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| Chickens coming home to roost |
Cockell, a not very bright, failed cigarette salesman with a wicked record for expense abuse was a catastrophe in every sense. Just an example of his greed LINK
It now seems that the chickens are coming home to roost....
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| Wants OUT! |
The sudden departure of H&F's CEO, Nigel Pallace is purportedly connected with Tri-Borough.
The Royal Borough is now in a quandary.
Good senior officers have departed and services deployed to H&F and Westminster have been the subject of massive criticism.
It's all been a terrible mistake....just as the Dame warned...
In June 2012 I wrote to Cllr Cockell, Leader of Kensington and Chelsea as follows:
ReplyDelete"Any organisation can only serve one "brain" otherwise it becomes dysfunctional. We are proceeding with three Leaders and three Cabinets. The Tri Borough FAILS THIS TEST.
The Chief Executive selected to run a merged operation has to be recruited from outside the shareholders. If he comes from one of the hosts there will always be suspicion from the others and authority will be undermined and then it breaks down.The Tri Borough FAILS THIS TEST.
If costs have to be reduced by re engineering an organisation, then lines of control have to be shortened and power concentrated. But we are building a shared power organisation and distributed organisation. The TRI Borough FAILS THIS TEST
Merger and integration is high risk. There is no point contemplating it unless savings of ca 30% can be demonstrated on paper (and empirically only about 10% will be obtained). The three Boroughs spend about £2 billion. 30% is £800 million. But Tri Borough savings were projected to be ca £20m to £30m at the outset and now £40 million is being trumpeted. Paltry in the scheme of things and they will be swept away by risk. The Tri Borough FAILS THIS TEST.
The personality of the Chief Executive needs to be understood and a performance/reward framework put in place to match his behaviour to the desired outcome. The dual appraisal arrangement by K&C and Hammersmith is a classic "divide and rule" trap. The Tri Borough FAILS THIS TEST
The Chief Executive needs to report to a single master. Mr Myers will report to two masters. The Tri Borough FAILS THIS TEST
Shareholder/owner drivers need to be aligned. Westminster and K&C have guaranteed Conservative majorities.The Leaders are on a long leash. Hammersmith is a marginal council (Conservatives in survival mode). The Tri Borough FAILS THIS TEST
Shareholder/owner constituencies need to be aligned. The demographics of Hammersmith are fundamentally different from K&C/Westminster. The Tri Borough FAILS THIS TEST
In my experience any integration programme will fail if any one of the rules above are broken.
Very clear analysis by Retired Chief Executive. What a pity that the Council does not have people like this in the Cabinet instead of flops like Weale, Campbell, Mellen and Warrick.
DeleteAbsolutely a well measured response...
DeleteIn addition, none of the involved parties have sufficient management experience to deliver an effective result.
ReplyDeleteDisgraced ex Leader Cllr Cockle was on a glory mission to grab headlines as part of his PR campaign to secure a peerage. He was deaf to any advice about how to bring about successful organisation change. Just cheap claims about "saving £ millions" without the first clue of how to do it.
DeleteWhat else could be expected from a failed fag salesman?
Well, dear Pooter's Peerage is down the pan - very much like the future of the RBKC...
DeleteThe Hammersmith thugs saw the opportunity to do a land grab and roger Hornton Street. Which they proceeded to do.
ReplyDeleteWestminster saw the risk just in time and backed off. They kept their Town Clerk and agreed to do joint purchasing for refuse collection. Clever people.
Pooter stuffed his residents in pursuit of personal ambition. But the Dame and her hornets stuffed the bounder. Pooter never made the House of Lords and disgraced ex Cllr Phelps never got his invitation to take tea in the Palace of Westminster.
Long live the Dame
Indeed....
DeleteCllr Cockell was warned on many occasions about the folly of his Tri Borough plan. But he refused to listen to advice and his Cabinet, with one exception, were too timid to question or discuss the risks. Cllr Moylan was a lone voice urging caution.
ReplyDeleteThis was Cllr Cockell's last great disaster.
ReplyDeleteI hope that Cllr Paget-Brown and his Cabinet have a recovery plan to unwind the tri B and restore the Royal Borough to what it should be
ReplyDeletePiggy needs to get his skates on. And he needs to sharpen his razor blade. Above all he needs to shape a Cabinet team that can cope with rebuilding the Hornton Street organisation. No thought is required to recognise that piggy's Deputy, Cllr Mellen, needs to be moved out of harms way.
ReplyDeleteRight on... Those who 'migrated' to H&F should be left there....and rot...
DeleteIt was obvious the moment tri-borough was announced that it was only a matter of time before it collapsed. In the event its demise has been very speedy. There's a mismatch between Horton Street and H & F's various personal fiefdoms plus the semi-detached WCC.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth noting that WCC engaged sufficiently to join bi-borough's decades old, corrupt waste contracts. This racket is called Garbagegate. Residents of all three boroughs are now committed to pay twice the UK norm for these services. It's not exactly a sexy subject, but this is a huge publicly run criminal conspiracy against the public purse. Even in KCHFW there are people struggling to feed and clothe their children.
Cllr Warrick, our new £50k/yr Cabinet member, has been given the garbage job. After years of developing his skills with the property spivs operating in the Royal Borough we can look forward to even less for even more.
DeleteGet it?
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has now become the Royal Borough of Westminster with Westminster's archaic management style.
ReplyDeleteThere are no more happy RBKC staff doing and wanting to provide a good service.
RIP RBKC