Did Wirral Council’s Pensions Committee really approve the accounts of the £6.9 billion Merseyside Pension Fund?

Pensions Committee (Merseyside Pension Fund) 15th September 2015 Left Peter Wallach Head of Pensions Right Cllr Paul Doughty Chair of the Pensions Committee

Below is a copy of my statutory objection to the approval of the accounts of the Merseyside Pension Fund (a £6.9 billion pension fund that form part of Wirral Council’s accounts) which go to Wirral Council and its auditors Grant Thornton.

It’s rather dull and technical, but in the interests of openness and transparency I am publishing it below. It relates to yesterday’s meeting of the Pensions Committee that can be viewed below. I was so cheesed off I made two spelling mistakes in the email (a corrected version is below).

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!

Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

Wirral Council’s Pension Committee public meeting of the 15th September 2015 Part 1 of 2 (Merseyside Pension Fund)

I reckon receiving this email will probably be about as welcome at Wirral Council as someone breaking wind in an open plan office. However such is life! The press are independent for a reason!

Subject: Statutory objection to Pensions Committee approval of Merseyside Pension Fund Accounts for 2014/15

CC: Pat Philips
CC: Colin Hughes
CC: Surjit Tour
CC: Peter Wallach
CC: Joe Blott
CC: Tom Sault

CC: Cllr Paul Doughty
CC: Cllr Ann McLachlan
CC: Cllr George Davies
CC: Cllr Treena Johnson (email address unknown)
CC: Cllr Adrian Jones
CC: Cllr Brian Kenny
CC: Cllr Geoffrey Watt
CC: Cllr Kathy Hodson
CC: Cllr Cherry Povall
CC: Cllr Pat Cleary
CC: Cllr Anita Leech

CC: Cllr Nick Crofts (Liverpool City Council)
CC: Cllr John Fulham (St Helens Council)
CC: Cllr William Weightman (Knowsley Council)
CC: Paulette Lappin (Sefton Council)

CC: Cllr Jim Crabtree
CC: Cllr Ron Abbey
CC: Cllr Chris Blakeley
CC: Cllr Angela Davies
CC: Cllr David Elderton
CC: Cllr Phil Gilchrist
CC: Cllr John Hale
CC: Cllr Matthew Patrick

CC: Fiona Blatcher
CC: Heather Green
CC: Chris Blakemore

Dear all,

I am a local government elector in the Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council area and make this statutory objection to the Pensions Committee approval of the the Merseyside Pension Fund Accounts for 2014/15 (see Audit Commission Act 1998, s.16).

For the purposes of clarity to the auditor this is a statutory objection to a matter not in relation to a matter covered by Audit Commission Act 1998, s.17-18 but Audit Commission Act 1998, s.8.

As required I am sending a copy of this objection to the auditor, those I have contact details for on Wirral Council’s Pensions Committee (I do not have an email address for Cllr Treena Johnson), Wirral Council’s Audit and Risk Management Committee and those tasked with corporate governance at Wirral Council such as the Monitoring Officer Mr. Tour, the Head of Pensions Peter Wallach, the Strategic Director for Transformation and Resources Joe Blott and Tom Sault the Acting 151 Officer as well as other relevant people.

I do not have contact details for some on the Pensions Committee. I am sending this to the officer who took the minutes of the Pensions Committee meeting on the 14th September 2015 in the hope that it can be forwarded to those I do not have contact details for (the non-councillor members and Cllr Treena Johnson).

As this is a rather technical objection, I provide below a summary of the key points.

However I first need to declare an interest. I have a close family relative who is currently paid a pension by Merseyside Pension Fund, therefore a close interest in the corporate governance of the Fund being done properly.

On the 14th September 2015, I and three other members of the public (two of whom were employed by Grant Thornton and are Wirral Council’s auditors) attended a public meeting of Wirral Council’s Pensions Committee.

This meeting was filmed by myself and published shortly after, see

Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

and

Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

One of the functions of the Pensions Committee as detailed in Wirral Council’s constitution is to approve the statement of accounts and financial statements of the Merseyside Pension Fund and recommend these to the Audit and Risk Management Committee.

This is because the Merseyside Pension Fund forms part of Wirral Council’s accounts. There is a statutory deadline to approve the statement of accounts for the 2014/15 financial year by the 30th September 2015.

As mentioned at the Pensions Committee itself by one of the councillors this Fund is valued at ~£6.9 billion.

