Tag: Martin Morton

12 Questions for the Wirral Council/LGA Improvement Board

12 Questions for the Wirral Council/LGA Improvement Board

12 Questions for the Wirral Council/LGA Improvement Board

                                

The Wirral Council/Local Government Association Improvement Board is asking for questions to its meeting on Friday. Here are a few unanswered questions.

Q1. The final report of Anna Klonowski Associates Limited was published as part of the Cabinet agenda of the 12th January 2012. Wirral Council also received from Anna Klonowski Associates sixteen appendices (listed below), which apart from appendix G (Standards for England Decision notices) have not been published. Whereas there are strong reasons not to publish appendix L (Medical Information Relating to Martin Morton provided in confidence), if Wirral Council is now “open and transparent” when will the other fourteen appendices be published?

A Appendices as Referred to in the Report
B Equality & Human Rights Commission Letter Dated 29 December 2010
C First Improvement Plan
D Care Quality Commission Inspection Report
E Charging Policy for Supported Living Services
F Documents Relating to 27 Balls Road
G Standards for England Decision Notices
H Documents Relating to Reimbursement Claims
I Emails Relating to Supported Living Contracts
J Documents Relating to Service Provider 2
K Documents Relating to Service Provider 3
L Medical Information Relating to Martin Morton (MEDICAL IN CONFIDENCE)
M Documents Relating to Service Provider 4
N Minutes of Adult Protection Strategy Meetings Relating to Service Provider 4
O Documents Relating to the Safeguarding Adults Unit
P Minutes of the DASS Monitoring & Development Sub Group Meeting Held on 11 December 2008
Q Employment Dates for WMBC Employees

Q2. On the 14th April 2011 Cabinet resolved with regards to the Martin Smith report decided that “at the conclusion of all the necessary internal processes Mr Smith’s report be made public”. On the 12th January 2012 Martin Smith’s report was published, however all the names (presumably of Wirral Council officers and councillors) contained within the reported were redacted before publication. Is publishing the redacted (rather than full) report complying with the spirit of the earlier Cabinet decision? Will Wirral Council to publish an unredacted version of the Martin Smith report?

Q3. Martin Smith’s remit was to “seek to establish whether Martin Morton was subject to any bullying or other inappropriate behaviour by any officer or Elected Member, or by the Council as an organisation, and to present a report on my findings”. Presumably considering his remit some of the blacked out names in his report would be the names of councillors. As councillors are accountable to the people of Wirral, how can the people of Wirral hold their elected representatives to account unless the Martin Smith report is published including the names of councillors in it?

Q4. Bearing in mind questions one to three, does the Improvement Board understand that because of the obfuscation referred to, that the Wirral public will find it hard to believe that Wirral Council has changed when there are so many unanswered questions surrounding these events due to the lack of transparency and accountability?

Q5. The Standards Committee of Monday 4th July 2011 discussed an administrative error that had occurred in dealing with the standards complaint made by Martin Morton made regarding Cllrs Roberts, McLaughlin, Pat Williams and Bridson. He had initially made a complaint about Cllrs Roberts, McLaughlin and Pat Williams, but had replaced this with a more detailed complaint involving Cllrs Roberts, McLaughlin, Pat Williams and Bridson. This second complaint mysteriously vanished from Wirral Council’s files. A public apology was made at the time by the Monitoring Officer to Martin Morton and the councillors who were the subject of the complaint. Did any Wirral councillors have access to the revised complaint prior to its disappearance from Wirral Council’s files if so who were they?

Q6. A separate and unrelated complaint about one of the four councillors referred to in question five (ref SfE 2010/02) was decided on the 20th December 2010. However the covering report sent to the panel which decided was incorrectly titled “Report of the Monitoring Officer – Case Reference 2010/03” . This report to the panel also omitted that the original complaint referred to an alleged breach of 6(a) of the Code of Conduct. As an apology was given for an administrative error to the complainant referred to in question 5, will an apology for this administrative error be given to the complainants of complaint reference SfE 2010/02 and the subject of the complaint?

Q7. In the review report it states “it is proposed to strengthen the independent nature of the Audit and Risk Management Committee through the appointment of a majority of external members”. How many independent members of the Audit and Risk Management Committee will be appointed, who will they be appointed by and will the Audit and Risk Management Committee be chaired in future by one of these independent members?

Q8. The Strategic Director for Regeneration and the Environment Kevin Adderley has been mysteriously absent of late from recent public meetings at Wirral Council. Can a reason be given for this to quash (or confirm) the rumours circulating as to the reasons why?

