum up everything that’s wrong with LDL.
Of course BT will pick up the tag for this tasteless example of self-congratulatory PR, so they should – LDL is controlled by BT (they state this openly in their accounts). It is a lucrative BT subsidiary. The Council needs to stop referring to this as a joint venture, because it isn’t. Joint ventures have joint control, and LCC have none whatsoever.
I honestly thought that things might actually change in these latest negotiations – after all the reports, from inside and outside the council, the FOI battle to get all the details of the agreement – the performance reviews that were never done, the access to accounts that was never given, etc. etc. into the public domain.
I thought we might find out what all the money that goes to BT as a “management fee” actually paid for. We know where the other half of the 80 million we pay LDL goes – it goes back to the council to pay the workforce and other local costs. BT gets the rest for the goods and services it supplies. But everyone knows that these are overcharged, nowhere near market rates. Is this now going to stop? It doesn’t sound like it.
But first we were told that all the other previous reports (KPMG, IdEA, internal council reviews) had got it wrong, That the Audit Commission had got it wrong, too, when it found we were paying more than twice as much as any other core city for some of the services we buy from LDL. So who are these people who have decided that everyone else was wrong?? And on what basis did they make this astounding decision?? What evidence?? Assuming, of course, that they were competent to make it. We need to know all this.
And we were also told that LCC will now own 40% instead of 19%. Wow – we now own 40% of nothing, instead of 19%, like before. Because that’s what it means. If you have shares in a company, but no control, then what you have is an investment. But the company does not make a single penny in profit, so the return on your investment is nothing.
The justification for all this is jobs. But most of the jobs at LDL are jobs that would need to be done whether of not LDL existed – and they would probably be done by the same Council employees who are doing them now.
Apart, of course, from the work they have been doing for private clients.
Which leads, of course to the “ominous” statement about the “impacts of the reduction”. It sounds like they have no intention of changing their way of doing things – or their profits – but make the employees bear the brunt. It looks like they are finally going to have to part with some of the tens of millions they have received from private clients. Perhaps they think they can offset this loss by making everyone work harder.
It’s particularly easy for them to cut their employment costs, when they don’t even have to pay redundancy (the cost of which is, of course, the Council’s responsibility).
They really are determined to pig out in the public sector trough.
Beyond contempt.
What, David Bartlett criticising LDL?
Well I never!
Well said Katie. This is public money we're talking about.
The councillors who have failed to get a grip - who have even declined to resist this plundering of the public purse - have some questions to answer. They shouldn't be surprised when the public accuses them of corruption - it's inevitable, given that tens of millions are being spent by the taxpayer, that every independent body which has looked into this has concluded that the taxpayer is being ripped off, and that this nonsense continues unchecked.
Thanks deceangli. It was a bit of a rant, but why everyone isn't up in arms about the lack of explanation or accountability is beyond me.
The last Finance & Resources Select Committee before the renewal deadline was last week, and the LDL contract WASN'T EVEN ON THE AGENDA. Whyever not?? These are the people who are supposed to scrutinise it. When will this happen?? The famous LDL Scrutiny Panel disappeared from the Council website a couple of months ago, too - we don't even know if it still exists and who is on it, much less what on earth it's doing (meeting in secret, perhaps??).
We'll be able to get a lot of information through FOI requests - the Information Commissioner has made clear that any commercial confidentiality issues do not outweight the enormous public interest - but it will be too late to do much with it.
And as for corruption - they're not corrupt, so much as inept and gullible. Apparently.
Hi Katie,
As the new chair of Finance and Resources, I just wanted to let you know that we did discuss the LDL scrutiny panel at the first meeting of the Finance and Resources Scrutiny Committee last week.
It was part of the agenda item where we looked at what we would like to scrutinise in the coming year and what was still outstanding from last year.
We agreed that the LDL scrutiny panel with group of party leaders would meet again hopefully before the end of June, or in July, once the requisite report on the review has been finalised. Andrew Makinson will continue in the chair although we shall need some new scrutiny panel members as some of the original ones are no longer councillors. I have asked committee services to ask the whips to indicate who the groups wish to put forward, which is the standard way of assigning places.
Select committees are held in public and you are very welcome to come to each and any of them, in fact I was half expecting you last week, to be honest.
Best wishes, Louise
Hi Louise, thanks for the reply. I'm glad to hear it was raised last week, and look forward to reading the minutes.
I am, to put it mildly, a bit puzzled about the timing - surely you (LCC, I mean) have to sign up to the famous refresh by the end of June, don't you? The procedure you describe sounds distinctly leisurely, so whatever the reconstituted scrutiny panel may be doing in the future (and reporting properly on its meetings on the Council website would be a start), it clearly won't be discussing the contract renewal.
