Council (Wirral Council) 14th October 2013 Questions to the Leader (Cllr Phil Davies)

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Council (Wirral Council) 14th October 2013 Questions to the Leader (Cllr Phil Davies)

The Council meeting started with a one minute silence for the late Sylvia Hodrien and Jim Edwards. There were prayers for councillors after which the Mayor invited people to sit down.

1. Declarations of Interest 3:52

Cllrs Rennie, Niblock, Roberts and Stapleton declared a personal interest in item 11 (Recommendation from the Regeneration and Environment Policy and Performance Committee) as Wirral Council’s representatives on the Mersey Fire and Rescue Authority.

2. Mayor’s Announcements 5:05

The Mayor gave apologies for Cllr Pat Williams. He asked if there were any further apologies? Cllr Chris Blakeley gave apologies for Cllr Leah Fraser.

3. Petitions 5:22

Cllr Les Rowlands presented a petition of seventy-four households opposed to the proposal to sell off public land on the corner of Boundary Lane and Telegraph Road.
Cllr Stuart Kelly presented a petition of a hundred and eight residents asking for improvements to the lighting on the pathway from the Holmlands area to Woodchurch High School and Woodchurch Leisure Centre.
Cllr Philip Brightmore presented a petition of two hundred and thirty-seven households asking for something (sadly the rest of what Cllr Brightmore said about that petition was unclear).
Cllr Pat Hackett presented a petition of one hundred and eight people from the Field Road Residents Association in New Brighton objecting to the Council selling a car park.

4. Public Questions 6:20

The Mayor informed the Council that he had not received any requests from the public for questions.

5. Minutes 6:28

The minutes of the Council meetings held on the 15th July and the 19th September were agreed as correct.

6. Leader’s, Executive Members’ and Policy and Performance Committee Chairs Reports 7:30

The Mayor invited the Leader of the Council to introduce his report. Cllr Phil Davies said that his report covered five main areas. These areas were the future Council model and vision, the Budget, European funding (Wirral Council were going to submit a judicial review on this matter), the progress of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority application and his recent visit to China.

Cllr Jeff Green asked the first question to Cllr Phil Davies. His question was, “Given the Council’s Budget position, as set out in this report, is the Leader of the Council aware of the rumours circulating around a £48,000 compensation payment made to a serving Council officer and does he know what that payment was for?”

Cllr Denise Roberts asked, “Would the Leader of the Council join with me in congratulating the Chancellor of the Exchequer for following Wirral’s example by leading a trade delegation to China and declaring he wants Britain to share in China’s economic progress?”

Cllr Stuart Kelly asked, “In the Leader’s report he talks about working in partnership with strategic partners such as business. At the Council meeting on the 15th July, the Leader will recall that I asked him whether he was aware that the policy of payments to small and medium-sized enterprises within five days was being quietly abandoned by officers. In his reply to me in July, the Leader was clear that the policy had not been abandoned by him or the Administration but also does he recall in his answer saying that he had and I quote ‘asked for a report to be presented to the Cabinet by the Strategic Director for Regeneration and Environment detailing what support is in place to ensure SMEs continue to survive and grow which would include information regarding payment times’? I’d ask the Leader Mr Mayor what has happened to that report and how is Council performing against the five-day payment times?”

Cllr Chris Blakeley asked, “My question is about the visit to China. Mr Mayor, we’re informed a key theme of the latest visit was to develop educational links between the young people of Wirral and the young people of China. Can the Leader of the Council tell us why that key theme does not appear in his report because he’s covered everything else (developing education links)? Mr Mayor, I think I … to update councillors on the status of the gifts that travelled halfway round the world and back.”

Cllr Stuart Wittingham asked, “Can I express my thanks to all those involved in organising the second Wirral Council annual conference which was held at the Floral Pavilion on Saturday? Can I ask the Leader of the Council to emphasise the importance of all elected Members to engage in the discussion about developing a model and vision of how the Council operates in future?”

Cllr Andrew Hodson asked, “I was delighted to read of the ongoing progress of the Wirral Waters site and will he be joining me in congratulating Esther McVey on her recent promotion as Employment Minister and place on record his thanks to her for her endeavours to secure Enterprise Zone status for Wirral Waters?”

