Wirral’s councillors will tonight discuss changes to Council meetings, call ins and how decisions are made

Wirral’s councillors will tonight discuss changes to Council meetings, call ins and how decisions are made                                                                        Wirral Council’s Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee will discuss proposals tonight to change the way Wirral Council makes decisions. If these proposals are agreed by councillors, then in future unless objections to traffic regulation orders reach a threshold … Continue reading “Wirral’s councillors will tonight discuss changes to Council meetings, call ins and how decisions are made”

Wirral’s councillors will tonight discuss changes to Council meetings, call ins and how decisions are made

                                                                      

Council (Wirral Council) 19th November 2015 One of the meetings that would change if proposals are agreed tonight
Council (Wirral Council) 19th November 2015 One of the meetings that would change if proposals are agreed tonight

Wirral Council’s Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee will discuss proposals tonight to change the way Wirral Council makes decisions.

If these proposals are agreed by councillors, then in future unless objections to traffic regulation orders reach a threshold of fifteen objections or a petition of twenty-five or more different households, then it won’t be discussed at a public meeting of the Highways and Traffic Representation Panel. However ward councillors for the area that the proposed traffic regulation order relates to, will be able to request that the matter is decided by councillors even if the number of objections don’t reach the threshold. If the objections don’t reach the new threshold and a ward councillor doesn’t ask that councillors on the Highways and Traffic Representation Panel make a recommendation on it, then the decision will instead be made by the Head of Service for Environment and Regulation after consulting with the Cabinet Member for Highways.

Changes are proposed to the way meetings to decide on call-ins of decisions are dealt with. Instead of a committee of fifteen councillors deciding on call-ins, there will be a panel of nine councillors (5 Labour councillors, 3 Conservative councillors and 1 Lib Dem councillor). An earlier start time of 4.00 pm for call in meetings is suggested. Adjournments will only be allowed for seven working days and if this is not possible the call-in will be re-heard from the beginning.

Proposals affecting Council meetings are also on the agenda. The start time will be brought forward to 6.00 pm and the guillotine put back to 9.15 pm. The time for questions to councillors who are chairs of committees or on the Cabinet will be reduced from an hour and a half to thirty minutes. This is to allow more time during Council meetings for councillors to debate notices of motion. Further details on the changes and the reasons behind them (including some I haven’t mentioned here) can be found on Wirral Council’s website. If agreed tonight, the changes will be recommended for approval at the Council meeting on the 14th December 2015.

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Wirral Council in numbers: 3 senior managers leaving, 2 buildings fall down and 2 public meetings cancelled

Wirral Council in numbers: 3 senior managers leaving, 2 buildings fall down and 2 public meetings cancelled

Wirral Council in numbers: 3 senior managers leaving, 2 buildings fall down and 2 public meetings cancelled

                                                    

Employment and Appointments Committee 27th October 2014 Committee Room 2 L to R Cllr Gilchrist Lib Dem, Chris Hyams Head of HR, Cllr Adrian Jones Labour Chair, Andrew Mossop Committee Services and Graham Burgess outgoing Chief Executive
Employment and Appointments Committee 27th October 2014 Committee Room 2 L to R Cllr Gilchrist Lib Dem, Chris Hyams Head of HR, Cllr Adrian Jones Labour Chair, Andrew Mossop Committee Services and Graham Burgess outgoing Chief Executive

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You can watch the meeting of the Employment and Appointments Committee of 27th October 2014 above at which the Employment and Appointment Panels referred to below were created.

As there is so much happening at Wirral Council now, I thought it was best to write a general piece about a few different topics at Wirral Council.

The public meeting of the Coordinating Committee last week which met to decide a call in of the decision to consult on closure of Children’s Centres was unexpectedly brought to a halt and adjourned (without yet reaching a decision or hearing all witnesses) as the Wallasey Town Hall was evacuated due to the collapse of two Council-owned buildings in nearby King Street.

This story has been widely covered by the media. The main road outside where the building collapsed was closed that evening (but has since been reopened). As I was nearby that evening, I can say that there was a large emergency services response (Merseyside Police, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service and North West Ambulance Service) and also organisations such as National Grid responded to cut off the gas supply.

As Wirral Council owned the properties that fell down, questions were asked by politicians and the press as to why the buildings fell down. However I will leave that story for now and move to other matters.

