A ROW has broken out over the scrutiny of Barnet Council’s contracts with outsourcing firm Capita.

The authority is due to review its Customer and Support Group (CSG) contract – which has Capita running the council’s back office services including finance, HR and IT – later this year.

The ten-year contract started in September 2013 and is worth £320million.

Labour councillors have called for all review meetings, including working groups, to be carried out in public, to ensure transparency for tax payers.

But the Conservative group says some meetings need to be held in private to ensure greater scrutiny, and to remove the temptation to “simply play up to the press or the public gallery”.

Any decision which comes from the review will be taken in public, the group added.

A Labour proposal calling for all review meetings to be held in public was rejected at the performance and contract management committee last Thursday (January 7).

Councillor Geof Cooke, Labour's performance and contract management spokesman, said: “The review of this Capita contract should be transparent and held in public – hundreds of millions of pounds of public money is being spent on this contract and the council tax paying public deserve to know what councillors really think of the contract and how it is operating.

“I cannot think of a serious reason why the working group reviewing the contract should not meet in public, other than that it would reveal what the Tories really think of Capita.”

The council will also carry out an early audit of IT services provided by Capita, which Cllr Cooke said was “long overdue”.

He added: “There have been many incidents – for instance in April last year there were three major failures causing rent not being collected and income transactions not being recorded properly and in the previous December a major system was unavailable for several days.

“The committee chair Cllr Finn needs to get a grip over contract variations and ensure that the main ones are reported for consideration by the committee.”

In response, Councillor Anthony Finn, Conservative chairman of the performance and contract management committee, said: "The purpose of the cross-party working group is for councillors to review the CSG contract and get the best deal for Barnet going forward.

"To do this most effectively, members will need to analyse commercially sensitive information and be able to discuss the issues freely.

“This lends itself to some meetings being held privately - enabling this level of scrutiny and removing the temptation for any councillor to simply play up to the press or the public gallery.”

Cllr Finn added: "There will be public discussion of the issues and the review's findings as part of the process and any decisions arising from it would be taken in public by the relevant committee."