Employment and Appointments Committee 22/3/2012 Wirral Council

As it was a short meeting I’ve already uploaded it to Youtube. It’s in two parts, part 1 (the first twelve minutes) and part 2 (the last eight minutes), which are also below. Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an … Continue reading “Employment and Appointments Committee 22/3/2012 Wirral Council”

As it was a short meeting I’ve already uploaded it to Youtube. It’s in two parts, part 1 (the first twelve minutes) and part 2 (the last eight minutes), which are also below.

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The agenda and reports can be found on Wirral Council’s website except at the time of writing this, the AOB item entitled “Proposed Change to Senior Management Position”. It’s four pages which I’ve scanned in, Page 1, Page 2, Page 3 and Page 4.

The result of these changes will be that:-

(a) David Armstrong is appointed Acting Deputy Chief Executive,
(b) Surjit Tour becomes Deputy Monitoring Officer and stops being Scrutiny Officer (Head of Legal and Member Services) and
(c) Shirley Hudspeth, Democratic Services Manager stops being Democratic Services Manager and becomes Scrutiny Officer (Head of Legal and Member Services).

The Committee agreed to recommend (a) and (c) to Council and noted (b).

Items 5 (Chief Executives Office) and 7 (Department of Regeneration, Housing and Planning: Senior Management Structure) were deferred to a future meeting.

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 15th March 2012 Report on meeting Part 1

Well as promised in a previous post here’s a writeup of part of last Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, well at least some highlights.

Item 8 (Chief Executives Office) along with its its appendix have been deferred to a future meeting.

Cllr Jeff Green wanted to waive call-in on item 27 regarding St. Anselms College but was given legal advice by Surjit Tour that he couldn’t because the officers who have to agree to it to waive call-in weren’t present.

The nomination for Mayor and Deputy Mayor for 2012/2013 were as follows:-

Mayor: Cllr Gerry Ellis

Deputy Mayor: Cllr Dave Mitchell

Bill Norman (Director of Law, HR and Asset Management), Ian Coleman (Director of Finance) and Jim Wilkie (Chief Executive) were all absent from the Cabinet meeting.

Err, let’s see, Craig Manning has written about item 16 for the Wirral Globe which can be read online. Certainly Cllr Jeff Green wasn’t happy with the news, but Social Services has a reputation for overspending by £millions each year.

Letter to Cllr Steve Foulkes from Local Government Association 11/11/2011

Letter to Cllr Steve Foulkes and Jim Wilkie from Local Government Association 11/11/2011 from Dr Gill Taylor of the Local Government Association

UPDATED: 14th April 2015

The second paragraph of page 1 of this letter contains the sentence:

"The Whistleblower, who had been dismissed by the authority, had made allegations against the backdrop of long standing concerns about Adult Social Care but also the wider corporate governance issues around the authority’s failure to recognise or act on information which it had received over a number of years."

"The Whistleblower" is Mr Martin Morton and he was not dismissed by Wirral Council. A compromise agreement was agreed between Mr Martin Morton and his former employer Wirral Council which ended his employment.

The Local Government Association have apologised to Mr Morton for incorrectly stating in their letter below that he was dismissed. They now realise this sentence in their letter was inaccurate and have asked for this amendment to be published here.

Click on images for larger version.
 
Letter to Cllr Steve Foulkes from Local Government Association Page 1 of 6

 
Letter to Cllr Steve Foulkes from Local Government Association Page 2 of 6

Letter to Cllr Steve Foulkes from Local Government Association Page 3 of 6
Letter to Cllr Steve Foulkes from Local Government Association Page 4 of 6

Letter to Cllr Steve Foulkes from Local Government Association Page 5 of 6
Letter to Cllr Steve Foulkes from Local Government Association Page 6 of 6

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 8th December 2011 Part 2, Declarations of Interest, Minutes (24/11), Corporate Plan

The agenda and reports for the Cabinet meeting can be found by following the link.

Present:
Cllr Steve Foulkes (Chair)
Cllr Harry Smith
Cllr Chris Meaden
Cllr Ann McLachlan
Cllr Anne McArdle
Cllr George Davies
Cllr Adrian Jones
Cllr Brian Kenny
Cllr Phil Davies

Cllr Steve Foulkes welcomed people to the Cabinet meeting. A blanket declaration of interest was made for councillors who are school governors on the item on school admission policies.

Cllr Phil Davies declared an interest in item 22, Funding of Voluntary, Community and Faith Sector 2012/2013 as he is a non-executive director of the Wirral Multicultural organisation (Wirral Council appointment).
Cllr Brian Kenny declared an interest in item 22, Funding of Voluntary, Community and Faith Sector 2012/2013 as he is a non-executive director of the Wirral Multicultural organisation (Wirral Council appointment).
Cllr Brian Kenny declared an interest in item 18, Local Development Framework – Developer Contributions and the Community Infrastructure Levy as he is a member of the Planning Committee (Wirral Council appointment).
Cllr Anne McArdle declared an interest in item 22, Funding of Voluntary, Community and Faith Sector 2012/2013 as she is on the management board of Leasowe Community Homes (Wirral Council appointment).

The minutes of the meeting held on the 24th November 2011 were agreed.

Jim Wilkie, Chief Executive, introduced the first item on the revised Corporate Plan. He said it was a proposed Corporate Plan which set out the vision for Wirral Council and its set of proposed values highlighting the sections on health, well being and child poverty. Mr. Wilkie brought people’s attention to the five themes of the previous Corporate Plan, it set out the goals for the next few years as well as the next year, he was happy to answer any questions.

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 24/11/2011 Part 6 Gas disruption (Leasowe and Moreton), Budget Projections 2012-2015

Cllr Steve Foulkes said the debrief should include lessons learnt and a critique. He said he had been there on Friday night and said people had been "working hard" and that it was a "huge National Grid operation". Cllr Foulkes said they had been lucky the weather had been relatively mild.

He referred to Cllr Jeff Green’s earlier comments about the Serious Fraud Office investigation. Cllr Foulkes referred to an email which referred to a letter being received.

Jim Wilkie said he had emailed all three party leaders (Cllr Foulkes, Cllr Green and Cllr Harney) last Friday [18th November] over a conversation. However Jim Wilkie said the letter had not yet been received. He had intended to speak, but he understood the letter would arrive this week.

Cllr Steve Foulkes said it had been reported that the Serious Fraud Office was investigating. He referred to Frank Field but said it would be “difficult to break a confidence”. In order to discuss it further they would have to go exempt session to seek legal advice.

Cllr Jeff Green expressed the view that he wanted it dealt with sooner.

Ian Coleman introduced report 3 on the Budget Projections for 2012-2015.

He said it was an update, but this would be the last time the Cabinet received the report in this format, as in the next few weeks they should get the provisional local government financial assessment. They were not making provision for price inflation.

Cllr Steve Foulkes said there were still a number of days to go for the budget simulator. He referred also to Neighbourhood Plans. They were waiting to put it together, to give leeway on the issues to be resolved. He read out a proposed resolution of Cabinet on this agenda item.