Two public meetings that should have happened in the next week at Wirral Council have been cancelled. These are:

19th November 2014 5.30pm Licensing Act 2003 Committee, Committee Room 1, Wallasey Town Hall (contact: Anne Beauchamp | Chair: Cllr Bill Davies (Labour)
24th November 2014 6.00pm Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee, Committee Room 1, Wallasey Town Hall (contact: Shirley Hudspeth | Chair: Cllr Bill Davies (Labour))

Presumably standards are now so high at Wirral Council that there can be a budget saving achieved from councillors travel expenses, employee costs and the room hire for the cancelled Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee not meeting. The Licensing Act 2003 Committee’s remit is not unsurprisingly to do with the Licensing Act 2003 c.17. As everyone on Wirral knows, there are no problems whatsoever with pubs, clubs, off licences, late night refreshment or other related activities on the Wirral. Wait a sec, news just in. Seems there is a problem (according to residents). Here’s a question submitted by one of the Oxton residents to the Birkenhead Constituency Committee meeting of 30th October 2014:

Name: Alfred Lennon (Oxton Village People)
Date Received: 23rd October 2014
Query: Wirral has a problem with alcohol as detailed it its Joint Strategic Needs Assessment and requiring the recent police crackdown. Yet the Authority persists in licensing ever more premises with ever longer drinking hours. Why cannot the Authority be brave, reduce the number of licensed premises AND reduce their opening hours?

Response from Wirral Council Licensing Section:

The Licensing Application Process

When a Licensing Authority received an application for a new premises licence or an application to vary an existing premises licence, it must determine whether the application has been made in accordance with section 17 of the Licensing Act 2003 (the Act), and in accordance with regulations made under sections 17(3) to (6), 34, 42, 65 and 55 of the Act. This means that the Licensing Authority must consider among other things whether the application has been properly advertised. These requirements are different to those connected to the Planning process.

Under the licensing regime an applicant is required to display a blue notice on the premises and publish a notice in a local newspaper providing details of the application. The applicant must also serve the application on the Responsible Authorities which are: the Police, the Fire Authority, Trading Standards, Environmental Health, Planning, the Area Child Protection Board, the Licensing Authority and Public Health who are all entitled to make representations. In addition to this, the Council published details of all application on the Council’s website and circulates these details to all Councillors. Representations can also be made by any person, which can include residents and businesses whom may be affected by a premises.

The Licensing Authority may only accept relevant representations. A representation is “relevant” if it relates to the likely effect of the grant of the licence on the promotion of at least one of the four licensing objectives. In other words, representations should relate to how the licensable activities carried on from premises impact on the objectives. For representations in relations to variations to be relevant, they should be confined to the subject matter of the variation.

Four Licensing Objectives:

  • The Protection of Children from Harm
  • The Prevention of Crime and Disorder
  • The Prevention of Public Nuisance
  • Public Safety

Wirral Council’s question then goes on for a further A4 side on Cumulative Impact. Just commenting on their answer for a moment to this point from what I remember of current policy (I may be a little rusty so don’t rely on this), as a general rule (*which depends on the circumstances of the application) if there are objections to a new premises licence or application to vary a premises licence it gets decided at a public meeting of the Licensing Act 2003 subcommittee by 3 councillors.

A certain amount of other applications don’t get this scrutiny and are either decided by officers (based on a policy agreed by councillors). What’s left out of the answer is that anyone can request a licence review (if you have the time, paper and postage to do this) which results in an existing licence being reviewed.

This doesn’t happen very often (rarely is what I’d say) as either most people don’t know they can do this, or don’t want to or they don’t know how. I doubt it would be in Wirral Council’s financial interests to tell people how as it would lead to more public meetings of the Licensing Act 2003 subcommittee and then they’d have to put up the fees charged to those running premises as it costs Wirral Council £thousands (room hire, councillors travel expenses, employee time, website running costs, printing of agenda/reports, postage et cetera) each time they hold a public meeting.

However moving on from employee time to an employee leaving. On 31st December 2014 Graham Burgess (the Chief Executive leaves). There isn’t time to appoint a new Chief Executive to start on 1st January 2015 as the post hasn’t even been advertised yet.

The Chief Executive is also Wirral Council’s Head of Paid Service, Returning Officer and Electoral Registration Officer.

So before a new Chief Executive is appointed who will fill these important roles (the latter two especially important because there is an election for Wirral’s 4 MPs and 22 councillors in May 2015). The Head of Paid Service, Returning Officer and Electoral Registration Officer role are all ones Wirral Council is under a legal obligation to have someone in post for. However the decisions have to be made by Council (a meeting of Wirral Council’s councillors) before 31st December 2014.

