Friday 15 March 2024 – What Is It You Think Bishops Do?
I am anathema. My leaning to a more progressive style of governing upsets senior managers who have more trust in businesses to provide for us economically and socially. My Assistant Director previously said businesses told him they want to deliver social value if only the council would stop asking them for it (see What Are People Thinking?). My wokery is just a hindrance to socialism. Declaring Social Value policy not the responsibility of the Economic Development Team, he can undo the mechanisms that hold suppliers to account such as governing major contract awards and commissioning an external provider to monitor social value who he knows has no intention of, or ability, to do so. It is, then, rather irritating for him that he has a Social Value Officer in his team.
The dilemma he has, though, is, is it up to an assistant director to decide what policies to implement or not? A local authority is a democratic institution and councillors representing residents decide what policy is. Mine or the AD’s approach to government should not be relevant. As I said in my introduction, I want to work at the council because the council wants to hold businesses to account and include local residents who would otherwise be economically excluded. This is a progressive policy, and if the council didn’t want to do this, I wouldn’t work here. Why the AD wants to work here (the ridiculously high salary) and undermine councillors’ policy he fundamentally doesn’t agree with, I can only guess (the ridiculously high salary). But lying to councillors (see RIP Social Value) and using public money to pay a chum for a service he knows doesn’t work (to monitor social value – see The Little Things) so that suppliers can’t be held to account for delivering publicly funded contracts, is fraud. This is a whistleblowing issue.
In my last one-to-one meeting with my manager, the Head of Employment & Skills, on Wednesday 21 February, I asked him one last time, what are his intentions with delivering Social Value? He told me again that his service wasn’t up to him and that the AD was leading on it and not telling him what he was doing or what his intentions were. I told him that I understood that what our AD had done to undermine social value was undemocratic and that, according to the council’s Whistleblowing Policy, I had a duty to report this. Like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, this announcement eliminated some of his disinterest and he asked me to hold fire until he had a chance to speak to the Head of Strategy who has been assigned by the AD to redesign the council’s approach to Social Value, and he arranged a follow-up meeting with me for Thursday the following week. I agreed but insisted that he use the word “whistleblowing” in his conversation with him.
After over another week later, Friday, 8 March at 11:39, with no word and with already being fobbed off for over a year, I submitted my report and evidence to the Anti-Fraud Team. Then, at 16:28 the same day, my manager sent an invite for a meeting for today with me and the AD titled “Social Value and Added Value – Discussion on next steps”. This is awkward. It is too late. But I was curious to see if it would be too little.
I’m sacked, he said in the meeting. Only as a result of, and until my threat of, whistleblowing his corruption, the AD arranged this meeting with me which he included the words “next steps” in the title. In the meeting, he said that the next step is to do a team restructure. More resources are needed to “curate” what is needed, developed and contributed in each opportunity area in the borough and we simply don’t have the staff capacity to properly do that. My post is to be deleted and new posts created to seek and co-ordinate contributions based on need in each area and for different themes such as jobs, business support, business space. environment, education, healthcare and transport infrastructure. They are all functions of economic development, he told me (the Head of Service was in the meeting too, but it was unclear why unless he was taking minutes, of which secretarial duties seems to be his only role at the council: more Moneypenny than Bogart) and, as such, Planning and Procurement are merely functions of the Economic Development Team. New posts will be created headed by a more senior Principal Officer role. His thinking behind this was, the problem he was having with implementing the council’s Social Value policy in procurement is because the council is a deeply hierarchical institution and procuring managers were running rings around me simply because I was too junior for them to care about. According to him, the reason they weren’t contract-manging social value KPIs in their contracts had nothing to do with him instructing me not to monitor it, so that contract managers had no way of knowing what progress had been made on them. And it had nothing to do with he and the AD for Corporate Procurement undermining the governance process for awarding contracts without social value policy having been applied so that contract managers needn’t worry about the implications anyway. Instead, it was because I didn’t heft enough authoritative weight. He was right about my heft insomuch as I struggled to gain any traction with him in this meeting to deflate this pompous view of how a corporation works.
