Consultants, golf, politicians and Wirral Council: What could possibly go wrong?
Consultants, golf, politicians and Wirral Council: What could possibly go wrong?
Last Friday Wirral Council published a General Exception Notice about reporting to Cabinet the results of a soft market test exercise about Wirral’s golf courses. Interestingly it says the reason for the exception notice is that there is no Cabinet meeting in August (something that is hardly unsurprising as the draft calendar of meetings for this municipal year was agreed last December). The other reason given in the notice is that the earlier a decision happens, the greater the potential savings.
The Cabinet meets on the 7th July and Claire Fish’s report at the agenda item Soft Market Testing Exercise – Golf Courses and it can be read on Wirral Council’s website. It’s not what’s in the report itself, but what’s not in the report that is surprising.
As you can read in this tender notice published back in March, Wirral Council & Chester West and Chester Council jointly issued a “prior information notice” in the supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union. This referred to a prospectus and questionnaire (which were given to those responding to the notice) to decide whether there would be interest from golf operators in running eight golf courses (seven of which are in Wirral). Wirral Council was down as the contracting authority for this exercise, however the telephone number and email contact details given are that of a business consultancy called V4 Services Limited based in Stafford.
Wirral Council’s list of invoices over £500 paid for the month of April, which you can find on this page shows a payment made to V4 Services Limited for £18,757.68 from the technical services department with the description being “consultants”. This amount of £18,757.68 isn’t mentioned in the report, nor is any reference made to V4 Services Limited. As a slight aside I suppose no-one except me has yet spotted that the link to the pdf file for the May payments on that page, is in fact an identical file to the pdf for April payments?
There is a curious grammatical error made five times in the report that you wouldn’t expect the author of the report (Claire Fish (Strategic Director – Families and Wellbeing) on a salary of £121,807) to make. Here are the examples if it from the report (highlighted in bold):
1.3 “Other Council’s have found that similar arrangements can eliminate subsidy entirely”
3.2 “The terms of any agreement or leasehold interest would be determined if the Council’s proceed, and with dialogue the Council’s will seek to secure best consideration.”
3.3 “Both Council’s made it very clear in the documentation released they are open to exploring innovative ways of structuring any prospective arrangement that delivers best consideration and secures arrangements that deliver mutual benefits. At present Wirral Council maintains its own courses, and carries out the green-keeping.”
3.4 “Seven (7) suppliers completed and returned the market questionnaire with varying levels of interest across both Council’s, between full 18 hole golf courses and smaller, pitch and putt courses.”
There’s also a bit of the report that makes no sense at all, under the “legal implications” section is the rather cryptic “This report is based on the structure of delegation”. In my opinion vast sections of the report sound not like they’ve been written by Claire Fish at all, but by consultants. If V4 Services Ltd have been paid £18,757.68 for the soft market testing exercise (that could’ve been done by Wirral Council using in-house resources) they have a vested financial interest in persuading Cabinet to agree to proceed to the next stage of a full procurement exercise (that V4 Services will probably argue they are in a better position to run than anyone else as they ran the soft market testing exercise). So what do you think?
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Cllr Ann McLachlan “the key problem here that we have a high volume of FOIs from a small number of people”
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Wirral Council’s Cabinet discuss freedom of information (19th June 2014) starts at 2:29 in the video above
Wirral Council’s Cabinet discuss the Freedom of Information Scrutiny Review (19th June 2014) L to R Cllr Stuart Whittingham, Cllr Bernie Mooney, Cllr Chris Jones, Shirley Hudspeth, Surjit Tour, Cllr Phil Davies, Graham Burgess
Cllr Ann McLachlan “the key problem here that we have a high volume of FOIs from a small number of people”
Wirral Council’s Cabinet discussed the Freedom of Information Scrutiny report, the Cabinet report, report and final report of the scrutiny panel can be viewed on Wirral Council’s website. The reason for it being on Cabinet’s agenda is that it was referred to Cabinet by the Transformation and Resources Policy and Performance Committee on the 14th April. I wrote a transcript of what was said then back on the 17th April so I’ll be following the same format here.
