Category: Cllr Phil Davies

Have improvements to make Wirral Council’s decision making better got bogged down in bureaucracy?

Have improvements to make Wirral Council’s decision making better got bogged down in bureaucracy?

Have improvements to make Wirral Council’s decision making better got bogged down in bureaucracy?

                                     

The New Year is a time of looking back to the previous year and forward to the new one. So please cast your minds back to November 2013 and a meeting of the Improvement Board held in public.

Prior to this there had been a short ten-day consultation on the Improvement Board Review report.

As the Improvement Board Review report is sixty-three pages long I will quote the sections I am referring to here about changes to the Audit and Risk Management Committee (the committee referred to in the quote from section 95 is Wirral Council’s Audit and Risk Management Committee):

“ 20. Action Taken

…
20.4 It is proposed to strengthen the independent nature of the Audit and Risk Management Committee through the appointment of a majority of external members.” (page 15)

“PRIORITY 2: CORPORATE AND DECISION MAKING

95. It is proposed to strengthen the independent nature of the Committee through the appointment of a majority of external members.” (page 34)

“Next Steps

112. Compliance with the constitution will be through more rigorous challenge from Audit and Risk Management Committee. It is proposed that would be enhanced, by (subject to Council agreement) appointing a majority of independent members of the committee.” (page 37)

“SUMMARY OF NEXT STEPS FOR WIRRAL

167. A key challenge is to ensure compliance to the revised procedures. Compliance with the constitution will be through more rigorous challenge from Audit and Risk Management Committee. It is proposed that would be enhanced by (subject to Council agreement) appointing a majority of independent members of the committee. The Leader of the Council has indicated that he will develop a proposal for consideration by Councillors alongside the review of the Constitution.” (page 49)

Prior to the Improvement Board public meeting on the 15th November there were special meetings of both the Coordinating Committee and the Audit and Risk Management Committee to discuss the Improvement Board Review report.

The Coordinating Committee agreed this:

That this Committee welcomes the Report. It clearly states that the Authority is moving in the right direction.

This Committee pledges to play its full part in continuing that direction of travel.

All Members will be encouraged to engage in the next steps identified within the report.

We must not be complacent as we still need to improve in many areas identified in the report and embed positive changes.

We thank all members of the Improvement Board for their help.

We thank all employees and Members for their efforts in this journey of improvement.

We would recommend the approach adopted by the Local Government Association, in piloting sector led improvement, and would recommend it to others who find themselves in difficulties.

and the Audit and Risk Management Committee (by eight votes to one agreed):

(1) That this Committee welcomes the report of the Improvement Board, which draws attention to the significant progress Wirral has made in the last 20 months.

It recognises that there are still issues which need to be addressed but believes it is clear that Wirral is now an outward looking Authority – open to constructive criticism and willing to address problems when they occur.

We would recommend the sector-led approach to change and development to other authorities who find themselves in difficulty.

(2) That the thanks of the Committee be accorded to the Improvement Board, all staff and Members who have participated in the change process. It now remains for Members to continue to participate in their own development and not become complacent but ensure that change becomes embedded for the future.

(3) That the recommendations contained within the Review report be endorsed and that, subject to clarification as to the ownership of the steps required to support continued improvement, all Members be encouraged to engage in the work required in those areas.

Here is a transcript of the answer given to my question on this issue at the Improvement Board meeting of the 15th November 2013 on the issue of changes to the Audit and Risk Management Committee:

In the review report it states “it is proposed to strengthen the independent nature of the Audit and Risk Management Committee through the appointment of a majority of external members”. How many independent members of the Audit and Risk Management Committee will be appointed, who will they be appointed by and will the Audit and Risk Management Committee be chaired in future by one of these independent members?

You can watch Graham Burgess’s and Cllr Phil Davies’ reply to this question by following this link to footage of the Improvement Board meeting.

