Wirral Council tries to ban filming of public meeting to award Freedom of the Borough to the 96 who died in Hillsborough!

Wirral Council tries to ban filming of public meeting to award Freedom of the Borough to the 96 who died in Hillsborough!

Wirral Council tries to ban filming of public meeting to award Freedom of the Borough to the 96 who died in Hillsborough!

                                                   

Councillor Bill Davies, Left (Chair, Licensing Act 2003 Committee (Wirral Council)) votes against a filming ban of a public meeting 26th October 2016
Councillor Bill Davies, Left (Chair, Licensing Act 2003 Committee (Wirral Council)) votes against a filming ban of a public meeting 26th October 2016

On Friday evening, at a public meeting of all Wirral Council’s councillors, freedom of the borough is expected to be awarded to the 96 that died in the Hillsborough disaster.

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I filmed Liverpool City Council award freedom of the city of Liverpool to the 96 who died in Hillsborough last year (which can be viewed above), freedom of the borough for PC Dave Phillips last year and the award of freedom of the borough for 107 (Lancashire & Cheshire) Field Squadron Royal Engineers (Volunteers) and the 234 (Wirral) Transport Squadron Royal Logistic Corps (Volunteers) in 2012.

I was therefore surprised to receive the following email below from Kevin McCallum this afternoon. I have sent a response back asking Wirral Council’s Interim Monitoring Officer to provide advice to councillors as to whether this is lawful as Wirral Council are required to provide reasonable facilities for the purpose of filming the public meeting.

I’ve also pointed out I’m quite happy to film from the Council Chamber, as I have done before for a public meeting of the Wirral Schools Forum. Filming from the Council Chamber was done by another media organisation during the freedom of borough meeting for PC Dave Phillips last year. I’ve removed Kevin’s mobile number from the email below as as far as I know it’s not made public. I’ve also not included the LGC Awards 2015 Most Improved Council logo and the boilerplate text at the end.



from: MacCallum, Kevin
to: John Brace <john@johnbrace.com>
date: 11 September 2017 at 14:29
subject: Freedom of the Borough council, Friday.

Hi John,

Just wanted to let you know in advance of Friday that unfortunately the public gallery will be off-limits for the Freedom of the Borough event, as it is being reserved for invited guests of the families.

We are filming the entire event and will be posting it onto our YouTube channel.

If you would still like to attend you, along with any other members of the public wishing to view the formal part of the event, will be asked to use one of the Committee Rooms on the ground floor, where sound will be played through from the Chamber.

Thanks
Kev

Kev MacCallum
Head of Communications
Communications & Marketing

T: 0151 691 8388
M: XXXXX XXX XXX
E: kevinmaccallum@wirral.gov.uk
W: www.wirral.gov.uk & www.wirralview.com


Updated 11.3.18 I finally found the footage of the meeting over 6 months later, it hadn’t been published on Wirral Council’s Youtube Channel as Kevin suggested, but the channel of Paul Frost on the 19th September 2017.

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PC David Phillips, killed in the line of duty, awarded Freedom of the Borough by Wirral’s councillors at emotional meeting

PC David Phillips, killed in the line of duty, awarded Freedom of the Borough by Wirral’s councillors at emotional meeting

                                         

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Video above is of the public meeting of Wirral Council held on the 20th May 2016 to award the Freedom of the Borough posthumously to PC David Phillips.

Mayor and Mayoress of Wirral presenting a Freedom of Borough award for PC David Phillips posthumously at the Extraordinary Council meeting of Wirral Council held on the 20th May 2016
Mayor and Mayoress of Wirral presenting a Freedom of Borough award for PC David Phillips posthumously at the Extraordinary Council meeting of Wirral Council held on the 20th May 2016

The highest honour Wirral Council can bestow on a Wirral citizen is called Freedom of the Borough. Wirral Council councillors decided last Friday evening to give this award posthumously to PC David Phillips and make him an Honorary Freeman of the Borough.

Last year PC David Phillips had been trying to stop two burglars who were fleeing the scene of their crimes in a stolen red Mitsubishi pick up truck. The truck was being chased at high-speed through the Wirral streets at night by police cars.

He had put a ‘stop stick’ (used to burst a vehicle’s tyres) across the Wallasey Dock Road in Seacombe and was waiting for the truck to go over the ‘stop stick’ to bring the high-speed chase to an abrupt halt.

The fleeing burglar avoided the ‘stop stick’ across the road by crashing the vehicle into PC David Phillips. PC David Phillips was struck by the front of the Mitsubishi pick up truck and his colleague PC Thomas Birkett jumped out-of-the-way. PC David Phillips then tragically died of his injuries. The driver, who didn’t stop at the scene was later convicted in Manchester Crown Court of manslaughter and sentenced to twenty years. He was also banned from driving for three years.

PC David Phillips left behind a wife and two young daughters.

The Bishop of Birkenhead Rt Reverend Keith Sinclair started the meeting with a prayer.

After apologies were given for councillors who couldn’t make it to the meeting, the Mayor of Wirral asked for a round of applause for the police band, who had been playing before the meeting started in the lobby to Wallasey Town Hall.

