Former Cllr Crabtree receives 12 week suspended sentence for phone call

Former Cllr Crabtree receives 12 week suspended sentence for phone call

Former Cllr Crabtree receives 12 week suspended sentence for phone call

                                                     

Cllr Jim Crabtree (February 2016)
Cllr Jim Crabtree (February 2016)

Yesterday, former Cllr Crabtree received a suspended 12 week prison term (suspended for a year) and a restraining order for what he said during a phone call to Cllr Louise Reece-Jones last year.

Continue reading “Former Cllr Crabtree receives 12 week suspended sentence for phone call”

What links FOI, ICO decision notice FS50591795, audit, a class A drug, barristers and Liverpool City Council?

What links FOI, ICO decision notice FS50591795, audit, a class A drug, barristers and Liverpool City Council?

                                           

There is a form of direct accountability during the audit of local councils when for a short period each year local government electors can inspect information about that financial year such as invoices and contracts.

Here is a legal reference to that right (Audit Commission Act 1998, s.15) which has been a direct form of democratic accountability that in one form or another has been around since Victorian times.

It’s tied in to rights of local government electors to ask questions of the external auditor (which for Wirral Council is Grant Thornton), to make objections to the accounts, to request public interest reports. After all how can you do all that without seeing the information in the first place?

It’s a form of direct democratic accountability.

Unlike making a freedom of information request (time limit of 18.5 hours) there is strictly very little legal limits on what can be requested (well apart from on the insular peninsula at Wirral Council where they have a habit of deliberately shifting the goalposts and coming up with bizarre interpretations of legislation to suit themselves). Last year I made requests under this audit legislation to Wirral Council, Liverpool City Council, Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority, Merseytravel and the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority.

The Liverpool City Council request was connected to an earlier FOI request and there’s been a recent decision notice issued in that matter on the 1st February 2016 which hasn’t been published yet by ICO.

Ironically ICO seemed to have met a stumbling block with Liverpool City Council on that one as they asked me for the information that I’d been refused under FOI (happy to oblige). This implies Liverpool City Council weren’t being entirely cooperative with ICO.

I’ve been sent a paper copy of the decision notice through the post, but it’s not published on ICO’s website yet. The reference is FS50591795. It’s a mercifully short eight pages and requires both Liverpool City Council to issue a fresh response with 35 days of 1st February 2016 (or appeal to the Tribunal) and states that Liverpool City Council breached s.10(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. If anybody wants me to I can scan a copy in and publish it here.

Basically LCC’s arguments are that I’m being unfair to barristers by requesting invoices they’ve submitted to LCC. Because as we all know, the purpose of a self proclaimed "socialist" Council like Liverpool City Council is to stick up for downtrodden, oppressed groups on the margins of society like barristers!

Cllr Paul Brant (left) speaking at a recent public meeting of Liverpool City Council (11th November 2015)
Cllr Paul Brant (left) speaking at a recent public meeting of Liverpool City Council (11th November 2015)

Let’s take the example of one barrister (pictured above on the left), a barrister I might point out who is not the subject of the invoices I requested, but who is in addition to being a barrister, a Labour Liverpool City Council councillor called Cllr Paul Brant. He resigned as a councillor in 2013 (although has since been re-elected) after receiving a police caution for possession of a class A drug. He was also the subject of a The Bar Tribunals & Adjudication Service disciplinary tribunal.

Below are the details.

Defendant Paul Brant (Lincoln’s Inn)

Type of hearing 3 Person Disciplinary Tribunal

Panel members
Mr William Rhodri Davies QC (Chair)
Ms Pamela Mansell
Mr Mark West

Finding and sentence Reprimand.

Section of the code 301(a)(i)/901.7

Status Final
Date Friday 12 September 2014

This Tribunal was held in Private.

Here is a link to the outcome of the Paul Brant disciplinary hearing from which I quote,

"Details of Offence

Paul Brant engaged in conduct which was discreditable to a barrister contrary to paragraph 301(a)(i) of the Code of Conduct in that on a day between the 1st January 2013 and the 21st September 2013 he committed the criminal offence of being in possession of a controlled drug of class A contrary to The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, for which offence on the 20th September 2013 he receive a simple caution."

It would be a conflict of interest for Cllr Paul Brant to do work for Liverpool City Council but according to his Chamber’s website he has been instructed to represent Wirral Council in the past (yes Wirral Leaks I can get trees into a story too!):

Jayne Spencer v Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council (2008); LTL 1/10/2008 (Highway liability claim, tree root in Port Sunlight conservation area causing personal injury – whether breach of duty. Mr Brant appeared successfully at first instance and on appeal).

This is an aside but I do remember one year during the audit, Wirral Council weren’t happy with me requesting the invoices for their legal invoices for these sorts of liability claims. “

However there should be some transparency as to who Liverpool City Council are paying! All Liverpool City Council councillors are responsible for budget matters including Cllr Paul Brant.

One of my arguments rejected by ICO was that there are laws regulating who can give legal advice. You can check whether a barrister has a current practising certificate here.

To give the example of Paul Brant above, it shows he works at Oriel Chambers and was subject to a disciplinary tribunal in September 2014 (the outcome of which is detailed above).

One of my other arguments to the regulator was that Liverpool City Council is under a legal obligation to publish the names of its suppliers for invoices over £500. In fact the guidance they’re required by law to follow specifically states that being self-employed (which is their argument surrounding barristers) doesn’t mean they can keep the suppliers’ name out of the public domain (but Liverpool City Council do).

The page on his Chambers’ website states he is "in a senior position in a large local authority" (meaning Liverpool City Council).

However the above legislation (surrounding rights of inspection, objection etc) during the audit was scrapped by the government. You can’t use it any more to do this after the 2014/15 financial year.

Instead for 2015/16 financial year onwards it’s been completely watered down.

Previously (apart from information about its own staff) local councils during the audit had to get permission from their external auditor if they wanted to withhold from inspection in the category of "personal information" (which was very narrowly defined). This was a safeguard to prevent public bodies abusing their powers.

Bear in mind however that each time the public body contacts their external auditor it increases what they’re charged.

This was a check and balance introduced by the last Labour government.

However this check and balance on misuses of power in local government was repealed (scrapped) by the last Coalition government (Conservative/Lib Dem).

Oh but there’s more!

There’s a rather infamous recent case (well infamous in those familiar with "citizen audit") where a local government elector called Shlomo Dowen requested (during this period each year during the audit) a waste management contract between Nottinghamshire County Council and Veolia ES Nottinghamshire Ltd.

The case reference is [2009] EWHC 2382 (Admin), [2010] PTSR 797, [2010] Env LR 12. Anyway interestingly at that stage a High Court Judge said Mr. Shlomo Dowen should be allowed to inspect and receive a copy of the contract (despite Veolia bringing a judicial review about it).

However Veolia weren’t happy at all by this (in fact if you read through the judgements in both cases you’ll find that even if Mr. Dowen was given the contract they wanted restrictions on him sharing it with other people) and brought an appeal in the Court of Appeal ([2010] EWCA Civ 1214, [2012] PTSR 185, [2010] UKHRR 1317, [2011] Eu LR 172). Veolia claimed that allowing Mr. Dowen to inspect/receive a copy of the contract would infringe that companies’ human rights.

I quote from part of that judgement, “I am not entirely convinced that English common law has always regarded the preservation of confidential information as a fundamental human right”.

Rix LJ, Etherton LJ, Jackson LJ upheld the appeal however.

The irony of all that was that Shlomo Dowen already had access to the information as Veolia’s lawyers did not seek a stay following the earlier judgment.

However the above is why an extra category of "commercial confidentiality" has now been added to s. 26(5) of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014.

Interestingly withholding information on grounds of commercial confidentiality, this is a quote from the legislation,

“(5) Information is protected on the grounds of commercial confidentiality if—

(a) its disclosure would prejudice commercial confidentiality, and

(b) there is no overriding public interest in favour of its disclosure.”

is subject to a public interest test.

However there are other changes on the horizon too. Previously the inspection period was 15 days (3 weeks assuming there are no holidays).

When that inspection period was published in a public notice in at least one newspaper in the area and on the public body’s website.

I only have until the end of the 2015/16 local government financial year to get up to speed on these changes as being the Editor here I’ll have to schedule time for responding to the public notices, arranging appointments to inspect, as well as spare capacity for dealing with the moaning of the public sector (example moan last year being, it’s been 7/8 years since someone did this!).