Q9. Although Wirral Council is meeting its target of responding to 85% of Freedom of Information Act requests within twenty days during the Information Commissioner Office’s monitoring period, a greater proportion of Freedom of Information Act requests have been turned down. If memory serves me correctly, this has been achieved by dedicating greater human resources to responding to Freedom of Information Act requests. This raises the questions, are these resources temporary and only for the Information Commissioner Office’s monitoring period (and if so how will the current performance be maintained once these resources are withdrawn) and how does refusing a greater proportion of Freedom of Information Act requests tally with the administration’s stated desire to be more “open and transparent”?

Q10. The reports into whistleblowing allegations raised about Wirral Council’s BIG (business investment grants) and ISUS (Intensive Startup Support) have both not been published in full despite being received by Wirral Council in the Spring of this year. The Executive Summary to the Grant Thornton report into the BIG scheme was published by Wirral Council on the 15th July (the companies referred to in the Executive Summary were anonymised). If the Executive Summary to the ISUS report follows the same format as the BIG report and has also been anonymised, why has this not been published also?

Q11. The recommendation at the end of the review into the Improvement Board’s work recommends a review by the end of the year, ending the work of the Improvement Board and the Council following the next steps recommendations in the report. Does the Improvement Board think that the Corporate Governance Committee should be reconstituted to ensure sufficient oversight by councillors of the work identified in the “Next Steps” section?

Q12. a) Are the LGA members of the Improvement Board financially renumerated for their work on the Improvement Board?
b) Is Wirral Council invoiced by the LGA for the Improvement Board’s work?
c) If the answer to (a) or (b) is yes, could amounts be given (whether exact or approximate) of the total cost to Wirral Council over the lifespan of the Improvement Board?

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Thousands of pounds spent by Wirral Council on legal advice for safeguarding and Salisbury Independent Living

Thousands of pounds spent by Wirral Council on legal advice for safeguarding and Salisbury Independent Living

Thousands of pounds spent by Wirral Council on legal advice for safeguarding and Salisbury Independent Living

                                                                                                              

A comment left yesterday by Paul Cardin made me think about three legal invoices which seem to be (at least it seems reasonable to assume) tied in with issues raised during Martin Morton’s whistle blowing.

SIL on this invoice stands for Salisbury Independent Living (who was service provider 3 in the Anna Klonowski Associates Ltd report). Ninety-five pages of her two hundred and forty-nine page report were about Salisbury Independent Living. In stark contrast to the other invoices for thousands of pounds, this is for £360 representing 2.5 hours of an associate’s time on “financial abuse”. Unless this was independent legal advice to someone who was overcharged by Wirral Council, you wonder why it wouldn’t have been cheaper to do this in-house instead.

However, Wirral Council isn’t always so frugal in cases involving disabled adults. This interim invoice comes to £3,024 for “adult safeguarding advice” for one person from August to October of last year.

Morris Hill of Weightmans was also involved with legal work for Wirral Council in [2012] WLR(D) 31, [2012] EWCA Civ 84, [2012] PTSR 1221, a Court of Appeal case between Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council and Salisbury Independent Living Ltd which Wirral Council won. The case was about a claim by Salisbury Independent Living Ltd that Wirral Council owed them £3 million and was an appeal from [2011] UKUT 44 (AAC) this earlier decision. There’s also a further invoice for £8,017.20 concerning Salisbury Independent Living.

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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) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution | Conservative Leader Cllr Jeff Green responds “We remember the libraries, we remember Martin Morton, we remember what you did in closing care homes, we will make sure that these issues are publicly debated whether the Labour Party likes it or not”

Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 Cllr Jeff Green (Conservative Leader) responds to Labour’s proposed changes to the constitution with HD Video “We remember the libraries, we remember Martin Morton, we remember what you did in closing care homes, we will make sure that these issues are publicly debated whether the Labour Party likes it or not.”

Continued from Council (Extraordinary) (Wirral Council) 30th April 2013 | Revisions to the Constitution Cllr Phil Davies (Labour) speaks for the revisions | Cllr Jeff Green (Conservative) against

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Council (Extraordinary) Meeting, Council Chamber, 30th April 2013, Part 3 (Revisions to the Constitution) Conservative Leader Cllr Jeff Green responds

Cllr Jeff Green: “We remember the libraries, we remember Martin Morton, we remember what you did in closing care homes, we will make sure that these issues are publicly debated whether the Labour Party likes it or not.”

Extraordinary Council 30th April 2013 Cllr Jeff Green revisions to the Constitution Wirral Council

Cllr Jeff Green said the changes would make it less possible for Martin Morton to blow the whistle under the new arrangements and to have it discussed. He said that although [the existing Constitution] didn’t stop it, it did put it on the record and gave them a chance to do something about it. Cllr Green said the changes would stop them even having a debate asking the Administration to explain themselves, which was partly why the Conservatives thought getting rid of scrutiny committees was “inappropriate”. He expressed his concerns about child protection, to a heckle of Luddite from the Labour benches.

