However the page below was only provided last Friday, which accounts for a further £241.10 claimed (October 2013).
This breaks down to:
1) Mersey Tunnel tolls Fast Tag (£1.30 * 10 (5 return trips on 17/10, 18/10, 21/10, 23/10 & 24/10)) = £13
2) Return train from Liverpool to London for LGA Workforce Board meeting (21st October 2013) = £220.80
3) London tube for LGA Workforce Board meeting (21st October 2013) = £7.30
Total (for 17/10/13 to 24/10/13): £241.10
These were for meetings to see an unspecified Police and Crime Commissioner (which could be Jane Kennedy), a meeting of the City Region Cabinet, a meeting of the LGA Workforce Board (in London), a meeting of NWIUF (spelt incorrectly) and the LEP (Local Enterprise Partnership presumable the Liverpool City Region one).
In fact NWIUF is an error on the expenses form and should instead be NWUIF (which is the North West Urban Investment Fund).
For four meetings that are not at Wallasey Town Hall (Police Commissioner, City Region, NWUIF and LEP) Cllr Phil Davies should have included the place he was going to on the form. However, as he claimed Mersey Tunnel tolls for going to these meetings, it is assumed they are all outside the Wirral and to the east.
Looking on the bright side though, Cllr Phil Davies’s expense form is typed, which makes it far easier to read than those councillors who fill them in by hand! The total of £241.10 seems to have originally been a different figure, but then tippexed out and replaced with £241.10. However it is to be expected that the Leader of Wirral Council has a busy schedule and diary.
Cllr Phil Davies expenses claim 2013 page 1 of 1
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Councillor Ron Abbey today reassured people about the risk of infectious diseases to the people of Merseyside through Liverpool Airport and sea ports
Councillor Ron Abbey today reassured people about the risk of infectious diseases to the people of Merseyside through Liverpool Airport and sea ports
Councillor Ron Abbey, Chair and the Mersey Port Health Committee plus officers at the West Reception Room. 1st floor, Liverpool Town Hall, Liverpool on the 16th October 2014 for a public meeting
Apologies for the poor sound quality on the video below, one of the few spots to film in the West Reception Room was sadly next to a working air conditioning unit. The video below should finish uploading at about 5.30pm on 16/10 and is one of two parts. The second part will be uploaded later.
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Mersey Port Health Committee (comprising councillors from Liverpool, Wirral and Sefton), 16th October 2014 at West Reception Room, 1st Floor, Liverpool Town Hall, High Street, L2 3SW starting at 11.00am | 53.40711°N, 2.99162°W
I attended my second meeting (this time on dry land so no possibility of sea sickness) of the Mersey Port Health Committee, for my write up of its AGM earlier this year just follow this link.
Although we were the only two members of the public at the last meeting, this time we were also joined by a student who was attending as part of her studies.
On the Mersey Port Health Committee and present from Wirral Council were Cllr Ron Abbey (Labour) and elected Chair at the AGM last time), Cllr Gerry Ellis (Conservative) and Cllr Harry Smith (Labour). Councillor John Salter (Labour), Councillor John Hale (Conservative) and Councillor Dave Mitchell (Lib Dem) (who are all on the committee representing Wirral Council) were not present.
There were also various other councillors representing Liverpool City Council and the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton.
The meeting started with an officer saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, could you please take your seats before we start today’s meeting? Before I formally commence proceedings, …” before going on to remind people that there were no fire alarms planned during the meeting, which fire exit they should use if there was an emergency and where to assemble outside at Exchange Flags. He also referred to the “new legislation” (a reference to the Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/2095)) and said, “The use of recording devices both audio and video is permitted at public meetings now in accordance with government legislation” and he asked that we not film the other members (he should have said member) of the public present (the error was because there was only one other member of the public present, a student there attending as part of her studies at the University of Liverpool).
I’ll point out at this point I will make a declaration of interest as I have previously been a student there (as has Leonora) and Leonora and I both have a current connection with that university.
