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Barnet Council told to pay Catalyst £6m for care home improvements

9:20am Thursday 2nd September 2010 in


THE council faces paying out £6 million after an arbitrator ruled it owed the cash to contractors hired to improve care homes.

Catalyst had been after £16m under the terms of a contract signed in 2002 under the Lib Dem Labour coalition council, tying the council into a 15-year deal with them.

However, Fremantle Trust, which was hired to refit the homes, claimed £16m in “care fees deficit” for work done, which was disputed under the terms of the contract by the council.

An arbitrator has now ruled Barnet Council must pay £6m to the company, which will be paid out of a risk reserve account.

Councillor Sachin Rajput, who is in charge of adult social services, said the problems stemmed from the contract under the previous administration.

He added: “They stuck us with a contract that did not adapt to the changing needs of the people we serve, a bit like the recycling contract they also lumbered us with that did not allow plastic or cardboard to be collected.

“Personalised budgets are putting choice and spending power in the hands of our clients, but Labour failed to allow for this possibility in the care home contract.

“The Conservative administration has worked hard with our officers to reduce the payment they left us open to down as much as possible.”

A council spokesman said there are now negotiations ongoing with Catalyst to ensure the changing needs of older residents are met in the future.

Comments(10)

Rog T says...
9:48am Thu 2 Sep 10

You'd think they'd have learned their lesson. Instead they are planning to flog off everything under the futureshape/ one barnet program.

This is just a small foretaste of what is coming

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Grumblepop says...
10:55am Thu 2 Sep 10

"Councillor Sachin Rajput, who is in charge of adult social services, said the problems stemmed from the contract under the previous administration"
.
THE PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATION WAS -- led by Freer. The one 'previous' to that by Lyons
.
What a sad indictment of Rajput's Barnet education and the standards of Rajputana's of his higher education. more like the Carbolic Smoke Factory. Any wonder why it has cost £6million

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Rog T says...
11:12am Thu 2 Sep 10

Grumblepop,

Sach Rajput is an ex Mill Hill County boy, so you can't blame his education.

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Mr Reasonable says...
11:56am Thu 2 Sep 10

Hang on a minute! Shouldn't someone be questioning what role the OFFICERS involved had in this mess. Surely it is them and the expensive consultants and lawyers who drafted the contract that should take some of the responsibility. Councillors set policy and whether or not it was the right policy is debatable. However, the technical and contractual detail is the responsibility of the officers. This appears to be a contractual dispute. Surely if the officers and lawyers had been doing their jobs properly they would have anticipated these sorts of changes in demand might have taken place over a 15 year period and ensured that there were adequate break, change or variation clauses included in the contract to allow for changes to the service. Alternatively, they should have been setting out clear advice that a 15 year contract was far too long in an evolving and changing environment. If officers did provide that advice and councillors at the time chose specifically to ignore their advice then that is a much more serious matter and one that needs detailed public scrutiny, not petty points scoring jibes. Future Shape will depend heavily on officers, external consultants and lawyers providing clear advice and technically competent contracts. Councillors should be asking themselves very serious questions about the capabilities of the officers to provide them with the very best technical advice before they embark on what could an exceptionally risky and expensive outsourcing programme. Ultimately someone at Barnet Council has cost the ratepayers of Barnet £6million. We need to know why this came about and who was as fault so that we don't end up repeating these mistakes again and again.

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Grumblepop says...
12:08pm Thu 2 Sep 10

Was that Moat Mount School or Orange Hill or vice versa versa joined up? A couple of my brats went there also. On a serious note, I have to concede that Rajput was not the lawyer who negotiated that 'faulty' contract but he may do a better job than the current Borough Solicitor apperas to be doing. It's plain wrong to have a dig, Sachi beyta, my apologies.

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mrsangry999 says...
12:22pm Thu 2 Sep 10

Yes, but, Mr Reasonable, there needs to be a distinction here between the responsibilities of the minority of over paid senior officers and the majority of less fortunate officers who do all the hard work, and are under enormous pressure to cope with an ever increasing workload at a time when job security is so uncertain, and unlike hteir superiors and councillor masters, face a future of frozen salary levels.

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Mr Reasonable says...
12:55pm Thu 2 Sep 10

Absolutely agree Mrs Angry. I am assuming contracts of such a scale are dealt with/signed off by the most senior officers in the council. It may be that the entire senior management team has changed since 2002 but given that the top tier of management now all get paid 6 figure salaries, it is only right that we should demand the highest levels of competency. I would also note that if senior officers do give advice on such technically complex matters which is then ignored by councillors, that should be fully documented and made publicly available. In that way we can all judge for ourselves who is to blame if/when things go wrong.

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Grumblepop says...
6:05pm Thu 2 Sep 10

RAJPUT FOR BOROUGH SOLICITOR. Out with Lustig. Better pay than councillor and giving back more to the Community than he's doing as a politician. If he gets his negotiating and drafting wrong consider the BIG pay-off. Please no lawyer jokes?

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Pujols says...
9:49pm Fri 10 Sep 10

“Personalised budgets are putting choice and spending power in the hands of our clients, but Labour failed to allow for this possibility in the care home contract."

Of course personalised budgets had not even been thought about by the NHS in 2002 when this contract was signed, and also the whole personalisation programme only applies to people receiving care in their own homes, not to those people in residential/nursing care. Therefore this is irrelevant to the issue at hand and shows that Mr Rajput is either deliberately fogging the issue for political reasons, or simply doesn't understand the department for which he has responsibility.

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Pujols says...
10:03pm Fri 10 Sep 10

"Surely it is them and the expensive consultants and lawyers who drafted the contract that should take some of the responsibility. "


As someone with experience in working for the council I can tell you that the majority of these contracts are not drafted by lawyers, but by junior managers who often have very little experience in these matters. Lawyers might have been consulted to ensure that the people writing it had not done something obviously stupid, but no legal expert is going to know anything about the service area that the contract relates to, only the law. Senior managers/officers never get involved in the ones I've seen, probably because they wouldn't know enough about it themselves to spot any problems, thus by keeping a distance they ensure deniability if it all goes wrong.

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