A blog about Wirral Council's public meetings, Wirral Council's councillors, Bidston & St. James ward and other public bodies on Merseyside
Author: John Brace
New media journalist from Birkenhead, England who writes about Wirral Council.
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Wirral councillors agreed to write off £1,033,550.67 in rent arrears based on secret CBRE report
Wirral councillors agree to write off £1,033,550.67 in rent arrears based on secret CBRE report
Cllr Harry Smith tells Wirral Council’s Pensions Committee that £1 million is “a lot of money to write off”
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This agenda item starts at 22:57 in the video above.
Wirral Council’s Pensions Committee who manage the Merseyside Pension Fund received a report recommending that they write off £1,033,550.67 in rent arrears. The reasons as to why £1,033,550.67 of rent arrears needed to be written off were in a report of CBRE (the managing agents for the Merseyside Pension Fund’s properties) that councillors agreed to keep secret. Video of what was said about the rent arrears starts here and continues here.
Here is a transcript of that item.
Cllr Pat Glasman (Chair, Pensions Committee): Right, agenda item 11 (property arrears). Paddy Dowdall (Investment Manager): Thank you Chair, firstly apologies for not being able to spell property and further apologies for the purpose of the report which is to write off the not insignificant £1,033,550.67 in unrecoverable rent arrears from the property portfolio. There’s an exempt appendix as per schedules that are available. The local government act, I can’t comment on parts relating to the exempt appendix. Cllr Pat Glasman (Chair, Pensions Committee): Errm, do you accept the recommendations subsequent to… Cllr Harry Smith (Labour, Pensions Committee): I think it’s worth commenting that 5% represents £5 in every hundred, that’s a lot of money to write off, but you know I don’t think it’s unnecessary that we do it, I’ve nothing against the recommendations, £5 in every hundred. Cllr Pat Glasman (Chair, Pensions Committee): It’s very disappointing. Cllr Mike Hornby (Conservative, Pensions Committee): I think Chair that CBRE should be made aware of the concerns expressed by this committee. Cllr Pat Glasman (Chair, Pensions Committee): Could you make sure that that is minuted? OK. Cllr John Fulham (Labour (representing St. Helens Council), Pensions Committee): I’m going to discuss it in exempt, is that alright? Cllr Pat Glasman (Chair, Pensions Committee): We are.
Those on the Pension Committee decided later in the meeting to exclude the press and public for discussion of the CBRE report into property arrears on grounds of commercial confidentiality.
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Was the Wirral Council Cabinet decision to consult on closing Lyndale School lawful?
Was the Wirral Council Cabinet decision to consult on closing Lyndale School lawful?
Labour’s Cllr Tony Smith (Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services) explaining at a Wirral Council Cabinet meeting why he thinks the Cabinet should agree to consultation on closure of Lyndale School
Unless you’ve been on holiday or don’t read the papers you can’t fail to have heard about the decision by Wirral Council’s Cabinet last Thursday to start a consultation on the closure of a primary school called Lyndale School in Eastham for children with special educational needs. This was reported on this blog and in the Wirral Globe. There is also a large petition against closure that had attracted over five thousand signatures before the decision at the Cabinet meeting.
The report seeking approval to consult on the closure of Lyndale School deems this decision to be classed as a “key decision”. There are four regulations in The Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Meetings and Access to Information) (England) Regulations 2012 which relate to key decisions.
Regulation 8 merely defines what a key decision is.
Regulation 9 states the following (decision maker refers to the Cabinet and is defined here):
9. (1) Where a decision maker intends to make a key decision, that decision must not be made until a document has been published in accordance with paragraph (2), which states—
(a) that a key decision is to be made on behalf of the relevant local authority;
(b) the matter in respect of which the decision is to be made;
(c) where the decision maker is an individual, that individual’s name, and title if any and, where the decision maker is a decision-making body, its name and a list of its members;
(d) the date on which, or the period within which, the decision is to be made;
(e) a list of the documents submitted to the decision maker for consideration in relation to the matter in respect of which the key decision is to be made;
(f) the address from which, subject to any prohibition or restriction on their disclosure, copies of, or extracts from, any document listed is available;
(g) that other documents relevant to those matters may be submitted to the decision maker; and
(h) the procedure for requesting details of those documents (if any) as they become available.
(2) At least 28 clear days before a key decision is made, the document referred to in paragraph (1) must be made available for inspection by the public—
(a) at the offices of the relevant local authority; and
(b) on the relevant local authority’s website, if it has one.
