Eversheds | A blog about Wirral Council, Wirral Council's councillors & officers

Wirral Council spent £465,497.06 with six different firms of solicitors in the last financial year

Below is a list of what Wirral Council spent on solicitors in the last financial year (2013-14) which comes at just under half a million pounds. Wirral Council also employ fourteen in-house solicitors. Each amount is a total for the 2013-14 by firm of solicitors and is derived from the lists of invoices over £500 that Wirral Council publish. It is possible the amounts are higher if there are invoices paid that were less than £500. I’ve done a similar list for barristers in another blog post.

Anthony Collins Solicitors £17,570
DLA Piper UK £700
DWF LLP £11,584.38
Eversheds £236,990.13
Forshaws Davies Ridgway LLP £609
Weightmans LLP £198,043.55

Total £465,497.06

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A Town Hall Mystery: The Riddle of £32,074.98 spent on legal advice for employee who had already retired

The mysteries of Wirral Council’s legal invoices deepen and leave me scratching my head trying to unlock their puzzles. Two pages are particularly perplexing to me, so maybe one of my readers could help enlighten me with an illuminating comment or two?

First the background, as many readers of this blog will know Jim Wilkie retired as Chief Executive of Wirral Council last year on the 7th June 2012.

The puzzle comes first in the form of this invoice for £28,422.44 from Eversheds for “Advice on governance and employment issues” and “Professional fees in conjunction with advising you on the above matter Period of Invoice 11 June 2012 to 31 July 2012 Your ref: Jim Wilkie”

How could they be advising Jim Wilkie on governance and employment issues as he no longer worked for Wirral Council? He’d retired!

Then as many readers of this blog know, Graham Burgess became Chief Executive/Head of Paid Service of Wirral Council on July 16th starting full-time in the September of that year.

However there’s a further invoice from Eversheds this time for £3,652.54 for the period 4th December to 28th December 2012 for “advice on governance and employment issues” and “Professional fees in connection with advising you on the above matter” again with a reference of “Jim Wilkie”.

Judging by this post on Wirral Leaks which has a copy of the media statement about the suspension of Dave Green ending it would appear as the dates match to be advice provided to Graham Burgess about Dave Green’s suspension and obviously not to Jim Wilkie.

This still leaves the question of who Frances Woodhead of Eversheds thought she was advising on governance and employment issues over the period of the first invoice? Based on the dates it can’t have been Jim Wilkie (as he’d retired days before the period covered by the invoice) and it can’t have been Graham Burgess as he was only made Chief Executive in the last two weeks of the seven week period covered by the invoice). So who was it that needed such expensive advice costing over £28,000?

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Incredible £2,697 spent on legal costs by Wirral Council in dispute with Volker Laser

Wirral Council legal invoices page 19 Volker Laser Eversheds LLP

I’ve erased some of the black boxes on legal invoices of Wirral Council and came across this one for £2,697 in a dispute that Wirral Council had with Volker Laser. Sadly Volker Laser is not the name of a Bond villain’s company but instead a civil engineering firm.

Helpfully on Evershed’s website they tell us the work was for Lucy Frith of Eversheds "defending a series of adjudications arising out of a remediation contract for a public sector employer" (at least that’s a reasonable guess considering it wasn’t any of the other three). So what does this actually mean when translated out of lawyer-speak?

Wirral Council’s Technical Services department contracted Volker Laser to do civil engineering work for them. Wirral Council weren’t happy that the work was done how they wanted, Volker Laser disagreed with this so Wirral Council got their lawyer involved to sort it out. This is only an “interim invoice” so who knows how much that fiasco actually cost the taxpayer in total? No wonder they wanted to black out the name of the contractor involved before releasing the invoice!

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Outrageous 20 Page Wirral Council Contract over Secret Hourly Legal Rates

Before Bill Norman left Wirral Council’s employment he said during a public meeting that Wirral Council had much less in-house solicitors than the previous Council that had previously employed him. Currently Wirral Council has ~~sixteen~~ fifteen people in-house to give legal advice (David Abraham, Ali Noman Bayatti, Louise Kate Bragg, Gregory Oghenebrume Eyitene, Angela Mary Green, Colin John Bennett Hughes, Victoria Michelle Leece, Rosemary Ann Lyon, ~~Elizabeth Macgregor~~, Anne Frances Quirk, Cecilia Mary Rathe, Sally Jayne Rotherham, Joanne Elizabeth Rutherford, Lucy Victoria Shaw, Surjit Tour and Karen Christina White).

As a result of having more legal work than people employed to do it, work gets outsourced. Some of this is through the North West Legal Consortium that have a website here. Basically it’s a collaboration between a number of local Councils and others (such as Merseytravel, The Office for the Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside and The Office for the Police and Crime Commissioner for Lancashire) for legal services from firms such as Weightmans LLP and Eversheds LLP. The “outrageous” clause in my opinion in the contract is this though:-

17. Confidentiality

The Consortium has entered into agreement with Solicitors Firms and Barristers Chambers in relation to discounted fee rates. Each of these rates is commercially confidential to that Firm or Chambers and as such should not, without the prior written consent of that Firm or Chambers be disclosed to any other Firm or Chambers or any other third party outside of the Consortium. Authorities should use reasonable endeavours to ensure either by themselves their servants or agents that they treat such Confidential Information as confidential and safeguard it accordingly; and they hereby agree to use reasonable endeavours not disclose such Confidential Information to any other person without the Solicitors Firm or Chambers prior consent.

What this means is that they can charge a three figure sum an hour for legal advice and despite the public’s right to inspect these documents and make copies (without redactions) Wirral Council will just black box out the amounts on for example this Weightmans table of prices here and here.

With this level of redaction (which extends to the invoices themselves too), how can the Wirral public know they’re getting value for money at these “discounted fee rates”? What’s the rate they’re classed as discounted from anyway? Links to the whole North West Legal Consortium contract are provided below.

Wirral Council spent £465,497.06 with six different firms of solicitors in the last financial year

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Incredible £2,697 spent on legal costs by Wirral Council in dispute with Volker Laser

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Outrageous 20 Page Wirral Council Contract over Secret Hourly Legal Rates

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