A blog about Wirral Council, Wirral Council's councillors & officers
A blog about Wirral Council's public meetings, Wirral Council's councillors, Bidston & St. James ward and other public bodies on Merseyside
Who wants to leave Wirral Council (at a cost of £146,666)?
This is a follow up article to What is Wirral Council trying to cover up now? which also ties in to this Freedom of Information request (first refused on s.43 (commercial interests) grounds, then at internal review on s.22 grounds (information intended for future publication).
Continue reading “Who wants to leave Wirral Council (at a cost of £146,666)?”
Wirral’s councillors asked to agree to £390,176.03 “golden goodbye” for Joe Blott and £1 million for other departing managers
Wirral Council had another public meeting in private (an assumption on my part as I wasn’t there) on Monday afternoon to obtain councillors’ agreement to a recommendation to save money by spending an estimated £1.4 million and increasing the salary of the Monitoring Officer to try and solve recruitment issues to this post.
Continue reading “Wirral’s councillors asked to agree to £390,176.03 “golden goodbye” for Joe Blott and £1 million for other departing managers”
Who’s leaving Wirral Council and what is a 20,085 signature petition against?
Yesterday’s email from Mr Tour, ended with “you are required to return to the public gallery”.
However when I did return to the entrance to the public gallery above the Council Chamber, after asking my question, Wirral Council’s Community Patrol unsuccessfully tried to stop me re-entering.
I have however sadly learnt in life to ignore a lot of Wirral Council employee’s more bizarre requests and slipped past him. The guy from Community Patrol tried to grab my arm to stop me but lost his grip.
Ironically as I had had a stand up protest downstairs over the nonsense over the seating arrangements, typing away notes on my iPad, in the hot weather my bare arm was so sweaty by then that his hand couldn’t grip on to me.
So I thank Surjit Tour for putting into place a chain of events that thwarted another Wirral Council employee.
As I’d forgotten to turn my tape recorder off downstairs there’s a tape of the whole matter and conversation.
Maybe Community Patrol will have better luck at the next Planning Committee?
Indeed Wirral Council losing its grip seemed to be a running theme of the evening.
The petition against the planning application for a fire station (on Council owned land) in Saughall Massie presented by Cllr Chris Blakeley has reached 4,034 signatures. The report from Wirral Council’s planning department recommends it for approval. The matter will be decided at the Planning Committee on the 20th July 2017, after a site visit on the 18th July 2017.
Another large petition, of a mere 20,805 signatures, submitted by Cllr Chris Blakeley on behalf of Cllr Jeff Green opposed the introduction of car parking charges in the country parks (which goes to a call-in meeting on the 18th July 2017).
Cllr Phil Davies (Leader) and the Labour councillors however does not agree with Cllr Chris Blakeley on many policy matters.
After questions for Cabinet Members from various councillors, there were general questions, followed by just over half an hour of debate about senior managers’ employment status.
A quick summary is Julia Hassall (Director of Children’s Services) resigned, Tom Sault (Assistant Director: Finance) is entering a “phased retirement”, Surjit Tour (Assistant Director: Law and Governance, Monitoring Officer and Senior Information Risk Officer) has resigned and Clare Fish (Executive Director for Strategy) has requested early retirement.
The Chief Executive, Eric Robinson also wants to regrade the Director for Children post to the £140-£155k band and create a new post for a senior manager (Director of Strategy and Partnerships) on a salary range of £103k-£115k. He also wants to increase the salary range for the Assistant Director: Law and Governance and Monitoring Officer post to a maximum of £93k. Those are most of the changes (there are some other ones too).
The changes to the senior management team that were recommended in a private meeting of the Employment and Appointments Committee were agreed by Council yesterday evening on a 35:25:1 vote (for:against:abstain). The 1 is the Labour councillor who is the Mayor abstaining. The other 35 are Labour councillors and the 25 were a combination of opposition councillors.
The effect is that Surjit Tour remains serving out his notice (until some point in September 2017), Clare Fish’s early retirement request is agreed, Tom Sault retires (but phased) and Penna (the external recruitment consultants) have a massive pay-day from advising Wirral Council on recruitment to all these posts (estimated by one councillor at ~£12k a post).
The senior management team was restructured last in November 2016 and at least one councillor suggested that changing again so soon implies that the previous model hadn’t worked.
Cllr Bernie Mooney referred to people being paid, “too bloody much”.
Certainly the senior management team hasn’t been changed this much since 2012, when a large number of them were suspended, then paid large sums to leave as the suspension wasn’t done properly.
There was also a short debate on wildlife sites.
Most people however were there in the public gallery (patiently waiting around two hours before the meeting got to that point) to hear debate on a Notice of Motion about the New Ferry explosion.
Cllr Warren Ward received cross-party plaudits for his work as a ward councillor for this area.
Labour councillors blamed it on the government.
Conservative councillors said that part of the response was the responsibility of Wirral Council.
In the end though, after just over 30 minutes of debate, councillors of all parties agreed a notice of motion that will result in Wirral Council writing a letter to the Prime Minister and a letter to the government minister for Communities and Local Government.
After that agreement, the Mayor called for a ten minute adjournment (which turned into a fifteen minute adjournment).
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Will councillors agree to Clare Fish retiring early at a cost of £105,000 tonight?
ED – edited at 15:39 on 10.7.17 to add sentence about amendments moved by opposition councillors.
Tonight Wirral Council’s councillors meet for two public meetings. Both are in the Council Chamber at Wallasey Town Hall, Brighton Street, Seacombe, CH44 8ED.
