Tag: Liverpool City Council

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

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
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.

There are a series of FOI requests to Liverpool City Council on the whatdotheyknow website here, here and here that give further information on this matter.

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What connects “persons interested”, Tharmathevy Thanabalasingam and Liverpool City Council?

What connects “persons interested”, Tharmathevy Thanabalasingam and Liverpool City Council?

What connects "persons interested", Tharmathevy Thanabalasingam and Liverpool City Council?

                                                           

As regular readers of this blog will know, I exercised my Audit Commission Act 1998, s.15(1) right to inspect invoices and contracts at Merseytravel (now part of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority), Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority, Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority (who go by the public name of Merseyside Recycling & Waste Authority) and Wirral Council for the 2014/15 financial year.

This ties in with a right under Audit Commission Act 1998, s.15(2) as a local government elector can then ask the auditor questions.

It’s well established that "persons interested" in Audit Commission Act 1998, s.15(1) means local government electors for the public body concerned.

The problem however came with my request to Liverpool City Council, as I’m not a local government elector in the Liverpool City Council area. Case law has determined that “interested person” (a term sadly not defined in the legislation itself) is a wider group than just local government electors.

R (HTV Ltd) v Bristol City Council [2004] 1 WLR 2717 is an interesting case that as far as I know isn’t available online so I looked it up in the university law library. I’ll refer to R (HTV Ltd) v Bristol City Council [2004] 1 WLR 2717 [24], [25], [39], [49] and [50] as it goes into the legislative history of who is considered an “interested person”.

"The authorities

24. The concept of “persons interested” has received very little consideration by the courts. In Marginson v Tildsley (1963) 67 JP 226 the appellant was a member of the Fleetwood urban authority for 20 years before he became bankrupt and was disqualified from the council. He sought the right to inspect the accounts under the Public Health Act 1875. He preferred an information against the clerk of the council alleging that the clerk had wrongly refused him access to the accounts. The justices dismissed the information but their decision was overturned on appeal. Lord Alvertstone CJ held that he was a person interested because although no longer a member of the council, the possibility that his estate could be liable for any surcharge rendered him a person interested.

25. In the later case of R v Bedwellty Urban District Council, Ex p Price [1934] 1 KB 333 the court held that a person interested was entitled to inspect the accounts by an agent, who in that case was his accountant. It was argued that the accountant was a person interested in his own right, but the point did not have to be determined and Avory J expressly left it open.

39. He also referred me to a passage in Jones, Local Government Audit Law, 2nd ed (1985), ch 8. The last edition of this valuable book was sadly in 1985. But in a discussion on the meaning of the concept of a “person interested”, the author expressed the view that the right was attached to any person who had a financial interest in the accounts, as well as somebody with a legal interest, such as a local government elector who has the legal right of objection.

49. I think it is somewhat artificial to say that non-domestic ratepayers do not contribute to the local authority’s budget. Although their contributions are channelled through, and will be subject to, redistribution by central government – the income will be received indirectly by the authority as a grant from central government – nevertheless I think this gives them a sufficient interest in inspecting the accounts and satisfying themselves as far as they can that they are in order. In my view, this is reinforced by the fact that they had the right for their representatives to be consulted on expenditure decisions.

50. I consider that these factors together give them a real and close interest in the council’s activities sufficient to confer these rights upon them. I would, moreover, be reluctant to think that this right, which undoubtedly existed until the Local Government Finance Act 1988, had been removed as a consequence of the restructuring of local government finances in that year. It follows that in my view the claimant is a "person interested" within the section."

 

So from the above I can gather that the concept of "interested person" means:

  • local government electors (which for Liverpool City Council at the last election I estimate at around ~320,000 local government electors)
  • former politicians of that public body (although as I think the ability to surcharge councillors has been repealed this may not apply in most circumstances)
  • those assisting local government electors such as accountants
  • as the R (HTV Ltd) v Bristol City Council [2004] 1 WLR 2717 case above established a company or business based in the area covered by the public body that pays business rates (or by its more formal term of non-domestic rates)

However according to Liverpool City Council my request was refused because as far as they see it, I don’t fall into one of the above categories.