Graham Burgess replied, “In terms of the request to strengthen the independent nature of the Audit & Risk Management Committee. First of all I think it’s going to be proposed by the Leader of the Council that for the new municipal year, after the elections in May, that there should be a majority of independent people on the Audit and Risk Management Committee.

There’s only one other Council in the country that’s adopted this approach and the Leader may wish to speak for himself on this matter but I think it is, it’s got to be recognised I hope, the willingness of this Council to open itself up to external scrutiny by I don’t know the numbers yet because that’s going to be discussed, it will be and Phil’s agreed that it should be referred to the Council’s scrutiny committee to discuss the best way to do it, the best way to recruit them, the exact numbers, but certainly I think it’s really brave of him, the fact that this Council and the other one Council to open themselves up in this way.

And the sort of people who might be ?????, and again there’ll be discussions with scrutiny and looking at elsewhere and taking advice from audit. I suspect there’ll be a number of people with a financial background to challenge that.

There’ll be a number of people who can represent key community organisations and can represent individual voices on the Wirral. So there’ll be a mixture I suspect of professional and lay people who can judge whether this Council is actually operating well in terms of its audit responsibilities.

I think that’s another demonstration of the openness that Phil and all parties I suspect want going forward and to be challenged. So in theory and in practice in fact, the councillors can be out voted by the independent members on that panel.

Might I also say that the Council does intend, again this is not finalised to retain the Chair of that panel as a councillor. The majority will be non councillors and that’s because it’s still a Council committee and in terms of organising things we need the availability of a councillor to do that, but I don’t want to be drawn about that.”

Cllr Phil Davies: “Just a sentence to say I think it will enable kind of an ongoing challenge to be built into monitoring, reviewing how we go forward in terms of all of the issues that have been looked at by the Improvement Board over the last eighteen months.

So I think it’s just another kind of check going forward that we’ve got an external voice or external voices, not part of the Council to really scrutinise what we’re doing on our performance going forward and I welcome that.”

So just to go back to a quote from the Improvement Board review report “The Leader of the Council has indicated that he will develop a proposal for consideration by Councillors alongside the review of the Constitution.” Well on Monday 6th January 2014 at a special meeting of the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee councillors (and the independent members of the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee) will discuss a review of Wirral Council’s constitution and a survey of councillors. The survey itself states “This feedback will inform a full review of the Constitution that will be undertaken in January 2014” asking for councillors to return the survey by the 7th January 2014 (the 7th January 2014 is stated on the survey, but the recommendation in the accompanying report states 24th January 2014).

Yet nowhere in the thirty-six proposed amendments to Wirral Council’s constitution is there even one that refers to appointing a majority of the Audit and Risk Committee as independent members. The Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee is the Council committee that proposes and scrutinises changes to Wirral Council’s constitution. So why haven’t changes to Wirral Council’s Audit and Risk Management Committee appeared on the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee agenda for the meeting on the 6th January?

The Improvement Board will be returning in March 2014 to see the progress Wirral Council has made, so why the delay on this matter. Does it require the matter to be referred to the fifteen councillors on the Council’s Coordinating Committee to agree things like “the exact numbers” of independent members on the Audit and Risk Management Committee? If the intention is a majority of independent members that can outvote the councillors you merely have one more independent member than councillors and remove the casting vote of the Chair?

Where is the Leader’s “proposal for consideration by Councillors alongside the review of the Constitution” and why isn’t it included in the agenda of the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee’s meeting of the 6th January? Why delay implementation of this until after the elections in May? Surely if it’s a “demonstration of openness” this could (as was indicated in the Improvement Board review report) be included in part of the January constitutional review and these changes to the constitution agreed at the Council meeting in either February or March?

At least then when the Improvement Board returned to check on progress in March (although the independent members wouldn’t have been recruited yet) the constitutional change to the Audit and Risk Management Committee could be pointed to as evidence that Wirral Council has actually implemented one of the Improvement Board’s recommendations?

