Cllr Phil Davies threatens to “terminate” taxi contract following Conservative concerns about missing medical and criminal background checks on drivers
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Cllr David “long arm of the law” Burgess-Joyce (pictured above) subjected Council Leader Phil Davies to a long question at the last Council meeting.
He pointed out that criminal background checks and medical checks hadn’t being done on taxi drivers used to transport disabled children to and from school.
He also asked why the contract had been awarded at all when another arm of the Council had following concerns revoked their licence to operate*?
*It was pointed out that an appeal to the licence being revoked had been unsuccessful.
It is also to be noted the contract Cllr David Burgess-Joyce refers to is also the same taxi contract used by Labour councillors to attend public meetings.
In response Cllr Phil Davies said that he “treats this with the utmost seriousness”.
He said that he and Eric Robinson (Chief Executive) had met with councillors on the 16th November. The purpose of the meeting was to understand what Cllr David Burgess-Joyce had outlined.
Cllr Phil Davies said he (please don’t laugh too much as you read this if you were associated with the Lyndale School campaign) “I do place the safety and wellbeing of the children in this Borough at the very top of my priority list”.
In a long answer (which you can watch above) he threatened that if possible the contract would be “terminated”.
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Phil Davies’s sickening apology about medical &DBS checks only goes prove that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing Despite the tender documents stating the contractor being responsible for all DBS checkspage12of33 That also goes for the Lyndale school closure only to find there not enough places for disabled children. referring to your previous blog it was sickening to see LRJ speech about taking legal action against her accusers, as well as the almost puppet like agreement to all the items on the agenda. I also fully endorse Paul Cardin comments.
The councillors sicken me but your brilliant reporting exposes them for what they are.
Hi John,
Thanks for your comment. As I think I mentioned above, the previous contract linked to (which the new one replaced) does mention DBS checks and checking against the Barred list for working with children or adults.
I will make an educated guess that something similar must be in the new contract (although I don’t have a copy of the invitation to tender to hand or a copy of the new contract).
The previous contract also stated that the contractor had to provide the Council with the name, address and DBS certificate for drivers.
So either, the new contract doesn’t have these safeguards or it does and Wirral Council wasn’t receiving this information (because if the DBS checks weren’t being done there wouldn’t be a certificate to send). Either way it is worrying.
LRJ said at a public meeting when asked to apologise, that she was complaining to the Solicitors Regulation Authority about the current and former Monitoring Officer at Wirral Council.
I think I can infer from that it is her view that she’s been subjected to an unfair process in some way.
Presumably she perceives or alleges that how she was felt she was treated by Surjit Tour and Phil McCourt as in some way or ways that breaches the SRA Code of Conduct, hence her complaint to the SRA.
As I’m familiar with many of the parties on all sides involved in the LRJ saga, I will only make the following comment, in my opinion that the matter should have been dealt with much quicker, in public, in the open which would have not led to half a dozen different versions as to what really happened.
From an outside perspective (I’m not commenting here on the outcome or the allegations that were made) it could’ve been handled much better.
It’s unfair on everyone for complaints processes to be dragged on for too long.
Thank you for your comment about my reporting. I don’t think that Wirral Council sees it the way you do though.
I have checked my blood pressure and despite Wirral councillors efforts, John you are my hero keep fighting the good fight, well done mate.
One day we must have a pie & a pint together.
Jon, isn’t it frightening. To think that these incompetent bungling and inept parasitical bottom feeding trough feeders have managed to reach the top of their particular chosen pile of local power is enough to make you weep urine!
Good God! A simple and straightforward task of collecting and collating data on a taxi service and they fuck that up! It’s no easy thing to be able to fuck things up with such consistency and yet, with apparent ease, nigh on effortlessly, they manage to do it on an almost regular basis without any hindrance of recorded success.
If it wasn’t so serious, it’d make you howl with laughter.
Wirral Councillors and senior managers remind me of baboons-the higher up the tree they climb,the more unpleasant things are revealed!
Don’t forget were talking about Wirral Council here, who couldn’t fit a light bulb without someone screwing it up!
If Wirral Council needed to fit a light bulb, they would need:
1 member of staff to run a procurement exercise,
a team of consultants to advise them that they need to buy the most expensive light bulb possible and preferably so expensive you have to run an EU procurement exercise,
Then after the procurement:
Company 1 to provide the ladder
Company 2 to provide the person to go up the ladder
Company 3 to provide the lightbulb
Wirral Council won’t of course provide any staff to co-ordinate these three companies actually turning up at the same time due to staff cutbacks. So Company 3 turns up on Monday buts there’s no ladder. Company 2 turns up on Tuesday, Company 3 turns up on Wednesday.
None of the three companies can get into the building as Wirral Council have fired the receptionist and the phone to call for help at the reception desk doesn’t work. Beyond the reception desk requires a card to enter. While waiting pointlessly the company sees many Wirral Council employees visit this building but they find they can’t get in as their card doesn’t work to open the door on this building.
Two politicians to argue with each other about whether the above is a waste of public money or represents value for money and in the end the decision would be that they’d rather spend money keeping people in the dark!
Strangely a certain someone, of course had a lightbulb in his pocket that he would have gladly screwed in about 5 seconds just so he didn’t have to bring a torch all the time, but Cllr Sullivan ranted so much he didn’t bother.
It should be pointed out that every journey by taxi provided fro special needs children does have an escort. It’s not a risk issue.
Thanks for your comment.
However, as highlighted by Councillor David Burgess-Joyce, if the taxi driver is medically unfit to drive and there’s an accident, it does become a risk or public safety issue, not just to the taxi driver, escort and child but to others too.
Some people having left comments (albeit not on this blog) state that some children don’t have escorts.