Councillors on Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority discuss the Greasby fire station consultation and one states “there is no reason the vocal minority should get their way”
Councillors on Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority discuss the Greasby fire station consultation and one states “there is no reason the vocal minority should get their way”
Chief Fire Officer explains to councillors at a meeting of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority why he thinks Saughall Massie is the best place for a new fire station
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Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority meeting 29th January 2014 Part 1 of 2 starting at agenda item 4 (Wirral Fire Cover Consultation Options)
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CLLR DAVE HANRATTY (Chair, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority representing Liverpool City Council): Item number 4 is the consultation outcomes of the proposed merger in Wirral of Upton and West Kirby. Thank you.
Here was what was in the original contract under minimum cleansing frequencies:
7.6 Minimum Cleansing Frequencies
7.6.1 The minimum Cleansing frequencies required by the Council at each location shall be in accordance with that outlined below and the appropriate zoning allocation.
Zone
Frequency
Manual
Mechanical
1
Daily
Weekly
2
Weekly
Fortnightly
3
Monthly
Monthly
4
Monthly
Quarterly
The alleyways were (before July 2013) being cleaned every four weeks as detailed in this part of the contract:
Wirral Council invoice WIRED Foster care review service £7500 11th March 2014 11
Next is another payment to WIRED, this time for £9,902 for a “parent partnership”. This is now called the SEND Partnership and is according to their website a service to provide “free information, advice and support about matters relating to Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND) and is for parents or carers of children aged 0-25, and young people aged 16-25 with special educational needs and/or disabilities”. Continue reading “EXCLUSIVE: 10 more invoices paid by Wirral Council including £3,683 for a shower and £10,450 for windows”
Every year, a legal requirement on Wirral Council means that they have to publish for each councillor how much was spent on travelling and subsistence allowances for each councillor.
Last year I made a Freedom of Information Act request for a breakdown of payments made to three taxi firms (A.P. Contract Hire Ltd, Wallasey Cars Limited and Wirral Satellite Cars Limited) for taxi journeys made by councillors paid for by Wirral Council.
Here is the breakdown for each councillor, taxi firm and total amount for that financial year.
AP Contract Hire
Cllr Irene Williams £11.20
Cllr Phil Davies (Plus 3 Staff) £54.00
Cllr Steve Niblock £51.00
AP Contract Hire Total £116.20
Wallasey Cars
Cllr Bill Davies £25.00
former Cllr Brian Kenny £5.00
Cllr Christina Muspratt £10.10
Cllr Irene Williams £46.20
Cllr Joe Walsh £50.60
Cllr Moira McLaughlin £197.10
Cllr Pat Hackett £700.00
Cllr Steve Niblock £442.90
Cllr Tony Norbury £13.00
Wallasey Cars Total £1,489.90
Wirral Satellite Cars
Cllr Bill Davies £106.65
Cllr Chris Meaden £6.70
Cllr Christina Muspratt £159.40
Cllr Denise Realey £20.10
Cllr Harry Smith £25.20
Cllr Irene Williams £117.70
Cllr Joe Walsh £184.55
Cllr Moira McLaughlin £558.20
Cllr Phil Brightmore £7.30
Cllr Steve Foulkes £17.50
Cllr Steve Niblock £16.00
Cllr Tony Norbury £51.95
Wirral Satellite Cars Total £1,271.25
Grand Total £2,877.35
An amount of £10.20 for an Anne Davis for Wallasey Cars was also included in the response to my request, but as there is no councillor called Anne Davis, I have not included this amount in the figures above.
One thing to be noted is that all the councillors in this list are from the same party (Labour Party). Let’s take one councillor’s taxi expenses at random and compare them to the published list for 2013/14.
Cllr Moira McLaughlin’s taxi rides came to £197.10 with Wallasey Cars and £558.20 with Wirral Satellite Cars (total £755.30).
Taking another councillor from the list above, £700 was spent on taxi rides for Cllr Pat Hackett with Wallasey Cars. Yet when you read the published list for 2013/14 his expenses are down as £0 and travel expenses £0.
I would suspect that if I went through the list of councillors above I’d find that none of these taxi rides appear on the list that’s published each year. The response to my FOI request contains the line “The use of taxis’, and the associated costs, has been in connection with legitimate Council business.”
This all reminds me of that quote from Wirral Council’s former Chief Executive Graham Burgess of “We need to spend less on ourselves and more on services” and I wonder what the £2,877.35 spent on taxi journeys for councillors could have been spent on instead.