If a simple recommendation to have a majority of the Audit and Risk Management Committee made up of independent people has to go to a meeting of the Coordinating Committee to be agreed in principle (November 2013), the Audit and Risk Management Committee to agree its recommendations (November 2013), then the Coordinating Committee (again to agree the details), then the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee (to recommend the constitutional changes to Council), then full Council (to agree the constitutional changes), is it any wonder that the Anna Klonowski Associates report referred to the “bureaucratic machinations” of Wirral Council (which seem to still be alive and kicking) and that the Wirral public (as expressed at the public meeting of the Improvement Board in November) are sceptical that there is a political will to change Wirral Council in the direction of more openness in what most people would consider a reasonable timescale?

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Wirral Council plays the Regeneration Game (badly)

Wirral Council plays the Regeneration Game (badly)

Wirral Council plays the Regeneration Game (badly)

                                

Just before Christmas started Wirral Leaks asked for a guide to the BIG Fund/ISUS/Working Neighbourhood investigation. Well where to start?

BIG stands for business investment grants. ISUS stands for intensive start-up support.

BIG is not to be confused with Think Big (marketed under the rather terrible catchphrase Think Big! Think Wirral). Think BIG was for grants of over £20,000 and as far as I know isn’t included in the whistleblowing allegations. Think BIG had a budget of £300k a year in Wirral Council’s budget from 2009/10 and is now called the Think Big Investment Fund.

Business Investment Grants (for under £20,000) were awarded to companies that were successful in applying for a business investment grant. Grant Thornton (who are also Wirral Council’s auditors) were asked in October 2012 for a quotation for work to look into the whistleblowers’ concerns. As a result of this work, two reports were produced and sent to Wirral Council. One report was on BIG and the other on ISUS.

In response to a question from Nigel Hobro to Cllr Phil Davies at the full Council meeting in July, Wirral Council published the summary of Grant Thornton’s report into the BIG program.

I made a Freedom of Information request for Grant Thornton’s ISUS report in August 2013. On the 23rd September 2013 Wirral Council stated that “the report, which has been reported previously, has been handed over to the Police for their consideration, in accordance with the recommendations contained within the report” and refused providing the report using a s.30 exemption (Investigations and Proceedings conducted by Public Authorities).

I asked for an internal review as the investigation had been carried out by Grant Thornton UK LLP (who isn’t a public authority). Another factor I pointed out was that Wirral Council weren’t bringing criminal proceedings, but instead passing it to the police. I also pointed out that s.30 was a qualified exemption and subject to a public interest test (which Wirral Council hadn’t included in its original reply).

Wirral Council’s response to the internal review was that they still refused to release the report. However they did provide further detail as to why. Firstly they stated that the investigation into the BIG and ISUS program was done independently of Grant Thornton’s role as Wirral Council’s auditors. This was to “review the earlier investigation conducted by the authority’s Internal Audit section and to conduct their own investigation into these allegations” and referred to an assurance by Grant Thornton that their work on BIG & ISUS was independent to that of their work auditing Wirral Council’s accounts.

Wirral Council regarded the work that Grant Thornton had done on BIG and ISUS as on Wirral Council’s behalf, therefore in Wirral Council’s view a s.30 exemption still applied. Stating this in English only a person with a legal background would write “as such Section 30 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 is still appropriate as the investigation was conducted by an organisation acting on behalf of the organisation.” Despite referring it to the police, Wirral Council gave the impression they hadn’t made their minds up as to whether they would start a criminal prosecution themselves. However if they hadn’t made their mind up already not to institute criminal proceedings on this why refer it to the police?

In a concession though, they did agree with me that the original refusal should have included Wirral Council considering the public interest test. The person doing the internal review did carry out a public interest test (of sorts).

They gave many reasons against disclosure (and none for). The reasons they gave were that they regarding it being in the public interest not to disclose the report were that “the investigatory process is safeguarded“, that it would “undermine an investigation/prosecution of criminal matters“, “dissuade members of the public from reporting potential or actual wrongdoings“, “undermine the prosecution process and the role of the criminal courts” and “could prejudice the right to a fair trial“.