I will also point out that we’re allowed to film whoever is in the actual meeting room, but Liverpool City Council decided on their own filming policy (which is at odds somewhat with the legislation) earlier this year (with no prior consultation of the people affected such as ourselves but that’s Liverpool City Council for you). A the meeting it was discussed they decided that they didn’t want the public filmed at public meetings for rather complicated reasons I won’t go into here. From what I remember of the discussion back in September 2014 Liverpool City Council councillors expressed the slightly odd viewpoint that the public at a public meeting were entitled to privacy. In fact I seem to remember that at that very meeting at least one councillor expressed the viewpoint that they felt it was the height of bad manners to turn up with a camera and record a public meeting! For the earlier discussion on that filming policy see: the video footage I took then and the major problems I had filming Liverpool City Council’s Constitutional Issues Committee which was about filming public meetings in the same room that I was filming in today.
No declarations of interest were made.
There was a correction made to the minutes as the list of councillors attending was incorrect. Cllr John Coyne (Green Party, Liverpool City Council) raised the issue of infectious diseases and the Chair (Labour, Wirral Council) Cllr Ron Abbey referred to the guidance on Ebola and how port health was the “guardian on the frontline of preventing infectious diseases”.
An officer referred to the Liverpool City Council emergency group and an exercise the day before. She said that there was a lot of literature about the public health measures if there was an outbreak at a sea port.
Cllr John Coyne referred to the press reports about the intention to screen at the Eurostar Terminal in London. The Chair Cllr Ron Abbey pointed out that there were no direct flights to Liverpool with a point of origin from the countries affected by the Ebola outbreak. He also referred to Heathrow and Eurostar and that people would be transhipped through other ports first.
The councillor referred to trains.
Cllr Ron Abbey (Chair) said that Eurostar links to France, which was a main connecting hub and then people could travel by Eurostar from the French airports.
An officer, supporting Cllr Ron Abbey said that it was based on risk and that both Heathrow and Eurostar were both passenger hubs. She referred to regular surveillance of flights coming through.
A councillor once again referred to Eurostar and the terminal in London.
The Chair (Cllr Ron Abbey) reassured him that people travelling from affected countries would be automatically screened on flights before they got to Liverpool, therefore there was no call to do a secondary check at Liverpool John Lennon Airport.
An officer said that they were working with Public Health England and there was a port health plan. He referred to meeting all relevant agencies to discuss the potential of sea ports or airports with regards to communicable disease.
The Chair (Cllr Ron Abbey) said it was a “moving issue”. He referred again to a secondary check at Liverpool John Lennon Airport, but that it was a smaller airport than Gatwick or Manchester.
A councillor said that he felt that as it had a 21 day incubation period, that the screening had no medical value and expressed the view that it was being done for “political” reasons. However he did want to ask about ships from West Africa docking at the pier and also for guidance about ships, crew and passengers which he felt was more relevant than people flying in or Eurostar.
An officer answered about the potential for ships from West Africa on which there were people who had possibly contracted a communicable disease and referred to meetings with public health. She said that ships had a responsibility to report any illness of crew or passengers under maritime law, not just Ebola.
The minutes of the last meeting were then agreed, with the amendment to the list of those who had attended.
The Chair made an announcement that he welcomed a student (who he named) to the meeting. However the student wasn’t there so he apologised to the student who was there for misleading people over what her name was. He welcomed her to the meeting and hoped she would find it interesting.
If politicians agree to a consultation it will run from the 3rd October 2014 for twelve weeks.
One of the more controversial aspects to this closure plan is it involves building a new fire station on Frankby Road, Greasby on a piece of land now owned by Wirral Council (used for a library, children’s centre (there is a current consultation on closure of these run by Wirral Council), community centre and other uses.
Negotiations between Wirral Council and Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority have been ongoing for some time. If the consultation went to plan and the other two fire stations closed, the site on which the library, community centre and children’s centre would be cleared. In its place a new fire station, library and community space would be built. Indicative floor plans might be available by the date of the meeting on Thursday.
Agreement in principle to a lease from Wirral Council to Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority has been given by Wirral Council officers, but no action will take place until the consultation has taken place.