I do however have a legal interest in 22 of the invoices I requested as I made a FOI request for them on the 14th May 2015. Liverpool City Council refused to supply a copy of the invoices and also refused at internal review. I exercised my right under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, s.50 to complain to the regulator (the Information Commissioner’s Office about this) on the 31st July 2015 and a decision by ICO is awaited.

Some ICO decision notices take a much wider view as to the definition of “interested person”. This decision notice (FS50582149) at part of paragraph 62 states (ACA 1998 refers to the Audit Commission Act 1998):

"As stated in paragraphs 24 and 25 above, the ACA 1998 provides a right of access to inspect accounting information for their local authority to any local government elector and ‘any persons interested’. Although the term ‘interested person’ is not defined within the ACA 1998, the Audit Commission suggest the term must refer to an individual who has a legal or financial interest in the accounts which would include local government electors, non-domestic rate payers and those with a financial or contractual relationship with the Council or those in receipt of services from the Council."
 

Keen followers of local government will know that the Audit Commission doesn’t exist any more, however if the Liverpool City Council shared the view of the now defunct Audit Commission that an "interested person" as was someone "in receipt of services from the Council" then I certainly fall into that category!

I regularly walk on Liverpool’s roads (maintained by Liverpool City Council), have made at least one Freedom of Information Act request to Liverpool City Council and have filmed public meetings of Liverpool City Council starting with this one of the Constitutional Issues Committee on the 8th September 2014 last year (there have been a number I’ve filmed since the Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014 forced Liverpool City Council to remove the anti-filming public meetings section in their constitution).

However, this is going off the point a little and the next point will sound like an arcane legal point. I can’t request permission from a High Court Judge for judicial review of Liverpool City Council’s decision to refuse inspection/copies of the invoices under the audit legislation that relate to the FOI request. Why is that? That’s because it would be refused due to the existing right of appeal to ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office).

I would guess that if permission for judicial review was applied for, a High Court Judge would refuse permission to the part of the request to Liverpool City Council under the audit legislation that relates to the 22 invoices that pertain to the earlier FOI request on those grounds. This is because part 5 of the Pre-Application Protocol for Judicial Review makes it clear that "Judicial review should only be used where no adequate alternative remedy, such as a right of appeal, is available."

It is far better to establish the principle of whether the invoices are able to requested through FOI requests through an ICO decision notice. However before Liverpool City Council did a U-turn and realised I wasn’t a local government elector I did get copies of 7 invoices for its legal costs (the first of which is at the end of this article).

There will be a delay getting editorial approval with the other six as Liverpool City Council have done an extremely bad job at redacting some of the information. One of the invoices relates to a Family Court matter that it probably be unlawful for me to publish in its present form as the names of the parents and a child are clearly visible. Those more well versed in data protection law could perhaps leave a well-informed comment on why giving out such detail to a member of the public ain’t a good idea.

As usual the thumbnails are linked to higher resolution images for each page.

I would make an educated guess that the invoice below relates to a decision of Liverpool City Council’s Licensing and Gambling Sub-Committee on the 30th July 2014 to revoke the licence for Kenny Food & Wine at 237 Kensington, Liverpool 7.

There’s a right of appeal of decisions of such committees (a Licensing and Gambling Sub-Committee is composed of councillors and meets in public) to the local magistrate court. The premises licence holder’s name is Tharmathevy Thanabalasingam (which is published in the report to that committee).

The Liverpool City Council solicitor this invoice went to is Mr. P Merriman. He’s the licensing, gaming and betting solicitor at Liverpool City Council.

Mr David Hercock of Six Pump Court is a barrister. The invoice is for £2,400 (£2000 + VAT).

Liverpool City Council invoice David Hercock Six Pump Court 28 January 2015 page 1 of 2 thumbnail
Liverpool City Council invoice David Hercock Six Pump Court 28 January 2015 page 1 of 2 thumbnail
Liverpool City Council invoice David Hercock Six Pump Court 28 January 2015 page 2 of 2 thumbnail
Liverpool City Council invoice David Hercock Six Pump Court 28 January 2015 page 2 of 2 thumbnail

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What are the changes next year to the public's right to inspect documents of public bodies during the audit?