However, there is more than this in this story. As referred to in this previous blog post headlined “Million pound contract between Wirral Council and Enterprise Solutions (NW) Ltd for ISUS scheme was never signed” and referred to at 1.16 to 1.22 of Grant Thornton’s report the contract between Wirral Council and Enterprise Solutions Limited (also known as Wirral Biz) was never signed (a copy of the unsigned contract is linked to from that blog post).

Therefore Enterprise Solutions (NW) Ltd don’t regard it as a binding contract. Enterprise Solutions (NW) Ltd are quoted in Grant Thornton’s report as stating in a letter to Wirral Council from December 2012 “this company has nothing to hide in relation to its involvement in any of the above programmes [one of which was the BIG programme] on which it provided services. We are therefore prepared to grant access on the basis requested, on the understanding that your costs of the exercise are borne by the Council.”

Despite this commitment by Enterprise Solutions (NW) Ltd to Wirral Council by letter in December 2012, that they had “nothing to hide” Grant Thornton state in 1.21 of their report that “we have not been given access to the documentation retained by the company concerning the services it provided under the BIG programme and have, therefore, been unable to discuss these with Enterprise Solutions.”

Complicating the matter further, Wirral Council was also in receipt of money from the (since abolished) North West Development Agency in the form of grants. This was for the ISUS (intensive startup side of things). The first ninety pages of the contract with the North West Development Agency is here and a further thirty-six pages here.

The North West Development Agency money given to Wirral Council under the terms in the contract (one hundred and twenty-six pages isn’t the whole contract as there were pages on publicity requirements I haven’t scanned in yet) came from Europe. Just to complicate things even further, Wirral Council also used Working Neighbourhood Funds money to fund these programs.

The whistleblowers’ concerns were that companies that didn’t qualify for grants were given them. On the BIG side, applications were first reviewed by the BIG Panel then the award of the grants were agreed by Wirral Council’s Cabinet (not part of public meetings of Cabinet but in private after the press and public were excluded) due to “commercial confidentiality“.

Grant Thornton looked into the applications of six companies that had applied for business investment grants. In five of these they found “financial anomalies” which were not explained to the BIG Panels. Four of these five were “significant anomalies” which had not been brought to the BIG Panel’s attention. The types of anomalies are outlined in 2.33 but ranged from accounts that indicated that the applicant had paid unlawful dividends (contrary to the Companies Acts) to balance sheets were one year’s opening balance didn’t match the previous year’s closing balance.

One applicant had included a £500 grant from Wirral Council in its accounts, which had been received four months before the accounting period that the accounts covered. Grant Thornton recommended that out of the six applications it looked at that Wirral Council should claw back the grant to the company referred to as BIG6 and refer that application to the police (which happened at some point earlier this year).

I asked Merseyside Police some questions in September about their investigation in September. The reply I got from a Detective Chief Inspector Gareth Thompson was “This matter is currently in the hands of Wirral Borough Council and any requests for information you have should be directed to them, perhaps by way of a Fredom of Information enquiry” (yes freedom is spelt incorrectly in the reply, but to be fair to Detective Chief Inspector Gareth Thompson I would guess that freedom is a word used very rarely by police officers).

This blog post contains a transcript of the answer given to Nigel Hobro by Cllr Phil Davies back in July 2013.

So who knows what’ll happen next in this overly complicated saga? Who knows? Certainly my attempts to make inquiries have been stonewalled (apart from the contracts which I’ve published). However there is an unconfirmed rumour that DCLG (the Department for Communities and Local Government) are going to clawback grant money from Wirral Council in 2014 which could come to a six-figure amount.

So there you have it, nearly everything I know about the BIG/ISUS saga and Wirral Council.

