Roads | A blog about Wirral Council, Wirral Council's councillors & officers

Tower Bridge repairs, the future of Williamson Art Gallery and school crossing patrols u-turn

It’s time to answer some questions from readers. First there’s a topical question.

1. How long is the Tower Bridge road closed for in Birkenhead?

Ah yes, a recurring question that pops up from the Wirral motorist wanting to get from Wallasey to Birkenhead (or vice versa). The bridge closed on Saturday 15th February 2014 and work is predicted to take a week for urgent repairs to the A bridge. Wirral Council say the work is necessary due to a loose steel plate.

Last week I received a phone call from a woman who wanted to know what is happening to the Williamson Art Gallery following last week’s Cabinet meeting on the 12th February to discuss the budget and that she trusted this blog to let her know what was going on.

2. What’s happening to the Williamson Art Gallery?

Well this was also mentioned at the recent Birkenhead Constituency Committee meeting too. I’ve looked through the nine page handout given out during the meeting that details Labour’s proposals to the Council meeting on Tuesday 25th February to decide the budget for 2014/15.

On page six, the Williamson Art Gallery is mentioned and I quote:

“Re-phasing the savings from Williamson Art Gallery (£100,000 of saving rephased to 2015/16)
The engagement of local people and ‘Friends’ groups has been welcomed in exploring new models for funding the Williamson Art Gallery in the future. It is acknowledged that more time is required to develop the proposals. Therefore the saving of £400,000 is to be delivered over the next two years, i.e. £150,000 in 2014/15 and £250,000 in 2015/16. Cabinet strongly favours keeping the Williamson open. This will be funded from reserves in 2014/15.”

The Williamson Art Gallery is in Oxton ward. Last time there was an election there it was won by the Liberal Democrats in 2012 by a majority of 263 votes (with Labour in second place). The two major issues raised by Lib Dems in Oxton in the recent past have been the future of the Williamson Art Gallery and whether schools (or Wirral Council) should fund school crossing patrols. Strangely enough school crossing patrols forms the next bit of Labour’s budget resolution which I quote here.

“School Crossing Patrols
Cabinet believes the safety of children is paramount. In December Cabinet agreed to ask schools to take over the funding of school crossing patrols. Given the concerns expressed by a minority of schools, officers are instructed to continue discussions with schools with a guarantee that no funding is removed where agreement cannot be reached.”

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Extra £7 million announced by government in funding for councils to help with flood costs: Will Wirral apply?

At a recent Cabinet meeting I heard Cllr Phil Davies talking about how some (£250,000) of the projected underspend for this year’s Budget was set aside to pay for the clean up and repairs to infrastructure after the floods in December. He said that although there was a government fund that local councils could apply to for emergency financial help following such events (called the Bellwin scheme), Wirral Council didn’t qualify as it hadn’t spent more than 0.2% of its annual budget which for Wirral is £930,432.

However the government has since announced a further £7 million of funding to councils for this kind of expenditure in what they call a severe weather recovery scheme. Half of it is for repairing roads damaged by flooding and the other half for expenditure incurred through supporting communities.

Applications for this money have to be made by February 19th February at 5pm and ministers have stated that all local authorities in England who apply and are eligible will receive the money. To qualify for the community element of the grant Wirral Council will need to show that “at least ten residential and/or commercial properties had been reported as flooded (water having entered the property)” in Wirral and that Wirral Council had “incurred expenditure on supporting their communities during the recovery phase”.

To qualify for the highways element Wirral Council would have to prove that the floods caused damage to parts of the highway of more than one and a half metres that they were responsible for. Whether Wirral Council qualify for this element I’m not sure. However as some of their expenditure on the community element side would seem to be eligible, here’s a link to the application form. After all if Wirral Council is entitled to the money why don’t they apply for it?

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Politicians Paint A Picture to Public of Plenty of Pavement Parking Problems at Policy and Performance Committee

Cllr David Elderton shows photos of pavement parking problems to the politicians on Wirral Council’s Regeneration and Environment Policy and Performance Committee

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Video of the item on parking on pavements and grass verges starts at 5:00

Councillors on Wirral Council’s Regeneration and Environment Policy and Performance Committee received an update on parking on pavements and grass verges.

Some councillors were most put out at what they saw as a lack of enforcement action on pavement parkers in the patch they represent. Officers of Wirral Council said that apart from places where there was a traffic regulation order, single yellow or double yellow line that enforcement of pavement parking was down to the police.

However the police saw matters such as pavement parking as a low priority. Wirral Council had piloted nine areas where traffic regulation orders restricted pavement parking. Since the summer, they had also placed over a hundred warning notices on cars parked on the pavement.

Damage to grass verges, pavements, underground services and the Council’s insurance costs for highway related tripping accidents were also discussed. Councillors eventually decided (as there was nothing in the budget for this item) to refer the matter to the next meeting of Constituency Committees to deal with as they see fit.

Cllr Jerry Williams said, “In Bebington this is one of the major issues. We get more complaints about verges and parking issues than anything else at all and it’s because you know people are parking on verges, pavements not where we’ve got difficult circumstances of 1920s houses, it’s where you’ve got a road where it’s five car widths wide and they’re parking their cars on the pavements and verges and a good example in Bebington is Teehey Lane shops, just had a few thousand pounds spent on it in relation to broken pavings. Again the issues of people with disabilities tripping and other people. The next thing you know the milk lorries are driving on at seven o’clock in the morning when I’m running down the road, driving on the pavements damaging the pavements again.”
…
“Let’s also have a go at these utility companies. We all know who are the worst offenders. Who do I think is the worst offender? Without any question of a doubt BT Openreach. They are the worst, every time the Council officers go onto them to ask for some sort of regulation, they certainly say we’ve discussed it with the operatives, things are going to be done. The next thing you know, we’ve asked the officers you see them parking on the pavement!”

Cllr David Elderton said, “I’d put this on the screen but frankly I can’t put a USB on at the moment. That photograph of … situation where he showed the problem of putting stickers on people’s cars causing a major obstruction. That did help and the press release that came out on the 18th July last year did also enhance things for a while and as you will know I kept this next to my heart in my wallet even the ticket that you’re supposed to put under the windscreen of a car.

So that wasn’t a good idea. In my opinion we’ve lost the way, we’ve lost the emphasis on it completely. It’s no longer being managed and controlled in the way that I believe it should be.”

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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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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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Tower Bridge repairs, the future of Williamson Art Gallery and school crossing patrols u-turn

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Extra £7 million announced by government in funding for councils to help with flood costs: Will Wirral apply?

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Politicians Paint A Picture to Public of Plenty of Pavement Parking Problems at Policy and Performance Committee

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

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