What are the changes next year to the public’s right to inspect documents of public bodies during the audit?

What are the changes next year to the public’s right to inspect documents of public bodies during the audit?

                                             

Wirral Council lease Neptune Wirral Limited Neptune Developments Limited Neptune Projects Limited 20th June 2011 for New Brighton Phase II draft car parking management plan page 2 of 2
Wirral Council lease Neptune Wirral Limited Neptune Developments Limited Neptune Projects Limited 20th June 2011 for New Brighton Phase II draft car parking management plan page 2 of 2

Above is one of the documents I requested under the 2013/14 audit last year, which is a page of a lease that Wirral Council have with Neptune that states that if Wirral Council introduce car parking in the Fort Perch Rock car park, then charges can be introduced in the free car parks part of the Marine Point development.

Each year for the past few years I have exercised a right you get to exercise only for three weeks each year, which is a right under section 15 of the Audit Commission Act 1998 to inspect documents relating to the previous financial year (2014/15) during the audit.

This has in years gone past has been the only way to see such financial information and to give one example of a story that resulted in many interesting stories on this blog (ranging from councillor’s expenses and taxis to an unsigned contract for a million pounds worth of work).

This year I have exercised my s.15 right not just with Wirral Council, but with Liverpool City Council, Merseytravel, the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority and the Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority.

A couple of weeks before the three-week period when the public can inspect these documents each of these bodies has to publish a public notice in a newspaper that circulates in the area covered by that body. The regulations also require each body to publish this notice on their website. Wirral Council’s notice can be found on their website here.

To save myself trekking off to Birkenhead Central library and spending an afternoon going through back issues of the local newspapers trying to find the public notices, I found this website that has a searchable database of all public notices published by the Trinity Mirror group.

All of the notices (apart from the Merseytravel one) had a name of someone at that public body who I wrote to (whether by letter or by email). In the case of Merseytravel I wrote to the Chief Executive, who passed my request on to the person at Merseytravel dealing with it.

So far the responses have been as follows:

Merseytravel – dates of Monday 27th July 2015/Tuesday 28th July 2015 agreed to come in and inspect the documents. They have a “paperless office”, but will be printing off copies of the invoices/contracts I requested so their legal department can redact parts of them.

Merseyside Waste and Recycling Authority – dates of Friday 24th July and Wednesday 29th July 2015 have been agreed to come in and inspect documents.

Liverpool City Council – email sent yesterday, no reply received yet

Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority – email sent and acknowledged on the 15th July 2015, no further reply received since

Wirral Council – email sent with request for contracts & councillor expenses on 19th July 2015, reply received yesterday, list of invoices sent this morning, no reply received yet or date/s arranged

Next year, any right of access to invoices and contracts will be under the new section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014.

The main differences will be next year that a new ground of refusing a request on grounds of “commercial confidentiality” has been added in to the legislation unless there is an “overriding public interest in favour of its disclosure”.

This puts on a statutory footing the Veolia case, see [2010] EWCA Civ 1214 if you’re curious about what I mean.

The new section 26 also means that determinations about what is “personal information” on documents (therefore not open to inspection) will in future be made by the public body themselves and not the situation at present of the public body having to get agreement from their external auditor to this. It does make it crystal clear that the names of sole traders on invoices is not covered by the definition of “personal information” and defines “personal information” as “identifies a particular individual or enables a particular individual to be identified”. The restriction on information about the public body’s staff remains in section 26 next year.

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Should all Liverpool City Council councillors have had a vote on a £110,000 "golden goodbye" for the former Director of Public Health?

Should all Liverpool City Council councillors have had a vote on a £110,000 “golden goodbye” for the former Director of Public Health?

Should all Liverpool City Council councillors have had a vote on a £110,000 “golden goodbye” for the former Director of Public Health?