Cllr Mark Johnston asked, “My question is in relation to point five in the report and the International Trade Centre. Firstly I would like to applaud the Council for its outward looking approach to inward investment, however I note that all three party leaders have all been out to Taicang, China on separate visits. My question relates to the progress on the recommendations made under a scrutiny review looking at the International Trade Centre, especially the agreement reached to explore a cross party working party to make sure the recommendations were carried through. I haven’t seen any progress on that yet, thank you.”

The Mayor asked the Leader of the Council, Cllr Phil Davies to answer those questions.

Continues at Council (Wirral Council) 14th October 2013 Answers to Questions to the Leader (Cllr Phil Davies).

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Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th October 2013 Cllr Phil Davies “we’re not out the woods yet by any means”

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Youtube playlist of Cabinet meeting of 10th October 2013

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th October 2013 Cllr Phil Davies “we’re not out the woods yet by any means”

FINANCE
4. Statement of Accounts 2012/13 8:26 | Cabinet report | Statement of Accounts 2012/13

Cllr Phil Davies said, “OK so that takes us on now to item four, the err Statement of Accounts for 2012/13.

Errm, again, errm this err, I think these Statement of Accounts have been to Audit and Risk Management Committee, err err, but the thing that err again I want to draw your attention to is in paragraph 2.10, clearly this is a report that relates to 12/13, the statement of accounts relates to 12/13, err when we had a number of errm pretty err you know big challenges err on errm to you know address. Not least errm a £17 million overspend from the previous administration errm which you know which was a huge challenge and again I think it reflects the distance that we’ve travelled, that we’ve addressed that and later in the financial monitoring report we’re actually reporting an underspend now in the first few months of this year which is err great.

Errm but I think the the the paragraph 2.10, errm Grant Thornton err recognise the progress made by the Council during 12/13 with the direction of travel being rated as amber, errm so I think that’s, err we’re not out of the woods yet by any means, but I think that’s encouraging errm external validation if you like of the progress that we’ve made, so I think that’s very welcome.

So I don’t really want to say much more than that except to say that we’re err being asked to note the Statement of Accounts err and the audit report by Grant Thornton and that errm at 12.2 progress on delivering the actions identified in the audit findings report will be monitored by Audit and Risk Management Committee. So can we agree those recommendations?”

Cabinet: “Agreed”

Cllr Phil Davies: “OK, very good thank you.”

Ed – although Cllr Phil Davies refers to a £17 million overspend which he blames on the previous Conservative/Lib Dem administration, this wasn’t an overspend but a projected overspend of £17 million, which after a spending freeze reduced to £4.7 million. The Labour Cabinet in October 2012, after the projected overspend of £17 million was known, agreed to extra spending (beyond what was in the 2012/13 budget) of £700,000.

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Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th October 2013 | Minutes silence (Sylvia Hodrien) | Birkenhead Priory Heritage Lottery Grant | Declarations of Interest | Minutes | Annual Governance Statement 2012/2013

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Youtube Playlist of Cabinet meeting of 10th October 2013

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th October 2013 | Minutes silence (Sylvia Hodrien) | Birkenhead Priory Heritage Lottery Grant | Declarations of Interest | Minutes | Annual Governance Statement 2012/2013

Prior to the first item the Chair of Wirral Council’s Cabinet, Cllr Phil Davies asked for people to stand for a minute’s silence in response to the news of the death of former councillor Sylvia Hodrien. Once the minute’s silence had finished, he reported the news (which was already reported by the Wirral Globe two days ago) that Wirral Council had been successful in obtaining a Heritage Lottery Grant for Birkenhead Priory of £393,100.

He said that the money would be used to improve the visitor experience, for a digital learning pack for schools and would lead to opportunities for volunteers. Cllr Davies was “delighted” at this “really good news story” and thanked the team at Wirral Council that had applied for the funding. He asked if Cllr Chris Meaden wanted to make any comments?

Cllr Chris Meaden referred to Jo McGuire the conservationist and pointed that this was the second Heritage Lottery Grant that Wirral Council had received for Birkenhead Priory. She also thanked the team.

