What is it about Mayor Lutfur Rahman and his penchant for empire building? He pleads poverty and lashes out at Westminster for forcing him into cuts and job losses, yet then seems happy to spend our money on his new office (£115,000 and counting), his Mercedes rental car (£72 a day) an a new army of advisers led by Ken Livingstone’s former crony, Murziline Parchment.
The following advertisement has just been posted on a tendering website for four new mayoral advisers to help his mind on these issues:
Lot 1 – regeneration and deveopment;
Lot 2 – health and well being;
Lot 3 – public consultation and engagement
Lot 4 – communications and media
He’s set aside a budget of £40,000 for the eight month projects. Doesn’t he trust the people who already work in the above service areas? Tory group leader Peter Golds said: “We get another vanity project from this mayor every week, it seems. It’s absolutely shocking.”
I spoke to the council’s procurement department. These posts will report directly to the mayor.
Here’s the ad in full:
Contract: TOWER-DNWC-8JWFD5
Main Contract Detail
- Buyer:
- Tower Hamlets
- Title:
- CR3956 Advisor to the Mayor
- Category/Categories:
- hide categories
79411100 – Business development consultancy services
79413000 – Marketing management consultancy services
79416200 – Public relations consultancy services- Additional Categorisation(s):
- None
- Summary:
- The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is seeking quotations from individuals and companies to provide advice to the Mayor in one or more of the following areas:
Lot 1 – regeneration and development;
Lot 2 – health and well being;
Lot 3 – public consultation and engagement
Lot 4 – communications and media
The anticipated contract start date is 15th August 2011 for an initial period of 8 months.
The Council is looking for one provider per lot. The current budget for all the 4 lots is between £35,000 and £40,000 for the 8 month period.
Interested parties will be required to register on the London Tenders Portal, using the link below, which is free of charge, and must allow sufficient time to register (at least 1 working day). The Council accepts no liability whatsoever for expressions of interest that are not received due to internet connectivity issues, transmission delays or errors.
https://www.londontenders.org/procontract/supplier.nsf/frm_home?openForm
Deadline for completion and return of quotation is Tuesday 9th August 2011 12:00 Hours.
Tower Hamlets is an Equal Opportunities Employer.
The Council does not undertake to invite all applicants or bind itself to accept the lowest or any Tender. The Council will not be liable for any costs incurred in tendering for this contract.
If you require any further information please contact: Murziline Parchment at murziline.parchment@towerhamlets.gov.uk
- Contact:
- Mrs Gohar Lecordier
- Email Address:
- gohar.lecordier@towerhamlets.gov.uk
- Telephone:
- 020 7364 4795
- Fax:
- 20 7364 4973
- Address:
- 4th Floor Mulberry Place, Town Hall
5 Clove Crescent
London
Greater London
E14 2BG
United KingdomKey Dates
- Estimated contract start date:
- 15/08/2011
- Estimated contract end date:
- 13/04/2012
- Expression of interest start date:
- 19/07/2011 13:00
- Expression of interest end date:
- 09/08/2011 09:00
Other Information
- Contract Period:
- 8 (months)
- Anticipated Extension Period:
- 0 (months)
- Number of Anticipated Extensions:
- 0
Trial by Jeory 
What on earth (and that is the toned-down version of what I would have written) does the Mayor need four advisers on these four random subjects for. As you say – there are professional staff already devoted to these tasks from the highest level downwards.
If I were preparing a bid for the contract I would have no information to go on about what he wanted from the successful candidate – what is the precise task (consulting on what exactly?), what outcomes are expected in the timescale, what are to be the agreed milestones. And at £35-£40k for the full set of four contracts over 8 months that works out at no more than a couple of days work a week.
Also interesting to note the timescales: bids to be submitted by 9th August for a contract start date of 15th August. Leaves around 5 working days for due diligence, consideration of the range of bids I am presuming they will get for each consultancy contract, consideration by the Mayor of the final shortlist (unless he is proposing to put all the other problems of Tower Hamlets to one side to devote himself to assessing each of the bids personally).
Or of course they are not expecting lots of bids and have somebody lined up already. Who might that be I wonder (especially for the communications role). Finally I refer them to the Home Affairs Select Committee meeting yesterday where the questioning about how Neil Wallace came to be appointed in a consultancy role to the Met, what his role was and who knew his background, checked him out etc etc showed a sorry state of affairs that looks as though it could be repeated in Tower Hamlets.
Correction to that: I’ve just looked at the calendar. Bids to be received by midday on Tuesday 9th August leaves 3 and a half working days (the contract start date is the following Monday) for full consideration, due diligence, (eg checking that the consultants have no conflicts of interest). I know that August is usually a quiet month but this is ridiculous.
Also note that Jules Pipe, for one, does not have all these consultants and advisers and yet seems to manage very well indeed. And there might be more of an argument for him to have them given that he shares his time with his role as Chair of London Councils. Can’t speak for any of the other mayors in London or the UK.
Ted – you should be able to get hold of more documentation which provides a precise scoping for their role and highlights in what way they are different from council officers who are already providing policy and operational advice and support in these areas. At the very least there should be a report which outlines why these new officers are required and in what ways existing officers are unable to provide this support.
If this is not a part of a reorganisation of services (about which there would need to be formal consultation with staff) then there is scope for thinking these might be political advisers….
