In response to a FOI request Wirral Council pulls a rabbit out of a hat and the invoice mysteriously disappears!

In response to a FOI request Wirral Council pulls a rabbit out of a hat and the invoice mysteriously disappears!                                                                   Above is a picture of a magician with the famous white rabbit out of a magician’s hat trick. First the hat is empty, then the magician makes the white rabbit appear out of nowhere. … Continue reading “In response to a FOI request Wirral Council pulls a rabbit out of a hat and the invoice mysteriously disappears!”

In response to a FOI request Wirral Council pulls a rabbit out of a hat and the invoice mysteriously disappears!

                                                                 

John Booth with white rabbit
John Booth with white rabbit

Above is a picture of a magician with the famous white rabbit out of a magician’s hat trick. First the hat is empty, then the magician makes the white rabbit appear out of nowhere.

Wirral Council seem to be wanting to pull a similar magic trick when it comes to this FOI request. Let’s just recap what Wirral Council have stated so far.

On the 21st April 2015 Wirral Council refused this FOI request for the fees notes (note plural) on the basis of legal professional privilege (you can read the full text of that refusal here).

On the 11th June 2015 Wirral Council at internal review refused this FOI request for the fees notes (note plural) on the basis of commercial interests (you can read the full text of that refusal here). At internal review Wirral Council stated "The original responder considered the contents of the fees notes".

On the 27th October the Information Commissioner’s Office issued decision notice FS50585536 which required Wirral Council to produce the fees notes within 35 days.

On the 24th November Wirral Council produced one of the two which you can read about in Why did Wirral Council spend £48,384 on a London-based barrister in benefits battle with landlord?

However yesterday Wirral Council decided to show us all a magic trick.

The fee note for the £2,700 invoice, which they have been claiming for the past nearly nine months has been carefully considered by its officers when refusing this request (twice) has conveniently and somewhat mysteriously vanished.

Yes like the reverse trick of the white rabbit appearing out of nowhere and just when it would be contempt of court not to produce it, it vanishes!

Of course the observant among you will have long witnessed the "magic and miracles" that goes on at Wirral Council by its employees.

ED: 1/12/15 9:49 Just for clarity, here is the invoice this refers to which quite clearly states "See fee note attached for description of work".

I will finish with this clip of Sir Humphrey Appleby from Yes, Prime Minister. Wirral Council’s responses to FOI requests will be discussed by councillors on Thursday evening, in response to this Lib Dem motion.

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Why did Wirral Council spend £48,384 on a London-based barrister in benefits battle with landlord?

Why did Wirral Council spend £48,384 on a London-based barrister in benefits battle with landlord?

                                                          

ICO Information Commissioner's Office logo
ICO Information Commissioner’s Office logo

For those who don’t remember Wirral Council’s motto is "by faith and foresight" and last night’s meeting of Wirral Council’s Audit and Risk Management Commmittee (which you can watch in full by following that link) had a number of comments and queries by councillors about why when Wirral Council seeks legal advice from outside third parties, the usual procurement rules don’t apply.

By strange coincidence, that very day and an hour before the Audit and Risk Management Committee started, Wirral Council finally responded (in part) to a Freedom of Information Act request of mine made on the 23rd March 2015 for a two-page fee note for the services of a barrister called Miss Jennifer Richards QC.

Many justifications were made at the Audit and Risk Management Committee meeting for Wirral Council’s legal expenditure, such as paying for the best advice. Miss Jennifer Richards QC’s services came with a price tag of £48,384 so I’m not surprised that Wirral Council spent 8 months wasting my time and theirs by arguing about whether I should have access to this (until the Information Commissioner’s Office issued decision notice FS50585536) which I can summarise in the following sentence.

Stop being silly Wirral Council and just give John a copy of the invoices within 35 days (or appeal within 28 days) otherwise it may be dealt with as contempt of court)!

Although this may seem for a small amount of legal expenditure in the grand scheme of things, it’s just one of a series of legal expenses for Wirral Council in a case that ended up in the Court of Appeal and is in some ways connected to the Anna Klonowski Associates/Martin Morton issues and Wirral Council’s Department of Adult Social Services.

You can read that final Court of Appeal judgement online for yourself ([2012] AACR 37, [2012] EWCA Civ 84, [2012] PTSR 1221, [2012] WLR(D) 31), but this was an appeal from an earlier decision to the Upper Tribunal of the Administrative Appeals Chamber, see [2011] UKUT 44 (AAC).

