I have submitted several questions for tomorrows council meeting. The questions (with the number from the Council papers and the answer I have received are listed below. My comments are listed after the 'answer' in bold
Question 2
Can the relevant Cabinet Member please advise if works to existing roads and pavements (including street lighting) in the Borough follow the guidance set out in the DETR's Manual for Streets?
Answer by Councillor Andrew Harper
The Manual for Streets (MfS) publication produced jointly by the Departments for Transport and Communities & Local Government replaces Design Bulletin 32 and its companion Design Places, Streets and Movement.
The new guidance in MfS is being used on new developments with regard to agreeing the residential layout on new build and also agreeing adoptable highway layout. MfS is not used on planned maintenance schemes unless the street layout is subject to re-design.
MfS provides guidance on the design of layouts, construction, adoption and maintenance of new streets. It covers the design considerations for residential streets and lightly trafficked local roads although some of its principles may be applied to other road types where appropriate. It is not, however, meant to be used on heavily trafficked roads as these are covered by the Highways Agency's Design Manual for Roads and Bridges.
This was in response to a query from a local resident.
Question 5
Can the relevant Cabinet Member assure me that all street lights replaced by DW lighting under the PFI project are as the letter to residents puts it "life expired" and are at "risk of structural failure"?
Answer by Councillor Andrew Harper
The programme of street lighting column replacement extends for a five-year period. The priority order of replacement is based on a number of factors, however the age and condition of the lighting columns is the most important when evaluating the priorities. The replacement programme requires replacement of 16,786 lighting columns in total, Borough-wide, of which approximately 50% are life expired. The structural integrity of a lighting column can not be guaranteed beyond the manufacturers stated life expectancy and therefore the risk of structural failure places an increased liability on the contractor / Council.
The industry guidance documents recommend that a risk management approach is used over time to reduce this liability, with consideration given to funding a time managed replacement programme, to avoid any columns becoming life expired as the preferred option or where funding is difficult instigating a programme of structural testing and replacing those columns which fail the tests. As of now, half way through the five-year programme, the vast majority of the life expired columns have been replaced. The contractor has therefore amended his consultation letter and no longer refers to columns being life expired, hence potential danger of structural failure is largely eliminated.
I was concerned that the letter that DW lighting were sending out implied that all the lights being replaced were either life expired or dangerous. In reality we are replacing perfectly good lights that have many years life left in them.
Question 8
Please could the relevant Cabinet Member advise the number of meeting rooms / offices within the Boroughs offices that are equipped with AV / Video conferencing facilities and the number of meetings that took place in those rooms where that equipment was utilised within the month of September this year?
Answer by Councillor Mike Freer, Leader of the Council
324
This has to be the most bizarre answer I have ever received. 324 what? I will be pressing Cllr Freer for a proper answer. We have spent a small fortune on plasma TV's and I'm trying with this question to establish the use they are getting.
Question 35
With regard to the Leader’s "Leader Listens blog” – Is this blog costing the taxpayer any money? If so, how much?
Answer by Councillor Mike Freer, Leader of the Council
The cost of the Leader Listens site amounts to £400. This includes the cost of externally hosting the site.
That's £400 of our money promoting Cllr Freer. He could easily have a free blog like this one.
Question 38
With regard to the Leader’s "Leader Listens blog” – If so, is it an appropriate use of public funds given that Councillor Freer already has a free blog on the Barnet Times?
Answer by Councillor Mike Freer, Leader of the Council
The Leader Listens blog serves a different purpose to the blog hosted by the Hendon Times. The Leader Listens site allows me as Leader of the Council to obtain feedback from residents who attend the many meetings I hold around the Borough and provides the ability to share video footage of the meetings for those who were unable to attend. This increases democratic participation and engagement to a wider proportion of the Borough’s residents.
You are also out of date as I have discontinued my Hendon Times Blog.
But there hasn't been any feedback and nowhere on the Times website does it say that his blog has ended.
Question 41
With regard to the Leader’s "Leader Listens blog” – The Council has received a government grant of £100K to spend on these internet ideas. Is it appropriate to spend the money promoting the Leader rather than the Council?
Answer by Councillor Mike Freer, Leader of the Council
The £100,000 received from the Department for Communities and Local Government is for a wider programme of activities and is not solely for ‘Internet ideas’. Social media forms one element of our behavioural change initiatives. None of the funding from the Department for Communities and Local Government has been spent on the Leader Listens site.
Behavioural change initiative!! I really have to find out what that is. Sounds rather Orwellian to me.