Cllr Green said he was supportive of Area Forums, he had asked for a report on them six months ago at the Leaders Board, however the Chief Executive had never felt it appropriate to bring it back to be discussed. The report had gone to Cabinet instead of seeking all party support. Cllr Green felt the process used had been deliberate in an attempt to try to cause division. He felt the proposals hadn’t been thought through, were unclear and that the new area committees would receive a far meagre sum of money [than the existing Area Forums].

On the changes to Council meetings, Cllr Green felt the Administration would ask officers to write a two-sided report, which councillors could then ask questions on. He said that the councillors wouldn’t get an immediate answer, wouldn’t be allowed to ask a supplementary, but at the end the Cabinet Member would answer all the questions in five minutes.

Cllr Green was also concerned about removing the right of councillors to place on the agenda and have issues debated. He had asked how many other Councils don’t allow councillors to do this and had been told “not very many”. He claimed it was only on Wirral that there was a tendency to “pull power to oneself” and “to sweep any opportunity for backbenchers at all to raise issues and have them debated”. Cllr Green finished by saying, “We remember the libraries, we remember Martin Morton, we remember what you did in closing care homes, we will make sure that these issues are publicly debated whether the Labour Party likes it or not.”

Following the Court Order of 18th April 2012 and a Lib Dem smear: My response

Following the Birkenhead County Court order of 18th April 2012 naming Cllr Alan Brighouse on behalf of the Birkenhead Liberal Democrats granted by Deputy District Judge Ireland following the court hearing of the 4th April 2012, the Lib Dems have finally coughed up the original complaint (not shared with me until now 12 months later, despite their constitution stating 10 weeks) made about me by Simon Holbrook in May 2011 (after he lost his seat). I’ve sought advice and am making parts of it public (as there’s a public interest to at least parts of it being made public), along with my version of events (which seems far closer to reality than his complaint, my comments are in italics). Here’s section 1:-

“1. Smearing of Sitting Councillors

In an email to Cllr Gilchrist dated 19 May 2011 at 09:59, John Brace did link the Standards investigation into Cllr Williams’ and Cllr Bridson’s part in the “special charging policy” with that of the recent investigation into the way in which Martin Morton was treated, despite the fact these are two separate matters.

Cllr Williams and Cllr Bridson are not and were not under investigation into the alleged bullying of Martin Morton. This investigation, which was instigated by former Cllr Holbrook has now concluded and reported. It never was and never had been a matter for the Standards Board for England.”

As is detailed here it was considered twice by the Standards Board for England, as initially the complaint about Cllr Bridson hadn’t been sent to them. The complaint (or complaints as a second was submitted) were made by Martin Morton and had already been reported in the Wirral Globe under the headline Town hall blunder: Wrong paperwork sent to local government watchdog inquiry prior to Simon’s complaint about me.

One of these two councillors had been on the charging policy working group in 2005 that led to the overcharging policy, the other had been Cabinet Member for Social Care and Inclusion (which covers Social Services) during part of the period that the overcharging occurred.

The report referred to, the Martin Smith report, was reported to Cabinet on 14th April 2011, however it was not made public until the following year due to the Labour administration’s attempts to delay both its publication and the AKA report.

The relevant section of my email of 19th May to Cllr Gilchrist (and Cllrs Williams, Brighouse, Kelly, Bridson, Harney, Gilchrist, Mitchell and two other party members), is quoted below.

“Morale in the party is extremely low, the Chair and the Vice-Chair of the local party are currently (according to the Wirral Globe) under investigation on standards grounds following a decision by Wirral Council’s Independent Assessment Panel to refer the matter to Standards for England regarding their roles in the Social Services “special charging policy” and how Martin Morton was treated. This independent report (by now read by councillors but currently exempt) will be published within 2-5 months and will lead to a public discussion of their roles in this saga. Both are likely to be candidates in 2012 and the full reasons how and why they did things will have to be made clear to the public and party in the spirit of openness and accountability if we are to move on.”

Lastly Simon Holbrook refers to himself in the third person, which generally wouldn’t be the case if as claimed he was the author of the complaint. However it’s clear by the way it was written that somebody wanted me to stop asking questions by the way flat out denials were made regarding the standards complaints.

The decision notice of Standards Board for England with regards to Cllr Williams and Cllr Bridson back me up as to what the complaint was about. As it was re referred back to Standards for England following the paperwork mixup, there are earlier decision notices regarding Cllr Williams, Roberts and McLaughlin too.