A blog about Wirral Council, Wirral Council's councillors & officers
A blog about Wirral Council's public meetings, Wirral Council's councillors, Bidston & St. James ward and other public bodies on Merseyside
Will Wirral Council start charging up to £25 a year for parking permits in resident parking scheme areas?
Wirral Council’s Cabinet will be asked next Monday morning to approve recommendations that include consulting residents on an annual charge for parking permits for those that live in the following resident parking scheme areas:
Continue reading “Will Wirral Council start charging up to £25 a year for parking permits in resident parking scheme areas?”
Why did 2 Wirral Council councillors take taxi journeys costing £83.60 each time?
This year, during the 30 day inspection period I requested the Eye Cab Limited invoices for the contract for taxis for councillors.
An option in the Eye Cab Limited Passenger Transport Contract to extend it for a further year was taken up by the Council which meant it ran to the 31st August 2017.
Wirral Satellite Cars (who have recently merged with Argyle Taxis to become Argyle Satellite) won the the contract to supply taxi journeys to councillors which started on the 1st September 2017. Major parts of the new contract have also been redacted on grounds of commercial confidentiality.
The Eye Cab Limited invoices supplied cover March 2016, April 2016, May 2016, June 2016, July 2016 and August 2016. Apologies if the text can be a little hard to read, but these were how they were supplied by Wirral Council.
These are for taxi journeys by Cllr Moira McLaughlin, former Cllr Steve Niblock, Cllr Tony Norbury, Cllr Irene Williams, Cllr Warren Ward, Cllr Stuart Whittingham, Cllr Phil Davies and Cllr George Davies.
Wirral Council has decided to redact from these invoices, the name of the Wirral Council employee that these invoices went to and the mobile telephone number for Eye Cab limited. Some of the start points and end points of these taxi journeys have also been redacted by Wirral Council who deem it to be unfair processing of personal data for the public to know the home addresses of councillors!
One matter that does stand out are two taxi journeys made on the 5th July 2016 and the 7th July 2016 costing £83.60 each (as Wirral Council received an invoice each time for a 70 mile round trip rather than just the mileage between points A and B). Both journeys are shown on the invoice as being related to Cllr Phil Davies and both relate to taxi journeys to Manchester Airport.
Wirral Council have pointed out that Cllr Phil Davies shared the taxi journey with the Deputy Leader of the Council Cllr George Davies and the purpose of it was travel to and from the LGA Conference held in Bournemouth between the 5th and 7th of July 2016.
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Opposition councillors request meeting to review Wirral Council’s Cabinet decision to increase car parking charges by 20 pence and introduce new car parking charges in country parks
One of the decisions made by councillors on Wirral Council’s Cabinet, I’ve been meaning to write about since the Cabinet met last month was a decision to increase car parking charges (which has since been put on hold).
On the 19th June 2017, Wirral Council’s Cabinet agreed (see video below starting at 33:31 and photo above) to increase charges for parking at Council car parks on the Wirral by twenty pence and to introduce charges for parking where there had been no charges before (50p for an hour, £1 for 2 hours and £2 for all day) at Arrowe Country Park, Royden Country Park, Eastham Country Park and Thurstaston Country Park.
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However for the country parks only, in a modification to the original proposals households could pay for a £50 annual permit instead of paying charges when they parked in the country parks.
There’s a long 21-page draft traffic regulation order that goes into all the details.
The Cabinet minutes were published and opposition councillors had five days in which the decision could be called in for review.
Six (or more) opposition councillors on Wirral Council “called in” the decision, so it now it won’t be implemented immediately but put on hold until the Business Overview and Scrutiny Committee meets.
There will be a special public meeting of the cross-party Business Overview and Scrutiny Committee starting at 4.00 pm on the 18th July 2017 in Committee Room 1 at Wallasey Town Hall, Brighton Street, Seacombe, CH44 8ED.
The Business Overview and Scrutiny Committee is composed of 9 Labour councillors, 5 Conservative councillors and 1 Liberal Democrat councillor on it.
