Wirral Council’s Cabinet agrees to consultation on £2.498 million of cuts There were hundreds of people at last Thursday’s Cabinet meeting. In fact there were so many people present that the venue for the Cabinet Meeting that evening was moved from Committee Room 3 (maximum 46 people) at Wallasey Town Hall to the Civic … Continue reading “Wirral Council’s Cabinet agrees to consultation on £2.498 million of cuts”
Wirral Council’s Cabinet agrees to consultation on £2.498 million of cuts
There were hundreds of people at last Thursday’s Cabinet meeting.
In fact there were so many people present that the venue for the Cabinet Meeting that evening was moved from Committee Room 3 (maximum 46 people) at Wallasey Town Hall to the Civic Hall (maximum 370 people). However those maximum numbers are reduced further by about twenty if you bear in mind the ten councillors on the Cabinet plus senior management that support the Cabinet at its meetings.
Before the meeting started at 6.15pm there was a large protest outside Wallasey Town Hall.
As it was dark, at that time of the evening my photos of the protest haven’t come out very well. You should however be able to see the flags and some of the protest slogans in the pictures below (although I apologise that some are unreadable). The trade unions were protesting about the potential loss of jobs, there were those who use the Council’s services that are under threat there too.
Protest outside Wallasey Town Hall 17th December 2015 before Cabinet meeting photo 1 of 6 thumbnail
A farce at Wirral Council’s public question time (Act 2, Scene 1) Is Wirral Council “open and transparent”?
A farce at Wirral Council’s public question time (Act 2, Scene 1) Is Wirral Council “open and transparent”?
A question on councillors expenses to Cllr Adrian Jones Wirral Council 14th December 2015
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Wirral Council’s Public Question Time 14th December 2015
Before I write about the question I asked of Councillor Adrian Jones at public question time, I am going to explain some of the legal background, what’s happened so far and why there are echoes of the extreme lengths that the former Speaker of the House of Commons Michael Martin went to over MPs’ expenses.
There are a number of different laws (and a bit of history) here that apply to this, so I am going to start by explaining my understanding of them and explain why Cllr Adrian Jones has unfortunately fallen into the trap of believing things officers tell him and also getting bamboozled by some of the legal jargon. Here is a link to a transcript of a previous answer he gave.
I’m a local government elector here on the Wirral (basically that means I get to vote in elections to Wirral Council).
Each year, during the audit there is a period of about three weeks when local government electors have a legal right to inspect and receive free copies of accounts to be audited and copies of all books, deeds, contracts, bills, vouchers and receipts relating to them.
Wirral Council can remove any details of employees, but has to seek the external auditor’s permission (in this case Grant Thornton) to remove anything else.
Once the inspection period ends, there is then a period when questions can be asked of the auditor followed by a period when formal objections can be raised or requests for a public interest report.
In case Wirral Council thinks I’m picking on it, this year I made requests to Merseytravel (part of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority), Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority (also called Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority), Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority and Liverpool City Council.
Each of those other bodies managed to respond and provide the information for inspection more or less within the inspection period.
Two of these authorities (Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority and Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority) provided some of what I requested in electronic format.
Wirral Council however decided that providing me with what I’d estimate at 10% of what I asked for was reasonable. It’s not!
These other public bodies I refer to are much smaller (in terms of staff and budget) than Wirral Council, yet by being flexible saved to give the example as outlined above the internal costs of copying a contract of over 11,000 pages in length. Had I requested such a contract from Wirral Council I would still be waiting as they would insist on supplying it in paper format!
In addition to this I requested various invoices and to inspect the councillors’ expenses (I haven’t seen any of the latter and received about one in ten of the former).
By reversing this decision Wirral Council saved ’thousands in the costs of perhaps adding an extra hour to the next Highways and Traffic Representation Panel public meeting, the cost of it then going on the agenda of the next Regeneration and Environment Policy and Performance Committee public meeting and the cost of a Cabinet Member finally making a decision (along with the associated costs of officers trying to persuade objectors to drop their objections).
I might point out that as I put this information in the public domain had Cabinet reversed their decision at an earlier stage the costs of consultation on the proposed traffic regulation order (an expensive public notice in the local newspaper etc) would have been saved too.
I would suspect that councillors’ use of taxis would be broadly comparable from year to year. So let’s test Cllr Adrian Jones’ assertion.