Or the new performance management/governance arrangements - the root of the problem, in my view.
Or the mistakes made in the past, and what has been learnt from them (answers to my questions above would help).
Which leaves the Select Committee - all this is squarely within your remit. In fact, of all your duties and responsibilities, surely this is the one you should be focussing on, given the massive impact any change in the LDL arrangements could and should have on expenditure, staffing, etc.
So when are you going to discuss it properly, in public. Your next scheduled meeting is 17 July, after the deadline.
Hi Katie
The scrutiny panel has set a date in late June, I don't have it to hand. If I recall correctly Scrutiny Panels are not public meetings and I will have to check whether the minutes will be released but I can certainly confirm that all party leaders have been invited, plus members of the panel who are still on the council, plus the cabinet member (Deputy Leader) and the assistant cabinet member and that the meeting precedes any paper to the cabinet.
It is late on Sunday night and I have just found this so I dont have all the answers at my finger tips but please rest assured that this is very much on our agenda.
Best wishes, Louise
Louise, whether or not Scrutiny Panels are open to the public (and it's not specified), their dates, agendas and minutes should be available - and until the end of 2010, they all were. The circumstances in which minutes etc. can be withheld are clear, and very limited. As to commercial confidentiality,the Information Commissioner has made it clear that the public interest in the LDL contract overrides this.
My point about the LDL Scrutiny Panel is that all mention of it has disappeared from the Council website, which lists 24 current scrutiny panels, looking at things like health and social care, higher education funding, and partnerships (all joint ventures apart from LDL). The LDL Scrutiny Panel was on this list until earlier this year. Since the proceedings of all these bodies are still available, someone must have decided to remove the LDL Scrutiny Panel.
You surely should be finding out why. And getting it restored as soon as possible.
And, finally, you state that you don't have the date of the next meeting to hand -this is astonishing. These people report to your Select Committee - are you not involved? Shouldn't you be a bit more interested?
Dear Katie
I am happy to ask all of these questions, and have them answered for you. I do know the date of the meeting, I just didnt have it in my hand at 9.30pm on a Sunday night after I had got home from visiting my mum for the weekend. Of course I am interested, it was me who arranged that the panel meet and that the date be agreed and circulated. I can see that you are passionate about this issue and I applaud that. That is why I am here, communicating with you. Best wishes, Louise
It is June 27th by the way, with the findings/deliberations going to cabinet two days later. Cabinet is a public meeting too.
It is June 27th by the way, with the findings/deliberations going to cabinet two days later. Cabinet is a public meeting too.
It is June 27th by the way, with the findings/deliberations going to cabinet two days later. Cabinet is a public meeting too.
Thanks for the info Louise, and apologies if I have appeared to be over-aggressive.
I wouldn't have described my attitude as passionate - more outraged, exasperated and frustrated.
Believe it or not, I can well believe that the negotiations will produce some savings, going forward - as well they should, of course.
But this is not really what I'm worried about.
As I keep saying - my concern is governance - scrutiny, oversight, etc.
There was a disastrous failure in this, despite all sorts of provisions in the original agreement and contract – a Strategy Board, performance monitoring, commitments to open book accounting, arms length transactions, etc. etc.... everything you could wish for. But none of it happened.
Instead there was lip service (glossy reports with little meaningful information), and a lot of stone-walling, procrastination, etc. If this doesn't change then problems will continue, irrespective of whatever is agreed now.
Suffolk County Council are having exactly the same kind of problems with Customer Services Direct - the LDL clone set up in 2004 - massive overcharging, insufficient information and oversight, etc. etc. One of the Councillors involved in setting this up, Kevan Lim (Labour), wrote an excellent post on this (“Is BT ripping off Suffolk?” on kevanlim.co.uk on 17 March of this year).
This has to change. The two-year fight to get unredacted copies of the contract and agreement made it clear that BT uses "commercial confidentiality" to prevent access to any proper information. The Information Commissioner rejected these arguments, firstly because he did not see how the information could possibly benefit any of BT's competitors and, secondly, that the public interest in releasing the information was compelling.
Removing the proceedings of the Scrutiny Panel set up to monitor the LDL contract - the panel to which Cosgrove and Dolan reported - taken off the Council internet site seems to indicate that this attitude of concealing information persists, and for this reason is extremely worrying.
Any entirely accept that there are aspects of the negotiations that are and should remain confidential, but there is far more that should not. And provisions about performance management and scrutiny will be meaningless without proper and timely information and real teeth (i.e., failure to provide information, to allow proper access to the accounts should constitute what is referred to as a Contractor Breach).