After the consultation, a further report will come back to the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority in order for a decision to happen. However closing two fire stations will lead to an increase in response times. There will however be a saving in salaries (of about £900,000 a year) by having one fire station instead of two.
Building a new fire station at Greasby will cost about ~3.45 million, however this could be offset by selling the land that Upton and West Kirby fire stations are now on. Mersey Fire and Rescue Authority is hoping to get a DCLG grant of £1.5 million towards the cost of building the new fire station and will hear back from DCLG on that towards the end of the year.
Any difference will be met from reserves built up in part by a underspend in last year’s budget. The capital costs of the project (appendix H) are being kept secret for commercial reasons (whether this is the Fire Authority itself, DCLG and/or a third-party is a little unclear).
Wirral Council now have four representatives on Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority. These are Labour (3) Cllr Denise Roberts, Cllr Jean Stapleton and Cllr Steve Niblock and Conservative (1) Cllr Lesley Rennie.
Currently the makeup of the committee that will make a decision on Thursday in Bootle comprises up of 16 Labour councillors, 1 Lib Dem councillor and 1 Conservative councillor.
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14 councillor Scrutiny Panel created by Liverpool City Region Combined Authority
14 councillor Scrutiny Panel created by Liverpool City Region Combined Authority
Knowsley Council filming the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority 19th September 2014
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Liverpool City Region Combined Authority meeting of 19th September 2014 (Part 1) agenda items 1-8
At the time of writing Wirral Council’s Regeneration and Environment Policy and Performance Committee will be meeting tonight (22nd September 2014 starting at 6pm in Committee Room 1, Wallasey Town Hall) and as well as the emotive issue of car parking (you can read the report of officers and report of the seven councillors who looked into it on Wirral Council’s website, item ten is a verbal update on scrutiny of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority.
I was present at the meeting on Friday morning of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority which both myself and Knowsley Council filmed. For a bit of background Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council’s population is half the size of Wirral and all of its 63 councillors since 2012 are from the Labour Party.
Thanks in part to a retweet by the Liverpool Local Enterprise Partnership of a tweet on Knowsley Council’s Twitter account (with ~7,000 followers) and Councillor Phil Davies mentioning it during the meeting itself, Knowsley’s video footage of the meeting uploaded at about 4pm that day has had 129 views. This compares to a total of 21 views of our footage (which is in two parts of the same meeting but unlike Knowsley’s in higher quality HD).
Going briefly into the history of filming at Liverpool City Region Combined Authority meetings, I made a request to film the first meeting held on April 1st 2014 (the request was refused by Knowsley’s Chief Executive Sheena Ramsey as the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority constitution puts this decision in the hand of an officer, specifically the Chief Executive of Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council). After that meeting, the Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson then went and briefed the Liverpool Echo about how upset he was at not being picked at Chair instead of Wirral Council’s Leader Cllr Phil Davies.
Possibly as a result of this, the next meeting (when they had to pick a Chair again as it was the Annual General Meeting), on the 13th June 2014 the meeting was broadcast live on the internet in HD by Knowsley Council as a Google Hangout. In the interest of transparency at this point I will point out at this point that I receive a small amount from Google in advertising on Youtube videos I’ve filmed. Once again my request to film this meeting was again refused (somewhat strangely considering that Knowsley Council filmed the meeting and broadcast it live).
On August 6th 2014, as regulars readers of this blog will know, the law changed on the issue. A week later a report of Knowsley Council’s Chief Executive proposed a policy on filming which was agreed to by their Leader Ron Round. This decision was made by their Leader as a delegated decision. However the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority is a separate body to Knowsley Council.
Obviously they couldn’t stop me filming the meeting last Friday. However a Knowsley Council officer before the meeting referred to the part (still in Liverpool City Region Combined Authority’s constitution) that allows their Chief Executive to refuse requests to film. However if they actually did so now it would be unlawful and therefore the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority constitution should be changed to prevent confusion. I did suggest a change, but the response back from the officer concerned was that they won’t recommend to politicians a change the Liverpool City Region Authority’s constitution which is partly why a Scrutiny Panel for the Combined Authority is needed as a check and balance! The Knowsley Council officer I talked to before the meeting did tell me that a policy on filming (although never formally agreed by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority) had been agreed “that morning” and surprise, surprise is the same as Knowsley Council’s policy on the matter.