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Secrets about Wirral Council’s Birkenhead Town Centre Regeneration revealed

Secrets revealed about Wirral Council’s Birkenhead Town Centre Regeneration plans and Neptune

Secrets revealed about Wirral Council’s Birkenhead Town Centre Regeneration plans and Neptune

                             

Indicative illustration of Neptune Development Limited’s masterplan for Birkenhead Town Centre
Indicative illustration of Neptune Development Limited’s masterplan for Birkenhead Town Centre

Earlier this year I made a Freedom of Information request for the procurement advice that Wirral Council received from Peter Oldham QC and also Weightmans’ partner Sean Crotty about the regeneration of Birkenhead Town Centre.

A Rosemary Lyon (one of Wirral Council’s in-house solicitors) refused this request on grounds of commercial confidentiality (its own and other third parties). She stated that providing the information would “adversely affect its [Wirral Council’s] bargaining position concerning potential regeneration of Birkenhead Town Centre which would result in less effective use of public money” and “make it less likely that companies or individuals would provide the Council with commercially sensitive information in the future and consequently undermine the ability of the Council to fulfil its role”. They even went so far as to claim that releasing the information “would adversely affect the course of justice”.

However, this blog post is the story behind what went on behind the scenes that Wirral Council clearly (according to the response to my Freedom of Information Act request) didn’t want to be disclosed to the public or written about in the media for reasons I will go into below.

On the 16th July 2013, the Leader of Wirral Council Cllr Phil Davies (under delegated decision making powers meaning that he made the decision on his own) gave his agreement to a “preferred development agreement” with Neptune Developments Limited to “allow them to work up a comprehensive redevelopment proposal for Birkenhead Town Centre incorporating Council owned land on Europa Boulevard and involving the re-modelling and offer of Birkenhead Market”.

In the report seen by Cllr Phil Davies before reaching his decision reference was made to “a commitment to develop a clear master plan for Birkenhead Town Centre” in the 2013/16 Corporate Plan. Reference was also made to the previous offer to Wirral Council in 2010 by William Tar Developments to build a casino on two out of three plots of land owned by the Council on Europa Boulevard. That offer was rejected in September 2010.

However what’s not been known widely by the public until now is that “At the same time and in response to the marketing exercise Neptune Developments Limited (NDL) submitted a proposal requesting that the Council move away from disposing of the sites separately and instead work with them to develop a wider regeneration scheme for Birkenhead. NDL had already secured an interest on a vacant site on Conway Street and they suggested that this coupled with Council owned land on Europa Boulevard could be combined to allow a more comprehensive redevelopment scheme to be worked up and in turn would give a far greater regeneration impact than if the sites were developed separately” and that “negotiations have been continuing with NDL since the completion of the marketing exercise”.

Detailed below is Neptune’s proposal,

“Neptune proposes that the project is taken forward on the basis of a two stage agreement. The first, which is the subject of this Report, will involve granting NDL Preferred Developer Status which will be extendible to a period of 12 months and will be subject to NDL meeting the following performance targets:


  • Work up the Master-plan into a detailed implementation strategy for approval by the Council

  • Working with the Council, NDL will develop proposals which will reposition the town as a retail and leisure destination

  • NDL will negotiate further site acquisitions if necessary to deliver the agreed strategy.”

Subject to securing Members (Ed – Members means councillors) approval to the Strategy and Master-plan NDL would then be required to enter into a second Conditional Development Agreement which would commit them, at their own risk, to work up the proposals into a position were they could be implemented and to deliver the returns that are needed to secure the wider regeneration of this part of the Town.

It is proposed that the Conditional Development Agreement with NDL will be structured to ensure the Council receives the best value obtainable for the 3 sites on Europa Boulevard which will be determined by an independent valuation and all works will be undertaken on an open book basis with NDL working on a fixed developer return on cost which varies depending on the nature of the risk.”

In a section titled “Other options considered” it’s basically stated that no other options were considered because NDL has an interest in the land needed to build Birkenhead Market on once its moved.

“An initial assessment of the NDL proposals confirms that if delivered the scheme will have the potential to revitalise an important part of Birkenhead Town centre delivering a far greater regeneration impact than if the sites identified in this report were developed out separately. No other options have therefore been considered as NDL has already secured an interest in the balance of the land that is needed to deliver the re-provided market.”

