Is this what an “open and transparent” Council looks like?

Is this what an “open and transparent” Council looks like?                                                    Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party. YouTube privacy policy If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh. Accept … Continue reading “Is this what an “open and transparent” Council looks like?”

Is this what an “open and transparent” Council looks like?

                                                  

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Public Question Time 14th December 2015 where I ask a question to Councillor Adrian Jones

In his answer Cllr Adrian Jones states that Wirral Council is being “open and transparent”.

I provide below four pages from what Wirral Council supplied when I requested the Highway Services Contract that Wirral Council have with Bam Nuttall on which millions of pounds are spent each year.

These first two pages (according to the preceding page) are to do with the NRSWA Team (whatever that stands for). This team is described as “a separate team of 4 inspectors monitoring utility works and repeat defects. This team could integrate with the highway teams

As usual the thumbnails link to higher resolution versions of the same image.

Bam Nuttall contract Service Breakdown Structure page 1 of 2 thumbnail
Bam Nuttall contract Service Breakdown Structure page 1 of 2 thumbnail
Bam Nuttall contract Service Breakdown Structure page 2 of 2 thumbnail
Bam Nuttall contract Service Breakdown Structure page 2 of 2 thumbnail

Next is an email detailing some last minutes changes to the contract. The unnamed author of this email receives this blog’s first ever Sir Humphrey Appleby award for the sentence “Please find attached a revised copy of P112 of Volume 1, which now includes the omitted Tender Amendment relating to the uplift on rates for Coastal Defence Work in tidal conditions, and an additional page for Volume 3 Method of Measurement to be inserted in the Preamble, which compiles the clarifications issued during the tender period in connection with Price List Bandings into a coherent single document.

Bam Nuttall contract email thumbnail
Bam Nuttall contract email thumbnail

Finally, even the author of the Scottish Power Energy Network’s guide to connecting street lights to the mains electricity gets the black box treatment.

Bam Nuttall contract SP Energy Networks Connection Registration and Management thumbnail
Bam Nuttall contract SP Energy Networks Connection Registration and Management thumbnail

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EXCLUSIVE: First 83 pages of Wirral Council’s Highway Services Contract with BAM Nuttall

EXCLUSIVE: First 83 pages of Wirral Council’s Highway Services Contract with BAM Nuttall

                                                           

In 2013, Wirral Council’s Cabinet on the 7th November decided to award the Highway Services Contract to BAM Nuttall (which started on the 1st April 2014). BAM Nuttall won the contract out of three companies that bid for it and they replaced the previous contractor Colas. The contract runs from 2014 to 2018 and has an estimated value of £30 to £33 million (£6 to £6.6 million a year). You can read the Cabinet report that led to that decision and the Internal Audit report and Gateway 3 report (along with the recommendations/action plan for both of those) on Wirral Council’s website.

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At a meeting on the 7th November 2013 Wirral Council’s Cabinet spends less than two minutes deciding on awarding the £30 to £33 million Highway Services Contract to BAM Nuttall (that agenda item starts at 1m 40s)

This year was the first year I could request a copy of the BAM Nuttall contract during the audit and I’ve scanned in the first 83 pages (of a very long contract). The Highway Services Contract is for:

the provision of standby and call-out, reactive and preventative maintenance on all parts of the highway, public car park and coastal defence infrastructure for which Wirral Council is responsible, including: carriageways; footways; gully cleaning and drainage; street lighting and electrical services; traffic signs and road markings; street and coastal defence furniture; bridges; subways and retaining walls and sea wall and accesses; together with snow and ice clearance; including precautionary salting except for
 
maintenance of traffic signals equipment and their electrical supplies, all maintenance and improvement schemes estimated in value at over £250,000 and the provision of gritting vehicles and road salt.
 

The documents below cover the parent company guarantee with Koninklijke Bam Groep N.V. (no that’s not a spelling mistake but the name of a company based in the Netherlands), then the start of volume 1 (part 1) of the contract documents which covers form of agreement, bond (unfortunately the details haven’t been filled in on this), form of tender, declaration, what information is considered commercially sensitive for freedom of information requests, information assurance, insurance certificate (with AXA Corporate Solutions), parent company letter guarantee, contract data part 1 (data provided by Wirral Council, partnering information, more contract data on the optional parts of the contract (pages 62-63 add optional clauses about FOI requests) which includes matters such as TUPE, subcontracting, intellectual property, data protection, human rights, the Local Government Ombudsman, price adjustment for inflation and other optional clauses/changes to the contract).

Below are thumbnail images of the contract pages. The text on the thumbnails is just about readable on my laptop screen. If there are any pages that you find it’s not readable please leave a comment with the page number and I’ll link the thumbnail to a higher resolution image for that page.

The optional contract clauses added about FOI requests seem to mean that if a FOI request is made for information about or relating to the contract, that Wirral Council will contact BAM Nuttall and ask it to make representations if it wants information to be withheld. Page 24 of the contract classes the following parts of the contract as "commercially sensitive" which are Contract Data Part 2, The Price List and the Fee Percentage Schedules.