                                                            

Mayor Joe Anderson responds on the issue of green spaces in Liverpool 8th April 2015
Mayor Joe Anderson (Chair of the Appointments Panel), Liverpool City Council 8th April 2015

For those with long memories going back to 2012, you will remember a number of Wirral Council’s chief officers were suspended, but left Wirral Council with large payouts. One example (of many) was Bill Norman (the former Monitoring Officer/Head of Law, HR and Asset Management) leaving at a cost of £151,416.

Those with even longer memories will remember that two senior managers in Wirral Council’s Social Services department left the employment of Wirral Council the day before the Anna Klonowski Associates report was published at a cost of £109,496.45 for the Head of Support Services (Finance Department) and Assistant Director, Head of Wellbeing (Department of Adult Social Services) at a cost of £111,042.95 .

There was a certain degree of public anger that in the case of these last two councillors were not directly involved in the decision. Outrage at the amount involved led to a change to Wirral Council’s constitution, so councillors did decide whether to agree to a compromise contract in Bill Norman’s case. This also led to changes at the national level.

The Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP wrote to all leaders of local councils in England in February 2013, you can read read his letter here which contained the following on what should happen with regards to large severance payments.

  • Full Council should also be given the opportunity to vote on severance payments over £100,000. Many believe that pay-offs to senior local government staff are excessive and too frequent. The Localism Act brings out into the open the approach taken to severance across the sector. There is a clear case for going further and ensuring that, as well as approving their authority’s policy on severance, Members are able to consider each time it is proposed to spend local taxpayers’ money on a large pay-off.

    This follows on from my announcement in November 2012 where I said that I intend to remove the costly and bureaucratic requirement for a designated independent person to investigate allegations of misconduct by senior officers from the Local Authorities (Standing Orders) (England) Regulations 2001. I am currently consulting with the Local Government Association and others on the draft regulations to give effect to these changes.

Accompanying Eric Pickles’ letter was guidance, which section 40 of the Localism Act 2011 stated that “A relevant authority in England must, in performing its functions under section 38 or 39, have regard to any guidance issued or approved by the Secretary of State.” Sections 38 and 39 of the Localism Act 2011 relate to pay policy statements.

At Liverpool City Council’s Budget meeting of the 5th March 2014, the pay policy for 2014/15 was agreed. The bit about large severance payments is phrased in an interesting way:

6.6(ii) Guidance issued by the Department for Communities and Local Government on severance payment puts forward a case for offering full Council the opportunity to vote on severance packages above a certain threshold and that is placed at £100k. Full Council delegates this function to the Council’s Appointments Panel. Council does so, on the basis that such delegation facilitates compliance with Data Protection legislation in respect of the entitlement to privacy of the individual concerned without prejudicing transparency as that is achieved by the City Council ensuring compliance with Access to Information Rules, Legislation and all accounting requirements placed upon the Authority.

    In other words instead of following the guidance and giving all councillors a vote at Liverpool City Council on severance payments over £100,000 and the requirement in section 40 of the Localism Act 2011 to have regard to the guidance when drawing up their pay policy statement, Liverpool City Council decided just to do things differently.

    Buried on page 82 of Liverpool City Council’s statement of accounts for 2014/15 it shows a payment of £110,000 was made for “compensation for loss of employment” to Liverpool City Council’s Director of Public Health who left on the 6th April 2014.

    So did the Appointments Panel at Liverpool City Council decide on this? The meeting of the Appointments Panel of Monday 24th February 2014 (the one directly before to the Director of Public Health leaving in April 2014) curiously has no agenda and no minutes published on Liverpool City Council’s website.

    The supplementary guidance issued in 2013 had this to state on the subject of large severance payments.

    Severance payments

    11. There has been a great deal of public scrutiny of the level of severance payments awarded to senior local government staff and rightly so. Authorities should ensure that they manage their workforces in a way that best delivers best value for money for local taxpayers and sets the right example on restraint. This includes any payments offered to staff leaving the authority.