Finally, my comment about people being inept and gullible – this mainly referred to the previous leader of the Council and his acolyte officers. The hubris of Warren Bradley’s leadership was jaw-dropping. And while I accept that it is generally sensible and practical to look forward and not back, some things really do need explaining – if only to ensure that similar things do not happen again. I strongly believe that he and anyone else who served as LCC director on the board of LDL should be made to answer for agreeing to the contracts to do work for third party providers without nailing down the terms under which LDL’s workforce would actually do the work. The section of the documents that the Council and BT fought hardest to keep back was the schedule that clearly stated that no contract of this kind could be agreed without the specific approval of the LCC director. So they had specific power to force changes, because the contracts couldn’t have been agreed without them. So why didn’t they?
Louise, I presume you are responsible for the fact that the LDL Scrutiny Panel has reappeared on the list of committees on the Council website. Thank you.
Louise, I presume you are responsible for the fact that the LDL Scrutiny Panel has now reappeared on the list of committees on the Council website. Thank you.
How about a copy of the most recent VFM report (suitably redacted, of course)?
Hi Katie, no, you are responsible for that really, you raised it! I spoke to officers in Committee Services on Wednesday who confirmed there was no actual reason for them being removed and it may have happened during a spot of housekeeping perhaps. They were happy to put them back up again. I thought they said it would happen next week perhaps, so I am glad it has been done already. I have asked whether the report that will be discussed on Monday can be made public and am waiting to hear the outcome of that. I have not seen it yet. Please bear with me. Best wishes, Louise
Louise, sorry to sound fulsome, but it really makes a change for one of the councillors involved in this business to actually respond to one of the issues raised in this blog. I don't think anyone else has. I am trying to bear with you, but it's impossible not to be shocked and disappointed that you haven't yet seen the report to be discussed on Monday. Surely the Select Committee should have time to read and digest such a (presumably) momentous document?
I'm a cynic, by now, so I don't believe the "housekeeping" excuse. There are all sorts of defunct committees and bodies that haven't met for years, and their proceedings, membership, dates etc. are still there on the website. Just this one, current one, got removed by mistake.
And they haven't actually replaced what was taken off - just the minutes of the last meeting and the agenda for the next one. The details and minutes of all the previous meetings aren't back yet.
Finally, the VFM report. Perhaps Committee Services, and whoever instructs them, should refer to the Constitution of the Council. It's pretty clear on the criteria and procedures for redacting information from reports etc., and it doesn't say anything about total blackouts. It is stretching credulity to imagine that every single word of every single sentence of all that this outweights the public interest in their disclosure.
This secretive attitude only feeds the suspicions that so many people have that there's something seriously dodgy about the LDL arrangements.
Apologies. The penultimate sentence of this last post should read :
It is stretching credulity well beyond breaking point to imagine that every single word of every single sentence of all the VFM reports that have been written about LDL is highly confidential, and that this confidentiality outweighs the enormous public interest in their disclosure.
Hi Katie, I am going to send instructions and questions over the weekend to my committee clerk, concerning some of the issues you have raised here. I have just phoned but he was not available and it is nearly 5pm so it wont be until next week now that action can be taken. Please rest assured that I intend to run scrutiny of Finance and Resources as openly and transparently as possible, and believe that if residents raise questions in public forums - like this one - then they should be responded to, providing of course that I have seen the entry or letter! Hopefully we can make some progress next week. Best wishes, Louise
Link to LDL Refresh Report that was discussed at scrutiny panel this morning and which goes to cabinet on Wednesday. http://councillors.liverpool.gov.uk/mgConvert2Pdf.aspx?ID=27395&T=9
Louise, thank you.
It's interesting stuff (to a sad obsessive old bag like me, anyway). Sounds like they've got a good deal, financially, although I was a bit puzzled about the £1 million "fund" of profits from third party work that BT is "holding" for the council. That's a nice tidy sum, isn't it? How did they work it out, exactly? I imagine the City Treasurer Review of March included some proper detail on this - hopefully they had access to the full LDL management accounts, because Ernst & Young didn't.
Apart from that, the key to making all this work will be getting proper performance management (timely and clear information from LDL and robust benchmarking), which needs good contract management by LCC and a massive overhaul of governance. Everything to do this was in the JVA from the beginning, if only it had been implemented properly. And given what appears to be the culture at the top of LDL, changing things will be very hard without replacing the senior management team.
