Page 62 - ALG Issue 3 2018 (printable)

London
The Dark Side
of Devolved Management
You mean there is one? Really? Just
how is that possible? Running your
own site without interference; paying a peppercorn rent (hopefully considering all the work you do); electing your officers and committee; allocating and terminating tenancies; keeping your own waiting list; being financially independent, raising and spending your money the way you want; being supported by your membership. All seem to be blindingly and self-evidently positive and desirable.
But there is a dark side, and the London Region may show it up more clearly
with events and processes on some of London’s allotment sites
(2014/2015) has “to enquire about how
to get a plot, go to Barnet Allotment Federation”. Elsewhere Redbridge set up Vision rcl (Redbridge culture and leisure to include parks and libraries). Hounslow has had Carillion managing its sites, and idVerde has been active in Sutton, Croydon and Bromley. In some of those cases officers, formerly employed by the borough, have been transferred into the outsourcing firm’s employees. I am taking no ideological position here as these decisions are of course made by the elected members of the councils concerned. But extra distance is put between the landlord and the tenant
has such a code been in place for members of the Management Committee and more recently for officers of NAS regional bodies. It is worth consideration by devolved managed associations and will have different emphases than the regional codes. Of course such a code of practice will not stop transgressions occurring but it will provide
a framework within which they can be dealt with more easily.
More often though, the commitment
and enthusiasm that marked the start of
the devolved managed regime ossifies incrementally. Shortcuts get taken – often with no malevolent intent. When Trustees
are not provided with all the information
they should have, where private limited companies running allotment sites have
only two directors, when committee members feel excluded from the decision- making processes, where the trading hut has no price list and charges different
prices to different members, or where
the financial management is unclear, association members are more distanced from contributing to the welfare of the association. The immediate corrective is
an evolutionary change in the officers and committee members of the association and open, accountable communication with all members of the association. Sometimes that gets done only after the stresses grow into
a full blown crisis, which is so much more draining and damaging on all concerned. Where landlord’s support is equivocal or not present, the possible intractability has the potential to imperil the site. Given the land pressures in the London Region that could be used as yet another method of producing
suggesting, sometimes very strongly, that devolved management has not delivered
We all know what happened to Carillion, and the cascade of outsourcing and sub- contracting in some London boroughs
with accountability issues becoming more problematic and less direct to deal with. We all know what happened to Carillion, and the cascade of outsourcing and sub-contracting in some London boroughs where someone else
or some other body
is always available to
and is not delivering
on its promises. All
the situations set out
here are real but are
not being identifiably
named. Not all are
NAS members, but
the majority are. I am suggesting that the reasons for becoming a devolved managed site and association set out in the paragraph above may not be sustained from within
blame, and has the potential to bring about a major public disaster.
The internal process enabling devolved management not to deliver on its promises are more hurtful; often more personal
and can drain a site of its liveliness and positivity. The causes are less obvious and insidious in their infection. Competence is often not the issue but governance of the devolved association is. Fine words such as openness, transparency, accountability and integrity we can all pay homage to, but beyond them
the association and that external landscape changes can bring fresh and unexpected changes to the devolved site.
The external changes are less painful perhaps but can be managed. The
London Allotment Officer Forums over the past few years have given a picture of a declining number of officers specifically dedicated to allotment management and administration. Inevitably too there has been, over the decade or so that those forums have met, a turnover of officers. Devolved management has often been raised in those meetings and I think it is fair to say that
the officers concerned have been under some pressure to have a ‘cost neutral’ service. Two immediate consequences: higher rents, and a budget that will cover only maintenance but not capital projects. Devolved management sits within that quite easily. But in this current decade those financial pressures on local authorities have made more radical choices. A number of boroughs have outsourced their allotment service (and sometimes other services such as refuse collection and recycling) to external organisations. So, Bromley, one
of the earliest boroughs to adopt universal devolved management on allotments, has on its website “if you are interested in getting an allotment please contact the site directly or via the Bromley Allotment and Leisure Gardens Federation website”. Barnet,
with a more recent history of devolvement
dereliction by design. I would submit that
neither of the two paragraphs above do anything other than strengthen the case for NAS membership. The NAS provides templates for a wide range of documents
that devolved associations will need. At both national and regional levels and both formally and informally it does offer advice and guidance. Far, far better to deal with the difficulties before they become more intense with continued clear, empathetic, open communication with all members that as more likely scenario to enable a devolved managed association to flourish in the light of day.
Jeff Barber
62
there is a whole raft of
practices that are not
always followed or even
perhaps acknowledged.
As far as I am aware,
few associations will
have codes of conduct,
setting out how the
association will expect
its members to behave to one another. There is of course a ‘nuisance clause’ attached to many tenancy agreements. That does need to be there and there are two further points to place on the record. Some boroughs – Enfield and Redbridge are two
I am aware of – have a code of conduct for site representatives that covers this territory. In many other cases in associations there is no formal statement of what is expected and with best of intentions the ‘common sense’ approach to all procedural matters is used. But in today’s world where rumour can be fanned to fact remarkably quickly this has
to be addressed. The second point must be the admission that only in the past four years
Welcome to our new members...
Jerome Allotment Association 2 Individual Members
The NAS provides templates for a wide range of documents that devolved associations will need