Hackney publishes council spending over £500
Hackney's elected mayor, Jules Pipe
Hackney Council has published online details of items of expenditure over £500, in line with government guidance set in place last year.
With 31 January as the deadline, Hackney and other remaining councils had only a couple of weeks left to comply.
Mayor of Hackney, Jules Pipe, said: “Hackney Council has worked hard over the past decade to achieve a reputation for excellent financial management.
“As the only council to have ever achieved five years of consecutive council tax freezes, alongside making the highest efficiency savings in London, and investing in continuous service improvement, Hackney has built a foundation of efficiency and high quality services.
“As a council, we feel it is vital that we are open and transparent about where and how we spend money and are therefore now publishing the details of all expenditure over £500.”
The call for financial openness was announced in June last year by Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.
He said: “Getting council business out in the open will revolutionise local government. Local people should be able to hold politicians and public bodies to account over how their hard earned cash is being spent and decisions made on their behalf. They can only do that effectively if they have the information they need at their fingertips.
“The public should be able to see where their money goes and what it delivers. The swift and simple changes we are calling for today will unleash an army of armchair auditors and quite rightly make those charged with doling out the pennies stop and think twice about whether they are getting value for money.”
Get the data: Hackney Council’s spending over £500.
—
Related:
Lets see, it seems that for the 3 month period covered over £5m spent on agency staff. Thats a lot of permanent jobs that aren’t needed.
including a lot of highly paid consultants that are not needed
That £5m was just for temp clerical staff with one agency, if I had of dug deeper I am expecting to find worse. I did notice some big sums that almost seem to be miscellaneous expenses and no companies named. You have to wonder how taxes are being spent and what the hell on?
I wonder if at least some of the temp staff are employed though cos of cuts to contracted posts – ie no pension, benefits payments, no redundancy pay outs, easy to cut staffing with no strings tied.
Even allowing for those costs based on a 25k salary and that making up 1/3 of the cost of a member of staff that is still over 70 perm posts that could have been paid for. I know about the cost of floor space/IT/electric etc per person and it 1/3 is probably more like 50% but even so that is a lot of people that are at risk that dont need to be. Factor in the increase in temp staff to fill roles that have gone in redundancies especially highly skilled posts who have a bad habit of coming back as a consultant. Having worked in a London council and having been a budget holder I do have a fair grasp of the situation and it still says to me cut the temps out as the in house skills are needed. Be interested in following budgets ove the next few months.
Tony N – we’d be extremely interested in talking to you about Hackney budgets. Andrew.D.Veitch@gmail.com.
On page 168 of December 2010 accounts (pdf version) it states: “Miscellaneous suppliers payment LBH/Sundry £20,000.00”. The item listed below that is “Miscellaneous suppliers payment LBH/Sundry £15,000.00”.
Doesn’t such a vague set of descriptions (above) for such large amounts of money make this scrutiny exercise a worthless waste of time and isn’t Jules Pipe making a mockery out of any potential or wannabe “armchair auditors”?
If the Council really wanted to show it was being helpful and making the information accessible, it would be more specific and advise us what to do and where to go if we wanted to know more about any particular item of expenditure.
I see the December figures have now mysteriously disappeared!
The December figures are now available again on the council’s website at: http://www.hackney.gov.uk/budget-supplier-payments.htm – Ed.
Well the Randstad share holders will be over the moon at another bumper month.
One payment seems a little massive not to name the supplier page 129 (pdf version) £350,569.68 NNDR Sundry supplier…. now that to me does not look like sundry payment, iust where did it go? Also we are still getting the term individual payment (page 157) so which individual got paid off?
Now the council Visa bill was almost £50k just glad there are no air miles or other incentives associated with the cards!?
Mobile spend £34k hope none of the council officers are making personal phone calls. Now big question here is Mobile companies give financial incentives for council contracts so what did the council get for this?
So a lot of information but a lot of stuff there I would question.
Tonyn;Is ther any amongst the figures on how much the nil sex policy consultation came to?
Steve, without knowing what budget it came out of I wouldn’t even know where to start. The company that does the web consultation does it for £779 per year. So they probably write that cost off in the budget so it would come as a nil value. Staff are a given cost so that has a nil value. Report writing and correlation are a staff cost and therefore nil etc etc. When in the real world we would look at staff time etc as a true cost the council wanting to pretend it cost nothing would use the it is already paid for argument to hide what it has cost the council tax payer. Cant you tell I have had 5 years in local government lol.
I am just looking at that £350k sitting there that is not assciated to a supplier and wondering just where and what that was spent on.