Month: March 2015

Why did Wirral Council pay £2,943.61 for travel to Rome, Madrid, Frankurt, Paris, Montreux, Dublin & Vienna?

Why did Wirral Council pay £2,943.61 for travel to Rome, Madrid, Frankurt, Paris, Montreux, Dublin & Vienna?

Why did Wirral Council pay £2,943.61 for travel to Rome, Madrid, Frankurt, Paris, Montreux, Dublin & Vienna?

                                                   

Councillor Paul Doughty Chair of the Pensions Committee deciding on Monday 23rd March on the advice of officers to keep all this a secret
Councillor Paul Doughty Chair of the Pensions Committee (on the right of the photo) deciding on Monday 23rd March on the advice of officers to keep all this a secret

I will declare at the start that I have a close relative paid a Merseyside Pension Fund pension.

Rome, Madrid, Paris and Vienna were all destinations travelled to by Wirral Council employees working in its Merseyside Pension Fund section paid for out of Merseyside Pension Fund funds. On the advice of officers, councillors on the Pension Committee on Tuesday resolved to keep this list out of the public domain on the basis that it was “Information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person (including the authority holding that information)” and that “in all the circumstances of the case, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information”.

I disagree with councillors on that assessment and the table of overseas travel by those in its Merseyside Pension Fund section for 2014 is below.

DEPARTMENT OFFICER LOCATION DATE PURPOSE COST *
MERSEYSIDE PENSION FUND GREG CAMPBELL MADRID 13-17 JAN 2014 ATTEND INVESTMENT CONFERENCE TO VIEW 16 COMPANY PRESENTATIONS WHO ARE POTENTIAL VIABLE INVESTMENTS. TO PROVIDE EUROPEAN MANAGER WITH BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF INDIVIDUAL COMPANIES AND INDUSTRY KNOWLEDGE. £642.63
MERSEYSIDE PENSION FUND PETER WALLACH ROME 5-7 FEB 2014 ATTEND INTERNATIONAL INVESTOR EUROPEAN PENSIONS SYMPOSIUM. INVITED TO SPEAK AT THE EVENT AND OPPORTUNITY TO HEAR FROM PENSIONS AND INVESTMENT EXPERTS. TO MEET WITH OTHER PUBLIC AND PRIVATE FUNDS. £260.22
MERSEYSIDE PENSION FUND SUSANNAH FRIAR MIAMI 18-21 MARCH 2014 ATTEND PARTNERS GROUP ANNUAL CONFERENCE TO DISCUSS PROGRESS OF FUNDS. ATTEND PRESENTATIONS BY PARTNERS FUND MANAGERS AND INVITED SPEAKERS TO LOOK AT CASE STUDIES OF COMPANIES INVESTED. NIL
MERSEYSIDE PENSION FUND LEYLAND OTTER MONTREUX 27-30 APRIL 2014 ATTEND EUROPEAN PENSIONS AND INVESTMENTS CONFERENCE. AN OPPORTUNITY TO NETWORK WITH OUR PEERS IN THE INVESTMENT FIELD AND TO ASSIMILATE CURRENT THINKING ON PROSPECTIVE INVESTMENTS ACROSS A WIDE RANGE OF ASSET CLASSES £305.58
MERSEYSIDE PENSION FUND OWEN THORNE DUBLIN 6-8 MAY 2014 ATTEND BLACKROCK RENEWABLES CONFERENCE. ATTENDANCE AT INVESTOR DAY WHICH IS INTEGRAL PART OF THE FUND’S INVESTMENT MONITORING PROCESS. TO EVALUATE PROGRESS OF THE TEAM AND OTHER NETWORKING AND MARKET INTELLIGENCE GATHERING BENEFITS £60.00
MERSEYSIDE PENSION FUND LEYLAND OTTER BRUSSELS 12-13 MAY 2014 ATTEND ANTIN IP INVESTOR DAY. OPPORTUNITY FOR UPDATE ON INFRASTRUCTURE FUND AND SITE VISIT NIL
MERSEYSIDE PENSION FUND SUSANNAH FRIAR FRANKFURT 13-15 MAY 2014 ATTEND INVESCO PROPERTY CONFERENCE TO DISCUSS PROGRESS OF THE FUND. TO ATTEND PRESENTATION BY INVESCO MANAGERS AND INVESCO SPEAKERS. MEET WITH OTHER INVESTORS £391.00
MERSEYSIDE PENSION FUND GREG CAMPBELL PARIS 17 JUNE 2014 TO ATTEND INVESTMENT CONFERENCE WITH OVER 20 COMPANY PRESENTATIONS. MANY WHO ARE HELD IN THE EUROPEAN PORTFOLIO. TO PROVIDE BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF INDIVIDUAL COMPANIES TO INCREASE INDUSTRY KNOWLEDGE. £713.89
MERSEYSIDE PENSION FUND SUSANNAH FRIAR PARIS 17-17 NOV 2014 ATTEND CARLYLE GROUP ANNUAL CONFERENCE. TO PROVIDE PROGRESS OF INVESTMENTS, ATTEND GENERAL CONFERENCE TO LEARN THOUGHTS OF GUEST PRESENTERS AND OTHER CARLYLE FUNDS. NETWORK WITH LIKE MINDED INVESTORS. £564.59
MERSEYSIDE PENSION FUND PETER WALLACH VIENNA 19-21 NOV 2014 ATTEND IPE CONFERENCE & ANNUAL AWARDS. AN OPPORTUNITY FOR MPF TO BE REPRESENTED AT THE AWARDS CEREMONY AND THE BENEFIT FROM THE SEMINAR AND NETWORKING OPPORTUNITIES WITH OTHER FUNDS. £5.70