(3) Where, in relation to any matter—
(a) the public may be excluded under regulation 4(2) from the meeting at which the matter is to be discussed; or
(b) documents relating to the decision need not, because of regulation 20(3), be disclosed to the public, the document referred to in paragraph (1) must contain particulars of the matter but may not contain any confidential, exempt information or particulars of the advice of a political adviser or assistant.
As you can see from the above, the decision “must not be made” until a document has been published containing the information specified in (a) to (h) above at least 28 clear days before the meeting on Wirral Council’s website.
Yes, this entry on the Forward Plan complies with regulation 9(1)(a) and 9(1)(b).
However does it comply with 9(1)(c) and include “where the decision maker is an individual, that individual’s name, and title if any and, where the decision maker is a decision-making body, its name and a list of its members”? No it just states “Decision due: January 2014 by Cabinet”, with no list of who the individuals that make up the Cabinet are.
Yes, regulation 9(1)(d) is complied with, however 9(1)(e) is not. Although there is a link now to the Cabinet report, this report was published on the 9th January 2014 therefore wouldn’t have been in existence on 18th December 2013. When this item was published on the Forward Plan this document wasn’t listed. Nor did it state the address from which copies of it could be obtained (Regulation 9(1)(f)).
Also as this report was submitted to the Cabinet, in contravention of Regulation 9(1)(g) this entry in the Forward Plan did not state that “other documents relevant to those matters may be submitted to the decision maker” or how to obtain these (Regulation 9(1)(h)).
There is provision within regulation 10 and regulation 11 for a decision to be made without following the notice requirements in Regulation 9, however this is only with the permission of the Chair of the relevant overview and scrutiny committee (in this case the Chair of the Families and Wellbeing Policy and Performance Committee) Cllr Wendy Clements. I emailed Cllr Wendy Clements asking her was she asked and did she give her permission, her reply was “In response to your specific questions; no, I was not asked, and no I did not give permission.”
The School Organisation (Prescribed Alterations to Maintained Schools) (England) Regulations 2007
8. Any governing body, local education authority or adjudicator (where applicable) when—
(a) consulting on proposals;
(b) considering or determining proposals;
(c) considering what are related proposals;
(d) making decisions on matters relating to implementation
must have regard to any guidance given from time to time by the Secretary of State.
Had this guidance been read by Cabinet prior to making the decision to proceed to consultation they would’ve read things like this:
“The Special Educational Needs Improvement Test (Paragraph 4.55)
When considering any reorganisation of provision that would be recognised by the LA as reserved for pupils with special educational needs, including that which might lead to some children being displaced through closures or alterations, LAs, and all other proposers for new schools or new provision, will need to demonstrate to parents, the local community and Decision Makers how the proposed alternative arrangements are likely to lead to improvements in the standard, quality and/or range of educational provision for children with special educational needs. All consultation documents and reorganisation plans that LAs publish and all relevant documentation LAs and other proposers submit to Decision Makers should show how the key factors set out in paragraphs 4.59 to 4.62 below have been taken into account by applying the SEN improvement test. Proposals which do not credibly meet these requirements should not be approved and Decision Makers should take proper account of parental or independent representations which question the LA’s own assessment in this regard. ”
and
“4.59 Decision Makers will need to be satisfied that the evidence with which they are provided shows that LAs and/or other proposers have taken account of the initial considerations and all the key factors in their planning and commissioning in order to meet the requirement to demonstrate that the reorganisation or new provision is likely to result in improvements to SEN provision. ”
So bearing the above in mind, I’m starting two polls on this blog.
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To recap it involves a male senior councillor in the Labour Group who made an “adverse comment” about an unnamed senior employee at Wirral Council. The councillor admitted he did make the comment and a report was written detailing that this Labour councillor had breached the Code of Conduct.
Previously if there’s been a report detailing a councillor has breached the Code of Conduct, even if officers recommended the report be exempt, the Standards Panel have decided to make the report public as you can see from that previous blog post detailing a seven page report and two page appendix into an allegation that former Councillor Denis Knowles breached the Councillor’s Code of Conduct in relation to a comment he made online.
Since then, in the Summer of 2012 the legislation regarding complaints made about councillors breaching the Code of Conduct has changed. This explanatory note on Wirral Council’s website explains some of the changes, but basically there are now two legal requirements on Wirral Council. The first on Wirral Council is that it “must promote and maintain high standards of conduct by Member and Co-opted Members” (Members in this context means councillors and Co-opted Members means people co-opted to Council committees). The second legal requirement is that they must have arrangements in place for investigating allegations and making decisions on allegations. The policy on this is here, the new Code of Conduct here and a an online form for people to use is here. Wirral Council has also appointed four independent persons that have a role in determining whether complaints made are worthy of investigation.
