Wednesday, 16 March 2022 – Why Do Officers Do It?
“GET SANCTIONS DONE” are the words Marina Hyde put in the mouth of Boris Johnson in her comic sketch in the Guardian yesterday about the heavy Metropolitan Police presence to defend sanctioned Russian oligarch, Oleg Derispaska’s Belgravia mansion, despite he masking the ownership of the mansion behind offshore shell companies while UK law defended the private property rights of geopolitical kleptocrats and up until Johnson’s Government passed new legislation to sanction them and seize their property, her point being that the Met never got the memo that, with the very limited resources they constantly bemoan, they needn’t have deployed “a phalanx of shirt-sleeved, riot shielded protect-and-servers who may or may not be available inside of six weeks next time your house is burgled…, the largest police presence you’ll see outside of a women’s vigil for someone murdered by a Met police officer…, territorial support group, police negotiators, police climbers, riot police… at least eight vans and two squad cars, as well as a JCB…” to defend a property invaded… sorry… liberated by a military operation, by four protesters that Deripaska has been at pains to claim is not his and of which the Government has yet to take control. But this is the problem with democratic organisations: the politicians want to get their policies enacted but their civil servants and officers are often slow to change to new policy and get it done. The Met has been for too long far too close to its Russian overlords to miss the changing mood in Government and now not react en force to cries of foul play by the newly designated foulers. “In the end, then”, she concludes, “I can’t but help feeling Monday’s ridiculous tableau in Belgrave Square is symbolic of a wider discombobulation, as Londongrad pivots to a new era.”
I feel for her. Council officers, too, struggle to change to new policies passed by councillors. One new policy we have to get done is Social Value, enacted in May 2020 and still a fresh thorn in procuring officers’ sides as they pivot to this new era. Procuring officers now have to consider social value contributions in bids from suppliers of a proxy value of at least 10% of the price they quote for delivering the service. This “consideration” is 10% of a bidder’s score in a competitive tender. After bids are evaluated and scored, the highest scorer wins the contract. For the direct awards of contracts (that is, when it is not competitively tendered), the supplier still has to offer 10% social value or else it can’t be awarded the contract.
I know on the scale of central Government’s considerations of having to go to economic and actual war with either Russia or Putin and is fellow KGB sociopaths (the difference yet to be unentwined), asking bidders to propose coherent social value measures in the borough doesn’t sound like a big deal, and perhaps managed by any other corporation it wouldn’t be but, in the hands of council officers, it has been an earth-shifting change and is on the brink of collapse because officers just will not respect and acknowledge the politicians’ new policy. As interim* “Social Value Officer” in the Economic Development team, my job is to help suppliers deliver their contracted social value measures towards the economic development of the borough. (*Interim to what is for the pages of a later diary entry.) This is a big and interesting role for me where there is a lot of scope and resources to help residents. I also have to comment on decision reports, as part of the governance process, to award contracts in the first place so that the councillors can be confident that procurements are compliant with their new policy. This, I thought would be a small part of my new role. Wow, was I wrong!
I now spend most of my working life replying, “The computer says no” to commissioning managers and their administrators. It is a constant barrage from them, and from the same people, over and over again, getting angrier and angrier. “Yes, you do have to ask for social value.” “No, there are no exemptions.” “Yes, you do have to evaluate their social value proposals.” “No, you can’t accept proposals under 10%.” “Yes, this is council policy.” “No, I can’t change council policy, I’m not a councillor.”
Why become a police officer if you don’t want to enforce the law? If they don’t have the resources to investigate burglaries or attacks on women, why are they so prepared to defend mansions illegally acquired by oligarchs? An unkind suggestion might be that they choose the “crimes” they enforce such as against property owned by the mega-rich establishment and they enjoy beating up hippies and protestors. If so, this isn’t the role of what is a Government officer to just do what you want and ignore the democratic process of deciding on policies. And why become a council officer if you don’t want to include services to your commissions to help your residents that your councillors have decided to impose? Just as with the police officers happy in their JCB and riot gear, is it natural to conclude that there must be a reason for council officers’ blinkered independence as well?
The latest waste of time that makes up governing good procurement at the council came from the Adult Social Care service. The commissioning manager asked for my comments on the implications of compliance of considering social value in the direct award of mental health service contracts. I asked for the social value measures the suppliers proposed and their evaluations. She sent me the measures but not their evaluations except to say she herself evaluated them. Upon her chasing me for my comments, I asked her again for the results of her evaluations but she refused to send it, instead insisting that it is my job to add the comments regardless and threatening to escalate the request to the Director of Adult Social Care if I didn’t. So I didn’t. So she did. The Director emailed me this afternoon:
“Hi Paul,
"I am told attached [sic] documents [the proposed social value measures including statements on how they will be delivered] were shared with you in February. These are all the documents relevant to this contract. I hope the attached [measures] will help with your queries, if not please ring me to resolve [sic]. We are keen to get move forward [sic] and get [the relevant councillor’s] sing off [sic] next week.”
I replied:
“Hi [Director],
"Yes, that’s correct. I understand these are the proposals made by the suppliers.
"In award reports, I’m asked to comment on whether social value should be considered in a procurement, on the proposals and on their evaluation. I can determine the first two from the draft award report and the proposals attached here.
