Tag Archives: 100 Temple Street

AGILE STILL FRAGILE?

An expensive SEVEN YEAR FIASCO of ‘agile working’ continues unchallenged at Bristol City Council. There’s still NO EVIDENCE that the council’s plan to buy the Temple Street Lubianka for £18m and expensively refurbish the Counts Louse at a further cost of £16m while selling off council offices across the city has delivered any savings.

Alongside the pricey property arrangements came a ‘Workplace Programme’ promoting HALF-BAKED TECH SOLUTIONS and fashionable MANAGEMENT CONSULTANCY NONSENSE. This claimed the council could create money-saving “new agile working environments” for their workforce by issuing staff with laptops, smart phones and tablets and promoting home-working and mobile working to save money.

The expensive plans, put together by UNACCOUNTABLE MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS, originally came with promises of £60m of savings by Max Wide “Boy”, one of the many execs who have rolled in through THE COUNCIL’S REVOLVING DOOR over the last few years to scrounge a six-figure salary. Wide Boy arrived in 2013 and departed out again in 2016 leaving a £30 million agile working-shaped DEBT in his wake.

Fast foward three years and the ‘Agile Working’ fiasco continues. A recent report to councillors on the latest AGILE WORKING FAILURE in adult care – where the implementation of tablets and tech on the advice of consultants has belly-flopped – explains, “there still isn’t a clearly defined and available benefits document for the Agile Working Project”.

In other words after seven years of forking out HUGE SUMS OF MONEY on the advice of management consultants procured by high-earning council directors, no one HAS MEASURED THE COST EFFECTIVENESS of their ‘agile working’ strategy. Consequently the obvious conclusion that cutting back staff and giving those that remain a tablet will NOT SAVE ANY MONEY is still yet to be reached.

Although any targets for rewarding failure among council execs and their management consultants continue to be exceeded.

ROTTEN COMRADES

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It’s all been kicking off amongst the council’s sleepy unions who appear to have been rudely awakened by problems that don’t seem to be solvable by business-as-usual toadying.

Showing a surprising turn of speed for reps normally found dozing with their heads up management’s arse, the council’s comrades have suddenly realised they themselves are facing the chop and have started some frantic, if clumsy, lobbying.

One council union, Unison, has discovered that the recently completed public consultation proposes devastating cuts in areas where only it has members. Libraries and Community Links are supposed solidly Unison and have traditionally supplied the union with its (in-)”activists”.

Unison have belatedly woken up to the fact that they chose the path of least resistance when the Labour Party and council bosses were planning their latest cuts. While their opposite number, Unite, spent a lot of time lobbying the Mayor when he was first elected. Unison reps were reported to have said they didn’t see the point of lobbying anyone. Quelle Surprise, the latest cuts seem to have fallen disproportionately on them then.

This comes weeks after there was muted Unison laughter aimed at the GMB for fading so drastically in numbers that management were mumbling about de-recognition. Facing possible decimation in the coming restructures, Unison is no longer laughing. After all, with de-recognition comes going back to your regular job and actual work.

So, blowing dust off old copies of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist (which some real socialist left in a box, years ago), our rotten comrades have been frantically lobbying, campaigning, actually talking to members and – heaven forfend – threatening disputes! There is hope yet.

Rumours are that disputes are brewing in Reablement, Night Care and the Community Links. Meanwhile library workers have been warning darkly that their strike in 2016 supported by Marvin and Labour when they were seeking votes in the mayoral election was never resolved by Marvin once elected and as far as they know their original ballot is still live.

Mobs have been reported stalking the corridors of Temple Street looking for customer services managers. Even the city’s team managers are looking for an Arthur Scargill-type character to lead them out the gates due to overwork and stress.

Meanwhile, Unite has been seen cheering it all on, shouting ‘fight, fight, fight’ from the sidelines. Cheerful in the knowledge that someone’s going to get it and it’s certainly not going to be them.

-Cheerful Dwarf

FROM AGILE TO FRAGILE: HOW SENIOR COUNCIL BOSSES HAVE SCREWED THEIR STAFF #1

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ON THE DAY IT’S FINALLY REVEALED THAT BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL’S FORMER CHIEF EXEC, NICOLA “LADY GAGA” YATES LEFT LAST MONTH WITH A £196K PAY OFF FROM THE THE REVEREND MARVIN REES, WE START TO REVEAL THE APPALLING FINANCIAL BASKETCASE GAGA AND HER SENIOR BOSSES HAVE TURNED OUR COUNCIL INTO … AND WHO’S GONNA PAY FOR IT

How has Bristol City Council property boss Robert “Spunkface” Orrett already managed to run up a LOSS of £9m in his department this year? Surely there’s some mistake? Wasn’t Spunkface brought in from the super efficient, cash generating private sector to prevent just this kind of public sector waste and profligacy?