1. Declarations of Interest 4:00

Cllr Phil Davies suggested that for item 17 (Proposed changes to school funding formula) that they make a block interest declaration as many of the Cabinet were school governors. Cabinet agreed to a block declaration of interest.

Cllr Harry Smith asked if he needed to declare that his brother was a lay reader at Birkenhead Priory? Cllr Phil Davies told them he didn’t need to.

2. Minutes 4:41

Cllr Phil Davies asked if Cabinet agreed the minutes of the last Cabinet meeting held on the 19th September? Cabinet did agree the minutes so Cllr Phil Davies signed them.

FINANCE
3. Annual Governance Statement 2012/2013 5:04

This item had a report and three appendices, appendix 1 (Annual Governance Statement), appendix 2 (Significant Governance Issues Action Plan) and appendix 3 (CIPFA (Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy) framework).

Cllr Phil Davies, Cabinet Member for Finance said that the Annual Governance statement was an important document and a draft had been presented to the Audit and Risk Management Committee meeting of the 18th September. He wanted to make a few general comments, first that he was pleased to see references to the progress made on getting Council’s finances on a sustainable footing which was welcome. Cllr Davies also said the report mentioned work on a new vision for Wirral Council and that there would be a councillor’s training session on Saturday to look at that.

He said that they’d be having an annual policy Council meeting in November of this year to look at the future direction of the Council and refresh the Corporate Plan. Ed – The policy Council meeting will be in December as was mentioned in an earlier blog post.

Cllr Davies said they’d done a lot of work on improving their corporate management procedures and making sure they got their risk management in good order. In section five of the Annual Governance Statement he said there were a number of challenges ahead, such as the bad debts issue, saying “I think we’ve taken quite strong and prompt action to address the bad debts”. Cllr Davies wanted to draw Cabinet’s attention to the conclusion which referred to the auditors being pleased about considerable progress made to address the governance issues and that this had been reflected in the recent Corporate Peer Challenge report that was debated in Cabinet and Council.

He said that it also recognised a number of developments put in place to address the further challenges in section five and that they needed to agree a plan and review process to check that the items were addressed. Cllr Davies described it as “generally an encouraging report and lots of progress has been made but a fair amount of progress still to be done”. He asked Cabinet to agree the recommendations, which were that the Annual Governance Statement, action plan for 2012/2013 and updated code on corporate governance were all approved by Cabinet. Cabinet agreed this.

Continues at Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th October 2013 Cllr Phil Davies “we’re not out the woods yet by any means”.

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Local groups can bid for £40,000 of grants from Wirral Council to improve the appearance of their local area

Love Wirral logo While looking through the recent delegated decisions made by Cabinet Members, I came across this recent decision about the Love Wirral grant and the accompanying report authored by Head of Neighbourhoods and Engagement, Emma Degg.

So what is the Love Wirral grant scheme you may wonder? Well it’s £40,000 of money split four ways between each constituency and will be available for “individuals, groups, schools and businesses” to “improve and look after their neighbourhoods”. The money can be applied for between 28th October 2013 and noon on 6th December 2013 with the sole aim of the project being “to improve the appearance of the local environment”.

Between the 13th and 24th January of next year the public will be able to vote online either yes or no to each project, councillors will decide which projects get the funding in the first half of February and successful projects will get the money in the middle to the end of March (the cynic in me would point out that’s just in time for it to be included in various candidate’s election leaflets taking credit for it). However in the report itself it states “this project will enable communities to play an active role in presenting Wirral to the world during the Open 2014”.

A third unstated reason behind all this would be the £1 million cut to the street cleansing contract this year and the threatened strike action that was reported in the Wirral Globe with the rather alarming threat from the unions that Wirral would be engulfed by a “tidal wave of filth”. You only have to look around to tell that the streets aren’t cleaned as often as they used to. So are we heading slowly towards the American “Adopt-a-Highway” system where local community groups are responsible for regular litter picks on a local stretch of the road? Is Wirral’s problem with litter made worse by Wirral Council cuts to enforcement too (which has meant fewer people fined for dog fouling as well as litter)? As usual your thoughts on this topic in the form of comments are appreciated.