"What I also need in order to make my comments is the evaluation of these proposals. [The procuring officer] said she did it.”
This, I
thought was clear and reasonable and she seemed in her reply satisfied with my explanation
of the process:
“Now I am much clearer on your request.
“I think [the procuring officer] tweaked the [measures and the accompanying method statements] instead of carrying out a full evaluation but let me check and confirm.
Thanks.”
However, later this afternoon, she came back to me:
“I am being reassured by the [procuring officers] that we do not need evaluated SV for the direct awards. I am told you will need to see the spreadsheet that states that the providers are working at the 10% requirement and clarification on how we will monitor this, and this should be sufficient for your sign off. We ae (sic) aiming to get [the relevant councillor’s] sign off on Tuesday before purdah, so would really appreciate your prompt response.”
What can I say? Here the Director is directing me, the officer responsible for governing the required consideration of social value independently of the procuring service, her service, how to govern her. I default to saying the computer says no:
“Hi [Director],
"I can only tell you what, as part of my role as Social Value Officer, I’m asked to comment on in award reports.”
This didn’t stop her badgering me.
“Hi Paul,
"I have been speaking with a number of people including [the newly-appointed Assistant Director for Corporate Procurement] who has been doing my job until very recently. [She] has been the assistant director of commissioning for a number of years, [sic] she tells me that what you are asking has not been the practice of the team, [sic] also this document was signed off by [my predecessor Social Value Officer] previously.
"So could I have your approval asap please.
"thanks [sic]”
If they had my predecessor’s, the Social Value Officer’s, sign-off, then they don’t need me, the Social Value Officer, to sign it off. I’ve seen the draft report: she hasn’t signed it off. Unashamed by this incoherence and clearly trying to interfere in the independent governance process, I assessed that there’s no point in trying to further reason with her, so I forwarded the email string to my Assistant Director (for Economic Development under which Social Value policy sits, not the AD for Corporate Procurement that the Director of Adult Social Care Procurement has wrongly claimed is, or ever was, responsible or ever had absolutely anything to do with it), adding:
“Hi [Assistant Director],
“Sorry to put this on you but I don’t know what more I can say to [the Director] below [in the email string].
“I think it is inappropriate for the procuring service to try to influence the officers who are supposed to be making comments on the implications of their procurements, independently of that process, as part of its governance. I understand that there should be provision if the director disagrees with the comments but I would have thought that would be to take it up with the commenting officer’s line management rather than harass the commenting officer.
“Secondly, in her handover, [my predecessor] told me that I should comment on SV proposals and their evaluation.
“And, thirdly, the method statements proposed by the suppliers are poor and I have little confidence that they will be delivered based on this.”
I’ll have to wait to see which side she comes down on, her own team or that of the Director. I genuinely hope she disagrees with me and takes this dysfunctional function away from me because, having to now do governance which no-one respects, I have no time left to actually deliver services to residents.
In the meantime, it is interesting to see the Director’s assertion that the council doesn’t evaluate proposals from suppliers because they will be monitoring them anyway once the contracts are awarded. Presumably, and I have heard procuring services make this argument before that, because we will be adding the proposed social value measures into the suppliers’ contracts, if they don’t and/or cannot deliver them, they will breach their contract, so why waste time and resources evaluating them when it will come out in the wash anyway?
Local authority care services have a history of this. Last month it was reported in the mainstream media that a children’s home in Bolton was shut down for “serious and widespread failures”. The Guardian said “that one boy had not bathed, changed his clothes or been provided with a home-cooked meal since he arrived in September 2021. Inexperienced and underqualified staff had not entered one bedroom for more than four months despite evidence of flies and a “pungent smell” that spread throughout the home… Another child was placed at risk of harm by staff carrying out “unnecessary” cardiac pulmonary resuscitation on them.”
“The private home only opened in August 2021. It was run by Achieve Care Homes Ltd…” It was later reported that two local authorities commissioned community interest companies run by the owner of Achieve, Robert McGuinness, between 2015 and 2021 for contracts totalling £1.5m which he used to spend on his pub business and on himself by buying a Lamborghini. The care home in Bolton was shut down by Ofsted relatively quickly; the seeming criminality and degrading service commissioned came out in the wash. What the article does not address is how these local authorities assessed Achieve’s proposals in the first place. What I now know is that their care directors think that it is frustrating and wrong that governance processes should insist on asking care companies for proposals and scrutinising and evaluating them before awarding a contract rather than just leaving it to see what happens knowing they can always terminate their contract later.
Spot the Difference
In a
similar incident, on Thursday last week, the
procuring officer for the Capital Delivery team emailed me explaining that he
was in the process of arranging a direct award for consultants for the
construction of a development and asked for my advice on social value
contributions they could offer:
“I suspect that on most construction projects significant SV [social value] can be achieved via sourcing materials locally or using local subbies but this is not an option for consultants providing intellectual, technical or administrative services. Can you offer any advice on how we can navigate this…?”
No I can’t! Since when do public organisations help bidders “navigate” the tendering of services they can’t deliver? So, this brings me back to the question of why do council officers do it? It seems to me they are far too close to their suppliers and have more regard for them than the democratic objectives of their politicians to GET SOCIAL VALUE DONE.
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