Item 4 and 5 on the agenda of that meeting were the pension fund accounts 2014/15 and draft annual report.

As the Pensions Committee is a public meeting of a local authority, legislation that governs public meetings applies to it. The statement of accounts formed part of a document known as the “Report & Accounts 2014/15” which was given to those on the Pensions Committee present on the afternoon of the meeting itself.

Please note the reference below to principal council, by virtue of Local Government Act 1972, s.100E also apply to committees and sub-committees of a principal council. The Pensions Committee is a committee of a principal council.

Local Government Act 1972, s.100B(4), is quite clear on the procedure that should be followed in the case of agenda items that are not open to inspection by members of the public five clear days before the meeting.

(4) An item of business may not be considered at a meeting of a principal council unless either—

(a) a copy of the agenda including the item (or a copy of the item) is open to inspection by members of the public in pursuance of subsection (1) above for at least [five clear days] before the meeting or, where the meeting is convened at shorter notice, from the time the meeting is convened; or

(b) by reason of special circumstances, which shall be specified in the minutes, the chairman of the meeting is of the opinion that the item should be considered at the meeting as a matter of urgency.

It is clear that the Report & Accounts 2014/15 for the Merseyside Pension Fund did not fall under the description in s. 100B (4)(a) and therefore the procedure in 100B(4)(b) applies. The Chairman of the Pensions Committee Cllr Paul Doughty did not specify at the meeting itself his opinion that the item should be considered as a matter of urgency, nor would the reasons for this be specified in the minutes.

This is an important corporate governance safeguard written into legislation.

Firstly, if the documents are not made available to the public five clear days before the meeting, the public and press cannot scrutinise them. Secondly (as was mentioned at the meeting itself) at least one councillor expressed the view that half an hour was insufficient to scrutinise a highly technical 46 page document.

This is not a one off occurrence. Officers in previous years have frankly played these games of brinkmanship with accounts routinely handed to those tasked with corporate governance to approve on the evening of the meeting itself. The safeguard above in s.100(4)(b) above, details a procedure to be followed if the matter is urgent.

Therefore my objection is that because of what I have detailed above, the Pensions Committee did not approve the statement of accounts for the Merseyside Pension Fund because:

(a) the report was late and
(b) it is clear from the legislation that a procedural step was missed making the decision ultra vires.

I am however not an unreasonable person and suggest the following course of corrective action. If this is followed I will happily withdraw my objection.

i) That the Pensions Committee holds a further meeting between now and 30th September 2015.
ii) The Audit and Risk Management Committee recommendation is altered (agenda item 12 meeting of the 22nd September 2015) to be conditional on the meeting outlined in i) and the same for any Cabinet meeting that has to approve the same item
iii) That at this special meeting it considers the items referred to in this objection in a way that is not open to legal challenge or perceived to be ultra vires and that the information for this meeting is published on Wirral Council’s website five clear days before the meeting.

As Wirral Council’s auditors Grant Thornton will no doubt make clear, the matter that forms this objections needs to be resolved before the accounts are signed off. I look forward to reading and hearing responses to this objection.

However as this is a perceived serious corporate governance failing, I am making this objection public.

Yours sincerely,

John Brace

If you click on any of the buttons below, you’ll be doing me a favour by sharing this article with other people.

Why is there a £17k to £19k discrepancy in allowances and expenses for councillors on Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority?

Current Chair of the Audit Sub Committee Cllr Denise Roberts is in the foreground of this photo from 27th November 2014 Background L to R former DCE Kieran Timmins DCFO Phil Garrigan and councillor

There’s a discrepancy I’ve spotted. In the papers for the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority Policy and Resources Committee that meets on the 17th September 2015. There is a note in the Statement of Accounts (note 29) on page 59. It’s short so I’ll quote it below as it’s mainly information in a table.

29. Members’ Allowances

The Authority comprises of 18 councillors from the 5 districts of Merseyside. The total allowances paid to members within the year were:

	2014/15	2013/14
	£000	£000
Allowances	225	239
Expenses	14	23
	239	262

As you can see from the table above, for 2014/15 the total allowances paid to councillors is £225,000 and the total expenses for 2014/15 to councillors £14,000. The total for these two figures is £239,000.

On June 11th the Merseyside Fire & Rescue Authority met, agenda item 9 was Members Allowance Payments 2014/15. This agenda item contained a table detailing payments to councillors for 2014/15.

