Wirral Council Employee Survey 2013: Industrial relations: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
Wirral Council Employee Survey 2013: Industrial relations: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
One of the quandaries you face in the press is just what you do over leaked documents. When I was working in print it was easy, the procedure was everything just had to be double sourced. With Wirral Council that has in the past often caused problems as two bits of Wirral Council would flat-out contradict each other over the same facts!
The particular document I am referring to is the Ipsos Mori “Wirral Council Employee Survey 2013”. This contains such classic lines such as:
“The contents of this report are of a commercially sensitive and confidential nature and intended solely for the review and consideration of the person or entity to which it is addressed. No other use is permitted and the addressee undertakes not to disclose all or part of this report to any third party (including but not limited, where applicable, pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act 2000) without the prior written consent of the Company Secretary of Ipsos MORI.”
In an “open and transparent” public sector, where Wirral Council wanted to show how it had emerged from the nightmare of its past “industrial relations” issues, here’s just one industrial relations issue that would not be happening:
a) employee appeals/grievance hearings of Wirral Council employees now decided by Wirral Council management behind closed doors instead of councillors (unlike other local councils) at public meetings behind closed doors. Yes it was a Labour administration and Labour councillors that decided to change the constitution and go against the trade unions on that one!
b) excessive secrecy on HR matters (but I’m the press and I would say that wouldn’t I?), however it’s not just me but others that state the same thing?
The whole ninety-page document that is the Wirral Council Employee Survey 2013 (before you get to the appendices) is the kind of thing that councillors, the public, employees and others should be able to read, but I’m sure management would rather not like to ever see the light of day.
“To act as Head of Paid Service to the Council and to provide workforce leadership for the Council.”
In other words the buck stops at him. OK answerable to the public then are councillors who are Cabinet Members, but from an officer perspective ultimately Graham Burgess (or whoever replaces him after the end of this year) sets the culture of the organisation when it comes to workforce matters.
It was during Graham Burgess’ tenure as Chief Executive/Head of Paid Service that the changes to the grievance and appeals procedures were changed. One of the reasons given at the time was that with large-scale redundancies, councillors would’ve been snowed under dealing with employee appeals.
That may be a legitimate reason to put forward for the change (and yes I have heard at least one former councillor moan during a public meeting about how terribly long-winded some employee appeals/grievances were). However taking councillors out of grievance appeals meant that any future whistleblowers would only be heard by management. Then management have a vested interest in making sure issues are resolved behind the scenes (such as paying off whistleblowers to leave and keep quiet) and then the underlying issues are not talked about by councillors in public meetings (making life easier for management) or indeed written about in the press.
I think it is about time I published some of the Human Resources related invoices to do with Employment Tribunals and employee issues so that the public can see how expensive to the public purse it is to not have effective internal processes to deal with employee matters. Previously such procedures (despite their flaws) relied not on the more independent decisions of councillors but now it’s purely officers who decide instead. I’m not saying councillors would make decisions that were less likely to result in large expensive legal bills, it’s just I personally disagree (a rare political point on my part) with the lack of political oversight in employee matters as it means councillors are less likely to know what’s going on.
I fully realise matters have been dealt with behind closed doors, but there is a point where too much secrecy can be counter productive in the public sector as it results in no one being personally accountable for the results of their actions.
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The October 2013 form was supplied and is below. It is for 151 miles of travel @ 40p/mile which is a total of £60.40 which covers travel to some public meetings such as Council and Planning Committee, representing Wirral Council on outside bodies such as the West Kirby Charities Board, a visit with the Cabinet Member Cllr Chris Meaden to Rock Ferry library, a tour of West Kirby and Thurstaston ward with Wirral Council’s Chief Executive Graham Burgess and a reception and briefing for the Green Flag award in the Round Room at Wallasey Town Hall.
Cllr David Elderton (unlike other councillors) includes his departure time and return time and mileometer readings on the form itself.
