Special Meeting (Wirral Council) Part 2 20/2/2012 Anna Klonowski Report

Well I’ve finally uploaded the last of the footage I took at the Special Council meeting a week ago to Youtube. A few videos ended up with errors so about three speeches have been cut. It’s all in a playlist now if you want to see it from start to finish. Part 1 (all 15 … Continue reading “Special Meeting (Wirral Council) Part 2 20/2/2012 Anna Klonowski Report”

Well I’ve finally uploaded the last of the footage I took at the Special Council meeting a week ago to Youtube. A few videos ended up with errors so about three speeches have been cut.

It’s all in a playlist now if you want to see it from start to finish. Part 1 (all 15 minutes of it) from two weeks ago when it was first adjourned can be viewed by clicking the link.

Part 1 of the resumed adjourned meeting is below and forms part of a playlist so you can easily get to the next part. A speech of Cllr Green is missing at the end as I ran out of battery and about three speeches have had to be shortened due to errors on the video file. It should give a good idea about what it was about if you weren’t there though, and as promised during the meeting itself a number of names of people and organisations have now been made public.

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Audit and Risk Management Committee (Wirral Council) 1st February 2012 Part 1

Present:

Committee

Cllr Crabtree (Chair)
Cllr Dodd
Cllr Mountney
Cllr Brighouse
Cllr John Salter deputising for Cllr Ron Abbey
Cllr Irene Williams
Cllr Jeff Green

Officers

Mark Delap (Committee Clerk)
Deputy Director of Finance
Chief Internal Auditor
Bill Norman (Legal Adviser/Head of Law, HR and Asset Management Department)
Tom Sault

Audit Commission
Mike Thomas (District Auditor)

Liz Temple-Murray

The Chair asked for declarations of interest. There weren’t any declared, so the Committee considered the minutes of the meeting held on the 29th November 2011.  The Chief Internal Auditor said they had been asked in the minutes to circulate a copy of the Internal Audit Manual.

Cllr Darren Dodd referred to amendments to the minutes. The Chair said if he was OK with the explanation Cllr Dodd had received from Mark Delap? He asked if it was OK if he signed the minutes?

The Chair moved onto item 3 Annual Governance Report 2010/2011 Action Plan Update.

The Deputy Director of Finance referred the Committee to the Action Plan and recommendations.

The Chair asked for comments.

There were no comments, so the Chair moved onto item 4 Statement of Accounts 2011/2012 Review of Arrangements.

Tom Sault introduced item 4. He referred to the Statement of Accounts and Action Plan and updated the Committee on areas of further progress. He said he was happy to take any questions?

Cllr Green was keen that there was not a repeat of last year and following criticism by external audit didn’t want the situation to happen again. He asked Tom to clarify and comment on the proposal for closing the Statement of Accounts.

Audit & Risk Management Committee (Wirral Council) 29th November 2011 Part 1, Declarations of Interest, Minutes (28/9/2011), Budget Projections 2012-2015

Present:

Labour
Cllr Jim Crabtree (Chair)
Cllr Darren Dodd (Vice-Chair)
Cllr Irene Williams
Cllr Ron Abbey

Conservative
Cllr Simon Mountney (Spokesperson)
Cllr James Keeley
Cllr Sue Taylor (deputy for Cllr Jeff Green)

Liberal Democrat
Cllr Alan Brighouse (Spokesperson)

Officers present
Tom Sault
Surjit Tour (Legal adviser)
Mark Delap (Committee Clerk)
David Taylor-Smith

Also
Mike Thomas (District Auditor)
Liz Temple-Murray (Audit Commission)

Surjit Tour after talking with the Chair Cllr Jim Crabtree left the room. Mike Thomas said that agenda item 9 (Audit Commission) HESPE Follow Up Report would not be dealt with tonight.

Cllr Jim Crabtree said he would like to make a start and welcomed people to the meeting. He asked for any declarations of interest. None was declared. The minutes of the meeting held on the 28th September 2011 were agreed.

David Taylor-Smith introduced the Budget Projections 2012-2015 report. He said it was a regular report to Cabinet and referred to page nineteen, which dealt with the shortfall in each of the next three financial years. There were processes to address the issues rather than debate over how the shortfall would be found. He asked for any questions.

Cllr Jim Crabtree invited Cllr Darren Dodd to speak.

Cllr Darren Dodd asked him to “tell us more about the processes in place”?

David Taylor-Smith said the Director of Finance reported to the Cabinet meetings. He said the Cabinet and the Executive behind the scenes had regular debates over planning and how the [Labour] administration responded to the reports was up to them.

Sustainable Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee 20th October 2011 PACSPE Call-in

Tonight’s meeting was as the Cabinet decision of the 22nd September 2011 on the PACSPE contract had been called-in by Cllr Jeff Green, Cllr Tom Harney, Cllr Dave Mitchell, Cllr Lesley Rennie and Cllr David Elderton.
At the end of a 3 1/2 hour meeting the voting went as follows.

Labour Amendment to Conservative motion

This amendment upheld the original decision.