The total allowances detailed in that table for 2014/15 are £143,242.50 + £16,140 + £24,210.00 + £1.345.00 + £8,070.00 + £11,939.57 + £6,053.04 + £2,690.33 = £213,690.44

However £213,690.44 does not equal £225,000!

The difference is £11,309.56 +-£500!

The total expenses detailed in that table are £1,338.45 + £4,175.84 + £2,194.05 = £7,708.34

Again £7,708.34 does not equal £14,000.

This difference is £6,291.66 +-£500!

The two differences add up to a grand total of £17,601.22 +-£1000.

As the figures in the statement of accounts are rounded to the nearest £1000, this could be any figure between £16,601.22 and £18,601.20.

On the expenses side I can make an educated guess that the expenses paid directly by Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority that are detailed on the 49 pages of expenses here for councillors weren’t in June being properly coded. Page 2 of a letter from Janet Henshaw states that this amount estimated at between £5,700 and £6,700 wasn’t being coded to each councillor as it would require going through approximately 12 monthly invoices and coding expenditure to 18 councillors (which is classed as a “wholly unreasonable use of scarce resources”).

I’ve totted up amounts in the first twenty-four pages and they total £3,068.04. Assuming the other pages are for broadly similar amounts that would make the total in the ballpark figure of £6,136.08 (which is within the range of £6,291.66 +-£500).

However I’m still at a loss as to why there’s a ~£11,309.56+-£500 difference on allowances for 2014/15!

Perhaps I should ask the auditor Grant Thornton what’s going on and also raise it with the councillors and officers?

If you click on any of the buttons below, you’ll be doing me a favour by sharing this article with other people.

What connects “persons interested”, Tharmathevy Thanabalasingam and Liverpool City Council?

What connects "persons interested", Tharmathevy Thanabalasingam and Liverpool City Council?

As regular readers of this blog will know, I exercised my Audit Commission Act 1998, s.15(1) right to inspect invoices and contracts at Merseytravel (now part of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority), Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority, Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority (who go by the public name of Merseyside Recycling & Waste Authority) and Wirral Council for the 2014/15 financial year.

This ties in with a right under Audit Commission Act 1998, s.15(2) as a local government elector can then ask the auditor questions.

It’s well established that "persons interested" in Audit Commission Act 1998, s.15(1) means local government electors for the public body concerned.

The problem however came with my request to Liverpool City Council, as I’m not a local government elector in the Liverpool City Council area. Case law has determined that “interested person” (a term sadly not defined in the legislation itself) is a wider group than just local government electors.

R (HTV Ltd) v Bristol City Council [2004] 1 WLR 2717 is an interesting case that as far as I know isn’t available online so I looked it up in the university law library. I’ll refer to R (HTV Ltd) v Bristol City Council [2004] 1 WLR 2717 [24], [25], [39], [49] and [50] as it goes into the legislative history of who is considered an “interested person”.

"The authorities

24. The concept of “persons interested” has received very little consideration by the courts. In Marginson v Tildsley (1963) 67 JP 226 the appellant was a member of the Fleetwood urban authority for 20 years before he became bankrupt and was disqualified from the council. He sought the right to inspect the accounts under the Public Health Act 1875. He preferred an information against the clerk of the council alleging that the clerk had wrongly refused him access to the accounts. The justices dismissed the information but their decision was overturned on appeal. Lord Alvertstone CJ held that he was a person interested because although no longer a member of the council, the possibility that his estate could be liable for any surcharge rendered him a person interested.

25. In the later case of R v Bedwellty Urban District Council, Ex p Price [1934] 1 KB 333 the court held that a person interested was entitled to inspect the accounts by an agent, who in that case was his accountant. It was argued that the accountant was a person interested in his own right, but the point did not have to be determined and Avory J expressly left it open.

39. He also referred me to a passage in Jones, Local Government Audit Law, 2nd ed (1985), ch 8. The last edition of this valuable book was sadly in 1985. But in a discussion on the meaning of the concept of a “person interested”, the author expressed the view that the right was attached to any person who had a financial interest in the accounts, as well as somebody with a legal interest, such as a local government elector who has the legal right of objection.

49. I think it is somewhat artificial to say that non-domestic ratepayers do not contribute to the local authority’s budget. Although their contributions are channelled through, and will be subject to, redistribution by central government – the income will be received indirectly by the authority as a grant from central government – nevertheless I think this gives them a sufficient interest in inspecting the accounts and satisfying themselves as far as they can that they are in order. In my view, this is reinforced by the fact that they had the right for their representatives to be consulted on expenditure decisions.

