Isle of Man company cancels plans for ICT College in Birkenhead The Isle of Man Today website (which is the website for the three Manx newspapers such as the Isle of Man Courier) reported yesterday that the International Centre for Technology Ltd has "pulled the plug" on a plan to re-use the Conway Building … Continue reading “Isle of Man company cancels plans for ICT College in Birkenhead”
Isle of Man company cancels plans for ICT College in Birkenhead
Wirral Council (15th December 2015) Cllr Adrian Jones announced plans that have now been cancelled for an ICT College in Birkenhead last month
The Conway Building and the Hamilton Building are both owned by Wirral Council. Manx Education Foundation who had been behind the plans had a minority shareholding in the International Centre for Technology Ltd. However the International Centre for Technology Ltd have since bought out Manx Education Foundation’s shareholding which means the plan for a creative industry training college in Birkenhead will now not happen.
ICT Ltd are instead concentrating on developing a property on the Isle of Man called the Nunnery that they bought from the Tynwald (Isle of Man government) for £5 million that they hope to open later this year.
Further investigation found the same problem at eleven additional PFI sites.
Wirral has a number of schools constructed using PFI that are managed by Wirral Schools Services Limited. It is not known if any of the schools on the Wirral are affected by this. Here is the information from the report.
“Case Study 2: Fire Separation in Major Construction projects
24. A site visit to a local school on 9th January 2015 following a fire on 7th January 2015 (incident no 32304) identified serious fire separation concerns due to smoke spread from the ground floor kitchen to the 1st floor protected staircase.
25. The school was built as part of a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) initiative. The investigation led to 11 additional PFI sites where the same issues were detected. As the issues potentially had national implications Protection Officers utilised the CFOA [Chief Fire Officer Association] Community of Practice to share the risk information. It was subsequently established that the same issue had been found in other major new-build / refurbishment projects across England with estimated repair bills totalling in excess of £100m.
26. Officers escalated the issue to the CFOA Fire Engineering Technical Standards Group due to the national potential in order that the risk information can be effectively shared with other Fire and Rescue Services and that national guidance is produced to ensure that these issues are dealt with consistently and effectively.”
Will either of the two Wirral councillors (Cllr Lesley Rennie and Cllr Jean Stapleton) on MFRA’s Performance and Scrutiny Committee ask if any of the Wirral PFI Schools (Leasowe Primary, Bebington High, Birkenhead Park School (previously University Academy Birkenhead and before that Park High), South Wirral High, Weatherhead High, Hilbre High, Prenton High, Wallasey High and Wirral Grammar Girls) or the two Wirral PFI City Learning Centres (Wallasey City Learning Centre and Hilbre City Learning Centre) are affected by this?
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5 different versions of one political cover up but which one will you choose?
ICO Information Commissioner’s Office logo
Wirral Leaks has awarded me Director of the Year in their 500th post. Although to be clear that’s really for this Youtube channel rather than this blog.
To be honest I shouldn’t really say the award is to myself as it isn’t entirely my work. I need to thank my long-suffering helper, my wife Leonora who supplies me with batteries when politicians waffle on for a long time.
Unlike Wirral Leaks who have just reached a mere 500 posts, this will be the 1,509th post on this blog. However unlike Wirral Leaks I’m not going to indulge any further in blowing my own trumpet, I might not go in for fancy graphics like they do, I just plod on. So on with the story.
This is a story with a number of options to it. Remember those books in the Choose Your Own Adventure series, which gave you options and depending on the option you turned to a different page? Well this is your chance. You have an option of five different versions depending on your choice. Just click on the relevant link (or read all five if you like).
Hi. Congratulations on winning the 2015 General Election. However now you’re in charge you’ve got to accept responsibility. Once of your MPs, a Mr. James Wharton MP (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Minister for Local Growth and the Northern Powerhouse) has decided to cover up a FOI request involving Labour-run Wirral Council. No I didn’t make the request, someone else did.
Not only have ICO found (decision notice FS50594521) that DCLG (Department for Communities and Local Government) broke the law in responding to this request, but Mr. James Wharton MP refused to release an audit report about business grants at Wirral Council because it would cause "prejudice to the effective conduct of public affairs".
Unlike one of his predecessors The Rt Hon Sir Eric Pickles MP (who was never short of a few things to say about local government), he’s chosen to cover things up instead. Really, what were you (and Mr. Wharton) thinking?
Hi. Congratulations on keeping control of Wirral Council in 2015. One of the more embarrassing episodes that’s been rumbling on for a while has been the BIG/ISUS issues, but this next bit will make you laugh. Someone made a FOI request to DCLG (Department for Communities and Local Government) for the Government Internal Audit Agency report about Wirral Council.
And guess what, the Conservative Minister, Mr. James Wharton MP (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Minister for Local Growth and the Northern Powerhouse (or Northern Poorhouse as some of the witty people in your party have renamed it)) decided to keep it a secret!
Yes doesn’t it make you laugh when the Conservatives are helping you?
Hi. Didn’t know there were many of you left to be honest. Former Cllr Stuart Kelly sniffed a scandal over the whole BIG/ISUS issue at Wirral Council when he was a councillor. However Graham Burgess and Kevin Adderley denied there was anything wrong.
Probably the Europeans will ask for their money back so central government will ask Wirral Council for money back. Either way it’ll be embarrassing, but not for you!
Yes, we all know you want to get out of Europe. This is another scandal involving European money, that was mismanaged. Seriously though you have no councillors on Wirral Council and despite 3.8 million votes only one MP. Life’s not fair eh? But look on the bright side the British National Party have been struck off the register of UK political parties! Plus if the Conservatives stick to their word there’ll be an IN/OUT (but no shake it all about) referendum on Europe.