Cllr David Elderton expenses claim October 2013 page 1 of 1
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Whistleblowers assembled in Committee Room 1 to hear apologies from Wirral Council over a toxic whistleblowing saga involving secrecy, national, local and regional government, internal and external audit, the private sector, ££££s, senior managers, contracts and Wirral Council
Whistleblowers assembled in Committee Room 1 to hear apologies from Wirral Council over a toxic whistleblowing saga involving secrecy, national, local and regional government, internal and external audit, the private sector, ££££s, senior managers, contracts and Wirral Council
Nigel Hobro (standing) addresses the Audit and Risk Management Committee of Wirral Council 8th October 2014 L to R Cllr Adam Sykes, Cllr David Elderton, Andrew Mossop, Surjit Tour, Nigel Hobro (c) John Brace | still taken from video
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Above is a playlist of all parts of the Audit and Risk Management Committee (Wirral Council) meeting of 8th October 2014 held in Committee Room 1, Wallasey Town Hall starting at 6.00pm (apologies for recording problems)
Audit and Risk Management Committee
Cllr Jim Crabtree (Chair, Labour)
Cllr Ron Abbey (Vice-Chair, Labour)
Cllr Paul Doughty (Labour)
Cllr Matthew Patrick (Labour)
Cllr John Hale (Conservative spokesperson)
Cllr Adam Sykes (Conservative)
Cllr David Elderton (Conservative)
Cllr Stuart Kelly (Lib Dem spokesperson)
The Audit and Risk Management Committee of Wirral Council met for a special meeting about BIG/ISUS on the evening of 8th October 2014 whilst a thunderstorm raged outside Wallasey Town Hall. This was a continuing from its adjourned special meeting about the same topic on 22nd July 2014. For details of what happened at its meeting of the 22nd July 2014 see my earlier blog post Incredible first 5 minutes of Wirral Council councillors’ public meeting to discuss BIG & ISUS investigations.
The meeting started with a minute of silence for Mark Delap. Mark Delap was one of the Wirral Council employees that used to take minutes at its public meetings and had died recently.
After the minute of silence was over, the Chair asked for declarations of interest.
Cllr Matthew Patrick declared an interest due to a friendship with Nigel Hobro’s son (Nigel Hobro is one of the whistleblowers and spoke during the meeting itself).
Surjit Tour gave some brief advice to Cllr Matthew Patrick as to whether his interest was personal or prejudicial.
The Chair thanked Surjit Tour for the advice he had given to Cllr Matthew Patrick.
The Chair, Cllr Jim Crabtree then explained that there had been a lot of allegations since the issue had first been raised in 2011. There was a large volume of paperwork for the meeting, however details were redacted to protect businesses and companies. Also the names of officers and other people were blacked out. He also referred to commercial sensitivities and how they had gone to proper steps to protect identities.
He reminded people of the risk of legal challenge and Wirral Council’s liabilities. Cllr Crabtree asked everyone not to name names and continued by saying that any issues Wirral Council officers had addressed, they had done on behalf of the Council.
Cllr Stuart Kelly asked a question on the information that was redacted. He referred to a challenge to paragraph j, that was redacted in the papers to the July meeting, but was now provided. He wanted assurance from the legal officer Surjit Tour that the redactions were only in the categories as just outlined by the Chair.
Mr. Tour explained that the redactions had taken place to make sure that nobody by reasonable inquiry and information already in the public domain could piece together who or what the redacted information referred to and who the people redacted were. He added that in some cases it was unfortunately necessary to redact a lot of information mindful of what was already in the public domain, people could “fill in the gaps” which would expose Wirral Council to a liability.
The Chair invited Nigel Hobro to speak for at most fifteen minutes.
To be continued…
However below are some of my personal observations about this meeting I’ve started writing up above and a bit of a compare and contrast with two different special meetings of the Audit and Risk Management Committee held years apart (but both dealing with Wirral Council’s response to whistleblowers (one internal, one external).
It shows how history has a habit of endlessly repeating itself and is based on my opinion as one of the few people who was actually present at both meetings.
There are similarities between this public meeting and an earlier public meeting many years ago of the Audit and Risk Management Committee to decide on a response to the whistleblowing of former Wirral Council employee Martin Morton. Back then (years ago) there were arguments by politicians over a series of meetings over how much money should be paid back to those that were overcharged and to what year you go back to with the refunds.
Even when refunds were agreed by politicians, Wirral Council took so long that some of the people involved had died and in order cases (the ones that were still alive) the amounts were so large, that Wirral Council officers didn’t want to pay the people involved because they thought it would have a knock on effect on their benefits and officers doubted that some of the people had the capacity to be able to look after their own financial affairs.
Sadly the decision back then was fudged (which is partly what led to the problems later). Martin Morton’s concerns were also far, far wider than the overcharging issue, his concerns also involved allegations of the misuse of public money to fund organisations with links to serious and organised crime, serious allegations of serious crimes against vulnerable people who had apparently at the time not been investigated thoroughly enough, woefully poor corporate governance at Wirral Council, terribly weak political oversight due to put it frankly chaos back then and ultimately Mr Morton paid a personal price because people in Wirral Council tried to repeatedly punish him for daring to blow the whistle. Due to the large financial amounts involved, Cabinet had to sign off on the large expenditure that resulted.
