ICO rule that Wirral Council’s refusal of FOI request based on "commercial interests" is incorrect (FS50585536)
ICO rule that Wirral Council’s refusal of FOI request based on "commercial interests" is incorrect (FS50585536)
ICO Information Commissioner’s Office logo
The Information Commissioner’s Office have issued another decision notice in favour of this blog. You can read it for yourself as I’ve uploaded it to the blog decision notice FS50585536 (although eventually it’ll be published on ICO’s website).
It’s five pages, so I’ll summarise what it states and go into the history.
As a local government elector during the 2013/14 audit I requested various invoices for legal work which I have a legal right to inspect and receive free copies of as a local government elector on the Wirral.
Sadly the invoices that this decision notice refer to were only the first page of a multi-page invoice. I made a FOI request for the rest of the invoices. One was for £48,384 and the other for £2,700 (both from Weightmans).
Wirral Council first refused the request on a quite baseless and ludicrous application of stating that they were covered by legal professional privilege.
Whoever dealt with it at internal review agreed with me that this was incorrect.
However then Wirral Council refused the request giving the reason of "Commercial interests".
The Information Commissioner’s Office was not convinced by Wirral Council’s arguments and has rejected Wirral’s application of withholding the information based on commercial interests.
I am pleased the decision notice doesn’t give Wirral Council the option to "pick another reason" to withhold the information. There’s one request I have to Wirral Council now on its third decision notice because Wirral Council has exploited that loophole in the past.
So Wirral Council have (well had from the date of the decision notice which was 2 days ago) 35 days to supply the information or 28 days to appeal the decision.
Let’s hope Wirral Council stop playing games over freedom of information and do the right thing?
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What’s in the 370 page whistleblowing report on Wirral Council’s grants to businesses?
What’s in the 370 page whistleblowing report on Wirral Council’s grants to businesses?
ICO Information Commissioner’s Office logo
The BIG/ISUS whistleblowing issues have been already covered in extensive detail by this blog over the past few years. However the latest twist in this story was yesterday’s release of a 370 page 2012 internal audit report into the matter following ICO decision notice FS50559883.
Wirral Council have finally released an internal audit report dated 13th January 2012 that went to Bill Norman (then Monitoring Officer/Director of Law, HR and Asset Management at Wirral Council). Those with long memories will remember that Bill Norman was suspended later that year over the Colas matter, then in September 2012 councillors agreed he should receive £146k plus £5k legal expenses to leave.
Back to the BIG/ISUS matters and let’s just quickly recap the blog posts I’ve written on the many aspects of this matter as they provide some background. I’m sure there are one or two I may have left out (I remember I republished some of my earlier blog posts which contained the agreements for BIG/ISUS in the lead up to the special meeting of the Audit and Risk Management Committee last October).
Million pound contract between Wirral Council and Enterprise Solutions (NW) Ltd for ISUS scheme was never signed (22/8/13) This blog post was about the contract between Wirral Council and Enterprise Solutions (NW) Ltd for the ISUS (Intensive Start Up Scheme) not having been signed. At the special meeting of the Audit and Risk Management Committee in October 2014 former Strategic Director for Regeneration and Environment Kevin Adderley did claim that a signed version had eventually been found and brought it to that meeting.
BIG/ISUS Reports: Wirral Council and Merseyside Police in “Alice in Wonderland” (4/10/13) Wirral Council and Merseyside Police respond to FOI requests for the reports for Grant Thornton’s (Wirral Council’s auditor) report into the ISUS matters. Wirral Council state they can’t release it because they’ve referred the matter to Merseyside Police, a Detective Chief Inspector for Merseyside Police states that "This matter is currently in the hands of Wirral Borough Council" and suggests that I make a FOI request to Wirral Council.
Or as I sum it up "Wirral Council won’t say anything because it’s in the hands of Merseyside Police, but Merseyside Police say it’s "currently in the hands of Wirral Borough Council".
So that’s a brief summary of developments so far? So what does the new information reveal? It’s a report by an auditor at Wirral Council which details the allegations the two whistleblowers made, the investigations into those allegations and the auditor’s opinion as to whether the whistleblowers were correct or not.