Spunkface: business pro who can’t identify a £9m loss?

A brief read of the Reverend Rees’s emergency finance report – expensively prepared by his highly-paid private sector finance consultant Anna “BIG WEDGE” Klonowski, managing director of Elka Solutions Ltd management consultancy – reveals that Spunkface has managed to turn a profit projected to be £7.5m in March’s budget into a LOSS of £1.5m five months later!

Most of the excuses concocted for this financial shambles float in a special space between useless and the absurd. According to Ms Big Wedge, Spunkface has flopped because he’s FAILED to increase return on investment property holdings; he’s FAILED to reduce running costs from the disposal of admin buildings and he’s FAILED to reduce facilities management costs as promised.

Since the rental income from INVESTMENT PROPERTIES was £10m in 2015 – 16 – slightly up from £9.5m in 2014 -15. It’s is hard to see how Spunkface or the council thought they could increase this income by £7.5m this year … So it’s nothing to do with that then.

Similarly, FACILITIES MANAGEMENT costs are just £4.3m a year so there’s no £7.5m savings to be made there … So it’s nothing to do with that then.

This just leaves the running costs saved from the disposal of admin buildings. A major part of recently departed strategic director Max Wide “Boy’s” SINGLE CHANGE PROGRAMME that was going to deliver £60m of carefully designed strategic cuts by March 2017.

MAX WIDE ‘BOY’ - There'll be hell toupee with him in charge...

MAX WIDE ‘BOY’: has packed up his Powerpoint slides and fled

The jewel in the crown of these proposals was the ‘WORKPLACE PROGRAMME‘. The plan being that council would create “new agile working environments” for all council staff in just TWO BUILDINGS – an expensively refurbished Counts Louse and the newly purchased £15m Temple Street base. Apparently this could save the council a fortune in office rentals and leases and by having less buildings to maintain and administrate.

The new ‘agile work environments’ are already universally loathed by staff as corporate, sterile and IMPRACTICAL. Relying on expensive half-baked tech solutions and fashionable nonsense in an attempt to appear modern, the offices have only found favour with sad and lonely senior local authority bosses who appear to gain a sense of importance wafting around the ‘flexible space’ with their iPads.

Alas, Wide Boy’s Single Change Programme and on-trend ‘agile environment’ plans may not have panned out quite as he had planned. Before legging it in June he alleged via one of his many vague (but extremely agile with the truth) Powerpoint presentations to GULLIBLE COUNCILLORS that he had managed to deliver just £30m of his promised ‘savings’ up to April. Meaning a further £30m savings had to be found this year.

But now we find that a £9m shaped HOLE has appeared in Property Services exactly where Wide Boy’s agile ‘Workplace Programme’ savings should be. That means that Wide Boy’s overall savings are actually £21m not £30m. A cock-up that 1,000 low paid council staff will now have to pay for with their jobs. Less ‘agile working’ and more ‘fragile working’!

Marvin: talked shit and lost to a red trousered arse

Reverend Rees: employed a new gang of twats on big money?

So why don’t council bosses openly tell us about this financial savings BELLYFLOP and their wholly misconceived corporate ‘agile’ cock up? Indeed, why hasn’t Spunkface – as a responsible public servant – prepared a proper detailed report on the finances in his Property Department for the mayor and councillors? As opposed to keeping his head down and trying to bury this enormous senior management CLUSTERFUCK in an opaque set of accounts?

Could it have anything to do with the fact that Marvin’s newly installed team of highly paid bosses – some pulling in a GRAND A DAY on temporary contracts; others tax efficiently creaming £80k A QUARTER – are just about to embark on yet another top-down reorganisation?

They’re promising, with lashings of corporate jargon, natch, lots more huge savings. So maybe they don’t want anyone noticing that the last reorganisation was a load of OVERPRICED BULLSHIT run by a bunch of highly paid INCOMPETENTS and cover-up artists?

Are The Reverend’s newly assembled little gang of greedy bosses and management consultants preparing to deliver their own under-powered reorganisation using the same old over-powered corporate PR techniques safe in the knowledge they, too, can do A RUNNER before the shit hits the fan?

And Look! Top of the new bosses’ list – promising to deliver £16m of savings by March 2017 – is Wide Boy’s utterly failed and useless SINGLE CHANGE PROGRAMME!

That’s gonna work like a dream isn’t it?

SWANKY OFFICE WATCH

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The current multi-million pound refurbishment of the Counts Louse will include the THIRD refurbishment of the building’s third floor management suite for profligate twats on six-figure salaries in SIX YEARS!

