Corporate Governance Committee (Wirral Council) 26th October 2011 5.00pm (Committee Room 1) Part 8

Cllr Foulkes said the report raised two issues. The first would help feed into the corporate governance work program, the other issue was to do with the work stream which would have to bid into the Budget. Cllr Anne McArdle raised the issue of external customers, schools, what schools needs and school employment. Bill Norman … Continue reading “Corporate Governance Committee (Wirral Council) 26th October 2011 5.00pm (Committee Room 1) Part 8”

Cllr Foulkes said the report raised two issues. The first would help feed into the corporate governance work program, the other issue was to do with the work stream which would have to bid into the Budget.

Cllr Anne McArdle raised the issue of external customers, schools, what schools needs and school employment.

Bill Norman said his department provides human resources and a significant level of employment related advice to schools as well as legal and committee services. More work on the latter would limit their capacity to give advice to schools and deal with admission appeals.

Cllr Ann McLachlan said that 4.9 was a useful starting point. Bill Norman replied that David Smith had made a helpful point, Cabinet has bulky three-week agendas and it was a matter of deciding the best way of using time.

Cllr Foulkes raised the issue of Anna’s seminar to all councillors. He asked that they do their level best. Cllr Phil Davies said Bill had made a good start on the challenges, but asked what the options were of addressing the challenges? He asked if other councils had looked at the same challenges and how Wirral Council would go about addressing them?

Cllr Green said the wanted to highlight the requirement of making it clear how the review of services would be laid out and answering the question “What sort of Council do we want?”. He had a strong opinion but he wanted to avoid producing unnecessary reports which would be avoided by a clear and agreed set of requirements.

Corporate Governance Committee (Wirral Council) 26th October 2011 5.00pm (Committee Room 1) Part 7

Cllr Ann McLachlan said they should not be diverted from their primary purpose or stretching too thin. She said they needed focus. Cllr Foulkes said to tell him what they wanted but it would have a direct effect on resource implications (which he said was not unique to Wirral Counci). Cllr Phil Davies said Jim Wilkie would bring a report back to the next meeting about the turnaround team. Cllr Foulkes said there was an issue of resources and backfilling people if they were diverted from their job. Jim Wilkie said they would use whatever resources were necessary.

Anna Klonowski said they had to make sure they had the right people with the right experience. Cllr McArdle said [to Anna] that she “may be surprised at the talent”.

David Smith introduced the Internal Audit report and said it was important to mention Internal Audit and there were a couple of things in paragraph 4.2 that might justify diverting attention and it would be worthwhile to seek external views. Ian Coleman would be reporting back at the beginning of December which was a challenging timescale. Cllr Foulkes asked if people were happy, so the report was agreed.

Bill Norman talked about the review of Legal and Committee services. He said they had started the process of reviewing one of the key support areas and that Anna’s corporate governance report was a spear in terms of going forward. It did create additional areas of pressure, but the approach in 4.14 should help councillors take decisions and for them to be implemented.

Corporate Governance Committee (Wirral Council) 26th October 2011 5.00pm (Committee Room 1) Part 3

Cllr Tom Harney said there were two things. The first was the business of when, he wanted a finite date and said it “can’t wait forever” and “if we miss the date we should do something about it”. The second was that [the Cabinet]’s job was to manage and they were responsible for managing people, this can’t wait six months.

Cllr Foulkes said their credibility hinged on redefining corporate governance. Imparting core skills on people he didn’t see as a problem. However there might be smaller adjustments at the end. He wanted to make as much progress as he could without damaging the integrity of the system. Cllr Foulkes said he noted the report fed into the wider discussion. He took on board Tom’s point, but there was enough in the Anna Klonowski Associates report. First they would deal with the two hundred top managers making small minor improvements, he said they would “not just carry on what we’ve done before” which was waiting for policy.

Cllr Ann McArdle said the worst thing they could do would be to destroy the integrity of the process.

Chris Hyams talked about the objectives and expectations and steering the meeting through a difficult conversation.

Cllr Phil Davies said he worried about launching a training program. He went on to talk about the culture, roles, responsibilities and behaviours which were linked. He worried that Chris’ training should look at all component parts.

Anna Klonowski said the tools and techniques used shouldn’t undermine what was a precursor to launching anything.

Cabinet 22/9/11 Item 19A Independent Review

There have been a number of searches to this blog (and one email request) for the Anna Klonowski report following media reports of last Thursday’s Cabinet.

Her (first) report is here with a covering report written by Jim Wilkie here.

I haven’t got around to typing up what happened at last Thursday’s Cabinet meeting (yet).

Anna Klonowski Associates Ltd Report

A Supplementary Report and a Covering Report are down as item 19A of tomorrow night’s Wirral Council’s Cabinet agenda.

However the full report and executive summary is not going to be published until those named in it have had a right of reply. It’s a rather long running saga, a little complex to put into a short blog post but the supplementary report (which relates to the institutional failings at Wirral Council previously also identified by former employee Martin Morton) should hopefully start Wirral Council back on the path to where it should be.

Clearly somebody’s going to make political capital out of it (and the full report and executive summary when it’s published). With a third of council seats up for election (22) in May 2012, I’m sure some councillors would prefer the reports to be published sooner rather than later.

Update 22/9/11: There’s a Wirral Globe story about it written by Leigh Marles that goes into more detail.