Category: Cabinet

Leasowe, Saughall Massie and Moreton Area Forum 27th February 2013 Part 2 | Moreton Youth Club

Leasowe, Saughall Massie and Moreton Area Forum 27th February 2013 Part 2 | Moreton Youth Club

Continued from Part 1.

Caroline Laing said that officers had been asked for savings [in the Youth and Play Service] of £1.2 million which had led to a report to the Cabinet meeting of the 18th February.

She continued by saying that the Budget option would consolidate the existing youth clubs into four youth hubs and would result in a reduction in the number of outreach teams and the closure of eleven satellite youth clubs. The proposals would be discussed and had been recommended to the Budget Council meeting of the 5th March. The Leasowe Youth Club was proposed to be closed with no recommendation to be saved, meetings had been held with Leasowe Community Homes and 7 Waves Community Radio over an exit strategy, there would be a locality manager to give advice and guidance to voluntary organisations and there would still be some outreach provision which would be focussed on more targeted activity.

Cllr Blakeley said that before he asked for questions about Moreton Youth Centre, he want to ask if Moreton Youth Club would stay open until the Birkenhead hub costing £1 million opened?

Caroline Laing said it was worded until but she didn’t know the answer.

Cllr Blakeley said it sounded like the Moreton Youth Club wouldn’t close until the super Hub was open and asked for any questions?

A member of the public asked what criteria were used to decide what youth centres closed and which stayed open?
Caroline Laing answered that the decision was made by Cabinet, but in relation to the Budget four would be retained.

A member of the public involved with a voluntary group that used a youth club said that they hadn’t been consulted on closure and knew of another voluntary group in the same position. Tracey Smith said that managers had been provided with the detail of the consultation. Cllr Lewis asked the member of the public to see him at the end so he could liaise between her and the locality manager. Caroline Laing pointed out that the locality manager appointment had not yet been made.

A member of the public called Steve said that the youth club had been known as Cadburys Youth Club and that he’d been one of the first to go it many decades ago. It had been built for the people of Moreton, but had since gone to Wirral Council. He said it was scandalous that now people would not have anywhere to go to at night, that there would be more people hanging around if they removed provision and questioned how people would be able to afford the bus fare to Birkenhead and back finally saying it was “not right”.

Continued at Part 3.

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 18th February 2013 Budget Meeting

Video of Wirral Council’s Labour Cabinet meeting of the 18th February 2013 to discuss their Budget recommendations to the Council meeting of the 5th March 2013

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Above is video of the well attended Cabinet meeting of 18th February 2013 which discussed the Labour Budget recommendation to Council (which will meet on the 5th March). The agenda, reports, draft minutes etc can be found by following the link.

It was another well attended meeting in the Civic Hall, prior to it was a march and protest outside the Town Hall.

Every agenda item (apart from declarations of interest and minutes) was a recommendation to Council on the 5th March, as the Labour Group could change their mind between now and then on their budget, I’ll save commenting in detail on Labour’s Budget until after the Budget Council meeting on the 5th March.

Council Meeting (Wirral Council) (11th February 2013) Kate Wood made Honorary Alderman, Debates on Taxes and Spending

A report on the Council meetings (Wirral Council) of 11th February 2013 along with video footage of the latter. The first was an extraordinary meeting to confer the title of Honorary Alderman on Kate Wood. The second was a regular meeting with motions on local government funding, health, housing, elections, benefits, Area Forums, tax credits, payday loans, public sector contracts and Universal Credit.

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Above is the first 2 1/4 hours of the Wirral Councill meeting of 11th February 2013.

Unfortunately the day this finally uploaded, someone rang up my ISP pretending to be the bill payer (my wife) and cancelled the ADSL line (which took a week to set up with another provider).

Prior to the main meeting there was a short (well by Council standards fifteen minutes is short) Extraordinary Meeting to make Kate Wood an Honorary Alderman. As a slight legal footnote for the last two and a half years Wirral Council could also confer the title of Honorary Alderwomen as the last Labour government changed the legislation in 2010. The papers and minutes for that meeting can be found on Wirral Council’s website.

The main meeting that night was much longer.

The first controversial point (at least if you’re a Conservative councillor) was the recommendation from Cabinet for approval by Council that Cllr Steve Foulkes be the Deputy Mayor for 2013/14. However to avoid any long drawn out debate on the merits of Cllr Foulkes as Deputy Mayor, the matter was simply noted on the basis that it’ll be decided at the Annual Council meeting of the 13th May 2013.

As usual only three notices of motion were debated, the first being Labour’s entitled Unfair Cuts in Local Government Funding, along with a Lib Dem amendment.

The second notice was a Conservative motion entitled Council Tax Referendum along with a Labour amendment and Lib Dem amendment.

Around this point I ran out of battery as the meeting was by now two and a quarter hours long.

The last notice of motion debated was a Lib Dem motion entitled Council Finances along with a Labour amendment.

A few of the motions not debated were unanimously agreed (well unanimous except for the abstention of the Mayor) (Vascular Services Review (about moving vascular services from Arrowe Park to the Countess of Chester), “Health Homes” and the Case for Selective Licensing of the Private Rented Sector and Construction Industry Blacklists).

For the rest of the motions and objections there were splits in the vote among party political lines. The first was “Attack on Democracy in Wirral” – a Conservative motion against the move to four yearly elections from 2015/6, the second was “The Empty Rhetoric of Localism” – a Labour motion about Council Tax Benefit, Crisis Loans and Community Care Grants, the third a Conservative objection against abolishing Area Forums and calling for consultation, the fourth a Lib Dem objection to abolishing Area Forums calling for it to be referred to a group of councillors to make recommendations on, the fifth a Labour motion entitled “Cuts to Tax Credits” (as well as a Conservative amendment and Lib Dem amendment), the sixth a Labour motion on “Payday Loans” (as well as a Conservative amendment and Lib Dem amendment), the seventh a Lib Dem motion on “Tax Avoidance and Public Sector Contracts” (as well as a Labour amendment) and the eighth a Lib Dem motion on “Universal Credit” as well as a Labour amendment.

