Wirral Council’s Standards Committee agrees recommendation on changes to notices of motion procedural rules
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Wirral Council’s Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee meeting held on the 23rd November 2015
Surjit Tour explains to councillors the effect of proposed changes to procedural rules at a meeting of Wirral Council’s Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee 23rd November 2015
One of the changes agreed by councillors at last night’s meeting of Wirral Council’s Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee was a change to the protocol for dealing with referred notices of motion. Referred notices of motion are notices of motion that have been sent by Wirral Council’s Mayor to one of Wirral Council’s committees to debate instead of being debated at a Council meeting.
The changes to time limits on speeches for the proposer (5 minutes) and right of reply (3 minutes) were to bring the time limits in line with new time limits proposed for Council meetings.
However an extra category of speaker has been added. This is described in the new rules as "any other person" and they will have three minutes to speak. "Any other person" is described as "at the discretion of the Chairperson, other persons with expertise on the subject of the Motion may be invited to attend the meeting at which it is to be considered"
These new rules won’t apply to next week’s high-profile Notice of Motion Proposal for a fire station on green belt land in Saughall Massie to be discussed by councillors on Wirral Council’s Regeneration and Environment Policy and Performance Committee at a public meeting starting at 6.00pm on the 2nd December 2015 in Committee Room 1, Wallasey Town Hall. This is because the recommendation by the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee (if agreed by Council on the 14th December) won’t come into effect until the 15th December 2015. At a previous meeting of the Regeneration and Environment Committee councillors wanted to ask questions of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service officers about why they wanted to build a new fire station in Saughall Massie.
EXCLUSIVE: What do the plans for a new fire station at Saughall Massie look like?
EXCLUSIVE: What do the plans for a new fire station at Saughall Massie look like?
Dan Stephens (Chief Fire Officer) answers questions at a public consultation meeting in Saughall Massie to discuss proposals for a new fire station (20th April 2015)
The story of the possibility of a new fire station in Saughall Massie has rumbled on to a new phase as Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service has requested pre application planning advice from Wirral Council. Pictured above is Dan Stephens in Saughall Massie trying to explain the need for a fire station earlier in the year to residents.
In the interests of openness and transparency (and if the Chair of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority Cllr Hanratty is reading and deplores the drain on financial resources providing the information I’m about to show on this blog I might point out it was emailed to this blog I didn’t ask for it so no cost to the public purse whatsoever), I’m publishing here some documents to do with Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service’s request for pre-application planning advice.
Just before I get to the documents (I’m sure someone will eventually reveal what the advice is that Wirral Council receives in response to this) I will point out the way the project is described by Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service’s contractors is that this is all going through the formalities and this this is essentially a done deal. Although like Cllr Blakeley I will make it clear that is merely how anybody reading these documents would think and it may just be MFRS’s contractors getting ahead of themselves in documents that I think they wouldn’t assume would be published.
However a decision is yet to be made on the land and yet to be made over planning permission. So that’s the caveat I will put here as from the tone of some of the way these are written you’d guess that these decisions had already been made.
The purpose of pre-application planning advice is so that if there are any problems plans can be changed. So therefore it is possible the planning application will vary from the above.
As detailed by the Chief Fire Officer Dan Stephens during the consultation, once a planning application is submitted there will be a period of consultation before any decisions are made.
However if you have any comments, please feel free to leave a comment.
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EXCLUSIVE: What’s in the North West Fire and Rescue Services PFI Contract?
EXCLUSIVE: What’s in the North West Fire and Rescue Services PFI Contract?
The three boxes on the left comprise the PFI fire stations contract
During the 2014/15 audit I exercised a right as a local government elector in Merseyside to a copy of a contract that Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority has, which is a PFI contract for various fire stations on Merseyside.
It also involves Cumbria County Council and Lancashire Combined Fire Authority and is with Balfour Beatty Fire and Rescue NW Limited (but other companies and organisations are also involved).
The contract is the size of a DVD, so until a decision was made today here to increase the space for this blog I haven’t been able yet to publish it in full as it comes to many gigabytes of information. It falls within the "big data" journalism category because it is a collection of pdf files that are all multi-page images (hence the large file size).
When printed off it comes to three boxes worth of contract documentation (as pictured above). I hope to publish some of the associated invoices in the future too.
