What's happened on the 6th floor of Wirral Council's Chamber of Secrets for it to sue for over £300,000?

What’s happened on the 6th floor of Wirral Council’s Chamber of Secrets for it to sue for over £300,000?

What’s happened on the 6th floor of Wirral Council’s Chamber of Secrets for it to sue for over £300,000?

                                                             

Last year I requested various legal invoices during the 2013/14 audit of Wirral Council. One of these is below:

Wirral Council invoice Trowers & Hamlins £10,151.04 20th February 2014
Wirral Council invoice Trowers & Hamlins £10,151.04 20th February 2014

The invoice above is from Trowers & Hamlins and is for work connected to a court case to do with the 6th floor of Castle Chambers (a building owned and rented out by the Merseyside Pension Fund which is part of Wirral Council).

The court fee of £1,670 means this invoice is to do with to a civil court case in the High Court (in which Wirral Council is the claimant) to recover a sum of money where the amount exceeds £300,000 or an amount that is not limited.

What is blacked out under the heading Professional services provided appears to end in “6th floor Castle Chambers – Merseyside Pension Fund for the period to 31 01 2014”

So why all the secrecy surrounding the 6th floor at Castle Chambers? What was the outcome of the case and did the expenditure of £10,151.04 with Trowers & Hamlins lead to Wirral Council recovering any money?

Below is an earlier invoice about the same matter for £5,749.44.

Wirral Council invoice Trowers and Hamlins £5,749.44 13th August 2013
Wirral Council invoice Trowers and Hamlins £5,749.44 13th August 2013

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Author: John Brace

New media journalist from Birkenhead, England who writes about Wirral Council. Published and promoted by John Brace, 134 Boundary Road, Bidston, CH43 7PH. Printed by UK Webhosting Ltd t/a Tsohost, 113-114 Buckingham Avenue, Slough, Berkshire, England, SL1 4PF.

5 thoughts on “What's happened on the 6th floor of Wirral Council's Chamber of Secrets for it to sue for over £300,000?”

  1. I wonder how much rent the Pension fund are paying on Castle Chambers.

    Wirral Council must have lots of empty office space following all the cuts. So why don’t they move the Fund management to Wallasey or Birkenhead, and so provide themselves with a bit of rent income – and a few more Wirral based jobs

    1. I think the Merseyside Pension Fund owns Castle Chambers.

      Wirral Council are currently trying to dispose of assets (such as Acre Lane) that were used for office space, so I would think that most of the available office space (such as at Birkenhead Town Hall) is being taken up by staff relocating due to asset disposals.

  2. And yet they intend to place some frontline staff in a car park with toilet access in the adjacent building during opening hours. They claim they have no suitable premises to accommodate workers!

    1. If I remember correctly as part of “agile working” there was a deliberate move to reduce the number of desks below the number of people that used them with the intention that anyone could work from anywhere.

      1. Agile working will only work if the system hardware is reliable more than 50% of the time!

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