There’s a long history to the parking charges issues and an earlier stage in the same decision was called in and was reviewed in March 2017. You can watch video of that meeting below.
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Business Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Wirral Council) 13th March 2017
Usually after representations are made during the consultation period, a cross-party advisory panel called the Highways and Traffic Representation Panel meets in public and makes a recommendation to the Business Overview and Scrutiny Committee. The Business Overview and Scrutiny Committee then makes a recommendation onwards to the Cabinet (or Cabinet Member) for a decision.
As the Business Overview and Scrutiny Committee met for the first time yesterday evening since the Claughton by-election (when it decided the councillors to appoint to the Highways and Traffic Representation Panel), when the Cabinet had made the decision on the 19th June 2017, there were no councillors at that point appointed to the Highways and Traffic Representation Panel to consider the objections made during the consultation.
Increases to parking charges are on hold till at least the 18th July 2017. The Business and Overview and Scrutiny Committee can choose at that meeting to either:
a) uphold the Cabinet decision made on the 19th June 2017 (in which case the decision is implemented),
b) refer the matter back to Cabinet for reconsideration,
or
c) refer the matter to Council.
At the call-in meeting of the Business Overview and Scrutiny Committee on the 13th March 2017, councillors voted at the end of that meeting. 8 councillors voted in favour (Labour) and 6 councillors (Conservative and Liberal Democrat) voted against. So the decision taken by Cllr Phil Davies (Leader of the Council) at an earlier stage was upheld on a 8:6 vote.
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Wirral Council’s Cabinet alters car parking charges proposal following outcry
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Cabinet (Wirral Council) 20th February 2017
Labour councillors on Wirral Council’s Cabinet have recommended a 4.99% rise in council tax for Wirral residents next year. However once the police and fire precepts are taken into account (expected to be a 1.99% rise each) the overall effect on council tax bills will be slightly less than five percent.
The controversial on street car parking proposals have been altered with a full report on the changes available on Wirral Council’s website.
The proposal to increase the charges at all council operated car parks that currently charge by 50 pence has been reduced to a 20 pence increase. The new £4 flat rate tariff proposed for country parks (Arrowe Country Park, Royden Country Park, Eastham Country Park and Thurstaston Country Park) has been altered to 50 pence for the first hour, £1 for two hours and £2 all day.
Proposals to introduce charges for parking at Birkenhead Park, New Brighton, West Kirby, Hoylake, Heswall, Liscard, Bromborough, Bebington, Irby, Upton and Moreton have been dropped.
These altered proposals will be discussed at a meeting of all Wirral Council councillors when they meet to set the budget for next year on the evening of the 6th March 2017.
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£206,000 extra for Wirral’s potholes, £170,000 for selling “ornamental pleasure gardens” and a land swap to a body that doesn’t exist!
Wirral Council has accepted an extra £206,000 from the government’s Pothole Action Fund to be spent on (no prizes for guessing) fixing potholes on Wirral’s roads.
The details are in a report, but they expect to repair around 3,887 potholes and Wirral Council will be publishing a report on how they spend the money.
Of the £206,000 allocation, £116,000 is planned to be spent on surface dressing, £20,000 on “micro-asphalt” and £70,000 on patching.
The surface dressing work will be carried out in August and the micro-asphalt work is planned to start in July.
In other news, Cllr George Davies has managed to agree a land swap with a public body that was abolished in 2012. Yes, I couldn’t make this up if I tried!
The Merseyside Police Authority (abolished in November 2012) is now the “owner” of a piece of land (according to his decision). Maybe Wirral Council needs to move with the times and realise it’s the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside (after all only last month we had the second election for who would be Merseyside’s Police and Crime Commissioner)!
Finally, onto a phrase you don’t hear very often on this blog “ornamental pleasure garden”. Wirral Council has decided to sell land next to Gibson House to a developer for £170,000 despite covenants restricting its use to an “ornamental pleasure garden”.
Wirral Council selling off green space is of course a worry elsewhere on the Wirral with its flagship Hoylake Golf Resort project causing such concerns a local Hoylake councillor Cllr Gerry Ellis recently called for the project to be scrapped.
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