August, 2013 | A blog about Wirral Council, Wirral Council's councillors & officers

Incredible £2,697 spent on legal costs by Wirral Council in dispute with Volker Laser

Wirral Council legal invoices page 19 Volker Laser Eversheds LLP

I’ve erased some of the black boxes on legal invoices of Wirral Council and came across this one for £2,697 in a dispute that Wirral Council had with Volker Laser. Sadly Volker Laser is not the name of a Bond villain’s company but instead a civil engineering firm.

Helpfully on Evershed’s website they tell us the work was for Lucy Frith of Eversheds "defending a series of adjudications arising out of a remediation contract for a public sector employer" (at least that’s a reasonable guess considering it wasn’t any of the other three). So what does this actually mean when translated out of lawyer-speak?

Wirral Council’s Technical Services department contracted Volker Laser to do civil engineering work for them. Wirral Council weren’t happy that the work was done how they wanted, Volker Laser disagreed with this so Wirral Council got their lawyer involved to sort it out. This is only an “interim invoice” so who knows how much that fiasco actually cost the taxpayer in total? No wonder they wanted to black out the name of the contractor involved before releasing the invoice!

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Outrageous 20 Page Wirral Council Contract over Secret Hourly Legal Rates

Before Bill Norman left Wirral Council’s employment he said during a public meeting that Wirral Council had much less in-house solicitors than the previous Council that had previously employed him. Currently Wirral Council has ~~sixteen~~ fifteen people in-house to give legal advice (David Abraham, Ali Noman Bayatti, Louise Kate Bragg, Gregory Oghenebrume Eyitene, Angela Mary Green, Colin John Bennett Hughes, Victoria Michelle Leece, Rosemary Ann Lyon, ~~Elizabeth Macgregor~~, Anne Frances Quirk, Cecilia Mary Rathe, Sally Jayne Rotherham, Joanne Elizabeth Rutherford, Lucy Victoria Shaw, Surjit Tour and Karen Christina White).

As a result of having more legal work than people employed to do it, work gets outsourced. Some of this is through the North West Legal Consortium that have a website here. Basically it’s a collaboration between a number of local Councils and others (such as Merseytravel, The Office for the Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside and The Office for the Police and Crime Commissioner for Lancashire) for legal services from firms such as Weightmans LLP and Eversheds LLP. The “outrageous” clause in my opinion in the contract is this though:-

17. Confidentiality

The Consortium has entered into agreement with Solicitors Firms and Barristers Chambers in relation to discounted fee rates. Each of these rates is commercially confidential to that Firm or Chambers and as such should not, without the prior written consent of that Firm or Chambers be disclosed to any other Firm or Chambers or any other third party outside of the Consortium. Authorities should use reasonable endeavours to ensure either by themselves their servants or agents that they treat such Confidential Information as confidential and safeguard it accordingly; and they hereby agree to use reasonable endeavours not disclose such Confidential Information to any other person without the Solicitors Firm or Chambers prior consent.

What this means is that they can charge a three figure sum an hour for legal advice and despite the public’s right to inspect these documents and make copies (without redactions) Wirral Council will just black box out the amounts on for example this Weightmans table of prices here and here.

With this level of redaction (which extends to the invoices themselves too), how can the Wirral public know they’re getting value for money at these “discounted fee rates”? What’s the rate they’re classed as discounted from anyway? Links to the whole North West Legal Consortium contract are provided below.

EXCLUSIVE: 36 More Pages of North West Regional Development Agency’s Contract With Wirral Council for Business Grants Program

Continuing from yesterdays’ blog post of the first ninety pages of the North West Development Agency’s contract with Wirral Council, here are the next thirty-five pages. As European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) money was involved, these are the standard conditions of the European Regional Development Fund grant.

EXCLUSIVE: 90 Pages of North West Regional Development Agency’s Contract With Wirral Council for Business Grants Program

The astute among you will no doubt be aware that the North West Regional Development Agency was abolished last year, however I would guess that in its absence that its functions under the contract are now done by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

There is more to the contract than the first ninety pages, although the other pages can wait for another day. The contract between the North West Regional Development Agency and Wirral Council was for business grants and has been the subject of recent whistle blowing concerns.

