21 Conservative councillors request public meeting to discuss halting Girtrell Court closure plans
21 Conservative councillors request public meeting to discuss halting Girtrell Court closure plans
21 Conservative councillors have requested a special meeting of Wirral Council councillors to discuss the future of Girtrell Court. Based on promises that the replacement service would be “equal to, or better than” Girtrell Court, the councillors point out that the twenty bed service at Girtrell Court is being replaced by a ten bed unit.
Therefore they do not believe that replacing a twenty bed service with a ten bed service is “equal to, or better than” Girtrell Court and call upon the Council to reverse its decision to close Girtrell Court.
The public meeting to discuss the future of Girtrell Court is expected to take place on the evening of the 14th November 2016 in the Council Chamber at Wallasey Town Hall, Brighton Street, Seacombe, CH44 8ED. It will start at either 6.15 pm or when the previous meeting to discuss the future of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority finishes.
Updated 16/11/2016 You can watch what happened at that Extraordinary meeting of Wirral Council held on the 14th November 2016 to discuss Girtrell Court below.
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Extraordinary Meeting, Council (Wirral Council) Girtrell Court 14th November 2016 Part 1 of 2
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What did Bernard Halley tell Wirral councillors about a 7,000+ petition against the closure of Girtrell Court?
What did Bernard Halley tell Wirral councillors about a 7,000+ petition against the closure of Girtrell Court?
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Council (Wirral Council) 11th July 2016 Agenda item 4B (Petitions) Petition of over 7,000 requesting Council halt closure of Girtrell Court
As you can hear in the video above, Bernard Halley had five minutes to address Wirral Council’s councillors on the subject of his petition requesting that the closure of Girtrell Court be halted.
“….” refers to parts which are unclear due to his distance from the microphone and background noise. DASS stands for the Department of Adult Social Services.
Benard Halley said, “Thank you Mr. Mayor. I would like to take this opportunity to address the issues in this petition.
The petition that we refer to is on on change.org and it is about the closure of Girtrell Court.
The current statistics which have been very carefully balloted are 4,778 Wirral postcode signatures, 2,211 UK wide signatures and a 101 worldwide signatures, so it’s getting quite a bit of notoriety.
I would say at this stage that I have absolutely no political affiliation whatsoever, so I’m not grinding any of the traditional axes in this room.
In fact, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want, I don’t relish being regarded as a troublemaker, I would much rather support DASS in all their endeavours but this is an issue of principle that has to be followed through.
You are closing a service which whilst not perfect, enjoys the full confidence of parents and carers against their clearly expressed wishes.
Confidence that is held in Girtrell Court is vital when you ask us to entrust our loved ones to a third party.
Your process so far as carers are concerned have been flawed from the start. You decide an end product closure and then work backwards to find a solution that fits.
We find no evidence whatsoever that users called for change. We have objectively polled Girtrell Court users using an open question poll document and their data contradicts the …. . I challenge the Council to make full disclosure of their case to the scrutiny committee for independent evaluation.
Mr Phil Davies has repeatedly used the phrase, “equal or better”. That begs the question who decides what is equal or better? Surely it should be the users of the service?
Well Mr Davies you are a long way from equal to or better at the moment.
You have a potential building and a potential service provider. You do not have a service specification and terms of the contract which is absolutely vital for carers. We want to know that this is not a flash in the pan. There is no comparable staffing ratio data. There is no confirmation that users will have equal to time allocation, there is no information on the range or extent of user activities necessary to equal Girtrell or is this new service going to be just a baby sitting service?
In short you do not have or are far from the complete package which will enable anyone to evaluate equal or better.
Recent correspondence and press releases including emails from your Chief Executive claim that the closure decision has been made in partnership with carers. This is categorically untrue.
None of the carers have agreed to the closure of Girtrell Court.
Carers, including myself have often argued on the comparative virtues of three properties and provider combinations but with the sole motivation of ensuring any alternatives that originated was the best out of the limited choice available.
This was not and is not an agreement or approval for Girtrell Court closure.
The property chosen has some virtues but and this is a big but, the …. is on three floors and even with a lift there are concerns over evacuation capability in the event of a fire.
I am told that one of the principal reasons for closing Maplehome was an identical concern over evacuation capability.
Please do not use this as a Tory versus Labour slanging match which has characterised every debate on Girtrell.
Both propositions have occurred under the remit of DASS, so why is what was unacceptable then suddenly acceptable now?
I come to timescales. We were told at the start that the end of March was unachievable. My position cited the end of September as a possible appropriate date.
Now work on the property is unlikely to be completed by the end of November at best and only then can the Care Quality Commission’s approval be sought. So even with a fair wind, it might be the end of December it seems optimistic.
This ill-managed project has caused worry, distress and concern not only to service users, but to their carers. Many of whom are much older than I, have greater burdens to carry and who do not need Wirral Borough Council subjecting them to 9 months or more of added stress.
We come back to the starting point, you should have and could have used this financial year to plan and a design for a replacement service, while allowing users the confidence that Girtrell will continue seamlessly until an equal to or better than service can be constructed.
Instead, you reverse engineered a flawed solution which does this Council and its officers no credit whatsoever.
The petition has attracted over 7,000 signatures.
If you should ignore this level of public support moreover to do so by muscling your own councillors using a three line whip to stifle those points of view with compassion and conscience is a travesty of democracy for which this Administration should be truly ashamed.
(loud applause and cheers from the public gallery)
The bare minimum for the hard pressed carers should be afforded is consultation on the full package solution as I identified earlier.
If I may read a portion of the petition because it is pertinent, “Our demand is simple, retain the excellent Girtrell Court and its professional caring staff until the Council has researched carer and cared for needs, analysed, researched, costed and fully consulted on the suitability of any replacement offering.”