As referred to in that later decision it was about “a protracted dispute between Salisbury Independent Living (“SIL”) and Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council (“the local authority”) concerning housing benefit claimed by SIL to be due to its tenants and former tenants.

I have mentioned in a question at a public meeting to a councillor before that there is a cost to the public purse in legal expenses for Wirral Council not resolving issues and then these matters ending up being adjudicated by the courts.

In the interests of openness and transparency I am reproducing the invoice supplied below in full (the scan with bits blacked out by Wirral Council is of a rather poor quality).

Thirty Nine Essex Street (or 39 Essex Chambers) is the name of the London-based chamber of barristers. Weightmans is a firm of solicitors that does a lot of work for Wirral Council.

DX stands for document exchange (it’s a system that legal practices use for exchanging documents). DWP stands for Department for Work and Pensions. It seems this invoice is for the earlier Upper Tribunal stage of the legal proceedings (I hate to think what the total legal expenditure comes to for this whole case as that decision was then appealed by Wirral Council to the Court of Appeal).

Yes there are typos in the invoice (which I’ve left in the copy below). If I’ve made any mistakes in typing it up compared to the original please leave a comment pointing out where I’ve made a mistake.

In converting it from print to HTML I’ve tried to keep the formatting as close to the printed invoice as possible.


ThirtyNine
ESSEX STREET

LONDON WC2R 3AT

Telephone: 0208 7832 1111 Facsimile: 020 7353 3978 DX: LDE 298

E mail: clerks@39essex.com

Professional Fees of Miss Jennifer Richards Q.C
VAT Registration No: 606103782



DX: 718100 LIVERPOOL 16
Weightmans LLP (Liverpool)
India Buildings
Water Street
Liverpool
L2 0GA
England
 Your Ref:          MHL/186279/97
Case Ref:          174541
Page: 1/2


Various tenants of Salisbury Independent Living -v- Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council – Upper Tier Tribunal

Court: Upper Tribunal CH/1528/2012



DateDescription of WorkFees VAT
27 Feb 2012Drafting application for permission to appeal from First tier Tribunal to Upper Tribunal£1,650.00330.00
03 Apr 2012Drafting Grounds of Appeal to Upper Tribunal
 
£2,200.00440.00
04 Jul 2012Perusal and Consideration of various documents, emails, correspondence etc and advising by telephone£1,650.00330.00
04 Sep 2012Perusal and Consideration of submissions of Department for work and Pensions filed in support of Upper Tribunal appeal and adsvising by telephone£600.00120.00
06 Sep 2012Preparation for and Advising by Telephone re order of XXXXXXXXXXXX DWP and progress of Upper Tribunal£70.0014.00
10 Sep 2012Perusal and Consideration of draft directions and drafting position statement and further directions for Upper Tribunal = 4 hours£1,100.00220.00
13 Sep 2012Preparation For and Attending Hearing
 
£2,500500.00
25 Oct 2012Between 18th October and today’s date considering bundles of evidence and identifying documents for inclusion in the bundle for the Upper Tribunal£3,000.00600.00
31 Dec 2012Reviewing Trial bundle and drafting skeleton argument
 
£6,325.001265.00
07 Feb 2013Perusal and Consideration of transcripts FTT proceedings and proposed amendments/ corrections
 
£4,125.00825.00

     Note: items marked ‘*’ are previously unbilled




















Rate Fees V.A.T. TOTAL FEES C/Fwd C/Fwd
20.00% £40320.00 £8064.00 TOTAL VAT C/Fwd
TOTAL DUE C/Fwd
Rendered on 21 Feb 2013, 22 Feb 2013, 05 Mar 2013, 28 Mar 2013, 01 May 2013, 03 May 2013, 13 Jun 2013
THIS IS NOT A TAX INVOICE
 
04 Jul 2013
 

Please make payment to the following account: XXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXX
We also accept payment by cheque to XXXXXXXXXXXX
Please quote case number and barrister name on BACS payment and notify us of bank tranXXXXXXXXXXXX



ThirtyNine
ESSEX STREET

LONDON WC2R 3AT

Telephone: 0208 7832 1111 Facsimile: 020 7353 3978 DX: LDE 298

E mail: clerks@39essex.com

Professional Fees of Miss Jennifer Richards Q.C
VAT Registration No: 606103782



DX: 718100 LIVERPOOL 16
Weightmans LLP (Liverpool)
India Buildings
Water Street
Liverpool
L2 0GA
England
 Your Ref:          MHL/186279/97
Case Ref:          174541
Page: 2/2