The first regular public meeting of all 66 councillors starts at 6.00 pm and I’ll hopefully be asking questions during agenda item 5 of the Vice-Chair of the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee Cllr Paul Stuart (as the Chair Cllr Moira McLaughlin is unable to make the meeting tonight).
The second meeting is an extraordinary meeting called by 21 Conservative councillors. The requisition notice for that meeting and the motion on greenbelt policy can both be found on Wirral Council’s website.
Buried in the supplementary agenda for the first meeting on pages 15-16 are two previously exempt reports to the Employment and Appointments Committee meeting on the 27th June 2017 (see pages 15-16).
Both the Liberal Democrat councillors and the Conservative councillors have moved amendments to this to be voted on tonight.
The reports show that the recommendation to spend £105,000 on early retirement for Clare Fish (Executive Director for Strategy) and to create a new management post of Director of Strategy and Partnerships at a salary range of £103k-£115k (£146k including on costs).
As both the new post has a salary of over £100,000 and the early retirement cost for Clare Fish is over £100,000, both decisions can’t be delegated to the Employment and Appointments Committee, but instead the Employment and Appointments Committee makes a recommendation for a decision by a meeting of all Wirral Council’s councillors tonight.
The votes on the recommendation agreed in private at the Employment and Appointments Committee to do this was as follows.
For 4 (Cllr Phil Davies (proposer), Cllr Bernie Mooney (seconder), Cllr George Davies* and Cllr Chris Jones*)
Against 3 (Cllr Chris Blakeley, Cllr Lesley Rennie*, Cllr Phil Gilchrist*)
Abstain 1 (Cllr Adrian Jones*)
All votes with an asterisk are educated guesses, as the meeting chose to exclude the press and public from the decision (as you can watch below) and the names of the people voting are not recorded in the draft minutes (apart from the proposer and seconder who are assumed to vote for their recommendations!).
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Employment and Appointments Committee (Wirral Council) 27th June 2017 Part 1 of 2
The details on the change to make it a legal requirement that all councillors voted on generous severance packages over £100,000 was referred to in further detail in a blog post from 2015 about a proposed £110,000 severance package for Liverpool City Council’s outgoing Director of Public Health.
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UPDATED: Wirral Council U-turns on secrecy of Chief Officer’s early retirement in only 26 hours!
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Correction/update An earlier version of this story linked the Employment and Appointments Committee decision to the departure of Malcolm Flanagan. The Employment and Appointments Committee decision was about the early retirement of another Chief Officer Strategic Director Kevin Adderley whose early retirement has been confirmed by Wirral Council.
Yesterday’s Employment and Appointments Committee meeting (see above) was another masterclass in how politicians will seemingly agree to anything that senior officers ask them to do (however nonsensical).
I asked to speak at the meeting to challenge excluding the press and public (a decision that affects me) for the early retirement item and as Mr. Tour stated during the meeting previously early retirements of chief officers (Jim Wilkie’s cost around £111k to Wirral Council) were considered in public. The request to speak was denied.
There is a slight irony to this as when Mayor Cllr Adrian Jones signed up to article 21. Article 21’s interpretation has meant that at other council’s public meetings the public get to speak … but not at Wirral Council when a decision is being made about them by the whole Committee.
I gave the Chair and Mr. Tour a bunch of public interest reasons (the high cost to Wirral Council of early retirement, the cost of recruiting to that post if it isn’t deleted, scrutiny of politicians etc) before the meeting. All ignored, the public were asked to leave and by around 7.30pm at a public meeting, after excluding the public at around 5.05pm, Wirral Council was announcing a name of a chief officer that was retiring (but not the one the Employment and Appointments Committee made an early retirement decision on). Malcolm Flanagan’s departure was announced but Kevin Adderley’s retirement was still a secret until the next day.
The Head of HR wasn’t present at the Employment and Appointments Committee meeting, she was also due to present a report on attendance management to the Transformation and Resources Committee later that evening, however she was absent from that meeting too (yes I do spot the irony in being absent from a meeting where you’re supposed to be presenting a report on why people are absent from work).
Councillor John Salter did ask the Wirral Council officer in her place at the later meeting about the “attendance management” of Emma Degg only to be told that Wirral Council don’t comment on individual cases.
This perhaps shows councillors that as far as officers are concerned they’re the ones running things and councillors can keep their nosy questions to themselves. If they do have the gall to ask them they will be brushed off. The official motto of Wirral Council is “By Faith and Foresight”.
At Wirral Council officers have been leading the Council since as long as anyone can remember (despite what the councillors may say to the contrary). Here are three examples (with the catchphrase of Churchill’s nodding dog).
Will councillors approve officer recommendations for parking charges for Fort Perch Rock car park?
Councillors: Oh yes.
Will councillors do a U-turn on parking charges for Fort Perch Rock car park?
Councillors: Oh yes.
Will councillors decide to close a much-loved special school called Lyndale?
Councillors: Oh yes.
Here are three examples when councillors or those tasked with corporate governance ask officers something.
Will you renegotiate the Schools PFI contract to save money and save having to make massive cuts to the education budget which will cut support for those with special education needs?
Officer: Oh… no.
Will you answer questions about why Emma Degg left?
Officer: Oh… no.
Will you stop using long Powerpoint presentations to deliberately take up so much public meeting time so that nobody on a scrutiny committee has time (or very little time) to ask you questions?
Officer: Oh… no.
So there you go, Wirral Council summarised concisely.
As it was pointed out to me recently by a councillor that I need to be more positive, I will end by wishing Malcolm Flanagan all the best for his retirement and point out that not all officers at Wirral Council are like those described above. Some are decent human beings that work hard in difficult jobs and don’t get nearly enough thanks from either the press, public or politicians.
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