What’s happened on the 6th floor of Wirral Council’s Chamber of Secrets for it to sue for over £300,000?
What’s happened on the 6th floor of Wirral Council’s Chamber of Secrets for it to sue for over £300,000?
Last year I requested various legal invoices during the 2013/14 audit of Wirral Council. One of these is below:
Wirral Council invoice Trowers & Hamlins £10,151.04 20th February 2014
The invoice above is from Trowers & Hamlins and is for work connected to a court case to do with the 6th floor of Castle Chambers (a building owned and rented out by the Merseyside Pension Fund which is part of Wirral Council).
The court fee of £1,670 means this invoice is to do with to a civil court case in the High Court (in which Wirral Council is the claimant) to recover a sum of money where the amount exceeds £300,000 or an amount that is not limited.
What is blacked out under the heading Professional services provided appears to end in “6th floor Castle Chambers – Merseyside Pension Fund for the period to 31 01 2014”
So why all the secrecy surrounding the 6th floor at Castle Chambers? What was the outcome of the case and did the expenditure of £10,151.04 with Trowers & Hamlins lead to Wirral Council recovering any money?
Below is an earlier invoice about the same matter for £5,749.44.
Wirral Council invoice Trowers and Hamlins £5,749.44 13th August 2013
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Below is the text of my question to Councillor Adrian Jones (the Cabinet Member for Support Services):
“Each year Wirral Council is required to publish annual totals of what councillors have claimed in travel expenses. Due to contracts with various taxi firms invoicing Wirral Council directly thousands of pounds of expenses weren’t included in the list for 2013/14.
The Members Allowance Scheme states that the use of taxis (or councillors’ own cars) for attending meetings is only permitted where public transport is either not available, or the journey by public transport would be likely to result in unreasonable delay.
For the taxi journeys made by councillors not included in the annual published lists for 2013/14 and those made since can you confirm:
(a) each journey was taken where there is no available public transport (or taking public transport would lead to unreasonable delay) and if not will councillors involved be refunding Wirral Council and
(b) what changes will be made so that the expenses for such journeys made in 2014/15 will be included next time the annual lists are published?”
For example by looking at that website I can tell you that my MP Frank Field travelled by taxi on the 10th October 2014 from Rock Ferry to Conway Park station costing £6. I doubt there’ll ever be that level of openness and transparency for expense claims by councillors, but during the audit last summer I exercised my right to request (see s.15 of the Audit Commission Act 1998)the documentation providing amounts, what transport they used, mileage et cetera for travel expenses for councillors during the 2013/14 financial year.
A lot of paperwork was provided (which I published on this blog), but the detail about taxi journeys by Labour councillors revealed through a Freedom of Information Act request here was not (and this is only the annual totals and not at the detail of each journey).
It’s only if information was provided on the level of detail of each journey that the question about whether there was no available public transport could be answered. I’m sure Wirral Council should have this information from the invoices from the taxi firms. When this part of the passenger transport contract was put out to tender this year lot 4 was described as follows:
“LOT4 – This contract is for ad hoc journeys by taxi to allow Wirral Councillors to travel to various venues across Wirral.
This contract will allow Wirral Councillors to travel around Wirral on official Council business. The times will vary and may include evening and weekends.”
I look forward to hearing Councillor Jones’ answer this evening!
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Why has Wirral Council spent £6,003,273.07 on temporary staff over the past 10 months?
Why has Wirral Council spent £6,003,273.07 on temporary staff over the past 10 months?
I found out today that Wirral Council had won the “Most Improved” Council award.
However here are some eye-watering amounts that Wirral Council have spent on agency staff over the last year (the amounts in pounds are the fourth column):
Why are Wirral councillors trying to kill off press freedom by a new public meetings filming ban?
Why are Wirral councillors trying to kill off press freedom by a new public meetings filming ban?
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Video of the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee from 3rd March 2015, the item on filming starts 43 seconds into the meeting
Surjit Tour (Monitoring Officer at Wirral Council) gives councillors his opinion at the meeting that he doesn’t think the draft policy banning filming breaches the Human Rights Act 1998 3rd March 2015
Last night councillors (as you can see from the video above) on Wirral Council’s Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee agreed to bash the final nail in the coffin of press freedom to report on public meetings of Wirral Council and recommended to all councillors at the next Council meeting on the 16th of March that press freedom remain dead and buried (that is they recommended a draft policy on the reporting of all public meetings of Wirral Council).
Labour councillors on the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee last night repeatedly prevented any discussion by opposition councillors on the controversial subjects of the closure of Lyndale School and library opening hours. If councillors from the ruling group can’t respect and listen to viewpoints they may not agree with, how can democracy actually function at all on Wirral Council?
The draft policy (if approved by Council) will mean that at the start of the meeting the Chair will ask anyone if they have any objections to the meeting being filmed. If someone does object the Chair will stop the meeting being filmed. However any legal powers Chairs may have had to stop filming of public meetings were repealed by the Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014 last year.
The policy goes much further and states a ban on editing filming, photography or recording of a meeting that could cause “reputational harm”.
Wirral Council seem to not recognise the importance of the independence of the press and councillors on the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee don’t seem to think there is anything wrong with this policy.
If you’re from the Wirral and would like to make your views known to your local councillors ahead of the Council meeting on the 16th March, their contact details are on this page. As emails to councillors are no routinely filtered, I would suggest phoning or writing by mail.
37 Labour councillors agree Wirral Council’s budget for next year & reject amendment to keep Lyndale School open
37 Labour councillors agree Wirral Council’s budget for next year & reject amendment to keep Lyndale School open
Councillor Phil Davies "I’m pleased that for a second successive year this Administration will freeze Wirral’s council tax" Budget Council 24th February 2015
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There was plenty of blame to go round at last night’s Council meeting, called to agree Wirral Council’s budget for 2015/16.
Labour’s Cllr Phil Davies blamed both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems. The Tory Leader Cllr Jeff Green chose instead to blame the Labour Administration on Wirral Council. The Lib Dems said that both Tories (on using money for welfare assistance for other purposes) and Labour (on streetlights not being fixed) were wrong, but did agree with Cllr Green’s plea for a U-turn on the closure of Lyndale School.
The sole Green Party councillor Cllr Pat Cleary blamed first the Conservatives referring to “untold misery” caused by housing benefit reforms and then the Labour Administration for accepting the Council Tax Freeze Grant which he called “simply a bribe”.
It then went on and on and on a lot more with backbench councillors trying to score political points. In the end Labour wouldn’t back down on closing Lyndale School and the votes were as follows:
Lib Dem Budget
Votes: 5 for, 56 against, 1 abstention LOST
Conservative amendment to Schools Budget to reverse Lyndale School closure decision
Votes: 24 for, 37 against, 1 abstention LOST
Conservative Budget
Votes: 18 votes for, 43 against, 1 abstention LOST
Labour budget
Votes: 37 votes for, 24 against, 1 abstention WON
The councillors went on to agree to Eric Robinson as Chief Executive, unusually by a card vote with 57 votes for, 4 against and 1 abstention.
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