Question 44
With regard to the Leader’s "Leader Listens blog” – Has the Council taken on new staff to run this? If so, who will pay their wages when the grant money has gone?
Answer by Councillor Mike Freer, Leader of the Council
The Council has not employed any new permanent staff to run the Leader Listens site.
So we have employed temporary staff have we? At what cost?
Question 47
With regard to the Leader’s "Leader Listens blog” – Members of the public have posted messages to Councillor Freer on the new blog but they have not been uploaded. Is Councillor Freer censoring messages which he doesn't like? What is the point of inviting people to join in, if he is not going to reply?
Answer by Councillor Mike Freer, Leader of the Council
The Council follows best practice online participation guidance as developed by organisations such as the British Broadcasting Corporation and IBM. This includes the right for the authority to moderate out content deemed harmful, threatening, abusive or defamatory.
As at 17 October 2008 only one comment which was deemed inappropriate against the criteria has been received and therefore the content was not published. Therefore your assertion is incorrect.
Well seeing as there are no published comments at the time of writing that means that the only comment received has been deemed offensive or otherwise unsuitable. I wonder if it was more unsuitable than the anti-semetic video the council published on their site. Somehow I doubt it.
Monday, November 03, 2008
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6 comments:
Well the 324 answer is obvious - 324 rooms and 324 meetings!
So that's 324 meetings divided by 30 days giving an average of 10.8 meetings per day that utilise AV. If we have 324 meeting rooms that's an average occupancy of just over 3%. What an appalling waste of resources! Even if we are generous and do it over 20 working days that only averages about 5%. Somehow I don't think it's that 324 is the answer to life the universe and everything.
RE Answer 47.
Duncan,
You may be wonder about the quote Mike Freer censored. I left it and it said the following
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Hello Mike,
Nice to see you've got your very own blog. Just out of interest, would you be so kind as to tell us all what you think of Barnet Council posting a clip on YouTube where the following statement is made about Barnet.
"I know it's mainly a Jewish area so a lot of the Jewish people have got things, but for the normal British people...there is nothing really for them."
Now I personally was rather alarmed that the council should be posting far right views on the internet. I found this remark rather inflammatory and thought it could help stir up anti semitism. Do you think that this comment portrays the residents of Barnet in a good light? Do you think that the Council staff posting on YouTube should be properly trained to identify such messages as inflamamtory and not post them?
Will you, as leader, personally be investigating how such a clip could be left, to ensure no such thing happens again.
Anyway good luck with the new blog. As I now have much time on my hands, I'll be following it avidly. Do you have a fan club?
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This was left on the 6th October. Maybe you can tell me which of Mike Freer's criteria for censorship apply to the comment?
Sorry if it is so terrible that it offends anyone.
"behavioural change initiatives"!!??
Good grief, I was clearly of the mistaken belief that the council was there to run the libraries and empty the bins.
I am baffled by the council's current love of all things 'Web2.0' such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Youtube. All can be useful services, but it is unclear what audience they think they are aiming at. Is ANYONE interested at looking at pictures of postit notes on a whiteboard or smiling suits pointing at maps?
I would rather time and effort was put into sorting out the main council website so it was easy to navigate and contained useful and accesible information for council tax payers.
It is intereating to observe that a blog entitled 'leaderlistens' consists of the leader talking at us, but nobody appears to be listening, let alone responding. Perhaps it should have been called 'leaderspeaks'. I wonder what that £400 could more usefully have paid for...
David
Quite. The thing about most of this is that it could have been done for nothing. How difficult would it be to add blogs to the existing council site, or use blogger or wordpress
Duncan,
Just been having a chat about these YouTube clips with a customer who is a pretty high profile film director. I showed him the Barnet Council YouTube site and asked his opinion. He said "It is typical of what happens when there is some public money which needs to be spent, rather than using the medium in a suitable way." His point was that there are plenty of subjects in Barnet which would lend themselves to being filmed. For instance, things such as the exhibition's at Church Farm museum, some of the more interesting buildings could have clips made. He also felt that there are some things which you can only convey effectively in film. His view is that just taking random clips of local residents is a complete waste of public money, as only the resident and their friends are likely to be interested. I library of clips for educational purposes would also be good, showing sites of interest in the Borough such as Darlands Lake and the Welsh Harp. These could be emailed to schools & colleges.
He also suggested that the grant should have been used to encourage young filmmakers to go out and make their own clips, rather than a stale, stuffy corporate video company. The best clips could have then been posted. The £100,000 would easily have bought every school in the Borough a video camera. I am sure that headteachers would have proven to be far more successful censors than the system Freer describes in his answer.
Typically unimaginative and a sad waste of money.
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