In 2009 former Chief Exec JAN ORMONDROYD spent a six figure sum refurbishing her office suite in the regal style with purple carpeting, bullet proof glass and the legendary strategic leadership fridge.

Then last year, new Chief Exec Nicola “LADY GAGA” Yates spent a load of money on furniture and IT kit to stamp her personal style on the third floor. Indeed, she even threw a tantrum and fired the council’s Workplace Programme Manager, GRAHAM SKINNER when her new furniture didn’t arrive on time and thus putting a £60m project into chaos!

Now, in this age of austerity, more money is being spent refurbing the management suite all over again! This time to create an ‘AGILE WORKSPACE‘ we’re told.

Let’s just hope when we get a new mayor next year they like the results or, no doubt, we’ll be forking out another six figure sum for new carpets, soft furnishings and an a la mode mayoral cappuccino machine!

THIEVES IN 100 TEMPLE STREET? SPENDING RUNS RIOT AT NEW COUNCIL HQ

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While we may have said farewell to Graham Skinner – the man behind the council’s move to 100 Temple Street – the lunatic levels of spending on the project continue to rise.

Skinner had been raising eyebrows for some time with his wild spending ways. Particularly when he started employing a series of EXPENSIVE PRIVATE SECTOR CONSULTANTS to sort out the move to the new offices.

We’re told the going rate for arranging the office furniture and ordering in the pot plants at Temple Street is £600 TO £1,000 A DAY!

Even more crazy when you consider council staff trained and qualified to do this work are sat right now twiddling their thumbs in the Counts Louse.

Is this an example of the private sector financial discipline Skinner’s boss Robert ‘Spunkface’ Orrett was brought in to implement?

‘YOU’RE FIRED!’ BRISTOL COUNCIL BOSS GAGA GOES ON CLEANSING-OF-THE-TEMPLE RAMPAGE OVER FURNITURE DELAYS

BRISTOLIAN #4.9 NOW ON THE STREETS!

PLUS: BRISTOLIAN BITES!!!

Tantalising titbits including…

THINK OF THE CHILDREN! – barney between Fergo’s true believers & Labour at charity bash
PRIMARY FAIL – IndyRedpants election strategy off the rails already?
UNIFORMLY BAD – what’s going on at popular Totterdown school?
THIEVES IN THE TEMPLE – £90 million budget cuts not affecting the consultancy gravy train
BEDROOM TAX LATEST – Council prepares to boot poor families onto street for Christmas
LEGAL NEWS – panicky BCC misrepresents own consultants’ findings on Mem impact
HOYT’S GOURMET JOY – ‘Assistant Mayor’ fills his face with food & reneges on ‘No Evictions’

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» The BRISTOLIAN #4.9 – December 2013

FERGONOMICS: CUT £35 MILLION (THEN SPEND £18 MILLION)

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Bristol’s new overlord GEORGE FERGUSON has celebrated his favourite date in the calendar – International Women’s Day – with the announcement that the City Council is to splash out £18 million on new office space in a massive overhaul of its property portfolio which will cost £70 million.

The triple dip-defying move to 100 Temple Street near Temple Meads train station – as hinted at in the last issue of The Bristolian – is a bold strategy for the Mayor, who is slashing nearly 400 jobs, cutting the city budget by a tenth and raising Council Tax by just under 2%, yet comes at a high personal cost to His Redtrouserness according to insiders.

“The new premises on Temple Street fall within Lawrence Hill, which is the fifth most male ward in the city with only 48 percent of residents being women. Whilst it’s a marginal improvement on Council House, which falls within the 47.9% female Cabot ward, it’s certainly no Westbury, which weighs in at nearly 54% women,” reveals a source close to the SINGLETON MAYOR.

Fergo apparently spent several restless nights considering the options, pacing up and down the empty, echoing corridors of Shitty Hall in the dark like a RED-TROUSERED NAPOLEON, before deciding to bite the bullet and make the move to Redcliffe.

“We were so worried we even put a proposal to him to relocate the Mayor’s office to a special temporary annex at Badminton School,” says the source. “But selfless to the last, George insisted that we fork out half the amount we’re saving in budget cuts on a prestige office complex by a roundabout.”

The Council’s new site is currently home to global accountancy firm KPMG, with whom George’s interim Corporate Services Director Angie ‘Sacker’ Ridgwell has a long history. KPMG will be the second ‘Big Four’ auditor to be made homeless in Bristol over the past year, following the ouster of Ernst & Young from their Rupert Street offices to make way for the sparkly new Bridewell police station (refurbished at a cost of just £3.8 million).