In addition to Graham Burgess leaving on the 31st December 2014, so is Vivienne Quayle (currently Director of Resources and s.151 officer).

So these are the interim management arrangements currently down to be discussed which will then (assuming the Employment and Appointments Panel approve them) be a recommendation to Council which meets on the 8th December 2014 (this report has a typographical error and states 8th December 2015 by mistake) to decide on an Acting Chief Executive and Acting Head of Paid Service.

Also Council on the 8th December 2015 will need to appoint a Returning Officer and Electoral Registration Officer.

These are the following recommendations (subject to Employment and Appointments Panel agreement and Council agreement on the 8th December 2014):

Returning Officer: Surjit Tour (Head of Legal and Member Services)
Deputy Returning Officer: Joe Blott (Strategic Director of Transformation and Resources)
Acting Electoral Registration Officer: Surjit Tour (Head of Legal and Member Services)
Acting Deputy Electoral Registration Officer: Joe Blott (Strategic Director of Transformation and Resources)
Acting Chief Executive and Head of Paid Service: recommendation to be made by appointment panel on 24th November 2014 to Council meeting on the 8th December 2014

Due to Vivienne Quayle leaving, these are the proposed interim management arrangements recommended to the Employment and Appointments Panel who then have a choice whether to recommend these to Council regarding Ms Quayle leaving:

Acting Section 151 Officer: Tom Sault (Head of Financial Services) regraded from HS2 (now not the proposed railway but a salary grade at Wirral Council) to HS1 for interim period
Acting Deputy Section 151 Officer: Jenny Spick (Finance Manager)
Acting Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO) (recommendation to Council): Mike Zammit (Chief Information Officer)
Audit function and Procurement function (functional responsibility in Resources division): Tom Sault

There is also a third member of the senior management team leaving too, but arrangements won’t be decided on that until a meeting on the 10th December 2014. That person leaving is Emma Taylor (Head of Specialist Services) in the Families and Wellbeing Directorate. Emma Taylor leaves in December 2014 and the responsibilities of the Head of Specialist Services post are children’s social work, fostering, adoption and children in care.

Helping Wirral Council with the above are Penna PLC (for which they are being paid £15,000 for each post so £45,000 in total) and the Local Government Association.

The seven councillors who will be making the above recommendations to Council in the near future are the seven on the Employment and Appointments Panel who are:

Cllr Phil Davies (Labour)
Cllr Ann McLachlan (Labour)
Cllr George Davies (Labour)
Cllr Adrian Jones (Labour)
Cllr Jeff Green (Conservative)
Cllr Lesley Rennie (Conservative)
Cllr Phil Gilchrist (Lib Dem)

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The reasons why Wirral Council’s Lyndale School call in is being delayed

The reasons why Wirral Council’s Lyndale School call in is being delayed

The reasons why Wirral Council’s Lyndale School call in is being delayed

                                  

Labour's Cllr Tony Smith (Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services) explains at a Wirral Council Cabinet meeting why he thinks the Cabinet should agree to consultation on closure of Lyndale School
Labour’s Cllr Tony Smith (Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services) explaining at a Wirral Council Cabinet meeting why he thinks the Cabinet should agree to consultation on closure of Lyndale School (which is the decision that was called in)

I read the Wirral Globe article headlined “Town Hall bungle means Lyndale meeting called off” with interest as it was related to my earlier blog post headlined “Is the Lyndale School call in going to the wrong Wirral Council committee?”.

Basically Wirral Council is stuck (and apologies for the cliché) between a rock and a hard place. Their new constitution states call ins have to be decided by the Coordinating Committee, however a law (The Education (Parent Governor Representatives) Regulations 1999) means it has to be decided by a committee with parent governor representatives on and a previous case Transport and General Workers Union and Hilary Hollington v Wallsall Metropolitan Borough Council [2001] EWHC Admin 452 means that if they went ahead and made a decision on the Lyndale School call in by the Coordinating Committee without any parent governor representatives having a vote as part of that committee’s decision, then such a decision would almost certainly be quashed (based on that bit of case law) by a High Court Judge if any of the parents requested a judicial review.

The only committee that could legally decide the call in (that has parent governor representatives on it) is the Families and Wellbeing Committee (however for it to do so would currently be unconstitutional). There was a meeting scheduled of the Families and Wellbeing Committee for Thursday but it was mysteriously cancelled. If anybody knows what this cancelled meeting was about and if it was related to the call in please leave a comment.

So what happens next? Well the Coordinating Committee will meet on Wednesday 5th February as planned, but at the meeting will probably receive legal advice that they can’t make a decision on the call ins as they don’t have any parent governor representatives on their committee.