As Wirral Council was somewhat uncooperative last year over the size of my request (only responding to the 10% of it they didn’t deem to be particularly sensitive), I will be having internal discussions here on avenues that can be explored to either embarrass Wirral Council into legal compliance (by censure (not to say that always works) or take more formal action.

Weirdly some of the politician’s expenses that they refused me under the audit legislation and Cllr Adrian Jones refused to make an appointment for me to see, they released in response to a later FOI request.

Which just goes to show that if you ask for the same information three times from Wirral Council (audit rights, a politician, then FOI), you might finally get it! Obviously by the third time, it starts to get embarrassing and seems like they have something to hide. I really don’t like having to ask three times when once should be enough though!

Anyway what was going to be only a short article about local government, barristers, ICO, FOI and audit is now rather on the long side so I’ll draw this to a close and give you an opportunity to comment.

If you click on any of the buttons below, you’ll be doing me a favour by sharing this article with other people.

EXCLUSIVE: Wirral Council continues its multi year battle to keep the 320,000+ Wirral people and press completely in the dark on councillors’ expense claims but in an exclusive you can now read 44 pages of the taxi contract for councillors

EXCLUSIVE: Wirral Council continues its multi year battle to keep the 320,000+ Wirral people and press completely in the dark on councillors’ expense claims but in an exclusive you can now read 44 pages of the taxi contract for councillors

EXCLUSIVE: Wirral Council continues its multi year battle to keep the 320,000+ Wirral people and press completely in the dark on councillors’ expense claims but in an exclusive you can now read 44 pages of the taxi contract for councillors

                                           

Updated: 16:56 7th October 2015: 3 minutes after this blog post was published Wirral Council got in touch about my request under the The Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2015. Wirral Council asked for more time to reach a decision (which seems to be on line one page one of their big book of responses. 😉

However I have written back (and carbon copied in Surjit Tour) explaining that Regulation 5(5) excludes such documents because in order to access them I had to prove a legal interest (in this case being a local government elector for the Wirral area) during the 2014/15 audit.

I have made a request for the information Wirral Council are required to provide because of regulation 16(7)(a) and 16(7)(b).

This does mean that as this matter has been resolved, I will be publishing more information unearthed during the audit in the future, such as the Bam Nuttall contract.

Those who pay close attention to this blog will realise I haven’t published anything on this blog for a week. Apologies for that and here is an explanation. For some of that time I wasn’t well and the combination of nights of disrupted sleep due to dogs barking outside/helicopters/extremely noisy weather*(*take your pick as that’s just one night) resulted in severe lack of sleep that made me feel so ill that the last thing I wanted to do is write (and believe me I have to feel very ill not to want to write).

The closest I can describe it to is like suffering from something like jet lag from sleep deprivation (which didn’t help me get better as quickly as I should and had the opposite effect). So apologies if I have either been slow (or not responding at all) to emails and comments. I just haven’t been particularly up to the art of stringing together words into real sentences as typing and actually using my joints to type just made the pain worse. So if I’ve written any emails to you over the past week or so where I seem unusually cranky or cheesed off hopefully this explains why.

However I was better yesterday but was busy doing writing of a different sort, which forms part of what I’m going to write about today.

This blog post is a new chapter in a long running saga about taxis, Wirral Council and secret expenses system. However the story has got far wider than that.

First, before I get into fourth gear of what is a story that seems to now have more interesting angles than the Watergate affair and as this blog is read in many countries around the world I need to explain.

For reasons far too complex to go into here, Wirral Council tends to go in for similar types of high political drama that surrounded the Watergate affair, except people very, very rarely resign (resigning being a once in a blue moon event at Wirral Council that tends to really take people by surprise). This was summed up by the attitude of the former Improvement Board at a public meeting who I will paraphrase here, no one is ever held personally accountable and you mustn’t name names (as if you name names that’s blaming people)! My own personal political philosophy is there are always matters people are personally accountable for, but organisational failings of checks and balances and abuses of power have more serious outcomes for society as a whole than people (or even groups of people) behaving badly. However I digress and I need to briefly summarise the story so far as this is starting to have echoes of the MP expenses scandal. In fact not just echoes but marked similarities.

Wirral Council (official long name the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral) has sixty-six councillors (for foreign readers unfamiliar with the word councillor it’s a form of politician). Nearly every year the people who get to vote on the Wirral (Wirral’s population was estimated at 320,295 in mid-2013 according to the Office for National Statistics) get to choose a candidate. The candidate with the most votes (and I’ll leave out a long argument as to why the First Past the Post system that is used for this is unfair and the merits of STV [single transferable vote] for another day) becomes a politician called a councillor. The person who is elected (unless it’s in a by-election) is then elected and called a councillor generally for a four-year term of office.

During their term of office they receive allowances, but there is also an expenses system too. Under our "democracy" (although technically the United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy) politicians such as councillors are answerable to the people.

Many politicians stand for re-election (there are no term limits for being a councillor so for some people it can become a "job for life" (however as councillors on Wirral Council are not employees and not MPs (Members of Parliament) they don’t get a gold-plated pension)) so if you’ve been a bad sort of politician and stand for re election (or if you’re a good politician but are very bad at actually communicating this to the public and/or your political party does bad things) you’ll lose your seat. This is the greatest form of accountability to the public.

During their term of office (on top of their generous allowances) councillors can claim expenses (or have expenses paid on their behalf) under a set of rules written into Wirral Council’s constitution called the Members Allowance Scheme (pages 329-338) of Wirral Council’s constitution. Members in local government jargon means councillors.

A law called The Local Authorities (Members’ Allowances) (England) Regulations 2003, SI 2003/1021 (later amended by the The Local Authorities (Members’ Allowances) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2003, SI 2003/1692 and The Local Authorities (Members’ Allowances) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2004 places various legal responsibilities on Wirral Council.

Wirral Council are legally required to keep a record of all payments made under the scheme (whether to councillors themselves or to third parties). These records are required to be "be available, at all reasonable times, for inspection and at no charge" to any local government elector for the Wirral area.

However the right to copies of such information is wider than that as under the regulations "any person" can request copies.

This is a bit of a laugh really, as it takes Wirral Council months merely to assemble such information on councillors (therefore strictly speaking the information isn’t available at all reasonable times for inspection breaching one of the regulations).

I am however taking about a thousand words so far and slightly digressing from the points I wanted to make (which wasn’t just about local government record keeping).

Another part of the regulations requires an annual list to be published by Wirral Council for each councillor for the total of allowances & expenses claimed by each councillor for the previous financial year. This way the public can see what councillors are personally receiving (or is being paid on their behalf to third parties) in relation to their duties. Some councillors chose to claim no expenses at all.

However it probably requires a certain amount of forensic accountancy to prove that the expenses lists as published by Wirral Council have been incorrect and they have been for many years.

I am now going to refer to why this happened and what Wirral Council needs to do to correct this and why despite it being pointed out to them they probably won’t bother as to Wirral Council getting things right seems to be too much effort and too expensive as the politicians decide on an annual revenue budget of hundreds of millions of pounds a year and large amounts of capital expenditure too.

At the moment the published expenses lists are only part of the story. Based on looking at a similar situation at Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority, what the public are actually told about is probably only approximately 50% (or half for those who don’t understand percentages) of what is actually claimed in expenses.

It has become a party political issue which is illustrated by this quote from the Leader of Wirral Council Cllr Phil Davies in this Wirral Globe article earlier this year. Again members is referring to councillors (our members refers to the councillors who are part of the ruling Labour Group on Wirral Council).

Asked why only Labour councillors appeared on the list, Cllr Davies said: “The reality is that quite a lot of our members don’t have cars, so they need to use taxis to get to council meetings. If they had cars then they would be making a claim on council expenses for their car allowance, but they don’t. There are more Labour councillors who don’t have a car than those from other parties. These are legitimate claims within the budget of the council for elected members to allow them to do their jobs. Quite often taxis are the only form of transport they can use to get to their meetings.”

Apart from this having echoes of militant Labour delivering redundancy notices to all Liverpool City Council staff by taxi, basically this is a councillor (Leader of the Labour Group) somewhat begrudingly explaining about a secret expenses system for claiming taxis that the public and the press are presumably deliberately kept in the dark about. Wirral Council has known about this corporate governance matter about councillors expenses but despite claiming it would fix it has refused to do so. These figures for taxis (which come to £thousands) don’t appear in the annually published lists) and as detailed in the Wirral Globe article (based in part on my earlier story on the matter) that are used exclusively by one political party (Labour) are according to Cllr Phil Davies justified.

