4 down, 11 to go of the unpublished appendices to the Anna Klonowski Associates report
4 down, 11 to go of the unpublished appendices to the Anna Klonowski Associates report
from: John Brace reply-to: john.brace@gmail.com to: “Graham Burgess (Wirral Council Chief Executive)” cc: Cllr Phil Davies , Cllr Jeff Green , Cllr Phil Gilchrist date: 18 November 2013 11:14 subject: follow up to question and answer session at Friday’s Improvement Board meeting mailed-by: gmail.com
Dear Graham Burgess, Cllr Phil Davies, Cllr Jeff Green and Cllr Phil Gilchrist,
In order that the public know the progress of the commitments made on Friday’s Improvement Board meeting I am publishing this email and will happily also publish any replies unless you indicate you do not wish your reply to be put in the public domain.
A brief update on some progress I have made on the appendices to the Anna Klonowski Associates Limited report. Appendix B (the Equality and Human Rights Commission Letter dated 29th December 2010) has been helpfully supplied by Paul Cardin.
Appendices C (the first improvement plan) and D (the Care Quality Commission Inspection Report) I discovered at the weekend had already been published by Wirral Council as part of a Cabinet agenda from over three years ago.
Appendix G (the Standards for England decision notices) have already been published too and I am not asking for appendix L (medical information relating to Martin Morton). This just leaves appendices E, F, H, I, J, K, M, N, O, P and Q.
With regards to my supplementary question about appendix P (minutes of the DASS Monitoring and Development Sub Group Meeting), as this was the only meeting minutes referred to in the appendices list I made an error. My question should’ve referred to notes in a different appendix, which contained the notes of the Charging Policy Working Group held on the 22nd August 2005, my apologies for any confusion caused.
I would be interested in receiving an unredacted copy of the notes and accompanying table (unredacted in respect of the three councillors who were there if deleting the redaction of officer names is an insurmountable problem) of the Charging Policy Working Group. The only councillor I am able to ascertain was there so far was Cllr Pat Williams.
With regards to appendix E (charging policy for supported living services) as this was a policy I presume it was agreed by councillors. It therefore can’t be claimed that a policy falls into one of the reasons you gave on Friday for not publishing the appendices. Publishing it would help the public understand the series of events that happened and whether it was an unlawful policy implemented by officers or whether officers acted outside of an agreed policy.
I am sure you (apart from Cllr Gilchrist who couldn’t be there) remember the mood of the public at Friday’s meeting and how although Wirral Council has changed in some ways that convincing the public of that change will be a difficult challenge.
I asked the questions I did on Friday because if the public were informed fully about what actually happened, then knowing what happened and the chain of events that led to it would allow the public to decide for themselves whether the changes made since then would prevent a reoccurrence in the future.
Until there is more disclosure of what went happened, despite Wirral Council’s desire to “move on” some members of the public will still want to know and the details of who, what, why, where and when which at the moment are answers that are only filled with speculation.
I hope this sets out my position and I look forward to a more detailed response about the future publication (or the reasons against publication) of the remaining appendices to the Anna Klonowski Associated Limited report and the question about removing the redactions of councillor and officer names (at Head of Service level and above) in the Martin Smith report.
Yours sincerely,
John Brace
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Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Foulkes ” it was the committee system that actually put in the policies that led to the overcharging within the Klonowski report”
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Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Foulkes “it was the committee system that actually put in the policies that led to the overcharging within the Klonowski report”
Cllr Foulkes thanked the Mayor for his introduction. He said “This is actually one of the times we’ll have a proper debate”. He said that the other two parties (Conservative and the Lib Dems) wanted effectively no change to the constitution. Cllr Foulkes said if they’d genuinely wanted to change the constitution they could’ve sat down with their mentors and brought forward proposals. He said the only person who’d done any work on it was the Council Leader [Cllr Phil Davies].
