Category: Cllr Phil Gilchrist

Cllr Foulkes uses phrase “shambolic” to describe Wirral Council’s decision making on Lyndale School

Cllr Foulkes uses phrase “shambolic” to describe Wirral Council’s decision making on Lyndale School

Cllr Foulkes uses phrase “shambolic” to describe Wirral Council’s decision making on Lyndale School

                                  

Councillor Phil Gilchrist explains his amendment on the minority report on Lyndale School to councillors, officers and the public 2nd October 2014 Council Chamber, Wallasey Town Hall (c) John Brace
Councillor Phil Gilchrist explains his amendment on the minority report on Lyndale School to councillors, officers and the public 20th October 2014 Council Chamber, Wallasey Town Hall (c) John Brace

Below is the text of the amendment submitted on Monday evening to the minority report from Cllr Paul Hayes. It was not circulated to the public gallery, so myself and another went downstairs during the adjournment to get a copy.

Despite the Chief Executive’s assertion that it was a “private paper”, this will form part of the minutes of the public meeting on 22nd October 2014.

It is a shame committee services officers aren’t instructed to circulate copies to the public gallery too during the adjournment. However this would cost Wirral Council the extra labour costs of sending someone up the stairs and the extra photocopying costs of a further ten or so sheets of paper, so I am happy in these straightened financial times to decrease the labour costs of Wirral Council!

So this Lib Dem amendment gets a wider audience (and I got told off a bit by the Chief Executive on my way out of the Council Chamber for being in the Council Chamber as he made some point about “private papers” and a “private meeting” that to be honest I didn’t understand at the time as we were both tired), it is below. I’ve linked from it to the documents referred to in it. It’s also interesting to hear the Mayor’s comments on an attempt to make councillors vote on an amendment they hadn’t received a copy of yet!

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The item on Lyndale School starts at the 3 minute 40 second mark, lasts for a further six minutes then the meeting is adjourned.

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This is after the meeting resumed after the adjournment and continues below at the next clip.

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The item on Lyndale School is for about two minutes at the start.

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COUNCIL 20 OCTOBER 2014

Proposed: Cllr Phil Gilchrist
Seconded: Cllr Dave Mitchell

Amendment to the Minority Report from Cllr Paul Hayes

It be noted that the SEN Improvement Test as set out on Page 87 as Appendix 3 in the Consultant’s Report did not fully set out paragraph 40 as set out in the Guidance Document, namely that:

“….Decision-makers should make clear how they are satisfied that this SEN improvement test has been met, including how they have taken account of parental or independent representations which question the proposer’s assessment”.

…was not included and that, therefore, the matter should be referred back to Cabinet so that they can fully set out how they have undertaken this assessment in the light of the guidance.

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Of course, the question is therefore, did Wirral Council’s Cabinet (and Coordinating Committee) actually have to consider the guidance before reaching a decision? It would seem from the legislation they do have to have regard to it. For the purposes of clarity LEA stands for Local Education Authority:

Section 72 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 c.40 states the following:

“72. Duty of LEA to have regard to guidance

A local education authority must, in exercising their functions under this Part, have regard to any guidance given from time to time by the Secretary of State.”

Note the use of the word must, the decision makers must have regard to any guidance (which was issued on the 28th January 2014). It’s not optional to do so. The current guidance introduced in January 2014 is in four parts (and hasn’t been included in the papers for the meetings so far in full):

School organisation (maintained schools) (23 pages) issued 28/1/14

School organisation: annex A (16 pages) issued 28/1/14

School organisation: annex B (23 pages) issued 28/1/14

School organisation: annex C (14 pages) issued 28/1/14

In other words, when making the decisions on 5th February 2014, 25th February 2014, 27th February 2014, 4th September 2014, 2nd October 2014 and 20th October 2014 can those over sixty councillors all prove they had regard to the guidance when the seventy-six pages of government guidance wasn’t included in the papers for those meetings?