Various tenants of Salisbury Independent Living -v- Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council – Upper Tier Tribunal

Court: Upper Tribunal CH/1528/2012



DateDescription of WorkFees VAT
25 Feb 2013Preparation For and Attending Hearing
Preparation beofre trial 30 hours
Preparation after court 4 hours
Full day in court
£12,500.002500.00
26 Feb 2013Refresher
Ful;l day in court
Preparation 4 hours after court
£2,000.00400.00
27 Feb 2013Refresher
Full day in court
Preparation 1 hour
£2,000.00400.00
04 Sep 2012Perusal and Consideration of Respondents’ Post Hearing Note and Drafting Note in Response
 
£600.00120.00
     Note: items marked ‘*’ are previously unbilled




















Rate Fees V.A.T. TOTAL FEES £40,320.00 £8,064.00
20.00% £40320.00 £8064.00 TOTAL VAT £8,064.00
TOTAL DUE £48,384.00
Rendered on 21 Feb 2013, 22 Feb 2013, 05 Mar 2013, 28 Mar 2013, 01 May 2013, 03 May 2013, 13 Jun 2013
THIS IS NOT A TAX INVOICE
 
04 Jul 2013
 

Please make payment to the following account: XXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXX
We also accept payment by cheque payable to XXXXXXXXXXXX
Please quote case number and barrister name on BACS payment and notify us of bank transfer byXXXXXXXXXXXX

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ICO rule that Wirral Council’s refusal of FOI request based on “commercial interests” is incorrect (FS50585536)

ICO rule that Wirral Council’s refusal of FOI request based on "commercial interests" is incorrect (FS50585536)

ICO rule that Wirral Council’s refusal of FOI request based on "commercial interests" is incorrect (FS50585536)

                                                                 

ICO Information Commissioner's Office logo
ICO Information Commissioner’s Office logo

The Information Commissioner’s Office have issued another decision notice in favour of this blog. You can read it for yourself as I’ve uploaded it to the blog decision notice FS50585536 (although eventually it’ll be published on ICO’s website).

It’s five pages, so I’ll summarise what it states and go into the history.

As a local government elector during the 2013/14 audit I requested various invoices for legal work which I have a legal right to inspect and receive free copies of as a local government elector on the Wirral.

Sadly the invoices that this decision notice refer to were only the first page of a multi-page invoice. I made a FOI request for the rest of the invoices. One was for £48,384 and the other for £2,700 (both from Weightmans).

Wirral Council first refused the request on a quite baseless and ludicrous application of stating that they were covered by legal professional privilege.

Whoever dealt with it at internal review agreed with me that this was incorrect.

However then Wirral Council refused the request giving the reason of "Commercial interests".

The Information Commissioner’s Office was not convinced by Wirral Council’s arguments and has rejected Wirral’s application of withholding the information based on commercial interests.

I am pleased the decision notice doesn’t give Wirral Council the option to "pick another reason" to withhold the information. There’s one request I have to Wirral Council now on its third decision notice because Wirral Council has exploited that loophole in the past.

So Wirral Council have (well had from the date of the decision notice which was 2 days ago) 35 days to supply the information or 28 days to appeal the decision.

Let’s hope Wirral Council stop playing games over freedom of information and do the right thing?

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What’s in the 370 page whistleblowing report on Wirral Council’s grants to businesses?

What’s in the 370 page whistleblowing report on Wirral Council’s grants to businesses?

What’s in the 370 page whistleblowing report on Wirral Council’s grants to businesses?

 

ICO Information Commissioner's Office logo
ICO Information Commissioner’s Office logo

The BIG/ISUS whistleblowing issues have been already covered in extensive detail by this blog over the past few years. However the latest twist in this story was yesterday’s release of a 370 page 2012 internal audit report into the matter following ICO decision notice FS50559883.

Wirral Council have finally released an internal audit report dated 13th January 2012 that went to Bill Norman (then Monitoring Officer/Director of Law, HR and Asset Management at Wirral Council). Those with long memories will remember that Bill Norman was suspended later that year over the Colas matter, then in September 2012 councillors agreed he should receive £146k plus £5k legal expenses to leave.