In response to this FOI request the taxi bill in 13/14 was ~£3k and Cllr Adrian Jones confirmed in answer to my question that for the 14/15 financial year the total cost was roughly the same.
Here are three councillors that got taxis in 13/14 and the costs:
Cllr Moira McLaughlin £755.30 Cllr Pat Hackett £700 Cllr Steve Niblock £493.90
Had anyone of those stopped getting taxis at Wirral Council’s expense the total amount for 14/15 would’ve dropped dramatically.
Yet here are the relevant amounts from the 2014/15 published list:
Cllr Moira McLaughlin £NIL Cllr Pat Hackett £NIL Cllr Steve Niblock £NIL
If these three councillors had all decided to give up getting taxis and the £NIL amounts were correct (the latter point Cllr Adrian Jones states in answer to my question) then the total amount would drop by ~£2k (the combined total of all three). However it hasn’t!
You can see the full exchange between myself and Cllr Adrian Jones below.
Cllr Ron Abbey (who is a member of Wirral Council’s Audit and Risk Management Committee) makes the point before Cllr Adrian Jones that it is implied that this is unlawful and isn’t that terrible to imply such a thing?
Clearly as clearly outlined above, had Wirral Council not flouted a number of its other legal responsibilities I would be able to answer that question and Wirral Council’s cultural attitudes towards its legal responsibilities continue to have the effect of interfering with the freedom of the press and triggering the Streisand effect.
Councillor Adrian Jones makes the point that councillors are trusted not to misuse the public purse paying for their taxis.
Below is a claim form (as I’m being seasonal) from one of Cllr Adrian Jones’ party colleagues, a Councillor Peter Brennan (a councillor at Liverpool City Council) who claimed from Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority (and was paid for) £5.64 for car mileage expenses to and from a carol concert at St Nicholas’ Church. In the grand scheme of things you may point out that £5.64 doesn’t matter and at least he didn’t get a taxi! However it’s the cumulative cost to the public purse of these matters and the excessive secrecy at Wirral Council that is leading to suspicion as to why despite Cllr Adrian Jones’ claims about openness and transparency that at Wirral Council they are being anything but on this politically sensitive topic!
Cllr Peter Brennan car mileage claim November 2014 to February 2015 page 1 of 2 thumbnail
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Wirral’s Cabinet expected to start consultation on 4% Council Tax rise and £2.4 million of cuts
Cllr Phil Davies at a recent Cabinet meeting
Wirral Council’s Cabinet will meet next Thursday evening to discuss further cuts to Wirral Council’s budget for the 2016/17 year. Councillors are expected to agree to a public consultation on £2.5 million of budget options as well as a 4% council tax increase. Cabinet is also expected to agree to a staff consultation on budget options such as reducing the pay rise from 2% to 1%.
The consultation will run from the 18th December 2015 and finishes on the 29th January 2016. At the end of the consultation Cabinet will propose a budget to be voted on at a meeting of all Wirral’s councillors.
Community Safety (£367,000) – litter enforcement was recently outsourced to Kingdom Security and this proposal would see the same happen to dog fouling enforcement, Wirral Council hope to increase income to the community safety service from landlords and schools.
Discretionary Housing Payments & Advice (£406,000) – this proposal would see Wirral Council only covering rent shortfalls to people in hardship to the amount they receive from the government, it would also see the end of Wirral Council providing welfare benefits advice.
Girtrell Court service re-provision (£155,000) – Girtrell Court provides short breaks for carers of adults with physical and learning disabilities, this proposal would see that service provided by the private sector instead of directly by Wirral Council.
Highways Maintenance and Road Safety (£320,000) – This proposal means Wirral Council would only use the money it receives for highways maintenance, only 100 out of 300 grit bins would be filled and school crossing patrols would be reviewed.
Leisure Centres and Golf Courses (£641,000) – Discounts and free access would be removed, such as free access for long serving Council staff, foster carers and families, free swimming for those under 18 in the school holidays and free swimming for the over 65s between 9am and noon.
Libraries Re-provision (£203,000) – Transferring up to 12 of Wirral’s libraries into "community ownership" (run by volunteers rather than paid staff).
Parks Community Partnership Working (£108,000) – Increasing the role of community organisations and volunteers in parks maintenance and looking to increase parks income.
Charging for the Pest Control Service (£30,000) – Charging landlords, business and residents who can afford to pay for dealing with rats.
Charging for the Garden Waste Service (£196,000) – Increasing the brown bin charge from £35 a year to £40 a year (but with a £5 discount if paid online).