Not even four weblinks were included, so they could read it in their own time was included.

The guidance that was quoted, wasn’t for the right time period and after new guidance was issued on the 28th January 2014, Wirral Council just kept using the old version as the first Cabinet meeting to discuss Lyndale School was held on the 16th January 2014.

Why don’t people bother to check these things at Wirral Council before including them in meeting papers? Should the Labour councillors accept some responsibility for not asking officers whether required guidance was not included with the papers or do Labour councillors assume that Wirral Council officers don’t make any mistakes (unlike the rest of us)?

During the adjournment I happened to pass Julia Hassall (Wirral Council’s Director of Children’s Serivces) leaving the Council Chamber and she didn’t look very happy by this development. However it’s been known for some time (although apparently Wirral Council officers and politicians are the last to know it seems).

It’s just one of many unresolved anomalies about how the decisions surrounding Lyndale School have not been made as they should have done.

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UPDATED: 9 Labour councillors vote to continue to next stage of consultation on closing Lyndale School despite concerns raised

UPDATED: 9 Labour councillors vote to continue to next stage of consultation on closing Lyndale School despite concerns raised

UPDATED: 9 Labour councillors vote to continue to next stage of consultation on closing Lyndale School despite concerns raised

                                                                          

Councillor Tony Smith (Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services) at the Special Cabinet Meeting of 4th September 2014 to discuss Lyndale School L to R Cllr Stuart Whittingham, Cllr Tony Smith, Cllr Bernie Mooney and Lyndzay Roberts
Councillor Tony Smith (Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services) at the Special Cabinet Meeting of 4th September 2014 to discuss Lyndale School which was being reviewed by the Coordinating Committee on 2nd October 2014 L to R Cllr Stuart Whittingham, Cllr Tony Smith (Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services), Cllr Bernie Mooney and Lyndzay Roberts

Wirral Council’s Coordinating Committee (which comprises fifteen councillors, two parent governor representatives, a Catholic rep, is required to have an Anglican rep but at this stage I don’t really know why there isn’t one), met on the evening of 2nd October to reconsider the Cabinet decision of 4th September 2014 which made a decision to consult on closure after the “consultation” earlier this year. Neither of the two parent governor representatives (who have speaking and voting rights) nor the Catholic representative (who also has speaking and voting rights) were present.

According to correspondence received hours before the meeting, a senior Wirral Council officer stated they have previously tried to persuade the Church of England to appoint an Anglican representative, but have failed and refers to this as merely an “anomaly”.

Here is the list of the people who made the decision itself and were there on the night, including matters such as whether they are spokesperson, Chair, Vice-Chair and which political party. I have listed people who are on the committee first, it is unclear to me who the Conservative spokesperson was or whether it was Cllr Bruce Berry or Cllr Leah Fraser who was deputising for him:

Labour
Cllr Moira McLaughlin (Chair), Labour
Cllr Paul Doughty (Vice-Chair), Labour
Cllr Janette Williamson, Labour
Cllr Michael Sullivan, Labour
Cllr Denise Roberts, Labour * note deputy for either Cllr Phillip Brightmore, Cllr Anita Leech, Cllr Christina Muspratt or Cllr Jerry Williams
Cllr Harry Smith, Labour * note deputy for either Cllr Phillip Brightmore, Cllr Anita Leech, Cllr Christina Muspratt or Cllr Jerry Williams
Cllr James Crabtree, Labour * note deputy for either Cllr Phillip Brightmore, Cllr Anita Leech, Cllr Christina Muspratt or Cllr Jerry Williams
Cllr Ron Abbey, Labour * note deputy for either Cllr Phillip Brightmore, Cllr Anita Leech, Cllr Christina Muspratt or Cllr Jerry Williams

Conservative
Cllr Wendy Clements, Conservative
Cllr Tom Anderson, Conservative
Cllr Steve Williams, Conservative
Cllr Bruce Berry, Conservative * note deputy for either Cllr Chris Blakeley or Cllr Mike Hornby
Cllr Leah Fraser, Conservative * note deputy for either Cllr Chris Blakeley or Cllr Mike Hornby

Lib Dem
Cllr Phil Gilchrist, Liberal Democrat spokesperson

So to summarise, that is eight people on the committee and seven deputies substituting for people who are on the committee but chose to send a deputy in their place for reasons best known to themselves.

