Category: Green Belt

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 … Continue reading “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.

Cabinet meeting (Wirral Council) 22/02/2011 Part 1 – the Conservative/Lib Dem budget cometh and Labour is not happy

Well yesterday the Conservative & Lib Dem Cabinet “unveiled” their Wirral Council budget for 2011/2012. Labour’s (opposition) budget will arrive by noon on Friday the 25th February.

Next Monday (1st March) the full Council will vote on the budget, although with 41 (yes I know it’s 42 including the Lib Dem Mayor but generally he doesn’t vote as he’s supposed to be politically neutral as part of his office) “progressive partnership” councillors to Labour’s 25 24 (edit – I sometimes forget Cllr. Knowles had switched from Labour to Tory and the independent Cllr Kirwan isn’t still with Wirral Council) councillors, I’m sure even Labour can do the maths and realise Labour’s budget will be defeated next Monday (with no need for Budget Part 2 on the evening of the 9th March) by around seventeen votes.

Can you see which bits of the Budget are from the Lib Dem side and which from the Conservative side? Yes you can see “the seams” between the two halves as we continue to be two independent political parties with minds and policy making processes of our own. If you look really hard you can see the bits influenced by yours truly and others (for example the 4-year rolling programme for 20 mph residential zones discussed last year by the party when Cllr Quinn was Cabinet Member for Streetscene and Transport) now carried forward by Cllr Rennie.

One Lib Dem policy coming into play is the pupil premium which means about £5 million extra for Wirral Schools to spend on children on free school meals, looked after children and service children. You should’ve heard the “wails of anguish” at the Wirral Schools Forum from headmasters/headmistresses from the more prosperous parts of the Borough when they realised £5 million would be spent on improving the educational chances of the most needy! Clearly Wirral is a place of large social divides and the extra money will be a welcome boost to the schools in Bidston & St. James.

So what may you ask is “in the budget”? Well, first to deal with the elements of the council tax that are made up by Merseyside Police’s budget and Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service’s budget. Both Merseyside Police and Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service froze their contributions from Council Tax compared to last year (2010/2011).

Due to increased costs and inflation (as well as a high proportion of its costs being on staff), Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service will be cutting some jobs. Their Chief Exec/treasurer explains the situation in a self-styled “podcast” (I don’t think he quite knows what a podcast is but I have to give them a few marks for trying), which unfortunately with my browser Firefox either opens a blank black window or six video windows of him at once creating an echo effect so I’ve uploaded it to Youtube (which has slightly better audio quality than five echoes).

For the purposes of any copyright lawyers out there, as the work has been made previously available to the public (and still is on Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service’s website at this location), this is classed as “fair dealing” under s.30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is being done for the purpose of news reporting (and making sure you can hear what the speaker says).

Quite why councillors on Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service left it to an officer to record a video to explain the cuts is a mystery I’m sure my humble readers can enlighten me on in the comments section (or maybe I’ll just ask Cllr Ellis, Cllr Niblock, Cllr Rennie or Cllr Roberts next time I see them).

38 Degrees – Save Our Forests campaign

I have been contacted by a resident about the Save Our Forests campaign which is regarding the government’s plans regarding the Forestry Commission. Locally Lib Dem councillors recently voted to increase the size of the Bidston Hill site of biological importance (which is a material consideration when deciding planning applications). Also Norman Street and Upper Brassey Street have had fifty trees planted (which makes both streets look more pleasant). The current position of the Lib Dems (and the coalition government is outlined below).

The government wants to resolve the current conflict that exists within the Forestry Commission as it’s a supplier of timber and regulator of that industry. The forests will be protected for future generations, although commercial interests may get forest land this will be in the form of a lease with strict protections built in rather than a direct sale of the land.

Public access and biodiversity will be protected and there will be safeguards to protect the public interest. First refusal will be given to community bodies and civil society organisations. Land owners will still need a licence for felling more than five cubic metres of growing trees. 70% of England’s woodland is already in private hands, the Forestry Commission controls 18%. The overall aim is to allow those who live closer to the forests greater powers to protect them.

When in government Labour sold over 25,000 acres of woodland with barely any protection. However the Lib Dem/Conservative government will put in place safeguards to protect public access, the natural environment and the interests of local communities.

The government is also planning to plant one million trees in urban and suburban areas in the next four years, which will be the first government tree planting campaign since the 1970s. There is a consultation process and the Coalition Government is trying to reassure the public that they will protect our forests better than ever before.

Planning Committee 21/10/2010 – Compost in Clatterbridge (Part 2)

The next item on the agenda was an application for a green waste composting area, vehicle accessway and site office in Clatterbridge.

This application also had a petition against it of 78 people, which was received late on Monday. Sue Smith spoke on behalf of the petitioners and mentioned Monday’s site visit. She talked about the animal life and that there was more traffic at other times of day. Over the last 11 years there had been eight fatalities and she saw traffic and noise as two of the reasons why the petitioners were objecting.

She pointed out that the application was for 10,000 tons/year which would equate to 32 bin lorries/week. She was against the concreting and tarmaccing of the Green Belt and asked if the Planning Committee had received her letter of objection. She pointed out the woodland on the site and that she wanted the site to remain green. She said she wanted it to be green belt land, not green waste land.

The agent then spoke and pointed out that it was a small green waste business with two owner-operators which had been seven years in business. He added that if the application was approved that the business would take on an extra employee. He thought the proposal would benefit the rural landscape, reduce the pressure of landfill and that agriculture was an appropriate use and associated activity in the Green Belt. He said the compost would be spread on the surrounding 179 acre farm, which was heavy clay soil. This would give the farmer greater yields and be used as a soil improver. Over six weeks the volume of green waste would reduce by over 50% and over a ten-year period, the compost would raise the height of the land by no more than two inches. It would not be open to the public who would be free to use the Council’s sites. He also mentioned that the Environment Agency would have to grant a licence and that a benefit would be the reduction in carbon emissions.

Cllr Jerry Williams then addressed the committee. He pointed out that the application would lead to an increase in traffic and that nearby stables meant the surrounding roads were used heavily by horses. He pointed out that the area looks onto Storeton Village and referred to the site’s opening hours. He said there had been no environmental assessment done and that his main concerns were environmental damage and highways issues.

The Chair then opened it up to debate by committee members asking for a response from officers on the three issues of speed, noise and road traffic accident history. An officer replied that on this C-road national speed limits applied which meant a speed limit of 60mph or 40mph for heavier vehicles. He pointed out the application improved access to the site as well as space to turn. A map was shown to the committee of known traffic accidents in the locality. The officer said the rate of accidents was similar to other roads in the area.

Regarding noise, they had measured the noise of the shredding equipment as heard from the nearest property 800m away. A noise of 78db on site was heard as only 37db at the nearest property which was classed as acceptable.

Cllr Gilchrist commented on the landscaping and the variety of species. He also asked what the hedge around the development would be (the answer being hawthorn). Cllr Johnston asked if any of the compost produced would be taken away or whether it would all be spread on the surrounding land. The answer was that the farmer would be using the product produced.

Cllr Elderton asked about the number of traffic movements a day this would produce. The answer given by an officer was 3 or 4 a day.

The Chair said it had been an interesting site visit and that the site couldn’t be seen from the village because of the lie of the land. The Chair (Cllr Mitchell) moved approval. Cllr Salter seconded it. Eleven councillors voted for the application and one voted against, so it was approved.