Month: May 2013

Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr John Hale “these proposals should be consigned to the dustbin where they belong”

Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr John Hale “these proposals should be consigned to the dustbin where they belong”

Continued from Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Foulkes “it was the committee system that actually put in the policies that led to the overcharging within the Klonowski report”

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Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr John Hale “these proposals should be consigned to the dustbin where they belong”

Council meeting Extraordinary 30th April 2013 Revisions to the constitution Cllr John Hale

Cllr Hale thanked Cllr Tom Harney for his kind remarks. He referred to the Chief Executive’s report to Cabinet of the 18th April, page 46 (page 8 on the file that’s linked to) and quoted from 5.3 “The views of the Democracy Working Party which has met on a number of occasions have helped inform these proposals.”

He considered it to be misleading as it could be read that there was general support for the proposals, in fact a majority of the Democracy Working Party were opposed to the proposals. The Democracy Working Party had only met on five or six occasions for one and a half hours at a time, although it did overrun by ten minutes at its last meeting. Cllr Hale said that this was to review a constitution of one hundred and ninety-nine pages. He said, “I don’t believe this to be anything else except a cynical exercise carried out in order to claim full cross-party consideration and consultation when nothing could be further from the truth.”

Cllr Hale said the result would be to give greater power to Cabinet and the Chief Officers. Fourteen months ago over 70% of councillors voted for a return to the committee system. He said even if they assumed that the new councillors were against a return to the committee system that there would still be a majority in favour of it. Cllr Hale said that this had been the result of a secret ballot.

He said democracy was best served when all parties in proportion to their numbers were represented in the decision making process at all levels of the Council. Cllr Hale referred to the freedom that overview and scrutiny committees have and that no new powers were given to them, just their names were changed.

Cllr Hale said the coordinating committee would have ample opportunity to interfere with and constrain the overview and scrutiny committees. He felt the changes to the Council meeting procedures would reduce the time for opposition councillors whilst increasing the time for the majority party councillors. Cllr Hale said “any third world dictator would be proud” and that “these proposals should be consigned to the dustbin where they belong”.

Continued at Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Darren Dodd “this is what the people of Wirral have been asking for for a very long time”.

Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Foulkes “it was the committee system that actually put in the policies that led to the overcharging within the Klonowski report”

Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Foulkes ” it was the committee system that actually put in the policies that led to the overcharging within the Klonowski report”

Continued from Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Blakeley “Where will it end, what next? Will Wirral be twinned with Pyongyang?”

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Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Foulkes “it was the committee system that actually put in the policies that led to the overcharging within the Klonowski report”

Cllr Foulkes thanked the Mayor for his introduction. He said “This is actually one of the times we’ll have a proper debate”. He said that the other two parties (Conservative and the Lib Dems) wanted effectively no change to the constitution. Cllr Foulkes said if they’d genuinely wanted to change the constitution they could’ve sat down with their mentors and brought forward proposals. He said the only person who’d done any work on it was the Council Leader [Cllr Phil Davies].

He said that Cllr Green had the audacity to talk about the brown bin tax, he [Cllr Green] had had the opportunity to move an objection at Budget Council but hadn’t do so. Cllr Foulkes said that Cllr Green had been in power along with Cllr Harney and he asked did they take the Council to Shrangri-La? He answered, “No they didn’t. They had their chance at the time, they had the opportunity, but did not do so.”

Cllr Foulkes said, “I’m going to get lectures tonight about getting rid of two committees, one of them is around Adult Social Services and adult safeguarding. We had a training session on Monday night on adult safeguarding, a very informative one, all about how the restructures, how the Council’s delivering it, the staff, the people, one event. Who turned up? How many Conservative Members [councillors] turned up to that training session? How many? Not one, not one, sadly I don’t know what’s going on within the Liberal Democrat Group, we’ve read the headlines about it, I don’t know what was going on there, but none of those turned up and sadly I have to say only five Members [councillors] turned up and well, gladly they were all Labour Members [councillors] who bothered to turn up. If that’s the measure of the all party contribution to learning about safeguarding then we still have some way to go.”