Ultimately the decision taken at the end of a long meeting (there were a series of votes at the end on whether to uphold the decision or refer it back to Cabinet to reconsider based on concerns councillors had) was to uphold the Cabinet decision of the 4th September 2014. This was taken on a majority of 9 votes to 6. Each of the alternative recommendations failed on a vote of 6 to 9. The alternative recommendations which were lost were proposed by by Cllr Phil Gilchrist (Lib Dem spokesperson) and Cllr Steve Williams (Conservative councillor).

Labour councillors (9) voted to uphold the Labour Cabinet decision. The joint votes (6) of the Conservative councillors (5) and Liberal Democrat spokesperson (1) voted against Labour’s recommendation.

Although six councillors were in favour of not implementing the Cabinet decision of 4th September and referring it back to Cabinet with their concerns, they were outvoted by the nine Labour councillors who voted against.

This means the Director of Childrens Services, Julia Hassall can now go ahead to the next stage of closing the Lyndale School which is a short consultation (lasting about a month). Even if Wirral Council were taken to court over this matter, Surjit Tour made it quite clear in a formal letter to me that they would not pause the process and would just carry on doing this, regardless of many outstanding legal concerns. In the interests of transparency at this point, I refer to the exchange of letters between myself (mainly the one of 8th September 2014) and Surjit Tour in this matter about the possibility of legal action through the courts.

He is of course entitled to his opinion on this matter, so am I. He has to work within the policy and budget framework of Wirral Council and is in a politically restricted post, I have to consider other concerns such as financial, legal, political and commercial (it’s complicated basically).

Following this consultation Wirral Council’s Cabinet will make a further decision at some future point on closure of the Lyndale School. As it was such a long meeting and negotiations over potential access to Wirral Council’s wi-fi network for live broadcast of meetings as they happen have stalled, only part of the footage of the five-hour meeting at the time of writing has been uploaded. You can watch video of part of the meeting below.

On a more personal note and this is just my opinion, I would like to point out (briefly) that politics comprises objective and subjective tests that can be applied when determining decisions.

Nobody expects politicians to be experts as they are there to represent the public interest. In certain areas such as law and other areas they have to rely on the internal advice of Wirral Council officers. That is why officers giving advice are in politically restricted posts and can’t really be seen to be taking sides in a party political matter.

Although it would be unlawful to drop Lyndale School’s budget by more than 1.5% under the minimum funding guarantee regulations this year (2014-15) compared to its 2013-14 budget, the government is currently consulting on draft regulations which would remove this current protection under the minimum funding guarantee for SEN places in 2015-16. However there is a current consultation on regulations which cover 2015-16 and the draft regulations put to Parliament may differ from those being consulted on.

In fact you only have to look at how the regulations on filming meetings of Wirral Council changed after the consultation and lobbying by people such as myself to show that that is a distinct possibility.

However how much Lyndale School receive this year for the education of children there and in future years is down to a complicated combination of the Wirral Schools Forum, Cabinet, Council and other factors beyond anybody’s reasonable control. A schools formula is arrived at locally by a combination of the Wirral Schools Forum, Cabinet and Council. This schools formula determines how much each individual school gets each year (and is changed each year).

In essence though, this shouldn’t really be about money. The law allows Wirral Council to close a school, however naturally they have to plan for what happens next to the existing pupils. Some will transfer to secondary school well before the planned closure date of January 2016. This should really be about the children of Lyndale School.

