Tag: Bill Norman

Corporate Governance Committee (Wirral Council) 16th November 2011 Part 1, Declarations of Interest, Minutes

Corporate Governance Committee Chair (Cllr Steve Foulkes) Cllr Phil Davies Cllr Adrian Jones Cllr Anne McArdle Cllr Ann McLachlan In attendance (right to speak, not to vote or make decisions) Cllr Jeff Green Cllr Tom Harney Officers Ian Coleman, Director of Finance/Deputy Chief Executive Jim Wilkie, Chief Executive Bill Norman, Director of Law, HR & … Continue reading “Corporate Governance Committee (Wirral Council) 16th November 2011 Part 1, Declarations of Interest, Minutes”

Corporate Governance Committee

Chair (Cllr Steve Foulkes)
Cllr Phil Davies
Cllr Adrian Jones
Cllr Anne McArdle
Cllr Ann McLachlan

In attendance (right to speak, not to vote or make decisions)
Cllr Jeff Green
Cllr Tom Harney

Officers
Ian Coleman, Director of Finance/Deputy Chief Executive
Jim Wilkie, Chief Executive
Bill Norman, Director of Law, HR & Asset Management
Others including committee clerk etc

The agenda and reports can be found here.

The meeting started with an apology from Cllr Foulkes who said he was “sorry to be late”. There were no declarations of interest. The committee then discussed the minutes of the Corporate Governance Committee held on the 26th October 2011.

Bill Norman mentioned that Cllr Tom Harney had communicated with him about the minutes which were in draft form. The draft minutes gave the impression that both Cllr Tom Harney and Cllr Jeff Green had been recorded in the minutes as members of the committee. However this would be changed to “in attendance”.

Cllr Steve Foulkes said he wanted “to set our stall out”, “not force to votes” and hoped the invite [to Cllr Tom Harney and Cllr Jeff Green] would be accepted in the spirit it was given. He then went on to talk about the “rules of engagement” and how they would “shape decisions”.

Cllr Adrian Jones said it would be “nice to get consensus”.

Cllr Steve Foulkes said he accepted the suggested changes [to the minutes]. The minutes with changes were agreed and the committee considered item 3 Work Program, Progress and Associated Issues.

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.

West Wirral Area Forum 6/10/2011, PACSPE (Parks and Countryside Services Procurement Exercise) contract Part 6

Dave Green continued that since 2008 different administrations had agreed to the need for Wirral Council to save money. There were pension costs to do with the contractor joining Merseyside Pension Fund, however there had been briefings and a report on this which detailed the risks and options.

The lack of a bid for in-house provision had been agreed by Bill Norman, Director of Law, Human Resources and Asset Management and Ian Coleman, Director of Finance. The Cabinet resolution called for a report to a further meeting in November detailing a three to five-year business plan. The Cabinet decision had not been executed, although the minutes had been published as the other political parties had called it in. The position was that on the 22nd September a decision had been made, but Cllr Green had submitted a call-in last night (5th October) so it couldn’t be enacted.

Mr. Green said there were time critical issues to do with mobilising the cheapest and best contractor or restructuring the service. However it was “in the hands of the politicians”. He thought it was a good tender at a cheap price. He had sought advice from the District Auditor about the inflation risks. Mr. Green thought it would be November before it was resolved and until then it was in limbo. He said “he never thought politics would impact on grass cutting”.

Cllr Jeff Green said he was interested in people’s questions.

Martin Harrison said he had been on the Parks Steering Group and was the Secretary of the Wirral Parks Forum (which is the forum of the Friends Groups).

Standards Committee 29/9/2011 Part 14 Urgent Business – Correspondence Received by the Chair

Continued from Standards Committee 29/9/2011 Part 13

Cllr Chris Blakeley said it “needs more than five minutes to understand the ramifications” and asked when the next meeting was.
The answer given by Mrs. Shirley Hudspeth was the 30th November [2011].

Cllr Les Rowlands said there were no time issues.
Cllr Chris Blakeley said this needed to be conveyed to Mr. Morton.
Cllr Dave Mitchell said it was not fair on councillors.

Surjit Tour said the process was explained in the middle of August. However the letter had been delivered on the eve of the committee. The process had been communicated to individuals in the middle of August. There had been delay, Standards for England had decided in the middle of August (17th August).

Cllr Chris Blakeley said he was happy to consider it if he had the time to read it and digest it and give him justice.

The Chair Brian Cummings asked if everyone wanted a copy?

Surjit Tour said they should consider whether to make it exempt or not.

RESOLVED:  That Mr Morton’s correspondence be considered at the next meeting of the Committee scheduled for 30 November 2011 and he be informed of this decision.

The meeting finished.