…and as we all know political advisers must be paid for by political parties and not by the taxpayer.
He may be Mayor but he still has to play by ALL the rules and stick to ALL the relevant legislation irrespective of whether or not he belongs to a formal political party.
It certainly looks as if he’s setting up something which can be challenged in more ways than one – and by staff as well as taxpayers and other councillors.
Incidentally you might also see if you can find out what’s the stated written rationale for this sentence “The Council does not undertake to invite all applicants or bind itself to accept the lowest or any Tender. ” ?
There are a range of reasons why this might possibly be applicable – but this normally has to be recorded in writing. This record must then be available to the public for accountability purposes. It’s part of the process of being transparent and accountable for the spending of public money and the letting of contracts.
No Wapping effect here I hope!
Wasn’t the argument for having an elected Mayor that LBTH would be less bueracratic? Ted, what’s the comparison – in termms of head count and cost of the former Leader and Cabinet system, and the Executive Mayoralty?
It will be interesting to see who is appointed. What is happening is that, given he can’t sell off council owned property cheaply to his cronies because of scrutiny, he is now rewarding his chumchas with posts. Some of the cash generated will be diverted to his financiers, those who paid for his campaign.
http://ig24.i-grasp.com/fe/tpl_LBTH01.asp?s=BclNkQVsFdUGlIiUda&jobid=43385%2C6557234671&key=10873304&c=651221353423&pagestamp=sepmxtkwoilweadvpa
Oh, and let’s look forward to the payments to each of the successful contract bidders being outlined in detail in the list of financial expenditure over £500 that Tower Hamlets Council (along with every other council) has to publish. Because it’s a contract and not a personal salary it will have to be published.
I’m still not grateful to Eric Pickles for that particular piece of largely useless bureaucracy but at least this will be one of the very few cases where it might come in useful.
How many advisers does it take to plug-in a Mayor of Tower Hamlets? And no comments about dim light bulbs please! BTW he’s just changed his car again too…
Let’s not forget the due diligence issues. VAT registration springs to mind……
Then there’s the issue of people who get appointed to do a full time job in one public sector body and then take time out to perform consultancy services for another. But we must assume the contracts people haven’t forgotten about the ACEO who did forget that simply isn’t possible!
You missed DR3945 Independent Tenant Advisor for Housing Options Appraisal
This talks about
“an Independent Tenant Advisor to provide advice and support to Tower Hamlets tenants and leaseholders as part of an options appraisal for the future management of its stock.”
This also refers to
“The role specification sets out the role that suitably qualified organisations are invited to tender for. In doing so, the Independent Tenant Advisor is invited to respond to and cost for the approach adopted in the specification.”
Which is progress. At least there is some reference to a role specification……
Pity they forgot to provide an adequate one.
Whatever happened to output based contract performance measures? (For those unfamiliar – this means stating precisely what outputs you want to achieve and in what timescale to what standard).
The nature of independent advice is that you then leave it up to the individual to determine how they achieve those. If you attempt to dictate HOW they achieve the outputs you are deemed to be employing the person rather than contracting with them. That then leaves the Council open to having to deduct tax from payments made to the individual and also paying employers NI contributions on the totality of the payment made.
In summary – these are incredibly weak tender specs – it makes one wonder about the competence and calibre of council managers and the contracts team.
“Unfortunately the job you are looking for is no longer being advertised”
I demand an explanation and smell a conspiracy!
I’d read that as him having given up the funding for a full-time post to create the funding for the four advisers. The annual salary and the budget are virtually equivalent.
It may be that the Council had difficulty filling the post or that the Mayor needs a range of support which goes beyond what any postholder could reasonably offer without changing the job description.
On the other hand holding a post vacant is not unusual. In fact it’s pretty standard for any council trying to achieve savings….I think I remember that as being one of the main planks of the unspecified savings to be found by support services this year! So where does the funding come from for these new advisers if the post is being held vacant so it can contribute to the savings target
As always with such new initiatives it always pays to follow the money.
The relevant Freedom of Information question is to ask what specific budget is funding these officers and whether there has been any formal virement from another budget involved in creating a budget for this consultancy advice (eg a movement from a pay budget to a non-pay budget for consultancy services)
I’d have to say that since most of what he’s seeking advice on is pretty core to core Council functions one would have thought that that he had plenty of officers who could already provide him with the advice! Which certainly raises the question of why they’re not being asked to provide it?
But maybe their faces don’t fit?
But that would be discrimination wouldn’t it?
At some point the Mayor of Tower Hamlets Council needs to get to grips with the notion that you need to appoint competent people and then work with what you’ve got rather than changing people every five minutes because they’re not your favourite person.
Then there’s also the notion that leadership starts at the top and involves the leader setting the tone for the way the organisation needs to behave. Profligacy is a pretty poor tone to set when people are losing their jobs.
The buck stops at the top – in more ways than one.
@Graham If you’re referring to the Community Liaison Officer post – the page says that the closing date for applications was 10th July which is why it is no longer being advertised. And TH isn’t the only employer that doesn’t update webpages with vacancies frequently enough.
But from 2013 Eric Pickles has bequethed Lutfur the income from the Business Rates (currently collected locally and handed over to central Government to distribute fairly around the country). LBTH has one of the highest business rate incomes of any English Local Authority (with the obvious exceptions of Westminster and the City of London)