What did a Government Internal Audit Agency draft report reveal about Wirral Council procurement processes and how a contractor spent public money?
What did a Government Internal Audit Agency draft report reveal about Wirral Council procurement processes and how a contractor spent public money?
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” – George Bernard Shaw
Why did a ferris wheel in New Brighton and a Wirral Globe article about it disappear?
Why did a ferris wheel in New Brighton and a Wirral Globe article about it disappear?
With spin machines in overdrive on the second of two election cycles this year, how about a story about the New Brighton Wheel?
Regular readers of this blog will be aware that the issue of Wirral Council charging for car parking on Fort Perch Rock car park has been a political issue in the recent past which led to a U-turn by Wirral Council on the issue of charging.
Relatively recently part of the Fort Perch Rock car park (owned by Wirral Council) was cordoned off for a ferris wheel and associated facilities run by a limited company.
The Chief Executive of Wilkie Leisure Group Limited, who manages a business close to the Fort Perch Rock car park had concerns about how Wirral Council had run the tendering process for the ferris wheel.
He instructed Kirwans Solicitors (David Kirwan is a former councillor at Wirral Council) to help Wilkie Leisure Group Limited with Wirral Council.
Stories now differ between the different parties to this matter as to why the wheel came down when it did.
The following two quotes are from a press release about the matter.
In a recent letter from Wirral Council to Wilkie Leisure Group Limited, Wirral Council’s Assistant Chief Executive and Director for Business Services (referred to as Mr Amstrong) is quoted as writing,
“Mr Armstrong recognises your client’s long standing contribution to the attractions of New Brighton.
Liverpool Fair Ltd have been granted an extension of their contractual licence to 11 pm on 6/5/17.
They must begin the safe removal of their equipment on 7/5/17. Any further use of the site for the Big Wheel is dependent on the grant of planning permission and a decision by the Council as landowner that it would be an appropriate use of the site.
The Council’s Contract Procedure Rules would apply to any procurement that might then follow.”
David Wilkie wrote, “While I am pleased that Wirral Council has acknowledged its failure to follow the correct tendering processes, I am sorry for the people of New Brighton and the surrounding areas that, thanks to that failure, they will now lose an attraction that all should have been able to enjoy.
It is crucial for local businesses such as ours, which has passed through three generations, that councils conduct fair and just procedural processes through which all businesses can bid. This is a reminder that they have a responsibility to do just that.”
The related court matter has been discontinued due to the removal of the Wheel, but the corporate governance concerns raised by it related to both planning permission and whether Wirral Council had followed their own rules in how the licence was awarded.
Certainly since the removal of the wheel there has been an accusation that the Wirral Council spin machine has entered spin mode. Both the Wheel and the Wirral Globe article about it have both disappeared!
If you click on any of the buttons below, you’ll be doing me a favour by sharing this result with other people.
EXCLUSIVE: Wirral Council spent £16,412.04 on legal advice for Birkenhead Town Centre regeneration
EXCLUSIVE: Wirral Council spent £16,412.04 on legal advice for Birkenhead Town Centre regeneration
Invoices published below for the first time today show that Wirral Council spent £16,412.04 with Weightmans on legal advice on proposals for redevelopment of Birkenhead Town Centre. Advice was given by Weightmans to Wirral Council on the preferred development agreement (later referred to as a lock out agreement) with developers Neptune Developments Limited.
Wirral Council’s Cabinet agreed last month to consult staff at Europa Pools, which might be relocated as part of the regeneration proposals.
If you click on any of these buttons below, you’ll be doing me a favour by sharing this article with other people. Thanks:
Consultants, golf, politicians and Wirral Council: What could possibly go wrong?
Consultants, golf, politicians and Wirral Council: What could possibly go wrong?
Last Friday Wirral Council published a General Exception Notice about reporting to Cabinet the results of a soft market test exercise about Wirral’s golf courses. Interestingly it says the reason for the exception notice is that there is no Cabinet meeting in August (something that is hardly unsurprising as the draft calendar of meetings for this municipal year was agreed last December). The other reason given in the notice is that the earlier a decision happens, the greater the potential savings.
The Cabinet meets on the 7th July and Claire Fish’s report at the agenda item Soft Market Testing Exercise – Golf Courses and it can be read on Wirral Council’s website. It’s not what’s in the report itself, but what’s not in the report that is surprising.
As you can read in this tender notice published back in March, Wirral Council & Chester West and Chester Council jointly issued a “prior information notice” in the supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union. This referred to a prospectus and questionnaire (which were given to those responding to the notice) to decide whether there would be interest from golf operators in running eight golf courses (seven of which are in Wirral). Wirral Council was down as the contracting authority for this exercise, however the telephone number and email contact details given are that of a business consultancy called V4 Services Limited based in Stafford.
Wirral Council’s list of invoices over £500 paid for the month of April, which you can find on this page shows a payment made to V4 Services Limited for £18,757.68 from the technical services department with the description being “consultants”. This amount of £18,757.68 isn’t mentioned in the report, nor is any reference made to V4 Services Limited. As a slight aside I suppose no-one except me has yet spotted that the link to the pdf file for the May payments on that page, is in fact an identical file to the pdf for April payments?