So to summarise the proposed cuts (along with a 4% council tax increase) are to dog fouling, community safety, covering rent shortfalls for those in financial hardship, axing the welfare right service, the short breaks for carers service, highways maintenance, grit bins, school crossing patrols, free swimming for children, free swimming for pensioners, free leisure access for some Council staff, transferring many of Wirral’s libraries to be run by volunteers, having more volunteers involved in parks maintenance, charging for dealing with rats and increasing the brown bin charge by £5.
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EXCLUSIVE: First 83 pages of Wirral Council’s Highway Services Contract with BAM Nuttall
In 2013, Wirral Council’s Cabinet on the 7th November decided to award the Highway Services Contract to BAM Nuttall (which started on the 1st April 2014). BAM Nuttall won the contract out of three companies that bid for it and they replaced the previous contractor Colas. The contract runs from 2014 to 2018 and has an estimated value of £30 to £33 million (£6 to £6.6 million a year). You can read the Cabinet report that led to that decision and the Internal Audit report and Gateway 3 report (along with the recommendations/action plan for both of those) on Wirral Council’s website.
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At a meeting on the 7th November 2013 Wirral Council’s Cabinet spends less than two minutes deciding on awarding the £30 to £33 million Highway Services Contract to BAM Nuttall (that agenda item starts at 1m 40s)
This year was the first year I could request a copy of the BAM Nuttall contract during the audit and I’ve scanned in the first 83 pages (of a very long contract). The Highway Services Contract is for:
the provision of standby and call-out, reactive and preventative maintenance on all parts of the highway, public car park and coastal defence infrastructure for which Wirral Council is responsible, including: carriageways; footways; gully cleaning and drainage; street lighting and electrical services; traffic signs and road markings; street and coastal defence furniture; bridges; subways and retaining walls and sea wall and accesses; together with snow and ice clearance; including precautionary salting except for
maintenance of traffic signals equipment and their electrical supplies, all maintenance and improvement schemes estimated in value at over £250,000 and the provision of gritting vehicles and road salt.
The documents below cover the parent company guarantee with Koninklijke Bam Groep N.V. (no that’s not a spelling mistake but the name of a company based in the Netherlands), then the start of volume 1 (part 1) of the contract documents which covers form of agreement, bond (unfortunately the details haven’t been filled in on this), form of tender, declaration, what information is considered commercially sensitive for freedom of information requests, information assurance, insurance certificate (with AXA Corporate Solutions), parent company letter guarantee, contract data part 1 (data provided by Wirral Council, partnering information, more contract data on the optional parts of the contract (pages 62-63 add optional clauses about FOI requests) which includes matters such as TUPE, subcontracting, intellectual property, data protection, human rights, the Local Government Ombudsman, price adjustment for inflation and other optional clauses/changes to the contract).
Below are thumbnail images of the contract pages. The text on the thumbnails is just about readable on my laptop screen. If there are any pages that you find it’s not readable please leave a comment with the page number and I’ll link the thumbnail to a higher resolution image for that page.
The optional contract clauses added about FOI requests seem to mean that if a FOI request is made for information about or relating to the contract, that Wirral Council will contact BAM Nuttall and ask it to make representations if it wants information to be withheld. Page 24 of the contract classes the following parts of the contract as "commercially sensitive" which are Contract Data Part 2, The Price List and the Fee Percentage Schedules.
Does Wirral Council believe that the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government?
Wirral Council Cabinet meeting at Birkenhead Town Hall Thursday 12th March 2015 Left to right Surjit Tour (Monitoring Officer), Cllr Phil Davies (Leader of the Council) and Joe Blott (Strategic Director (Transformation and Resources))
I was planning on writing today about the implications of the Comprehensive Spending Review (however that’s something that would really benefit from a very in-depth piece), but Wirral Council have published an interesting document about Cabinet meeting report protocol.
That probably sounds rather boring, but it shows the informal arrangements that everyone knew existed behind the scenes before reports were published are being put on a more formal footing.
Although much of it is probably the rather dry nuts and bolts and let’s face it there will still be people submitting reports late and chairs not following procedures with regards to late reports, it does seem an attempt at least to make what the press and public end up reading at least not full of obvious errors (and I’m not talking about spelling mistakes).
The report does state what I knew already, that the SLT (Senior Leadership Team or senior managers at Wirral Council) see reports before they’re published and have a chance to suggest edits.
