Tag: Graham Burgess

Wirral Council (15th July 2013): Whistleblower Motion (Chief Executive’s statement)

The Chief Executives statement on the whistleblowing motion of the Conservatives (Wirral Council) from 15th July 2013

In what was a stormy evening at Wirral Council and Cllr Mitchell’s first full length Council meeting in the Chair as Mayor, the Chief Executive Graham Burgess issued a written statement to councillors and the public about the Conservative’s notice of motion on whistleblowing. His statement is reproduced below.

Statement from the Chief Executive

I would like to firstly advise a note of caution to all Elected Members when it comes to discussing individual cases. The Council in this instance has been requested to deal directly with Mr. Morton’s solicitor to seek a resolution to the outstanding issues. We are keen to reach a resolution at the earliest opportunity and have corresponded with Mr. Morton’s Solicitor to that effect.

I must also draw Council’s attention to the recent judgement by Mr. Justice Hughes in the first-tier tribunal between the Apellant [sic] and the Information Commissioner. Judge Hughes upheld the Information Commissioners decision to uphold this Council’s refusal of personal information relating to the Officers alluded to in this question. This followed his appraisal of the AKA report and all relevant information provided.

In particular it is important that Members note the following conclusions:

The information which the complainant has asked for is detailed information on personnel matters relating to the individuals concerned. This goes much further than a request to detail of any severance payments made to the individuals. It is also about the terms under which they left the authority. The public interest in knowing whether appropriate policies and procedures were followed or whether the council acted inappropriately in terms of the events outlined in the report has been served by the disclosure of the report.

The individuals identified with in the report had not been convicted of any crime. Public accountability for failing is within the Council’s practices and rests with the Council as a whole rather than with individual officers.

He concluded by finding that while there was a legitimate public interest in understanding how the Council had reacted to the report; this information would not help with that process and a balance had to be struck with respect to the rights of the individuals concerned. He found that:-

Any pressing social need for greater transparency on the Council’s reaction to the report would not be met by a disclosure of this information. He therefore considers that it would be unfair (and given the implied confidentiality of the employer/employee information, unlawful ) for the purposes of the first data protection principle for that information to be disclosed. 

In the light of the above judgement we do not consider that it would be lawful or practical to allow a further investigation into the circumstances surrounding the departure of the two Officers in question.

Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 28th January 2013 Council Tax and Chief Exec’s contract

Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 28th January 2013 Council Tax and Chief Exec’s contract, also delegation of employment issues and senior management restructure

Monday’s Council meeting started the usual way with prayers. Following the prayers the Mayor asked for apologies for absence. Apologies were given for Cllr Elderton and Cllr McLachlan. The Mayor said that Cllr Elderton had improved in hospital for two weeks and hoped they would have a wonderful evening. He also said he’d be stricter on keeping people to time limits on speaking as if they had been adhered to last time a further eight councillors would’ve spoken, with a warning that the Deputy Mayor said he would be much tougher during his time in office.

No declarations of interest were made.

The Mayor brought forward item 5 (by-election results) and asked for it to be noted. Cllr Jeff Green (Conservative leader) congratulated the two new Conservative councillors at being elected.

A number of petitions were submitted.
Cllr Patricia Glasman submitted a petition opposing planning application APP/12/01520 for a ‘One to One’ Birth Centre in New Brighton.
Cllr Kathy Hodson told of a petition of 690 signatures opposing the withdrawal of maintenance of the bowling greens.
Cllr Leah Fraser put forward a petition of 36 signatures opposing planning application DPP4/12/01491 for an extension to St Georges Primary School in Liscard.
Finally, Cllr Clements presented a petition of 118 signatures opposing withdrawing maintenance of a bowling green in Greasby.

The meeting moved onto approval of the Council Tax Support scheme. Cllr Phil Davies gave a brief speech, bemoaning the fact that their budget was being cut by 10% next year, but that pensioners and people with disabilities wouldn’t lose out. Cllr Gilchrist indicated his disagreement with the scheme and said there would be problems collecting money from people who hadn’t had to pay Council Tax before. Fifty-five councillors voted for the scheme (Conservative and Labour) with the seven Lib Dem councillors against it.

Cllr Phil Davies stating it was unfortunate that they didn’t have the right figures on the senior management restructure from the start, but that they’d had assurances it wouldn’t happen again. The changes were agreed unanimously.

The changes to delegation on employment matters were more controversial. Cllr Phil Davies said that following the feedback from the peer challenge review, which recommended clarifying roles to ensure councillors did “not get overly involved in operational matters”. He asked for a quarterly report to the Employment and Appointments Committee on the gradings, grievances and disciplinary action decisions.

Cllr Jeff Green said they would be supporting it.

Cllr Pat Williams said that poor working practices had been brought to councillor’s attention during these meetings and that they had often found in the employee’s favour. She said that they would not know about these issues if it was taken out of their hands.

The Labour and Conservative councillors voted for (55), the Lib Dem councillors voted against (7).

Item D (Collection Fund 2012/2013, Council Tax Discounts (Annual Review) and Council Tax Base) was agreed unanimously.

