Freedom of Information Fail

Had another FoI decision back from the Information Commissioner's Office. Unfortunately, and somewhat bizarrely in my opinion, my complaint was not upheld.

Well I say it wasn't upheld but in fact it was partially upheld in as far as the breached s.10 of the FoIA because the response was delayed but that kind of goes without saying these days. The bit they didn't uphold was the important bit and demonstrates considerable gullibility on the ICO's part.

The case was about NCC's decision to appoint consultants Dunbar and Boardman to look after the council's lifts. I'd got most of the info including how much they were paying but I wanted a copy of the decision to hire them which NCC said they didn't have. The ICO decided to believe them on 'the balance of probabilities'.

Now I know it's hard to prove a negative but let's put this in the context of NCC's conduct throughout the case. Remember that they initially claimed that no consultants had been appointed, before having to contradict themselves at review when I pointed out that I knew Dunbar and Boardman were on board. They also claimed that no accidents had occurred, forgetting about the nasty Viccy Flats one which had just featured in the Post (and which is still under investigation by the HSE as far as I know).

Now have a read of the ICO investigator's account of his attempts to get this last bit of info from NCC, in particular para 21 -

Looks like a bit of a runaround doesn't it? Kind of a bit like they were trying to avoid the issue and hoping it would go away.

Yet, when NCC finally says that there is no decision, despite this record of ahem, 'inaccuracy' and evasive behaviour, despite the fact that it is highly unlikely that a council would simply hand over £3.3k per month without there being a paper trail, the ICO accepts this.

I wonder how much money is thrown around without a record being kept?

You Lift Me Up...

As you can see I'm running out of potential titles with the word 'lift' in them.

A response has arrived from NCC about how much they are paying to Dunbar and Boardman for lift maintenance.

It works out to £3388 per month including VAT which comes to £40655 pa. Not as much as I was expecting I have to admit. In the last year that the internal team was in operation the net cost was £36,070 pa although that was back in 2008.

My guess is that at most NCC gets a couple of days work for that monthly spend whereas the internal team had at least two full time staff (more I think). Remember that this is for monitoring and commissioning work, costs for actual repairs and maintenance are separate.

With this being a suspiciously low figure I hope that my first info request eventually digs up a copy of the decision to commission Dunbar and Boardman via the Information Commissioner's Office. Will have to wait for a bit on that one though.

Update - Been told that D+B only have to look after approx 20% of the lifts that NCC's internal team did as the majority are the responsibility of NCH. Prior to D+B NCH looked after all of them but decided to cut back after the Viccy Flats accident. I think NCH have one f/t worker doing their lifts.

Recruitment Agencies

Just seen an interesting little FoIA snippet on the 'What Do They Know' site.

According to this response, NCC actually increased the amount it spent on a temp agency called Taskforce last year.

Bear in mind that at the beginning of the 2009/10 financial year NCC was implementing its 'Workforce Reductions' phase 1, losing 438 posts between Feb and Nov 2009 (source p16 here). Yet the amount paid to Taskforce increased from £2,675,928.20 in 08/09 to £2,923,697.75in 09/10.

Among the compulsory redundancies were the lift maintenance team, which eventually had to be replaced by consultants Dunbar and Boardman following a serious accident. I'm waiting to hear how much this contract is costing.

I wonder how many other hidden costs there are that result from the slashing of jobs?

PS The FoIA request that this relates to was submitted on 15 Sep and answered on 17 Sep. My request about payments to Dunbar and Boardman was submitted before it yet has not been answered yet.

"We Haven't Employed Any Consultants on This"..."Oh, You Mean THOSE Consultants..."

Further to previous posts about NCC's lifts and such, I'm managing to slowly wring little bits of information out about what's been going on, although there's a way to go yet.

The backstory is here. I decided to do a FoIA to find about costs and savings both before and after the decision to axe the lift maintenance team as part of the 2009 cuts and we've got as far as we can with NCC here. I will almost certainly be going to the Information Commissioner on parts of this one and I will have to look at the figures they provided to see if there's a story in there but I want to write up one aspect of the affair now.

One of the things I'd asked about was whether any consultants had been engaged to do any of the work previously done by the lift team. As part of an interim response on 27 July I got a fairly unequivocal reply as follows -

"6) Request a copy of any decision to employ any consultants to undertake any work previously carried out by the lift maintenance team, or advice as to where to find it if it is already publicly available?

No such decision had been made as of the date of this request, therefore in accordance with section 1 of this act copy documentation cannot be provided as it is not held by this authority."

So, that's clear then, no consultants being used.

Trouble is I'd received a tip off that a firm called Dunbar and Boardman had been hired to cover for the lifts so I thought this was odd. After a bit of prompting I got this today and here's what it says about consultants -

"In response to your additional supplementary comments with regards to Dunbar and Boardman, I can confirm that following the incident at Victoria Centre flats, Nottingham City Home (NCH) no longer wished to manage Nottingham City Councils lifts. As a result, Dunbar and Boardman were appointed. NCH will however maintain responsibility for their own lifts."

Oh, and did I mention that they'd also denied any accidents happening in lifts in the interim response? -


"5) Please will you provide the numbers of accidents involving lifts for each year to date and going back as far as the records referred to in #s 1-4?
 
