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June 13, 2010
CIPFA
This a cat call
Please will the guys at CIPFA produce the figures for 2009-10 as quickly as possible. If they don't do this within the next two months, it will be virtually impossible to make sensible comparisons between councils in the most difficult budget round anyone can remember.
Please. If you need a hand to do it. I'll come and help.
Posted by Perkins at 9:51 PM | Comments (4)
Perkins goes in goal
Very good with a table tennis ball. Perkins has applied for the top job at the World Cup.
Posted by Perkins at 9:55 AM | Comments (1)
What were the Audit Commission doing?
Everywhere you go and almost every political commentary to which you listen there is a view that there are susbstantial improvements in efficiency that can be made in local government. No one denies it- they nod in agreement. So the extent of the wastage is enormous and ubiquitous. "How should we make a proper budget?" I was asked last week. "Can you give us some tips?"
But this is over £100bn of the national public expenditure-- and one has the feeling that the same might easily be said of other areas of national public expenditure. Vast amounts of money have been and are being spent without any proper scrutiny of whether they are or were worthwhile. We all know it, we hear and read of horrific examples every day. This isn't to do with political parties at all- it is to do with the basic mechanisms of the state. It has been the great public rip-off. This is the unfair society that we really should be bringing down.
Applause is given to those who can find yet more money to spend. I was told proudly of a project in which several million pounds of lottery money will be spent on basic public infrastructure "as long as they can get it through before anyone spots it" .. Lottery money is not for public infrastructure -we already pay taxes for that.
So what on earth have the bodies charged with protecting the public purse been doing for the past ten years? In the case of Local Government this question has to be answered by the Audit Commission. Over bloated, over paid, over bureaucratic, and totally useless. You only have to read the Tax Payers' Alliance output to wonder what dream has been going at the Audit Commission. It is quite astonishing Let sleeping watchdogs lie - because they have been.
Posted by Perkins at 9:08 AM | Comments (0)
June 12, 2010
Fantastic Concerts
Two excellent concerts
Thursday 17 June in St John's Smith Square at lunchtime
and
Sunday 20 June in the Purcell Room at 7.30
Posted by Perkins at 5:35 PM | Comments (0)
June 9, 2010
The Foundation Stone
There is quite a lot of good and productive chat going on in different quarters about how to improve public libraries and quickly.
Of course everyone is worried about 'the deficit' but in some ways that is focussing minds on what needs to be done.
This blog is not the first place to observe that everything in the library world is difficult so long as policy about libraries is made in the Arts Ministry and the funding and management of local councils, who run libraries, is managed from the Department of Communities and Local Government.
Any analysis of the correct action has to address this problem first. In these days where coalitions, which were unheard of only a few months ago, are providing effective and strong solutions, it seems that the foundation stone of a new cathedral of public libraries means a strong purposeful coalition between Ministers in the DCMS (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) and Ministers in the DCLG (Department of Communities and Local Government).
I have no way of knowing whom the right personailities are and where the responsibilities lie, but Ed Vaizey is the person in the DCMS -- and my firm belief is that step one is for Ed to make a strong robust working coalition with a minister in the DCLG. In this way policy can then come to councils through the DCLG and be placed in a proper order of priority. This will be a miraculous transformation from the current and historic situation in which policy has come from the DCMS and no one in local government has taken a blind bit of notice.
Posted by Perkins at 8:40 PM | Comments (0)
June 7, 2010
No progress
A year ago I was approached by one of the large county councils and asked if I could do for them what I had done for the London Borough of Hillingdon.
In Hillingdon the cost of the service has been reduced but the libraries are being improved to the extent that the use of some of the community libraries has increased, I am told, by 300% . It is a good, successful and self sustaining project, being run, now, entirely by the council.
In this large county council I spent some time with the leader and he was absolutely keen to proceed. He understood exactly what had been done and there were many aspects which fitted exactly the way he wanted to run his council. In particular in Hillingdon, the local librarians in each library have control over the resources they need to give the right service in their community. They are able - and have learned how - to be very responsive to local need. That is why they are so popular. Evidence is in abundance- you only have to go and talk to Hillingdon council.
However leaders of councils are busy people and in this case he passed the matter to the appropriate people in his council to manage. It has taken them a year, but they have now persuaded him not to go ahead. They fear that the project will disrupt their own operation, and they do not want to do it. The leader senses belligerence from his management and when he plenty of other problems, it is not worth taking them on. So the project has stopped.
This is not the first time I have seen this -in fact I think I count 6 occasions, including Swindon last year, where this was the method used by library and council management and other national bodies to block a programme which would have quickly brought great benefit to the public.
One day the balloon will burst. Or the libraries will close. Prisoners? Who wants them.
I think it has to be for the local people to be firm and say, simply, we want this project to go ahead. You work for our benefit.
Posted by Perkins at 8:21 AM | Comments (2)
Trusts to run public libraries
The question of whether and how to 'outsource' the management of public libraries has come up again at a conference last week
For ten years library managers have debated the ideas of putting the management into the hands of other companies or trusts. So far there have only ever been four projects that have actually taken off, and of those, I am open to conradiction, none have improved the public library service at all.
The theory is that a trust might somehow provide better management- and of course that could well be true. But the problem is that having created the trust in each case the trust have apppointed more or less the same management as before. Management is just as much about people as it is about structures.
What is not acceptable is to create a trust simply to solve a problem that the council can't face on its own. The worst example is the small council in which a recent study identified that 50% of its staff costs made no contribution at all to the service to the public. Instead of tackling that problem, as the duty of honest public service requires they should, the chief librarian and council have embarked on a long and costly process to try to 'outsource' the management to someone else. That is wrong. Very wrong.
Posted by Perkins at 7:57 AM | Comments (1)
June 4, 2010
Lo and behold
A couple of months ago I wrote in The Bookseller and here that there are some fundamental flaws with public library supplier selection.
In particular I noted that the standard discounts on some supply contracts are so high that there would be a temptation for library suppliers who are selecting the books to choose some copies that may have been obtained at extremely low cost.
Those of us who have been around a long time and bear the scars know that publishers who sell to remainder dealers in the book trade sometimes mark the books in particular ways so that they cannot readily re-enter the normal supply chain. Quite often these books, as anyone who goes to a car boot sale or even many remainder book shops, are popular titles. They are sometimes being sold like this because a book has been re-jacketed or there is some other reason why some stock is surplus. It does not mean the title is in any way past its sell by date.
When I wrote that in the Bookseller I expected there would be an outcry of indignation, and was rather surprised at the silence that followed.
Lo and behold I noticed this morning that a popular crime fiction paperback that I borrowed from my local library yesterday carries a remainder mark that I recognise. The publisher is one of the large 5. A label inside the book tells me it was supplied to my library service by one of the main library suppliers at its full paperback price. They probably bought it at 80% discount from a remainder dealer. That is the way high discounts can be given.
ho hum
Posted by Perkins at 11:19 AM | Comments (1)