Cllr Phil Davies wears many hats, one as Leader of the Labour Group of councillors, one as Leader of Wirral Council (with the Cabinet portfolio for finance and corporate governance) and a third as a local councillor. The quote referred to above makes Cllr Phil Davies sound like a union rep for the other Labour councillors trying to keep hold of an expensive perk for his fellow politicians.

This has parallels with the approach by Michael Martin MP when he was Speaker of the House of Commons over the MP’s expenses scandal. Michael Martin MP saw himself as a representative of his fellow politicians and eventually had to resign because of the fallout over MP expenses when a national newspaper (in an example of chequebook journalism) bought and published the information. This ultimately led to a lot of embarrassment and prison sentences for some politicians (but ultimately reform of the system) whereas councillors at Wirral Council don’t even get the bare legal minimum of scrutiny of their expenses due to poor corporate governance (which is a matter that the person with democratic acccountability to the public is Cllr Phil Davies).

He compares Labour councillors’ use of taxis to a car mileage allowance used by other councillors. However the latter appears in the annual lists, but Labour’s use of taxis doesn’t. In order for the people to know what’s going on and compare one to the other they have to both appear.

I hope this doesn’t come across to people as an attack on Labour politicians or Labour Party, it’s not. If this was being done by Conservative, Lib Dem, Green Party or other sorts of politicians I would be writing this same sort of blog post.

However it reminds me of an email exchange I had before the General Election with a Labour Party member. They told me that they couldn’t campaign against their own party on an issue (I think it may have been about Lyndale School or possibly some other controversial issue) as instead their efforts were better put into getting Labour elected nationally into government in 2015.

Their view was once elected a Labour government in 2015 would have power and therefore be able to solve the policy problem. It was a stark example of how political parties may have individuals that care about policies, but ultimately as a group the Labour Party wasn’t interested in campaigning for something popular with the public (therefore winning votes and support) which may have ultimately led to them winning the 2015 General Election. This point was pointed out to them many times in the lead up to the election by the press and others.

Instead the Labour Party decided to pursue a strategy of ignoring public opinion, brazenly going for power at all costs, then got confused when the Conservatives got a majority and Labour lost seats.

I will point out that when I was a former member of the Lib Dems, there was a controversial joint Labour/Lib Dem policy decision to close half of Wirral’s libraries. I expressed my views against this in Lib Dem party meetings, stubborn councillors decided play brinkmanship, there was a public inquiry and the whole thing descended into farce and fiasco with a lot of people losing face over the whole matter. I even got ticked off by Sue Charteris as I unfortunately turned up about fifteen minutes late to the public inquiry (which was being filmed) and was told off for having the temerity to discreetly take a photo of what was going on (an omen of the later long running battles over filming public meetings).

At no point do I remember telling anyone within or outside the Lib Dem party (I decided to leave the Lib Dems in January 2012 and indeed sued the entire Liberal Democrat party for breaking the law, had my day in court and won), sorry I personally believe half of Wirral’s libraries shouldn’t close, but I refuse to campaign against the combined Labour & Lib Dem Parties as it’s important that I instead put my efforts into making sure the Lib Dems became the sole party of national government in 2015.

I think if I had made such claims fellow party members would’ve asked me if I was being sarcastic or not thinking straight. My position on the disastrous policy was well known, my views were dismissed partly because of my youth (one party member referred to me as a "baby" during a party meeting) although I doubt the full story about what happened internally within the Lib Dem Party over its politicians setting an unlawful budget will ever be told. The problem with that coalition is the buck could always be passed to Labour just as two halves of the recent 2010-2015 Coalition government could do with each other. The Lib Dem Party has always made it clear to me that they don’t care about the reputational consequences of its politicians or employees breaking the law. As obeying the "rule of law" is a part of democracy it makes me wonder how they have the gall to truthfully call themselves the Liberal Democrats.

However I am going off track in an explanation of the terrible policy failings of party politics and the errors of judgement of politicians (who seem to have a blind spot when it comes to abuses of power) that make unpopular decisions that are not only unlawful but not supported by their own political party either.

This article is going to be about the nuts and bolts of the Passenger Transport Contract issue though.

Last year, Wirral Council agreed to a one-year Passenger Transport Contract worth about £4.1 million. It’s possibly worth more than this as there’s an option in the contract for a one year extension. However I’m not sure if the £4.1 million figure relates to the one or two years of the contract.

This contract is with a company called Eyecab Limited based in Upton (Upton makes a lot of geographical sense for a taxi company to base itself as it’s in the middle of the Wirral).

The contract is divided up into four parts called lots. I’d better describe what each lot is about.

LOT 1

This lot is for transporting children with special educational needs and/or disability from home to school and school to home. It also covers transport for children in care. Children in care is a term that those involved in social work might be more familiar as looked after children. If you’re still not familiar with the term looked after children it refers to for example (but not exclusively) to those in foster care for whom Wirral Council is their "parent". It also covers transport for vulnerable adults to day centres.

LOT 2

Lot two is for ad hoc travel for children with special educational needs and/or disability, vulnerable adults and children in care by taxi, people carrier or hackney carriage (black cab).

LOT 3

The third lot is for journeys by taxi to work and training for Wirral residents (where journeys start or end in East Wirral) known as the "Maxi Taxi". This is to "support individuals travelling to locations not served by traditional public transport and too far or too unsafe to cycle to."

On that latter point, in my younger days I classed a 16 mile cycle ride as not too far and for many years regularly used to cycle a 7 mile round trip to work and back. I’m presuming the "too unsafe" comments are in relation to the rise in people killed and seriously injured on Wirral’s roads since that time. However as you can take the bike on a Merseyrail train (and most areas of Merseyside are within one mile of a train station). It is possible to use bike, train, bike as I did for many years as a university student and for work travelling all over Merseyside as the trains run from very early in the morning to very late in the evening.

LOT 4

I’ll just quote the official description for this lot. "This contract is for ad hoc journeys by taxi to allow Wirral Councillors to travel to various venues across Wirral.
This contract will allow Wirral Councillors to travel around Wirral on official Council business. The times will vary and may include evenings and weekends.
"

Much as I would happily write about the millions spent by Wirral Council on lots 1-3, effectively lot 4 is the focus of this piece.

During the audit I requested the contract with Eyecab Limited. I did this as I’m a local government elector for the Wirral area using Audit Commission Act 1998, s.15. I will add here that this is the last year I can do this as that right has now been repealed by the previous Tory/Lib Dem government.

It’s been replaced with a much more watered down right which has the following two major changes (amongst others).

(a) the safeguard of the independent auditor deciding what is personal information (not relating to officers) rather than the body itself and whether this can or can’t be redacted from information supplied has been removed,

(b) showing perhaps a Tory philosophy that will no doubt fill my Labour-leaning readers with glee as another example of government pandering to the sorts of commercial interests that make large donations to the Conservative Party, an extra category of withholding information on grounds of "commercial confidentiality" has been added.

I will point out that Wirral Council has withheld some information from the contract supplied to me. The phone number for Eyecab Limited is such a secret that presumably Wirral Council got permission from its auditors to withhold it.

When the phone number for Eyecab Limited is in the Yellow Pages as 0151 201 0000 (therefore hardly confidential after all please leave a comment if you ever heard of a taxi company that deliberately keeps its phone number a secret?), I do wonder why Wirral Council just make work for themselves (and me) in blacking such information out.

Other information that has been withheld has been pricing information and routes.

On the subject of Wirral Council and its well paid auditor Grant Thornton, when I complained to Grant Thornton about one of contacts to blow the whistle to (Ian Coleman on page 36) having received early retirement from Wirral Council two years before this contract even started, I got an email back stating that contracts weren’t to do with the accounts, therefore weren’t the auditors’ responsibility.

Auditors it seems such as Grant Thornton don’t know what they’re doing (maybe Wirral Council could ask for a refund of their fee when they get things wrong) so they just seem to spout nonsense like this in an attempt to fob people off.

As nobody is ever personally accountable in local government I will spare the particular auditor’s blushes by merely quoting from the email and my reply without naming names. It shows however that some auditors in my opinion are about as much use as a chocolate fireguard (a general point aimed at the entire accounting profession rather than this particular auditor).