One day before the AKA report was finally released to the public, the two middle managers involved in this matter were each paid a six figure sum each to leave Wirral Council.
At the earlier meeting (and at least one person on the Audit and Risk Management Committee is the same person as back then), the Chair back then accused one politician (Cllr Ron Abbey) of either not reading the papers for the meeting as they were asking questions that were already answered there or of completely misunderstanding what they had read (if they had read them). At this time the Chair was of a different political party to the Labour councillor (Cllr Ron Abbey) & in the interests of impartiality (with absolutely no offence meant towards one of my local councillors Cllr Jim Crabtree) many other local authorities have an unwritten rule that the Chair of the Audit and Risk Management Committee is not from the same political party as the ruling administration to ensure independence.
Knowing Cllr Crabtree as I do, I know that even if a councillor stepped out of line at a meeting he was chairing, even if the councillor was from the same political party as he was, Cllr Crabtree’s personality is such that he would frankly realise that it’s in the “public interest” to hold his fellow councillors to account even if he would have to be careful how he did this in public.
After it seems part of the reasons why Labour got a small majority on Wirral Council is because councillors from that party woke up the news that the Wirral public expected them to hold other politicians to account in public even if these were other councillors from the same political party.
Bill Norman (who left in somewhat mysterious circumstances in 2012) was the legal adviser to that earlier Audit and Risk Committee meeting years ago, not Surjit Tour as it is now. The issue of blacking out all the names (and other details) in the published papers was addressed by Bill Norman then with broadly similar reasons given to those given by Mr. Tour many years later. However I will point out that the culture of legal practice is such that confidentiality, especially when it comes to active proceedings is extremely important to maintain!
At the time this written material authored by Mr. Morton included in the papers for the meeting was also redacted, so this aspect of whistleblowing hasn’t changed much at all over the years at Wirral Council.
Wirral Council, back then and as it seems now has a fear of being sued. Although if they were open and transparent wouldn’t Wirral Council welcome judicial oversight of their decisions as it would give Wirral Council the chance for someone independent to look at it and the opportunity to defend themselves in court if they had done nothing wrong?
Perhaps it’s unfair to say a fear of being sued, it’s a fear at Wirral Council of being sued and losing and the results that flow from that which could be a combination of large financial penalties (or other things) as well as the fact that court reporters such as myself or the publications they publish in can’t actually be sued under British law for court reporting as long as we comply with the few rules that apply as court reporting attracts absolute privilege. All court hearings whether public or private are recorded by the court on tape anyway and in theory transcripts can be ordered.
Some may say for a large local Council (covering a population of ~320,000), whilst obviously they have their own organisational reputation to consider, that they seem unduly concerned at times at reputation management (although this is also a preoccupation of political parties) rather than dealing with matters in an entirely open and transparent way. There is a blurry line between the individual reputations of senior managers and politicians on one hand and the organisational reputation of the organisations they are either employed by or are elected to represent the views of the public at.
Some of the reports that went to the most meeting the day before yesterday, have been the subject of previous articles by me and FOI requests.
You can read my FOI request (25/8/13) for the report on ISUS here, which was refused on 23/9/13 and refused at internal review on 24/10/13. That external audit report can be read as part of the committee’s papers (see agenda item 2 and the links from this page on Wirral Council’s website if you wish to do.
Had the responses to those FOI requests been forthcoming and Wirral Council provided the information within weeks a lot more would have been in the public domain before the July and October meetings in 2014 of the Audit and Risk Management Committee meetings. Wirral Council instead chose to rely on exemptions to suppress the information and knew I was unlikely to appeal to ICO, as if I had I’d probably still be waiting for a decision!
Excessive secrecy just makes the public and press suspect that there’s a deliberate cover up or Wirral Council has done something it’s ashamed or embarrassed about. Usually the answer is a little more complicated than a conspiracy.
The Merseyside police investigation (which resulted in no charges) was used as an excuse by Wirral Council to deny FOI requests, not just about the one Grant Thornton recommended was referred to the police, but information in general about the other aspects too.