* Costs to Fund. A number of events were subsidised by the organisers who pay for or contribute towards travel, and/or accommodation and/or attendance costs.

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Wirral Council spends £2,294.57 on a German translation and the prize for the most pointless redaction

Wirral Council spends £2,294.57 on a German translation and the prize for the most pointless redaction

Wirral Council spends £2,294.57 on a German translation and the prize for the most pointless redaction

                                                

Wirral Council invoice Capita Translation and Interpreting Limited £2294.57 11th July 2013
Wirral Council invoice Capita Translation and Interpreting Limited £2294.57 11th July 2013

Wirral Council spent £2,294.57 with Capita Translation and Interpreting Limited for translation of documents from English to German. Quite why Wirral Council would spend this much on translation is unknown.

The list of payments made over £500 list the department as being the Law, HR and Asset Management department, however the invoice itself has CYP (Children and Young People) written on it.

There’s not much more to be said than this, so I’ll just move on to the most pointless bit of blacking out I’ve seen by Wirral Council on an invoice:

Wirral Council invoices Weightmans £942 24th September 2013
Wirral Council invoices Weightmans £942 24th September 2013

As you can see on this invoice the total sum payable (£785 + VAT of £157 which comes to £942) is blacked out.

So why was the total blacked out (which can easily be determined by adding two figures together)? I quote from the official response:

“Just to clarify, the invoices I supplied to you were redacted on the basis of advice from our legal section rather than by departments themselves.”

Yes this is Wirral Council, a Council that describes itself as “open and transparent”, which is seemingly something not believed by its legal department!

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Why did Wirral Council not check an invoice from Weightmans for £2,185.20 was correct before paying it?

Why did Wirral Council not check an invoice from Weightmans for £2,185.20 was correct before paying it?

Why did Wirral Council not check an invoice from Weightmans for £2,185.20 was correct before paying it?

                                                                

Wirral Council invoice Weightmans £2185.20 29th April 2013
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans £2185.20 29th April 2013

Above is an invoice from Weightmans to Wirral Council for £2,185.20. However it doesn’t add up. If the hours part is to be believed then these are the real figures:

Graeme Creer (GCR Partner) 13.8 hours @ £150/hour = £2,070
Simon Goacher (SIG Partner) 0.6 hours @ £150/hour = £90
Morris Hill (MHL Associate) 0.5 hours @ £120/hour = £60

+ VAT (20%) = £444

Total: £2,664

However the invoice is only for £2,185.20.

As the “Certified correct for payment” signature is blacked out, you can’t tell who at Wirral Council just paid it without scrutinising whether it was correct or not.

So perhaps somebody leave a comment answering are employees at Wirral Council supposed to check invoices are correct before paying them?

