Category: Wirral Council

A Town Hall Mystery: The Riddle of £32,074.98 spent on legal advice for employee who had already retired

A Town Hall Mystery: The Riddle of £32,074.98 spent on legal advice for employee who had already retired

The mysteries of Wirral Council’s legal invoices deepen and leave me scratching my head trying to unlock their puzzles. Two pages are particularly perplexing to me, so maybe one of my readers could help enlighten me with an illuminating comment or two?

First the background, as many readers of this blog will know Jim Wilkie retired as Chief Executive of Wirral Council last year on the 7th June 2012.

The puzzle comes first in the form of this invoice for £28,422.44 from Eversheds for “Advice on governance and employment issues” and “Professional fees in conjunction with advising you on the above matter Period of Invoice 11 June 2012 to 31 July 2012 Your ref: Jim Wilkie”

How could they be advising Jim Wilkie on governance and employment issues as he no longer worked for Wirral Council? He’d retired!

Then as many readers of this blog know, Graham Burgess became Chief Executive/Head of Paid Service of Wirral Council on July 16th starting full-time in the September of that year.

However there’s a further invoice from Eversheds this time for £3,652.54 for the period 4th December to 28th December 2012 for “advice on governance and employment issues” and “Professional fees in connection with advising you on the above matter” again with a reference of “Jim Wilkie”.

Judging by this post on Wirral Leaks which has a copy of the media statement about the suspension of Dave Green ending it would appear as the dates match to be advice provided to Graham Burgess about Dave Green’s suspension and obviously not to Jim Wilkie.

This still leaves the question of who Frances Woodhead of Eversheds thought she was advising on governance and employment issues over the period of the first invoice? Based on the dates it can’t have been Jim Wilkie (as he’d retired days before the period covered by the invoice) and it can’t have been Graham Burgess as he was only made Chief Executive in the last two weeks of the seven week period covered by the invoice). So who was it that needed such expensive advice costing over £28,000?

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At least £3,787.20 spent by Wirral Council on losing health and safety case

At least £3,787.20 spent by Wirral Council on losing health and safety case

As was reported in the Wirral Globe earlier this year Wirral Council lost a case to the Health and Safety Executive leading to a fine of £25,000 and Wirral Council having to pay the other side’s legal costs of £9,417. The case was to do with twenty-nine workers in its parks and gardens department being affected by Hand Arm vibration syndrome and Wirral Council pled guilty to the case which was heard in Wirral Magistrates’ Court.

This Weightman’s invoice shows that Wirral Council’s costs for a month of Weightman’s work on the case was £3,787.20. It’s an interim invoice though and Wirral Council’s legal costs would’ve been higher were they represented in court.

I could write a lot about the subject of Wirral Council & health and safety, but as there has been much written before on this topic I won’t, but feel free to leave a comment on this topic if you wish. The main peak of the action in the form of anesthesia was observed 3-4 hours after ingestion. Enough anesthetic effect was for approximately 8 hours. With severe pains, Soma does not completely anesthetize, but they remove part of the pain and make it at least somehow portable, with moderate pain they reduce it to the level that one starts hoping for the best. Read more at http://www.shaynahiller.com/buysoma/ The pressure decreases, but for me it is within the normal range.

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Wirral Heritage Open Days 2013 (St. Oswald’s Church, Bidston, Bidston Windmill, Bidston Community Archaeology & Flaybrick Memorial Gardens)

Wirral Heritage Open Days 2013 (St. Oswald’s Church, Bidston, Bidston Windmill, Bidston Community Archaeology & Flaybrick Memorial Gardens)

As it’s September once more, a number of Heritage Open Days are coming up (some in Bidston and St. James). The first of four in Bidston and St. James is on Thursday 12th September when St. Oswald’s Church in Bidston Village will be open from 10 am to 3 pm. There’s no need to book, the church has disabled access and there will be refreshments. Tours around the church will happen throughout the day and for further information you can contact Mr Tony Endean, the churchwarden on 0151 652 7328.

Bidston Windmill “bats permitting” will be open for visitors from 10 am to noon on Saturday 14th September. There is no need to book in advance, but children under eleven need to be accompanied by an adult. A minimum height restriction of 1.06 metres applies for those who want to go to the upper floors. For further details contact John Jakeman or Nic Harding on 0151 653 9332.

Also on Saturday 14th September Bidston Community Archaeology are holding an open day running from 10.30 am to 4 pm. They are currently excavating a medieval farmhouse fifty metres from the Tam O’Shanter Urban Farm and will be showing the public their finds. Again no booking in advance is needed.

The last event in Bidston and St James running on two days (Saturday 7th September and Saturday 14th September both at 11 am) is a “Local Heroes Military Guided Tour” of Flaybrick Memorial Gardens starting at Tam O’Shanter Urban Farm. The walk will take about one and a half hours and does need booking in advance, which you can do by contacting Chris Morris on 0151 608 5050.

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Incredible £7404 spent by Wirral Council on legal advice for Birkenhead Town Centre regeneration

Incredible £7404 spent by Wirral Council on legal advice for Birkenhead Town Centre regeneration

Incredible £7404 spent by Wirral Council on legal advice for Birkenhead Town Centre regeneration

                                                               

Earlier this year Wirral Council paid £6,000 to Weightmans for “professional charges in relation to the potential regeneration of Birkenhead Town Centre to include all time up to and including 17 December 2012” and £1,404 for procurement advice from Peter Oldham QC. You can see the invoices by clicking on these links and there’s a Wirral Globe article from July about Neptune being asked to come up with a master plan for the area.

Wirral Council have a Corporate Procurement Unit so why didn’t they ask them for advice instead? They even have sixteen in-house solicitors they could have asked. I wonder if they thought that asking a Weightman’s partner and a QC meant that if someone made a FOI request for the advice, Wirral Council can (rightly or wrongly) claim a section 42 exemption (legal professional privilege). However as this advice isn’t in relation to any legal proceedings, section 42 doesn’t apply. Therefore I’ve made a FOI request for the advice provided on the whatdotheyknow website.

Update: 26th September 2013: Wirral Council have switched it from a Freedom of Information Act request to one dealt with under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 and refused it under regulation 12 (5)(e) “commercial confidentiality” and 12 (5)(b) “legal advice privilege/legal professional privilege”.

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Incredible £2,697 spent on legal costs by Wirral Council in dispute with Volker Laser

Incredible £2,697 spent on legal costs by Wirral Council in dispute with Volker Laser

Incredible £2,697 spent on legal costs by Wirral Council in dispute with Volker Laser

                                                               

Wirral Council legal invoices page 19 Volker Laser Eversheds LLP
Wirral Council legal invoices page 19 Volker Laser Eversheds LLP

I’ve erased some of the black boxes on legal invoices of Wirral Council and came across this one for £2,697 in a dispute that Wirral Council had with Volker Laser. Sadly Volker Laser is not the name of a Bond villain’s company but instead a civil engineering firm.

Helpfully on Evershed’s website they tell us the work was for Lucy Frith of Eversheds "defending a series of adjudications arising out of a remediation contract for a public sector employer" (at least that’s a reasonable guess considering it wasn’t any of the other three). So what does this actually mean when translated out of lawyer-speak?

Wirral Council’s Technical Services department contracted Volker Laser to do civil engineering work for them. Wirral Council weren’t happy that the work was done how they wanted, Volker Laser disagreed with this so Wirral Council got their lawyer involved to sort it out. This is only an “interim invoice” so who knows how much that fiasco actually cost the taxpayer in total? No wonder they wanted to black out the name of the contractor involved before releasing the invoice!

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