I will recite a little personal history here. My primary school was changed (when I was 10), not because of closure but because my parents had moved three miles away and transport to and from school was taking my mother longer than it was when I only lived a mile away.

Therefore my perception of what happens to a primary aged child when you do this to them, is somewhat clouded by that. Twenty-four years later, I still resent that decision, as I do not feel my interests were properly considered especially considering the fact I would’ve left that primary school within the next twelve months to go to secondary school and that we had moved house many years previous.

I can understand though that it resulted in a reduced carbon footprint as I could walk to the school I was transferred to. It ended up with me being admitted to hospital for a week though and knowing how much that costs makes it a false economy.

The children of Lyndale School are more fragile than I was at aged ten. Wirral Council identify themselves in a Equality Impact Assessment that the disruption will have an effect on the children.

However a letter from their legal department takes the contrary view that any potential risks can be mitigated against. Personally I have no confidence in Wirral Council that the potential risks have been mitigated at this stage, as my feeling is that such detailed planning won’t actually happen until a decision to close (or not close) the Lyndale School has been finally made at some future point. At this stage officers may consider behind the scenes that spending officer time and resources on planning for something that might not happen would not be value for money. However all scenarios should be explored if Wirral Council insists on going down this route.

Considering the high costs already expended by Wirral Council on their plan to close Lyndale School, one wonders if that seemingly large and endless budget allocation had instead been used for keeping the Lyndale School open, whether it would’ve been a better use of public funds. Each time they hold a public meeting it costs thousands of pounds and there have been many of these so far. Such is the price of democracy I suppose which has deliberately made closing a school a long and drawn out process so that a “spanner can be put in the works” to stop it at any one of many stages.

Some people are surprised it has not been stopped before now. However looking at the wider aspects of the way society treats disabled people, prejudice and other matters I am not wholly unsurprised by this course of events.

Below is a playlist from when the meeting started. When the video was shown due to an outstanding unresolved copyright claim regarding one of the two pieces of music used in it by Sony Music Entertainment, the video has sadly had to be edited out of the footage of the meeting. However it can be viewed elsewhere online.

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Wirral Council launches Future Council consultation on 17 budget options for £2.5 million savings

Wirral Council launches Future Council consultation on 17 budget options for £2.5 million savings

Wirral Council launches Future Council consultation on 17 budget options for £2.5 million savings

                                                       

Future Council Wirral logo
Future Council Wirral logo

Ed – Update 14:55 9/9/14 to fix 6 incorrect links to the budget options that was helpfully pointed out by a reader.

Yes, it’s another annual consultation on savings from Wirral Council that began yesterday and runs from yesterday to the 31st October 2014. What’s this one on? This is on £2.5 million of cuts that Wirral Council need to make in 2015/16.

Although the documentation refers to £4 million of budget options this seems rounded to the nearest million (the options total £3.75 million). Out of these options about £2.5 million will be chosen (two-thirds by total value).

Here are the documents and links:

Final Full Consultation Pack (this is a 21 page document which covers all options).

The options are then in various “themes” and are below by theme (I’ve also included the amount in pounds next to each option for financial year 2015/16 if that option is chosen).

This means some of the larger savings options are almost certain to go ahead which are those involving community libraries, the all age disability service, youth and play, preventative maintenance (highways and parks), Council Tax Over 70s discount and Girtrell Court.

These six options total £2.566 million of the £2.5 million savings required.

The other eleven options seem less likely to meet with public approval as they will be opposed by (in some cases) large sections of Wirral’s society. Some of them have already been rejected in earlier years following consultation such as charging for car parks at the country parks, school crossing patrols etc.

With the options below I’ve briefly included a sentence or two explaining what it’s about.

Customer Contact

Reduce library opening hours to four hours (10am to 2pm) with these libraries opened either two or three days a week. This option does not seem to apply to the four central libraries or combined libraries/One Stop Shops whose opening hours remain the same.