The meeting finished with a number of changes agreed to committee places, after the recent by elections and resignation.

Cabinet 24th January 2013 (Wirral Council): Adult Social Services: The Bad Debt Saga continues

Cabinet 24th January 2013 (Wirral Council): Adult Social Services: The Bad Debt Saga continues

Following the revelation just before Christmas that Wirral Council’s Adult Social Services had £5 million of “previously unnoticed bad debt” Graham Burgess, Wirral Council’s Chief Executive had this to say to last Thursday’s Cabinet on the subject.

He said, “I’ll summarise the comments in a formal email which I’ll send out to all ward councillors. Three actions have been taken in relation to this matter, one is in order to change the system essentially of debt recoverage so we’ve stopped the leakage due to bad debt, and we are following up bad debt as fast as we can. So we’ve stopped the previous practice which led to the situation.

Secondly, we’ve got a small team staff that are actively pursuing the bad debts to bring back to the Council as much as they can of the money which is owed to the Council. As I said some of it is actually more than six years old, some of it more than five years old, more difficult to bring back to the Council, nevertheless we have to be pursuing that now.

Thirdly, simply asking to undertake a review or investigation of this matter to establish how we got in this situation and to learn lessons from it. To this end I have commissioned Eugene Sullivan who until a few weeks ago was the Chair of the national Audit Commission to undertake this investigation, to give some independence to this review.

Eugene Sullivan has started the work, is interviewing some councillors who are still here, is going through records in some depth, is speaking to the District Auditor who has a role in this process and is expected to bring a written report to Members sometime in mid-February where we’ll bring the report back to Cabinet at that stage.”

So yet more bad news on the way for Wirral Council.

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 24th January 2012 Financial Monitoring (Revenue Overspend), SIGOMA report and Come Together campaign/petition Part 1

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 24th January 2013 Agenda items 1-4, Declarations of Interest, Minutes, Leaders Announcements and Financial Monitoring (Revenue), SIGOMA report and Come Together campaign

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Present:
Cllr Phil Davies
Cllr Tony Smith
Cllr Adrian Jones
Cllr Harry Smith
Cllr Brian Kenny
Cllr Pat Hackett
Cllr Chris Jones
Cllr Chris Meaden
Cllr George Davies
Cllr Ann McLachlan

Cllr Phil Davies welcomed people present and commented that the meeting was less noisy than the previous Cabinet meeting. He welcome Joe Blott, the new Strategic Director for Transformation and Resources. No declarations of interest were made.

The minutes of the meeting held on 20th December 2012 were agreed.

Cllr Phil Davies said they’d take agenda item 3 (response to alcohol consultation) as an item of Any Other Business as they needed to agree their response to the consultation in time to meet the deadline, so the first main item was Financial Monitoring – Revenue (this is the original report), which was the subject of a revised report in the supplementary agenda.

Cllr Phil Davies asked Peter Timmins to introduce the report. Peter Timmins said that the position on the overspend had improved by a £million, he referred councillors to 2.15 on page 7, talked about the earmarked reserves and referred to table 6 at 3.2 on page 10. He said that the underlying problems had been masked by one-off solutions this year.

Cllr Davies thanked Mr. Timmins for the report and said he wanted to make a few comments. He said it was pleasing to see the overspend this year down, however he said they still had additional pressures such as the bad debts issue in Adult Social Services which there would be a verbal report on later and the Social Services care home fees consultation.

He said they were waiting for a “clear steer from government” in response to the meeting they [the three party leaders] had with the Minister a few weeks ago about flexibility about capitalisation and the way the levies operate. There would be a further meeting with civil servants on Tuesday [29th January] and that they were working hard on the budget options consultation which would end at the end of the month. Following the consultation there would be a report to the Cabinet meeting of the 18th February (where they would also decide on a new three-year Corporate Plan).

Cllr Davies said he wanted to add to the recommendations (which are below):

Add the following to the recommendations in the report:-

1. Cabinet believes that the Government’s austerity policy is proving to be profoundly unfair. Authorities with the highest levels of poverty and deprivation are facing the biggest cuts. At the same time, wealthy areas with the lowest levels of poverty pay less.

2. Wirral is losing £151 per head in cuts. Liverpool is losing £252, Manchester is losing £209, Newcastle is losing £162, Birmingham is losing £166, and Sheffield is losing £140 per head.

3. Milton Keynes is losing just £38 per head. Central Bedfordshire is losing £18 per head. And people in North Dorset are losing just £2 per head.

4. Cabinet also notes that a recent report by SIGOMA (Special Interest Group of Metropolitan Authorities Outside London) indicates that out of the 47 SIGOMA authorities Wirral has had the largest cut in its funding from central government (2.62% cut in revenue spending power 2013-14). This compares with the SIGOMA average of -1.78% and the average for Shire Districts of -1.37%.

5. Cabinet supports the ‘Come Together’ Campaign launched by the Mayor of Liverpool on the 18th January when the Leaders of Core Cities, Merseyside Districts and Faith Leaders met to discuss the impact of the Government’s austerity policy.

6. Cabinet supports the on-line petition which has been launched at www.come-together.co.uk. This calls on the Government to urgently re-think its policy and to apply the cuts more fairly across the country, protecting those most in need, and making sure those in wealthy parts of the country pay their fair share. We urge all residents to sign this petition.

This was seconded by Cllr McLachlan and agreed by the Cabinet.