So do you think we should return to making investigator’s reports public if they have a finding that a councillor (and he acknowledges that he did in this case) breached the Code of Conduct? Surely if the “senior officer” wants their name kept out of it, the report could be released with their name redacted and does not naming the councillor involved make people think that Wirral Council takes its legal obligation that it “must promote and maintain high standards conduct by Member and Co-opted Members” seriously? Please leave a comment if you have any thoughts on these questions.
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Cabinet decides on 12 Week Consultation on Lyndale School closure after emotional plea by parent “I ask you not as councillors or as administrators, but as parents, grandparents and decent human beings, please do not close our school”
Cabinet agree to consultation on closing Lyndale School after being asked by parent “I ask you not as councillors or as administrators, but as parents, grandparents and decent human beings, please do not close our school”
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Wirral Council’s Cabinet, Council officers, councillors, the public and Alison McGovern MP present at the Cabinet meeting heard an extremely moving request from a mother of a child at Lyndale School, Dawn Hughes not to go ahead with a consultation on the closure of Lyndale School (which is a primary school in Eastham for children with special educational needs). What she said is worth quoting in full here and starts at 3:16 in the video above.
Dawn Hughes said, “Hello everyone, my name is Dawn Hughes which you’ve just heard.
My daughter Ellie attends Lyndale School and the disruption that is being proposed is a lot worse than Miss Hassall’s report. It would take me longer than five minutes just to explain my child’s diagnosis and all the ways it affects her daily life.
She is not unusual at Lyndale, this is the level of capacity that the nursing staff deal with every day. But to deal with practical matters first, I want to ask you to show us that you are sincere when you say that you have the needs of our children at the heart of this process by further extending the twelve week consultation and allowing our governors access to resources like Council staff time so that we can explore other options. Then we can take all the time needed to give due weight to this important issue.
Miss Hassall’s report details falling roll numbers at Lyndale, leading to escalating costs with little qualifying information. The truth is that Lyndale has lived under the threat of closure for eight years which leads pre-school services to discourage prospective parents.
Lyndale parents have strongly supported a two to nineteen option for Lyndale for many years so that their very vulnerable children can avoid the unnecessary and cruel diststress of transition to an unfamiliar environment and community. This option along with inviting in children from out of area would have increased roll numbers and it is still possible for this to happen if the will is there.
This report says that Lyndale is not financially viable, but the national average spent, the amount on PMLD children is £29,000. That’s against Lyndale’s spend of £33,000, a shortfall of £4,000 per a child and that’s not considering the complexity of needs. Also not a great deal of scope in terms of the local authority budget. This shortfall would be lessened by greater occupancy. The high need of our children means that the cost of education would be the same provided by an alternative school or an alternative.
Our parents feel that the £16,000 top up for PMLD [profound and multiple learning difficulties] children is simply not enough to cover their needs and clearly we’re looking at how this figure was arrived at. Is it based on need or cost?
We know national government decisions have made things difficult but the Discretionary Schools Grant is administered locally and it is within your powers to allocate more where there is need. The SEN [special educational needs] Improvement Test legally means that you have to provide as good as or preferably better provision for our children.
The test would have to look at provision in the suggested alternative schools. Miss Hassall has said that Stanley School and Elleray Park are equipped to take Lyndale children but they are already full to bursting. I spoke to both schools recently. Stanley said they had 97 children already against a capacity of 90 and Elleray Park has 92 pupils and only 75 actual places. Where are our children going to fit?
If you plan to extend these schools why not invest that money to continue to provide good quality PMLD [profound and multiple learning difficulties] provision at Lyndale? Stanley School has never in its history had a PMLD [profound and multiple learning difficulties] child so it has no experience in this field. Lyndale parents are very worried about the safety of their children and their needs.
We contemplate the mix of PMLD [profound and multiple learning difficulties] and children with behavioural difficulties. Many of our children are on life support, oxygen, naso-gastric or gastroscomy feeds and should any of this equipment be pulled out it could be fatal within seconds.
Many of our children cannot purposefully moved at all, and should they be bitten or hit, and should they be bitten or hit they cannot defend themselves. It is madness to put these two types of children together.
Lots of our children are hyper-sensitive to noise or some movement for example. For some children noise is unbearable and induces seizures. My own daughter’s hypersensitive and contracts painful muscle spasms which can last for months leaving her unable to sleep, eat or swallow amongst other horrible symptoms. I don’t even have family around at Christmas because Ellie can’t tolerate bustle, how would she cope in a big, noisy school?