Hopefully BT have learnt some lessons - if you look at the various joint ventures and partnerships they have entered into with various local authorities, there's a common theme - where there's proper governance, accountability and contract management, things work (Edinburgh in particular is an object lesson in this), and when they don't, things go wrong - Essex (contract cancelled), Rotherham (contract cancelled), Liverpool and Suffolk (scandals, rumours, concerns about transparency and costs). There are more, I would think - including one in Tyneside where they actually set up a specific BT subsidiary and transferred all the council staff to work for the new company. Sounds odd - but at least this way the company has to submit proper accounts to Companies House.
And that, of course is another thing that should change immediately - LDL cannot remain a "small" non-trading company. It needs to file proper accounts instead of publishing glossy brochures with minimal massaged information. The only reason for exploiting this loophole can be to keep proper financial information out of the public domain (and this must also be one of the reasons they wouldn't sort out the third party earnings business - no trace of anything in the accounts as presented to date).
Changing this would help to restore confidence.
So all we need now are the City Treasurer's Review and the full Ernst & Young Report!!
Louise, thank you.
It's interesting stuff (to a sad obsessive old bag like me, anyway). Sounds like they've got a good deal, financially, although I was a bit puzzled about the £1 million "fund" of profits from third party work that BT is "holding" for the council. That's a nice tidy sum, isn't it? How did they work it out, exactly? I imagine the City Treasurer Review of March included some proper detail on this - hopefully they had access to the full LDL management accounts, because Ernst & Young didn't.
Apart from that, the key to making all this work will be getting proper performance management (timely and clear information from LDL and robust benchmarking), which needs good contract management by LCC and a massive overhaul of governance. Everything to do this was in the JVA from the beginning, if only it had been implemented properly. And given what appears to be the culture at the top of LDL, changing things will be very hard without replacing the senior management team.
Hopefully BT have learnt some lessons - if you look at the various joint ventures and partnerships they have entered into with various local authorities, there's a common theme - where there's proper governance, accountability and contract management, things work (Edinburgh in particular is an object lesson in this), and when they don't, things go wrong - Essex (contract cancelled), Rotherham (contract cancelled), Liverpool and Suffolk (scandals, rumours, concerns about transparency and costs). There are more, I would think - including one in Tyneside where they actually set up a specific BT subsidiary and transferred all the council staff to work for the new company. Sounds odd - but at least this way the company has to submit proper accounts to Companies House.
And that, of course is another thing that should change immediately - LDL cannot remain a "small" non-trading company. It needs to file proper accounts instead of publishing glossy brochures with minimal massaged information. The only reason for exploiting this loophole can be to keep proper financial information out of the public domain (and this must also be one of the reasons they wouldn't sort out the third party earnings business - no trace of anything in the accounts as presented to date).
Changing this would help to restore confidence.
So all we need now are the City Treasurer's Review and the full Ernst & Young Report!!
Hi Katie
I will see what I can do. We now have all the papers from the scrutiny panel back online, apart from perhaps an early one where notes rather than minutes were taken and I have not been able to track them down yet, but am still on the case.
Talk to me about the redacted report, can you link to it? I dont really know exactly which one you are referring to and if I am to get it published in a more acceptable form then I need to be sure I can identify it.
Best wishes
Louise
Hi Louise. The report I was referring to was the City Treasurer's Review, presented to the Cabinet in March. It should not be withheld in its entiretly, but published, if necessary with redactions.
Given that it contradicted several previous reviews of the LDL contract, including at least two external reviews, one of which cost over £500,000, as well as the Dolan and Cosgrove report, which had all sorts of repercussions (Cosgrove and the Employment Tribunal??), there is surely an overwhelming public interest in publishing it. I don't actually think there should be any redactions, but even a redacted version would be better than nothing.
Hi Louise. The report I was referring to was the City Treasurer's Review, presented to the Cabinet in March. It should not be withheld in its entiretly, but published, if necessary with redactions.
Given that it contradicted several previous reviews of the LDL contract, including at least two external reviews, one of which cost over £500,000, as well as the Dolan and Cosgrove report, which had all sorts of repercussions (Cosgrove and the Employment Tribunal??), there is surely an overwhelming public interest in publishing it. I don't actually think there should be any redactions, but even a redacted version would be better than nothing.
Hi Katie
I am on with it, now that you have clarified what you are after. Questions are being asked, we shall see what the answers are.
Incidentally, re the appalling level of double and triple posting going on throughout this blog, I have come to realise that even if you get the error message saying that the website cannot be found, the post has been made, so you dont need to repeat it.
The only ones you need to repeat are those which particularly ask you to re-enter the code and which say you have used the wrong text. They really make me laugh actually. What is wrong, I wonder to myself, about my perfectly sensible contribution? When what they really mean is that the commenting facility is up the spout.
Cheers.
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