The size, complexity and length of the contract makes it difficult to believe that councillors (whether on the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority or Lancashire Combined Fire Authority or Cumbria County Council) could have possibly fully understood it or its implications before agreeing to it.
However as councillors are accountable to you the public on Merseyside, here is a list of councillors who were at the meeting that agreed it Councillors Tony Newman (Chair), Jimmy Mahon, Dave Hanratty, Sharon Sullivan, Les Byrom, Colin Strickland, Robbie Ayres, Barbara Murray, Ted Grannell, Denise Roberts, Linda Maloney, Lesley Rennie, Gerry Ellis, Martyn Barber, Steve Niblock and Eddie Clein.
The contract means Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority/Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service pay amounts to a private company over decades for its fire stations at a time when its overall budget is falling. Yes, the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority controlled by a Labour majority decided behind closed doors to privatise a chunk of a public service (whereas considering Labour’s trade union links you’d expect Labour to do the opposite and fight to keep services in the public sector wouldn’t you?)
Ultimately it means taxpayer money from the council taxpayers on Merseyside (and money MFRA/MFRS receives from elsewhere) goes to fund the profits of a private company and the money was ultimately borrowed from foreign banks who pay any taxes on their profits abroad. So if they have to end up making cuts in the years to come to pay for the rising costs of this contract, it’s because of a decision they made in 2010 isn’t it (although let’s face it they’ll always try and blame any cuts on someone else such as the government)?
The contract details employees transferred to a private company rather than working in the public sector.
So, I’ve made an editorial decision to publish it. In the interests of openness and transparency of course!
It’s split into thirteen sections. In the interests of it making sense when you read it, I include a table of some of the parties and abbreviations used here.
Position
Parties
Abbreviation
Account Bank
Barclays Bank plc
Account Bank
Arrangers
Dexia Crédit Local Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale
Arrangers
Authorities
Cumbria County Council Lancashire Combined Fire Authority Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority
Authorities, each an “Authority”
Construction Contractor
Mansell Construction Limited
Mansell
Building Sub-Contractor
Border Construction Limited
Border
Facility Agent
Dexia Crédit Local Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale
Facility Agent
FM Contractor
Balfour Beatty Workplace Limited
BBW
Funders
Dexia Crédit Local Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale
Funders
Funders’ Insurance Consultants
Aon Limited
Aon
Funders’ Solicitors
Tods Murray
TM
Funders’ Technical Advisers
Appleyards
Appleyards
Guarantor
Balfour Beatty plc
BBplc
Hedging Counterparties
Dexia Nord LB
Hedging Counterparties, each a “Hedging Counterparty”
Holding Company
Balfour Beatty Fire and Rescue NW Holdings Limited
HoldCo
Independent Certifier
Gleeds Management Services Limited
Independent Certifier
Intermediate Company
Balfour Beatty Fire and Rescue NW Intermediate Limited
InterCo
Model Auditor
[TBC]
Model Auditor
Parallel Loan Counterparty
Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Holdings Limited
BBIHL
Project Co’s Solicitors
Ashfords LLP
Ashfords
Project Company
Balfour Beatty Fire and Rescue NW Limited
ProjCo
Project Co’s Insurance Advisers
Jardine Lloyd Thomson Limited
JLT
Security Trustee
Dexia Management Services Limited
Security Trustee
Shareholder/Stockholder
Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Investments Limited
BBIIL
Sponsor
Balfour Beatty Capital Limited
BBCap
Consultant
Ove Arup & Partners Limited
Arup
Consultant
Blue Sky Design Services Limited
Blue Sky
Consultant
Seymour Harris Limited
Seymour Harris
So here’s the contract itself, I hope somebody out there appreciates it and finds this useful!
in-house counsel on capacity of BBIIL, BB, Mansell, BBW and BBIHL to enter into the Transaction Documents to which each is respectively a party, the due execution of those Transaction Documents and on the enforceability of the Transaction Documents. (9 pages)
VIDEO: A round-up of local Wirral and Merseyside politics by John Brace (part 1)
VIDEO: A round-up of local Wirral and Merseyside politics by John Brace (part 1)
Screenshot from Youtube video of John Brace
Below is a transcript of a video I’ve recorded about a range of local political matters. I’ve added some extra detail which I don’t say on the video in [] brackets and of course links to more detailed stories. I realised when I finished recording that I’d been talking for nearly eighteen minutes. It’s about a variety of local political issues.
