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EXCLUSIVE: Incredible £88,174 loss made by Merseytravel on sale of Liverpool pub (continued)

EXCLUSIVE: Incredible £88,174 loss made by Merseytravel on sale of Liverpool pub (continued)

EXCLUSIVE: Incredible £88,174 loss made by Merseytravel on sale of Liverpool pub (continued)

                        

Continues from EXCLUSIVE: Incredible £88,174 loss made by Merseytravel on sale of Liverpool pub.

Tony (Merseytravel officer): Also the plot in front of you doesn’t have any access to the highway and fronts the street. There’s very little space in that it’s actually quite a small plot of land.

Cllr Liam Robinson (Liverpool City Council, Labour): Tony?

Cllr Anthony Carr (Sefton Council, Labour): Thanks Tony too. Do you have any details of the acquisition of the land neighbouring the land and when the current owners took possession of that land about the date that they purchased that land for? Whether it was because it was a big piece of land…about it was eighteen months.. the land valuation office about the land valuation office so it gives you a better guide as to not what they wanted, but what they already paid for the land that they’ve already got?

Tony (Merseytravel officer): I’m sorry I don’t have those details but I’ll see what I can find out.

Cllr Liam Robinson (Liverpool City Council, Labour): Again Steve?

Cllr Steve Foulkes (Wirral Council, Labour): I suggest progress Chair that I think this, now that it’s a public document which I think it should be, the land valuation is out there and in you know the public arena. We’re unlikely then, to get any more than this for this piece of land but can we ask officers to consider the options that Members have raised when parcels of land like this as a general policy that we go to auction or we use that methodology to see if we can get the best return we can on any piece of land or any asset that we sell?

Cllr Liam Robinson (Liverpool City Council, Labour): Yeah absolutely and I think that it’s central to the way that we deal with any asset I would sell in making sure that now the District Auditor and the District Valuer at all times for any disposal or acquisition with us in getting that relevant necessary advice at all times. Mary?

Cllr Mary Rasmussen (Liverpool City Council, Labour): Just a kind of an afterthought really Chair. It would be interesting to know what pieces of land we do own and where they are so that we can be forewarned if you like we know nothing just jump out of the ground and be flogged off rather cheaply in the future? Just to make as all aware.

Cllr Liam Robinson (Liverpool City Council, Labour): And I think fundamentally all these things are captured in our asset register and it would be useful to actually have a workshop for all Members to take Members through everything that remains within the asset register and what its strategic long-term how its potential is. Ken?

Cllr Ken McGlashan (Knowsley Council, Labour): Thanks Chairman. We used to have a New Deal for Communities earlier in across my area in Huyton and when we demolished about eleven hundred houses the price of the land then was at the maximum. Now we’re lucky to get a third of that price for that land and what we’re looking to do now is hold onto the land so we’ve got a development project. We already have developments there.

When they’ve finished one plot, hopefully that will sort of drive up the price of the next plot up. So the price of land at the moment is at an all time low and about ..%. The price has been advertised so nobody is going to pay more than the advertised price.

Cllr Liam Robinson (Liverpool City Council, Labour): Gordon?

Cllr Gordon Friel (Sefton Council, Labour): Just really a technical point on how we put this in the public domain. If we decided that we really wanted to seek an auction price for this meeting, we’d have declared our hand by it being a public document. Would we compromise ourselves? So I just wonder … that the information was regarding this, the mark down, but are we best advised putting this in the public arena with this being sold in anyway? Thank you very much Chair.

Cllr Liam Robinson (Liverpool City Council, Labour): Ok, if there’s no further contributions, if I can move the recommendation in paragraph seven of the report?

Councillors: Agreed.

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Merseyside Police Authority 20/2/12 12/13 Budget Meeting Pt 2 – Police Authority agree to raise Council Tax police precept by 3% and refuse Council Tax Freeze Grant

The members of the Merseyside Police Authority met to decide on the 2012/2013 Budget after their meeting last Thursday had been adjourned.