I think the term is fobbing off as from other bloggers I know that auditors up and down the country are trying to evade their responsibilities in law by giving this sort of reply to local government electors. The likes of Cllr Ron Abbey (who I recently heard being critical of local government electors exercising their rights with auditors at a Merseytravel meeting because of the cost) would probably not approve of me teaching an auditor they’re wrong as the cost of this (in the form of increased external audit costs) is falling on the taxpayer (whereas sadly my advice and grumpiness is not something I can charge them for).

"Dear Mr Brace

I have now had an opportunity consider the contents of your email to me of 6 September 2015.

I understand from your email that you have exercised your rights under the Audit Commission Act to inspect certain documents associated with Wirral Council’s accounts for 2014/15, including a Passenger Transport Contract with a specific contractor named in your email. You highlight that page 36 of the contract identifies the individuals who should be written to in the event of a whistleblowing complaint. The second of these names is the former Director of Finance who left the council 2012. You have asked us to explain why someone who ‘was not an employee of Wirral Council at the time the Passenger Transport Contract was put out to tender (or when the contract was agreed) … was he included as a whistleblowing contact in the contract?’

I have carefully considered this matter and I am not sure this is a valid question that it is appropriate for us to answer. As you highlight the power to question the auditor is set in section 15(2) of the Audit Commission Act 1998. Although interested persons can ask questions of the auditor, the questions must be about items in the Council’s account. It seems to me that your question is not about an item of account and therefore we are not in a position to respond to your question. It seems to me that your question is more appropriately addressed to the Council.

In summary, I would suggest that you contact the Council with your specific request for information.

It is currently our intention to close the audit of the Council’s 2014/15 accounts by 30 September 2015.

I hope that is helpful in clarifying the position.

Yours sincerely"


I however have learnt the art of being concise in emails and played this game of re educating the external auditor in the trump suit of 3 High Court Judges. Here is one of my replies (which meant the auditor had to change their mind).

Dear all,

I would also like to point out that a Court of Appeal case established beyond a doubt that contracts are part of the accounts. See [2010] EWCA Civ 1214 .

So as three High Court Judges seem to agree with my interpretation, I would ask you to reconsider..

Thanks,

John Brace


As you would probably say in tennis, game, set and match to me (not that I’m competing with an auditor, it’s just well whether deliberately or by accident they don’t really seem to know what they’re actually doing or the legal framework within which they operate properly but what’s new eh?).

However if I wanted to blow the whistle on the contract about taxis for councillors (and there are many reasons why one should), the contract suggests I blow the whistle to a person who was granted early retirement by Wirral Council in 2012.

Bear in mind this contract isn’t just about councillors and their taxi journeys. It’s also about children with disabilities & vulnerable adults. It is possible a family member might have cause for concern that they wish to raise. If so they could be directed to a person who doesn’t even work for Wirral Council.

Back however to lot 4 and taxis for councillors. As a reward for having to read through nearly 3,000 words of my ranting about poor corporate governance, I have a reward for you dear reader but I want to first explain the price at which publication of this contract comes.

First I had to request it during the audit. Wirral Council exceeded the time limits set down in law for giving it to me so I had to wait a bit longer. I then had to travel for a meeting at a Wirral Council building just off Hamilton Square to inspect it and pick up a copy.

It comes to 43 pages (even after the information has been removed I referred to earlier). I then had to scan these pages in one at a time (because that’s the way my A3 scanner works). I made a request to Wirral Council under The Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2015 to publish it.

Despite this request being made some time ago, I have not received a response back from Wirral Council. As my communications to Wirral Council often seem to disappear into if I was being charitable what must be a black hole operating in one of its departments that sucks up my emails, I’m having to use my editorial discretion to use the part of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998, s.30 that deals with criticism, review and news reporting. I’m also covered bythe Data Protection Act 1998, s.34 in that its been made available to the public (myself) therefore isn’t subject to the non-disclosure provisions of the data protection legislation.

The way I have digitised this contract was by taking the 73 image files, putting them in OpenOffice Writer one at a time and creating a PDF file. However this file (as each page is an image) comes to 124 megabytes. As Wirral Council raided a reserve for high speed internet access some time ago, not only would this use up a lot of space but peoples’ internet speeds would mean it would take a long time to download.

I therefore spent one work day (yesterday) initially typing up the contract only using images for those that needed it (a MaxiTaxi logo and some signatures). This is very boring and time consuming work, but part way through I found a way to speed things up dramatically by putting the multi-page pdf file through FreeOCR.

The problem was as you can see from my earlier post about page 36 is that the pages given to me by Wirral Council were in a very poor state with many artifacts (a technical term for blemishes on the page). The artifacts cause massive problems for OCR as OCR software can try and guess what they are (for example a full stop).

Passenger Transport Contract Wirral Council page 36 of 40 thumbnail compressed
Passenger Transport Contract Wirral Council page 36 of 40 thumbnail compressed

The versions of the contract I finally ended up with are far easier to read than the version provided to me by Wirral Council. For those with disabilities, the text can now be magnified without just blowing up the blemishes too. The file sizes of the new files (and I’m providing it in multiple versions because I’m trying to be helpful) are massively smaller.

I have not included the Wirral Council logos and replaced these with (Wirral Council logo). As you can see from the image above it’s the five Ws logo with WIRRAL in bold letters. The typographical errors in the contract (such as the many instances of Disclosure and Baring (rather than Barring) Service), missing full stops etc I’ve left in and not corrected. I hope people appreciate the work put into producing it and I realise it has probably been hard work reading through over 3,000 words to reach this point.

A bit like Schrödinger’s cat, although I requested this contract and the what must be about ~6 monthly invoices that relate to it during the audit, I can only at this point in time observe one (the contract).

Wirral Council are still stalling me on inspecting and receiving copies of the monthly invoices for councillors journeys by taxis. Anyone would think that Wirral Council hasn’t quite got the staff to deal with the sort of investigative journalism I tend to be good at. However as the taxi contract is used solely by the ruling Labour Group councillors I can see how it would be in no officers’ interests to actually comply with the legal deadline for this as no doubt I would publish them which would cause politicians to be embarrassed. Wirral Council are &improving& their website, the legal notice they’re required to publish on their website with the deadline on has also vanished at the time of writing.

Certainly I await to see what other corporate governance horrors Wirral Council get up to and will (hopefully) keep readers of this blog advised of what’s happening. In the meantime at the end are the pages of contract information.

This does raise a lot of questions but I will just concentrate on one which seems to demolish one of the reasons given for this contract. When Councillor Adrian Jones read out an answer to me prepared for him by officers at a public meeting as reported previously he stated, "The Council has negotiated competitive prices and entered into contracts with a local taxi company to provide transport for Members in accordance with the Members Allowances Scheme. The taxi company submits its invoices and the details of the Members that used the taxis each month directly to the Council for payment. The advantage of this arrangement is that the cost of transport by taxis is always at the negotiated rate and is a more efficient way to manage the service."

It does raise an interesting point though as the pricing information for councillors’ journeys by taxi are included. In the method statement that Eyecab Limited completed when bidding for lot 4 (councillors’ taxi journeys) Eyecab Limited stated on page 34 of 40 "Eye Cab is an all Hackney taxi firm vehicles range from five passenger seats to seven passenger seats at present we operate approximately twenty seven vehicles this number is increasing on a regular basis."

When I heard Cllr Jones’ answer about "competitive prices" anyone hearing it would think that it was stating that taxis through this contract are better value for money (in terms of the actual cost of the taxi ride) than a councillor paying for it themselves, then claiming the money back.

However having read the contract and that I know now that Eyecab Limited is an all hackney carriage company, I’m puzzled. That’s because the prices at which all hackney carriages on Wirral charge is set by Wirral Council. Therefore for the same journey surely all hackney carriages would charge the same amount and it wouldn’t be cheaper doing it through a contract. When you factor in the costs of putting this contract out to tender (yes I realise lot 4 is part of a wider contract however potential contractors had to bid on each lot separately), the costs of procurement will outweigh any efficiency saving from just having to pay a monthly invoice rather than when councillors claim on an ad hoc basis.

A small saving does occur because Wirral Council isn’t actually doing it legally and including these amounts in the annual lists but by small saving I’m talking about an employee cost time of maybe £50-£60.

However by not doing it that way it increases costs elsewhere at Wirral Council, for example the cost of processing FOI requests, providing me with a redacted copy of the contract during the audit, providing me (hopefully eventually) with the underlying invoices etc and of course the expensive cost in senior officer time (probably an employee on ~£80 an hour) in having to answer questions posed by me to Councillor Adrian Jones at a public meeting.