Item E (The Employment Contract of the Chief Executive and Head of Paid Service) attracted more disagreement. Cllr Phil Davies said that it was “important to make the change now”, whereas Cllr Green didn’t understand the sudden urgency or why there shouldn’t be an open and transparent process instead. He said it was disappointing as the Chief Executive should have the full support of councillors.

Cllr Harney said he couldn’t understand why the issue of a permanent contract couldn’t be linked to the performance appraisal of the Interim Chief Executive. He said he hoped it was not a precursor to employment practices that had “bedevilled the Council”. Cllr Pat Williams said that Labour had created division which was “unnecessary and insensitive” and referred to adverse and avoidable press publicity. Cllr Mark Johnston said during his time as councillor he had seen three political leaders, four Chief Executives and damning reports on poor governance. Cllr Gilchrist referred to the peer review.

Cllr Davies responded to the comments made and referred to a conversation with Cllr Green in December, Cllr Green disputed how Cllr Davies portrayed this. He said he was more than happy to show the public proof that this was incorrect. He said, “To suggest anything else is not only inaccurate, but it actually puts at risk any sort of trust we can have in terms of when we actually have a meeting, whether those views will be accurately represented or not.”

Cllr Davies (Phil) said that it was his recollection of the meeting and said the “business of the Council must go on” and taunting Cllr Green by saying, “this is why Jeff is no longer Leader of the Council”. He said “I believe this is the right thing to do” and said he was “showing leadership” and that it was “the right thing to do”.

A card vote was called for. Conservative councillors voted against, Labour councillors voted for. Lib Dem councillors voted for and against. The final vote was 36 in favour, 26 against.

Item 4 was noted and Item 6 was agreed. The meeting then finished.

Cabinet 24th January 2013 (Wirral Council): Adult Social Services: The Bad Debt Saga continues

Cabinet 24th January 2013 (Wirral Council): Adult Social Services: The Bad Debt Saga continues

Following the revelation just before Christmas that Wirral Council’s Adult Social Services had £5 million of “previously unnoticed bad debt” Graham Burgess, Wirral Council’s Chief Executive had this to say to last Thursday’s Cabinet on the subject.

He said, “I’ll summarise the comments in a formal email which I’ll send out to all ward councillors. Three actions have been taken in relation to this matter, one is in order to change the system essentially of debt recoverage so we’ve stopped the leakage due to bad debt, and we are following up bad debt as fast as we can. So we’ve stopped the previous practice which led to the situation.

Secondly, we’ve got a small team staff that are actively pursuing the bad debts to bring back to the Council as much as they can of the money which is owed to the Council. As I said some of it is actually more than six years old, some of it more than five years old, more difficult to bring back to the Council, nevertheless we have to be pursuing that now.

Thirdly, simply asking to undertake a review or investigation of this matter to establish how we got in this situation and to learn lessons from it. To this end I have commissioned Eugene Sullivan who until a few weeks ago was the Chair of the national Audit Commission to undertake this investigation, to give some independence to this review.

Eugene Sullivan has started the work, is interviewing some councillors who are still here, is going through records in some depth, is speaking to the District Auditor who has a role in this process and is expected to bring a written report to Members sometime in mid-February where we’ll bring the report back to Cabinet at that stage.”

So yet more bad news on the way for Wirral Council.

Wirral Council Consultation: What Really Matters (Part 2)

An opinion piece on staff cuts at Wirral Council and the current consultation.

English: Wallasey Town Hall, Wirral, England a...
English: Wallasey Town Hall, Wirral, England as seen from the promenade. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

OPINION BY JOHN BRACE: Well as promised at last Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, Wirral Council has published its option papers for part two of the What Really Matters consultation.

As explained on the website the options are about 25% more than the savings required (so the consultation is really about the 25% of things Wirral Council does in the options the public would like to save). Despite stating on their website that the consultation lasts until January 31st 2013, some decisions will be have to be made at the special Cabinet meetings on December 20th 2012 to comply with legal requirements on consultation with the workforce.

There will be more unspecified “consultation events” and of course staff/trade union consultation too. What does this mean for staff working in service areas identified as a budget option? It means basically one of two things if you’re an employee in a service area that’s become an “option”:-

(a) you’ll could be lucky this year and end up in the 25% of options that aren’t cut, due to public/staff support in this current consultation or other reasons (but this doesn’t rule out your post being cut in future years),

(b) once the special Cabinet meeting (followed by the Employment and Appointments Committee) of 20th December 2012 meets your job could be at risk under the new (recently approved) less generous redundancy scheme

How many jobs will go at Wirral Council as a result of this? Well the law requires this kind of consultation for over twenty redundancies, the real figure partly depends on a bunch of decisions yet to be made, however if you add the predicted shortfall of £25.4 million next year to the current required in-year savings of £13.2 million, you get £38.6 million.

Obviously not all the £38.6 million will be staff’s salaries and some staff are directly employed by schools. These figures are based on full-time equivalents, as Wirral Council employs a lot of part-time workers, the real figures could be higher than this estimate.