COUNCILLOR PHIL DAVIES (Chair)
Right, which takes us on to item 16 in the governance, commissioning and improvement. It’s the freedom of information scrutiny review. This was a piece of work done under the Transformation and Resources Policy and Performance Committee. I’m delighted that Councillor Sykes, you’ve come along tonight to Cabinet and it’s really good that we’re giving you kind of an opportunity just to make to talk to the recommendations. OK, thank you.
COUNCILLOR ADAM SYKES
Chair, I’ll keep things brief because everyone eager to get home.
COUNCILLOR PHIL DAVIES
What’s happening tonight?
COUNCILLOR ADAM SYKES
Apparently there’s some football. During the last municipal year, the Transformation and Resources Committee carried out a scrutiny review to look into the FOI performance of the Council. As we began the review, the Council already began taking steps to improve FOI response times after the Information Commissioner had investigated and asked us to make some improvements and I’d like you to know obviously that you know that improvement came, response times to over 85% now within the guidelines which has improved since this report was done.
Eight recommendations came out of the report which are detailed in the report so I won’t go through each individually but I’ll take any questions should people ask them. They basically covered a couple of areas, firstly having designated people who are responsible for FOI throughout the Council rather than the current situation which is different across the Council depending on departments which answer your question.
Also to produce a more consistent and robust process throughout the Council as to how the FOI request is tracked and how it proceeds to make sure things run on track and things move forward in a quick fashion. Finally, to also improve the monitoring for carrying out both the scrutiny duty in the, in the… finally note the improvement in that and also by councillors as well, a strategic review that the Council’s put in place. That’s the Chief Executive’s Strategy Group. So I’m happy to take any questions.
COUNCILLOR PHIL DAVIES
Thanks for that Adam, I’m going to ask our Cabinet Member who this item comes under Councillor Ann McLachlan just to respond to this report, Ann over to you.
COUNCILLOR ANN MCLACHLAN (Cabinet Member for Governance, Commissioning and Improvement)
Yes thank you, well, Chair I’d like to start by congratulating Adam and Councillor Whittingham I believe and it’s Councillor Muspratt who formed this scrutiny review for Council and undertook what is an excellent piece of task and finish work really helping us to refine and you know be more efficient in dealing with a particular problem area and certainly it’s an excellent piece of work and I’d really like to congratulate you but as you’ve pointed out Adam there are eight recommendations which flow from your, from your review and as a result of that now in conjunction with Surjit [Tour], Head of the Legal Service I’ve now worked on an action plan to address those eight recommendations.
Just briefly I’d like to talk about that Chair and what those actions will be, but suffice to say that those actions will be implemented between now and December and we will have further reports to Cabinet and certainly to Council on those and they will include the nomination of champions. So a single point of contact for FOIs within departments and I understand the strategic directors and heads of service will be identified in nominating champions and that action will be done fairly soon.
There are a number of actions that are going to relate to our CRM which is our customer relationship management software system and we’re going to look at that in particular in a number of areas. One is how can we do better recording and monitoring to shorten the timescales when we receive FOI requests and also a solution possibly to look at how we capture all the information about an FOI before it’s actually disseminated so we’ve got it all in one place and a further piece of work is going to be undertaken with our software also to look at whether it’s actually fit for purpose to deal with some of these issues and if it is identified that we actually need a new kind of piece of software then we’re going to ask for a business case to be brought forward to show that we demonstrate that that’s going to you know have some good outcomes for us.
Also in terms of one of the recommendations that you made was you know at what level in an organisation are the FOIs dealt with. From the FOI reporting is now going to be escalated to the Chief Executive and his Strategy Group but also and I think quite importantly to go to the policy and performance committees into our new performance management framework now. So you can actually have much more oversight in terms of scrutiny of this area.
