Cllr Leslie Byrom Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority meeting 30th June 2015
Above is Cllr Leslie Byrom, Vice-Chair of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority. He is one of the Labour representatives from Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council. Some readers may recognise him as the councillor who chaired the public meeting when councillors decided to close Upton and West Kirby fire stations.
Last year he submitted an expense claim to Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service. You can see this expense claim and the accompanying receipt below.
Cllr Leslie Byrom expense claim September 2014 page 1 of 2Cllr Leslie Byrom expense claim September 2014 page 2 of 2
So, as you can see from the above the hotel receipt is for one night bed and breakfast (£100) and dinner (£72.05) which comes to a total of £172.05.
On the claim form however, despite Cllr Byrom signing a declaration that “I declare that I have actually and necessarily incurred additional expense” this £172.05 amount becomes £180. Someone has reduced the value of the claim £180 to £172.05.
However under the expenses system had Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service paid his accommodation directly, Cllr Byrom would’ve only been allowed to claim up to £47.81 for meals (a daily allowance of £56.82 minus £9.01 for the cost of breakfast).
As to whether spending £72.05 on a dinner is necessary. On an earlier stay at the same hotel, Cllr Leslie Byrom’s dinner was only £45.70 (see below).
Cllr Leslie Byrom hotel invoice February 2014Cllr Leslie Byrom expenses February 2014
As you can see he didn’t claim for the cost of the £45.70 dinner for that trip, but someone at Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service has increased the value of the claim to include it anyway!
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49 pages of secret expenses on fruit cake, stays at the Hilton, first class travel & taxis for councillors
49 pages of secret expenses on fruit cake, stays at the Hilton, first class travel & taxis for councillors
At the end of this piece are 49 pages of invoices paid directly by Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority. If a councillor pays for a meal or a taxi fare but claims the money back, it’s included in the annual totals for each councillor. You can view the table of annual totals for each councillor that was on Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority on the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority website.
The pages of expenses below that cover stays in hotels, train fares and meals (which would usually be in the travel and subsistence or overnight categories of expenditure of that table) aren’t included. Below is what Regulation 15(3) of the Local Authorities (Members’ Allowances) (England) Regulations 2003 states what should be included. Recipient refers to a recipient of a payment under the allowances scheme.
15. Records of Allowances
….
(3) As soon as reasonably practicable after the end of a year to which the scheme relates, an authority shall make arrangements for the publication within the authority’s area of the total sum paid by it in the year under the scheme to each recipient in respect of each of the following—
(a) basic allowance;
(b) special responsibility allowance;
(c) dependants’ carers’ allowance;
(d) travelling and subsistence allowance; and
(e) co-optees’ allowance.
In that letter Janet Henshaw (Monitoring Officer for Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service) writing on behalf of the Wirral councillors wrote:
“It was not possible to show travel & event bookings made directly by MFRA [Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority] (as opposed to members paying and then claiming back their allowances) due to the fact that this Authority uses an electronic software system to make each booking at the cheapest possible price for both members and officers. We were invoiced monthly in the last year for both Officers and Members without differentiation. Thus it would have been a wholly unreasonable use of scare resources to break this down each month between the two groups and then each and every individual.”
CFO on one of the receipts refers to the Chief Fire Officer Dan Stephens. DCFO refers to the Deputy Chief Fire Officer Phil Garrigan. As some of the names of the councillors below will be unfamiliar to readers I include a key below. The key has the name of the councillor, political party, which local authority they represent (or represented as Cllr Ted Grannell and Cllr Tony Newman are no longer on the Fire Authority) and whether they hold the position of Chair or Vice-Chair on Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority.
Cllr Dave Hanratty, Labour, Liverpool, Chair Cllr Linda Maloney, Labour, St Helens, Vice-Chair Cllr Leslie T Byrom, Labour, Sefton, Vice-Chair Cllr Ted Grannell (down on invoice as Ted Grenell), Labour, Knowsley Cllr Tony Newman, Labour, Knowsley Cllr Steve Niblock, Labour, Wirral
Why did Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service pay a consultant £2,500/day + expenses?
Why did Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service pay a consultant £2,500/day + expenses?
Principea Consulting Ltd Training Expenses invoice £2901 06p Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service
The above invoice was paid by Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service for a speaker from Principea Consulting Limited for a training event called Exercise Black Swan.
The first part £401.06 is for travel expenses that break down to these categories on the invoice.