At the time of publishing this blog post the video has been uploaded to Youtube, but is still processing at Youtube’s end.
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John Brace on local Wirral and Merseyside politics (part 1)
JOHN BRACE: Hello, I hope you can hear me clearly. I’m John Brace and I’m going to be filming a series of videos as due to the half term holidays next week, there’s a shortage of public meetings.
So, I thought I’d start off by looking at one of the bigger stories on my blog this week.
I suppose I’d better briefly explain what the situation is regarding councillors’ expenses and allowances.
Councillors on the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority are entitled to claim expenses for instance for travel to public meetings and each year they’re supposed to publish a table detailing each councillors’ name and how much has been spent over the year in expenses for that particular councillor in various categories.
However unfortunately what Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service was doing was, where they received invoices directly rather than councillors claiming back expenses they’d incurred themselves, where trips were booked through Capita, train travel that kind of thing, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service were invoiced directly but this wasn’t appearing on the actual annual lists so that about £6,000 or so of expenses were being left off. So I have been pointing this out over the past few months.
There’s also the issue that councillors get paid allowances and on this National Insurance and presumably things like income tax were paid. Now those amounts weren’t included in the annually published lists either.
I did ask Councillor Hanratty earlier, I think it was the day before yesterday whether these amounts would be included in future, didn’t get an answer.
I think they don’t want to give me answers on this, I think they hope I’ll just stop writing about it and move on to other things. After all I think there are far less councillors getting a taxi from home to the public meetings now since I started publishing what these expenses were for.
Anyway, another news story that’s seems to be popular on the blog is that Merseytravel’s Chief Executive David Brown is leaving. I think he’s leaving from some time next month to become Chief Executive of Transport for the North. Obviously that’ll be news for people that work at Merseytravel and I suppose you’re wondering what Transport for the North is!
Well it’s a new kind of regional body that’s been set up regarding transport matters and eventually it’ll become like Merseytravel is and the Combined Authority a statutory body. So I wish him luck in his new job and I think the Deputy Chief Executive Frank Rogers will be Acting Chief Executive until councillors decide on who the permanent Chief Executive should be, which should come to a future meeting in the future.
Anyway, another thing I’ve written about on the blog recently is to do with the whole Lyndale School closure matter. Now for those who have been following this story this is probably going to repeat what you already know, but Wirral Council officers said the reason the school had to close was that from 2016/17 which is the next academic year, that funding that they’d get for education from the government would be based on pupil numbers rather than place numbers.
Now at the moment I think there are about forty places at Lyndale School and about must be a dozen or so pupils. So basically they were saying that from next year, there would be a shortfall in Lyndale School’s budget.
But this hasn’t happened!
The Cabinet still decided to close the School, but the funding changes haven’t happened, Wirral Council will get the same funding as they did the previous year.
However despite them getting the same funding, they have actually made cuts from the SEN budget because there is flexibility at Wirral Council in that they can move money around within the education budget. They’ve still got to spend it on education, but they can move money around from say that allocated for teaching assistants for special educational needs to something else within that education budget and one of the things that’s been causing pressures on the budget is that they have a massive contract, I think it’s about half way through thirty years or something.
I’ve read through the contract and it’d take too long to go into here, but it’s a contract with Wirral Schools Services Limited for basically to rebuild a number of schools, but as well as the payments that relate to that there are also payments of millions a year I think that the schools have to pay this private company for services to do with the schools. For instance I think school meals is part of it, possibly cleaning and maintenance.
So the situation had been that Wirral Council was getting a grant from the government for some of this, but the contract meant that the costs were rising each year for PFI.
What was happening was, this money was being funded outside the education budget by Wirral Council. But then a political decision was made [by Wirral Council councillors] not to do this, which meant that a few million had to be cut out of the education budget elsewhere.
Hence why special educational needs got a cut, but again one of the other interesting twists and turns that came out in the Lyndale School saga is that the whole issue of whether the School should be closed or not seemed to arise around the time there was a revaluation of the land and buildings.