The executive summary runs from pages 9-16 and details the allegations made by the two whistleblowers and whether what was inspected during the investigation substantiated or refuted these claims. Pages 17-20 go through each of the allegations in detail as well as whether each allegation is correct or not and the implications that follow. Pages 21-45 are the main report which at the end contain 14 recommendations. Had some of these recommendations been implemented in 2012, some of the unanswered questions surrounding this matter would have been dealt with much earlier, such as the transfer of assets from Lockwood to Harbac.
At the special meeting of the Audit and Risk Management Committee in October 2014, councillors, officers and those speaking at the public meeting were warned not to refer to names of companies, yet the release of this 2012 audit report only removes the names of Wirral Council employees (and former employees). These matters are now out in the open (which should’ve happened before the Audit and Risk Management Committee met last year). Had this 2012 internal audit report been made available to councillors before that meeting the discussion may have been very different.
However it only came to light because of a FOI (Freedom of Information) request made by one of the whistleblowers and even then only after the Information Commissioner’s Office intervened with a decision notice. Certainly the whistleblowers must both feel vindicated by the conclusions reached in this detailed 2012 internal audit report.
The Liberal Democrat Group of councillors on Wirral Council plus the Green Party Councillor Pat Cleary have tabled the following Notice of Motion for the next Council meeting on the 12th October 2015 on the subject of FOI requests. It reads as follows:
OPEN GOVERNMENT ?
This Council recognises that the Information Commissioner’s Office, as the independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest and to promote openness by public bodies, upheld 13 complaints against Wirral Council in the past year.
Of the 18 notices issued between 29 September 2014 and 24 August 2015, the majority (72%) of complaints were upheld.
Council believes that this is a matter for concern, requiring an explanation to its Members.
Council requests that lessons should be learned and applied from these decisions and questions whether Officers have been excessively cautious or defensive in their interpretation of the legislation.
Council, therefore, requests that the legislation is approached with greater regard to the ‘public interest test’ so that the risk of further reputational damage to Wirral can be reduced.
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Mayor Joe Anderson “my good name [has been] dragged through the mud” over £90,000 legal bill for unfair dismissal case
Mayor Joe Anderson “my good name [has been] dragged through the mud” over £90,000 legal bill for unfair dismissal case
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Liverpool City Council meeting of 16th September 2015 Part 1 of 6
Mayor Joe Anderson explains why Liverpool City Council paid a nearly £90000 legal bill over an unfair dismissal battle with his former employer Chesterfield High School
After pledging his full support to the Royal National Institute for the Blind for the Council motion on the “Who Put That There!” campaign, Mayor Joe Anderson used his slot on the Council meeting agenda to give a very detailed explanation to those present about his former employer unfairly dismissing him.
“Joe must go” was a slogan on a protest banner I saw earlier this year, but this story starts with Chesterfield High School. Chesterfield High School told Joe to go, but Joe said no.
Joe (being a staunch trade unionist) felt this wasn’t fair. As His Honour Judge Serota QC put it Joe Anderson was on “a reverse form for a zero hours contract” in that he got to be Mayor, do zero hours of work for his employer yet still be paid by his employer!
However it wasn’t the fact that he was being paid for not working that was Joe’s problem. His employer decided that paying somebody for no work wasn’t “value for money” and that the public would be horrified if they knew so sent Joe a P45 through the post.
This hurt Joe. So Joe asked his friends at Liverpool City Council what they could do.
Sure enough Liverpool City Council got a lawyer for Joe. So it went to an Employment Tribunal.
The Employment Tribunal ruled that yes Joe had been unfairly dismissed but even if he hadn’t been, his employer would have still have sacked him anyway. So no compensation for Joe.
This was not the result Joe wanted, so once again he asked his friends at Liverpool City Council what they could do.
Sure enough Liverpool City Council got a lawyer (again) for Joe. So it went to an Employment Appeals Tribunal and here is the judgement.
Once again the case was lost and the final bill (that fell on the taxpayer) came to just under £90,000.
Mayor Anderson at the Liverpool City Council public meeting on the 16th September gave a detailed defence as to why he had done this.
Called to speak by the other Mayor, having been already embroiled in a trial by media, this was Mayor Anderson’s chance to have his say.
With his head bowed down, the normally confident Mayor seemed crestfallen. He started by referring to the blog of the Lib Dem Leader Cllr Richard Kemp. Mayor Anderson said he was doing this not because of Cllr Kemp’s blog.
He referred to it as “the Council’s legal action” (although as you can read from the Employment Appeals Tribunal judgement Liverpool City Council were not a party to the case).