He continued, “It can be enshrined in the year’s work or the work program of the new committee that will take over that and there are lessons to be learnt for combining looking at children’s safeguarding and adult safeguarding. That is a lesson that was learnt from the past.”

Cllr Foulkes also said, “I will remind this Council though, it was the committee system that actually put in the policies that led to the overcharging within the Klonowski report. It was the committee system that made that decision. If you think the committee system is foolproof it ain’t. If you think the Cabinet system is foolproof it isn’t.”

He said, “What I am shocked at is the lack of engagement by certain senior Members [councillors] in the process we have gone through. We’ve been to the Floral Pavillion and the atmosphere is better than in this Chamber.” … “We have a training mafia who are apparently monitoring us and making criticisms of us going to training sessions.” … “It maybe that we can have localised planning decisions, it maybe that we can have localised licensing decisions…”.

Continues at Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr John Hale “these proposals should be consigned to the dustbin where they belong”.

Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Blakeley “Where will it end, what next? Will Wirral be twinned with Pyongyang?”

Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Blakeley “Where will it end, what next? Will Wirral be twinned with Pyongyang?”

Continued from Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Harney “We don’t know where we came from, we don’t know where we’re going”

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Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Blakeley “Where will it end, what next? Will Wirral be twinned with Pyongyang?”

Council meeting (Extraordinary) 30th April 2013 Revisions to the Constitution Cllr Chris Blakeley

The Mayor thanked Cllr Harney, he asked councillors to keep their speeches to three minutes so that everyone who wanted to could have a say.

Cllr Blakeley said he would stick to three minutes. He said that twelve years ago when the Cabinet form of local government had been started, there was a select committee for each portfolio. This was so there would be no overlap and Cabinet Members were invited along to be asked questions, he said “everything seemed to work ok”.

These were deemed to be “too unwieldy” and “taking too much of officer’s time” so they were reduced to six, although there were some overlapping responsibilities it “was in the main manageable and workable”. Now they [the Labour administration] wanted to cut six committees to three, which Cllr Blakeley regarded as “extremely dangerous”. Cllr Blakeley referred to the Children and Young Peoples Overview and Scrutiny Committee and high-profile cases that had happened in other Boroughs such as Victoria Climbié and Baby P.

He asked them not to forget the overcharging of vulnerable adults on Wirral. He said the new committee would have to “scrutinise these two vast departments”. Cllr Blakeley said, “This is typical of Labour’s control freak dictatorial ‘We know what’s best’ capacity”.

He said that Area Forums made a difference by “giving local people a real opportunity to have a say”, “yet here we have Labour wanting to grab power back to the centre” and that the new constituency committees would be given a “token amount of funding” far less than the funding to the Area Forums they replaced. Cllr Blakeley said it was a “failure to understand what people of this Borough want”.

On the changes to Council meeting procedures, he said if it went through it would “effectively gag councillors from debate in the Council Chamber and put even greater power in Labour’s hands”. Cllr Blakeley said, “Sadly tonight Mr. Mayor, we are witnessing the destruction of the last vestiges of democracy in Wirral and the residents of this Borough will be ruled by a controlling, tyrannical Labour Group”.

He referred to the refusal of the £1.3 million Council Tax Freeze Grant, increases to car parking charges, the brown bin charges and asked “Where will it end, what next? Will Wirral be twinned with Pyongyang?”

Continued at Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Foulkes “it was the committee system that actually put in the policies that led to the overcharging within the Klonowski report”.

Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Harney “We don’t know where we came from, we don’t know where we’re going”

Cllr Tom Harney (Liberal Democrat Group Leader)’s response to Labour’s proposed revisions to Wirral Council’s constitution

Continued from Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Conservative Leader Cllr Jeff Green responds “We remember the libraries, we remember Martin Morton, we remember what you did in closing care homes, we will make sure that these issues are publicly debated whether the Labour Party likes it or not”

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Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Harney “We don’t know where we came from, we don’t know where we’re going”

Cllr Tom Harney referred to the Anna Klonowski Associates report and the public interest reports and he felt the Audit Commission “didn’t get it quite right” in investigating various officers. He said although councillors had political differences that he did not believe they were “running a basket case Council”. Cllr Harney said the question now was, “What really was happening?”

He asked if they were coming from a basket case Council or one that had problems, similar to other Councils, which hadn’t received the same publicity as Wirral Council surrounding their problems because Wirral Council had had a whistleblower. Cllr Harney asked, “If he hadn’t said anything publicly, what would our perception be?” and that surveys showed that over half of local government workers had experienced bullying at work. He said, “We don’t know where we came from, we don’t know where we’re going.”

Cllr Harney said that too many comments referred to mythical golden councils around the country. He asked how can they guarantee to the people of the Borough and employees that they’ll support them when they raise problems? Cllr Harney said “there’s a difference between having rules and keeping to them and maybe that’s a lesson that we and many other Councils should learn”.

Somebody heckled Cllr Harney, the Mayor told Cllr Harney just to ignore the heckler.

He said that the Improvement Board was a body that didn’t make decisions, hasn’t got a decision-making ability and no means of enforcing anything. Cllr Harney thanked the Mayor for his forbearance.

Continues at Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Blakeley “Where will it end, what next? Will Wirral be twinned with Pyongyang?”.

What next for demolished Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory site (Joseph Proudman Building) on Bidston Hill?

A story about the former Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (Joseph Proudman Building) site on Bidston Hill, Wirral, England

What next for demolished Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory site (Joseph Proudman Building) on Bidston Hill?

                     

Demolished Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, Bidston Hill

First, a quick history of what’s been happening about this site. Last year in June, Wirral Council’s Cabinet received a report recommending demolition. People had asked the Cabinet about the effect of the Unitary Development Plan change in 2004 on a decision to demolish it, so as nobody seemed to know whether this was still in effect, a decision on it was deferred to the meeting on the 9th July 2012.

The Cabinet meeting on the 9th July 2012 was in postponed to the 10th July 2012 and was told that the bit of the Unitary Development Plan relating to Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory had been deleted in 2007. However between June and July an application had been made to English Heritage for listed status. A decision was then deferred again to Cabinet’s meeting of the 6th September (in the hope that English Heritage would’ve decided on listed status by then).

It wasn’t on the Cabinet agenda of the 6th September or the next meeting of the 27th September. By October a decision had been reached by English Heritage not to accept the application for listed building status and on the 8th October 2012 the Cabinet Member for Corporate Resources, Cllr Adrian Jones gave consent to demolition (effective from the 16th October) for the Joseph Proudman Building. Since then it has been demolished by Hunter Demolition.

Wirral Council owns the site of the former Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, but NERC (the Natural Environment Research Council) has a 99-year lease from 1973. Wirral Council receive £1,800 a year rent from NERC. However NERC have tried to sell their lease. Local residents are concerned that now the building has been demolished that there could a residential development on this site, especially as the Lighthouse Cottage and Bidston Observatory are now being used for this purpose.

In the evidence base (see page 112) for Wirral Council’s Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment 2012 it is listed as a site (it lists it as Bidston Observatory but the coordinates are for the Joseph Proudman Building) with a capacity for thirty-eight dwellings. This document gives it an achievability score of 3 (which means development of the site could be achieved in the next five years). It states in that document “Car park and other building require demolition/conversion” (which has already happened).

Any decision on new housing on the site of the Joseph Proudman Building would be first need planning permission and being a major development would be decided by Wirral Council’s Planning Committee. A future request for planning permission would attract opposition from local residents wanting to keep Bidston Hill as it is, its impact on the existing listed buildings (the Lighthouse and the Observatory) would also need to be considered. Until that happens the future of the site is up to NERC and Wirral Council.

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