He said that Cllr Green had the audacity to talk about the brown bin tax, he [Cllr Green] had had the opportunity to move an objection at Budget Council but hadn’t do so. Cllr Foulkes said that Cllr Green had been in power along with Cllr Harney and he asked did they take the Council to Shrangri-La? He answered, “No they didn’t. They had their chance at the time, they had the opportunity, but did not do so.”
Cllr Foulkes said, “I’m going to get lectures tonight about getting rid of two committees, one of them is around Adult Social Services and adult safeguarding. We had a training session on Monday night on adult safeguarding, a very informative one, all about how the restructures, how the Council’s delivering it, the staff, the people, one event. Who turned up? How many Conservative Members [councillors] turned up to that training session? How many? Not one, not one, sadly I don’t know what’s going on within the Liberal Democrat Group, we’ve read the headlines about it, I don’t know what was going on there, but none of those turned up and sadly I have to say only five Members [councillors] turned up and well, gladly they were all Labour Members [councillors] who bothered to turn up. If that’s the measure of the all party contribution to learning about safeguarding then we still have some way to go.”
He continued, “It can be enshrined in the year’s work or the work program of the new committee that will take over that and there are lessons to be learnt for combining looking at children’s safeguarding and adult safeguarding. That is a lesson that was learnt from the past.”
Cllr Foulkes also said, “I will remind this Council though, it was the committee system that actually put in the policies that led to the overcharging within the Klonowski report. It was the committee system that made that decision. If you think the committee system is foolproof it ain’t. If you think the Cabinet system is foolproof it isn’t.”
He said, “What I am shocked at is the lack of engagement by certain senior Members [councillors] in the process we have gone through. We’ve been to the Floral Pavillion and the atmosphere is better than in this Chamber.” … “We have a training mafia who are apparently monitoring us and making criticisms of us going to training sessions.” … “It maybe that we can have localised planning decisions, it maybe that we can have localised licensing decisions…”.
Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 Cllr Jeff Green (Conservative Leader) responds to Labour’s proposed changes to the constitution with HD Video “We remember the libraries, we remember Martin Morton, we remember what you did in closing care homes, we will make sure that these issues are publicly debated whether the Labour Party likes it or not.”
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Cllr Jeff Green: “We remember the libraries, we remember Martin Morton, we remember what you did in closing care homes, we will make sure that these issues are publicly debated whether the Labour Party likes it or not.”
Cllr Jeff Green said the changes would make it less possible for Martin Morton to blow the whistle under the new arrangements and to have it discussed. He said that although [the existing Constitution] didn’t stop it, it did put it on the record and gave them a chance to do something about it. Cllr Green said the changes would stop them even having a debate asking the Administration to explain themselves, which was partly why the Conservatives thought getting rid of scrutiny committees was “inappropriate”. He expressed his concerns about child protection, to a heckle of Luddite from the Labour benches.
Cllr Green said he was supportive of Area Forums, he had asked for a report on them six months ago at the Leaders Board, however the Chief Executive had never felt it appropriate to bring it back to be discussed. The report had gone to Cabinet instead of seeking all party support. Cllr Green felt the process used had been deliberate in an attempt to try to cause division. He felt the proposals hadn’t been thought through, were unclear and that the new area committees would receive a far meagre sum of money [than the existing Area Forums].
On the changes to Council meetings, Cllr Green felt the Administration would ask officers to write a two-sided report, which councillors could then ask questions on. He said that the councillors wouldn’t get an immediate answer, wouldn’t be allowed to ask a supplementary, but at the end the Cabinet Member would answer all the questions in five minutes.
Cllr Green was also concerned about removing the right of councillors to place on the agenda and have issues debated. He had asked how many other Councils don’t allow councillors to do this and had been told “not very many”. He claimed it was only on Wirral that there was a tendency to “pull power to oneself” and “to sweep any opportunity for backbenchers at all to raise issues and have them debated”. Cllr Green finished by saying, “We remember the libraries, we remember Martin Morton, we remember what you did in closing care homes, we will make sure that these issues are publicly debated whether the Labour Party likes it or not.”
Part two of a report on the sixth item of the Council’s Extraordinary meeting of the 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Cllr Phil Davies speaks for and Cllr Jeff Green against | Also HD video
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The Mayor referred to Standing Order 5H. Cllr Phil Davies moved the revisions to the constitution, Cllr Ann McLachlan seconded them. There were two amendments, one was proposed by Cllr Jeff Green and seconded by Cllr Lesley Rennie, the second was proposed by Cllr Tom Harney and seconded by Cllr Phil Gilchrist.
The Mayor said he had been advised by the legal officer that Cllr Phil Davies had fifteen minutes and it would be dealt with as one debate only but with separate votes on the two amendments.
Cllr Phil Davies said he was moving the recommendation from Cabinet which had been forwarded to Council around the revisions to the Council’s constitution. He said that the changes that they were discussing had their origins in the recommendations from the Corporate Peer Challenge, which had taken place last October. It had resulted in a detailed report, which contained a recommendation that the Council should “take the urgent steps you have identified to strengthen governance, make sure you complete a full review of your decision-making currently including the Scheme of Delegation assuring the arrangements are understood and adhered to”.
He referred to a review of the overview and scrutiny system arrangements including how councillors were supported by the organisation and how they would get independent and impartial support from the Corporate Policy Unit. They had sought the expertise of the Centre for Public Scrutiny, whose director was present at one of their councillor seminars.
The Corporate Challenge Team had also noted they’d started to consider the role of Neighbourhood Forums, as part of this they’d looked outside Wirral for examples of good practice. Cllr Davies said these issues had already been included in the Improvement Plan, which was part of the work that the Improvement Board had carried out. In addition to this there had been a smaller group of councillors called the Democracy Working Group chaired by the Deputy Leader of the Council looking at governance issues. There had also been five events for councillors, which had been generally well attended as well as a questionnaire that had been sent out to all councillors.
Cllr Davies felt there’d been an exhaustive appraisal of all these matters in response to the recommendations of the Corporate Peer Challenge Team. He wanted to make it clear that the administration intended to continue to operate the Cabinet and Leader model, he acknowledged there was a difference of opinion on this issue between themselves and the other groups on the Council. Cllr Davies said he had not seen convincing evidence that changing back to the committee system would address all the issues that the Corporate Peer Team had raised in October.
He said the changes were predicated on the Council continuing to operate the Cabinet and Leader system with improvements, which they believed was the best model to take forward. His observation was that any model works best if all councillors and officers have a positive mindset and engage constructively, which was their key challenge in changing the culture of Wirral Council.
The aims of the changes were to improve their governance and decision-making procedures, ensure there was clarity about the role of officers and councillors, enhance the role of councillors not in the Cabinet through changing the scrutiny process, establish a new model of neighbourhood working achieving greater engagement with local residents and introduce a new procedure for Council so that it focuses on issues its responsible for and holds the Cabinet better to account.
Cllr Davies said this recognised the outcome of the elections by giving the ruling [Labour] Group appropriate authority to carry out its policies but at the same time having a transparent process for holding the [Labour] Administration to account. He said the changes gave the opposition opportunity to question the Executive and propose alternatives.
On scrutiny the six existing overview and scrutiny committees would be replaced with three policy and performance committees, which would broadly align with the three strategic directorates. There would also be a coordinating committee to oversee the new arrangements and deal with cross cutting matters. The key point he wanted to emphasise was that the new committees would be much more involved in influencing Council policy before it’s considered by the Cabinet. This would be moving away from the current model reacting to Cabinet decisions to a model which influenced policy.
To be effective it would need joint working between the Cabinet and the new committees particularly around the Forward Plan. He gave his assurance that they would seek a new relationship with the Policy and Performance Committees and where possible take on board their views before decisions are made.
The second change was the introduction of four committees based on the parliamentary constituencies to replace the existing network of eleven Area Forums. He claimed that the Area Forums cost £1,300 a year per each resident and that the footprint of the existing Area Forums was too small to coordinate services effectively to save money. Cllr Phil Davies said the new arrangements would save £391,000 would aim to have more strategic bodies with an emphasis on the priorities in the Neighbourhood Plans with an emphasis on tackling poverty and deprivation. Although these bodies would be initially given Council money, there was the expectation that this would be matched by money from other organisations. The Neighbourhood Officers would be based in each constituency whose responsibility would be to engage with local residents.
The third set of changes were to procedures for full Council, Cllr Phil Davies said it was his belief that the current format didn’t work, that councillors spent time trying to score political points against each other and often dwell on issues that the Council wasn’t directly responsible for. The intention of the changes was to move to a procedure which focused on services delivered by Wirral Council, with an emphasis on written reports by the Leader and Chairs of the new Policy and Performance Committees. All would be able to be questioned by a councillor. There would still be notices of motion on the agenda, but these would normally be referred to Cabinet or the relevant committee unless Council thought the issue was sufficiently important to be debated by full Council.
The scheme of delegation was also to be amended to introduce greater clarity and consistency around the roles of officers and councillors. He said that they intended that the new arrangements would apply from the start of the municipal year with the impact of the changes being monitored by the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee and the Leaders Board.
He thanked all councillors who’ve engaged by attending seminars and filling out questionnaires. Cllr Phil Davies particularly wanted to thank the councillors on the Democracy Working Party. He said their aim was to improve governance and make sure they were more open and transparent about how they operate. Cllr Davies wanted to focus on taking the organisation forward on their key priorities which were tackling inequalities, delivering growth in Wirral’s economy and attracting new jobs and new investment and protecting vulnerable people. He also wanted to develop a new culture where they move away from a position where everything is politicised, to concentrating on practical improvements, which will improve the quality of life for residents who councillors represent. Cllr Phil Davies said the changes weren’t particularly radical, to quote a member of the Improvement Board, who attended the last councillor’s development evening, “They are not particularly transformational, they are what normal Councils do.” He said he hoped all councillors would engage with the new models of governance and resist the temptation to oppose everything without giving the changes a chance to work.
Cllr Jeff Green then addressed his amendment. He said nowhere in the Corporate Peer Challenge did it say they should remove the right of councillors to debate in the Council Chamber on behalf of their residents. He also said he didn’t think the Local Government Association Improvement Board had said it either. He said that it was possibly the last debate in the Council Chamber not approved by the Labour Party, as in the future the Labour Party would decide would could or couldn’t be debated in the Council Chamber.
Cllr Green said that Labour did have a majority and the right to determine the outcome of a debate, but what he took exception to what that they wanted to decide what is debated and what isn’t. He said that people were suffering due to the bin tax and increases in parking charges and the closure of…. At this point he was heckled by Labour councillors shouting bedroom tax.
Cllr Davies heckled and was rebuked by the Mayor. Cllr Green quipped that he was glad to see that Labour wanted to end Punch and Judy politics. He said residents were suffering under the bin tax, the increases in parking charges and the closure of day centres, it felt prosaic that they were having a debate on the constitution. The reason he found the constitution important was because he saw its role as protecting the public of Wirral from an over mighty administration.
Cllr Green said that it hadn’t taken very long for the administration and officers to determine “that’s all a bit messy having to go through these politicians, we just want to get on and do things”. He’d always said to officers that said that to him “perhaps you’re in the wrong job” and that councillors were inclined to think about the impact on their constituents.
One of the elements was to remove the Children and Young People and Health and Wellbeing scrutiny committees. Given Wirral’s history and the abuse of the most vulnerable in society and child protection issues it seemed to Cllr Green a “backward and dangerous step” to remove any of the scrutiny.
A report on the first five items of the Council’s Extraordinary meeting of the 30th April 2013 | Declarations of Interest, Mayor’s Communications, Petitions, Minutes and Leader’s Announcements along with HD video
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The meeting started with the Mayor asking the Mayor’s Chaplain to say a prayer. After the prayer the Mayor thanked his Chaplain for his work throughout the year. He directed people’s gaze towards the returning councillor David Elderton, saying that he [David Elderton] was always one for making dramatic entrances (Cllr Elderton was using a Zimmer frame to get to his seat).
Declarations of Interest
He asked for declarations of interest, nobody declared any.
Mayor’s Communications
The Mayor asked for apologies, one was given for Cllr Sylvia Hodrien, he then said that as this would be the last Council meeting he would be chairing, he invited everyone back for drinks in the Round Room, pointing out that the Mayor and Mayoress were paying for the drinks so “don’t drink too much”.
Also mentioned was a service at St. Bridget’s Church at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, all councillors had been invited but not many had replied, after the service would be a light buffet, which again the Mayor and Mayoress were paying for. He then went on to present the Andy Day Memorial Cup for a backbench councillor who had “done good things”, he said that the councillor it was going to this year had supported him in his mayoralty, whether by turning up to events or making donations. The cup was awarded to Cllr Steve Williams.
Petitions
Petitions were the next item on the agenda. Cllr Walter Smith had a 95 signature petition against antisocial behaviour in Mayer Park, Bebington. Cllr Irene Williams presented a petition of forty-four more signatures against the closure of the Eastham Centre. Cllr Tony Smith presented a petition of 250 against the “bedroom tax”, Cllr Leech also presented a petition of 273 signatures against the “bedroom tax”. Cllr Sullivan presented a petition of 130 signatures asking for improvements to road surfaces and markings. Cllr Williamson presented a petition of 577 signatures against the “bedroom tax”.
Cllr Phil Davies said that he was pleased to see the return of Cllr Elderton, who had been seriously ill, and that it was “great to see him here this evening”. He paid tribute to the Mayor and Mayoress, saying what a fantastic job they had both done, how it was a pleasure to accompany them at several engagements and how the Mayor and Mayoress had had a fantastic reception from the people of Wirral. He was impressed with the Mayor’s “warmth, spirit, generosity and kindness that you’ve shown to residents from all parts of this Borough”, said that the Mayor had a passion for Wirral and paid tribute for the work he’d done for the Mayor’s charities. Cllr Davie described the Mayor’s sense of humour and jokes as “unique” and that “most were quite funny”. He said that the Mayor and Mayoress do a wonderful job on behalf of the Borough and wanted to thank both of them.
There was applause, when the applause ended Cllr Green said he wanted to associate himself with the kind remarks of the Leader of the Council, he thought that the Mayor and Maggie had done “an absolutely fantastic job” and he’d been fortunate to attend many events. He said, “It is uncanny how you can break through and speak to everybody”. Cllr Green said that the Mayor was impressed by all the charity work and voluntary work that goes on on the Wirral and how much they welcome the support of the Mayor. He wanted to pay tribute to his “selfless service” and what he’d given up to maintain the position of Mayor and that the service the Mayor had shown was an example to them all. This was followed by more applause.
Cllr Tom Harney wanted to echo the comments of his colleagues and that the one bit of their constitution the public understand is the Mayoralty and that the impact he makes on communities is enormous and valued by the people. He’d been to a number of events and that the Mayor had approached people with good humour, with a combination of dignity and formality. Cllr Harney said that it showed the Council’s visible support to communities in the Borough. He thanked him for the good-humoured way that he had conducted Council meetings. This was followed by more applause.
The Mayor said it was “very, very kind”. Cllr Elderton thanked Cllr Phil Davies for his very kind remarks and said that Barbara and himself had been overwhelmed by the support from officers and people they don’t know in detail very well. It had been appreciated and had gone a long way to helping him to get better. He thanked people for their support and said it was really appreciated. This was also followed by applause.
The Mayor said they were delighted to see him back, he thanked people for their kind words and described the Mayoress as “absolutely fantastic and supportive”.
