Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th October 2013 | Minutes silence (Sylvia Hodrien) | Birkenhead Priory Heritage Lottery Grant | Declarations of Interest | Minutes | Annual Governance Statement 2012/2013

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Youtube Playlist of Cabinet meeting of 10th October 2013

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th October 2013 | Minutes silence (Sylvia Hodrien) | Birkenhead Priory Heritage Lottery Grant | Declarations of Interest | Minutes | Annual Governance Statement 2012/2013

Prior to the first item the Chair of Wirral Council’s Cabinet, Cllr Phil Davies asked for people to stand for a minute’s silence in response to the news of the death of former councillor Sylvia Hodrien. Once the minute’s silence had finished, he reported the news (which was already reported by the Wirral Globe two days ago) that Wirral Council had been successful in obtaining a Heritage Lottery Grant for Birkenhead Priory of £393,100.

He said that the money would be used to improve the visitor experience, for a digital learning pack for schools and would lead to opportunities for volunteers. Cllr Davies was “delighted” at this “really good news story” and thanked the team at Wirral Council that had applied for the funding. He asked if Cllr Chris Meaden wanted to make any comments?

Cllr Chris Meaden referred to Jo McGuire the conservationist and pointed that this was the second Heritage Lottery Grant that Wirral Council had received for Birkenhead Priory. She also thanked the team.

1. Declarations of Interest 4:00

Cllr Phil Davies suggested that for item 17 (Proposed changes to school funding formula) that they make a block interest declaration as many of the Cabinet were school governors. Cabinet agreed to a block declaration of interest.

Cllr Harry Smith asked if he needed to declare that his brother was a lay reader at Birkenhead Priory? Cllr Phil Davies told them he didn’t need to.

2. Minutes 4:41

Cllr Phil Davies asked if Cabinet agreed the minutes of the last Cabinet meeting held on the 19th September? Cabinet did agree the minutes so Cllr Phil Davies signed them.

FINANCE
3. Annual Governance Statement 2012/2013 5:04

This item had a report and three appendices, appendix 1 (Annual Governance Statement), appendix 2 (Significant Governance Issues Action Plan) and appendix 3 (CIPFA (Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy) framework).

Cllr Phil Davies, Cabinet Member for Finance said that the Annual Governance statement was an important document and a draft had been presented to the Audit and Risk Management Committee meeting of the 18th September. He wanted to make a few general comments, first that he was pleased to see references to the progress made on getting Council’s finances on a sustainable footing which was welcome. Cllr Davies also said the report mentioned work on a new vision for Wirral Council and that there would be a councillor’s training session on Saturday to look at that.

He said that they’d be having an annual policy Council meeting in November of this year to look at the future direction of the Council and refresh the Corporate Plan. Ed – The policy Council meeting will be in December as was mentioned in an earlier blog post.

Cllr Davies said they’d done a lot of work on improving their corporate management procedures and making sure they got their risk management in good order. In section five of the Annual Governance Statement he said there were a number of challenges ahead, such as the bad debts issue, saying “I think we’ve taken quite strong and prompt action to address the bad debts”. Cllr Davies wanted to draw Cabinet’s attention to the conclusion which referred to the auditors being pleased about considerable progress made to address the governance issues and that this had been reflected in the recent Corporate Peer Challenge report that was debated in Cabinet and Council.

He said that it also recognised a number of developments put in place to address the further challenges in section five and that they needed to agree a plan and review process to check that the items were addressed. Cllr Davies described it as “generally an encouraging report and lots of progress has been made but a fair amount of progress still to be done”. He asked Cabinet to agree the recommendations, which were that the Annual Governance Statement, action plan for 2012/2013 and updated code on corporate governance were all approved by Cabinet. Cabinet agreed this.

Continues at Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th October 2013 Cllr Phil Davies “we’re not out the woods yet by any means”.

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Local groups can bid for £40,000 of grants from Wirral Council to improve the appearance of their local area

Love Wirral logo While looking through the recent delegated decisions made by Cabinet Members, I came across this recent decision about the Love Wirral grant and the accompanying report authored by Head of Neighbourhoods and Engagement, Emma Degg.

So what is the Love Wirral grant scheme you may wonder? Well it’s £40,000 of money split four ways between each constituency and will be available for “individuals, groups, schools and businesses” to “improve and look after their neighbourhoods”. The money can be applied for between 28th October 2013 and noon on 6th December 2013 with the sole aim of the project being “to improve the appearance of the local environment”.

Between the 13th and 24th January of next year the public will be able to vote online either yes or no to each project, councillors will decide which projects get the funding in the first half of February and successful projects will get the money in the middle to the end of March (the cynic in me would point out that’s just in time for it to be included in various candidate’s election leaflets taking credit for it). However in the report itself it states “this project will enable communities to play an active role in presenting Wirral to the world during the Open 2014”.