The alternative to mixed disability classes would be to segregate our children within a mixed school. The problem here is that in an emergency (such as a child needing resuscitation or having a seizure which happens frequently to many of our children) medical staff would have to navigate their way through keypad locked doors losing valuable seconds which again could prove fatal to our children.
Aside from these very real safety concerns, Stanley and Elleray are not suitable in this way. Lyndale provides a community atmosphere where children can move freely and safely around the school, visiting each other’s classrooms and socialising at lunchtime and other activities. Why should they be locked away for their own safety in a school which is unsuitable for them in the first place?
No one would sensibly suggest putting heart patients and meningitis sufferers on the same ward with the same doctors for the obvious reasons that they require different environments and treatments despite both having the label of “being ill”. In the same way we can’t treat all children that who have got the label of learning disabilities in the same way either.
Autistic and PMLD [profound and multiple learning difficulties] children have very different medical, environmental, educational and emotional needs. For example PMLD [profound and multiple learning difficulties] children need a stimulating, colourful sensory environment, exactly the opposite of what the type of environment autistic children need.
Parents have asked me to tell you that should Lyndale close, they will either keep their children at home or send them to schools out of area. This will incur a huge cost to the local authority.
The truth is we don’t think that it serves our children’s best interests to move at all. Many people feel our children are “just sitting there” with no consciousness of what happens around them, but I know that when Ellie looks at me with a twinkle in her eye it means she wants to play. I know that when other people see blankness she is in fact concentrating hard. I know when she is in pain or sad or anxious or ill and the staff at Lyndale have taken years to build up the same knowledge – that our children have an inner life as rich as yours or mine despite their inability to communicate it through normal means.
If you force them to move, they will feel the loss of all the people they trust and love and the loss of a placement that they were safe in for years. I ask yourself to put yourselves in their shoes for one minute.
Imagine being completely reliant on others for everything that happens to you and then imagine going to a strange place, where you know no-one and no-one is able to understand you when you try to tell them how you feel. Many of our children could not cope with the upheaval of a move. Change induces anxiety in our children and anxiety significantly worsens their disabilities and illnesses. They then suffer in a way that you would find unimaginable.
I’ve come to accept it with sadness over the years that Ellie will never learn to speak, eat or play independently or be able to take GCSEs. Many of our children don’t even make it to the end of primary school. It is painful for many parents with PMLD [profound and multiple learning difficulties] children to be constantly talked at by educationalists about “achievement” and the need to move on.
Ellie is 11 and still likes peek-a-bo. All she needs is a special place where she is happy and she can rely on the consistenty and environment and the adults around her. Lyndale allows for the days when the children frequently feel under par and brings therapy or treatment into the classroom.
Lyndale staff know that ill health is part and parcel of our children’s lives and to accommodate this into their individual sensory curriculum. I don’t believe that you can provide that at bigger schools with no PMLD [profound and multiple learning difficulties] experience. I don’t believe you better Lyndale to pass the SEN improvement test, you certainly can’t convince me or the other parents.
I imagine that most of you who have children or grandchildren and that they are the apple of your eye, quite rightly so. Now imagine that you are forced by some authority to send them to a place for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to a place where you know that they will unsafe, unhappy and possibly grossly, maybe fatally misunderstood. How would that feel?
And how much worse must that be for us who care for such fragile children every day? I ask you not as councillors or as administrators, but as parents, grandparents and decent human beings, please do not close our school.
I will extend an invitation to all members of the Cabinet to attend a meeting with our parents and visit our children. Come along and get to know them and see the wonderful work that Lyndale does. Thank you for your attention. ”
The Labour Cabinet agreed to go ahead with a twelve week consultation on closure of Lyndale.
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Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP, Parliamentary ping-pong, “democracy dodgers” and the £556,789 in “forgotten cuts” at Wirral Council
Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP, Parliamentary ping-pong, “democracy dodgers” and the £556,789 in “forgotten cuts” at Wirral Council
Shortly before Christmas Wirral Council had a “budget options” meeting after the What Really Matters consultation. At this meeting cuts, based on the public response to the consultation for 2014/15 were in principle agreed to. Strictly speaking it was a new budget and policy framework that was agreed to. The budget for 2014/15 is to be decided in March 2014, based on the assumption that Council Tax on Wirral would rise by 2% in 2014/15.