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Liverpool City Region Combined Authority meeting of 19th September 2014 (Part 2) agenda items 8-16 (Scrutiny Panel item starts at 1m 55s in this clip)
However back to the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, there has been criticism of it by some councillors as it is a “one party state” as it comprises the Leaders of the councils on Merseyside (plus the Chair of the Local Enterprise Partnership) and all the Leaders of the councils on Merseyside are all from the Labour Party.
What was agreed on Friday morning by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (the report can be read here was creating a scrutiny panel and appointments of councillors to this scrutiny panel have already been made by the Merseyside councils. The first meeting of the Scrutiny Panel is planned for the 19th October, although there will be a training session before that for councillors on it on the 26th September. I presume it will run along similar lines to the Merseytravel Committee (which is since April part of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority).
There will be fourteen councillors on the Scrutiny Panel for the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. Two are nominated from each council on Merseyside, with two extra places to represent opposition parties (one of these two opposition places being Councillor John Hale from Wirral Council to represent the Conservatives and the other, Councillor Haydn Preece from Sefton to represent the Liberal Democrats). The two Labour representatives from Wirral Council are Councillor Anita Leech (Labour) and Councillor Mike Sullivan (Labour).
I’m sure councillors will hear something similar in the verbal update given at tonight’s meeting about scrutiny of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority.
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Biffa asks Wirral’s Cabinet for a 10 year extension to bins & street cleaning contract worth at least £120 million
Biffa asks Wirral’s Cabinet for a 10 year extension to bins & street cleaning contract worth at least £120 million
Biffa Waste Service Limited November 2013 Invoice Wirral Council £1036840.28Biffa Waste Service Limited December 2013 Invoice Wirral Council £1032201.28Biffa Waste Service Limited January 2014 Invoice Wirral Council £1032201.28
Above are three of the recent monthly invoices to Wirral Council from Biffa Waste Services Limited for November 2013 (£1,036,840.28), December 2013 (£1,032,201.28) and January 2014 (£1,032,201.28).
I did not request the invoices for other months during that financial year (2013/14), but I would assume that the other nine are for similar amounts of around a million pounds. So why am I writing about this and what does Biffa Waste Services Limited actually do for it’s ~£12 million it receives each year from the taxpayer?
Well as shown on the invoices it’s for collecting the bins, cleaning the streets and extra amounts for working on a Bank Holiday. I’ll be looking more closely at the current contract with Biffa Waste Services Limited (which runs to 2017) tomorrow morning (if all goes well).
However there is some political news on the Biffa front, in fact Wirral Council seems to be bolstering itself for a bit of bad press coverage judging by the Cabinet papers for tonight’s Cabinet meeting (only tonight if you happen to reading this on the 11th September 2014).
I remember Mark Smith (a Wirral Council officer who is Head of Environment and Regulation) getting a grilling by the Chair (Rt Hon Frank Field MP) at a recent Birkenhead Constituency Committee meeting about what the Rt Hon Frank Field MP seemed to see as a lack of openness and transparency in the area of how Wirral Council manages the Biffa contract.
In the Rt Hon Frank Field MP’s view (from my memory of the meeting) he wanted (rather reasonably some might say) to know exactly what the public were getting for the ~£12 million a year that the taxpayer pays Biffa Waste Services Limited through Wirral Council. Sadly there was no one present at the meeting to answer for Biffa Waste Services Limited and Mark Smith seemed to struggle a little to give the kind of answers that Rt Hon Frank Field MP seemed to want to hear. However moving on from the frustrations of Birkenhead’s MP/Chair of the Birkenhead Constituency Committee to more local politics (although isn’t all politics local)?