A third unstated reason behind all this would be the £1 million cut to the street cleansing contract this year and the threatened strike action that was reported in the Wirral Globe with the rather alarming threat from the unions that Wirral would be engulfed by a “tidal wave of filth”. You only have to look around to tell that the streets aren’t cleaned as often as they used to. So are we heading slowly towards the American “Adopt-a-Highway” system where local community groups are responsible for regular litter picks on a local stretch of the road? Is Wirral’s problem with litter made worse by Wirral Council cuts to enforcement too (which has meant fewer people fined for dog fouling as well as litter)? As usual your thoughts on this topic in the form of comments are appreciated.

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Irony is alive and kicking at Wirral Council: Freedom of Information and Policy Council

I was reading through the Council’s final Annual Governance Statement which is on the agenda for Thursday’s Cabinet meeting and came across this gem in it which is about principle 4 (taking informed and transparent decisions which are subject to effective scrutiny and managing risk).

“In December 2012, the Information Commissioner’s Office announced that Wirral would be monitored for three months after concerns emerged regarding the timeliness of responses to freedom of information requests. The Council has also put in place robust processes to respond to freedom of information requests which are regularly reviewed by the Chief Executive’s Strategy Group to ensure that a timely response is provided. These improved processes are having a significant impact on the Council’s response to freedom of information requests.”

At the start of September I made this perfectly reasonable request for the minutes of the Chief Executive Strategy Group meetings of the 5th June 2013 and the 30th August 2013. No response came from Wirral Council within twenty days (they are required by the Freedom of Information Act to respond within twenty working days). So on the 2nd October I requested an internal review and a week later, still no reply from Wirral Council.

Therefore this raises the following questions:-

1. If the Council does have “robust processes to respond to freedom of information requests” how did this one slip the net?

2. How regularly is “regularly reviewed”? I suppose this one is also an answer to how often does the Chief Executive’s Strategy Group (or its subcommittees) meet, monthly, quarterly?

3. Why didn’t the Chief Executive’s Strategy Group make sure a “timely response was provided” to this request?

4. Does “improved processes are having a significant impact on the Council’s response to freedom of information requests” mean they’ve given the council employees involved a big book of FOI exemptions as it’s quicker to turn a request down however thin the reason for the exemption rather than spend time answering it?

Another curious paragraph I found in the same document was this:-

“An annual Policy Council meeting will take place with the first scheduled for November 2013 in order to discuss, debate and further shape the future purpose of the organisation and its response to key national and local drivers. Policy Council will play a direct role in informing the annual review of the Corporate Plan and future savings for the Council, as well as contributing to the development of a longer term vision for the borough in 2030 in partnership with other key stakeholders. A state of the borough report is being prepared as the foundation for developing this long-term vision.”

Curiously the only Council meeting in November scheduled in the calendar is the Youth Parliament meeting on the 12th. Surely this is not what’s meant by a “Policy Council”? The mystery of this is easily solved when you look at the calendar for December and on the 18th there’s a “Budget and Corporate Plan” Council meeting.

At the bottom of this document that I’ve already heavily quoted from is space for the signatures of the Leader of the Council and the Chief Executive both putting their names to this following statement:

“We are aware of the implications of the review of the effectiveness of the adequacy governance framework and are absolutely committed to addressing the identified weaknesses and ensuring continuous improvement of the system is in place.

We are pleased that considerable progress has been made to address the significant governance issues identified and this is acknowledged by the Council’s recent Corporate Peer Challenge. However, it is also recognised that a number of the developments that are being put in place have recently been agreed and require implementation and
robust review.

We will take prompt actions over the coming year to ensure that all of the above matters are addressed as appropriate to enhance our governance arrangements further. Many improvement actions represent work already in progress and we are committed to increasing the pace of these actions. We are satisfied that these steps will address the need for improvements that were identified in our review of effectiveness and will monitor their implementation and operation as part of our next annual review.”

Let’s hope the “robust review” of the Council’s corporate governance arrangements result in changes rather than the “robust processes to respond to freedom of information requests” which just seem to have led to more Freedom of Information requests turned down so the Council can meet its target and tell to the Information Commissioner’s Office that things have improved.

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Exclusive: Next 20 Pages of Wirral Council’s Colas Contract (Highways and Engineering Services Term Maintenance Contract)

This continues from an earlier blog post with the first twenty pages of the Colas contract. The contract itself is in A5 format, but the version I’ve been given is a copy in A4. As usual you can click-through each thumbnail for more readable versions of each page.

These pages have screenshots from the Inventory Management Screen and Job Management Screen as well as some instructions on how to use the software.

These pages have details on Cost Management, Test Management, Customer Care, Mapping Links and some further screenshots of the Customer Care Screen and the Test Management – Unit/Cable Test screen.

These pages have sections on mobile working (not implemented at Wirral), night scouting, job management, inventory management, gully cleansing, gully cleansing background, gully cleansing assets, contractor data and reports & photographs.