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EXCLUSIVE: 10 invoices paid by Wirral Council in 2013/14 for clarinets, conveyancing, court fees, legal advice, debt collecting, legal services and a temporary worker
EXCLUSIVE: 10 invoices paid by Wirral Council in 2013/14 for clarinets, conveyancing, court fees, legal advice, debt collecting, legal services and a temporary worker
I have another batch of copies of invoices to Wirral Council I received as part of the audit scanned in. Instead of the last time when I posted 155 invoices in the same blog post I thought it would make more sense to split them up and do them in batches of ten (with some comments). So these are the first ten.
Up first is an invoice from Wirral Music Service from a John Packer Ltd for 30 clarinets with Eb nickel-plated keys costing £74+VAT each. Quite why Wirral Music Service order clarinet keys from a shop over two hundred miles away in Somerset, when there are to my recollection plenty of music shops on Merseyside, each of whom I’m sure would appreciate nearly £3000 of business (and in the process help the local economy) I’m not sure!
I quote from page 1 of Wirral Council’s Corporate Plan that was in effect then which stated “We will help to drive continued economic growth in Wirral’s economy”.
Wirral Council invoice John Packer Ltd clarinet keys £2664 6th February 2014
Next we have a £700 invoice for a payment. Well being more accurate, it isn’t an invoice, it’s a form for a CHAPS payment to DLA Piper UK LLP (although the form itself states it’s for a BACS payment).
This is where Wirral Council gets about as cryptic as a cryptic crossword clue as not only is the address of the property blacked out but the handwriting is hard to decipher too. From what I can gather £500 is for “Purchase price of freehold title to (blacked out) (blacked out)” and £200 for “contribution towards sewers in (the rest of this is nigh impossible for me to decipher)”.
Wirral Council invoice DLA Piper UK LLP conveyance £700 7th August 2013
Next we have a heavily blacked out Barclaycard statement. The £2,415 entry is for court fees for cases involving unpaid council tax.
Wirral Council invoice Barclaycard Council tax court fees £2415 20th December 2013
Next is a curious invoice from Weightmans LLP for £748.80 for 5.2 hours work (at £120 per hour plus VAT) between February 2013 and April 2013 which is an interim invoice for “professional services” on the “local council tax support scheme”. For just over five hours work wouldn’t it have been better value for money to the taxpayer to have this done in-house?
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans LLP Local Council Tax Support Scheme £748.80 29th April 2013
Now we have the first of a series of invoices relating to Wirral Council’s “toxic debt”. For collecting Wirral Council’s debts Weightmans LLP is charging 10% of the debt collected + VAT. As the fee on this invoice is for £720.25 + VAT, presumably the amount collected was £7,202.50.
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans LLP Debt collection general £864.30 27th September 2013
Here is another invoice for collecting debts on behalf of Wirral Council from Weightmans LLP. This time it’s for collecting two larger debts than the previous invoice, which as Weightmans LLP get 10% of what is collected comes to £1,592.58 + VAT.
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans LLP Debt collection general £1911.30 30th September 2013 6
Then there is another invoice from Weightmans LLP for £1,182.20 which is 10% (+VAT) for collecting five debts. The debts range in size from £93.60 to £6500.
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans LLP Debt collection general £1418.64 30th October 2013 7
The next invoice from Weightmans LLP is for £7,761.60. It is an interim invoice for the period 3rd September 2013 to the 30th October 2013 for “professional services”. Counsel’s fees of £1500 + VAT (total £1800) and 34.3 hours of legal work (at £120 an hour) are listed on the invoice. However what this is all really about is a bit of a mystery! There also is a mismatch between the total of the associate’s fees at £4,140 and the entry of £4,968 in the fees and disbursements column.
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans LLP professional services £7761.60 30th October 2013 8
This is another invoice from Weightmans LLP for collecting money from one of Wirral Council’s debtors. Based on the amount charged the debt collected must have been in the region of £44,000.
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans LLP Debt collection general £5297.77 28th January 2014 9
Finally in this batch of ten invoices is an invoice for £963.60 from Team24 Limited (who are a Capita company). This is for a worker for 22 hours (at £36.50+VAT) to the Children and Young People’s Department at Wirral Council.
Wirral Council invoice Team24 Limited Worker for 22 hours £963.30 31st January 2014 10
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