Waste at Barnet Council

Barnet Council have spent £106,000 buying new laptops and accessories for the 63 Barnet Councillors. These are no ordinary laptops but are top of the range, high specification tablet computers. The list price for these computers is £1,354 (ex VAT) and whilst Barnet may have procured them with a good discount, they are still excessively expensive at £976.42. They don't have a CD or DVD drive and they have a small 12.1" screen so that means the Council also has to shell out on a docking station (£162.43) and a separate LCD screen (£105.99).  At the Audit Committee last night they acknowledged that they were probably over specified but because the council has already purchased 1,700 of these expensive computers to enable staff to work from home, it is easier for councillors to have the same machine. To give the technophobes amongst you an analogy, imagine the scenario in a commercial company. Everyone gets a company car. A bright spark researcher says, " we have specified Ranger Rovers because the can go very fast, handle all terrains, floods, snow, steep inclines, are very robust and are very reliable". I can imagine the finance director saying, "Great but we live in a city and they cost £60,000 each. For the few staff that have to go out into the wilds, let them have a Range Rover; everyone else can have a standard four door small salon car that is cheap to run and service". That sort of logic doesn't seem to prevail at Barnet Council.

Outrage at Councillor Allowance Increases

Many people were deeply unhappy at the proposed Councillor increases. The Residents' Association of Barnet petition gathered over 300 signatures. However, the threat of a leadership contest forced the councillors to reconsider this increase. They have now reduced the allowances for the cabinet members but a number of committee chairmen are still getting a 50% increase in their allowance from £9,974 to £15,333. This is on top of their standard councillor allowance of £10,597. What is worse is that some of these committees sit as infrequently as twice a year. Nice work if you can get it. Overall a deeply unsatisfactory situation and one which your Residents' Association of Barnet candidates will continue to fight.