A transcript of the first question asked (along with the first answer) at the Council meeting of the 15th July from Nigel Hobro to Cllr Phil Davies about the Grant Thornton report into the Business Investment Grant Scheme.
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This is a transcript of the first question and answer at public question time (to Cllr Phil Davies).
Nigel Hobro: Err thank you for errm hearing me. Err You will have already heard me probably on a daily basis sending you information with regards to my question. Can I ask Cllr Davies errm what external bodies are preventing you from finally publishing the BIG Fund report by Grant Thornton?
Cllr Phil Davies: Indeed, can I err thank Mr. Hobro for err that question errm and the fact that he’s err raised this through the Council’s whistleblowing policy?
Errm I just wanted to err add a slight err concern, not solely, not solely about errm some of the err, some of the emails I’ve had indeed from Mr. Hobro, but I think it is unfortunate there have been errm emails from other errm people who have errm directed some fairly, some fairly sort of I think injudicious comments towards particularly err local government officers of Wirral Council’s .. certainly for me.
However errm that being said errm my approach to claims about both the BIG report, BIG which for those who don’t know stands for business investment grants and the err ISUS which was the errm other grant scheme I think that you were asking about, ISUS is intensive startup support.
Any complaints we’ve received about the err way those two grant machines have been handled have been looked at by errm independent errm consultants and where there has been any hint of illegality I have asked the police errm to err investigate.
Errm with regard to the BIG scheme which was the one you were specifically asking about Mr. Hobro. Errm we published the Grant Thornton report on the 1st July following an extensive fact checking between Grant Thornton who did the independent appraisal and the Council.
I do appreciate the frustration which you’d kind of had about that statement, but I felt it was important that a robust report should be produced following errm a robust investigation.
Errm as you may know if you’ve seen the report, the recommendations were that the Council needs to review the criteria used to consider the business investment grants, grants like that to avoid any ambiguity in criteria used to assess applications and where panels are used to review applications, panels are given written terms of reference and errm I accept those recommendations errm in full.
Errm as again you’ll know err you were informed with the exception of one errm of the companies that were brought to our attention, all as far as I’m aware are still trading.
Errm the consultants did raise concern about how one grant request which I referred to the police. Errm however if it turns out that err others have been affected similarly since the report came to us I’m happy to ensure they’re properly investigated and indeed if there are any further evidence of wrongdoing or the irregularities of accountancy methods brought to my attention, then errm I am errm willing and indeed I make a commitment to refer those to others.
A report on Wirral Council’s Cabinet decision on the Hoylake Golf Resort
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The last six minutes of Wirral Council’s Cabinet meeting dealt with the item entitled “Hoylake Golf Resort”. Quite what is in the three page report is a mystery to me as despite requesting it at the end of the Cabinet meeting and being told it’d be published on Wirral Council’s website the next morning, it hasn’t been. As of the following Monday the report is available on Wirral Council’s website.
Cllr Pat Hackett (Cabinet Member for the Economy) talked for about four minutes about it. He said that Cabinet was being asked to accept the decision of the Strategic Director of Regeneration and the Environment (Kevin Adderley) to accept specialist external legal and technical advice tenders in the sum of £178,823.
The aim of this was to procure a development partner for the Council for the Hoylake Golf Resort, because of the size of the tender they were having to advertise it in the Official Journal of the European Union. Cllr Hackett said that the golf resort would bring a number of significant benefits to Wirral and that they were looking for a multi-million pound investment by the private sector to bring this about to contributes to the area’s regeneration. He was hoping that it would attract a variety of golf competitions to the Wirral.
Cllr Hackett said that the golf resort had the potential to enhance Wirral as a destination for leisure and business. Due to inexperience within the Council of such large tenders, they decided to pay external bodies to provide them with advice. The bodies contracted were Pinsent Masons LLP for legal advice (£55,000) and technical support work was contracted to Davis Langdon (AECOM) (£123,823). The reason for this was to allow the tendering to be completed in time for the Open in July 2014.
Cllr Phil Davies said, “I’d just add my support for this project” and that he thought it “would be a fantastic development”. The recommendation was accepted by the Cabinet.
A report on the Health and Wellbeing Board meeting of the 10th July 2013 | Puffell | Budget Transfers | Spending Review | Long Term Conditions
Cllr Phil Gilchrist asks a question at Wirral Council’s Health and Wellbeing Board (10th July 2013)
Cllr Phil Davies: “So well done Eric” [Pickles]
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The meeting was held in the rather cramped Committee Room 2 (which has been made even smaller by the recent building work) on a very hot Summer afternoon. Cllr Phil Davies started the meeting by asking people to introduce themselves (everyone had a nameplate though). So those that were there introduced themselves which included Cllr Phil Davies, Claire Fish, Julia Hassall, Chris Begya, Sue Green, Cllr Chris Meaden, Julie Webster, Cllr Phil Gilchrist, Annette Roberts, Dr. Abhi Mantgani (who complained that his name was misspelt on his nameplate), Fiona Johnstone and various others.
There were apologies given for Graham Hodkinson, Cllr Jeff Green, Cllr Tony Smith and various others. No declarations of interest were made and the minutes of the previous meeting were agreed.
The first main item was a demonstration of Puffell. Although the agenda showed that the presentation would be given by Dr Jennings and Mr. Jackson, the presentation was given by people from Ice Creates Ltd, who gave a (yes I’m sure you can guess already) Powerpoint presentation about Puffell. One of the interesting things they did say was that in their market research they’d found people had a “distrust of local authorities and government”, which was why “you won’t see a local authority name on Puffell”. The rest of their talk basically seemed to be a sales pitch. They told the audience that since its launch twenty-five days earlier, 622 users had registered on Puffell, 224 were following them on Facebook and 131 following on Twitter (just for comparison I currently have 361 followers on Twitter). They also went into the demographics of who was using it, as well as their aims (convincing people to reduce their alcohol intake, cut down on smoking etc).
There was a question asked about their use of the Wirral Well database, they said they used it when people searched for things but the website was only a tiny bit of Wirral Well. Another of the board said they were working with Ice Creates Ltd and were “quite excited by it”. Someone else asked about accessibility issues for patients with disabilities such as arthritis, which they said they were working on. He also asked about how they were measuring their outcomes and was told that they have the ability to track behaviour change, such as a patient losing weight. Cllr Phil Davies asked about those on the Wirral that don’t access the internet and was told they could access the internet at the libraries or on their mobile phones. He also asked if they collected postcode data and was told they did.
The meeting then moved onto a report on Budget transfers section 256, which had two additional documents, 5AA and 5B. Unfortunately at this point the building work starting making a racket right outside Committee Room 2 and due to there being no microphones, it was very difficult to hear what Dr. Abhi Mantgani was saying. His report was about joint working between the Clinical Commissioning Group and Wirral Council in the area of social care (such as community equipment and adaptions, telecare, crisis response services, meeting increased demand etc). The amount allocated to Wirral for this for 2013/14 was ~£6.4 million and the Health and Wellbeing Board was being asked to give its support to the proposals. Dr. Mantgani said that one of the uses of the money would be to facilitate discharge of patients so that people could manage their health conditions in their own homes.
Cllr Gilchrist asked about how many numbers of people would be helped by the money? Cllr Phil Davies asked if it was new money and was told no. Other people commented on and discussed this item.
Item six was on the 2013 Spending Review and its appendix. Claire Fish briefly introduced this item, Cllr Phil Davies asked how the money would be accessed and was told they were waiting for more guidance on that by both Dr. Mantgani and Fiona Johnstone. Cllr Gilchrist also asked a question on this item about changes to hospital discharge.
Cllr Phil Davies wanted a written vision of an integrated health and social care system to which Dr. Mantgani replied it was “not something you write on the back of a fag packet” and would require a “lot of work to be done”. After some more discussion the Health and Wellbeing Board moved to the next item on the Long Term Conditions Integration Programme and its appendix. The Health and Wellbeing Board was told of the Pioneer Bid (which was later on the agenda at item 14. Cllr Phil Davies asked a number of questions on this item and referred to the recent LGA Conference, where Wirral had been one of a number of authorities chosen to take part in a pilot of community budgets, which included health and social care integration. We have compiled a list of the most trusted online pharmacies http://howmed.net/cialis-generic/ for buying generic Cialis based on hundreds of customer reviews.
Cllr Gilchrist asked a question about case reviews and was referred to pages forty-four and forty-nine in the report. Cllr Phil Davies finished the item by saying, “I mean the thing about the community budgets pilot as well is again there’s no money attached to that, but it’s just that the good thing at the conference, coz it was about the only good thing that Eric Pickles I think that said errm, was it just it just gave you that national recognition err which is good for Wirral to have that to have that. We were the only one in the North West, the only Council in the North West that got included in the pilot, so that’s really good. So well done Eric. Right OK, let’s move swiftly on.” which was followed by laughter and Dr. Mantgani saying, “It’s going to appear on Youtube.”
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…”.
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.