Our Safety Advisors Unit have confirmed that no accidents have occurred involving lifts for which Nottingham City Council are responsible."

The bit I will definitely be taking further is the claim that no copy of the decision to employ Dunbar and Boardman is held because that's self-evident bollocks. This would be a fairly pricy contract and somebody somewhere must have made a decision about it, either an officer under delegated powers or a portfolio holder decision being most likely.

So the upshot of this is that somebody somewhere in the line of information provision initially told a direct lie and I reckon is still holding out on another one. I've said before that when dodginess of this type occurs I don't blame the Information Governance staff, they rely on what they're told by the originating department and that's where the fault lies.

Perhaps more importantly, in 2009 somebody decided to axe the Lift Maintenance team which didn't really appear to be costing very much and little more than a year later a serious accident occurs in an NCC lift. Suddenly NCC are employing outside consultants and handily (and allegedly) nobody has kept a copy of the decision on that so I haven't (so far) been able to establish how much lift maintenance is costing us now.

The 'workforce reductions' in 2009 were about saving money. How's that going then?

Fire in the Hold!

Noticed a brief report in the Post yesterday about a fire in the basement of the Council House.

My first thought was that it was an insurance/clearance job. After all, apart from a couple of die hard councillors, NCC has largely abandoned the Council House for its shiny new home at Loxley House and it could be described as a prime location. However, its listing status was recently upgraded to Grade II* so it would be incredibly difficult to make any alterations to the building. The normal fate for such properties is to suddenly find themselves aflame and oh noes! they have to be demolished, leaving room for new development and the landowner bathing in filthy lucre, instead of burdened with a money pit.

But jesting aside, a clue in the report points to a more likely scenario. Apparently the fire started in a lift mechanism before spreading. I'm no expert but I presume (hope?) that lifts aren't normally prone to spontaneous combustion unless, perhaps, they haven't been maintained properly.

Now lift maintenance is currently a live issue with NCC following the accident in the lifts at Victoria Centre flats. NCC used to employ a lifts maintenance team but this was cut in the 2009 workforce reductions to make savings. I understand that this decision is quite high in the minds of the health and Safety Executive which is currently investigating the Viccy flats incident.

Looks like we might have been subjected to a cut too far.

Update - just had it confirmed that the fire did start in the car lift as suggested by Niles in the comments. NCC isn't responsible for that so they're in the clear over that one.

Interestingly have been told that NCC has hired consultants Dunbar and Boardman to look after their lifts since the Viccy flats incident. Chances are that won't be cheap and the decision to engage them should have been published on the NCC website (either as a delegated officer decision or portfolio holder decision) but I haven't seen any sign of it. But they're being very secretive about lift related stuff at the moment. I've got a freedom of info request in about all that so it'll be interesting to see how much info they give me or whether they hide behind exemptions. I know which one my money's on...

Snippets

According to the Post, Jon Collins is in the running to become Chair of Notts Police Authority. The Post also reports a "Labour source" as questioning whether this is a good idea but predictably, they asked to remain anonymous. There are two other candidates and the decision will be made on 27 May.

As well as being a councillor in St Anns and Leader of the City Council, JoCo is also the Chair of 'One Nottingham', Chair of the Crime and Drugs Partnership, Chair of the Renewal Trust and a member of the East Midlands Development Agency board. He is also already heavily involved in NPA as Chair of its Change Management Committee and has been no stranger to controversy there. It's not been revealed whether he will give up any of these if here to be given the new NPA role.

(Update - just found out he is also Vice-Chair of the East Midlands Leaders Board)

Following the lift accident at Viccy flats, which may or may not be due at least in part to NCC's decision to make the lift maintenance team redundant last year, NCC have shown a keen sense of irony in loudly reporting its prosecution of a Radford shop owner for a defective lift which caused a strikingly similar accident to the Viccy flats incident. Still, at least they got a guide figure for the size of the fine.

Quite a risky PR strategy really because, although NCC will probably be able to pass the buck on to Nottm City Homes for Viccy flats, there are still a number of NCC buildings with lifts in which are probably just at risk.

Lift Issues

The Post has a report on a chap who had an accident in one of the lifts at a Nottingham City Homes owned block of flats, resulting in 'leg injuries'. I'm hearing that it was actually Victoria Centre flats and that the particular leg injury concerned was 'loss of...' which sounds pretty nasty.

NCH have acted in the only way they know how i.e. they have appointed a consultant.

There is an interesting comment at the bottom of the article and I've got a bit more info on that.

Phrases like 'only a matter of time have been' have been heard to be muttered by people who know about these things. It seems that, prior to the 'workforce reductions' decided last year in order to cut costs (as opposed to those announced THIS year), Nottm City Council employed a Lifts Service. It was these guys' job to look after and inspect the lifts across NCC and NCH (about 1400 in total I'm told) and to commission any repairs needed. However they were deemed surplus to requirements and made redundant. Apparently NCH took on one of the team members who has since been forced to do a convincing impression of the proverbial blue arsed fly with a rocket up its arse.

The workforce reductions were supposed to have been risk assessed for health and safety issues but unfortunately all that, along with any details of the jobs that were lost, was kept confidential so I can't find out any more about it.

The savings achieved were around £80,000. I wonder if the poor chap in hospital thinks it was worth it.