Off the top of my head I think the valuation was about £2.4 million [it was actually £2.6 million]. I’d better make it clear at this stage this is a what they call a technical, what’s it called, depreciated replacement cost value. It’s not a they send in an estate agent and they say how much would would we get for this and how much would we get for the school playing fields and so on?
No, it’s more they have to have on their asset list, a list of how much their assets are because obviously as a Council they have liabilities, they have to offset that with their assets.
But it’s a great shame what happened regarding Lyndale School, it’s not closed yet, it’ll close at the end of the academic year, but I think it could’ve been handled a lot better.
He’s called Phil Ward and the problem was that, there was quite a bit of criticism levelled at him for the way he chaired the consultation meetings. Now obviously you can criticise anybody for chairing high profile consultation meetings. I’m sure there were criticisms of how Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority did their consultation meetings.
But moving back to Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority, the Saughall Massie issue, it was agreed by councillors on the Fire Authority to go ahead, they’ve agreed the four or so million pounds in the capital budget and a planning application has been submitted.
Now I’ve checked on Wirral Council’s website and I can’t see a planning application there yet but obviously they have to scan it in and put it on the website for consultation so people can make their comments and so on.
The other issue is there was a vote recently on whether Wirral Council should give the land or they may get something for it I don’t know, maybe they’ll give it to them, should give this land to Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority for this new fire station in Saughall Massie.
Now obviously it would be better if Wirral Council could make a decision reasonably quickly but I understand the point that councillors made at the meeting, that they felt they were only hearing one side of the argument and that they hadn’t got the information in front of them regarding the emails that had been released under Freedom of Information Act requests, they hadn’t heard the Fire and Rescue Service’s point of view because nobody had been invited along from the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service and basically better decisions are made by politicians when they have the facts in front of them and they don’t like making decisions if they’re going to be made fools of later when it turns out there’s something they should’ve known or was in the public domain.
An example of that New Brighton car parking Fort Perch Rock fiasco. Now that went out to budget consultation, was agreed by Cabinet, was agreed by Council but what wasn’t known at the time was that Wirral Council had a lease for the Marine Point complex and that lease said that if Wirral Council introduced car parking charges at Fort Perch Rock, that they could be introduced in the car parking elsewhere there and Liverpool Echo journalist I think it was Liam Murphy got in touch with the company that runs the Marine Point complex and they said yes they’d have to introduce charges because obviously if Wirral Council had introduced charges at Fort Perch Rock car park then it would’ve displaced some parking to the free parking elsewhere, so then they’d feel they’d have to introduce charges themselves, but once these matters came out then there was a U-turn done on it and they decided they’ll make up the budget shortfall somewhere else.
But that goes back to my point about politicians having the information in front of them so they can make reasonably informed decisions. Now the reports that go before officers, sorry politicians whether that’s at Wirral Council, Liverpool City Council, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, Merseytravel and so on are written by officers. That is employees of the particular public body that the politicians are politicians for.
But there’s a question of, officers can have a particular point of view and make a recommendation and therefore ask the councillors to approve it, but officers aren’t actually going to know everything, but where do the public fit in all this?
Because of course in an ideal world, like for instance the Planning Committee yesterday where the public gets to speak for five minutes if they’ve got a qualifying petition. In an ideal world, if you were making a decision, say a major decision about a fire station being built, well that’s two decisions really, it’s a planning decision and whether Wirral Council give them the land. When you’re making a major decision like that, then not only should you have some sort of consultation with the public and by consultation I don’t mean publishing the papers for the meeting a week before, although that does give some advance warning so people can lobby the decision makers.
I’m talking about that people who are affected by the decision should have their say at a public meeting and I know there’ve been consultation meetings, that the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service have run and that’s fine. But what I’m saying is the ball’s now in Wirral Council’s court, there has to be the usual consultation on planning applications, but it’s a very emotive issue.
And I think basically if I can sum up the positions, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service have received a grant for some of the cost of this fire station and of course with the West Kirby and Upton fire stations being closed, they’ll receive something for the sale of those but basically they want to build it now in Saughall Massie because the site in Greasby has been withdrawn.
But the problem is that this is greenbelt land and there’s a lot of resistance from the residents regarding a fire station there.