Wirral Council was recommended by the forensic arm of its external auditors to refer one very minor matter to the police. Wirral Council did and this was then used this as an excuse to delay and prevent further scrutiny. The police response (and I summarise) was that based on what they were told that there was insufficient evidence to charge somebody (or somebodies) with a crime. Remember criminal charges require basically two elements, proof that the alleged crime occurred and also generally for most criminal matters mens rea (proof of a “guilty mind” too). The latter is often harder to prove than the former, which is why defendants sometimes plead not guilty in order to get a jury trial! As Wirral Council actually carries out criminal prosecutions through the Wirral Magistrates Courts, I’m sure someone there who is actually aware of these matters!
This article is getting rather long and at the two thousand word mark I am somewhat digressing into related matters, although obviously it is not as long as the papers for that meeting which come in at the length of a medium-sized novel!
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Graham Burgess (Chief Executive) announces he will retire from Wirral Council on 31st December 2014
Graham Burgess (Chief Executive) announces he will retire from Wirral Council on 31st December 2014
Above is Graham Burgess in July 2012 at the Council meeting that chose him as Chief Executive
Below is the text of a media release issued by Wirral Council and distributed by David Armstrong, Assistant Chief Executive to those at the Cabinet meeting this evening. Usually I don’t just reprint press releases, but as it’s late and it’s newsworthy I think people had better know.
Wirral Council Chief Executive, Graham Burgess announces his retirement
Wirral Council Chief Executive Graham Burgess informed tonight’s meeting of Wirral’s Cabinet that he is to retire on December 31, 2014.
Graham officially joined Wirral Council in September 2012. Previous to that, he had been Chief Executive of Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council, and remains a leading figure in the Local Government Association (LGA).
He said: ‘When I took up post, I said that first and foremost, my role was to help shape the transformation of Wirral. Wirral is now a very different place to when I arrived, and I feel now is the right time to hand over to let the next phase of this work begin.
‘I have enjoyed the opportunity to work with the organisations and communities that make Wirral a special place, and I will continue to take a strong interest in the borough’s future. I would like to thank the people I have worked with, including residents, Councillors, and staff for their hard work. There are many excellent people working for Wirral and I wish them every success as they take the authority forward.’
Councillor Phil Davies, Leader of Wirral Council today paid tribute: ‘Graham joined us at a very difficult time and has been a positive and transformational catalyst for change. I would like to thank him for galvanising a collective will to move forward positively and constructively.
‘I am sad to see him go. We have been a good partnership forged by a shared appetite for change and innovation. However. we will continue the positive progress already made, and look forward to choosing a new Chief Executive to continue to take us forward into the next phase.’
Before joining Wirral Council on a full-time basis, Graham had spent a considerable amount of time in Wirral, including as a member of the Council’s LGA-led Improvement Board.
Graham, who was born in and lives in Liverpool, was previously Chief Executive of Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council. He began working for Wirral Council as part of the LGA Improvement Board, after series of external reports highlighted major weaknesses in the authority.
Since taking up the post of Chief Executive on an interim basis, then later being permanently appointed to the role, Wirral has been selected as one of nine authorities to participate in the Public Services Transformation Network.
The Council’s improvement has also been named by the LGA as being the fastest turnaround of any Council in the country, and is held up by the LGA as an example of best practice.
Since Graham joined the authority, Wirral has made significant progress in managing the financial risks and challenges it faces. An independent ‘Value for Money,’ report, compiled by auditors Grant Thornton, and published in September, also found that Wirral had made significant progress in managing the financial risks and challenges it faces.
A stranger rides in to Wirral Town in a thrilling Wild West tale about gold, greed, horses, the law and a land grab
A stranger rides in to Wirral Town in a thrilling Wild West tale about gold, greed, horses, the law and a land grab
John Wayne as the sheriff in Rio Bravo
The following is a work of satire.
Deep in the dusty, hot West was a town called Wirral. This tale is about a land grab, a common theme in these parts as some townsfolk had let greed enter into their hearts.
Outside of town were about ten acres of farmland known as Fernbank Farm where all day the pony club offered rides to the local children. Everyone had fun there and the pony club had been there for as long as people could remember and paid rent for the use of the land to their landlord. Everybody was happy.
Little did the pony club know then, but their landlord wanted them off that land. At first they thought everything was going as it had in years gone by as their landlord even sent them a new lease to sign, which they returned back thinking everything would be just as it was in the past.
However they didn’t know that the local politicians had had a meeting and at this meeting they had changed the rules so a hundred houses could be built on the land. This was deliberately kept a secret from the pony club on the instructions of Tony Simpson.
Once a deadline had been passed and a new lease had deliberately not been agreed (while telling the pony club they would happily agree to a new lease), the landlord went to Surjit “the Sheriff” Tour, who worked for the landlord to ask him what to do. He told them that he couldn’t turf the pony club off their land yet and in order to evict them he’d first need a judge to agree to it.