Mayor Anderson was going to tell people the “full facts” and so that the public could “understand the complexities of this” followed by “I’ve certainly got nothing to hide or wish to disclose, err not disclose” .
Feeling his own collar he explained how he’d been on the radio that very day and dealing with the press detailling with the reasons why.
Joe (because it’s very hard in reporting this to know which bit it in this is Joe the former employee and which bit is Mayor Joe Anderson) said, “When I then became Leader of the Council in 2010, people in the Labour Party certainly know but I made a pledge, a promise that I would become a full-time Leader of the Council and for too long this Council was run like a toy town at Council and officers led the Council by the nose. Councillors weren’t here and decisions were made that were quite frankly not good enough for a Council and a city like Liverpool.”
Joe’s explanation was that when he was Leader of the Opposition on Liverpool City Council that Sefton Council had paid the LEA controlled Chesterfield School “round about £7,000 a year”. That was to pay Joe the 208 hours he was allowed off.
He claimed this cost Chesterfield School “less than £4,000” (although I’ll point out that surely Chesterfield would’ve had to pay both Joe time off to be a councillor and someone else to do his job?) which Joe saw as a “good deal”. Mayor Anderson stated that politicians were all doing this including two former leaders of Liverpool City Council.
Mayor Anderson claimed that the money he was receiving for no work from Chesterfield School he was giving to charity.
The difference however, came when Cllr Anderson became Mayor Anderson. He explained “six or seven weeks before my 55th birthday, Chesterfield High School became an academy and six or seven week before my 55th birthday sacked me without any discussion with me, without any negotiation with me” or as he put it “P45 in the post, you’re sacked”.
For him the fundamental principle as a trade unionist, he would support any councillor of whatever colour political party they may be, as the principle of being sacked for carrying out public service should be something that (saying this while twirling his finger) “we all defend and stand by”.
He said that the decision that that it should be challenged and that the indemnity policy applied was taken by the Chief Executive and Monitoring Officer of Liverpool City Council and that the Council’s external auditor and legal advisors were also informed.
In criticism of Councillor Kemp he said, “Let me ask ourselves the question around the politics of this, where it’s getting played out and how it’s disgracefully being played out. Course Councillor Kemp says, ‘Will he pay it back?'” At this point Mayor Anderson just shrugged in reply and then pointed out that former Lib Dem Leaders of Liverpool City Council had had similar arrangements with their employers.
He referred to the trial of former Lib Dem Leader of Liverpool City Council Warren Bradley, that a court had found guilty of perjury followed by saying “I’ve done nothing wrong, I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. The only thing I’ve done wrong, the only thing I’ve done wrong is trusted the School to honour that procedure that we’ve got in place that was costing them nothing but because it went to an academy they decided to sack me. That was the only thing that we did wrong”.
Mayor Anderson continued, “Then you ask yourself the question, ‘Has Councillor Anderson benefitted from this, has he gained from this?’ Well let me tell ye, not only have I not gained, my good name which I am proud of and the hard work that I do for this City has been sullied by individuals in this Council, dragged through the mud by individuals in this Council, for doing nothing more than trying to serve the people of this City.
It’s been estimated that because I’ve been finished in my local government pension that I had for 16 years that I will have lost somewhere estimated to be £134,000 in contributions. If I die now in service or whatever, I’m not in service of course because I’m not in the pension, my wife, my family I get nothing, no protection! No job to go back to! And yet there are councillors in this chamber that want to pay politics with that.”
He said he would support anyone who was sacked for doing public service “because it’s the right thing to do public service and so my conscience on this matter is absolutely 110% clear” because “nothing I’ve done in this matter was for Joe Anderson. Nothing! ” and “never at any time did I seek any personal gain for me”.
Referring to the opposition Mayor Anderson said, “they played dirty politics with it and that shows to me, that shows to me the contempt that they have for the democratic politics that we engaged in over the Mayoral Deal and also the disrespect that they have for this City and for us and the form of governance that we’ve got.”
Mayor Anderson said that the government has accepted and will change through legislation the changes that need to be made to support mayors in the future. If he’d stayed as Leader of Liverpool City Council, he would’ve retained his salary, retained his allowances and retained his pension.
However the City of Liverpool wouldn’t have had the Mayoral Deal, the schools and wouldn’t have had that investment and he wouldn’t have lost out on his pension accruing and the benefits if he was still part of the pension scheme. He finished by saying, “My conscience on this matter is absolutely clear” and received a standing ovation and applause from his Labour councillors.