Bam Nuttall contract Wirral Council page 1
Bam Nuttall contract Wirral Council page 1

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For The Small Price Of A Lightbulb

For The Small Price Of A Lightbulb

For The Small Price Of A Lightbulb

Bam Nuttall contract drawings of one of the twenty different designs for wiring for one of Wirral Council's streetlights thumbnail
Bam Nuttall contract drawings of one of the twenty different designs for wiring for one of Wirral Council’s streetlights thumbnail

One of my favourite authors, Isaac Asimov when editing books of science fiction stories (or even his own stories) used to add an introduction to each story. This is an introduction to a piece by a guest blogger (in future these introductions will probably be shorter).

Many moons ago, I started and ran a video games website (single-handed) that had more readers each month than the Wirral Globe has now. Just in case anyone considers that a “hobby”, I was paid for it, just as I earn money from writing this blog.

Visitors to that website used to submit content (there was a forum too) and believe me having to edit a submission from a teenager who completely ignores any of the rules of grammar and doesn’t use full stops was a stretch.

For a while I’ve been thinking of a new feature on this blog similar to the letters page of the newspapers where users can submit content. After all (apart from a submission by Leonora who I’ve tried to gently encourage to write again) readers of this blog have had to put up with me for the last five years!

I have asked a number of people to write a guest post, however Nick Lauro has been the first to thankfully say yes!

Compared to the experience above, editing Nick Lauro’s submission has been a dream by comparison. I have only made one very minor edit!

His piece is about something that I’ll refer to as a “bread and butter” issue of political activists or a politician and reminds me of a similar problem I tried to sort out once on the Beechwood estate. Writing any more than that about it would spoil the surprise.


By Nick Lauro

Is it really too much to ask? It’s not as though I’m asking for the air fare and the accommodation costs for a trip to China, it’s just a couple of street lamps that need fixing! So began my speculation, as I pondered in the dark about exactly how much of Wirral council taxpayers’ money it costs to send a van and a couple of engineers out to repair a street lamp or two.

It all started around the end of September when unusually, my little cul­-de-­sac was plunged into darkness by the simultaneous failure of not one, but two lamp posts. Not the end of the world, maybe a bit on the Victor Meldrew side of petty but nevertheless, a valid security risk to my fellow neighbours whose houses sit next to the shrouded, wooded scrubland that provides an obvious getaway/hiding place, for even the most feckless burglar. It’s not the first time a street light has failed over the 11 years I’ve lived in the road, and has always been an easy problem to rectify; contact council, report faulty light, wait a few days, light fixed.

Reporting a faulty street light is as simple as visiting the Wirral council website and filling in an online form that rewards you with a message of acknowledgement ­much preferable to hanging on the end of a telephone waiting to speak to an overworked, underpaid, first­ line support employee from an understaffed department. After you’ve completed the reporting process, you sit and wait for the lights to come back on again ­or in this case, not… four ­plus weeks and two ignored Tweets later, darkness still prevails when the sun goes down and my train of thought drifts toward ideas of austerity, cuts and a local authority so fiscally challenged, they can no longer provide the same level of service for our most basic of urban requirements. But wait; there is much talk in the local press about my locality being saved from oblivion by the universal panacea for all cash­ strapped local authorities ­a ‘Golf Resort’. We have a white knight upon his steed, bringing us promise of regeneration and our council coffers once again, overflowing with bullion ­surely enough to restore Wirral’s street ­furniture to working order for years to come?

Alas, our saviour and two of his executive salaried colleagues have departed in what looks to be a strategically planned exit, taking between them, some £500,000 of council taxpayers’ money in remunerations. Who will save us now, from further fiscal disaster? Who can keep the dream alive for ‘Wirral Waters’? Will the money to fix two dodgy street lamps down my road ever be found?

Seriously folks, when an organisation funded by money from the public purse ­our money ­can seemingly see fit to play the sort of boardroom games more in keeping with the style of premier league football managers, it is easy to feel bitterly short-changed. The recent monetary machinations carried out by our most highly paid public servants, only serves to cast suspicion and doubt on their ability to even find the money to change a light bulb.

© Nick Lauro 2015

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VIDEO: A round-up of local Wirral and Merseyside politics by John Brace (part 2)

VIDEO: A round-up of local Wirral and Merseyside politics by John Brace (part 2)

VIDEO: A round-up of local Wirral and Merseyside politics by John Brace (part 2)

 

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John Brace on local Wirral and Merseyside politics (part 2)

Part 2 of this video series is shorter than part 1.

As before, this transcript of the video will include relevant links. After I recorded the video I found another bundle of papers that make up the BAM Nuttall contract on the scanner. There are also pages Wirral Council didn’t give me because of commercial confidentiality reasons. However I think you get the point that it’s a long contract!


still from a Youtube video about politics part 2 thumbnail
still from a Youtube video about politics part 2 thumbnail

Hello, I’m John Brace and this is the second part of my videos about local politics on Merseyside and on the Wirral.