So just to recap, the Labour administration have ruled out a Council Tax referendum. The reason they give is that the large cost of the referendum that would fall on Wirral Council (if you can remember the amount they quoted please leave a comment about what it was and who said it). This is despite the law (The Local Authority (Referendums Relating to Council Tax Increases) (Date of Referendum) (England) Order 2013) that states a Council Tax increase referendum would have to be held on the 22nd May 2014 (the same day as the joint European & local Council elections). I’m not sure if the estimated figure a councillor quoted last year for a Council tax increase referendum took into account the reduced cost of the referendum due to holding other elections on the same day (or whether the cost quoted assumed the referendum would be held separately to other elections in which case the estimate is too high).
Labour’s budget assumption therefore assumes that Council Tax will rise by 2% (without the need for a referendum) to lessen the need for further cuts they’d have to make if the rise was any lower or Council Tax was kept the same. The Labour administration have also ruled out accepting a Council Tax Freeze grant equivalent to a 1% rise if they agreed to keep Council Tax the same as last year.
However Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP has different plans and according to an article last week in the Guardian based on leaked Cabinet letters wants to reduce the threshold to 1.5% and refers to councils that rise Council Tax by only two percent as “democracy dodgers” and “believes they need to be punished to show the government is trying to control the cost of living”. Furthermore Pickles states “he wants to stop councils or police bodies being able to exempt some spending from the cap.”
This article in the Bristol Post before Christmas also quotes the Rt Hon Eric Pickles from a statement in relation to council tax increases “as being particularly open to representations suggesting that some lower threshold be applied to councils, given the strong need to protect taxpayers wherever possible from unreasonable increases”.
So what has this got to do with Parliamentary ping-pong? Well the Local Audit and Accountability Bill is heading to its next to the last stage (starting on 21st January) called “parliamentary ping-pong” before the last stage “Royal Assent” and it becomes law. Crucially the section on Council Tax referendum calculations (s.41) comes into force (see s.49) when the act receives Royal Assent and changes the formula of how a yearly Council Tax increase is arrived at.
In future once the Local Audit and Accountability Bill becomes an Act, the calculation of Council Tax rise includes not just Wirral Council’s share of the Council Tax bill, but also (if I’ve read the bill correctly and please leave if a comment if I’m wrong) the other levying bodies that form part of Council Tax bills too. This means the yearly increase in Council Tax requirements in the budgets of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority and the Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside would affect what the percentage increase would be.
It looks from the wording of the Local Audit and Accountability Bill (and a lot of recent regulations) that this will come into effect for the 2014/15 financial year. As the basis by which a Council Tax rise is calculated will change, £556,789 is my rough estimate of what changing the threshold from 2% to 1.5% will be as the true amount of extra cuts will depend on what the Merseyside Police and Crime Commissioner’s and Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority’s Council Tax requirements for 2014/15 are.
At Wirral Council’s Coordinating Committee meeting (held yesterday at the time of writing), in item 8 (policy update), councillors on the committee will have read in their papers on page 2, under Implications for the Local Audit and Accountability Bill “Budget Strategy considerations may also be impacted by the changes to the Council Tax threshold for triggering a referendum.”
Yet curiously not one of the councillors of the fifteen on the Coordinating Committee asked how much changing the Council Tax threshold for triggering a referendum would affect the budget strategy considerations or to my recollection anything at all about how a change to the Council Tax threshold would affect the 2014/15 Budget.
So is this £½ million of cuts at Wirral Council that councillors seem to be unaware of going to result in a further twelve-week consultation (or will the responses to the What Really Matters consultation be reused)? If any of these further cuts require ninety days consultation with the trade unions will this mean that they will only be realised as part-year savings in 2014/15?
So what do you dear reader think? Will Cllr Phil Davies be saying of the Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP something similar to the famous Laurel and Hardy quote “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into!”. With exquisite timing, Wirral Council’s Labour administration will have to agree the budget for 2014/15 around the end of February 2014 meaning these extra cuts will probably feature in the local election period in the lead up to polling day on the 22nd May.
Certainly this apparent lack of a plan B will have to be explained when the Improvement Board returns in March. As the Rt Hon Ed Balls MP (Labour’s Shadow Chancellor) said last October about Labour’s economic competence, “we are going to win based upon our experience, our track record, our credibility”.
Oh and if you think the projected underspend of £884,000 will mean a further £½ million of cuts won’t have to be made in 2014/15 you’d be wrong.
£250,000 of the underspend will probably be agreed tonight to go towards the clean up and repairs to infrastructure in New Brighton following the bad weather. A further £519,000 of the underspend has been earmarked for future restructuring costs leaving (at current estimates) only a projected underspend of £115,000 that can count towards an estimated a £½ million of cuts required if the Coalition government reduce the Council Tax increase referendum threshold to 1.5%.
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