I raised the issue that we can’t really curate contributions if we don’t monitor them and insisted on continuing to commission his chum at Social Value Portal to assess and monitor Social Value proposals as was a big part of my whistleblowing evidence. “It doesn’t work at all”, I reminded him. “It’s not perfect”, he retorted seemingly ignoring my assessment based on actually using it rather than just being told it works by its owner over a curated lunch and sales pitch. My current role, he concluded and possibly obliquely referencing any assumed concern I had raised in my whistleblowing report about being bypassed from governing and monitoring social value, was to quality-assure it. I genuinely think he meant this in earnest, but all this made me think is, what does he think it is that a Social Value Officer does? Why would anyone quality-assure a bid for a public contract that has already been assessed and awarded by Corporate Procurement?
Fr
Dougal: They come in, they strip down
the wallpaper, they fumigate the place and then they’re gone.
Fr Ted: They’re bishops!
He didn’t say if one of those posts was earmarked for me to be recruited back into after I’m sacked; perhaps he hasn’t decided yet. Still, if I am recruited back into a post, apart from continuing to be paid, there will be no work for me or this new team to do because you can’t manage, never mind “curate” (whatever that means), something if you don’t monitor it and therefore can’t see it. I doubt my whistleblowing will result in anything because the council is rotten, but this could be a blessing. How the meeting went was:
AD: So, this is a very informal
session. I just wanted to have a chat,
give a heads-up on what is being proposed.
And “proposed” is a key word here.
And please keep this confidential to yourself, Paul. Before I go into detail, I will give you a
bit of background. When [the Executive
Director] and [HoES] established “Industrial Strategy 2” [before the AD joined
the council], I think that it is fair to say that, [HoES] correct me if I’m wrong,
sort of, [the Executive Director] thought about the top level, as in, getting a
Head of Service for the Industrial Strategy, and not a lot of thought went into
what would be underneath that, which is fine because that would always come
later. I think, when I mentioned your
view on this, it’s fair to say that we need more capacity as an organisation on
a number of things, particularly in terms of how we do growth and how we show clusters
[of businesses in one industrial sector clustering in a geographical area] and also
how we do social value. This is
something which [the AD for Corporate Procurement] has made very clear to me
and also something which [the Head of Planning] has made very clear to me. When I talk about “social value”, just so I
am clear, I mean how we use our levers for both section 106 and how we use our
levers of procurement. To put it
bluntly, people are running rings round us, and that is in no way any criticism
of you. We are, as an organisation, just
not very effective on this and strategic directors down are not taking this
seriously enough. We lose opportunity from
an economic development perspective when social value is such a key lever we’ve
got but also risks misrepresentation of the council[‘s policies]. So, we basically need more capacity.
Related to this, and [HoES], feel free to come in at this point, [HoES]’s team really needs to focus on frontline delivery. We need to up our game in terms of, kind of, our support for, you know, marginalised people which the Leader understands, The kind of “inclusion” agenda and H&F Works [the frontline employment advice team supporting residents into jobs] is an important part of that as is what we do on apprenticeships, as is what we do on, you know, supported employment [for young people with a learning disability]. So, that’s what [HoES]’s team needs to concentrate on. [The Head of Strategy]’s team needs to be focussed on the rules of the game; you know, how we do economic development across the council and strategy. For me, social value, that’s a no-brainer, it should sit there [in the Head of Strategy’s team], and it’s a no-brainer that we need more capacity with it. So, I guess I’ll pause there to get your thoughts on, kind of, underlying assertions shall we say.
[Paul]: That’s great news. I totally agree. I would say, there’s not just an element of people running rings around us, but there are some process issues where we just haven’t got it right, where we could nail this down. I get a sense that some departments such as the Economy department: Housing and Regeneration, who are really up for social value and are really doing some great stuff. You know, I have been talking to some of these [procuring] leads [in the Economy department] and they have been really pushing their suppliers to do some good stuff. Then you’ve got others like, you know, Public Health, Digital, that are not so into it, and they’re able to run rings around us because I just think we don’t have the processes in place to do things. So, for example, the governance process just isn’t strong. CAB [Contract Assurance Board who ultimately decide major contract awards are compliant with the council’s procurement policies] is not necessarily considering Social Value. Our monitoring is poor. We’re not reporting back to the leads. So, I’ve got some leads who really want those reports but just not getting them and don’t know what their suppliers are doing.