The point I will finish on is that Wirral Council doing things the right way and legal way saves money in the long run in the communications you get from people trying to persuade Wirral Council just to do things the right way.

However officers across local government (in fact some have even said this to my face) see this sort of press scrutiny as a drain on "scarce resources".

In other words, the kind of major embarrassing politically sensitive fiascos (politicians’ expenses just being the tip of an absolutely massive corporate governance iceberg) I write about on my blog probably cause no end of awkward questions behind the scenes from politicians to those on high 5 figure and 6 figure salaries as to why things aren’t right.

I’m sure some people paid by the taxpayer well above my pay grade don’t always see the sort of journalism as a good thing for their future career prospects. I’m pointing out things to the world that if the checks and balances that these employees are supposed to be were working properly would be spotted internally and corrected.

Some bureaucrats (while stating they welcome accountability) I’m sure don’t really feel it’s right that they should be under a legal requirement to hand over embarrassing information to me, that’ll then form stories that politicians will read (or in the case of video watch) and use to hold the bureaucrats to account.

It’s the way I’ve been trained though and the independence of the press is something that this country should value.

Please note, although I proofread the contract before publishing due to the poor quality of the original pages at times the OCR program has misidentified one character incorrectly such as the postcode CH44 8ED, the OCR program has outputted as CH44 BED (page 23 of 40). The other errors (typographical such as baring for barring & punctuation such as missing full stops) were made in the original document.

Passenger Transport Contract Eyecab Limited Wirral Council complete (Word document version) 331 kilobytes

Passenger Transport Contract Eyecab Limited Wirral Council complete (OpenOffice ODF Text Document) 72 kilobytes

Passenger Transport Contract Eyecab Limited Wirral Council complete (Adobe Acrobat pdf version) 257 kilobytes

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EXCLUSIVE: 155 invoices paid by Wirral Council in 2013/14 for legal services, external audit, physiotherapy and psychological assessments

EXCLUSIVE: 155 invoices paid by Wirral Council in 2013/14 for legal services, external audit, physiotherapy and psychological assessments

EXCLUSIVE: 155 invoices paid by Wirral Council in 2013/14 for legal services, external audit, physiotherapy and psychological assessments

                                                              

Below are 155 of the invoices I requested during the 2013/14 audit. They range from invoices to the Council’s external auditor Grant Thornton UK LLP, criminal work, a couple of judicial reviews, appealing an ICO decision notice to the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) as well as a lot of times Wirral Council have taken parents to court about their children. Some of these invoices I’ve previously written about on this blog, such as about the invoice about appealing the ICO decision notice. Turns out now I look at it more carefully there was a further invoice for £1,008 from February 2014 in that matter too.

Some of the others I’ve already on the blog as I received them in August 2014. However I didn’t publish them in August because I’ve had to go through a process of blacking out all the names (and partial names) of children and parents.

Added in green to many invoices are the representative (where known) from the list of payments in 2013/14 greater than £500. I’ve also added back in (on some) text which has been obscured by information blacked out on double-sided pages and bled through.

There is an index to all 155 invoices that can be downloaded here. I’ve tried to use the following file format when naming each file “Wirral Council invoice” followed by representative/organisation, amount, date, page number where there are multiple pages for the same invoice followed by invoice number.

Invoices 73 & 74 aren’t published here as they were cancelled and replaced by invoices 75 & 76. There is another batch of invoices I have yet to scan in, which is a mix of invoices for legal services and other general invoices. Below you should find all 155 invoices.

Wirral Council invoice Capita Health and Wellbeing Limited £520 Page 1 of 3 18th March 2013 1
Wirral Council invoice Capita Health and Wellbeing Limited £520 Page 1 of 3 18th March 2013 1
Wirral Council invoice Capita Health and Wellbeing Limited £520 Page 2 of 3 18th March 2013 1
Wirral Council invoice Capita Health and Wellbeing Limited £520 Page 2 of 3 18th March 2013 1
Wirral Council invoice Capita Health and Wellbeing Limited £520 Page 3 of 3 18th March 2013 1
Wirral Council invoice Capita Health and Wellbeing Limited £520 Page 3 of 3 18th March 2013 1
Wirral Council invoice The Lucy Faithfull Foundation £699.31 28th March 2013 2
Wirral Council invoice The Lucy Faithfull Foundation £699.31 28th March 2013 2
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings £10,344 page 1 of 2 15th March 2013 3
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings £10,344 page 1 of 2 15th March 2013 3

Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings £10,344 page 2 of 2 15th March 2013 3

Wirral Council invoice Peta M L Harrison St Johns Buildings £1,548 23rd March 2013 4

Wirral Council invoice Peta M L Harrison St Johns Buildings £552 15th March 2013 5

Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings £1,320 18th March 2013 6
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings £1,320 18th March 2013 6

Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings £3,792 20th March 2013 7

Wirral Council invoice David Garside St Johns Buildings £840 8th March 2013 8

Wirral Council invoice Remy Zentar St Johns Buildings £1,488 25th March 2013 9

Wirral Council invoice Kerry Daynes psychological report £680.04 29th January 2013 10