£11.60 Single fare on hovercraft to Southsea
£80.00 taxi to/from Southampton Airport
£136.96 Air Fare return to Manchester
£166.50 Two nights in the Premier Inn in Liverpool
£6.00 Single return on fast catamaran
Total £401.06
The second part of the invoice is £2,500 for Speakers Fee for presentation on 3rd of May 2013 (although this might be a typo and possibly should read 2014) and detailed as for the development and leadership of Exercise Black Swan. The rest of the invoice deals with VAT.
So, if I’ve read this invoice correctly Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service paid for someone to speak at a one-day training event the sum of £2,500, plus their travel and accommodation expenses of £401.06? Does anyone reading know what Exercise Black Swan was?
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Which St Helens councillor claimed £12 for a salmon dinner and a drink of Coke?
Which St Helens councillor claimed £12 for a salmon dinner and a drink of Coke?
Cllr Linda Maloney (Vice Chair of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority) on the left of the photo speaking at a public meeting on the 30th June 2015
Pictured on the left of the photo above is Councillor Linda Maloney who is a Labour councillor from St Helens. She is also Vice-Chair of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority.
Despite receiving £27,800 from the taxpayer for her public duties as a councillor (although presumably she wouldn’t receive all of this as some would go on Income Tax and National Insurance), she still claimed from the taxpayer for a salmon dinner and a drink of Coke at a total cost of £12 at a time when there are many people in Merseyside reliant on handouts from food banks!
Councillor Linda Maloney expense claim page 1 of 3Councillor Linda Maloney expense claim page 2 of 3Councillor Linda Maloney expense claim page 3 of 3
Sadly we were only allowed to inspect photocopies of the expense claims and receipts. As you can see from the receipts above, like Cllr Steve Niblock she also claims for journeys by taxi. Unfortunately the receipts obscure the reasons given on her expenses form for this expenditure.
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Which Wirral councillor claimed £50 on taxis to and from a public meeting?
Which Wirral councillor claimed £50 on taxis to and from a public meeting?
I wrote recently to some of the councillors on Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority expressing my concern that there were two expenses systems.
The first involved amounts where councillors had paid out expenses and claimed the money back. The totals for each councillor are published annually and you can see the list for 2014/15 on Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service’s website. This list also includes the extra £8,070 a year that each councillor on Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority receives with some receiving more on top of this (such as the Chair receives an extra £16,140 on top of the £8,040). These amounts are in addition to what they each receive for being a councillor from their own councils.
However there is a “secret” expenses system for councillors where Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service is invoiced directly. These amounts are not in the list above. My letter expressed the view that such expenses should be included and the reply I received is below.
Merseyside Fire and Rescue service letter about councillor expenses page 1 of 2Merseyside Fire and Rescue service letter about councillor expenses page 2 of 2
So I recently went to Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service’s headquarters in Bridle Road, Bootle and inspected these records. Below are two pages of an invoice for taxi rides by councillors that because Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service are invoiced directly don’t get included in the annual published lists.
Cabfind Ltd invoice taxis for councillors page 1 of 2Cabfind Ltd invoice taxis for councillors page 2 of 2
I was astounded to find that a councillor from Wirral (Cllr Steve Niblock who is one of the three Labour councillors from Wirral on the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority) had taken a taxi from his home to the Fire and Rescue Service headquarters for a public meeting that cost £25 and then a taxi back costing a further £25 (total £50)!
The letter from Janet Henshaw stated “It was not possible to show travel & event bookings made directly by MFRA [Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority] (as opposed to members paying and then claiming back their allowances) due to the fact that this Authority uses an electronic software system to make each booking at the cheapest possible price for both members and officers.” and “MFRA [Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority] does not use any taxi firms“.
Cabfind Limited isn’t a taxi firm, but based on this statement you’d expect that taxi journeys made by councillors using Cabfind Limited would be the same or cheaper than paying for it themselves?
Below is an expense claim submitted by Cllr Steve Niblock for a journey when he has paid the taxi fare himself and claimed it back. The journey to the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service headquarters is from and to the same address as the Cabfind Limited invoice above.
Councillor Steve Niblock expenses claim taxi journeys
The taxi journeys above were for £18.60 and £20.00. This is for exactly the same journey that when booked through Cabfind Limited (which Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service claim is “at the cheapest possible price”) was £25.00 and £25.00.
Had Councillor Steve Niblock walked to the nearest train station (Bebington) and got the train to the nearest train station to Merseyside Fire and Rescue headquarters (Aintree) the fare would’ve been only £3.85 each way (total £7.70). However there is nothing in the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority expense rules that states that councillors claiming back travel expenses have to travel by the cheapest route possible (such as by public transport).
Councillor Steve Niblock recently voted to close Upton and West Kirby fire stations and is part of the ruling Labour Group on Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority that claims that the Conservative government doesn’t give the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority enough money.