And, the biggest thing, I think, we’ll find, and this is where the capacity is coming in, I might suggest, is directing Social Value. So, some suppliers really want to do this but don’t necessarily know what we want and we don’t necessarily know what we want. So, simplifying the TOMs [the defined Social Value measures which form the basis for inviting social value proposals from suppliers] is definitely a great thing we should be doing, certainly, and tailor them to what our strategies are. We should have things in place. So, I was speaking to [the Housing Regeneration Manager] in the Property Team, for example, about how some of the suppliers can refurbish the Caretaker’s Lodge on [the] Hartopp & Lannoy [social housing estate being rebuilt]. Now, that is not necessarily something a developer would know to do but those teams don’t know to ask for these things.
[AD]: This is good news. I totally agree with everything you said. We need to both push internally directors on it but also, kind of, build their capacity. As you say, to be a stronger client. So, for me, this is really possible stuff. So, I’ll give you a really, really good example, [HoES] and I were in a… this is more section 106, but the same thing… we were in a meeting with Earls Court and it happened to be helpfully with [an Earls Court Development Company consultant] who happens to be from an Employment & Skills background which really helps, and it’s about pushing the boundaries to say, we’re not just going to do the basics, we just get a, you know, really think about the art-of-the-possible.
I guess my point back on the [proposed new team] structure thing is, we work, whether we like it or not, in a deeply hierarchical organisation, erm, as public sector tends to be. So we need someone who, you know, can be, like, a PO10 level to actually say, right, to basically kick some arse on it essentially, and to be taken really, really seriously. So, that’s not about people, that’s about, kind of, hierarchy should we say.
[Paul]: Fine. What we are doing now, I could do it if we had some, for example, I mean, there are simple things like what the [council] website says about the rules on applying Social Value is different to that in the Sourcing Strategy [the council’s decision paper on procurement policy, including Social Value policy, agreed by Cabinet] and is different to that being considered by CAB. You know, the Sourcing Strategy talks about scoring Social Value but we have no consistent way of doing that. And, quite frankly, I know we’ve been through this before but, a concern I’ve had is that we are simply not monitoring Social Value. SVP [Social Value Portal, the AD’s chum’s company that he commissioned to score and monitor Social Value] does not work.
[AD]: Hang on, hang on, so let’s just talk about monitoring because I completely agree. Ok, look at the structure [a proposed team structure on a PowerPoint slide presented on the screen but too small to read the text]. So, that is why the proposal is a [PO]10 and two [PO]5s so, build capacity so each of those [PO]5s will be responsible for, you know, I don’t know the ins and outs of this Westfield situation you’re talking about [see below] but, essentially, monitoring: being on it. Planning aren’t going to be on it. So that’s just not their thing. And nor [Corporate] Procurement. So that is why we need that capacity. I totally agree: there’s no point in doing it if we don’t monitor it. This is not small amounts of money. This in-kind stuff [he means financial contributions required from developers via S106]: this bankrolls the entirety of [the] Economic Development [Team]. It drives me mad when you hear people basically saying, “oh yeah, we have potentially lost out on £400k” [a reference to a financial payment due in lieu of Westfield building an Employment & Skills centre in the Westfield shopping centre that we didn’t want but the HoES forgot to tell Westfield before the deadline despite my chasing him at least once a month for the past two years to do it, and the deadline for claiming either the in-kind or financial contribution has now passed, and no doubt the HoES didn’t tell the AD it was his fault and instead blamed Planning who also should have been monitoring when financial contributions are due and invoicing developers before a financial payment obligation expires]. I mean, it’s just crazy.
[Paul]: Yes it is. I mean, it’s something that I have been pushing for since I got here, for three years, and we haven’t done anything about it. It’s something that we should be on top of and I thought we were. Just Earls Court alone, there’s going to be a lot to balance. There’s going to be partnerships going on, I know they’re going to throw The Skills Centre into part of their offer of section 106, there’s going to be end-use jobs, they’re going to be bringing in different partners such as [the council’s Adult Learning and Skills Service] and everything else like that. There does need to be someone to string these things together and helping them deliver it and bring the partnerships together, and engage the residents, perhaps through [H&F Works].
[AD]: So let’s talk about the wider direction of the team…
[HoES]: Can I come in before you do?
[AD]: Yeah.