Rather helpfully Appendix 5 to the Streetscene Environment Services Contract Extension item contains the following two entries on the risk register (copied below):
Risk No
Description of risk
Risk category
Risk Owner
Gross likelihood Score
Gross impact score
Total Gross Score
Net Likelihood Score
Net Impact Score
Total Net Score
Proposed Controls
Responsibility
Target date
RAG Status
1
District Audit scrutiny on decision process likely
Legal / Regulatory
Tara Dumas
3
4
12
3
2
6
Member decision based on thorough analysis of risks. Best value comparison work to be undertaken – Local benchmarking plus APSE/Audit commission comparison Update on market position sought from previous consultants contracted to review Biffa contract. Process to be reviewed by internal audit
TD TD TD MGa
07/07/14 completed 07/07/14 07/07/14
G C G G
2
Negative political and
media attention
Political/societal
PR team – Kathryn Green
5
3
15
3
2
6
Proactive approach by PR with press releases Confirm offer not linked to service/workforce changes
LF
Post decision 31/5/2014
G C
In other words, Wirral Council know (before any decision is formally made tonight to enter into negotiations) that it will cause all kinds of trouble. They’ve already decided (it seems) on a public relations line of telling the press it won’t lead to job losses/workforce changes and giving them the “gift” of a press release in the hope that most of the media will just print the press release more or less verbatim and not ask too many awkward questions about the matter.
They even know their external auditor (Grant Thornton) will be asking them a whole bunch of questions to do with it too but surprisingly there are even bigger risks than the media and Wirral Council’s auditors to tackle, although read the risk register at appendix 5 and hopefully you’ll see what I mean.
So how can I sum up what is proposed to be decided tonight quickly? The current contract will Biffa Waste Services Limited will end on March 2017.
The impression I get from reading between the lines of the Cabinet papers, (a lot of the detail has been kept deliberately secret by officers who are recommending to politicians to keep it secret too on grounds of commercial confidentiality) is that Biffa Waste Services Limited seemed to be somewhat concerned that if their multi-million pound 11 year contract ends on March 2017, that they would have to bid in a competitive tender against other companies and organisations for the new contract.
There’s then uncertainty (from Biffa’s perspective) over whether they would end up being the successful bidder or not. It’s called “competition” and is generally required for such large multi-million pound contracts because of all kinds of laws I won’t go into at this point and competition is therefore required for a whole bunch of good reasons.
So someone as Biffa Waste Services Limited has read through the contract they have with Wirral Council and found a caveat. There was a part in the contract that could extend it a further ten years (current prices of ~£12 million a year but yearly increases and variation are usually built-in). This contract covers “all household waste and recycling collections, street cleansing and fly tip removal, waste collection from schools and council offices and wheeled bin deliveries.”
All Biffa had to do to get a further ten years (at ~£12 million a year) was make a formal offer to Wirral Council (which they did) and have this agreed to by Wirral Council (which hasn’t happened yet with the earliest date expected being October 2014).
Due to the size of the amounts involved it has to be a decision made by politicians, specifically Wirral Council’s Cabinet and the councillor with responsibility for this area is the new(ish) Cabinet Member for Environment and Sustainability Councillor Bernie Mooney (who replaced Brian Kenny earlier this year when he lost an election in May to the Green Party councillor Pat Cleary).
However what’s in the currently exempt appendices?
Well appendix 1 covers the “value and suggested terms of the formal offer from Biffa in return for the Council extending the contract to 2027. In summary the proposal offers the Council a one-off saving split between 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17 followed by a continued annual reduction in the core contract price throughout the remainder of the extended contract period to the equivalent value. Officers asked Biffa to clarify the benefits to Biffa if the contract extension was agreed.”
I’m not allowed to link to appendix 1 (as it’s currently a big secret and you’d get an “access denied” type message from Wirral Council’s website if I did), but as the language used by a Wirral Council officer is rather opaque, it has to boil down to how I imagine a summary of what Biffa offered Wirral Council … “give us a further ten years and we will give you very good price if you pick us. Our price is very reasonable, many savings to be had, very good price, you buy from us again we treat you well. We are very good supplier and will take your bins to tip and keep streets clean for another 10 years for a very reasonable price.”
Wirral Council officers asked Biffa to clarify what Biffa would get out of extending the contract a further ten years.
Biffa responded to this on the 10th February 2014. Again I’m not allowed to show you Biffa’s response either on the instructions of Wirral Council officers!