Another piece of work is going to be undertaken to identify all the new trends and themes really, so we can categorise FOIs. You know that the key problem here that we have a high volume of FOIs from a small number of people who request them but are some of those on particular trends and themes, when we could create something on our website which would be like frequently asked questions so that information is there it’s readily accessible.
What we want to do is make sure that we’re as open and transparent as we possibly can be in order that we can lessen the number of FOI requests that need to put through the Council. Another piece of work that we’ll be undertaking with our marketing team to look at how is information structured and accessed on our website in other words how accessible is information? If you come onto the Council’s website and you’re trying to find something out, how easy is it? So we’re going to ask the department to kind of market test queries and see whether we need to do some work there but I think all in all what this piece of, this exercise has demonstrated is that members [councillors] working together have come up with shared solutions that are going to help us to deal with this in a more effective way.
It is going to involve some of internal systems, some of our ICT but again I’d like to thank you and I’d also like to thank Surjit [Tour] and his team and those people that are going to undertake the workload going forward and I’ll be looking forward Chair to reporting to the Cabinet and Council on what I hope will be you know will be a more successful story going forward in terms of the numbers of requests that we’re receiving. OK, thank you.
COUNCILLOR PHIL DAVIES
OK, thanks Ann, well can I suggest we agree kind of Ann’s sort of plan for taking this work forward and that means, I’d just like to reiterate I think it’s been a really excellent piece of work by the scrutiny team so well done Adam to you and your colleagues and thanks for coming along tonight to take us through it. OK, thanks very much. OK
COUNCILLOR ADAM SYKES
OK, I’d just thank the Cabinet Member and the officers for their response in a positive way in moving this forward and I’m grateful for the recommendations.
COUNCILLOR PHIL DAVIES
OK, thanks very much. OK, so we’ll agree that as a way forward. Is that agreed Cabinet?
CABINET
Agreed
COUNCILLOR PHIL DAVIES
Thank you.
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REVEALED: The date of the Cabinet meeting to discuss the Lyndale School closure consultation
REVEALED: The date of the Cabinet meeting to discuss the Lyndale School closure consultation
Councillor Phil Davies (on the right) at Wirral Council’s Cabinet meeting of the 19th June 2014 making announcements (including one on Lyndale School)
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The announcement on the date of the Cabinet meeting to discuss the outcome of the consultation on closure of Lyndale School appears at 0:16 in the video above. Apologies for the poor sound quality.
Councillor Phil Davies (Leader of the Council and Chair of Cabinet) had this to say at the Cabinet meeting about the Lyndale School closure consultation (which had originally been on the agenda for a Cabinet meeting in July).
He said, “I’d like to suggest a special Cabinet meeting on the 4th September and that will be to consider the outcome of the consultation on Lyndale School. So if we could just make sure that’s in everybody’s diaries and give the relevant notice to the public et cetera, I’d be grateful. So, a special Cabinet meeting 4th September.”
The consultation on closure of Lyndale School closes on the 25th June. There are more details about how to respond to the consultation on Wirral Council’s website.
The next question was about the £80,000 that had been raised by the public to pay for a sensory garden at Lyndale School. He asked what plans do they have for the sensory garden and how would you plan to get the money back to the people that donated it?
Phil Ward answered, “Well what it is, if a school, my colleagues can talk about the buildings on the site, but if a school does close clearly there would be in keeping, well we don’t know. We don’t know”.. “well resources that can be used, well resources that can be used certainly”… David Armstrong said, “It’s a what if question because there’s no decision made. There’s no real gardens, there’s no decision been taken to determine it.” The questioner replied with, “Well I’m sure if we knew at the time that there was the chance that all our hard work would be”… “we would not have done all that hard work.” to which David Armstrong replied, “All I will say is, all I will say is, that certainly in my time here we’ve always treated the school sites, what I’ve tried to do is do it with real sensitivity to what’s been the best care that I can.”