Solution before dissolution! Thank you for your time.
(loud applause and cheers from the public gallery)”
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The reason the debate might not be heard is because of Standing Order 17(1) in Wirral Council’s constitution (see page 162:
17. Rescission of preceding resolution
(1) No decision of the Council (including a decision taken by a committee or panel under delegated powers) may be reconsidered by the Council on a notice of motion within six months of the date of the earlier decision unless the notice of motion (under Standing Order 7) is signed by 17 members of the Council. If that motion is rejected by the Council neither it nor one to the same effect can be considered by the Council for six months.
However standing order 17, doesn’t apply to debates on large petitions, which are dealt with according to Wirral Council’s petitions scheme.
In the case of a petition of at the time of writing 6,593 signatures the petition scheme states “Petitions that must be considered by the Council – these must be signed by at least 3,000 people who live in the Borough”.
So in order for there to be a debate on Girtrell Court tonight either:
(a) Councillors could decide to suspend standing order 17 to allow the debate on Girtrell Court to go ahead, or
(b) Bernard Halley submits his large petition which triggers a fifteen minute debate as debates on petitions aren’t subject to standing order 17 or
(c) Councillor Blakeley finds fifteen other councillors to sign his notice of motion and therefore the debate goes ahead.
Tonight’s public meeting of Wirral Council will start at 6.00pm in the Council Chamber at Wallasey Town Hall, Brighton Street, Seacombe, CH44 8ED.
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Next Monday evening, starting at 6.00pm in the Council Chamber at Wallasey Town Hall there is a public meeting of all Wirral Council councillors.
One of the items to be debated at that meeting is a notice of motion on Girtrell Court (the text of the notice of motion is below). The notice of motion calls for any decision on closure of Girtrell Court to be made in public, rather than behind closed doors by the Cabinet Member Cllr Chris Jones and the Director of Adult Social Services Graham Hodkinson.
3. GIRTRELL COURT (to be debated)
Proposed by Cllr Chris Blakeley Seconded by Cllr Bruce Berry
Council notes that the Leader of the Council has previously stated that he wants his Administration to be open, transparent and fair with the people of Wirral. Council welcomes this approach.
Council therefore believes that the future of Girtrell Court must be decided in public and not under delegation to the portfolio holder, in conjunction with the Director of Adult Social Services.
Council further believes that the families of those using Girtrell Court, the staff, trade unions and residents and users must be given every opportunity to influence the future of Girtrell Court through a clear and transparent decision making process.
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It is hard to know where to begin when writing about last night’s Council meeting of Wirral Council at Wallasey Town Hall to decide on the budget. Above is a photo of the demonstration outside the main entrance to Wallasey Town Hall protesting about Girtrell Court being closed.
Realising that councillors were bypassing this entrance and using the door by Committee Room 3, there was another protest outside that way in too.
The meeting started and within the first few minutes the petition item was reached. The Mayor asked Bernard Halley (pictured below with his son David) to present his petitions opposing the closure of Girtrell Court. His e-petition had 1,200 signatures (of those nearly a thousand were Wirral residents). There was also a linked paper petition with over six hundred signatories opposed too.
Bernard Halley said, “Both petitions begged this Council to keep Girtrell Court running until proper alternatives are established, costed, evaluated, consulted upon and proven to be adequate.”
He gave a similar speech to the one he had made at the Cabinet meeting. Mr Cleary felt closing Girtrell Court was contrary to one of the 2020 pledges to protect the vulnerable and his opinion was that the proposed saving through closure would not save Wirral Council money but cost more money. Reference was also made by him to a proposal in 2011 proposed by Cllr Steve Foulkes and seconded by Cllr Phil Davies to stop the closure of Council-run care homes.
He expressed concern about the quality of care in the private sector and added, “At a time when users, their families, the public and staff see press stories of the frivolous use of taxpayers’ money, we implore you to look in the mirror, look into the eyes of those people in the balcony upstairs and tell them hand on heart how there is better provision out there.
We know you can’t do that and as such we urge you to fully drop this proposal. Thank you for your time.”
Although petitions of over 3,000 signatures can be debated for fifteen minutes, a decision was made to debate Girtrell Court during the budget debate instead.
Each of the political parties on Wirral Council with more than one councillor had a slightly different policy in their budget about Girtrell Court.
The Labour budget proposed closing it, subject to a later decision of the Cabinet Member Cllr Chris Jones and Director of Adult Social Services Graham Hodkinson.
The Conservative budget removed the need to close Girtrell Court by finding savings elsewhere instead. Three of the proposed areas for savings (amongst others) the Conservatives proposed were removing the free taxi service for councillors to and from the Town Hall, deleting the Executive Support Officer post held by Martin Liptrot and reducing the Council’s press, marketing and destination management team from fourteen posts to eleven and a half.
The Lib Dem budget stated this on Girtrell Court, “Council believes that the closure of the Lyndale School and the anguished debate about the re-provision of services at Girtrell Court underline the need to work closely with service users and their families. Council has a duty of care to ensure their concerns are fully addressed.
In the case of Girtrell Court, Council requests that the Director of Adult Social Services and the Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health produce regular reports to Members. These must set out how a range of sufficient quality alternative services is to be achieved. Members would be failing in their duty if they were not to seek assurance about the quality, availability and capacity of the
alternatives.”
Around three hours after the meeting had started, despite many heartfelt pleas about reversing their proposed closure of Girtrell Court, there was a vote on Labour’s budget and the amendments proposed by the Conservatives and Lib Dems.
The amendments proposed by the Conservatives and Lib Dems were lost (due to Labour councillors voting against them). The Labour budget was agreed (due to the majority of Labour councillors on Wirral Council).
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