Page 1 (this is just a cover page with the North West Regional Development Agency’s contact details on)

Page 2 (this is the first page dated 17th September 2009 stating it’s a grant funding arrangement between Wirral Council and the North West Regional Development Agency for business start-up)

Page 3 (this is an index page to the contract detailing various sections and page numbers)

Page 4 (this is the second index page to the contract detailing various sections and annexes)

Page 5 (this is the first page of the contract which details who it’s between, what it’s for and starts with a list of definitions of terms)

Page 6 (this continues the list of definitions of various terms in the contract)

Page 7 (this continues the list of definitions of various terms in the contract)

Page 8 (this continues the list of definitions of various terms in the contract)

Page 9 (this continues the list of definitions of various terms in the contract)

Page 10 (this continues the list of definitions of various terms in the contract)

Page 11 (this continues the list of definitions of various terms in the contract)

Page 12 (this continues the list of definitions of various terms in the contract)

Page 13 (this ends the list of definitions of various terms in the contract and details how certain references are to be interpreted)

Page 14 (this continues with how certain references are to be interpreted and starts to detail the roles of the North West Regional Development Agency and the accountable body)

Page 15 (this continues with detail as to the roles of the North West Regional Development Agency and the accountable body and goes on to representations and warranties)

Page 16 (this continues the representations and warranties)

Page 17 (this details conditions and what the accountable body’s obligations are)

Page 18 (this details when the contract will start, end and starts a section on consents)

Page 19 (this has sections on public procurement and the accountable body’s contractors and employees)

Page 20 (this has sections on onward liability, legislation, material alteration of the project and insurance)

Page 21 (this continues the section on insurance and has sections on reinstatement and notification by the accountable body)

Page 22 (this continues the section on notification and has sections on further assurance, good faith and co-operation and indemnity)

Page 23 (this continues the section on co-operation and indemnity and starts a section on monitoring of providers)

Page 24 (this has sections on provision of information by the accountable body and inspection and audit facilities)

Page 25 (this continues the section on inspection and audit facilities)

Page 26 (this has sections on maximum grant and conditions)

Page 27 (this continues the section on conditions and starts a section on repayment)

Page 28 (this continues the section on repayment and starts a section on review letter and variations)

Page 29 (this section is on events of default, remedies and termination)

Page 30 (this continues the section on events of default, remedies and termination)

Page 31 (this continues the section on events of default, remedies and termination)

Page 32 (this continues the section on events of default, remedies and termination and starts sections on novation, post completion and publicity)

Page 33 (this continues the section on publicity and has sections on North West Regional Development Agency logo & England Northwest’s brand and European Regional Development Fund funding)

Page 34 (this continues the section on European Regional Development Fund funding and has a section on intellectual property rights)

Page 35 (this continues the section on intellectual property rights and starts a section on reputation of the agency)

Page 36 (this continues the section on reputation of the agency and has sections on assignment and confidentiality)

Page 37 (this continues with the section on confidentiality and starts a section on Freedom of Information)

Page 38 (this continues the section on Freedom of Information and starts a section on Data Protection)

Page 39 (this continues the section on Data Protection and starts a section on default or termination of accountable body)

Page 40 (this has sections on status of accountable body, obligation to use CRM and notices)

Page 41 (this has sections on Value Added Tax, jurisdiction and miscellaneous)

Page 42 (this continues the miscellaneous section)

Page 43 (this continues the miscellaneous section and requires the accountable body to comply with obligations in the schedule)

Page 44 (this is the title page for Schedule 1 (Service Providers))

Page 45 (this is the start of the list of service providers)

Page 46 (this is the end of the list of service providers)

Page 47 (this is the title page for Schedule 2 (European Regional Development Fund Offer Letter))

Page 48 (this is page 1 of the European Regional Development Fund Offer Letter)

Page 49 (this is page 2 of the European Regional Development Fund Offer letter)

Page 50 (this is page 3 of the European Regional Development Fund Offer letter)

Page 51 (this is what the grant recipients had to sign)

Page 52 (this is the offer letter and acknowledgement (schedule 1 (project specific conditions) part A (General) and part B (Delivery Structure))

Page 53 (this continues the project specific conditions part B (Delivery Structure) and part C (Equality and Diversity))

Page 54 (this continues the section on part C (Equality and Diversity))