Delivering Differently Theme

Close four satellite youth centres & end funding Play Scheme.

Managing Demand

Remove 41 school crossing patrols.

Income and Efficiency

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UPDATED: EXCLUSIVE: 90 Incredible Lyndale School Closure Consultation Responses

EXCLUSIVE: 90 Incredible Lyndale School Closure Consultation Responses

EXCLUSIVE: 90 Incredible Lyndale School Closure Consultation Responses

                             

Phil Ward (Wirral Council's SEN Lead) at a later meeting of Wirral Schools Forum 2nd July 2014 (who chaired the consultation meeting at Acre Lane on the 16th June)

Phil Ward (Wirral Council’s SEN Lead) at a later meeting of Wirral Schools Forum 2nd July 2014 (who chaired the consultation meeting at Acre Lane on the 16th June and is referred to in some of the responses)

It’s not often there’s a “stop the presses” moment here or as this is an online publication “stop the electrons” moment. Yesterday I had planned to write about the Hoylake RNLI Open Day today.

Many moons ago (on the 29th June 2014) I made a Freedom of Information Act request for the consultation responses to the consultation about closing Lyndale School. Rather predictably the answer from Wirral Council on 29th July was “no”, we’re going to publish these in the future.

On July 14th, this blog published the Lyndale parents’ response to the consultation, on 30th July a response from some parents of a child at Stanley School and on August 12th Cllr Phil Gilchrist’s response.

The Green Party also published their response on their website.

However this was just four responses out of ninety that were known about. I was always curious about what the other eighty-six were! The following documents should show this. Sadly Wirral Council has taken it upon itself to black out a lot of the detail such as who the responses are from, however the other details can allow you to guess at who some of the names are. Apologies over some parts being hard to read, I think as part of the redaction some quality has been lost and a few are handwritten responses. I’ll try my best to type up some of the harder to read sections.

Wirral Council will be publishing these responses as part of the Cabinet papers by Thursday. UPDATE: Wirral Council will now not be publishing the consultation responses as part of the Cabinet papers. Apologies for this, in previous consultations they had published the consultation responses with the papers for those making the decision and Wirral Council had stated they would publish the responses but seemingly either changed their mind or lied. The responses are split by which category they came from into ten files and provide an interesting insight as to what was going on behind the scenes both during the consultation and as far back as the call in meeting. The way the consultation meetings were conducted comes in for criticism, so does the claim in the consultation documents that staff would be redeployed.

Elleray others (4 pages)

Elleray parents (6 pages)

Lyndale governors (16 pages)

Lyndale others (36 pages)

Lyndale parents (100 pages)

Lyndale staff (22 pages)

Other governors (4 pages)

Others (96 pages)

Stanley others (10 pages)

Stanley parents (10 pages)

UPDATE The text of the handwritten responses (some of which can be hard to read) and one typed response which has poor contrast with the background making it hard to read can be read here.

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The incredible £754,783.18 that Wirral Council councillors cost (plus amounts for the Mayor & Deputy Mayor)

The incredible £754,783.18 that Wirral Council councillors cost (plus amounts for the Mayor & Deputy Mayor)

The incredible £754,783.18 that Wirral Council councillors cost (plus amounts for the Mayor & Deputy Mayor)

                      

To very little fanfare (compared to the local newspaper coverage that used to go with the annual publication of MP’s expenses), Wirral Council has published on its website what it paid each of its councillors for 2013-14 with a breakdown by basic allowance, responsibility allowance, telephone rental (although this is a £NIL amount for everyone on that list), expenses, subsistence, travel expenses and car mileage. Despite replying to a FOI request and stating this was part of Wirral Council’s “openness and transparency” it is in fact a legal requirement that they publish this information annually (if you’d like to leave a comment referring to the specific Act of Parliament or regulations that require them to do this feel free).

