The title says it all, but Happy New Year to all the readers of this blog.
Happy New Year
The title says it all, but Happy New Year to all the readers of this blog.
Author: John Brace
New media journalist from Birkenhead, England who writes about Wirral Council.
Published and promoted by John Brace, 134 Boundary Road, Bidston, CH43 7PH. Printed by UK Webhosting Ltd t/a Tsohost, 113-114 Buckingham Avenue, Slough, Berkshire, England, SL1 4PF.
Bin collections & rubbish; the plan to deal with the backlog of rubbish
Bin collections & rubbish; the plan to deal with the backlog of rubbish
Well, after yesterday’s post about the bin collections seems things are changing again.
As Cllr Green puts it, “leaving bins uncollected for weeks is not acceptable” and “people also pay their Council Tax and expect a level of service in return”.
So, to summarise as of today (and yesterday) all scheduled collections are happening as they usually do. Anyone who had a missed collection this week should leave their bin out as Biffa will be coming to collect those they missed.
If you missed a green bin collection this week, leave your green bin with any extra bags of rubbish for collection on Sunday morning (Jan 2nd) and it should be emptied in 2-3 days.
Green bin waste is no longer being accepted at the extra ten locations set up to deal with the cold weather, so you can either take it to Bidston tip or hang onto it till Biffa collect it.
You can get more information from Streetscene on 606 2004.
P.S. I realise residents haven’t received the service they expect. Wirral Council collects the rubbish, which is then dealt with through Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority. The two Wirral councillors on MWDA are Cllr Alan Brighouse (Lib Dem, Oxton, 652 6041) and Cllr Tom Anderson (Conservative, Upton, 608 1899). Maybe you could highlight your concerns with them or in the comments?
Arrowe Park suspends visitors, Bins collection backlog
As reported by the BBC visiting has been suspended at Arrowe Park Hospital.
In other news Wirral councillors on the bin backlog and its effects on Wirral residents .
FOI request – Freedom of Borough – £2k so far and counting
I’ve just received a partial answer to my request and I am to be quite frank staggered by the costs so far in awarding a person Freedom of the Borough.
The buffet was £705, the alcohol £121.15, flowers were £30, a photographer was a staggering £258.50 (to take a few photos)! and the scroll was £846.
So far that’s £40 shy of £2000. Bear in mind although this is a public meeting any members of the public are kept away from the alcohol & buffet (which the public have paid for) and told they can’t sit anywhere in the public gallery they’d actually be able to see how at least £2k of their money is being spent.
157 guests were invited and 110 turned up.
I will point out at this stage, I’m not in any way criticising Steve Maddox getting Freedom of the Borough, but at a time when Wirral Council is making people redundant, personally it just doesn’t seem right to be spending so much. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be money spent on awards and ceremony it’s just the taxpayer should know that its money is being spent prudently.
The original report stated “There are no staffing implications arising out of this report; there may be some modest financial implications which can be accommodated from within existing budgets.”
Clearly Jim Wilkie’s view of “modest financial implications” are different to mine!
Freedom of Information & Wirral Council. Do officers get paid overtime for attending meetings?
Freedom of Information & Wirral Council. Do officers get paid overtime for attending meetings?
I have today received an apology from Wirral Council about a Freedom of Information Act request submitted on the 1st December 2010.
The request here is basically an answer to the question, “How much does it cost to award someone Freedom of the Borough?” which I wrote about before on this blog when it happened earlier this year.
As readers may recall Wirral Council was "named and shamed" by the Information Commissioner in October for taking too long to respond. Quite what the monitoring being done by the Information Commissioner isn’t gone into detail.
As pointed out when he was awarded Freedom of the Borough, Steve Maddox had had to sit through many years of Council meetings and had never been asked to say anything. Whereas I understand the logic of the Chief Officers being there, the only one I’ve known be asked anything (in recent times) is Bill Norman about who had seen the infamous Charteris report into the library closures (and the odd procedural question).
Either the Chief Officers of Wirral Council come to meetings on a purely voluntary basis or they are paid overtime. The table below shows how much they got paid last year (although there have been some controversial changes uprating them since).