£7k was the amount claimed back by councillors, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service then paid a further £7k in expenses directly (that should’ve been included in the figures).
With me so far?
No I come to a rather shocking revelation.
The allowances paid to councillors at Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority are paid tax-free. A Wirral Council councillor has left a comment stating that for Wirral Council, income tax and NI are deducted from councillors’ allowance from the amounts councillors receive.
I’ll try and explain.
I’m self-employed so I have to declare what I earn each year to HMRC [Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs]. HMRC then tell me how much National Insurance and Income Tax I pay and I pay that out of my gross profits.
However councillors are paid allowances and at MFRA (and presumably other public bodies but not Wirral Council) that pays them the allowance is paying any income tax or National Insurance due on top of that!
It isn’t coming out of their allowances! So everybody else has to pay tax out of their gross pay councillors do not! Who pays for this cosy arrangement? You do through taxes!
The amounts of course for a small authority like Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority for these beneficial tax arrangements the costs are small (£10,820.28) as it has only eighteen councillors.
In a question I posed to Councillor Adrian Jones earlier this year he stated “however in future the cost of Member’s [councillor’s] taxi journeys undertaken pertinent to these taxi contracts will be published on the Council’s website as soon as practicable after the end of each financial year.”
This response to a FOI request I made, shows the total spend on councillors for taxis from April to December 2014 was £1,829.55.
So over the whole year, that would be an estimated £2,400.
The figures however declared in the official expenses table only come to less than a thousand pounds.
Obviously this means the taxi amounts have once again not been included with the official figures despite Councillor Adrian Jones suggesting that they would.
I exercised my Audit Commission Act 1998, s.15 right this year (as I’m a local government elector in Wirral) to copies of the paperwork to do with expenses.
Wirral was supposed to (as not to do so would be breaking the law) provide them by the end of the inspection period which finished on the 14th August 2015.
This is to allow a reasonable period for any questions to the auditor or any objections to be resolved by the time the accounts have to be closed by 30th September 2015.
I have sadly only received a very small fraction of what I requested.
Merseytravel, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority and Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority all managed to provide the information either by the end of the inspection period or shortly after.
Wirral Council has not. It’s now over a month passed the 14th August 2015 and I’m still waiting.
There’s also a right to inspect these councillor expenses, again Wirral Council just states that they are dealing with this under the audit legislation, that the paperwork they have from HR on councillor expenses is incomplete therefore I can’t see it yet!!!
I mean seriously! They didn’t mind giving me incomplete paperwork last year (but did mind me pointing out it was incomplete and having to go back and do it properly).
Wirral Council likes it seems to be downright unusual and not learn from best practice elsewhere how to get better. As detailed above in the question to Councillor Jones, change from practices that shouldn’t happen are promised, but then the changes that have been promised don’t happen.
The public notice for those other authorities (apart from one that didn’t include a name) meant the request went straight to a member of their senior management team.
At Wirral Council that wasn’t the case.
At those other authorities this meant the request got dealt with within or near the timescales as the “instructions came down from on high” .
Fort Perch Rock car park New Brighton 29th June 2015 photo 1
Wirral Council would seriously try the patience of a saint. Sadly they force me into a position where I have to use arcane legal procedures and involve the external auditor (thus costing Wirral Council more by sadly driving up their external audit costs) to try and get anywhere.
Wirral Council’s Audit and Risk Management Committee meets next week on the 22nd September to discuss the 2014/15 accounts. One of the matters they’ll be discussing formed an earlier story on this blog.
The £6.9 billion Merseyside Pension Fund that Wirral Council manages pays a pension to a close relative of mine so I had better declare that as an interest.
However does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can to ensure Wirral Council does things better?
Or do people already think I’m perfectly capable of answering that one myself?
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Objectors referred to pay and display parking in Hamilton Square, Birkenhead and the reduction in visitors once charges for parking had started. Many objectors thought that car parking charges would put people off from visiting New Brighton. Some objectors thought that what charging would be unlawful. Others felt that Wirral Council ordering the pay and display ticket machines before the consultation on the proposed traffic regulation order started pre judged the outcome of the consultation.
The most detailed objection from Singleton Clamp & Partners Limited sent on behalf of the Wilkie Leisure Group stated:
