People power leads to Wirral Council U-turn on sale of Rock Ferry High School woodlands
People power leads to Wirral Council U-turn on sale of Rock Ferry High School woodlands
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Maybe the Green Party aren’t like other political parties who take a "guilty until proven innocent (and we the party will decide upon what prove innocent means)" approach and grill the party member when a complaint happens. No I’m not referring to the recent suspensions of councillors in the Wirral Labour Group… but my own personal experience of the Lib Dems taking seriously a party political complaint about me from former Labour Cllr Harry Smith (sent to both me and the party with a Wirral Council "With compliments slip").
In essence his complaint was that when he was Vice-Chair of the Pensions Committee (the Pensions Committee manages the Merseyside Pension Fund worth £billions which has over a hundred thousand people either pensioners or employees part of it) I put in a leaflet to people in the Bidston & St James ward that he didn’t go to a meeting that reported the Merseyside Pension Fund had dropped by hundreds of millions of pounds.
His complaint was that he decided to go on holiday instead (he didn’t send a deputy to the meeting) and that my leaflet wasn’t unfair personally to him because it led to people going to his surgery and asking him questions (because and I mean this with a lot of dripping sarcasm of course, obviously the last thing a local councillor is paid a generous allowance of thousands of pounds a year for is to actually have to deal with the public and see what I write below for why the Labour Group of 2015 takes a different view on representing the public to Harry Smith). Therefore former Cllr Harry Smith (around the time of a one week suspension as a councillor for not apologising properly for bullying) wanted disciplinary action taken against me by the Lib Dem Party for telling the Bidston & St James residents the truth.
Ultimately the Lib Dem Party (who then were always very keen to curry favour with other political parties) gave him and his fellow Labour party members their way in 2011 but the Lib Dems (under a lot of pressure to get rid of me) did it so badly, the Birkenhead County Court ruled one of the Lib Dem councillors, the local Birkenhead party and indeed the whole Lib Dem Party had broken the law in doing so.
Thus proving that politicians are terrible at realising that there are legal limits on what they should or shouldn’t do. As many will know, the political class have an arrogant view at times that rules and laws apply to everyone but them! The MP expenses scandal showed that.
However to be fair (and hopefully as balanced as I can be) to the Lib Dem Party, their view is that an unlawful decision still stands and court orders should be flouted (and then the Lib Dem Party wonders why it lost 49 MPs at the recent General Election?)
As former Cllr Harry Smith didn’t get his way over that complaint he tried to stop filming of a public meeting of Pensions Committee meeting stopped, telling others on the Pensions Committee it I was because I was a member of a political party (at the time a lie as I wasn’t a member of the Lib Dems then, due no doubt in part to his complaints and moaning about me "blotting my copybook" as one party member put it). A rather young fellow Labour councillor had the gall to tell him such a point was irrelevant which really got him going, however I am digressing into stories from yesteryear. It was suggested to me recently that I should be more positive (however remembering how former Cllr Harry Smith used to be is enough to spoil anyone’s good mood)!
Returning to the Cabinet meeting, Cllr Adrian Jones explained that Rock Ferry High School had closed in 2011. He outlined the process that had to be followed if the Rock Ferry High School and the playing fields were to be used for a different purpose and that this required government approval from the Minister. He summarised the efforts so far on finding an alternative educational use for the buildings which unfortunately had not panned out.
The costs (business rates and security) of managing the vacant site were costing Wirral Council money. The original intention had been for Wirral Council to sell the buildings and playing fields. However following public consultation and "opposition" to disposal of the site, a compromise position had been found or as Cllr Adrian Jones put it, “However, we are a listening Council and following extensive public consultation it was evidenced that there was a very significant amount of opposition to that proposal.”
He went on to say that this option would produce a reduced capital receipt to Wirral Council, but this would allow the Residents’ Association to bring forward proposals for the playing fields and woodland.
Cllr Adrian Jones proposed the following recommendation.
"It is recommended that:
17.1 Cabinet approves the submission of the application to the Secretary of State for Education for the disposal and change of use of the former Rock Ferry High School.
17.2 Approve the mixed use option for the site as outlined in 6.4
17.2 Approve officers to progress development proposals to site (area A) for residential development in accordance with local planning requirements
17.3 Work with the newly formed Rock Ferry Residents Association to bring forward proposals for the management of the site (areas B and C)"
For the purposes of information 6.4 (which recommendation 17.2) of the report refers to states:
6.4 Take account of local views and develop a mixed use option for the site
(i) area (A) i.e. the main school site, development for housing
(ii) areas (B) and (C) the former playing field site could be considered for community asset transfer for continued sport use and open space. This is of particular interest to the residents in the area and plans for the management and development of the area are being considered. Football clubs in the area have expressed an interest and there are opportunities for obtaining grant funding. This area was previously designated as school playing fields and the only community use was through lettings agreed with the school, general community access was not endorsed.
Councillor Chris Meaden pointed out that it was in her ward and referred to "slightly heated meetings" that she had attended and that they’d listened to the residents, changed the recommendations so that the woodland was kept and the sports field. She thanks the residents of Rock Ferry and that "we hope we’ve proved ourselves to you"
Cllr Meaden went on to thank Jeannette Royle (Senior Manager, Asset Management), David Armstrong (Assistant Chief Executive) and David Ball (Head of Regeneration) for attending the meetings and she wanted to thank them for their support and their efforts in listening to residents.
The recommendation were agreed by Cabinet.
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Sadly not all the court orders were sent to me. I emailed the Birkenhead County Court on the 13th July (using the email address on their letter) pointing out that a court order dated 9th October 2013 had not been included, only to receive an automated reply stating “The recipient’s e-mail address was not found in the recipient’s e-mail system.”
I tracked down the correct e-mail address, resent the email, but pointed out the incorrect e-mail on the letter. Birkenhead County Court have written to me in a letter received today apologising for the incorrect email address and have pointed out that both the email address and fax number for Birkenhead County Court have recently changed.
The letter also included a copy of the court order dated 9th October 2013 which is below. Interestingly this court order shows that District Judge Peake struck out the schedule of allegations filed by letter dated 26th September 2013 as it didn’t comply with the court’s directive of the 12th September 2013 that it should be reduced to no more than 12 individual allegations. Unusually this was a court order made without a hearing and without service on the other party.
The invoice below shows that the allegations in a letter dated 26th September 2013 struck out by the Judge were sent on the instructions of a solicitor working at Wirral Council to Paul Burns of Exchange Chambers.
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Why did residents endure 11 years of antisocial behaviour from the neighbour from “hell” before Wirral Council took legal action to try to have a tenant evicted?
Why did residents endure 11 years of antisocial behaviour from the neighbour from “hell” before Wirral Council took legal action to try to have a tenant evicted?
3 pages of those invoices were for the professional fees of Mr Paul Burns of Exchange Chambers instructed by a solicitor working at Wirral Council called Ali Bayatti.
The case involved a landlord as the Claimant (Leasowe Community Homes) and a person called Danielle New as the defendant. Those details were blacked out on the pages of invoices supplied by Wirral Council, even though s.15 of the Audit Commission Act 1998 c.18 doesn’t allow Wirral Council to black out such details.
The Claimant (Leasowe Community Homes Ltd) had rented 81 Grant Road, Leasowe, Wirral, CH62 2RU to the tenant Danielle New for £88.44/week (which was paid by housing benefit) from the 29th April 2002.
Wirral Council were acting as the solicitors for Leasowe Community Homes Ltd. Wirral Council’s Ali Bayatti then instructed Mr Paul Burns of Exchange Chambers to deal with some of the matters in the case.
The case basically had two elements. One part was to ask the court’s for a possession order to evict Danielle New, the other part was in relation to anti-social behaviour.
There are a dozen court orders in this matter (and references to some more that I don’t have). However this case starts on the 12th August 2013 when a “Claim form for possession of property” (N5) was filed with the Birkenhead County Court (see below).
With the N5 Claim form was also attached the 4 page “Particulars of claim for possession (rented residential premises)” (form N119 see below).
Also attached was ten pages titled “Additional Particulars of Claim” (see below). These pages detail the reasons behind the case and make for interesting reading (although for the sensitive readers I will point out they contain bad language and accusations of racism)!
Danielle New contested the allegations and there are many court orders from both Birkenhead County Court and Liverpool County Court in this matter (see below). The matter didn’t go to trial. Reference is made on one of the court orders to “a detailed assessment of the defendant’s publicly funded costs”, so presumably the defendant’s legal costs were paid for through legal aid. Court orders below are in reverse chronological order.
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EXCLUSIVE: 155 invoices paid by Wirral Council in 2013/14 for legal services, external audit, physiotherapy and psychological assessments
EXCLUSIVE: 155 invoices paid by Wirral Council in 2013/14 for legal services, external audit, physiotherapy and psychological assessments
Below are 155 of the invoices I requested during the 2013/14 audit. They range from invoices to the Council’s external auditor Grant Thornton UK LLP, criminal work, a couple of judicial reviews, appealing an ICO decision notice to the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) as well as a lot of times Wirral Council have taken parents to court about their children. Some of these invoices I’ve previously written about on this blog, such as about the invoice about appealing the ICO decision notice. Turns out now I look at it more carefully there was a further invoice for £1,008 from February 2014 in that matter too.
Some of the others I’ve already on the blog as I received them in August 2014. However I didn’t publish them in August because I’ve had to go through a process of blacking out all the names (and partial names) of children and parents.
Added in green to many invoices are the representative (where known) from the list of payments in 2013/14 greater than £500. I’ve also added back in (on some) text which has been obscured by information blacked out on double-sided pages and bled through.
There is an index to all 155 invoices that can be downloaded here. I’ve tried to use the following file format when naming each file “Wirral Council invoice” followed by representative/organisation, amount, date, page number where there are multiple pages for the same invoice followed by invoice number.
Invoices 73 & 74 aren’t published here as they were cancelled and replaced by invoices 75 & 76. There is another batch of invoices I have yet to scan in, which is a mix of invoices for legal services and other general invoices. Below you should find all 155 invoices.
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