In Wirral Council’s constitution it specifies the following under “Financial Regulations”.

5.3.2 The key controls for ordering and paying for work, goods and services are:-

…

(v) payments are made to the correct person/supplier, for the correct amount and are properly recorded, regardless of the payment method;

5.3.5 Chief Officers are responsible for ensuring that all goods and services are properly ordered, received and paid for in accordance with Guidelines for Financial Systems.

Quite what the mysterious “Guidelines for Financial Systems” are I don’t know. The Chief Officer for legal expenditure would be Surjit Tour, although it’s clearly not his signature on the invoice.

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Merseytravel announces wifi at all underground train stations within 5 years

Merseytravel announces wifi at all underground train stations within 5 years

Merseytravel announces wifi at all underground train stations within 5 years

                                                           

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Councillor Steve Foulkes at a meeting of Merseytravel's Performance and Review Subcommittee 23rd March 2015
Councillor Steve Foulkes at a meeting of Merseytravel’s Performance and Review Subcommittee 23rd March 2015

The first main agenda item at the meeting was a report on a review of transport and emissions in the Liverpool City Region, along with the terms of reference for the Reducing Transport Emissions Review 2014 and slides which summarised the author of the report said.

In response Cllr Steve Foulkes suggested, “Maybe leave your car home for one day or something, those types of changes you know that make a massive impact.”

Cllr Liam Robinson (Chair of Merseytravel) said, “For me that’s about making sure public transport is the number one choice of getting around from A to B.”

The next item was the Customer and Passenger Satisfaction Review.

There were no questions or comments on this. Councillors agreed the recommendation.

The next to last report was on Rail Patronage and Ticketing along with an enclosure.

A representative from Merseyrail and Northern Rail were along to answer any questions. The report showed an increase in passenger numbers on the Merseyrail lines (for the first half of 2014/15 compared to the first half of 2013/14) but a decrease in passenger numbers travelling with Northern Rail.

The Merseyrail representative attributed some of the increase to the Open Golf tournament and the Giants event, but that even when the extra passengers travelling to these events were taken into account that there was still an underlying growth of 2%.

The Northern Rail representative disputed that there had been a decline in passenger numbers and stated that their own figures showed a 2.3% increase compared to the previous year. He asked for passenger numbers to be compared at the end of the year as factors such as engineering works and electrification closures would have affected their figures.

A councillor pointed out that wifi was nearly always available on long distance trains and asked when they would introduce wifi to trains?

The answer given was, “Chair I can comment on that. Firstly, the thing to mention on that is the five-year growth plan that was mentioned by Paul a little bit earlier. One of the initiatives is wifi at all the underground stations as a pilot scheme. So that’s already committed to, we’ll see how that rolls out.”

The Northern Rail representative answered, “We are currently trialling free wifi on our electric trains in the Yorkshire area with a view to rolling out.

The new franchise specification for Northern and Transpennine Express will indicate, well sorry has stated that all services will have free wifi during the first part of that franchise. We’re also trialling free wifi at stations.”

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Why did Wirral Council pay £48,384 to Weightmans and what has DASS got to do with it?

Why did Wirral Council pay £48,384 to Weightmans and what has DASS got to do with it?

Why did Wirral Council pay £48,384 to Weightmans and what has DASS got to do with it?

Wirral Council invoice Weightmans £2700 7th June 2013
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans £2700 7th June 2013
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans £720 7th June 2013
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans £720 7th June 2013
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans £48384 11th July 2013
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans £48384 11th July 2013

Above are three invoices to Wirral Council from Weightmans, one for £720, one for £2,700 and one for £48,384.

Apart from “Counsel’s fees” and the always cryptic “professional services” I’ve no idea what these are for, other than the two smaller amounts are to do with Wirral Council’s Department of Adult Social Services. Two refer to a fee note attached to the invoice describing the work done in more detail. I’ve made a Freedom of Information Act request for the fee notes.

All three invoices would seem to be related as they have the same account number. Certainly there’s a public interest in having some openness and transparency as why Wirral Council spent £51,804 on legal costs. However considering how much of the detail on these invoices are blacked out, I don’t hold out much hope that Wirral Council won’t do the same to the fee notes in response to the Freedom of Information Act request.

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