Category: Labour

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.

West Wirral Area Forum 6/10/2011, PACSPE (Parks and Countryside Services Procurement Exercise) contract Part 5

Dave Green, Director of Technical Services continued by saying that they had received specialist help in going to tender and there had been a massive consultation with undertakers, bowlers, Friends groups and others. He said the undertakers had been the most fun. They had tried to address things and wanted a three-way partnership between the contractor, the Friends groups/users and Wirral Council (who would provide the cash and infrastructure). There were Key Performance Indicators and partnership targets that the Friends groups and users would develop and the contractor would deliver. There was a £100,000 bonus of the contractor met all the Key Performance Indicators.

Mr. Green said it would introduce imagination and innovation. The Early Voluntary Redundancies had reduced the size of the contract down to £7.4 million. However he said there was flexibility and accountability. Due to the size of the contract, European procurement rules applied. An invitation to tender had gone to seven contractors and was scored on a 70% price & 30% quality basis and it had been agreed how quality would be measured.

Six of the seven contractors had beaten the £7.4 million by a “fair figure”. The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations would affect about a hundred and fifty people working for Wirral Council. Tenders had gone out in mid-July using CHEST (the North West’s Local Authority Procurement Portal), which had led to the report to Cabinet on the 22nd September. The previous [Conservative/Lib Dem] administration had changed in May. The new [Labour] administration wanted to fully evaluate an in-house bid and how it could be delivered in-house.

On the 22nd September the Cabinet took the decision not to award the contract. The main reasons were to do with demonstrating value for money to the District Auditor, the governance report, Wirral Council’s ability to manage and dismiss contractors and concerns about inflation.

PACSPE: The saga continues (Wirral Council)

PACSPE: The saga continues (Wirral Council)

                                            

At a well attended Area Forum for West Wirral tonight, Cllr Jeff Green revealed that himself and Cllr Tom Harney (Leader of the Lib Dem councillors) have called in the Labour Cabinet decision of the 22nd September not to award the PACPSE (Parks and Countryside Spaces) contract.

I’ll write up more about the West Wirral Area Forum tomorrow which covered many interesting topics.

Blue Badge charges recommended to increase from £2 to £10 (Wirral Council)

Having read through next Thursday’s Cabinet agenda I noticed the report (which is item 36 on the agenda) entitled Introduction of New Procedure for Allocation of Blue Badge Parking for Disabled People.

In the interests of openness, I’ll declare at this stage that although I don’t hold a Blue Badge, my wife does.

If the recommendations in the report are adopted next Thursday, Wirral Council is going to increase the charge for Blue Badges from £2 and £10 and bring in a new assessment process for eligibility for Blue Badges starting from next month.

A private company Northgate Information Solutions will distribute the Blue Badges (at a cost to Wirral Council of £4.60 each), but Wirral Council will still need to decide on applications. On Wirral 25,500 Blue Badges (8% of the population) have been issued.

There will also be some changes to the Blue Badge scheme as a result of government regulations coming into effect at the start of next year.

If you are eligible for a Blue Badge but don’t know how to apply this page on Wirral Council’s website has details of who is eligible and how to apply.

Lib Dem response to Anna Klonowski report

I read with interest Cllr Tom Harney’s press release about a response to the Anna Klonowski report. He is right that Wirral Council needs to change and Cllr Tom Harney calls for more joint party working.

However it was his group of councillors that in May ended the joint Conservative-Lib Dem “progressive partnership” by their “positive abstentions”. This put an end to a certain level of joint working between the Lib Dems and Tories that Cllr Harney is now calling for!

In his press release of 19th May 2011 he set out why the remaining nine Lib Dem councillors through their “positive abstentions” were supporting a Labour minority administration. Labour have 45% of the councillors, but 100% of the seats on the ten councillor Cabinet (which makes most of the major decisions).

No party has a majority on Wirral Council (Labour 30, Conservative 27, Lib Dem 9). The Lib Dems hold the balance of power between the two largest groups (Labour and Conservative).

However what Anna Klonowski’s reports doesn’t mention is that the corporate governance issue problems experienced by Wirral Council are mirrored by corporate governance problems (of varying sorts) in all the political parties on Wirral that nominate candidates who become councillors on lead Wirral Council. Until the Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem parties get their own houses in order, there’s unlikely to be the impetus and political leadership for much change at Wirral Council. It suits all political parties to keep certain things about how they’re operating out of the public domain and press, yet it can entrench unfairness and injustice within their own parties.

Moving to the issues of which governance model Wirral Council should use, this was last decided on the 21st December 2009. However Cllr Tom Harney voted for the “Leader and Cabinet” model of governance along with all the Liberal Democrat and Labour councillors present. The Conservative councillors voted against.

If the current Labour Cabinet has too much power now it’s because Cllr Harney voted for such a model of governance on the 21st December 2009! However then it suited the Lib Dem and Labour councillors. Each party (then) had five seats in the Cabinet.

However there are still the powers for any group of councillors to “call-in” Cabinet decisions. They can even call in decisions by individual Cabinet members. Clearly things need to change, but there are different opinions about the way forward.