The questioner said it was a very, very unique school. David Armstrong replied with, “What we’ve done is anything that related to a particular pupil, anything that was in memory of a particular pupil we’ve dealt with that first and then we’ve gone on from that”…. The questioner asked who put the amphitheatre at the back of Lyndale School to which David Armstrong replied, “I don’t know.” The person asking the question said it was put there by lads working on a Youth Training Scheme for Wirral Action to which David Armstrong replied, “I can’t know every single detail.”
Phil Ward said, “Well clearly we’ve closed that one down, time moves on, there are different circumstances and we are where we are now.”
Ian Lewis said, “Four years ago, when I was a member of the Cabinet, the officers insisted on .. the officers brought a recommendation to close the Kingsway Primary School in Seacombe. It wasn’t a special school, it isn’t a special school and the argument for closing the school was that it isn’t financially viable.
I and the rest of the Cabinet voted against that proposal and four years later that school is still open and in its recent OFSTED inspection it was found to be outstanding. So on what basis do you think that, for the two directors, on the basis that this here is a school is for children who are vulnerable? If in four years time that’s still here, who’s to say it won’t be viable?”…
“Secondly, you mentioned the teaching in the other schools that you’re proposing Elleray Park and Stanley. That as I understand it won’t be one to one as we currently have at Lyndale, so issues such as basic issues such as toileting they would be left. If the children going to Lyndale, assuming this proposal went through, the children from Lyndale went to those other two schools and if their current level of education was to be maintained I would expect that they would have one to one levels of support as they have now, wouldn’t that therefore affect the viability of those schools that they were going to if they’re having to increase staffing to cope with the one to one and that’s a question to the two directors.”
Phil Ward said, “Well I’ll just reply to the one question if I may..”
Ian Lewis replied, “Sorry, I’m not familiar with who you are. Who are you?”
Phil Ward replied, “I’m the Strategic Lead for Special Educational Needs for Wirral. The question of one to one,…”
Ian Lewis said, “Can I ask the directors that question please?”
Phil Ward said, “If you’ll let me get to the last bit, the question of, I’ll bring them in in a sec, the question of one to one, I’ve spoken with the headteachers at the other schools and the basic premise that we’re working on and the staff that we’re working on that every school, every special school in this consultation can provide similar same levels of support to the youngsters if they had to move. It’s all about to the management of the curriculum and staff within the schools. Nothing is ruled out, nothing is impossible. We would not be significantly changing support for the children at the school.”
Ian Lewis replied, “Sorry if you can’t answer a question than I don’t think you should be involved. You haven’t answered the question about the children.” Phil ward interrupts. Ian Lewis continues despite the interruption, “What I’m saying is, let me finish please, what you’ve said is, you will move resources around into the two existing schools because of the increase in, for the children at Lyndale and therefore by definition, the education of the children in these two schools, will be diminished” and again Phil Ward interrupted him and they both started talking at the same time. Ian Lewis continued, “No sorry, will you please let me finish!? Let me continue please! It’s very, very rude for an officer, thank you! What I’m saying to you is, if you’ve got a set finite number of resources and don’t look at me like that I’d appreciate it. If you’ve got a finite number of resources and you share those amongst the number of pupils, then what you’re doing by putting more of those resources onto the children that need it as we have at Lyndale you must be taking those resources from somewhere.”
Phil Ward replied, “Right, I think I’ll bring in the Director on that.”
The person asked a question referred to the one to one care that children were receiving at Lyndale School. Julia Hassall replied that that was part of the reason behind getting up to date assessments of each child was to ensure that if they had to transfer to a different school they would get exactly the same care that they get at Lyndale.
