Monthly Archives: March 2011

Cabinet, Council spending, Suffolk County Council, Uncategorized

Where has all that money gone? To consultants, everyone!

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It was only couple of weeks back  I reminded you of SCC’s extraordinary and unspecified spend on consultants which was decided unilaterally by Suffolk’s Conservatives back in May. £122,000 of public money ( 16p from every single Suffolk resident) was to be spent without oversight on unspecified but terribly, terribly important  ‘services’ from three consultancy companies : Fields of Learning, Scintillate and DNA.  This decision (to allow Chief Executive Andrea Hill to spend this money without further reference to the Council) was voted through by the Tory majority at full council despite the best endeavours of my party.

We Lib Dems had previously prevented this significant spending decision being slid in via the Cabinet back door without ever reaching the ears of full council (see below*) by ‘calling in’ the Cabinet decision. I will remind you again that deputy leader Jane Storey said at the time that £122,000  ‘ is a tiny proportion of the county council’s budget!” Her implication was that no oversight should be  required in the spending of such a itsy bitsy teeny weeny sum of money by such an intelligent and serious bunch as the administration, and that it was damn nice of them even to have mentioned it!

Today the Evening Star reveals that  the DNA  in ‘DNA’ stands for Davidson Nicklen and Associates . And that the ‘Davidson’ in question is that very selfsame Sol Davidson whose coaching of the Chief Executive Andrea Hill, Council Leader Jeremy Pembroke,  and other senior executives apparently cost us people of Suffolk an itsy bitsy teeny weeny  £583 per 60 – 90 min session!  Or, as was minuted in the original Cabinet papers,  a price that was ‘competitive with market rates’.

Competitive? Do me a favour! Do you suppose for a single moment that any one of the beneficiaries would have put their hands in their own pockets and paid out that kind of money themselves?

No wonder the administration  – puffed up with delusions of grandeur and selfimportance though they are – were reluctant to specify this expenditure too exactly. We – the people of Suffolk – might have thought more oversight was required than they clearly wished to us to have!

The Conservatives voted to spend the remainder of this money on further  equally unspecified services from another couple of  consultancy companies (Fields of Learning and Scintillate).

So the next question must be, what exactly have the people of Suffolk been spending that remaining £92,000 on?

*That infamous Cabinet decision in full (from the Minutes of SCC Cabinet  Meeting 30 March 2010)

….the Chief Executive invited the Cabinet to agree exemptions from the Council’s Procurement Regulations so that contracts for Organisational Development (OD) services may be let without a competitive process.

Decision: The Cabinet:   i)     agreed exemptions from the Council’s Procurement Regulations so that contracts for Organisational Development (OD) services may be let without a competitive process; and ii)    delegated to the Chief Executive’s authority to agree these contracts.

Reason for Decision: The Cabinet recognised that due to the enormous scale of change which faced the Council, the Council needed to get experienced Organisational Development service providers in post as soon as possible.  The Cabinet considered that the day rates proposed were competitive with market rates and that the cost of getting any other provider ‘up to speed’ would be disproportionate.

So there’s the truth bald and unadorned for all to see  – the Cabinet  really DO consider paying £583 per 60-90 min coaching session is ‘competitive with market rates’.  Market rates for what?  The Emperor’s tailoring???

Pedestrians and Walkers, Quality of Life funding, Transport, Uncategorized, young people, Your councillor

Woodbridge: Clarkson’s Crossing opens live on air!

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There aren’t many road crossings that have their own name, but the brand new Clarkson Crossing in Ipswich Road Woodbridge is very different. For a start, it’s probably the only one in Suffolk  – maybe in the country – that local students have helped plan, design and name, in a joint project with Suffolk County Highway Engineers and their County Councillor! Today students from Farlingaye school, together with Farlingaye Deputy Head Graham Smith,  came out in force to help unveil a specially designed plaque to commemorate their collaboration, live on James Hazell’s radio show.

Caroline Page joins Farlingaye High School Students to open the Clarkson Crossing - live on Radio Suffolk!

The Ipswich road has become increasingly busy over the years and I have been very keen to provide a crossing, since I was elected, two and a half years ago. Althought  I had earmarked the money from my Quality of Life budget, and gained agreement for it to go ahead, we were uncertain what would be the best  solution.  Huge congratulations are due to the public-spirited students of Farlingaye High School who kick-started the final phase when they investigated difficulties in walking/cycling to school last year. This led to Suffolk’s Highway Engineers working with the students to look together at how this problem could be solved  within the money available -to  provide a solution that was fit for purpose.

Working together, the Engineers and the students established that a refuge island would best fit the problem and the bill. The students helped work out where it would have to be sited, and – as a last idea – they christened it. Today they helped unveil a specially designed commemorative plaque to officially open the Clarkson Crossing  live on Radio Suffolk.

The road is not only a school route  crossing point, but it is also a crossing point for bus users (many of them elderly), other pedestrians, and for National Cycle Route 1.

“For years children and their parents have crossed the Ipswich Road on the way to and from school but each year, this has got more difficult with more and more traffic going  faster and faster. It was becoming a daily battle . The worst thing was you could never find a gap in both streams of traffic at the same time. With the new crossing, you don’t have to! And having that island in the middle of the road is also slowing the traffic down.”  Ipswich Road Resident

Here, the young people  of Woodbridge have shown their elders something important: that if you think ‘something should be done’, the answer is often in your hands!

The plinth was designed by SCC's Sam Harvey - and didn't she make a lovely job of it !

This project started a long time before people started talking about the ‘Big Society’ To my mind it’s what we people in Suffolk just call ‘society’ – and society working as it ought to!

Council spending, cuts, Lollipop patrols, Suffolk County Council

Suffolk’s Parsimony and Profligacy: Update

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Having blogged a couple of weeks back about the extraordinary spending priorities being displayed by the leaders of Suffolk County Council,   I wasn’t unduly surprised to find another example  hitting  national news via the Daily Mail.

Apparently both our  Chief Executive and our Council Leader have been benefiting from extraordinarily expensive “coaching for change”  (article here) According to a Freedom of Information request the Chief Executive has had 23 sessions  from ex-Chemical Engineer turned senior executive coach  Sol Davidson each one of which cost the Suffolk taxpayer £525 plus VAT.

We do not (yet) have figures for the amount Suffolk taxpayers have spent on Jeremy Pembroke.

I’d like to mention here our Woodbridge lollipop man, Terry King. Mr King has been paid £35 a week by Suffolk County Council for his valued and life-saving services. Now Suffolk says his services are too expensive.   £12,075 would pay for him to continue protecting children in Woodbridge for nearly seven years.

I will not offend your intelligence by pointing out what other equally valuable uses Suffolk residents could put this sum of money to.

The county council line is dismissive.  Spending £12,000 on personal coaching is  ” in line with training normally provided to senior officers” they say  – which suggests that SCC spending priorities are even more skew-whiff  than anyone has realised.

I know nothing about Mr Davidson, beyond what is available via Google  which is principally profile pages. The more recent profiles read:

He now specialises in coaching leaders and their teams in building strategic and operational capacity in the face of increasingly uncertain and unpredictable circumstance

What is interesting for the residents of  Suffolk is that the uncertain and unpredictable circumstances we face are seemingly created by the very people he coached!

What’s all that about?

Update: It was reported in the EADT March 5th, that the total amount paid to Mr Davidson by SCC for his coaching was £27,825 for 53 sessions of between one hour and ninety minutes each. This was to coach the Chief Executive, Andrea Hill, and the corporate management board in ‘teambuilding and working styles’.