John Brace | A blog about Wirral Council, Wirral Council's councillors & officers

Council (16th July 2012) Parts 1 to 7

I’ve finally uploaded the video footage from last Monday’s well attended Council to Youtube. Links to each part are below with part 7 being in HD. Part 1 00:00 to 04:07 Part 2 04:08 to 06:34 Part 3 06:35 to 50:49 Part 4 50:50 to 53:43 Part 5 53:44 to 130:37 Part 6 130:38 to … Continue reading “Council (16th July 2012) Parts 1 to 7”

I’ve finally uploaded the video footage from last Monday’s well attended Council to Youtube. Links to each part are below with part 7 being in HD.

Part 1 00:00 to 04:07
Part 2 04:08 to 06:34
Part 3 06:35 to 50:49
Part 4 50:50 to 53:43
Part 5 53:44 to 130:37
Part 6 130:38 to 136:00
Part 7 136:00 to 169:33

A playlist of all seven parts is below.

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Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th July 2012 Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory saved from demolition

Well due to an application made to English Heritage for listed status for the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory Wirral Council’s Cabinet decided not to demolish it. This decision had already been deferred from an earlier meeting.

Cabinet also approved an amended Corporate Plan and a consultation on corporate and business planning.

Standards Committee (Wirral Council) 3/7/2012 Part 2 (2) Minutes, (3) Declarations of Interest

Standards Committee 3rd July 2012

Photo caption: From Left to Right
Cllr Steve Williams (Conservative), Cllr Chris Blakeley (Conservative), Cllr Les Rowlands (Conservative), Shirley Hudspeth (Officer – Committee Clerk), Surjit Tour (Legal Adviser), Malcolm Flanagan (Report author agenda item 5 & item 6), Unknown Labour councillor (1), Unknown Labour councillor (2)

This is continued from part 1.

Agenda Item 2 – Minutes 11:35 to 12:22

Agenda Item 3 – Declarations of Interest 12:22 to 20:29

Cllr Chris Blakeley declared an interest on Agenda Item 7 (Standards Complaints – Monitoring (Under the Old Standards Regime)) in relation to complaint SfE 2011/03 as he was one of the councillors complained about.
Cllr Ron Abbey asked for clarity.
The Chair asked the legal adviser for advice.
Cllr Ron Abbey said he was not privy to past cases he hadn’t been involved with, then asked a question.
Surjit Tour said a finding of “No Further Action” had been found and the regulations obliged them to issue a notice or press release unless the councillors concerned objected. He said this decision was on the public record.
Cllr Ron Abbey said he was happy with the process, but concerned.
Cllr Chris Blakeley said he wished to talk as he had some concerns and it would still be a matter of public record.
Surjit Tour reminded him not to reveal confidential information subject to caveats.
The Chair asked people to remember there were deputies here tonight and referred to the training of deputies and how the deputies should be trained.
Cllr John Salter said he was part of a complaint although he was unsure where it is. He asked Surjit for advice on whether he had to declare?
Surjit Tour said he didn’t have to as he couldn’t be identified.
Cllr Chris Blakeley said he’d been quite specific as to which one.
Cllr Bill Davies said something about legal advice
Cllr Les Rowlands asked for clarification, he said he had sat on some of these panels and made decisions. He asked if it was necessary to declare an interest? 18:00
Surjit Tour said, “The difficulty here is it depends on what is said … and this is a bit of a chicken and egg situation.” He didn’t want an inappropriate statement made. He went on to mention the question of confidentiality in place at the time. Any commentary would have to be factual. He said the press notice, would indicate the detail the nature of the complaint, parts of the Code [of Conduct] questioned, ultimately the decision of the panel and be very factual as opposed to comments.
Cllr Les Rowlands declared an interest of all the panels he sat on.
Surjit Tour said the difficulty was he was not able to determine which. The critical issue was other than fact he felt there should be no other comments made, any comments limited to within public notice which was governed by confidentiality rules.
Cllr Bill Davies declared an interest as he himself had been on many assessment panels so he was in the same position.

Standards Committee (Wirral Council) 3/7/2012 Part 1 Election of Chair, Minutes of previous meetings

Standards Committee 3rd July 2012

Standards Committee
Present
Conservative (3)
Cllr Chris Blakeley
Cllr Les Rowlands
Cllr Steve Williams

Labour (5)
Cllr Ron Abbey
Cllr John Salter
Cllr Bill Davies (Chair)
Cllr Bernie Mooney
Cllr Anita Leech

Lib Dem (1)
Cllr Tom Harney

Not Present:

Vacancy (1) Independent

Vacancy (2) Independent

Vacancy (3) Independent

Wirral Council Officers
Malcolm Flanagan
Shirley Hudspeth (Committee Clerk)
Surjit Tour (Legal Adviser/Deputy Monitoring Officer)
Rick O’Brien

Public
Mrs Leonora and Mr. John Brace
Mr. Denis Knowles

Agenda item 1 – Election of Chair 00:00 to 01:50

Surjit Tour explained to councillors that they needed to elect a Chair. Cllr Bill Davies was nominated. Cllr Chris Blakeley queried why it was necessary when Part 2 of the Annual Meeting of the Council, held on the 21st May 2012 had already reached a decision as to who the Chair should be? [Ed – this decision took effect from 1/7/12.]