Even before each public Cabinet meeting happens, Cllr Phil Davies has a meeting of his Cabinet (called a briefing) which the officers are expected to attend (usually in what’s called the Cabinet Briefing Room behind locked doors at Wallasey Town Hall) where he goes through the entire agenda and matters are discussed in private.
Interestingly, this report shows that the Cabinet briefing is used as a filter and the Cabinet briefing can be used to change the reports that are later published. I presume this practice of writing reports by committee leads to some bits being watered down.
There are also four compulsory steps a report has to go through before the press or public see it. It seems reports have to be run by legal (which makes me laugh considering some of the legal howlers I’ve pointed out on this blog over the years), human resources (which is understandable as many of the decisions are going to have HR implications), finance (again understandable) and the Head of Service (which has been standard practice for years anyway). As there are vacant heads of service posts, in that situation the relevant strategic director signs it off.
However there is one very important group of people this all leaves out, the public. Anyone involved with politics will of course comment and say that the last group of people involved in political decisions are the public.
This is what Wirral Council’s constitution states about decision-making:
13.2 Principles of decision-making
All decisions of the Council will be made in accordance with the following principles:
(i) proportionality (i.e. the action must be proportionate to the desired outcome);
(ii) due consultation and the consideration of professional advice from officers;
(iii) respect for human rights;
(iv) a presumption in favour of openness;
(v) clarity of aims and desired outcomes; and
(vi) Wednesbury* reasonableness (i.e. the decision must not be so unreasonable that no reasonable Council could have reached it, having taken into account all relevant considerations, and having ignored irrelevant considerations).
Every policy disaster (whether the library closure fiasco which resulted in a public inquiry or half a dozen others I could mention here) has resulted because the public weren’t involved (or were involved/consulted but politely ignored by politicians and officers who had the arrogance to think they knew better) and/or the above principles weren’t followed.
Let’s take the Fort Perch Rock car park charging U-turn as an example. Principle (ii) above states the "consideration of professional advice from officers" yet officers didn’t tell them that if they started charging at Fort Perch Rock car park then the lease the Council had for the Marine Point development would lead to charges at hundreds of spaces at the other currently free car parks.
No, it fell to a local blogger to publish the pages of the lease, a large petition against it of thousands of people and a campaign against the charges from a former Conservative councillor in the marginal seat of New Brighton. This was despite Labour’s backbench councillors warning the Cabinet at at least one public meeting not to go ahead with plans for charging.
Next week, the Transformation and Resources Committee will discuss the high-profile issue of a fire station in Saughall Massie. At the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority meeting earlier this year where the decision was made, the petition organiser was given five minutes to speak and a delegation from the Saughall Massie Conservation Society was also given the opportunity to speak for up to five minutes.
Yes, you are probably going to say, this ties in with (iii) above, respect for human rights as article 21, which Wirral Council signed up to when Cllr Adrian Jones was Mayor quite clearly states
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Notice the importance of that word directly or through freely chosen representatives (that is politicians).
The other public bodies I report on either have mechanisms written into their constitution (for example Liverpool City Council has a regular public question time slot at many of its meetings and I’ve mentioned the mechanisms that Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority has), so people can exercise their rights at public meetings and have their say before the decision is made.
At Wirral Council the public at public meetings get frustrated and heckle instead (then get told to shut up by the Chair or clear off which does show some politicians’ attitude towards the public outside of elections).
The Chair at last night’s meeting (despite his wish to get home in time to watch Coronation Street) tried to let many taxi drivers have their say (some more than once) before the decision to consult on increasing hackney carriage fares was made (if a decision is made following the consultation it’ll mean fares go up in time for Christmas).
Yet if there’s one point I am trying to make from this maybe boring piece about Wirral’s politics, it’s that the public should be more involved and you don’t encourage the public to turn up by expecting them to sit through meetings in silence and not have any influence over decisions that are going to affect their lives.
At the moment taxi drivers have more influence over decisions as there is a Joint Consultative Committee that meets regularly behind closed doors than I do over say Wirral Council’s filming of public meetings policy.
Yes, this probably sounds like as to why it’s a good idea to have politicians, or for the kind of public interest journalism I spend a lot of time doing but the point I’m trying to get at is one that Wirral’s political system doesn’t seem to have quite grasped which is "the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government".
At Wirral Council this seems to have morphed in the past to "the will of the officers shall be the basis of the authority of government" (and we expect politicians to rubber stamp decisions we refer to them).
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