The pony club were surprised by this move and got Kirwan (a lawman and former politician to help them), he did his best but the pony club soon ran out of gold coins to pay him and asked for help from Lewis instead.
The pony club’s day in court came and in the judge’s chambers in the town’s courthouse a Judge explained to all (including two curious journalists from the local reservation) that it would have to go to a proper trial where everyone would have their say. Reluctantly the landlord agreed to this.
The day of the trial came and another Judge was in charge. The landlord had hired expensive help from far, far away. The Judge said he was very sorry, but that he had no choice but to sign a possession order to turf the pony club off the landlord’s land. His hands were tied, he felt he had no choice but was very apologetic. If their landlord hadn’t been so underhand he said, he would have granted the pony club a new lease, but now unfortunately his hands were tied.
Once again the two curious journalists from the local reservation were there including a large number of the townsfolk who wanted the pony club to stay. The journalists wrote down what happened, told the local people and a story about the trial appeared in the town’s newspaper.
The husband of one of those put on trial felt the whole thing was unfair and complained. The landlord read his complaint but (surprise, surprise) said he didn’t agree. One of the two curious journalists from the local reservation even asked a question at a meeting of the politicians (it took a month for the politician to answer).
The landlord wasn’t entirely happy with these two going off the reservation at all, as well, these two were known to have caused trouble in the past but they also knew the townsfolk would really start kicking up a fuss if a large number of braves on horseback rode into the town because of how badly it had been handled. You see those on the reservation quite liked horses and didn’t like as it tended to be translated “white man speak with forked tongue”.
It wasn’t the done thing anymore for the landlord to label people (even those from the reservation) they saw as troublemakers as “crazy”. They’d done just that and ending up having to pay many, many, many (and probably a few more) gold coins to a Mr. Morton (a former employee) after he’d raised a big stink about their past skullduggery and a large amount of gold coins that the landlord had stolen accidentally removed in one of their “mistakes” and had said that they wouldn’t pay back (later changing their mind).
So what was the landlord to do? They asked a stranger from far away to come into town. The stranger did come into town, he talked with the pony club and he talked with the landlord.
Not quite understanding the rules of the game* Mr Aspin (the stranger) was from a far away town called Rochdale. He was not a lawman, but a surveyor but he did not like all he surveyed. Phrases such as “this is not an appropriate action for a Local Authority landlord to take”, “accusation of dishonesty”, “gnawed at his professional conscience” and “unfortunate sequence of events” ran through his report as a series of criticisms as to how the landlord had behaved.
*rules of the game referring to the landlord’s rule in that they preferred “independent” people to agree with them as if they didn’t it would mean no more gold coins from the landlord for them.
The stranger recommended they send an immediate written apology to the pony club, pay them them the gold coins they had paid to Kirwan and allow them to stay rent free as well as finding them somewhere else to move to.
Oh dear, what was the landlord to do? Sooner or later those two pesky reservation journalists would start writing about it (although on the plus side the landlord thought it might stop them writing about another of their dastardly schemes to try and close a local school called Lyndale) and then their mistakes would end up in the newspaper again which would mean all the townsfolk would know. Oh dear! How could they stop the press writing about it they thought? Let’s release the report on a Saturday they decided, the press won’t be at work then.
As no politician wanted to associate themselves with such an unpopular issue, they got the big cheese and well-known troubleshooter Mr. Burgess to apologise. “We apologise for the distress”, “the site is on of the three most valuable council-owned development sites”, “savings targets” and “we should have communicated better” he wrote as well as making the same commitment his boss had Councillor Phil Davies to find the pony club somewhere else.
Mr Burgess even went a little too far in some people’s minds in his enthusiasm and wrote things like “the independent investigation”… “found that the Council acted legally throughout possession proceedings” when the investigator’s report in fact stated “I am satisfied that the Council followed the correct procedure in the preparation and issuing of Court proceedings. It is outside my remit to make further comments in this regard as a legal process subsequently followed resulting in the Court granting permission.”
So, one of the two journalists on the reservation saw what went on and wrote this tale and here it is. A partial victory for the pony club, but it seems that the fight will carry on.
Tune in for next week’s thrilling episode about the Wild West Town of Wirral to hear how about the landlord continues to get into hot water in its efforts to “evict” disabled children from the local school called Lyndale in another tale of communication problems, politicians, apologies but this time (as far as we know at this point) not involving horses.
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