This list includes three people who aren’t councillors but are “independent persons” and are appointed by Wirral Council councillors. These three have a role set down in law in dealing with complaints about councillors. They are also co-opted on Wirral Council’s Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee (whose next scheduled meeting has been cancelled).

Unlike the councillors none of these three get a basic amount, but receive £25 for each meeting they attend of the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee. In addition to this they are able to claim car mileage for meetings associated with their role. The annual amounts for these three are the smallest on the list being £90.80 (Dr. Burgess-Joyce), £122.40 (Brian Cummings) and £208.10 (RS Jones).

For the politicians, the lowest annual amount paid was to Cllr Matthew Patrick of £3,794.14. This is because he was only elected part way through that year in October 2013 in the Upton by-election. The by-election in Upton happened because of the death of Cllr Sylvia Hodrien, who also appears in the list receiving a part year amount of £4,373.84. Former Councillor Darren Dodd is the only other name to receive a part year amount of £6,019.11 as he resigned part way through the year and moved to Leeds.

The rest received the basic allowance of £8,712.48. In addition to this amount roughly half receive an extra responsibility allowance which for this financial year applied to thirty-three out of the sixty-seven councillors. An extra responsibility allowance is paid to the ten members of the Cabinet (generally an extra £9,171 although the Leader receives £22,927), chair of a committee, leader or deputy leader of a political group etc. The largest responsibility allowance paid was to Cllr Phil Davies of £22,926.96 (this is in addition to the basic allowance of £8,712.48). The smallest amount (that wasn’t £NIL) paid as a responsibility allowance was to Cllr Lesley Rennie of £203.38.

In total (the councillors and independent persons) claimed a total of £5,171.75 in car mileage payments, £490.99 in subsistence payments (this a meals allowance when they’re away from home for over four hours) and £1,684.64 in “expenses”.

The total cost (from this list) to the taxpayer for 2013-14 for the councillors and three independent persons was £754,783.18.

For some obscure reason I’m not really sure of, in earlier years the amount that the Mayor and Deputy Mayor are paid is published separately. This doesn’t seem to have been done yet this year (at the time of writing), but in 2012-13 came to a total of an extra £12,228.80. I would guess that the amount for the mayoralty in 2013-14 would be a similar amount to this.

A number of councillors also represent Wirral Council on outside bodies. There are two councillors who represent Wirral Council on the Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority are paid an extra £1,834 each. These amounts are paid directly by Wirral Council to these councillors.

There are other outside bodies such as Merseytravel (four councillors from Wirral Council) and Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority (four councillors from Wirral Council). These two pay these councillors directly extra amounts for these extra responsibilities. A list similar to the one Wirral Council produces is published on their organisation’s website annually. These amounts are not included in this list from Wirral Council as such payments are made directly to councillors by those bodies rather than through Wirral Council.

A resolution to Council in previous years required Wirral Council to publish these extra amounts received too from bodies funded through the council tax such as Merseytravel, the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority and until it was abolished and replaced with the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside & Police and Crime Panel, the Merseyside Police Authority.

As with the complicated scheme in place at Wirral Council, these amounts can vary quite considerably from a basic allowance that all receive to large amounts for the Chair.

Taking one public body, the figures for Merseytravel (which is now part of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority) haven’t been published on Wirral Council’s website for 2013-14, but the 2012-13 figures show that Wirral Council councillors received a basic allowance each of £5,202.13 (with part year payments to Cllr Blakeley and Cllr Foulkes), an extra special responsibility allowance for three councillors ranging from £1,095.38 to £4,063.29 as well as travel & subsistence payments ranging from nothing claimed to £997.99.

So, although the “cost of democracy” at Wirral Council is at least £754,783.18, in addition to this amount is the cost of the Mayor & Deputy Mayor and the currently difficult to find amounts councillors receive for representing Wirral Council on outside bodies (which Wirral Council should following a resolution agreed by Wirral Council publish on its website but in recent years hasn’t).

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