Wirral Council spends £2,294.57 on a German translation and the prize for the most pointless redaction
Wirral Council spends £2,294.57 on a German translation and the prize for the most pointless redaction
Wirral Council invoice Capita Translation and Interpreting Limited £2294.57 11th July 2013
Wirral Council spent £2,294.57 with Capita Translation and Interpreting Limited for translation of documents from English to German. Quite why Wirral Council would spend this much on translation is unknown.
The list of payments made over £500 list the department as being the Law, HR and Asset Management department, however the invoice itself has CYP (Children and Young People) written on it.
There’s not much more to be said than this, so I’ll just move on to the most pointless bit of blacking out I’ve seen by Wirral Council on an invoice:
Wirral Council invoices Weightmans £942 24th September 2013
As you can see on this invoice the total sum payable (£785 + VAT of £157 which comes to £942) is blacked out.
So why was the total blacked out (which can easily be determined by adding two figures together)? I quote from the official response:
“Just to clarify, the invoices I supplied to you were redacted on the basis of advice from our legal section rather than by departments themselves.”
Yes this is Wirral Council, a Council that describes itself as “open and transparent”, which is seemingly something not believed by its legal department!
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Why did Wirral Council not check an invoice from Weightmans for £2,185.20 was correct before paying it?
Why did Wirral Council not check an invoice from Weightmans for £2,185.20 was correct before paying it?
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans £2185.20 29th April 2013
Above is an invoice from Weightmans to Wirral Council for £2,185.20. However it doesn’t add up. If the hours part is to be believed then these are the real figures:
As the “Certified correct for payment” signature is blacked out, you can’t tell who at Wirral Council just paid it without scrutinising whether it was correct or not.
So perhaps somebody leave a comment answering are employees at Wirral Council supposed to check invoices are correct before paying them?
In Wirral Council’s constitution it specifies the following under “Financial Regulations”.
5.3.2 The key controls for ordering and paying for work, goods and services are:-
…
(v) payments are made to the correct person/supplier, for the correct amount and are properly recorded, regardless of the payment method;
5.3.5 Chief Officers are responsible for ensuring that all goods and services are properly ordered, received and paid for in accordance with Guidelines for Financial Systems.
Quite what the mysterious “Guidelines for Financial Systems” are I don’t know. The Chief Officer for legal expenditure would be Surjit Tour, although it’s clearly not his signature on the invoice.
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Merseytravel announces wifi at all underground train stations within 5 years
Merseytravel announces wifi at all underground train stations within 5 years
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In response Cllr Steve Foulkes suggested, “Maybe leave your car home for one day or something, those types of changes you know that make a massive impact.”
Cllr Liam Robinson (Chair of Merseytravel) said, “For me that’s about making sure public transport is the number one choice of getting around from A to B.”
A representative from Merseyrail and Northern Rail were along to answer any questions. The report showed an increase in passenger numbers on the Merseyrail lines (for the first half of 2014/15 compared to the first half of 2013/14) but a decrease in passenger numbers travelling with Northern Rail.
The Merseyrail representative attributed some of the increase to the Open Golf tournament and the Giants event, but that even when the extra passengers travelling to these events were taken into account that there was still an underlying growth of 2%.
The Northern Rail representative disputed that there had been a decline in passenger numbers and stated that their own figures showed a 2.3% increase compared to the previous year. He asked for passenger numbers to be compared at the end of the year as factors such as engineering works and electrification closures would have affected their figures.
A councillor pointed out that wifi was nearly always available on long distance trains and asked when they would introduce wifi to trains?
The answer given was, “Chair I can comment on that. Firstly, the thing to mention on that is the five-year growth plan that was mentioned by Paul a little bit earlier. One of the initiatives is wifi at all the underground stations as a pilot scheme. So that’s already committed to, we’ll see how that rolls out.”
The Northern Rail representative answered, “We are currently trialling free wifi on our electric trains in the Yorkshire area with a view to rolling out.
The new franchise specification for Northern and Transpennine Express will indicate, well sorry has stated that all services will have free wifi during the first part of that franchise. We’re also trialling free wifi at stations.”
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Why did Wirral Council pay £48,384 to Weightmans and what has DASS got to do with it?
Why did Wirral Council pay £48,384 to Weightmans and what has DASS got to do with it?
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans £2700 7th June 2013Wirral Council invoice Weightmans £720 7th June 2013Wirral Council invoice Weightmans £48384 11th July 2013
Above are three invoices to Wirral Council from Weightmans, one for £720, one for £2,700 and one for £48,384.
Apart from “Counsel’s fees” and the always cryptic “professional services” I’ve no idea what these are for, other than the two smaller amounts are to do with Wirral Council’s Department of Adult Social Services. Two refer to a fee note attached to the invoice describing the work done in more detail. I’ve made a Freedom of Information Act request for the fee notes.
All three invoices would seem to be related as they have the same account number. Certainly there’s a public interest in having some openness and transparency as why Wirral Council spent £51,804 on legal costs. However considering how much of the detail on these invoices are blacked out, I don’t hold out much hope that Wirral Council won’t do the same to the fee notes in response to the Freedom of Information Act request.
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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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