The section on consultation states this “There will be a need to carry out extensive consultation on the scheme prior and during the detailed planning process. This will be carried out jointly between the Council and NDL.”

The section on legal implications refers to the advice that my Freedom of Information request in September was about (and refused). Once again Members means councillors.

“7.1 In the event that Members want to pursue this proposal and to ensure that it is compliant with current EU procurement law, Officers have sought advice from Weightmans LLP and Counsel about its legality.

7.2 The advice has now been received and it concludes that the Council would at this stage be able to enter into a Stage 1 Preferred Development Agreement on the proviso that a final test of lawfulness is carried out when the Stage 1 work has been completed and the detailed arrangements can be assessed.

7.3 NDL is aware of this advice and would be prepared to complete the first stage obligations at risk to allow the final lawfulness test to be undertaken when the scheme has been fully worked up.”

In other words Wirral Council’s happy to pass on the advice it received (at a cost of £7,404 of taxpayer’s money) to Neptune Development Limited to help them in a commercial venture as it may result in Wirral Council receiving money in the future for land in Birkenhead that it doesn’t want.

According to this article in the Wirral Globe in July 2013 Wirral Council wants to rebuild Birkenhead Market and move it.

Neptune Development Limited clearly as they have “already secured an interest on a vacant site on Conway Street” have a commercial interest in any master plan proposals and would be able to “negotiate further site acquisitions” in advance of the master plan becoming public knowledge.

Doesn’t this all sum up how Wirral Council tries to operate though and considering the public interest in the regeneration of Birkenhead Town Centre being done in accordance with EU procurement law do you dear reader think I should make a further Freedom of Information request to Wirral Council for the advice they received from Peter Oldham QC and Sean Crotty of Weightmans in relation to this matter in the hope that they would provide it this time?

P.S. If anyone would like to have a stab at translating ”all works will be undertaken on an open book basis with NDL working on a fixed developer return on cost which varies depending on the nature of the risk” into plain English that can be understood by the average person please leave a comment!

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EXCLUSIVE: Letter from Cllr Phil Davies to Cllr Jeff Green about “Wirralgate”

EXCLUSIVE: Letter from Cllr Phil Davies to Cllr Jeff Green about “Wirralgate”

EXCLUSIVE: Letter from Cllr Phil Davies to Cllr Jeff Green about “Wirralgate”

                         

Wirral Council logo

Please reply to:

Councillor Philip L Davies
Leader of Wirral Council

Town Hall, Brighton Street
Wallasey, Wirral
Merseyside, CH44 8ED
Telephone: 0151-691 8539
Fax: 0151-691-2887
Email: phildavies@wirral.gov.uk
Date: 17 December 2013

Councillor J Green
Leader of the Conservative Group
Wallasey Town Hall
Brighton Street
Wallasey
WIRRAL       CH44 8ED

my ref PD0012/DLK

Dear Jeff,

I write in response to your question at Council. I will also copy this response to all Members and ask for it to be published as an appendix to the Council minutes.

A group of individuals approached me about this matter. The individuals did not wish to make a formal complaint regarding the comments allegedly made by one of my Senior Members regarding a Senior Council Officer. However I am absolutely committed to ensuring that all matters of concern are properly investigated and so chose to immediately refer the matter to the Chief Executive.

The Chief Executive instructed the Strategic Director for Transformation and Resources, in his position as Deputy Monitoring Officer, to conduct an investigation and an Independent Investigator was appointed.

The Senior Officer concerned does not wish the investigation report to be made public, and I intend to respect their wishes. However if you would like to see a copy I will ask the Chief Executive to make it available to you. I intend to make the same offer to the Leader of the Liberal Democrats. I have been informed that you have been briefed previously regarding the outcome of that investigation however for clarity I will outline the conclusions.