Back to the BIG/ISUS matters and let’s just quickly recap the blog posts I’ve written on the many aspects of this matter as they provide some background. I’m sure there are one or two I may have left out (I remember I republished some of my earlier blog posts which contained the agreements for BIG/ISUS in the lead up to the special meeting of the Audit and Risk Management Committee last October).

So that’s a brief summary of developments so far? So what does the new information reveal? It’s a report by an auditor at Wirral Council which details the allegations the two whistleblowers made, the investigations into those allegations and the auditor’s opinion as to whether the whistleblowers were correct or not.

The executive summary runs from pages 9-16 and details the allegations made by the two whistleblowers and whether what was inspected during the investigation substantiated or refuted these claims. Pages 17-20 go through each of the allegations in detail as well as whether each allegation is correct or not and the implications that follow. Pages 21-45 are the main report which at the end contain 14 recommendations. Had some of these recommendations been implemented in 2012, some of the unanswered questions surrounding this matter would have been dealt with much earlier, such as the transfer of assets from Lockwood to Harbac.

At the special meeting of the Audit and Risk Management Committee in October 2014, councillors, officers and those speaking at the public meeting were warned not to refer to names of companies, yet the release of this 2012 audit report only removes the names of Wirral Council employees (and former employees). These matters are now out in the open (which should’ve happened before the Audit and Risk Management Committee met last year). Had this 2012 internal audit report been made available to councillors before that meeting the discussion may have been very different.

However it only came to light because of a FOI (Freedom of Information) request made by one of the whistleblowers and even then only after the Information Commissioner’s Office intervened with a decision notice. Certainly the whistleblowers must both feel vindicated by the conclusions reached in this detailed 2012 internal audit report.

The Liberal Democrat Group of councillors on Wirral Council plus the Green Party Councillor Pat Cleary have tabled the following Notice of Motion for the next Council meeting on the 12th October 2015 on the subject of FOI requests. It reads as follows:

OPEN GOVERNMENT ?

This Council recognises that the Information Commissioner’s Office, as the independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest and to promote openness by public bodies, upheld 13 complaints against Wirral Council in the past year.

Of the 18 notices issued between 29 September 2014 and 24 August 2015, the majority (72%) of complaints were upheld.

Council believes that this is a matter for concern, requiring an explanation to its Members.

Council requests that lessons should be learned and applied from these decisions and questions whether Officers have been excessively cautious or defensive in their interpretation of the legislation.

Council, therefore, requests that the legislation is approached with greater regard to the ‘public interest test’ so that the risk of further reputational damage to Wirral can be reduced.

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After 2 reasons for refusing a FOI request are overturned by ICO decision notices, Wirral Council just picks another!

After 2 reasons for refusing a FOI request are overturned by ICO decision notices, Wirral Council just picks another!

After 2 reasons for refusing a FOI request are overturned by ICO decision notices, Wirral Council just picks another!

                                            

ICO Information Commissioner's Office logo
ICO Information Commissioner’s Office logo

In March 2013 I made a Freedom of Information Act request to Wirral Council. You can view it on the whatdotheyknow.com website here.

Yesterday I had another refusal at internal review by Mr. Tour of Wirral Council of the part of the request that still remains outstanding.

This was after ICO (the Information Commissioner’s Office) intervened with decision/enforcement notice FS50509081 on the 28th September 2014 and followed by decision/enforcement notice FS50569254 on the 25th July 2015.

However parts 15, 18, 19 and 26 of the request were refused by Wirral Council again.

All those four parts of the request have been withheld because Wirral Council decides that section 36 (prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs) is engaged. The minutes of the Safeguarding Reference Group (part 26) have an additional reason for refusal because of section 40 (personal information).

I of course plan to appeal this latest refusal to ICO again (which probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone). Essentially however the problem I face to do with this request (which may be familiar to those who make FOI requests and have more experience than I do).

Public body decides on a reason to refuse a FOI request initially and at internal review (this stage could take up to 60 days). ICO disagree with the reason and issue a decision notice requiring the public body not to use that reason for refusing that request and to either provide the information or another reason.

So the public body comes up with another reason. That reason is challenged at internal review (again adding another 60 days). That reason is then appealed to ICO who disagree with the reason and ICO issue another decision notice.

The public body picks another reason to refuse the request and eventually it becomes a merry-go-round. The public body clearly really doesn’t want to give up the information, yet ICO is giving the public body a loophole each time a decision notice is issued by giving them a chance to pick another reason.

This Youtube clip (it should play at the bit that’s relevant) sums up how I feel about this latest development in this FOI request.

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