Now in the not too distant past Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service did put in a planning application for a temporary fire station in Oxton while Birkenhead Fire Station was being rebuilt. I know that was later withdrawn but that caused a similar level of fuss and outrage and politicians saying they were against it and so on.
But the problem was that was only a temporary ~12 month arrangement, eventually they found some way round finding somewhere else. But the same issues that were brought up then, have been brought up regarding this Saughall Massie issue, you know the issues regarding sirens, traffic and so on but I think the elephant in the room really for Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service is that a number of the fire stations they’ve got are part of the PFI scheme, so they can’t close those without massive penalties.
I mean I think Birkenhead Fire Station is one example of one of the fire stations they’ve got under this PFI scheme.
So there are fire stations they can’t shut, so that leaves if they want to make any budget savings, for instance through cutting jobs and merging fire stations, they’ve only got the ones that aren’t the PFI fire stations that they can choose from.
And that’s part of the reason why Upton and West Kirby got chosen.
But I think one of the things that has currently got the public going, is that after there was pressure put regarding the Greasby site, that the offer of Greasby where there’s a library and community centre there was withdrawn and people are asking why Wirral Council isn’t doing the same thing with Saughall Massie?
Well basically these are decisions yet to be determined, it’s a party political matter because three political parties involved in the last decision on this voted three different ways, but I can see a problem because firstly Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service can’t keep Upton and West Kirby open. They just don’t have the budget for the amount of firefighters that would take.
Now one alternative is, just keep Upton open, now the downside to this according to the Chief Fire Officer is that this would increase response times to the Hoylake and West Kirby area, so that’s why they want somewhere roughly in between the two stations.
However then people raised the issue of Upton’s close to Arrowe Park Hospital, so it’ll take longer to get to there so wherever you have a fire station there’ll be people that have a quick response time and people that have a slow response time.
But the fire engines aren’t always at the fire station all the time, I mean about half the time they’ll be called out on a job, well maybe a bit more than that, they’ll be out somewhere else and that can’t really be predicted where they’d be at, whether they’d be fitting a smoke alarm or something like that.
So there are a lot of issues to do with the Saughall Massie fire station and basically I’ll be reporting on it, but at the same time I think it’s interesting seeing both the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority meetings and the Wirral Council meetings and how this issue has been dealt with at both of them.
Of course if the government hadn’t offered Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service a large grant to build a new fire station there, then I doubt this would’ve gone ahead, admittedly they could’ve borrowed the money or found the money from somewhere but I think that what’s interesting is I did make a FOI for the grant application that they made to DCLG, was told that this information would be published in the future so I couldn’t have it now and I’d have to wait till after the consultations were finished and by that they didn’t just mean the Upton and West Kirby consultations but they meant the other consultations because this grant is not just for a fire station at Saughall Massie, there are similar consultations and mergers and closures happening elsewhere across Merseyside.
So hopefully that will sum up things and I’ll point out that tonight at the Wallasey Constituency Committee, I won’t be there but I noticed because I read through the reports and the agenda, that the Motability, they have a little place in Birkenhead that hires out wheelchairs and things like that are looking to set up a place in New Brighton, so people can hire wheelchairs and that kind of thing.
So that’s a possibly positive move for New Brighton, because I know there’s been a lot of criticism at New Brighton and a large petition over the dropped car parking plans.
Anyway I’d better finish for now, but thanks for listening.
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MFRA Chair Cllr Hanratty wants to “move on” on issue of councillors’ expenses
MFRA Chair Cllr Hanratty wants to “move on” on issue of councillors’ expenses
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Cllr Dave Hanratty (on the right) speaking at a meeting of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority 20th October 2015
Here’s an exchange between myself and the Chair of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority Cllr Dave Hanratty at a public meeting of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority today.
The reference to note 29 which is part of the statement of accounts for 2014/15 is below.
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
The amounts reported to the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority AGM in June 2015 are in this table here show allowances of £213,690.44 (total of the first eight columns) and expenses of £7,708.34 (total of scale subsist, trav & subsist, overnight & mileage columns).
However the expenses in that table only included amounts claimed back by councillors through expense claims. That table did not include amounts where the MFRA was invoiced directly for travel and accommodation expenses rather than councillors being reimbursed. These amounts where MFRA were invoiced directly total around six thousand pounds.