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Irony is alive and kicking at Wirral Council: Freedom of Information and Policy Council

I was reading through the Council’s final Annual Governance Statement which is on the agenda for Thursday’s Cabinet meeting and came across this gem in it which is about principle 4 (taking informed and transparent decisions which are subject to effective scrutiny and managing risk).

“In December 2012, the Information Commissioner’s Office announced that Wirral would be monitored for three months after concerns emerged regarding the timeliness of responses to freedom of information requests. The Council has also put in place robust processes to respond to freedom of information requests which are regularly reviewed by the Chief Executive’s Strategy Group to ensure that a timely response is provided. These improved processes are having a significant impact on the Council’s response to freedom of information requests.”

At the start of September I made this perfectly reasonable request for the minutes of the Chief Executive Strategy Group meetings of the 5th June 2013 and the 30th August 2013. No response came from Wirral Council within twenty days (they are required by the Freedom of Information Act to respond within twenty working days). So on the 2nd October I requested an internal review and a week later, still no reply from Wirral Council.

Therefore this raises the following questions:-

1. If the Council does have “robust processes to respond to freedom of information requests” how did this one slip the net?

2. How regularly is “regularly reviewed”? I suppose this one is also an answer to how often does the Chief Executive’s Strategy Group (or its subcommittees) meet, monthly, quarterly?

3. Why didn’t the Chief Executive’s Strategy Group make sure a “timely response was provided” to this request?

4. Does “improved processes are having a significant impact on the Council’s response to freedom of information requests” mean they’ve given the council employees involved a big book of FOI exemptions as it’s quicker to turn a request down however thin the reason for the exemption rather than spend time answering it?

Another curious paragraph I found in the same document was this:-

“An annual Policy Council meeting will take place with the first scheduled for November 2013 in order to discuss, debate and further shape the future purpose of the organisation and its response to key national and local drivers. Policy Council will play a direct role in informing the annual review of the Corporate Plan and future savings for the Council, as well as contributing to the development of a longer term vision for the borough in 2030 in partnership with other key stakeholders. A state of the borough report is being prepared as the foundation for developing this long-term vision.”

Curiously the only Council meeting in November scheduled in the calendar is the Youth Parliament meeting on the 12th. Surely this is not what’s meant by a “Policy Council”? The mystery of this is easily solved when you look at the calendar for December and on the 18th there’s a “Budget and Corporate Plan” Council meeting.

At the bottom of this document that I’ve already heavily quoted from is space for the signatures of the Leader of the Council and the Chief Executive both putting their names to this following statement:

“We are aware of the implications of the review of the effectiveness of the adequacy governance framework and are absolutely committed to addressing the identified weaknesses and ensuring continuous improvement of the system is in place.

We are pleased that considerable progress has been made to address the significant governance issues identified and this is acknowledged by the Council’s recent Corporate Peer Challenge. However, it is also recognised that a number of the developments that are being put in place have recently been agreed and require implementation and
robust review.

We will take prompt actions over the coming year to ensure that all of the above matters are addressed as appropriate to enhance our governance arrangements further. Many improvement actions represent work already in progress and we are committed to increasing the pace of these actions. We are satisfied that these steps will address the need for improvements that were identified in our review of effectiveness and will monitor their implementation and operation as part of our next annual review.”

Let’s hope the “robust review” of the Council’s corporate governance arrangements result in changes rather than the “robust processes to respond to freedom of information requests” which just seem to have led to more Freedom of Information requests turned down so the Council can meet its target and tell to the Information Commissioner’s Office that things have improved.

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Council (Wirral Council) 14th October 2013 Questions to the Leader (Cllr Phil Davies)

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Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th October 2013 Cllr Phil Davies “we’re not out the woods yet by any means”

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Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th October 2013 | Minutes silence (Sylvia Hodrien) | Birkenhead Priory Heritage Lottery Grant | Declarations of Interest | Minutes | Annual Governance Statement 2012/2013

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Local groups can bid for £40,000 of grants from Wirral Council to improve the appearance of their local area

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Irony is alive and kicking at Wirral Council: Freedom of Information and Policy Council

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