The Mayor of Wirral Cllr Pat Hackett explained the background to why the award was being considered. Leader of the Labour Group Cllr Phil Davies nominated the motion to award Freedom of the Borough to PC David Phillips.

Leader of the Conservative Group Cllr Jeff Green and Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group Cllr Phil Gilchrist jointly seconded the nomination and both spoke in favour of granting the award to PC David Phillips.

PC Phillips’ father Robin Phillips spoke about how honoured and proud the family was that he was nominated for this award and described the goodwill his family had received following PC Dave Phillip’s death.

Sir Jon Murphy QPM (Chief Constable for Merseyside Police) described it as a “wonderful honour”.

Cllr Lesley Rennie (a former police officer) in an emotional speech spoke of the culture in the police force and how he would not be forgotten.

The scroll and mounted award was then presented to PC Phillips’ widow and children by the Mayor & Mayoress. A second duplicate mounted award was then presented by the Mayor and Mayoress to PC Phillip’s father Robin.

The Mayor of Wirral Cllr Pat Hackett and before ending the meeting thanked all those who had attended.

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FOI request – Freedom of Borough – £2k so far and counting

I’ve just received a partial answer to my request and I am to be quite frank staggered by the costs so far in awarding a person Freedom of the Borough.

The buffet was £705, the alcohol £121.15, flowers were £30, a photographer was a staggering £258.50 (to take a few photos)! and the scroll was £846.

So far that’s £40 shy of £2000. Bear in mind although this is a public meeting any members of the public are kept away from the alcohol & buffet (which the public have paid for) and told they can’t sit anywhere in the public gallery they’d actually be able to see how at least £2k of their money is being spent.

157 guests were invited and 110 turned up.

I will point out at this stage, I’m not in any way criticising Steve Maddox getting Freedom of the Borough, but at a time when Wirral Council is making people redundant, personally it just doesn’t seem right to be spending so much. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be money spent on awards and ceremony it’s just the taxpayer should know that its money is being spent prudently.

The original report stated “There are no staffing implications arising out of this report; there may be some modest financial implications which can be accommodated from within existing budgets.”

Clearly Jim Wilkie’s view of “modest financial implications” are different to mine!

Freedom of Information & Wirral Council. Do officers get paid overtime for attending meetings?

Freedom of Information & Wirral Council. Do officers get paid overtime for attending meetings?

                                            

I have today received an apology from Wirral Council about a Freedom of Information Act request submitted on the 1st December 2010.

The request here is basically an answer to the question, “How much does it cost to award someone Freedom of the Borough?” which I wrote about before on this blog when it happened earlier this year.

As readers may recall Wirral Council was "named and shamed" by the Information Commissioner in October for taking too long to respond. Quite what the monitoring being done by the Information Commissioner isn’t gone into detail.

As pointed out when he was awarded Freedom of the Borough, Steve Maddox had had to sit through many years of Council meetings and had never been asked to say anything. Whereas I understand the logic of the Chief Officers being there, the only one I’ve known be asked anything (in recent times) is Bill Norman about who had seen the infamous Charteris report into the library closures (and the odd procedural question).

Either the Chief Officers of Wirral Council come to meetings on a purely voluntary basis or they are paid overtime. The table below shows how much they got paid last year (although there have been some controversial changes uprating them since).

Senior Officers Remuneration (Wirral Council) 2009-10
Senior Officers Remuneration (Wirral Council) 2009-10

Full Council last night & Scrutiny Programme Board

Full Council last night & Scrutiny Programme Board

Full Council last night & Scrutiny Programme Board

                                     

The Scrutiny Programme Board in a three-minute meeting decided to send the Hoylake lifeboat call-in to the Council Excellence Overview and Scrutiny Committee.

All the stops were pulled out an hour later for invited guests (and councillors) at Wirral Council’s meeting last night, where Steve Maddox was awarded Freedom of the Borough. Before the meeting from the public gallery you could hear drunken laughter echoing through the corridors of the Town Hall.

Despite myself and Leonora being invited; we were both prevented from speaking to councillors or Steve as Town Hall staff had been left with instructions as usual. All I managed to get was a hello to Steve as he walked past through the lobby.

For the first time in a long time, Labour councillors behaved and didn’t jeer/heckle through anybody’s speeches. After the last full council meeting where Cllr Harry Smith got two people booted out of the Council Chamber I half thought he’d jump up and say, "I object to the dozen or so member of the public sitting in the Council Chamber (some in front of the Labour benches obscuring our view of Tory councillors) including Steve Maddox, his family, the High Sheriff, Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant, Mayoress and others and insist they’re thrown out of the Council Chamber and sit in the public gallery." but he didn’t.

So much for Harry’s assertion last time that it was usual procedure of members of the public to be bullied into moving about contrary to Wirral’s constitution!

However, someone must have told Harry to behave because I didn’t even hear one heckle or jeer out of him.

There were around thirty in the public gallery, I’ll write a longer report on last night including a summary of the speeches by the three leaders. The atmosphere was quite different to usual; partly because all the political parties agreed.

The only thing that seemed to go wrong (with a night that was meticulously planned by officers who got rather stressed) was the Mayor’s microphone wasn’t working.