The regulations however require the table to include all payments made under the Members Allowance Scheme irrespective of whether they are paid directly by MFRA or claimed back by councillors using expense claims.
The table of figures for allowances reported to the AGM on the 11th June also didn’t include the employer National Insurance costs of £10,151.59p paid on the allowances.
Ultimately councillors are accountable to the people of Merseyside, so what reassurances can you give that next time the figures are published for 2015/16 that they will reflect the actual cost of councillors’ allowances and expenses?
CLLR DAVE HANRATTY (CHAIR): OK, thank you Mr. Brace. I understand that there’s been a number of email exchanges between yourself and officers of the Authority to explain to you the breakdown of the cost of how they’ve been calculated. Is that correct?
JOHN BRACE: Yes, there have been emails between us.
CLLR DAVE HANRATTY (CHAIR): I also understand that this has been shared with the District Auditor? Is that correct?
JOHN BRACE: Grant Thornton, yes.
CLLR DAVE HANRATTY (CHAIR): I also understand that this has been approved the way the finances have been reported to the Authority, it has been found it’s been confirmed, there has never been an issue with that? They’ve accepted the way it’s been calculated, the way it’s reported.
JOHN BRACE: They accepted the note in the Statement of Accounts includes the amounts I’ve referred to yes.
CLLR DAVE HANRATTY (CHAIR): Well in that case Mr. Brace I think you’ve received the response from the Authority and that’s been sufficient. OK?
Just before we finish on that, I know that the government have brought in freedom of information and it’s open to the public to ask questions about documents of the Authority, but what I would say is that because of the diminished resources that the Authority now finds itself in, I think when you look at the time that officers and resources are given to individuals who according to the Authority are asking for certain information, I think they need to consider the impact this has on the Service, on the officers? time and also on our financial resources and this shouldn’t be for somebody’s pastime or for somebody’s hobby when you think about the financial situation that we find ourselves in and I think the Authority needs to examine this and maybe report back to the appropriate minister about maybe if circumstances may be open to abuse.
I’m not happy with that myself, we’ve got a lot of demands within the Service, within the Authority and I don’t want any officers’ time being wasted by somebody coming in just to fill their own pastime. I think it’s absolutely appalling and I think there’s something that should be done about it.
So on that point, I think that the deputation should just be noted and we’ll move on.
As Cllr Hanratty refers to Grant Thornton’s approval of the way the figures are presented in the Statement of Accounts, I thought it best to include the only two emails from Grant Thornton to myself on this in full here.
11th September 2015 email from Grant Thornton
Dear Mr Brace
Thank you for your email, the contents of which are noted.
I have forwarded your email to Mike Thomas who is the Director responsible for our audit of Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service. Mike will respond to you in due course.
Yours sincerely
15th September 2015 email from Grant Thornton
Dear Mr Brace
I have been copied into your email regarding the queries you have raised with Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority regarding members expenses. In the first instance this is a matter for the Authority to deal with and to respond to you. My staff are aware of the issue and will keep in touch with MFRA regarding this matter. Hopefully this can be resolved very quickly in the next couple of days.
Yours sincerely,
In other words the issue of whether the correct figures were used in the table for the AGM meeting was never addressed by Grant Thornton (at least in emails to me) which Grant Thornton said was a matter for the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority.
This is what MFRA’s Treasurer stated in an email on the 16th September 2015.
Mr Brace,
With regard to items B) and C), the Statement of Accounts disclosure of £14k for expenses, as allowed per the CIPFA CODE of Practice, informs the reader of the accounts of the total gross non-employee costs associated with supporting the governance/member service. It goes beyond the disclosure required under legislation and therefore exceeds the £7k reported in the AGM.
I have explained this to the Authority/s Auditors Grant Thornton and they are satisfied with this explanation.
CIPFA CODE of practice – Final Accounts
Members’ Allowances (5) I77Authorities are required to disclose the totals of members/ allowances (and expenses) paid in the year …. Authorities in England and Wales might consider whether it would be helpful to provide the wider disclosures in order to give a full picture of the amounts received by members.
In fact the report on the figures to the AGM states “It is important to note that these are reimbursements for time and expenses incurred by Members, and are not payments in relation to travel and event bookings made directly by MFRA.”
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