However by my rough estimates it would be around 154 to 1,026 FT employees that will need to go to balance the books. With those types of numbers involved it won’t just the normal reasons people leave and there will have to be redundancies. The specifics of who, how many and which service areas has yet to be decided (apart from some Executive Team decisions on the current in year savings).

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Employment and Appointments Sub-Committee (Wirral Council) Appointment of a Strategic Director (Families and Wellbeing)

Report of the Employment and Appointments Sub-Committee (Wirral Council) of the 26th October 2012 in Committee Room 2, Wallasey Town Hall starting at 3pm.

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Present (6/7,3:2:1)
Employment and Appointments Sub-Committee
Committee Room 2, Wallasey Town Hall

26th October 2012 3pm

Cllr Lesley Rennie, Conservative
Cllr Jeff Green, Conservative
Cllr Patricia Williams, Liberal Democrat
Cllr Phil Davies, Labour
Cllr Ann McLachlan, Labour
Cllr Adrian Jones, Labour
Cllr George Davies (from 15:30 (agenda item 3)), Labour

Committee Services
Andrew Mossop (Committee Clerk)

Not Present (Legal adviser)
Wirral Council officers

Chris Hyams, Head of Human Resources and Organisational Development
Graham Burgess, Acting Chief Executive
David Armstrong, Deputy Chief Executive
Unknown male
Unknown female

Press/public (agenda items 1-3)
J and L Brace

The meeting originally scheduled for 3pm started at 3.06pm. There were no microphones used.

1. Appointment of Chair
Andrew Mossop asked for nominations for Chair.
Cllr Ann McLachlan proposed a nomination for Cllr Phil Davies.
Cllr Adrian Jones seconded a nomination for Cllr Phil Davies.
There was a vote on the nomination for Cllr Phil Davies for Chair by show of hands.
Andrew Mossop asked if there were any other nominations for Chair?
No other nominations for Chair were made.
Cllr Phil Davies was therefore appointed Chair of the Employment and Appointments Sub-committee (unopposed). Cllr Phil Davies got up from his seat and walked to the Chair’s chair in the room and sat down.

The Chair (Cllr Phil Davies) asked for any declarations of interest?

2. Declarations of Interest
No declarations of interest were made.

3.  Exclusion of the press and public
Cllr Phil Davies proposed the following recommendation on the advice of a Council officer:-

“That in accordance with section 100A (4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the public be excluded from the meeting during consideration of the following item of business, on the grounds that it involves the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined by the relevant paragraphs of Part 1 of Schedule 12A to that Act. The public interest test has been applied and favours exclusion.”
This was agreed.

A member of the public (the author of this blog) asked why the resolution didn’t include the paragraph/s number and asked if they were required to include theparagraph or paragraph number in the resolution?

The Chair Cllr Phil Davies said he would seek advice on the subject. He sought advice on the subject and was also given advice by Cllr Jeff Green that it was paragraph 1. His resolution was amended to:-

“That in accordance with section 100A (4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the public be excluded from the meeting during consideration of the following item of business, on the grounds that it involves the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined by the paragraph 1 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A to that Act. The public interest test has been applied and favours exclusion.”
The amended resolution was put to the vote and agreed. The press and public were excluded for agenda item 4 (Appointment of Strategic Director: Families and Wellbeing).

The public made their way to the door to leave the room.
Cllr George Davies arrives.
The public left the room.

Agenda Item 4 Appointment of Strategic Director: Families and Wellbeing

The councillors now including the late Cllr George Davies considered the applications for the new post of Strategic Director (Families and Wellbeing).

The following resolution was agreed:

That the following 5 candidates be long listed for the next stage of the selection process which shall be for officer interviews on Tuesday, 13 November – candidate numbers, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Transcript

Andrew Mossop: any nominations for the Chair?

Cllr Ann McLachlan: I nominate Phil Davies.

Andrew Mossop: Chair, err, Cllr Phil Davies, is that seconded?

Cllr Adrian Jones: Yes.

Andrew Mossop: Are there any other nominations?

Cllr Phil Davies: Right, OK, err folks, … see you’re busy…errm Item 2 this is a standing item, Members Code of Conduct Declarations of Interest. Has anyone wish to declare any interests?

No, OK, no interests, errm, item 3, is item for you to agree the exemption to exclude the members of the public from the meeting. Is that agreed?

Various councillors: Agreed.

John Brace: Sorry, there are no reasons in it, but the case law says there has to be reference to a paragraph, so errm is it possible to give the reasons,

Cllr Phil Davies:

John Brace: that’s supposed to be in the resolution you passed you see but unfortunately it’s missing from the agenda.

Cllr Phil Davies:
Cllr Jeff Green: on the basis of paragraph 1, I can suggest we actually go carry forward the exemption.

Cllr Phil Davies: So we should agree on the basis of paragraph 1?

John Brace: Is that agreed on paragraph 1?

Cllr Phil Davies: Is that agreed on the basis of paragraph 1?