[HoES]: Obviously, looking at this, erm, sad to see the service move out of my area directly. But I also think it’s the right decision. You know, amongst friends here, I’m putting my hands up: I haven’t been able to support Paul in the way that, erm, [the Head of Strategy], how his team is set up of specialist people. What I say to Paul in each meeting is, “I don’t understand this. Tell me what I need to do.” And really, that’s not how it’s supposed to be. [No shit!] So, you know, I, I, I’ve tried but I just want to put my hands up and say I haven’t been able to support Paul in the best way that I could.
[AD]: Yeah, no that’s fine, but it’s also about, erm, as you say, what that focus needs to be on from H&F Works. All I’m going to say is, looking at the wider structure, and you’ve mentioned Earls Court, the idea is that that new role: strategic lead centred at clusters, right, wh, wh, wh, what is that? So, essentially what is that is if we look at, kind of, what Planning do, and we look at, kind of, we look at Earls Court and Shepherds Bush Market, or all these things, we need, we need to do a better job at curating the growth in this borough. So we need to have an economic vision for: what’s the Innovation District look like? What’s White City look like? We don’t have capacity for that right now. So, Shepherds Bush Market is a really, really good example. At very much the eleventh hour, they came for me as you’ll recall and they basically said, “Oh, er, somebody’s got this idea for workspace in there. What d’you reckon?” That’s not how it should work. There should be a vision for the Innovation District. There should be a vision for Shepherds Bush. We need to drive that and then that lead should work very closely with the social value lead to think, here’s a vision and here’s a section 106 component of it. So, it’s, it’s capacity from an Economic Development perspective. And then you would have a Creative Enterprise Zone role: [the Creative Enterprise Zone lead] is in there at the moment, that would sit under it obviously, which is why that makes sense.
[Paul]: Well that’s kind of a similar thing that I was saying, we should be directing what social value contributions we want from suppliers. We should know in advance what we want and be able to talk to them about that, and that bidders should be able to say, “Look, this is what the council wants, let’s put this in our proposals.”
[AD]: No, precisely. So, it is, kind of, doing erm, what [the Executive Director] and I often talk about, no disrespect to Planning, but Planning is a function of Economic Development and not vice versa; Procurement is a function of Economic Development. But, in order to, kind of, have that, you need to have the capacity and the strategic capacity to actually lead it, erm, which I’m kind of doing a fair amount of at the moment but can’t really do it justice.
So, I’m kind of guided it makes sense but, obviously, this does mean some kind of organisational change, erm, implicitly, erm, and I guess that’s what we’re going to be launching… I think the current proposal is middle of April, so 17th of April: a proposed meeting to kind of kick stuff off, in person (I’ll be there) erm, with kind of affected staff. Erm, I guess, overall, there’s a net creation of job roles, which I’m really, really pleased about and we went to… I was at the adjudication panel talking about this and Finance and HR who were there… they were really, really positive about this, which is not given given the kind of, you know, state of local government finances, by any means, so I’m really please about that, but I also think they realise that we need to… this is kind of important to make sure 106 money keeps coming in, erm, and adding money to the local economy.
And, I think, the other thing just to say is, when we talk about social value here, I know your role is kind of, Paul, here, of the Employment & Skills bit of social value. This is the lot. You know, if you think about the different categories of TOMs: the Sourcing Strategy said Employment & Skills, you know, supply chain, climate, it means everything.
[Paul]: Yeah. On section 106, I have been focussing on Employment & Skills and local procurement but, Social Value, I have had to lead on all four themes and I have been co-ordinating the different teams to get that, like I said, working with the Property Team and getting regeneration contributions towards women’s refuges and the properties there, and working with the Climate Team to find out how we baseline these things and actually change the behaviour of our suppliers. So, I mean, I have worked with those departments because I don’t have that expertise outside of Employment & Skills but, yeah, I’ve had to do that too.
[AD]: So, erm, yeah, I guess the next steps, this will come out in a report which will basically rehearse what I have just said: the rationale for doing it. It would also set out, you know, the new roles being created. And, I guess, [the] process [for redundancies, sackings and recruitment] essentially.
[HoES]: In the meantime, then, addressing some of the changes, or work that needs to happen now, to at least get to grips with the elements of Social Value, in particular that, erm, in particular around monitoring. [The Head of Strategy]’s been contract-managing the SVP contract, effectively, erm, and we’ve got, er, thoughts and ideas around what needs to happen to get SVP to the place it needs to be for it to be effective. Would you suggest that’s the area we focus on, [AD], in terms of social value because, otherwise, at this stage, the monitoring element is just non-existent?