50. I consider that these factors together give them a real and close interest in the council’s activities sufficient to confer these rights upon them. I would, moreover, be reluctant to think that this right, which undoubtedly existed until the Local Government Finance Act 1988, had been removed as a consequence of the restructuring of local government finances in that year. It follows that in my view the claimant is a "person interested" within the section."

So from the above I can gather that the concept of "interested person" means:

local government electors (which for Liverpool City Council at the last election I estimate at around ~320,000 local government electors)
former politicians of that public body (although as I think the ability to surcharge councillors has been repealed this may not apply in most circumstances)
those assisting local government electors such as accountants
as the R (HTV Ltd) v Bristol City Council [2004] 1 WLR 2717 case above established a company or business based in the area covered by the public body that pays business rates (or by its more formal term of non-domestic rates)

However according to Liverpool City Council my request was refused because as far as they see it, I don’t fall into one of the above categories.

I do however have a legal interest in 22 of the invoices I requested as I made a FOI request for them on the 14th May 2015. Liverpool City Council refused to supply a copy of the invoices and also refused at internal review. I exercised my right under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, s.50 to complain to the regulator (the Information Commissioner’s Office about this) on the 31st July 2015 and a decision by ICO is awaited.

Some ICO decision notices take a much wider view as to the definition of “interested person”. This decision notice (FS50582149) at part of paragraph 62 states (ACA 1998 refers to the Audit Commission Act 1998):

"As stated in paragraphs 24 and 25 above, the ACA 1998 provides a right of access to inspect accounting information for their local authority to any local government elector and ‘any persons interested’. Although the term ‘interested person’ is not defined within the ACA 1998, the Audit Commission suggest the term must refer to an individual who has a legal or financial interest in the accounts which would include local government electors, non-domestic rate payers and those with a financial or contractual relationship with the Council or those in receipt of services from the Council."

Keen followers of local government will know that the Audit Commission doesn’t exist any more, however if the Liverpool City Council shared the view of the now defunct Audit Commission that an "interested person" as was someone "in receipt of services from the Council" then I certainly fall into that category!

I regularly walk on Liverpool’s roads (maintained by Liverpool City Council), have made at least one Freedom of Information Act request to Liverpool City Council and have filmed public meetings of Liverpool City Council starting with this one of the Constitutional Issues Committee on the 8th September 2014 last year (there have been a number I’ve filmed since the Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014 forced Liverpool City Council to remove the anti-filming public meetings section in their constitution).

However, this is going off the point a little and the next point will sound like an arcane legal point. I can’t request permission from a High Court Judge for judicial review of Liverpool City Council’s decision to refuse inspection/copies of the invoices under the audit legislation that relate to the FOI request. Why is that? That’s because it would be refused due to the existing right of appeal to ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office).

I would guess that if permission for judicial review was applied for, a High Court Judge would refuse permission to the part of the request to Liverpool City Council under the audit legislation that relates to the 22 invoices that pertain to the earlier FOI request on those grounds. This is because part 5 of the Pre-Application Protocol for Judicial Review makes it clear that "Judicial review should only be used where no adequate alternative remedy, such as a right of appeal, is available."

It is far better to establish the principle of whether the invoices are able to requested through FOI requests through an ICO decision notice. However before Liverpool City Council did a U-turn and realised I wasn’t a local government elector I did get copies of 7 invoices for its legal costs (the first of which is at the end of this article).

There will be a delay getting editorial approval with the other six as Liverpool City Council have done an extremely bad job at redacting some of the information. One of the invoices relates to a Family Court matter that it probably be unlawful for me to publish in its present form as the names of the parents and a child are clearly visible. Those more well versed in data protection law could perhaps leave a well-informed comment on why giving out such detail to a member of the public ain’t a good idea.

As usual the thumbnails are linked to higher resolution images for each page.

I would make an educated guess that the invoice below relates to a decision of Liverpool City Council’s Licensing and Gambling Sub-Committee on the 30th July 2014 to revoke the licence for Kenny Food & Wine at 237 Kensington, Liverpool 7.

There’s a right of appeal of decisions of such committees (a Licensing and Gambling Sub-Committee is composed of councillors and meets in public) to the local magistrate court. The premises licence holder’s name is Tharmathevy Thanabalasingam (which is published in the report to that committee).

The Liverpool City Council solicitor this invoice went to is Mr. P Merriman. He’s the licensing, gaming and betting solicitor at Liverpool City Council.