The Independent Investigator wrote on two occasions to the individuals who had brought this matter to my attention, however they refused to cooperate. All other concerned parties were interviewed, with external legal advisors present. No evidence was made available to the investigation to substantiate a serious allegation regarding inappropriate language.

The Senior Member concerned did make clear that he had made adverse comment regarding a Senior Officer, comments he regrets. The Investigation therefore found there had been a breach of the Council’s Code of Conduct. It concluded that an apology to the Officer concerned and a conciliation process was appropriate. At the request of the Senior Officer the matter has been dealt with in a confidential manner.

We have discussed the issue of improving the culture of this Council and I believe that both myself as Leader, and you as Leader of the Opposition have a crucial role to play in this. I have stated publicly, at Improvement Board and elsewhere, that the number one priority for this Council over the coming months must be to address this once and for all. I do not believe this is a matter for party politics, our staff and the residents of Wirral deserve and expect us to take a lead.

I would therefore again urge you that if you have any evidence of wrong doing, or can encourage others to supply any evidence that exists of wrongdoing, that you work with me to bring this to light. I promise that if this happens a further robust investigation will take place.

Yours sincerely,

Cllr Phil Davies signature

Councillor Phil Davies

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What’s a Wirral Council councillor worth?

What’s a Wirral Council councillor worth?

What’s a Wirral Council councillor worth?

                       

Oliver asks for more porridge

Recently there has been a lot of anger expressed by the public over a proposed 11% pay rise for MPs from 2015. Wirral Council’s councillors (unlike MPs who after the expenses scandal agreed that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority would set their pay) still decide on what they’re paid. In fact the legislation states that when voting on this matter they don’t even have to declare an interest!

In a parallel with MPs, in order to keep the base amount that councillors get low over the years and presumably avoid a similar kind of bad publicity that the proposed pay rise for MPs is receiving, the base amount for being a Wirral Council councillor is currently set at £8,712 (equivalent to ~168/week). There are (in many cases similar to the MP’s expenses system) a bewildering amount of ways that Wirral Council’s councillors can increase this.

Each year what Wirral’s council’s councillors are paid is published on Wirral Council’s website. These figures I link to are from 2012/13. As Wirral Council’s financial year finishes about a month before we usually have elections (apart from next year when local elections will be combined with the European elections) there are some small amounts for people that were councillors for only a few weeks in that year or were elected part way through the financial year. If you discount these part year amounts, the amounts range from the basic £8,712 to £30,437.60 for the Leader of the Council Cllr Phil Davies.

In addition to the amounts in that list councillors receive extra if they represent Wirral Council on certain outside bodies such as Merseytravel or Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority. Both of these bodies decide themselves on their own allowances scheme.

So what is proposed at Wirral Council? Well periodically the allowances scheme is reviewed by the “Independent Panel on Members Allowances”. The Independent Panel doesn’t meet in public and there isn’t any public consultation on its findings.

Reading its report its conclusions are based on the input of councillors (a census of councillors on pay, other authority’s independent reports and the direct input of Cllr Phil Davies, Cllr Jeff Green and Cllr Phil Gilchrist) as well as senior officers at Wirral Council.

In distinct echoes of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority proposed 11% pay rise for MPs, Wirral Council’s independent panel recommends “When the financial climate allows, due consideration should be given to reinstating the 5% austerity cut in the basic allowance.”

However the rest of the recommendations remain relatively uncontroversial and are unchanged to what they were previously. The allowances for the Mayor and Deputy Mayor (of £10,700 and £1,500) remain the same. Both the Mayor and Deputy Mayor attend a lot of different events during their year in Wirral. The Mayor also has to chair Wirral Council Council meetings. Keeping order and making sure Council meetings don’t degenerate into people speaking being drowned out by heckling, requires courage, tact and a sense of humour as well as the respect from other councillors.

About a year ago, much of the work of the Employment and Appointments Committee (such as appeals against dismissal, grievance hearings etc) was delegated to the Chief Executive Graham Burgess so the special responsibility allowance of its Chair of £2,751 is proposed to be scrapped.