[AD]: Yeah, definitely. And I think, just on SVP, and, you know, look, I mean, erm erm erm, I don’t think they are in any way perfect; far from it. I think, ultimately, the biggest thing is it is only as good as we, the client… [?] erm so I think they are being good in being up for changing the TOMs. I think the biggest thing is, to do an education piece with it to council. So, I think…
[HoES]: …and the piece around, the changes around the system as well, I think there are some technical elements to this which is, of course, Corporate Procurement are no longer using Social Value Portal…
[Paul]: …Er, I think they are now.
[AD]: I think they are. So I think we’ve got to try and get this thing working, having one system, and monitoring it [Social Value contributions], yeah, as best as we can.
[HoES]: Ok, so we probably need some guidance from [the AD for Corporate Procurement] and [the Economic Development Head of Strategy] on those, sort of, initial points because this is new to me and I’m just hearing it from you both so, okay, I will co-ordinate that.
[Paul]: Can I just go back to the monitoring side? Since we’ve re-procured them, they’ve now being doing it for, what, six to nine months? I mean, nothing has been monitored in the meantime while they’re not working. I mean, whether they can work or not: personally, I don’t think they can. I can’t see how they could possibly have the capacity to verify the evidence coming in by the method they have got to do it. I just don’t think it is possible. But, if it is, they haven’t done anything for six to nine months.
[AD]: Yeah, I don’t want to get into the detail of it [because he doesn’t know it despite choosing his chum at SVP over my method which works well] but, in my head, what we should have, we should almost have responsibility… there should be almost two layers… responsibility for what you are saying should sit with the contract manager or, like, the procurement lead in… let’s take Adult Social Care, right, they go and commission X to do a homecare contract which has an element of Social Value; in the same way that they would monitor, you know, commercial outcomes, sort of like performance outcomes, they should also be monitoring Social Value, and, then, the role of our team is to quality-assure that. Is Social Value Portal literally not just a platform to capture this stuff?
[Paul]: No. Social Value Portal is a platform to capture it which it does very poorly. Then someone goes in [to the platform] and has a look at what’s been captured: that evidence; those reports, and verifies them.
[AD]: Who’s that, Paul?
[Paul]: Social Value Portal. In our case, [the Hammersmith & Fulham Account Manager] that works at Social Value Portal.
[AD]: I think that, apart from this, that feels like a slightly separate conversation [that he said before and then didn’t have] is they perhaps over-egged that element of it. I think I agree with you. I don’t see how or why they should but, also, is, whether we like it or not, this authority, a bit like with HR, devolves stuff, essentially, to certain areas. So, I think it’s about getting those right.
[Paul]: Yeah, but the service areas can’t possibly manage it if they don’t have the information. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff going on like job starts, carbon dioxide emissions reductions…
[AD]: Why would they not have the information?
[Paul}: Because Corporate Procurement is telling all our suppliers to report to Social Value Portal who, in turn, is not monitoring it, who, in turn, is not telling the contract managers, who, in turn, can’t, therefore, possibly contract-manage it.
[AD]: It seems to me to be a culture-change thing, here, around getting the services responsible for it.
[Paul]: No, it’s not a culture-change thing. They can’t possibly monitor it even if they wanted to and I know, for example, erm, some of the, er, Regen and Housing teams do want to do this. This is not a culture issue. They just don’t have the information to be able to monitor it because it’s going to Social Value Portal [and that doesn’t work]. When, previously, it was coming to me, I was reporting to them all the time, so they had this [information] and were able to do it [contract-manage Social Value delivery required by their contracted suppliers]. Yes, then it might be a culture issue. Some were doing it [contract-managing], some weren’t. And that needs to change. But, right now, even if they wanted to do it, they can’t possibly do it because it’s not going through me anymore.
[AD]: [With the HoES], the conversation we’ve had is they will get the information through, get free access for the managers, but… yeah.