Surjit Tour answered his question. Cllr Bill Davies was elected unopposed as Chair. The new Chair thanked the Committee for their hard work.

The Chair moved the Committee to:

Agenda Item 2 – Minutes of Previous Meeting 01:50 to 11:35

The agenda item was to discuss the minutes of the meetings held on the 16th April 2012 and 25th June 2012.

Cllr Blakeley asked which set of minutes they were dealing with first?

He disputed the accuracy of various parts of the minutes. The Chair said he hadn’t been at the meeting in question. Cllr Harney said it would “cost a fortune” for verbatim minutes, but they had to record decisions made. He thought it was better if quoting to attribute it to a named person and felt it was better in future “to stick to a brief narrative” and a decision if any was made, feeling that spending time on it was not productive and what mattered was the decision.

Cllr Chris Blakeley suggested they record meetings in the future.

Cllr Ron Abbey stated the recording of meetings would need agreement at a meeting of the full Council, he supported Cllr Harney’s stance, but it required the full Council to resolve. A discussion followed.

Cllr Chris Blakeley referred to his resolution at a previous meeting that was agreed 5:0:4. He recommended that all future meetings are recorded by video or sound.

Cllr Salter said they’d done this route before as they had had streaming video of Planning Committee meetings for two years and there had been difficulties.

Cllr Ron Abbey said that technology evolved but wanted a full report on the policy option.

Cllr Chris Blakeley said he was happy to move a motion.

Cllr Tom Harney said he was in favour of recording, but there were resource implications and systems had to be set up, he felt it was a matter for Cabinet.

Surjit Tour suggested it could be looked at by the Member Equipment Steering Group, especially as KLOE 6 would lead to a review of the IT kit and the Council’s infrastructure, as part of this they could look into the possibility of recording as well as the streaming cost implications as part of this cross party working group.

Cllr Chris Blakeley was happy, Cllr Salter said it didn’t work on Planning, but the equipment was still here. Cllr Ron Abbey said he had no issue with it coming back as technology moved on. He wanted other people to look at it going to the Working Party to fill in information as a policy option.

Cllr Les Rowlands felt video was not helpful, but if it recorded accurate decisions then for Shirley’s benefit it could help improve the accuracy of the minutes.

Cllr Ron Abbey suggested it go to the Working Party.

Cllr Chris Blakeley wanted to move consideration for recording either video or voice, he was happy for Surjit Tour to take it to the cross party Working Group.

Cllr Bill Davies said he was not sure he wanted video, this was seconded by Cllr Les Rowlands.

The Chair said just to be clear it was going to the Working Party, which was agreed.

Continued in part 2

Wirral Council’s DASS: “The Airing of Grievances (Part 2)” Appeals SubCommittee 3/7/2012

I notice the delayed grievance appeal from the 5th March 2012 (adjourned for a whopping 17 weeks (119 days) is going ahead tomorrow afternoon (as I write this on the 2nd July 2012).

It seems there is a delayed grievance appeal from an employee of Wirral Council’s Department of Adult Social Services. Representing the historically dysfunctional Department of Adult Social Services at the March meeting was none other than Employee 19 of the AKA report, dramatic drum roll Mr. Richard O’Brien.

No, it’s not the famous Richard O’Brien who used to present the Crystal Maze on Channel 4 in the 90s, and yes I invite you in the comments to state the similarities between Wirral Council and The Crystal Maze, but a guy that goes by the shorter moniker of Rick O’Brien. Who’s Rick you may ask? He is the Head of Branch, Personal Assessment and Planning (whatever that is!?).

Basically he lines managers the managers (that manage the social work teams) for Wallasey, Birkenhead, West Wirral etc… so it must be to do with an employee in that branch of DASS (which doesn’t narrow it down much!)

Brenda Hall is representing the other side, as she’s a branch negotiator for Wirral Council’s UNISON.

Getting out my handy “Who’s Who at DASS”, I find Rick O’Brien’s email address is richardobrien@wirral.gov.uk, which is interesting as Rick O’Brien (as reported as an exclusive on this blog last year) was one of the people who Bill Norman emailed on the 12th December 2011 about not publishing AK’s preliminary draft report.

Wasn’t he the same Rick O’Brien getting criticism in the comments section of the Wirral Globe and mentioned by name in a response to a FOI request involving four week delays in care packages?

Oh and also mentioned in this Wirral Leaks post about the Commissioning conference in London?

Hmm, well he certainly manages to get himself mentioned a lot (and it seems sometimes for all the wrong reasons)! But then it seems, a Pete Sheffield is just met with stony silence over a FOI request for Rick O’Brien’s job description.

But if memory serves correct he was also “Employee 19” in the now infamous “Anna Klonowski Associates Ltd (AKA) Independent Review of the Council’s Response to Claims Made by Martin Morton (and Others)”.

Ahh yes, that Rick. Oh well, apart from my frivolous uses of the <A HREF></a> tags, it’s nice to see there are still people at DASS with grievances to air. I had high hopes for the new Director of DASS, Graham Hodkinson, but it seems that he’s inherited a lot of problems from his predecessor in the role, Howard Cooper. How long will it before the public and employees again trust Social Services/Wirral Council to do the right thing and have a bit more accountability?

I feel at times writing about Wirral Council that it would be so much easier if getting information out of it wasn’t about as painful as pulling teeth, but it’s getting late so I will bring this to a close.

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