Wirral Council invoice Forepsych Limited psychological assessment report £688.35 3rd February 2013 11
Wirral Council invoice Forepsych Limited psychological assessment report £688.35 3rd February 2013 11
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings £576 2nd April 2013 12
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings £576 2nd April 2013 12
Wirral Council invoice Remy Zentar St Johns Buildings £1,800 27th March 2013 13
Wirral Council invoice Remy Zentar St Johns Buildings £1,800 27th March 2013 13
Wirral Council invoice Sharpe Pritchard £25,698 31st March 2013 Page 1 of 2 14
Wirral Council invoice Sharpe Pritchard £25,698 31st March 2013 Page 1 of 2 14
Wirral Council invoice Sharpe Pritchard £25,698 31st March 2013 Page 2 of 2 14
Wirral Council invoice Sharpe Pritchard £25,698 31st March 2013 Page 2 of 2 14
Wirral Council invoice Gail A Owen St Johns Buildings £2,928 9th April 2013 15
Wirral Council invoice Gail A Owen St Johns Buildings £2,928 9th April 2013 15
Wirral Council invoice Nicola Miles 7 Harrington St Chambers £2,130 9th April 2013 16
Wirral Council invoice Nicola Miles 7 Harrington St Chambers £2,130 9th April 2013 16
Wirral Council invoice Kate Burnell St Johns Buildings 9th April 2013 £792 17
Wirral Council invoice Kate Burnell St Johns Buildings 9th April 2013 £792 17
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 11th April 2013 £864 18
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 11th April 2013 £864 18
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 16th April 2013 £720 19
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 16th April 2013 £720 19
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 16th April 2013 £1,032 20
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 16th April 2013 £1,032 20
Wirral Council invoice Dr Jennifer Ashcroft JJ Ashcroft Clinical Psychology Services Ltd 7th April 2013 £900.75 21
Wirral Council invoice Dr Jennifer Ashcroft JJ Ashcroft Clinical Psychology Services Ltd 7th April 2013 £900.75 21
Wirral Council invoice Gail A Owen St Johns Buildings 26th April 2013 £591.36 22
Wirral Council invoice Gail A Owen St Johns Buildings 26th April 2013 £591.36 22
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 20th April 2013 £600 23
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 20th April 2013 £600 23
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Bellamy St Johns Buildings 25th April 2013 £511.68 24
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Bellamy St Johns Buildings 25th April 2013 £511.68 24
Wirral Council invoice Sara A Mann St Johns Buildings 26th April 2013 £528 25
Wirral Council invoice Sara A Mann St Johns Buildings 26th April 2013 £528 25
Wirral Council invoice Tim D N Kenward 7 Harrington St Chambers 19th April 2013 Page 1 of 2 £900 26
Wirral Council invoice Tim D N Kenward 7 Harrington St Chambers 19th April 2013 Page 1 of 2 £900 26
Wirral Council invoice Tim D N Kenward 7 Harrington St Chambers 19th April 2013 Page 2 of 2 £900 26
Wirral Council invoice Tim D N Kenward 7 Harrington St Chambers 19th April 2013 Page 2 of 2 £900 26
Wirral Council invoice Remy Zentar St Johns Buildings 23rd April 2013 £936 27
Wirral Council invoice Remy Zentar St Johns Buildings 23rd April 2013 £936 27
Wirral Council invoice Susan Edwards St Johns Buildings 2nd May 2013 £672 28
Wirral Council invoice Susan Edwards St Johns Buildings 2nd May 2013 £672 28
Wirral Council invoice DMM Psychology Ltd 8th March 2013 £1660.80 29
Wirral Council invoice DMM Psychology Ltd 8th March 2013 £1660.80 29
Wirral Council invoice Sara A Mann St Johns Buildings 8th May 2013 £823.68 30
Wirral Council invoice Sara A Mann St Johns Buildings 8th May 2013 £823.68 30
Wirral Council invoice Rebecca Smith St Johns Buildings 8th May 2013 £720 31
Wirral Council invoice Rebecca Smith St Johns Buildings 8th May 2013 £720 31
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 9th May 2013 £1200 32
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 9th May 2013 £1200 32
Wirral Council invoice Rebecca Smith St Johns Buildings 9th May 2013 £720 33
Wirral Council invoice Rebecca Smith St Johns Buildings 9th May 2013 £720 33
Wirral Council invoice Benjamin Lawrence St Johns Buildings 13th May 2013 £787.50 34
Wirral Council invoice Benjamin Lawrence St Johns Buildings 13th May 2013 £787.50 34
Wirral Council invoice Advanced Childcare Assessments Limited 30th April 2013 £2,641.20 35
Wirral Council invoice Advanced Childcare Assessments Limited 30th April 2013 £2,641.20 35
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 15th May 2013 Page 1 of 2 £528 36
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 15th May 2013 Page 1 of 2 £528 36
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 15th May 2013 Page 2 of 2 £528 36
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 15th May 2013 Page 2 of 2 £528 36
Wirral Council invoice Louis Browne Exchange Chambers 15th May 2013 £3445.74 37
Wirral Council invoice Louis Browne Exchange Chambers 15th May 2013 £3445.74 37
Wirral Council invoice Claire Grundy St Johns Buildings 14th May 2013 £1800 38
Wirral Council invoice Claire Grundy St Johns Buildings 14th May 2013 £1800 38
Wirral Council invoice Sharpe Pritchard 17th May 2013 £640 39
Wirral Council invoice Sharpe Pritchard 17th May 2013 £640 39
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Building 17th May 2013 £1200 40
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Building 17th May 2013 £1200 40
Wirral Council invoice Sara A Mann St Johns Building 17th May 2013 £528 41
Wirral Council invoice Sara A Mann St Johns Building 17th May 2013 £528 41
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Building 21st May 2013 £576 42
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Building 21st May 2013 £576 42
Wirral Council invoice Cerys Williams St Johns Building 22nd May 2013 £2454.72 43
Wirral Council invoice Cerys Williams St Johns Building 22nd May 2013 £2454.72 43
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Building 24th May 2013 £768 44
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Building 24th May 2013 £768 44
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Building 28th May 2013 £811.29 Page 1 of 2 45
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Building 28th May 2013 £811.29 Page 1 of 2 45
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Building 28th May 2013 £811.29 Page 2 of 2 45
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Building 28th May 2013 £811.29 Page 2 of 2 45
Wirral Council invoice Simon Maddison St Johns Building 23rd May 2013 £1260 46
Wirral Council invoice Simon Maddison St Johns Building 23rd May 2013 £1260 46
Wirral Council invoice Sara A Mann St Johns Buildings 31st May 2013 £607.48 47
Wirral Council invoice Sara A Mann St Johns Buildings 31st May 2013 £607.48 47
Wirral Council invoice Document Technology Limited 10th May 2013 £569.58 48
Wirral Council invoice Document Technology Limited 10th May 2013 £569.58 48
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 4th June 2013 £849.60 49
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 4th June 2013 £849.60 49
Wirral Council invoice Susan Edwards St Johns Buildings 10th June 2013 £993.60 50
Wirral Council invoice Susan Edwards St Johns Buildings 10th June 2013 £993.60 50
Wirral Council invoice Ginette Fitzharris St Johns Buildings 11th June 2013 £799.68 51
Wirral Council invoice Ginette Fitzharris St Johns Buildings 11th June 2013 £799.68 51
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 13th June 2013 £2,208.96 52
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 13th June 2013 £2,208.96 52
Wirral Council invoice Grant Thornton UK LLP 14th June 2013 £63,504 53
Wirral Council invoice Grant Thornton UK LLP 14th June 2013 £63,504 53
Wirral Council invoice Catherine Rimmer St Johns Buildings 17th June 2013 £504 54
Wirral Council invoice Catherine Rimmer St Johns Buildings 17th June 2013 £504 54
Wirral Council invoice Stephen J Bedford St Johns Buildings 17th June 2013 £1,584 55
Wirral Council invoice Stephen J Bedford St Johns Buildings 17th June 2013 £1,584 55
Wirral Council invoice Stephen J Bedford St Johns Buildings 19th June 2013 £1,584 56
Wirral Council invoice Stephen J Bedford St Johns Buildings 19th June 2013 £1,584 56
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 25th June 2013 £552 57
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 25th June 2013 £552 57
Wirral Council invoice The Association of Electoral Administration 14th May 2013 £3,556.25 58
Wirral Council invoice The Association of Electoral Administration 14th May 2013 £3,556.25 58
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 1st July 2013 £960 59
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 1st July 2013 £960 59
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 1st July 2013 £4,910.40 Page 1 of 2 60
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 1st July 2013 £4,910.40 Page 1 of 2 60
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 1st July 2013 £4,910.40 Page 2 of 2 60
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 1st July 2013 £4,910.40 Page 2 of 2 60
Wirral Council invoice Sara A Mann St Johns Buildings 1st July 2013 £523.20 61
Wirral Council invoice Sara A Mann St Johns Buildings 1st July 2013 £523.20 61
Wirral Council invoice Tim D N Kenward 7 Harrington St Chambers 19th June 2013 Page 1 of 2 £3,660 62
Wirral Council invoice Tim D N Kenward 7 Harrington St Chambers 19th June 2013 Page 1 of 2 £3,660 62
Wirral Council invoice Tim D N Kenward 7 Harrington St Chambers 19th June 2013 Page 2 of 2 £3,660 62
Wirral Council invoice Tim D N Kenward 7 Harrington St Chambers 19th June 2013 Page 2 of 2 £3,660 62
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 3rd July 2013 £849.60 63
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 3rd July 2013 £849.60 63
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 28th May 2013 £3,264 Page 1 of 2 64
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 28th May 2013 £3,264 Page 1 of 2 64
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 28th May 2013 £3,264 Page 2 of 2 64
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 28th May 2013 £3,264 Page 2 of 2 64
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 12th July 2013 65 £1,440 65
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 12th July 2013 65 £1,440 65
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 12th July 2013 £552 66
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 12th July 2013 £552 66
Wirral Council invoice Gaynor Lloyd St Johns Buildings 12th July 2013 £1822.08 67
Wirral Council invoice Gaynor Lloyd St Johns Buildings 12th July 2013 £1822.08 67
Wirral Council invoice Sharpe Pritchard 18th July 2013 £10,080 68
Wirral Council invoice Sharpe Pritchard 18th July 2013 £10,080 68
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 25th July 2013 £696 69
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 25th July 2013 £696 69
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 25th July 2013 page 1 of 2 £7344 70
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 25th July 2013 page 1 of 2 £7344 70
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 25th July 2013 page 2 of 2 £7344 70
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 25th July 2013 page 2 of 2 £7344 70
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Manning Arden Chambers 26th July 2013 £1,800 71
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Manning Arden Chambers 26th July 2013 £1,800 71
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Manning Arden Chambers 26th July 2013 £1,800 72
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Manning Arden Chambers 26th July 2013 £1,800 72
Wirral Council invoice Helen Roberts Forensic Clinical Psychologist 1st August 2013 £821.10 75
Wirral Council invoice Helen Roberts Forensic Clinical Psychologist 1st August 2013 £821.10 75
Wirral Council invoice Helen Roberts Forensic Clinical Psychologist 1st August 2013 £590.50 76
Wirral Council invoice Helen Roberts Forensic Clinical Psychologist 1st August 2013 £590.50 76
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 7th August 2013 £1392 77
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 7th August 2013 £1392 77
Wirral Council invoice Sara A Mann St Johns Buildings 5th August 2013 £639.36 78
Wirral Council invoice Sara A Mann St Johns Buildings 5th August 2013 £639.36 78
Wirral Council invoice Gaynor Lloyd St Johns Buildings 12th August 2013 £1822.08 79
Wirral Council invoice Gaynor Lloyd St Johns Buildings 12th August 2013 £1822.08 79
Wirral Council invoice Helen Wilson St Johns Buildings 12th August 2013 £2016 80
Wirral Council invoice Helen Wilson St Johns Buildings 12th August 2013 £2016 80
Wirral Council invoice Ginette Fitzharris St Johns Buildings 19th August 2013 £528 81
Wirral Council invoice Ginette Fitzharris St Johns Buildings 19th August 2013 £528 81
Wirral Council invoice Ginette Fitzharris St Johns Buildings 15th August 2013 £511.68 82
Wirral Council invoice Ginette Fitzharris St Johns Buildings 15th August 2013 £511.68 82
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 22nd August 2013 £864 83
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 22nd August 2013 £864 83
Wirral Council invoice Helen Wilson St Johns Buildings 21st August 2013 £703.68 84
Wirral Council invoice Helen Wilson St Johns Buildings 21st August 2013 £703.68 84
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 4th September 2013 £576 85