Page 55 (this continues the section on part C (Equality and Diversity) and has part D (Intellectual Property Rights))

Page 56 (this is Schedule 2 (Project Specific Eligible Expenditure) Part A (Eligible Revenue Expenditure) and Part B (Eligible Capital Expenditure))

Page 57 (this is the first of the tables referred to in part A on salaries)

Page 58 (this is the second of the tables referred to in part A on overheads)

Page 59 (this is the third of the tables referred to in part A on premises)

Page 60 (this is the fourth of the tables referred to in part A on fees)

Page 61 (this is the fifth of the tables referred to in part A on other revenue)

Page 62 (this is the cover page for Schedule 3 (the targets))

Page 63 (this is part 1 of the Monitoring and Evaluation plan for Business Start-ups Phase II)

Page 64 (this continues the Monitoring and Evaluation Plan detailing its role)

Page 65 (this continues the role of the Monitoring and Evaluation Plan)

Page 66 (this details a timetable for receipt of project monitoring, other reports and claims)

Page 67 (this details the timetable after 30th April 2013)

Page 68 (this continues the timetable after 30th April 2013)

Page 69 (this details what the quarterly progress monitoring reports are)

Page 70 (this details what details are to be in the quarterly monitoring reports)

Page 71 (this continues with the details about what’s to be included in the quarterly monitoring reports)

Page 72 (this continues with the details about what’s to be included in the quarterly monitoring reports and has a section on record keeping/verification)

Page 73 (this continues the section on section on record keeping/verification)

Page 74 (this continues the section on record keeping/verification)

Page 75 (this continues the section on record keeping/verification)

Page 76 (this continues the section on record keeping/verification)

Page 77 (this continues the section on record keeping/verification and has sections on risk & management and programme milestones)

Page 78 (this continues the section on programme milestones)

Page 79 (this page starts Part 2 (Evaluation Plan))

Page 80 (this continues the Evaluation Plan)

Page 81 (this details the sources of information)

Page 82 (this continues with the sources of information)

Page 83 (this continues with the sources of information)

Page 84 (this details which organisations the evaluation findings are disseminated to)

Page 85 (this is an annex containing an agenda for monitoring/audit meetings)

Page 86 (this is the cover page for the offer letter and acknowledgement (Schedule 4 (Expenditure Profile)))

Page 87 (this is annex 2.1 a project finances input sheet)

Page 88 (this is annex 2.2 detailing project finances by year in £thousands)

Page 89 (this is a table (continued at page 90) detailing expenditure by quarter)

Page 90 (this is the second part of the table started on page 89)

What Everybody Ought to Know About Taxpayer Funded Monitoring Of Blogs

Unusual blog entries lead to a story about media monitoring, Tesco, Audit Commission and Gorkana Group Limited

As this is a WordPress blog, I have access to statistics about visitors to it. Normally the websites referring traffic are just search engines, other blogs and social media sites (Twitter etc), but this week a few unusual entries caught my eye.

The first one were two referrals from editors.s360.co, the referral string helpfully included two pages, which were the comments section on the recent writeup about the planning application in Wallasey Village being turned down and the page itself. When I dug a little deeper I found out that Social 360 do corporate social media monitoring for Tesco. Fair enough I thought, they’re a big brand so it makes sense for them to keep an eye on what’s being written about them online.

Then I spotted another unusual entry auditcommission.mediacoverage.co.uk/x/socialmedia/monitoring?pageNumber=2 . Hmm that’s strange I thought, why would the Audit Commission (or what’s left of them after the audit work got outsourced) be interested in my blog? It turns out the Audit Commission pay a PR firm called Gorkana Group Limited for “media monitoring”. They pay them monthly amounts between £200 and £300 a month.

It seems when the Conservatives were in opposition back in 2008 they called the spending of £16 million on media monitoring by various government departments and quangos “a colossal waste of money, and taxpayers will be furious that when everyone else is tightening their belts the last thing to get cut is the government’s own PR”. Since then they’ve gone curiously quiet on the subject.

So if you have a blog and have written about Tesco or the Audit Commission and see some unusual referral strings now you know what they are!

Incredible £2,697 spent on legal costs by Wirral Council in dispute with Volker Laser

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Outrageous 20 Page Wirral Council Contract over Secret Hourly Legal Rates

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