[HoES]: I will set out the changes that we should get from SVP in order to make this work. Erm, I need to speak to [the Head of Strategy] about that. Alongside that, we might just look at their service level agreement as well to make sure they’re delivering what they’re [supposed to be] delivering. Of course, historically, of course we want change from SVP and we want them to make this work. Erm, historically, SVP have been, erm, er… they’ve been difficult to get round the table to make [those changes]. They’ve avoided those changes. Working through this, you know, thinking about the PO10 position in terms of that authority, not working with somebody in between who doesn’t know the technical elements around this, I think it means that we will have the authority to contract-manage in a way that gets them to make the changes that need to happen. I don’t think it will be perfect as you say, [AD], erm, but I think there are some simple things that Social Value Portal need to make big changes to and we will get there. Erm, but we need, we need… with [the Head of Strategy], yourself [AD], Paul and I, we all need to be on the same page around this, and I think Paul’s document [on the elements of Social Value Portal that needs to be changed] really sets out the changes that we need from SVP.
[Paul]: I disagree. I remain, even if they made those changes, I don’t think they can… I don’t think they have the resources to do that. Even then, I don’t think they’ll have the capacity to look at the evidence in the way that they collect it. The way that I’ve done it is much simpler. Erm, it works, I’m able to verify it, and I’m able to report that. Even with the changes, that I don’t think they will make, even if they did, I still don’t think they’d have the capacity to do it with one person.
[HoES]: So, look Paul, let’s, let’s… I know we should have done this some time ago, let’s give them the opportunity to make those changes and, if doesn’t work, we go back to [the] service level agreement and look at contracts again.
[Paul]: I did send that list to them originally in 2022. I mean, talking about giving them a chance to do it… but that is the context of the chance they have [already] been given here.
[HoES]: Let’s revisit this again. Erm, and we’ll put a timeline around this of things that need to happen to make this work, and because, of course, monitoring is such a key aspect of social value and what we’re doing at the moment is running the risk of, if Members ask for what’s been delivered over the last twelve months, that becomes a really difficult, er, er, question to answer. But, look, let’s work on this together. [AD], it would be good if you could give [the Head of Strategy] a nudge to…
[AD]: Yeah, yeah, I’ll do that. But, in a way, this is a separate thing I guess. You know, social value is a… you know, software is never the… is always the tool. It’s never actually the solution.
[HoES]: It will enable this new team to really work well. Or we find that it doesn’t, so we need to know either way. But, no, I take your point.
[AD]: It feels like, I’m glad that you’re, sort of, driven that this is the right direction of travel. And, er, yes, I guess I don’t have a lot more to say for now. I guess we’ll kick off a sort of process in April.
Did you have any other questions, Paul?
[Paul]: Yeah, I’ve got one question about section 106. Um, so, what is the plan for the Codes [published planning policy codifying and justifying the S106 contributions, both financial and non-financial, that the Head of Strategy was supposed to be reviewing since last summer to reflect the refreshed Industrial Strategy that he was supposed to be writing but no-one has seen and very much related to the AD’s stated ambitions in this meeting despite he not mentioning them]? As you said before, they desperately need updating, I think, I can see [the Head of Strategy] sort of groping around with Gateway [BBC Media Village] and Earls Court to see what flexibility there currently is in them, and I think there’s lots and we’re using that and that’s great, but there’s obviously a lot more we could do with that. Is that going to be updated as well?
[AD}: Yeah, so, really good question. So, I think, we were… we were going to be refreshing the Industrial Strategy and we now are refreshing the Industrial Strategy which is a fairly quick piece of work. But, look, fundamentally, there should be a golden thread (shouldn’t there?) between what the council’s Industrial Strategy says and how we use 106 as our lever to do it. I think, personally, there’s an issue which we need to grapple with with Planning presentationally. Most councils have, you know, an SPD [“Supplementary Planning Document”: a published planning policy document setting out what S106 contributions developers can expect to be asked for, some codified, some not, exactly like the Codes which is published as an SPD]. In a sense, this is just semantics. But, the point is, we need a thing which is easy to use and to understand for developers and gives us nice amounts of flexibility. And, so, that feels like the change… it feels like the same kind of change as the TOMs [which the Head of Strategy is still trying to work out how to change and what to change it to]: broader, more strategic, less specific. I think, we’ll just need to work with Planning on the process to do that.
