Organisation

Premises

LOLA rented part of new modern offices in Enfield, just south of the town centre. The location was dictated by the availability of tele-communications lines (then the monopoly of the Post Office) and their distance from the 4 boroughs as well as the usual issues such as cost and suitability. The building was on stilts with parking below.

The building was called Tower Point North and LOLA had 2 of the 3 floors. In later years it was to acquire the upper floor. Operations was on the ground floor and development, technical support and senior management on the 1st floor.

Tower Point South was a 10 or 11 storey building occupied by Eastern Gas. In the early 70s the UK was subject to IRA bomb threats and Eastern Gas was a common target. When the alarms went off the many of the Eastern Gas staff would exit through the LOLA offices. Fortunately, all the threats were a hoax.

In the 2010s the whole block was converted to residential. The lower Tower Point North had 2 floors added with 66 apartments in total.

Structure

The early organisational structure was as follows:

Applications Development

Applications Development was headed up by Harry Pearman.

The new (i.e. IMS) applications were developed by two Application Development teams, led by Peter Evans and Jim Cleall-Harding. Each supervised a team of programmers and a team of analysts. Once each new application went live in one borough, further implementation and programming support was handed over to the Support Programming Group. Harry Pearman was succeeded by 1988 by Dr. Vince Padi.

Support Programming Group

Once operational, the new applications were maintained by the Support Programming Group under John Sheldrick, Head of Operations. Consisting initially of 'Implementation Officers' (who morphed into 'systems analysts' over time) and programmers. This group was essentially the old LBMSU Computer Division (North) minus Computer Ops. They took on the IMS applications as they matured. This group was managed by Ray Cole (Analysts) and Mike O'Brien then Philip Gorin (Programmers).

The legacy (ex Leo) applications were supported by this group as well. Gradually the legacy LEO programs were converted to run on the IBM/IMS system except in the case of Payroll where IBM wrote an emulator so the payroll could be run without rewriting it.

Technical Services Support

The technical support staff were headed by Tony O’Brien and were split into 2 teams:

• a Systems team of initially 6 staff, headed for many years by Dave Goodall. This team looked after the operating system and the IMS software
• an Applications Support Team of initially 7 staff, headed during the first 4 years by Ken Lewis. This team looked after the database schemas and the database integrity and efficiency, as well as middleware to support the application programmers. Application programmers could thus focus on user-interface design and application functionality.

Operations

Operations was headed by John Sheldrick and his deputy was initially Gerry Treadway. This division was split into:

• 3 computer operating shifts (initially 2)
• Operational Support headed initially by Ian Yarrien and included Job Control and Printing and Mailing
• Data Preparation headed for many years by Moira Coleman. Moira supervised a pool of 30 data prep staff who were all female as was typical for the period.
• Open Systems (from c1990) headed by Mandy.

Operations was on the ground floor with the computer room occupying one wing and the main block accommodating the keypunch room, typing pool and operations support.

Other Support Services

These included:

• An Education & Training group headed initially by Fred Lockhart.
• Finance and Personnel headed by Charles Stebbing and included the purchasing function. Additionally this group provided staff for reception, care-taking and the canteen.

Costs

For the year 1972/73 the total LOLA budget was £861,886 (c£11m in 2020) and the forecast for 1973/74 was £1m after which costs were expected to fall with the LEO computer centre closing .

This compares with the estimated costs in the 1969 Haringey Report . of £760,000 but this excluded the LEO costs and presumed LOLA would be based at the LEO computer centre in Southgate Road.

Work Environment & Culture

LOLA championed equal opportunities with equal pay for men and women and a good career structure and excellent relations with Nalgo, the Local Government trade union.

There was a focus on delivery with an emphasis on team working across the departments.

Social

A monthly 'LOLA News' was produced, initially by Derek Schartau's secretary, Beryl Dorrington. Examples are in the Catalogue

There was a flourishing Sports and Social Club which was enthusiastically supported with an annual Christmas party, car treasure hunts, football and cricket teams having matches against other firms, an internal squash league, ten-pin bowling and snooker.

• The first Christmas parties were held at the George and then the King's Head, both in the town centre. Later ones from circa the early 1980s were at the Merryhills in Oakwood. Once CFM took over they moved to The Town House night club which was previously the Florida cinema .
• These infamous Christmas parties include skits, often including the Director in costume. One was a rendering of the Kinks song LOLA. - See the photos page.
• The ten-bowling scores were maintained on the mainframe and showed ranking based on a rolling average.

The LOLA cricket team which in later years included Jeremy Leighton, Martin Jackson, Alan Blanks (Alan unfortunately passed away quite young from pancreatic cancer), Steve Barfield and Ian Yarrien. But the star was an Australian called Geoff Williams. Jeremy recalls playing against Ford Motor Company who had several fearsome West Indian fast bowlers!

Photographs of other sports and social activities can be found on the photos page.

References

1. London boroughs 'on-line', Derek Schartau, Head of Computer Services, LOLA (London On-line Local Authorities), Municipal and Public Services Journal, 29 December 1972 View Repro here [⇗]

2. Report on the Initial Study, Long Term Computer Project for the London Borough of Haringey [The Yellow Report], H. J. Dive, Director, London Borough's Management Services Unit, ISBN 0902603000, section 4.2 on page 52 (pdf page 58). View Repro here [⇗]   Click 'View Repro' to see the details.

3. As recalled in April 2021 by Martin Jackson, at LOLA from 1970-2006 and previously at LBMSU from 1968.

4. As recalled in January 2021 by Jeremy Leighton, at LOLA from 1980 to 1993.

5. The archive has 29 newsletters, 2 of these can be viewed on-line: December 1980 [⇗]    and June 1985 [⇗]