One thing I’ll be talking about today is the Bam Nuttall contract. You may not have heard of Bam Nuttall, but they replaced Colas. If I went into the whole Colas saga and the senior officers that were suspended and paid oodles of money because Wirral Council didn’t quite get it right, well I’d probably use up all the tape on this camera.

But anyway going back to Bam Nuttall, in must have been 2014, Wirral Council signed up to a contract with them and the contract called, let’s see the Highway Services Contract. So for instance stuff to do with road works. Anything I think over a certain amount to do with traffic lights is someone else’s responsibility but I’ve scanned in the first bit of the contract which is here, see that’s the bit I’ve scanned in, but it’s an absolutely massive contract.

This is the next bit, bit not the rest of it! Then there’s this. That makes up the contract.

I have asked Wirral Council not to give me things on paper and to save the planet, not cut down so many trees and give them to me on a CD, but Wirral Council always seem to prefer paper.

Anyway the other thing I’ll be writing about in the near future is, this is some of the invoices I got during the audit for various things. For instance, this one is an invoice for £7,389.50 for the Moscow Ballet doing Giselle at the Floral Pavilion.

Moscow Ballet invoice Wirral Council Floral Pavilion 2014 £7389 50 thumbnail
Moscow Ballet invoice Wirral Council Floral Pavilion 2014 £7389 50 thumbnail

Now you may well say well what’s the point in getting an invoice for that? Well, the taxpayer actually subsidises the Floral Pavilion to a large amount of money.

So whereas for example Wirral Council sees closing down Lyndale School as a priority because they say they don’t have the money, they do have the money to be subsidising the tickets of rich people going to see the ballet at the Floral Pavilion. OK, I could look up the amount later.

The other thing I was going to talk about is Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. Now of course this was only set up in the recent past and has mired itself in all kinds of controversy over the devolution deal, price, prize, all that and elected Member stuff.

Anyway, what I did notice and this came as news to me, even though I report on the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority is that Knowsley Council has set up a website for the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and they’re currently running a consultation on the things that make up the devolution deal.

Now, firstly before the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority was set up politicians quite categorically said, I’m not going to name the politician here but I’m sure people can find this out, I’ll probably find this out when I write this up on my blog.

They said the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority won’t cost any more money than the existing arrangements. Now registering a website, having a website hosted, dealing with all the stuff to do with a website does cost money! OK, the politicians will probably turn round and say, well this is from existing budgets or something, but it costs money that can’t be spent on something else.

So anyway, when I write this up on the blog, in the transcript I’ll include a link because to be honest it was news to me, it hasn’t been in a report that was submitted to the Combined Authority and as far as I’m concerned the only mention online about it is from Knowsley, whereas the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority is all the councils on Merseyside plus I think Halton and really speaking you shouldn’t just consult with the people of Knowsley, you should be consulting everybody.

So that’s a few things that I’ll be doing, let’s see today’s weather is cold, hence the jumper. When I was looking into market research as to what people want from a blog, one of the things that came up was weather forecasts. Now you’ll be glad to know that unless there’s a big demand I’m not going to start up with a map behind me and little symbols of clouds and sunshine, wind and all that because I really don’t fancy being a weather forecaster probably because people would love turning round and saying, “Well you said it would be sunny today John and now it’s raining!”.

But anyway if you really do want weather forecasts, there’s the Met Office website for that.

So that’s a summary of where I’m up to, this week there are hardly any public meetings because of the half term holidays and of course there’s Halloween at the weekend. One of the things that’s coming up of course is Bonfire Night and the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, ok I’m sure people are probably sick of me talking about Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service.

Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service are running, in I think conjunction with Wirral Council, trying to clear up the, say for instance the bits of wood and stuff like that people put together for bonfires because Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service probably really don’t want to be going round putting out a lot of small fires on Bonfire Night.

I mean they’re not being killjoys or anything, there are Council organised fireworks displays and things like that so people can go along. I’m sure there’ll be one in Birkenhead Park this year, people can make the usual jokes about taxpayer’s money going up in smoke, that kind of thing.

But anyway, that’s what I’ll be doing today, I’ve decided to keep it short because typing up these transcripts takes a while, but if there’s anything you want to leave a comment on or you think I should write about then please get in touch.

OK, thanks for listening.

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19 technical drawings of street furniture from Wirral Council’s contract with BAM Nuttall

19 technical drawings of street furniture from Wirral Council’s contract with BAM Nuttall

19 technical drawings of street furniture from Wirral Council’s contract with BAM Nuttall

                                               

These pictures are from Wirral Council’s contract with BAM Nuttall.

There is a saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. So I include some pictures of various drawings. Sadly Wirral Council have only supplied odd-numbered pages of the index, so what half the pictures were of was a surprise to me.

First as everyone needs to hear Wirral Council apologise (what for this time you may ask?) there’s the Scheme Sign Board with “Sorry for any inconvenience caused” which if Wirralleaks is reading is written in a black Arial typeface.

Wirral Council contract BAM Nuttall Volume 4 Scheme Sign Board
Wirral Council contract BAM Nuttall Volume 4 Scheme Sign Board

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