Going back to my point about capacity, you know, this is a sizeable piece of work, isn’t it? Planners are a little bit… yeah, I can’t think of a good word… angry. They have a very, like, process… so, so, so, I’ll give you an example: I have, like, pushed hard, erm, to have more open, creative conversations with Earls Court erm, because, part of the role of Economic Development is, yes, we need to make sure we’ve got a planning system, but also we want to support the growth, you know, actually, you know, we want Earls Court, we want ECDC [Earls Court Development Company: the developer of Earls Court], to be here, to be creative. And so we need to play a different role to Planning. Planning don’t always, kind of, like that or understand the role we are playing there. So, yeah, I think in terms of a kind of to-do list, inbox of that new PO10, yeah, like, we talked about setting out a whole load of processes about procurement, sorting out the Codes, that includes the, kind of, evidence base [justification in planning terms for what we ask for and how much] which Planning will need and how it fits with working with businesses. They, they, they work okay, the Codes. They’re not a disaster. They just could be a lot better.
[Paul]: Yeah, in particular, like with Social Value, it’s letting applicants know in advance what we want and what our plans are and that needs to be clearer, I think, so they come to the table having those conversations.
[AD]: Certainly. No, no, you’re totally right. So, look, in a way, what we’re doing here is, we are articulating the need to increase capacity, erm, aren’t we? Look, I know these things can be sort of unsettling, erm, but I feel like we, yeah… organisationally, we kind of need to do this.
So, to summarise, Earls Court Development Company is being creative because the land to be developed belongs to the Mayor of London and he is making them do it anyway and the AD sees their willingness to explore the art of the possible as evidence that planning legislation is not needed to make any developers make social and infrastructure contributions. Therefore, he concludes from this that Planners are being unambitious when he wants to negotiate deals that are beyond our planning authority. This is because, he says, Planning doesn’t get economic development, yet Planning is but a function of Economic Development. He and his Head of Strategy haven’t got around to changing the economic development policy in planning because they don’t understand “the ins and outs of it” despite claiming last summer that they were going to do it. But working to the existing policy in the (indefinitely long) meantime isn’t a disaster.
So, too, is Procurement but a function of Economic Development. No changes have been made since last summer to procurement processes, again because they don’t understand the ins and outs of it, and we don’t need to monitor and see what suppliers have delivered or not to be able to contract-manage them. It’s not about good governance as the Sourcing Strategy explicitly informed Cabinet, but it’s because contract-managers don’t have the right culture to contract-manage something they can’t see which is why they’re doing such a poor job of it. What’s needed is someone in the Economic Development team who is a PO10 rank to kick some contract manager arse, because I’ve not been able to do that through no fault of my own, even though I have delivered millions of pounds worth of social value contributions in spite of the AD (not that he knows that because he never asked me), even though contract managers don’t know what PO rank I am and wouldn’t know what rank the PO10 would be. Council officers are not given stripes to wear on our arms.
So, despite he thinking that all I do is “quality-assure” social value even though he knows that understanding is complete fantastical ignorance on a level with Fr Dougal’s understanding of his own organisation’s hierarchy, I am to be sacked and replaced with an arse-kicker assigned further up the hierarchy who will “curate” growth using the levers that he wants to make more vague, not monitor and not base on any legislative authority the council has as Planning is trying to warn him. And this could be unsettling for me. He didn’t address any of the evidence I reported in my whistleblowing testimony to the Anti-Fraud Team of him, the AD for Corporate Procurement and the Head of Employment & Skills defrauding and undermining Social Value governance and monitoring in the time he has been responsible for making the necessary changes agreed by Cabinet in February 2023. Since then, he is now saying that he has a completely different approach to that agreed by Cabinet, that now “organisationally, we kind of need to do.”
Five questions I might ask my manager:
1.
In theory according to this new team structure, using
the example the AD gave, what would have happened differently with Shepherds
Bush Market had we had more capacity to curate obligated contributions in the
different opportunity areas?
2.
How can you manage, never mind “curate”, something
you are not monitoring? Alternatively, how
much longer do you intend to give SVP to respond to the changes to the platform
needed beyond the two years the council has already given them since we sent
them the list of changes we need?
3.
Why are you intervening in the procurement
governance process to undermine it and then agree with the AD that it is
procuring managers running rings around me because I have not demonstrated the
right authority to “kick arse” resulting in my losing my job when it is you
commenting that procuring managers don’t need to bother applying the council’s
Social Value policy?
4.
Creating two PO5 posts sounds like that the team is
returning to having separate S106 and Social Value Monitoring Officers which is
what was made redundant less that two years ago, so is this an admission that
they were never redundant in the definition of employment legislation, and any
subsequent sackings are illegal?
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