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 4th September 2013 £576 85
Wirral Council invoice Grant Thornton UK LLP 12th September 2013 £63504 86
Wirral Council invoice Grant Thornton UK LLP 12th September 2013 £63504 86
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 11th September 2013 £687.36 87
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 11th September 2013 £687.36 87
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 11th September 2013 £1992 88
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 11th September 2013 £1992 88
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 16th September 2013 Page 1 of 2 £1296 89
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 16th September 2013 Page 1 of 2 £1296 89
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 16th September 2013 Page 2 of 2 £1296 89
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 16th September 2013 Page 2 of 2 £1296 89
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 16th September 2013 £1230.72 90
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 16th September 2013 £1230.72 90
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 17th September 2013 £655.68 91
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 17th September 2013 £655.68 91
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 25th September 2013 £561.60 92
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 25th September 2013 £561.60 92
Wirral Council invoice Paul Burns Exchange Chambers 23rd September 2013 £930 93
Wirral Council invoice Paul Burns Exchange Chambers 23rd September 2013 £930 93
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 30th September 2013 £720 94
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 30th September 2013 £720 94
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 2nd October 2013 £912 95
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 2nd October 2013 £912 95
Wirral Council invoice Benjamin William Jones St Johns Buildings 1st October 2013 £900 96
Wirral Council invoice Benjamin William Jones St Johns Buildings 1st October 2013 £900 96
Wirral Council invoice Ginette Fitzharris St Johns Buildings 7th October 2013 £511.68 97
Wirral Council invoice Ginette Fitzharris St Johns Buildings 7th October 2013 £511.68 97
Wirral Council invoice Kate Burnell St Johns Buildings 10th October 2013 £1248 98
Wirral Council invoice Kate Burnell St Johns Buildings 10th October 2013 £1248 98
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 14th October 2013 £720 99
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 14th October 2013 £720 99
Wirral Council invoice Cater Walsh Media Services Ltd 25th October 2013 £528 100
Wirral Council invoice Cater Walsh Media Services Ltd 25th October 2013 £528 100
Wirral Council invoice Sara A Mann St Johns Buildings 21st October 2013 £831.36 101
Wirral Council invoice Sara A Mann St Johns Buildings 21st October 2013 £831.36 101
Wirral Council invoice Ginette Fitzharris St Johns Buildings 21st October 2013 £576 102
Wirral Council invoice Ginette Fitzharris St Johns Buildings 21st October 2013 £576 102
Wirral Council invoice Ginette Fitzharris St Johns Buildings 21st October 2013 £753.60 103
Wirral Council invoice Ginette Fitzharris St Johns Buildings 21st October 2013 £753.60 103
Wirral Council invoice Helen Wilson St Johns Buildings 30th October 2013 £3235.20 104
Wirral Council invoice Helen Wilson St Johns Buildings 30th October 2013 £3235.20 104
Wirral Council invoice Kate Burnell St Johns Buildings 30th October 2013 £1113.60 105
Wirral Council invoice Kate Burnell St Johns Buildings 30th October 2013 £1113.60 105
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 31st October 2013 £1128 106
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 31st October 2013 £1128 106
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 30th October 2013 £528 107
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 30th October 2013 £528 107
Wirral Council invoice Mark Senior St Johns Buildings 1st November 2013 £864 108
Wirral Council invoice Mark Senior St Johns Buildings 1st November 2013 £864 108
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 11th November 2013 £993.60 109
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 11th November 2013 £993.60 109
Wirral Council invoice Susan Edwards St Johns Buildings 8th November 2013 £591.36 110
Wirral Council invoice Susan Edwards St Johns Buildings 8th November 2013 £591.36 110
Wirral Council invoice David V Glasgow 30th October 2013 £740.37 111
Wirral Council invoice David V Glasgow 30th October 2013 £740.37 111
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 13th November 2013 £576 112
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 13th November 2013 £576 112
Wirral Council invoice Helen Wilson St Johns Buildings 18th November 2013 £753.60 113
Wirral Council invoice Helen Wilson St Johns Buildings 18th November 2013 £753.60 113
Wirral Council invoice Christine Johnson Atlantic Chambers 22nd November 2013 £2940 114
Wirral Council invoice Christine Johnson Atlantic Chambers 22nd November 2013 £2940 114
Wirral Council invoice Paul Burns Exchange Chambers 22nd November 2013 Page 1 of 2 £4210 115
Wirral Council invoice Paul Burns Exchange Chambers 22nd November 2013 Page 1 of 2 £4210 115
Wirral Council invoice Paul Burns Exchange Chambers 22nd November 2013 Page 2 of 2 £4210 115
Wirral Council invoice Paul Burns Exchange Chambers 22nd November 2013 Page 2 of 2 £4210 115
Wirral Council invoice Susan Edwards St Johns Buildings 25th November 2013 £696 116
Wirral Council invoice Susan Edwards St Johns Buildings 25th November 2013 £696 116
Wirral Council invoice Robin Hopkins kbw 12th November 2013 £1872 117
Wirral Council invoice Robin Hopkins kbw 12th November 2013 £1872 117
Wirral Council invoice Wilkin Chapman LLP 16th October 2013 £1598.40 118
Wirral Council invoice Wilkin Chapman LLP 16th October 2013 £1598.40 118
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 21st November 2013 £576 119
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 21st November 2013 £576 119
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 26th November 2013 £1272 120
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 26th November 2013 £1272 120
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 11th December 2013 Page 1 of 2 £3473.28 121
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 11th December 2013 Page 1 of 2 £3473.28 121
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 11th December 2013 Page 2 of 2 £3473.28 121
Wirral Council invoice Jonathan Taylor St Johns Buildings 11th December 2013 Page 2 of 2 £3473.28 121
Wirral Council invoice Mark Senior St Johns Buildings 3rd December 2013 £2399.04 122
Wirral Council invoice Mark Senior St Johns Buildings 3rd December 2013 £2399.04 122
Wirral Council invoice Mark Senior St Johns Buildings 4th December 2013 £672 123
Wirral Council invoice Mark Senior St Johns Buildings 4th December 2013 £672 123
Wirral Council invoice Susan Edwards St Johns Buildings 27th November 2013 £504 124
Wirral Council invoice Susan Edwards St Johns Buildings 27th November 2013 £504 124
Wirral Council invoice Grant Thornton UK LLP 12th December 2013 £51120 125
Wirral Council invoice Grant Thornton UK LLP 12th December 2013 £51120 125
Wirral Council invoice Ruth Stockley Kings Chambers 19th November 2013 £607.50 126
Wirral Council invoice Ruth Stockley Kings Chambers 19th November 2013 £607.50 126
Wirral Council invoice Cerys Williams St Johns Buildings 7th January 2014 £528 127
Wirral Council invoice Cerys Williams St Johns Buildings 7th January 2014 £528 127
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 8th January 2014 Page 1 of 3 £5096.64 128
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 8th January 2014 Page 1 of 3 £5096.64 128
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 8th January 2014 Page 2 of 3 £5096.64 128
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 8th January 2014 Page 2 of 3 £5096.64 128
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 8th January 2014 Page 3 of 3 £5096.64 128
Wirral Council invoice Jennifer Lesley Scully St Johns Buildings 8th January 2014 Page 3 of 3 £5096.64 128
Wirral Council invoice Nigel Lawrence 7 Harrington Street Chambers 11th December 2013 £27185.90 129
Wirral Council invoice Nigel Lawrence 7 Harrington Street Chambers 11th December 2013 £27185.90 129
Wirral Council invoice Tim D N Kenward 7 Harrington Street Chambers 7th January 2014 £2220 130
Wirral Council invoice Tim D N Kenward 7 Harrington Street Chambers 7th January 2014 £2220 130
Wirral Council invoice Grant Thornton UK LLP 11th December 2013 £63504 131
Wirral Council invoice Grant Thornton UK LLP 11th December 2013 £63504 131
Wirral Council invoice Damien Sanders St Johns Buildings 15th January 2014 £600 132
Wirral Council invoice Damien Sanders St Johns Buildings 15th January 2014 £600 132
Wirral Council invoice Leona Harrison St Johns Buildings 15th January 2014 £1536 133
Wirral Council invoice Leona Harrison St Johns Buildings 15th January 2014 £1536 133
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 15th January 2014 £672 134
Wirral Council invoice Michael J Kennedy St Johns Buildings 15th January 2014 £672 134
Wirral Council invoice Catherine Rimmer St Johns Buildings 20th January 2014 £720 135
Wirral Council invoice Catherine Rimmer St Johns Buildings 20th January 2014 £720 135
Wirral Council invoice Helen Wilson St Johns Buildings 21st January 2014 £912 136
Wirral Council invoice Helen Wilson St Johns Buildings 21st January 2014 £912 136
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 17th January 2014 £951.36 137
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 17th January 2014 £951.36 137
Wirral Council invoice James Gatenby St Johns Buildings 20th January 2014 £607.68 138
Wirral Council invoice James Gatenby St Johns Buildings 20th January 2014 £607.68 138
Wirral Council invoice Helen Wilson St Johns Buildings 23rd January 2014 £816 139
Wirral Council invoice Helen Wilson St Johns Buildings 23rd January 2014 £816 139
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 23rd January 2014 £696 140
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 23rd January 2014 £696 140
Wirral Council invoice Anthony Gill Kings Chambers 28th January 2014 £1860 141
Wirral Council invoice Anthony Gill Kings Chambers 28th January 2014 £1860 141
Wirral Council invoice Sweet & Maxwell Ltd 2nd January 2014 £1041.60 142
Wirral Council invoice Sweet & Maxwell Ltd 2nd January 2014 £1041.60 142
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 14th February 2014 £720 143
Wirral Council invoice Andrew Haggis St Johns Buildings 14th February 2014 £720 143
Wirral Council invoice Kate Burnell St Johns Buildings 18th February 2014 £511.68 144
Wirral Council invoice Kate Burnell St Johns Buildings 18th February 2014 £511.68 144
Wirral Council invoice Peta M L Harrison St Johns Buildings 18th February 2014 £888 145
Wirral Council invoice Peta M L Harrison St Johns Buildings 18th February 2014 £888 145
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans LLP 25th February 2014 £1360.80 146
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans LLP 25th February 2014 £1360.80 146
Wirral Council invoice Damien Sanders St Johns Buildings 26th February 2014 £528 147
Wirral Council invoice Damien Sanders St Johns Buildings 26th February 2014 £528 147
Wirral Council invoice Paul Burns Exchange Chambers 19th February 2014 Page 1 of 3 £1120 148
Wirral Council invoice Paul Burns Exchange Chambers 19th February 2014 Page 1 of 3 £1120 148
Wirral Council invoice Paul Burns Exchange Chambers 19th February 2014 Page 2 of 3 £1120 148
Wirral Council invoice Paul Burns Exchange Chambers 19th February 2014 Page 2 of 3 £1120 148
Wirral Council invoice Paul Burns Exchange Chambers 19th February 2014 Page 3 of 3 £1120 148
Wirral Council invoice Paul Burns Exchange Chambers 19th February 2014 Page 3 of 3 £1120 148
Wirral Council invoice Robin Hopkins KBW 10th February 2014 £1008 149
Wirral Council invoice Robin Hopkins KBW 10th February 2014 £1008 149
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 5th March 2014 £543.36 150
Wirral Council invoice Joanne Jade Abraham St Johns Buildings 5th March 2014 £543.36 150
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans LLP 30th January 2014 £4982.40 151
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans LLP 30th January 2014 £4982.40 151
Wirral Council invoice Lexis Nexis Butterworths 3rd March 2014 £1659 152
Wirral Council invoice Lexis Nexis Butterworths 3rd March 2014 £1659 152
Wirral Council invoice Mark Senior St Johns Buildings 10th March 2014 £528 153
Wirral Council invoice Mark Senior St Johns Buildings 10th March 2014 £528 153
Wirral Council invoice Mark Senior St Johns Buildings 10th March 2014 £600 154
Wirral Council invoice Mark Senior St Johns Buildings 10th March 2014 £600 154
Wirral Council invoice Sharpe Pritchard 31st January 2014 £6468 155
Wirral Council invoice Sharpe Pritchard 31st January 2014 £6468 155
Wirral Council invoice Cerys Williams St Johns Buildings 13th March 2014 £816 156
Wirral Council invoice Cerys Williams St Johns Buildings 13th March 2014 £816 156
Wirral Council invoice Mark Senior St Johns Buildings 18th March 2014 Page 1 of 2 £1296 157
Wirral Council invoice Mark Senior St Johns Buildings 18th March 2014 Page 1 of 2 £1296 157
Wirral Council invoice Mark Senior St Johns Buildings 18th March 2014 Page 2 of 2 £1296 157
Wirral Council invoice Mark Senior St Johns Buildings 18th March 2014 Page 2 of 2 £1296 157

