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Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Harney “We don’t know where we came from, we don’t know where we’re going”
Cllr Tom Harney referred to the Anna Klonowski Associates report and the public interest reports and he felt the Audit Commission “didn’t get it quite right” in investigating various officers. He said although councillors had political differences that he did not believe they were “running a basket case Council”. Cllr Harney said the question now was, “What really was happening?”
He asked if they were coming from a basket case Council or one that had problems, similar to other Councils, which hadn’t received the same publicity as Wirral Council surrounding their problems because Wirral Council had had a whistleblower. Cllr Harney asked, “If he hadn’t said anything publicly, what would our perception be?” and that surveys showed that over half of local government workers had experienced bullying at work. He said, “We don’t know where we came from, we don’t know where we’re going.”
Cllr Harney said that too many comments referred to mythical golden councils around the country. He asked how can they guarantee to the people of the Borough and employees that they’ll support them when they raise problems? Cllr Harney said “there’s a difference between having rules and keeping to them and maybe that’s a lesson that we and many other Councils should learn”.
Somebody heckled Cllr Harney, the Mayor told Cllr Harney just to ignore the heckler.
He said that the Improvement Board was a body that didn’t make decisions, hasn’t got a decision-making ability and no means of enforcing anything. Cllr Harney thanked the Mayor for his forbearance.