Mr David Hercock of Six Pump Court is a barrister. The invoice is for £2,400 (£2000 + VAT).

Liverpool City Council invoice David Hercock Six Pump Court 28 January 2015 page 1 of 2 thumbnail

Liverpool City Council invoice David Hercock Six Pump Court 28 January 2015 page 2 of 2 thumbnail

If you click on any of the buttons below, you’ll be doing me a favour by sharing this article with other people.

Liverpool City Region Combined Authority agrees to ask government for further powers over Mersey Tunnels, transport, fire, police, skills, employment, European funding, trade, housing, health, energy and more!

Liverpool City Region Combined Authority agrees to ask government for further powers over Mersey Tunnels, transport, fire, police, skills, employment, European funding, trade, housing, health, energy and more!

Liverpool City Region Combined Authority agrees to ask government for further powers over Mersey Tunnels, transport, fire, police, skills, employment, European funding, trade, housing, health, energy and more!

Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

The video above of the Special Meeting of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority of the 2nd September will finish uploading by about 16:30 on the 2/9/15. Once processed it should be available for viewing but is not available at the time this blog post was published.

Mayor Joe Anderson speaking about devolution at a meeting of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (2nd September 2015) thumbnail

At a meeting of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, councillors, the Mayor of Liverpool and co-opted members agreed a revised set of recommendations. The revised recommendations appeared only minutes before the meeting started.

The revised recommendations approve a request to the Conservative government to devolve powers to the city region as part of a devolution deal.

Here are the original recommendations (with the crossed out parts deleted by the revised recommendations):

It is recommended that the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority:-

(a) comments upon, and endorses the devolution themes that will form the basis of the Liverpool City Region’s input to the Comprehensive Spending Review on the 4 September 2015 (NB: this detail will form the basis of a follow-on report for members’ consideration); and

~~(b) notes that the devolution process will remain an iterative process and that further information will be presented to future meetings of the Authority, for members’ consideration.~~"

Here are the revised recommendations agreed today:

1.1 Liverpool City Region Combined Authority is recommended to:

Approve the initial scope of the proposals as outlined in the supplementary report and the presentation made to the Combined Authority as the Liverpool City Region’s formal submission to the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, subject to a delegation to the Head of Paid Service in consultation with the Chair of the Combined Authority and the Lead Officer: Economic Development to make any drafting amendments to the final document;

Continue negotiations with Government over the Autumn period in advance of the publication of the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review to secure a bespoke devolution ‘deal’ for Liverpool City Region which will:

Drive economic growth and increase productivity;

Reduce costs and improve outcomes across the whole of the public sector;
and

Improve social outcomes and better health and wellbeing for local residents.

Note that any actual agreement with Government would require the approval of constituent Councils with appropriate consultation put in place;

Note that devolution negotiations are an iterative process and that further information will be presented to future meetings of the Combined Authority, for Member’s consideration and approval; and

Note that any Agreement will only be signed by both the Constituent Councils and Government when both parties are fully satisfied with the final details of the Devolution Deal.

So what are the proposals that the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority are asking the government for?

The proposals are in this supplementary report and include the points below (plus other asks):

Abolishing Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority and transferring its functions to an elected Liverpool City Region Mayor
Abolishing the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside and transferring its functions to an elected Liverpool City Region Mayor
Asking for a legislation change so that any surplus Mersey Tunnel tolls can be used for economic development
“the repayment of historic Mersey Tunnels debts by government”
Development Corporation Status for the Liverpool City Region
Creation of a Land Commission
“Designation of catapult Centres in the City Region for Manufacturing Technology Centre focused on marine and renewable energy and a Centre of Excellence for Infectious Diseases”
“A Free Trade Zone designation for the Liverpool Wirral Port system that includes provision for Global Zone-to-Zone Transfers, No Duty on Value Added and Enhanced Customs Warehousing”
“We want government to give us a long-term Special Rail Grant (SRG) to help
secure a new fleet of Merseyrail trains.”
“the development of a generation system of regional significance, for example, an offshore tidal lagoon”
Also requested are “asks” under the headings of “cultural partnership and creative dock”, “community safety, enforcement, licensing and regulatory services”, “education”, “children’s services” and “health, wellbeing and social care”

Certainly the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority is asking for many changes from the government, which if agreed in principle will be subject to consultation.