A parent said that since the last meeting they had visited Stanley School. She said, “The facilities there don’t get me wrong are absolutely fabulous, but I’d just like you to know I would be absolutely petrified to leave Scott there. I’m absolutely petrified.” and “my child would definitely not go to Elleray so the only other choice would be Stanley and it would be a massive, massive risks for Scott to go to that school.”
Phil Ward thanked her for her point.
The next question was about if anyone had spoken to the pediatricians of children at Lyndale. She said that there were children on hospital wards that might be suitable for Lyndale School but that nobody seemed to have asked the paediatricians or specialists if these children could go to Lyndale School.
Phil Ward answered, “Sorry I can’t speak for paediatricians, but surely the point..” was interrupted by the questioner asking again if anyone had asked the paediatricians to which he replied, “No, they have not, no is the answer to that.”
The next questioner referred to Julia Hassall’s statement earlier that there was a growing number of children with complex learning difficulties and referred to something that Andrew Roberts said at the call in. She asked what would happen when they can’t get into Stanley School? She said that the parents were categorically telling you that they don’t want to send their children to those schools.
Phil Ward asked if her first question was about how they’d respond to growing numbers? He said the question had come up a number of times and the answer was that Wirral Council has a responsibility on specialist provision. When there was evidence that the numbers were growing in any particular category then they would start discussions with schools to plan places.
The next questioner said that if they were providing up to two hundred and thirty places across Stanley and Elleray Park and those places were taken up by children transferring from Lyndale then wouldn’t there not be room for the expected increase in children with complex learning difficulties?
Phil Ward said that it was an ongoing process, as children were leaving for secondary school at the same time as children joining primary school the balance was shifting and changing all the time.
Someone asked what special arrangements that Wirral Council were making to gather the views of the children, almost all of whom had no conventional language whatsoever. He said that there were issues about friendships, relationships, their sense of place and security. As well as these there were issues about a safe environment to do with children with behavioural problems being mixed in with children who were very vulnerable with poor hand eye coordination and couldn’t protect themselves and anticipate danger. He said to find out what the children themselves would need special skills and special arrangements.
Julia Hassall responded, “This is why we’ve got our principal educational psychologist pulling together a group of meetings with the key staff involved with each child, the parents, any health professionals to really understand each individual child but also how the children interact with each other.”
The same person asked when that report would be available? Julia Hassall replied, “What will, they’re very specific to individual named children these meetings to get an update. So I think it would be breaching the confidentiality of the individual children but in terms of using that information to apply this SEN Improvement Test. That’s something we will absolutely make sure the needs of the children are put at the heart of that and this independent person Lynn Wright (I’m not sure of the exact spelling of this person’s name) will absolutely make sure that the needs of the children drive the future provision.”
Councillor Chris Carubia said that he was his understanding that if Lyndale was closed then the children would go to Elleray and Stanley, however nobody had mentioned Foxfield before?
Phil Ward answered, “In relation to, so, should a final decision be made about closure of the school”… “the children have got to go somewhere else. In terms of the legislation, we then would have a responsibility as a local authority then to engage in further conversations with each of the parents, not the parents as a group but each of the parents of each child that’s got a statement of special educational needs and that discussion will be had with each of the parents who may for their own reasons decide to express a preference potentially anywhere frankly. So there’s no presumption automatically that if the school were to close children would go to A, B or C. We’ve got to enter into that conversation.”
The next person referred to a visit to Stanley School and referred to it as a “brilliant building” but wasn’t sure whether it was “usable” and that it “felt like Manchester Airport”. A woman said that when she went to Stanley that it was a ninety place school but had a hundred children in it. She said that there were ten children at the school that were not funded and would this be sorted out if the Lyndale School children went to Stanley School? Andrew Roberts replied, “In terms of places at special schools, those decisions are taken annually. So the schools take it at a point in time, the decision taken in respect of Stanley was taken last November as a census. Clearly we need to be reviewing, as do the number of places at other special schools.” Phil Ward thanked him for his answer.