You are the vast majority of people. Wirral Council mismanaged a business grants program involving European money. The Europeans are asking national government for it back. National government are asking Wirral Council for it back. Oh and everyone’s trying to cover it all up as it’s embarrassing.
I’d love to tell you all the details, but they’re in a report the government minister is desperately trying to keep a lid on. Covers ups never work or do they?
What were the 9 most viewed stories on this blog over the last week?
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson on a train
There are many stories I plan to publish on this blog soon. There’s one involving Hoylake Golf Resort, a story involving a cover-up at Wirral Council sanctioned by a Conservative Minister and of course the steady stream of news that is local politics. I also plan to look back at what were the most viewed news stories in 2015.
However it’s time to look back at the 9 most viewed stories of the last week (with a few comments on each of them).
This is a look at what Merseytravel spend on media monitoring (which covers not just this blog, but newspapers and broadcast media too). It formed part of my citizen audit over the summer (but with tales of councillors’ salmon dinners and stays at gentleman’s clubs by Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority councillors) only was published now.
The big news story of the week was about whether the Mersey Ferries had a future at Woodside. Councillors disagreed with the consultants and asked for an option that kept the three terminals (Woodside, Seacombe and Liverpool Pier Head).
Inspired by the Sherlock Christmas special, this went back in time to 1894 to a fictional conversation around the Brace breakfast table. Yes Wirral is still in Cheshire, blogs don’t yet exist and the first Mersey Tunnel for the railway has recently been opened.
Number five leads in to Liverpool City Council’s views on Freedom of Information. They suggest a series of radical moves. They want the 18 hour rule changed to 6 or 7 hours, for those making Freedom of Information requests to be charged for the time it takes Liverpool City Council to black out information, more opportunity to deem requests vexatious and to abolish internal reviews.
After a long talk followed by a question and answer session with Jan Chaudry-van der Velde of Merseyrail the meeting got to the agenda item titled Mersey Ferries Long Term Strategy.
Here first is what Cllr Foulkes had to say during the meeting.
Councillor Steve Foulkes talks about the Mersey Ferries at a meeting of the Merseytravel Committee 7th January 2016
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Merseytravel Committee meeting (part of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority) meeting of the 7th January 2016 (Mersey Ferries item starts at 7m 51s)
Cllr Steve Foulkes (Wirral, Labour) spoke first, “Yes Chair, obviously we’re going to be moving something a bit later on, but I think I think there has to be some criticism I think from the elected Members in terms of the release of the report and the focus and attention on the negativity of it.
I think that I would like to turn this completely on its head and say that if I was a Leader of a Council or running a Council service and anybody was talking in terms of this day and age where the government that we have is actually savaging public services across the sector. It’s almost waging war on the public sector, if there was once, if I had a service and someone was coming forward with a bit of paper that was offering me a twenty year lifespan and beyond, I would grab that with both hands initially.
I would say that is undoubtedly positive news for the ferry service of this city region, an iconic ferry service that we as an organisation are planning for the next twenty, twenty-five years. So we have to take that as a very, very positive aspect and there are some very good initiatives within the report that would allow us to do that.
In particularly a way forward of getting new vessels which is key obviously we’ve been told they’re aging and vessels that will actually allow us to generate more income and make it even more sustainable. So the word is sustainability.
But obviously everyone’s eyes have been drawn to the one paragraph that doesn’t make good reading. But these are people who in their professional capacity have been asked to do if you know a helicopter view of the service and give us their deliberations.
And this is what to me is why I became a politician, why I joined these organisations is to actually have an influence on behalf of the people that I represent in using these facts, figures and information to actually develop the strategy and this is a good starting point for us for a strategy because that’s what it is you say Chair. It’s a discussion document for us to move forward.
Now I welcome the interest that’s been generated by this report and there are some good ideas coming from the public and from groups who are on their own calling themselves protest groups.
There’s absolutely no reason why those protest groups can’t become a useful ally, a tool in actually developing the strategy as we go on. So, for me it is a document that maybe could’ve been handled in terms of the PR issues a lot better.
But nevertheless it does give people some reassurance that this organisation cherishes the ferry service with all the economic problems it presents and the challenges it presents we cherish that service and want to maintain it for twenty, twenty-five years.
I think there’s a way forward that we can think about, certainly it highlights the purchase of the vessels, there are other models to purchasing the vessels. I would just ask just to consider certainly the logic and strategy we’ve used for building up the reserves for the rolling stock and the project management that we’ve gone through that all Members seem to appreciate it.
Could, alright the figures are still high by anyone’s measure we are talking twenties of millions of pounds in this document, but we can handle that in the simple way as we have to build up these reserves for the rolling stock, ie building up a reserve for capital, having some separate you know ways of generating money.
The other thing I would say though Chair, that that shouldn’t stop us from this long-term strategy we’ve debated. I still think that there are ways to make the ferry service more efficient and operationally more successful and there are things that are coming out, as we move on, and things that have already happened such as the annualised hours of the people that work on the ferries.
And there are some glaring costs that we need to remedy, for example keeping the boat on the River overnight with a full crew. It doesn’t seem a good use of public money. So there are lots of things we can do as we build up this strategy but my overall view is that apart from the one negative paragraph, it’s a positive way forward for the longevity of the much-loved ferry service and I’ll hope to reassure the public when you move your resolution. Thank you.”
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