The Chairs of the new Constituency Committees won’t receive any extra for their role, but this will be reviewed once they are “up and running” (suggested for October 2014). Pensions for Wirral’s councillors have been ruled out until the end of the current Government/Treasury consultation exercise.

The panel estimated that the average councillor spends twenty-three hours a week on the role and that any future increases in allowances should be linked to staff pay.

Finally I’ll make a number of what could be termed party political points (*breaking a general rule of mine on this blog and no I’m not a member of a political party despite rumours to the contrary) about councillors allowances and elections.

The arrangements that the political parties on Wirral have with their councillors (as far as I know and please leave a comment to the contrary if I am wrong) is that their councillors contribute a share of their allowances to their political party. This money is then used at election time (in conjunction with sources of other money) by that political party to help their candidates win votes from the public and get re-elected.

This is why there is only one independent councillor on Wirral Council (who was elected as a Lib Dem). Any independent candidate would have to either be independently wealthy in order to fund their own campaign or have a wealthy patron in order to stand a chance financially against the taxpayer funded political parties.

It leads to a system of safe seats on Wirral where one political party holds all the seats in a ward for a very, very long time. Voters are in such wards can become apathetic of voting as they feel the election is a foregone conclusion and their vote won’t make a difference to the outcome. The only thing that tends to shake things up are boundary changes.

Personally I view this current situation as bad for democracy (although those who it benefits may disagree). As much as some politicians may not like scrutiny, they make better decisions more in tune with public opinion when other political parties (and individuals) are scrutinising them. If a politician feels they may in the future either suffer the embarrassment of losing an election (or not be reselected by their party as their candidate) it can lead to them working harder in the public interest for the full term of their office (and not just at election time).

We have a system on Wirral where politicians’ future career prospects are based on reselection by their party who then goes on to fund their campaign (subsidised by the taxpayer). Comments on the system of democracy we have are welcome.

P.S. I’ll also formally announce something here I decided a while ago. I won’t be standing as a candidate in the Wirral Council elections in 2014.

Writing this blog and publishing the footage of public meetings (only possible because of media and consultancy work I do that is better paid than writing about Wirral Council) is in my view more in the public interest than the commercial work I do.

To be honest with you I’m much better at being a blogger with the freedom to say things as I see them rather than get bogged down in the party politics of Wirral (which is tarnished by a past reputation for doing things for party political reasons rather than acting in the public interest).

On a related matter the proposed legislation which includes a clause about filming Council meetings (the Local Audit and Accountability Bill) reaches its third reading and report stage tomorrow (17th December 2013). These are the last of its stages in the House of Commons.

There are two more stages to go after that before it becomes law. Once it becomes law there will be secondary legislation on the filming issue (the Local Government Association wants to be consulted on it), which will hopefully make the current unsatisfactory situation much clearer.

If the only result of starting this blog (and no it wasn’t just me getting angry about this issue but other people too I’m not going to take the sole credit despite this blog being cited in one of Pickle’s press releases about it) is that a change in the law will mean councils (and other bodies spending public money) in England won’t have any spurious legal grounds be able to justify banning audio or video recording of their meetings, then hopefully the greater openness and transparency that results will be a greater contribution to democracy than I could have ever achieved had I been elected as a Wirral Council councillor. Personally I would’ve preferred to try out the human rights arguments about the filming matter in a court of law, but a change of legislation is a better long-term outcome.

On the subject of courts of law, the libel case involving Jacqui Thompson (the woman who was arrested for filming a Council meeting in Wales) has a hearing in the Court of Appeal today. Update 14:40 Permission to appeal was refused. There have been reports in the press about the legality of Carmarthenshire County Council’s paying for its Chief Executive Mark James’ legal costs in this case.

In more local legal matters the issue of Wirral Council’s request for a possession order for Fernbank Farm will be decided at Birkenhead County Court some time in the New Year.

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