There is a curious grammatical error made five times in the report that you wouldn’t expect the author of the report (Claire Fish (Strategic Director – Families and Wellbeing) on a salary of £121,807) to make. Here are the examples if it from the report (highlighted in bold):
1.3 “Other Council’s have found that similar arrangements can eliminate subsidy entirely”
3.2 “The terms of any agreement or leasehold interest would be determined if the Council’s proceed, and with dialogue the Council’s will seek to secure best consideration.”
3.3 “Both Council’s made it very clear in the documentation released they are open to exploring innovative ways of structuring any prospective arrangement that delivers best consideration and secures arrangements that deliver mutual benefits. At present Wirral Council maintains its own courses, and carries out the green-keeping.”
3.4 “Seven (7) suppliers completed and returned the market questionnaire with varying levels of interest across both Council’s, between full 18 hole golf courses and smaller, pitch and putt courses.”
There’s also a bit of the report that makes no sense at all, under the “legal implications” section is the rather cryptic “This report is based on the structure of delegation”. In my opinion vast sections of the report sound not like they’ve been written by Claire Fish at all, but by consultants. If V4 Services Ltd have been paid £18,757.68 for the soft market testing exercise (that could’ve been done by Wirral Council using in-house resources) they have a vested financial interest in persuading Cabinet to agree to proceed to the next stage of a full procurement exercise (that V4 Services will probably argue they are in a better position to run than anyone else as they ran the soft market testing exercise). So what do you think?
If you click on any of the buttons below, you’ll be doing me a favour by sharing this article with other people.
Council Excellence Overview and Scrutiny Committee 22nd January 2013 Budget Options: Four yearly elections, Destination Marketing, fuel poverty, Pest Control,
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
The Council Excellence Overview and Scrutiny Committee was a special meeting with only one main agenda item which was to discuss the 2013/16 Budget proposals which are currently part of a consultation with the public (until 31st January 2013).
The Chair, Cllr John Hale said that in his view the Committee was without a lot of the information he would’ve liked on the Budget options, and that he was “not in agreement with the move to four yearly elections”. He also disagreed with the saving on Destination Marketing as this money “brought an awful lot of visitors to the Wirral” and had spin offs for businesses on the Wirral.
Cllr Phil Gilchrist (Lib Dem spokesperson) arrived and apologised for being late. The Chair asked Cllr Stuart Wittingham if he had any comments to make?
Cllr Wittingham said he was pleased that most of the savings were to the back office and that he wasn’t saying that the front line wouldn’t be affected. He had no comments to make on a four yearly election cycle but described it as a “substantial saving”.
The Chair said it was not a very substantial saving “at the cost of democracy” and that there was still “insufficient information”. He’d be moving to note matters with the exception of the four yearly elections that he was opposed to and the 100% cut to Destination Marketing, which he said supported major activities and brought in thousands of visitors to the Borough.
Cllr Hale had asked what the Pest Control reduction meant and that the answer given was that it would result in their staff being reduced from five to four. He said it also meant that the home insulation program which had only met 59% of its target wouldn’t be able to continue with the rest. However £50,000 would be kept in the Budget for fuel poverty.
Cllr Gilchrist said that previously when the Council had let people retire or take voluntary redundancy, there had been criteria that had had to be looked at such as the need to pass on their expertise or whether it would cause a problem for the service if they left, he asked if officers had discussed the rationale for restructuring?
The Chair asked Chris Hyams to answer the question.
She said the proposals were either for a restructure or service changes. In the case of a restructure, Chris Hyams said that they would seek volunteers first, but may need to move to compulsory redundancies. In order to maximise redeployment opportunities they would look for volunteers across the organisation. They couldn’t let people go where their jobs were required, but would be looking at things on a proposal by proposal basis.
Cllr Gilchrist made a further comment about redundancies.
Chris Hyams responded said the strategy had been to seek voluntary leavers, but ensuring they had the capacity in the services to let them go “at the appropriate time”. She gave the example of letting volunteers go in day services and redeploying people from residential to day services. However the voluntary leavers couldn’t leave until the redeployed workers were ready to move into their posts. She said they wanted to do it quick enough that they were not incurring the need for more savings, but at a time that was right taking into account their notice periods and with due consultation and process.
The Chair asked about suppliers.
The Wirral Council officer responded by saying, “Yeah Chair, thanks Chair, one of the one of the issues that had been identified through the work that the Local Government Association are doing with us with on the Improvement Plan is a weakness in procurement, how the Council procures its related goods and services. There are a number of processes that we can improve upon, one of the issues is that we have a purchase order system, but the majority of purchases don’t go through that purchase order system. So we believe that by improving the governance of that system to actually make it so that 90% goes through that purchase order system, we’ll be able to negotiate with suppliers and get a better deal. Hopefully the volume issue, we will get a better deal.
We’re also looking at how we actually manage our procurement function. One of the things that we’re doing is basically is to have overall category managers, which have an area of spend rather than the generic purchasing officers. A category manager would have an area of spend for instance Adult Social Services and become knowledgeable in that field and achieve savings with suppliers. We feel that the evidence from other councils is that we’re not getting value for money now just now and that the savings are achievable if we can actually both improve our processes and improve maybe we carry out procurement with these category managers.
It’s a process that’s used in the private sector and maybe we’ll use it in the public sector. We’re looking at best practice elsewhere, we’re getting advice both from other Councils and from the Local Government Association, now we actually need a step change in getting more out of our procurement activity because clearly with the financial challenges that the Council’s facing we’ve got to get more for less in effect and we believe that we can actually achieve the savings in procurement.”