There were two options to decide between. The first option was whether to accept a one-off Council Tax Freeze grant for 2012/2013 which equated to what they would have gained from a 3 percent rise in the police precept on the Council Tax bills for Merseyside residents. The second option was to reject the Council Tax Freeze grant and increase the Council Tax precept by 3 percent for Merseyside residents.

Neither option made any difference to the 2012/2013 budget, but did to budgets from 2013/2014 onwards.

The Chair welcomed people to the reconvened meeting. He said they wouldn’t go through the whole report again. He asked for a proposal.

It was proposed to reject the Council Tax Freeze grant for 2012/2013 and increase the Merseyside Council Tax police precept by 3 percent compared to its 2011/2012 level.

It was moved as an amendment to accept the Council Tax freeze grant for 2012/2013 and not increase the Merseyside Council Tax police precept for 2012/2013 compared to its 2011/2012 level.

A councillor spoke for the amendment and against the motion. Cllr Kate Wood spoke for the amendment and against the motion. The Chair commented that the Merseyside Police Authority sets the precept independently of the Merseyside local authorities who collected the Council Tax on their behalf.

Janet referred to a story on the BBC website. She had asked for a copy of the press release and felt the BBC had mixed it up as they had used a figure of £2 million instead of £1.865 million. She also didn’t understand the BBC article suggested there would be a loss of forty officers, which made out there would be a deficit when the revenue Budget for 2012/2013 was neutral between the two options.

She had an issue with the survey using survey monkey that the Police Authority had done. She said it was biased as option 1 was for putting up the Council Tax precept and that people could vote in it as many times as they liked, she herself had voted three times. She said although the proposed increase was small,would some residents would have to cut their heating bill to afford the increased Council Tax.

The Chair asked the Chief Executive to clarify.

The Chief Executive referred people to table 14 on page 45. He pointed out the issue was with the 2013/2014 Budget, not 2012/2013. He explained that the issue was never 2012/2013. The issue was what happened after 2012/2013 to the one year Council Tax Freeze grant.

He continued by pointing out in 2013/2014 if the Council Tax Freeze grant was accepted, then it led to a £2 million gap, as the grant would be dropped out of the Budget for 2013/2014. This meant the Council Tax base for 2013/2014 would be reduced [compared to increasing the precept for 2012/2013] and the effect of the Council Tax Freeze Grant was close to £2 million.

Referring to the survey, Paul Johnson explained that it had been sent out to libraries and they had made it so that more that each person could vote more than once. He said they had been criticised on Thursday for reorganising a meeting so quickly, which gave little opportunity to the public of Merseyside. They had achieved some helpful information, but if Authority members thought it was not up to scratch they were at “liberty to ignore” it.

The Chair said he was not going to give a summay out unless he was asked for it. In the short period of time he only intended to introduce it if there was another stalemate. It had been raised, but it did have limitations.

An Authority Member referred to a “lot of misunderstanding”. They then referred to Liverpool City Council deciding on the Council Tax levels and the effect on them of receiving or refusing the Council Tax Freeze Grant. The Member thought the effect over five years for the Police Budget could come to Ł9 million.

The Member referred to the “poorly paid on benefits” who had faced “Housing Benefit cuts” when “nobody gave a monkeys”. He then went onto refer to Working Tax Credit cuts and Winter Fuel Allowance reductions from Ł250 to Ł150.

He was arguing that the 3% rise would not lead to greater numbers of officers on the frontline as in previous years. However it would allow injured and ill officers to be tacken off their backroom jobs and made redundant, which would lead to a longterm saving.

This could lead to [approximately] forty new officers. If they were not going to recruit now then in a couple of years there would be a big gap and experienced officers who needed to pass their skills and advice on would have left Merseyside Police.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Annual Report 2011

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 17,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.