The summary of this response is again in rather opaque language “Biffa indicated that the savings they could offer arose from avoiding future procurement and mobilisation costs, the ability to re-finance their operations and a reduction in overheads due to the stable nature of the contract. The discount is not linked to any service changes.”
In other words Biffa are saying “grant us a monopoly, save us the cost of having to retender for the contract in 2017, Wirral Council will save money from having to retender the contract” (which is a bit of a debatable point really anyway considering the extra costs this will cause doing it this way) “and Biffa will be able to borrow money cheaper because we’ll have a longer contract.” To be honest I don’t agree entirely with Biffa’s point about overheads being significantly lower to justify this.
Another letter from Biffa (exempt appendix 3) is also currently being kept secret by Wirral Council officers (pending a decision by politicians). This letter is about an offer to redesign the fleet of bin lorries from 2017 to collect things such as food waste (to meet Wirral Council’s recycling targets).
However Biffa make it clear that this is absolutely Biffa’s final offer (well unless Wirral Council’s Cabinet say no to negotiations or no to the offer in October 2014 and Biffa have to bid for the new contract starting in 2017)!
Wirral Council officers seem very keen to have the Labour councillors on Wirral Council’s Cabinet agree to Biffa’s plan. “80p cheaper per a Wirral person than Liverpool” they state in the report, but strangely 15p more per a person than in Sefton!
Of course Wirral Council’s Cabinet could just choose to reject Biffa’s proposal and decide to bring the service in-house from 2017.
The recent street cleansing cuts to the contract, have been the source of both political and media attention in the recent past. However, what’s the officer’s recommendation?
Oh and before I get to that, Wirral Council asked Eunomia (are they consultants?) in 2012 to look at the Biffa contract, the consultants in fact suggested the contract should be retendered! Eunomia also suggested that if Wirral Council did agree to extend the contract by a further ten years than there should be changes to “contract clauses relating to indexation, labour cost inflation and future efficiency gains” which would be extremely sensible to do considering the current contract is linked to RPI (and let’s face it inflation is quite high)! However the Eunomia assessment is now two years out of date and things have changed somewhat since then.
As Wirral Council officers freely admit in 5.3.4 of this report, they don’t really know if this will save any money at all versus retendering the contract, it all just seems to be educated guesswork and unknown quantities.
The estimated savings have been listed, but surprisingly (and isn’t this usually the case?) not the increased costs (such as an increased audit bill from Grant Thornton for extra work).
It’s the report gets to “legal implications” that things start to get interesting!
Here’s a quote from 10.2 “The Legal colleagues have highlighted that it is necessary to limit the amount of material changes to the contract in order to minimise the risk of the Council being challenged on the legalities of the extension.”
In other words, do it right otherwise one of Biffa’s competitors, or in fact anyone could sue Wirral Council over how it was done.
Then entering into catch 22 territory the legal advice continues:
“Due consideration has been given to establishing whether the Biffa proposal offers Value for Money (Sections 4 and 5 refers) as required under the Council’s Contract Procedure Rules. However, it is important to note that the only decisive way to determine whether a more advantageous contract could be secured by the Council would be through retendering the contract.”
In other words, Wirral Council don’t know whether this saves them money without retendering the contract in 2017, but if they agree to Biffa’s proposal they won’t be retendering the contract in 2017 so they’ll never really know or be able to prove “value for money” to their external auditors Grant Thornton.
However let’s see, what do officers want? They want politicians to agree to them to enter into negotiations with Biffa, more specifically the Strategic Director of Regeneration and Environment (currently Kevin Adderley) and then report back to Cabinet no later than October 2014.
Personally (and this is just an opinion) I think politicians on the Cabinet will probably agree to enter into negotiations with Biffa tonight (even though Labour’s tendency in the past has been to bring back services in-house), if only just to keep their options open in October 2014. Quite what the Rt Hon Frank Field MP’s views on this latest development in the Biffa saga are at the time of writing unknown.
Coming up next today: What Wirral Council’s Cabinet is planning to do about Children’s Centres.
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