These pages are about ICT at Wirral Council with sections on Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management, Document Management, GIS, Databases, ICT Infrastructure, Server Equipment and Operating Systems, Desktop Systems, Telecommunications Networks and Network Protocols.

This continues being about ICT at Wirral Council with sections on Network Protocols, Internal Telephone Network, Network Equipment and Internet Access & Network Security.

This is a flowchart entitled HESPE (Highways Engineering Services Procurement Exercise) Assets and Work Ordering Interim Position at April 2009.

These pages have sections on call out/out of hours repairs, works areas and definitions of priorities 1,2 and 3, priority repair times (with definitions of priorities 1 to 5), aggregation of work, discounting of work orders based on value, structural maintenance programme/minor traffic improvement schemes and gully cleansing/minor drainage works.

These pages have sections on work ordering and the payment process as well as a screenshot of an example highways drainage work order.

This has a table of incident analysis codes by asset type, asset description, main cause, effect, action and result. It also details who determines the level of service for a work order and a table of the target timescales for various types of highway drainage work.

These pages have a table detailing which letter (from A to Z) corresponds to which planned gully cleansing round along with a map showing which areas the rounds cover.

This details the information that Colas is to supply to Wirral Council when it does work on the highway drainage assets (including the car parks). It also details how the Highway Drainage Asset Amendment Form should be used.

These pages contain a blank Highway Drainage Asset Amendment Form and a section on “Drainage Specials”. Drainage Specials are areas that are particularly susceptible to flooding and/or accumulation of silt and require more frequent cleansing.

These pages are a table of the Council’s car parks (each is given a number) in the areas of Birkenhead, Liscard, Moreton, New Brighton, Seacombe, Wallasey, Heswall, Irby, Pensby, Hoylake, Meols, West Kirby, Bromborough, Higher Bebington, Eastham, Bebington, New Ferry and Rock Ferry.

These pages detail bridges, interceptors and culverts.

These pages have sections on the public rights of way network, painting programmes, winter maintenance arrangements, coast protection minor works and street lighting.

These pages are a section on depot arrangements and a plan of the main depot building, external stores and canteen.

These pages contain a map of where the depot is and sections on completion, working with the employer and others, tests, title and the New Roads and Street Works Act 1981.

These pages have sections on notices, performance bond and performance as well as the cover page for section 2.2 (specification).

This has the preamble to the “Specification for Highway Works”.

This has a table of pages and relevant publication dates for the specification for Highway Works. If you’d like me to continue to publish more of the Colas contract then please leave a comment.

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Wirral Council councillors agree to consult on extra police powers for Birkenhead booze crackdown

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Wirral Council councillors agree to consult on extra police powers for Birkenhead booze crackdown

Continues from Licensing, Health and Safety and General Purposes Committee Wednesday 2nd October 2013.

A Wirral Council officer introduced the report referring to the existing alcohol free zones in Birkenhead, Prenton and Upton as well as the proposed boundaries for the new one. She said that before making an order there would have to be a period of consultation. Wirral Council would need to consult with Merseyside Police, each Premises Licence Holder or Club Premises Certificate holder in Birkenhead and owners or occupiers of land in Birkenhead. A notice would also have to be published in a local newspaper and twenty-eight days allowed for representations. She said that Merseyside Police were present to give details about their evidence on specific problems associated with alcohol.

The Chair invited Merseyside Police to comment. Merseyside Police explained why they were requesting the order, gave statistics about various alcohol related incidents reported to them and explained how only part of Birkenhead was covered by the existing order. They felt that an order covering all of Birkenhead would deal with any displacement problems. Merseyside Police referred to comments from Birkenhead businesses stating that they had lost customers as they don’t feel safe and referred to a particular problem outside St. Werburgh’s Primary School where adults were buying alcohol and cigarettes for teenagers. A street drinker had told a police officer that he drank in Birkenhead Park because it was not covered by the existing Designated Public Places Order. A petition of four hundred and sixty-two people was also in favour of the new Designated Public Places Order covering all of Birkenhead.

One of the police officers showed the Committee maps from a report they had commissioned that showed maps where the worst alcohol related antisocial behaviour and violence was. In their view the existing alcohol free zone in central Birkenhead wasn’t fit for purpose. The Chair thanked the police officers and opened it up to the councillors to ask questions.

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Cabinet (Wirral Council) 10th October 2013 | Minutes silence (Sylvia Hodrien) | Birkenhead Priory Heritage Lottery Grant | Declarations of Interest | Minutes | Annual Governance Statement 2012/2013

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Local groups can bid for £40,000 of grants from Wirral Council to improve the appearance of their local area

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Irony is alive and kicking at Wirral Council: Freedom of Information and Policy Council

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Exclusive: Next 20 Pages of Wirral Council’s Colas Contract (Highways and Engineering Services Term Maintenance Contract)

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Wirral Council councillors agree to consult on extra police powers for Birkenhead booze crackdown

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