Votes For         : 5 (Labour councillors)
Votes Against : 5 (Conservatives councillor plus one Liberal Democrat councillor)

Abstention       : 0
Casting vote of Conservative Chair: AGAINST

Votes For        : 5 (Labour councillors)

Votes Against: 6 (Conservatives councillor plus one Liberal Democrat councillor) + Chair’s casting vote
Abstention     :  0

AMENDMENT FAILS

Conservative Motion

Votes for          : 5 (Conservative councillors plus one Liberal Democrat councillor)

Votes against: 5 (Labour councillors)

Abstentions   : 0

Casting vote of Chair: For

Votes for:          6 (Conservative councillors plus one Liberal Democrat councillor) + Chair’s casting vote

Votes against: 5 (Labour councillors)

Abstentions:  0

MOTION PASSES (Proposed Cllr John Hale, seconded Cllr Don McCubbin)

Text of Motion:

This committee notes that:

    • The Cabinet appeared to ignore, and did not even mention, the findings of the Office of Government Commerce Gateway Reviews that the Parks & Countryside Services Procurement Exercise (PACSPE) had been subjected to.
    • No attempt was made to publically question officers from the Finance Department, the Legal Department and the Procurement Unit who were members of the PACSPE Project Board as to whether the “risk” identified by District Audit, and made such play of in the Cabinet resolution could or had been satisfactorily mitigated.
    • No discussion was had by Cabinet Members of the risks of not awarding the contract.
    • No mention or discussion took place regarding stakeholder management or the views of key stakeholders about the benefits of clear quality improvements that were built into the procurement exercise. In fact, other than the view of the Council’s Trade Unions, the results of the consultation and the views of the park users and user groups were not even mentioned in a single Cabinet meeting.
    • No reference was made to the new post of Community Engagement Manager to work with Friends, stakeholders, user groups, and local Area Forums or the new key performance indicators developed through PACSPE to reflect the change to a more customer and community focused service.
    • Insufficient account seemed to have been taken of the reduction from costs of £8.1 million per year to £7.4 million per year already achieved by the PACSPE process with the potential to reduce costs by a further circa £500,000. Indeed, it is hard to understand how the Leader of of the Council characterised a £1.2 million per annum potential saving arising from PACSPE to be sufficiently marginal to be ignored.
    • No effort appeared to be made by Cabinet Members to discuss or evaluate the additional costs to Council Tax Payers of purchasing what has been accepted as worn out equipment requiring immediate replacement (circa £2.5 million) or the TUPE costs of bringing current contractor staff into the Council workforce and pension scheme, per annum or over the 10 year period.
    • No mention was made of the training and development programme for staff and volunteers or the three to six new apprentices to be created as part of PACSPE.
    • No explanation was given at Cabinet regarding the opposition to a 10 year contract that would reduce annual costs by circa £1.2 million and improve the quality of our parks and countryside, other than the expressed need contained in the resolution to reduce spending by £85 million over three years.
    • Therefore we believe that the decision to refuse to award the PACSPE contract would see the ever decreasing quality of a service starved of investment by this administration which is already characterised by going for the quick fix instead of making the difficult but necessary strategic decisions in the interests of Wirral residents.

The Committee recommends to the Cabinet

*Editor’s note will have to check rest of resolution due to noise preventing taking it down*

My guess is that the rest of it is “reconsider the decision”.

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In the interests of openness, John Brace lives opposite Bidston Hill which is covered by the PACSPE contract.

Wirral Council Cabinet 13/10/2011 Job Evaluation, Merseyside Pension Fund accounts, Part 4

Chris Hyams, Head of HR & OD introduced Agenda Item 23: Job Evaluation. She said she sought Cabinet’s approval for the implementation of stage 4 which covered the Heads of Service and Chief Officers. The costs were in Agenda Item 35 – Exempt Appendix – Job Evaluation. She wanted to complete the process and they were working on stages 2 and 3. Stage 3 was underway regarding the evaluation of jobs.

Cllr Steve Foulkes asked if there was much option about taking it through to the upper grades?

Chris Hyams responded that there had been a local agreement in 2008 [by Cabinet].

Cllr Adrian Jones referred to 3.1 in the report . The recommendations were agreed.

Ian Coleman, Director of Finance introduced item 4 Merseyside Pension Fund Accounts. He said it was a statutory report that had already been agreed by the Pension Committee and the Audit and Risk Management Committee. The auditors had given an unqualified opinion.

Cllr Steve Foulkes said he was happy to endorse the accounts. The item was agreed.

Ian Coleman, Director of Finance introduced item 5 Audit Commission – Merseyside Pension Fund Annual Governance Report. He said it had already been presented to the Audit & Risk Management committee.

Cllr Steve Foulkes said that Wirral Council had been entrusted with the governance of one of the largest pension funds. Regarding best practice and skills, he asked how much it was possible for cross-skilling so Wirral’s corporate governance could pick up best practice from the Pension Fund?

Ian Coleman, Director of Finance said the Pension Fund was a division in the Department of Finance. He said the Pension Fund was a single service operation so governance was easier. The Pension Fund had to stick to Pension Committee policies and had oversight by the Audit Commission.