Here are what some of the people on the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority had to say at today’s public meeting that agreed the proposals:

Mayor Joe Anderson (Mayor of Liverpool, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority) said, "There will be opportunities, there also will be more negotiations of more substance with businesses, with other political parties, with other interested groups like health, the voluntary sector, the trade unions and others to engage and involve themselves in the process."

Cllr Phil Davies (Chair, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority) asked, "In the near future presumably we’ll be drawing up a consultation programme if you like as the negotiations roll out?"

If you click on any of the buttons below, you’ll be doing me a favour by sharing this article with other people.

What are the changes next year to the public's right to inspect documents of public bodies during the audit?

What are the changes next year to the public’s right to inspect documents of public bodies during the audit?

Wirral Council lease Neptune Wirral Limited Neptune Developments Limited Neptune Projects Limited 20th June 2011 for New Brighton Phase II draft car parking management plan page 2 of 2

Above is one of the documents I requested under the 2013/14 audit last year, which is a page of a lease that Wirral Council have with Neptune that states that if Wirral Council introduce car parking in the Fort Perch Rock car park, then charges can be introduced in the free car parks part of the Marine Point development.

Each year for the past few years I have exercised a right you get to exercise only for three weeks each year, which is a right under section 15 of the Audit Commission Act 1998 to inspect documents relating to the previous financial year (2014/15) during the audit.

This has in years gone past has been the only way to see such financial information and to give one example of a story that resulted in many interesting stories on this blog (ranging from councillor’s expenses and taxis to an unsigned contract for a million pounds worth of work).

This year I have exercised my s.15 right not just with Wirral Council, but with Liverpool City Council, Merseytravel, the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority and the Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority.

A couple of weeks before the three-week period when the public can inspect these documents each of these bodies has to publish a public notice in a newspaper that circulates in the area covered by that body. The regulations also require each body to publish this notice on their website. Wirral Council’s notice can be found on their website here.

To save myself trekking off to Birkenhead Central library and spending an afternoon going through back issues of the local newspapers trying to find the public notices, I found this website that has a searchable database of all public notices published by the Trinity Mirror group.

All of the notices (apart from the Merseytravel one) had a name of someone at that public body who I wrote to (whether by letter or by email). In the case of Merseytravel I wrote to the Chief Executive, who passed my request on to the person at Merseytravel dealing with it.

So far the responses have been as follows:

Merseytravel – dates of Monday 27th July 2015/Tuesday 28th July 2015 agreed to come in and inspect the documents. They have a “paperless office”, but will be printing off copies of the invoices/contracts I requested so their legal department can redact parts of them.

Merseyside Waste and Recycling Authority – dates of Friday 24th July and Wednesday 29th July 2015 have been agreed to come in and inspect documents.

Liverpool City Council – email sent yesterday, no reply received yet

Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority – email sent and acknowledged on the 15th July 2015, no further reply received since

Wirral Council – email sent with request for contracts & councillor expenses on 19th July 2015, reply received yesterday, list of invoices sent this morning, no reply received yet or date/s arranged

Next year, any right of access to invoices and contracts will be under the new section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014.

The main differences will be next year that a new ground of refusing a request on grounds of “commercial confidentiality” has been added in to the legislation unless there is an “overriding public interest in favour of its disclosure”.

This puts on a statutory footing the Veolia case, see [2010] EWCA Civ 1214 if you’re curious about what I mean.

The new section 26 also means that determinations about what is “personal information” on documents (therefore not open to inspection) will in future be made by the public body themselves and not the situation at present of the public body having to get agreement from their external auditor to this. It does make it crystal clear that the names of sole traders on invoices is not covered by the definition of “personal information” and defines “personal information” as “identifies a particular individual or enables a particular individual to be identified”. The restriction on information about the public body’s staff remains in section 26 next year.

If you click on any of the buttons below, you’ll be doing me a favour by sharing this article with other people.

Did Wirral Council’s Pensions Committee really approve the accounts of the £6.9 billion Merseyside Pension Fund?

Share this:

Why is there a £17k to £19k discrepancy in allowances and expenses for councillors on Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority?

Share this:

What connects "persons interested", Tharmathevy Thanabalasingam and Liverpool City Council?

Share this:

Liverpool City Region Combined Authority agrees to ask government for further powers over Mersey Tunnels, transport, fire, police, skills, employment, European funding, trade, housing, health, energy and more!

Share this:

What are the changes next year to the public’s right to inspect documents of public bodies during the audit?

Share this: