EXCLUSIVE: Wirral Council spent £1,009.35 on “media training” for councillors and a further £57,659.24 on legal costs over unreasonable land charges
EXCLUSIVE: Wirral Council spent £1,009.35 on “media training” for councillors and a further £57,659.24 on legal costs over unreasonable land charges
Jim Hancock invoice media training Wirral Council councillors
Wirral Council spent £1,009,35 on “media training” for councillors provided by Jim Hancock. The training was provided to councillors on the 16th March 2016, 27th April 2016 and 14th June 2016.
Part of the cost of the training were three round trips from Lymm to Wallasey (81 miles each time) charged to Wirral Council at 45 pence a mile costing £109.35.
I will declare an interest in the next part of this article as I’m currently awaiting a permission to appeal decision in relation to costs relating to an Environmental Information Regulations request (which doesn’t relate to land charges) which will be decided by the First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights).
Below are Wirral Council’s grounds of appeal. On the first page it lists Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council as the Claimant, when they are in fact the Appellant.
£761.50 of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority’s costs application rejected in Saughall Massie fire station information request case by First-tier Tribunal
£761.50 of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority’s costs application rejected in Saughall Massie Fire Station information request case by First-tier Tribunal
Liverpool Civil & Family Court, Vernon Street, Liverpool, L2 2BX (the venue for First-Tier Tribunal case EA/2016/0033)
Well, I finally got the costs decision from the First-tier Tribunal today in which I was the Appellant.
This continues from an earlier blog post about the hearing which ended with the Tribunal, MFRA, ICO and myself agreeing that I should receive the information.
Merseyside’s Fire and Rescue Authority’s costs application of £1,212 has been rejected by the Tribunal. Although the decision also refers confusingly to a total amount of their costs application of £1192.23.
Two out of the three Tribunal Members (although it doesn’t specify which two) don’t think I acted unreasonably in the period 4th August 2016 to 22nd August 2016. This means £224.66 of MFRA’s costs application is rejected by a majority decision of the Tribunal of 2:1.
Of the remaining £967.57, a further £467.57 is rejected.
This leaves £500.
Basically the argument about the £500 is this.
In late August 2016 following a request from the Tribunal, I stated to MFRA that if they were to provide me with the 4 A4 pages requested, I would be happy for the case to be ended by consent order.
MFRA chose not to end the case this way (although I did receive the 4 A4 pages from ICO on the 14th October 2016). I was sent an altered version of the 4 pages from Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority about 48 hours before the hearing.
Therefore because MFRA had legal costs from 22nd August 2016 to 23rd September 2016 this is what the application is about.
However in the decision the Panel admit that they agreed to MFRA’s costs application at the hearing before they had actually read the bundle for the hearing.
Indeed the fact they hadn’t read the bundle for the hearing before making decisions on costs is recorded in the reasons for the decision itself. Is it reasonable to expect the judiciary to read the papers before reaching a decision?
In fact the wording of the decision implies the panel members were put to great inconvenience by having to read the bundle and travel to the hearing itself!
There are legal arguments I could make as to why this £500 costs award shouldn’t have been made in the first place, but I will not reveal those until the matter is settled.
I feel pretty confident that the £500 will be overturned on appeal and I intend to appeal it within the time limit for doing so. Certainly the majority (£761.50) of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority’s costs application has already been rejected.
I notice that somebody has put the wrong case number on the decision which shows the Tribunal’s ongoing flair for accuracy!
It’s managed to achieve that now with a costs order for £500, although estimates of the legal costs for First-tier Tribunal cases are usually at around £10,000 for the public body involved.
The bit in the decision about a decision being made on the papers, I don’t remember being made at the hearing (although I will check my notes). In my view a hearing might have avoided some of the misunderstandings that have obviously arisen.
I’ve asked the Tribunal to reissue the costs decision with the correct case number (EA⁄2016⁄0054 rather than EA⁄2016⁄0117).
Does anyone wish me to include a copy of the decision in this blog post?
There are matters that came out during the Tribunal which I will publish on this blog that as they relate to the expenditure of a total of £8.4 million of public money I’m staggered that the Tribunal would write in its decision, that the First-tier Tribunal case “has involved costs to the public quite disproportionate to its significance or the matters in issue.”
Clearly the significance of the issue (in my eyes) is that MFRA told untruths to the public during its consultation to get the answers it wanted and refused to tell the public it had put aside £300,000 to pay Wirral Council for the land at first Greasby, then Saughall Massie.
Those untruths in the consultation have now formed part of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority’s planning application.
What was the government’s response to the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information report?
ICO Information Commissioner’s Office logo
I will start this by declaring some interests in the area of freedom of information. I am the appellant in case EA/2016/0033 (which is a case with the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) involving decision notice FS50596346). A further case involving an appeal to the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) involving decision notice FER0592270 was put in the post on Monday, but is yet to be received by the Tribunal. There are also numerous ICO decision notices that have been issued about FOI requests I have made.
Introducing new fees for FOI requests (above those that can be already charged) has been ruled out partly because this would lead to a reduction in FOI requests from the media and others.
The ministerial statement also refers to updated codes of practice published. Interestingly one of the requirements of this new code of practice will be for public authorities with a hundred or more full-time equivalent employees to publish detailed statistics on how they deal with FOI/EIR requests.
I presume this will be something similar to the quarterly reports issued by central government which give a detailed account of how FOI and EIR requests have been dealt with over that timescale.
As the ministerial statement states “The publication of such data not only provides accountability to the public, but allows the Information Commissioner to identify and target poorly performing public authorities more effectively.”
Certainly once the new code of practice is published, a new requirement on local government bodies to publish this detailed information will provide an insight into how FOI/EIR requests are dealt with.
There is also going to be revised guidance on the application of section 14(1) (vexatious or repeated requests). The ministerial statement states that they expect this only to be used in “rare cases” and that “the ‘vexatious’ designation is not an excuse to save public officials embarrassment from poor decisions or inappropriate spending of taxpayers’ money”.
There is also going to be consideration by the government of whether to include a requirement to publish expenses and benefits in kind received by senior public sector executives. It seems FOI requests have been made for these, but turned down on data protection grounds.
As I’m the Appellant in the Tribunal case EA/2016/0033 (which isn’t classed as “active” yet (as “active” in such cases is defined as from the point when a hearing date is set), I can reveal that the only major development in that case is that Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council has been added as a party to the appeal as second respondent (originally the case was just between myself and the Information Commissioner).
I’m still awaiting the Information Commissioner’s response (due by the 17th March 2016) and Wirral Council’s response is due not more than 21 days after they receive the Information Commissioner’s response.
Once the Information Commissioner responds and Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council responds to the Information Commissioner’s response, I have up to 14 days to respond to their responses.
The Tribunal have asked all parties to notify them of any dates they are not available between 6th June 2016 and 29th July 2016, so I presume a hearing date will be set on some day between those two dates.
I’m sure there are those that could comment better than me about a practice direction that leads to hearings discussing the secret information while one of the parties to the appeal is excluded (secret hearings) and a guide to keeping information secret from one of the parties to the case.
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