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Isn’t it time Wirral Council got their sums right on Lyndale School?

Isn’t it time Wirral Council got their sums right on Lyndale School?

Isn’t it time Wirral Council got their sums right on Lyndale School?

Councillor Tony Smith (Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services) at the Special Cabinet Meeting of 4th September 2014 to discuss Lyndale School L to R Cllr Stuart Whittingham, Cllr Tony Smith, Cllr Bernie Mooney and Lyndzay Roberts
Councillor Tony Smith (Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services) at the Special Cabinet Meeting of 4th September 2014 to discuss Lyndale School L to R Cllr Stuart Whittingham, Cllr Tony Smith (Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services), Cllr Bernie Mooney and Lyndzay Roberts

I’ve rewritten this blog post a few times as it is connected to tonight’s Coordinating Committee meeting about Lyndale School and the earlier Cabinet decision on the 4th September 2014.

The funding formula the government will use for allocating schools funding in 2015-16 hasn’t been decided yet and is now out to consultation.

It seems Wirral Council officers have for nearly a year been predicting what form the regulations will take. If changes are made to the regulations as a result of the current consultation it is also possible that this will change how much funding Wirral Council will receive in 2015-16 for Lyndale School.

Certainly it seems entirely premature at this stage to go through a consultation on closure when there is uncertainty at this point as to the funding regime.

However, where does this leave Lyndale School? Looking through the proposed regulations for school funding in 2015-16 a few things did occur to me.

There is a set amount, a lump sum that each primary school receives irrespective of its size of places or pupil numbers. This six-figure sum will be lost to Wirral Council if Lyndale School closes and would ultimately result in less money being spent on children.

One of Wirral Council’s arguments for closing Lyndale School, is that the £33,470 Lyndale would receive in inclusion funding in 2015-16 would be shared between the other ten special schools who would each receive an extra £3,347 each.

Actually that’s wrong. This is because £33,470 is a full year allocation and if Lyndale was closed, it would be done part way through the year (January 2016 is about three-quarters through the 2015-16 financial year). So Lyndale School would get about £25,102 for inclusion funding in that year, which would leave £8,368. This would then be shared between the ten special schools (if Lyndale closed) who would each receive a further £836.80 each, not £3,347.

This was an error in the Cabinet report to its meeting of 4th September 2014, repeated in Surjit Tour’s letter of 30th September 2014 and repeated in the papers for tonight’s meeting. The effect of which is to exaggerate the financial case for closing Lyndale School. To my recollection the error wasn’t highlighted during the Cabinet meeting on the 4th September 2014. However I’m sure there are possibly many other errors in Wirral Council’s education department’s arithmetic, with regards to Lyndale School funding, which I haven’t spotted yet (who in a twist of irony actually also have a duty to teach children mathematics).

I wonder if anyone will mention it tonight or has scrutiny died a horrible death at Wirral Council?

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