    12. Authorities are already required to publish their policies on severance for chief officers 5 and their policy on discretionary compensation for relevant staff in the event of redundancy. 6 In addition, other regulations provide for disclosure of remuneration of senior employees including details of severance payments within authorities’ annual statement of accounts. 7

    13. Taken together, these measures enable greater scrutiny of the money spent by authorities on severance. However, given continuing public concern about the level and frequency of such payments, there is a case for going further to ensure that decisions to spend local taxpayers’ money on large pay-offs are subject to appropriate levels of accountability. Authorities should, therefore, offer full council (or a meeting of members in the case of fire authorities) the opportunity to vote before large severance packages beyond a particular threshold are approved for staff leaving the organisation. As with salaries on appointment, the Secretary of State considers that £100,000 is the right level for that threshold to be set.

    14. In presenting information to full council, authorities should set out clearly the components of relevant severance packages. These components may include salary paid in lieu, redundancy compensation, pension entitlements, holiday pay and any bonuses, fees or allowances paid.

    15. This follows on from the Secretary of State’s announcement 8 that he intends to remove the costly and bureaucratic requirement for a designated independent person to investigate allegations of misconduct by senior officers from the Local Authorities (Standing Orders) (England) Regulations 2001. We are currently consulting with the Local Government Association and others on the draft regulations to give effect to these changes.

    So according to the guidance, should all of Liverpool City Council councillors had a vote on the £110,000 payment to the former Director of Public Health along with a published breakdown as to how this £110,000 figure was arrived at?

    Why is the agenda (and minutes if it met) of the public meeting of Liverpool City Council’s Appointments Panel immediately prior the Director of Public Health not available?

    Why state in the pay policy about “respect of the entitlement to privacy of the individual concerned” when there is legislation requiring such payments to senior officers to be included in the statement of accounts anyway (see Regulation 7(3)(iv) of the Accounts and Audit (England) Regulations 2011)?

    Doesn’t this all seem to show that when the Coalition government tried to improve transparency and accountability in this area that Liverpool City Council just blatantly decide to carry on what it was doing before regardless of what the new guidance stated?

    Does anyone know if following consultation with the Local Government Association and others whether regulations about this area came into force (if so what are they called) or was guidance considered sufficient?

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    Mayor Joe Anderson responds to green space protestors "I’ve got news for you I’m going to stand again [as Mayor]"

    Mayor Joe Anderson responds to green space protestors “I’ve got news for you I’m going to stand again [as Mayor]”

    Mayor Joe Anderson responds to green space protestors “I’ve got news for you I’m going to stand again [as Mayor]”

                                                                     

    Protest outside Liverpool Town Hall 8th April 2015
    Protest outside Liverpool Town Hall 8th April 2015

    About three dozen people protested outside Liverpool Town Hall yesterday ahead of a meeting of Liverpool City Council councillors. The protest was about opposing any plans to build on green space land and against Liverpool City Council selling off any green space land to developers.

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    One of the protestors from a group called Save Our Green Spaces Liverpool addressed the meeting and said, “Firstly, we want to ask the Council and the Mayor once again to respect the views of local people and our communities and not just listen to their preferred developers whose objectives seem to be for short-term economic gain at Liverpool’s long-term expense.”

    She asked for new housing to be built on brownfield sites and not green space sites and said “As a Labour run Council, it is your duty to look to the benefit of your constituents and listen to their views and to keep the lungs of our city in our parks and open spaces.

    We would also hope finally that in the Mayor’s final year he would want his legacy to be the introduction of building thousands of homes by the Council, affordable homes for its people on brownfield sites, rather than being remembered for building homes for the elite on places like Sefton Park Meadows.”

    Mayor Joe Anderson responds on the issue of green spaces in Liverpool 8th April 2015
    Mayor Joe Anderson responds on the issue of green spaces in Liverpool 8th April 2015

    Mayor Joe Anderson (pictured above) said that the protestors were “coming together in an alliance with the Greens and the Liberal Democrats to cause political mischief”. He claimed that “over the last four years, 167 sites totalling more than 100 acres have been created or improved within this city. We’ve now got more green space in this city than we’ve ever had in the history of this city, more green space now than we’ve ever had.”

    He finished by saying, “We’re not in the hands of anybody, we’re in the hands of the people of this city and it’s they who will decide. Let’s see and let me tell you one thing Janet you said in my last year as Mayor, well I’ve got news for you I’m going to stand again!”

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