To progress with this matter will need a change to Wirral Council’s constitution. Such changes originate as a recommendation by the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee first (usually on the advice of Surjit Tour), which next meets on the 24th February. A recommendation would then be made to change the constitution to Budget Council on the 25th February and presuming the change is agreed to, the call in will be decided on the 27th February by the Families and Wellbeing Policy and Performance Committee.

The quote from Cllr Leah Fraser in the Wirral Globe article of “The parents and staff of Lyndale School deserve better than this chaos” is one I agree with. Both the quotes of Cllr Phil Davies and Joe Blott leave out an important point not mentioned, which is that the parent governor representatives will have a vote in the decision over the call ins. I’m not sure if the Diocesan representatives have a vote too (it’s something I’d have to look into), but as far as I recall one of the two Diocesan representative positions on the Families and Wellbeing Policy and Performance Committee is vacant (although an appointment to it could be made at the next Council meeting).

However taking from 16th January (date of the original Cabinet decision) to 27th February (date of the proposed Families and Wellbeing Policy and Performance Committee to consider the call in) is a total of one month and eleven days. Certainly it is not ideal for the parents and staff of Lyndale School to face uncertainty over the outcome for such a prolonged length of time.

What Wirral Council’s constitution currently states on call ins is included at the end of this blog post. Changes to it will need to be made if the Lyndale School call ins are to be made by the Families and Wellbeing Policy and Performance Committee on the 27th February.

The controversial rewrite of Wirral’s constitution (which included changing the call in procedure) happened at an extraordinary meeting of Wirral Council last April.

Here are some quotes from what councillors said at the time back in April 2013 about the constitutional changes which Labour councillors voted for, but Conservative and Lib Dem councillors were opposed to.

Cllr Phil Davies (Labour’s Leader) (who recommended the constitutional changes which included changes to the call in system) said, “What are the aims of the changes we’re proposing? Well we want to clearly improve our governance and decision-making procedures.”

Cllr Jeff Green (Leader of the Conservatives) said, “One of the elements of these changes is to remove the Children and Young People’s and the Adult Social & Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committees. Given Wirral’s history …. it seems to me a backward and dangerous step to actually remove any of the scrutiny.”

Former Councillor Darren Dodd (Labour) said, “This is what the people of Wirral have been asking for, for for a very long time.”

Cllr John Hale (Conservative) said, “These proposals should be consigned to the dustbin where they belong”.

Cllr Chris Blakeley (Conservative) said, “Where will it end, what next? Will Wirral be twinned with Pyongyang?”

Cllr Tom Harney (Liberal Democrats) said, “We don’t know where we came from, we don’t know where we’re going.”

Excerpt from Wirral Council’s constitution on call ins

35. Calling in of decisions

(1) All decisions of:
(i) the Executive Board,
(ii) an individual member of the Executive Board or
(iii) a committee of the Executive Board, and
(iv) key decisions taken by an officer;
shall be published, and shall be available at the main offices of the Council normally within 2 days of being made. All members of the Council will be sent a copy of the decision.

(2) That notice will bear the date on which it is published and will specify that the decision will come into force, and may then be implemented, unless the decision is called in for scrutiny by 9a.m. on the Thursday following publication of a decision on Friday. (Adjusted by a maximum of one day in there is one or more Bank Holidays in that period)

(3) (a) During that period, the Chief Executive shall Call-In a decision for scrutiny by the Co-ordinating Committee if so requested by any six members of the Council who have given detailed reasons for the Call-In of the decision. The detailed reasons must be provided by the Lead signatory, by the Call In deadline. When a Call In is requested the Chief Executive shall liaise with the Member listed first on the Call-In schedule, to ensure there is sufficient information provided to enable the Call-In to proceed. As long as there is a clear reason given, the call-in should be allowed. He/she shall then notify the decision-taker of the Call-In. He/she shall call a meeting of the Committee on such date as he/she may determine, where possible after consultation with the Chair of the Coordinating Committee, and in any case within 7 working days of the decision to call-in.

(b) The relevant Chief Officer and all members will be notified of a call-in immediately and no action will be taken to implement the decision until the call-in procedure has been completed. A decision of the Cabinet, a committee of the Cabinet or individual Cabinet member may be called in only once.

(4) Having considered the decision, the Co-ordinating Committee may:-
(i) refer it back to the decision making person or body for reconsideration, setting out in writing the nature of its concerns or;
(ii) refer the matter to full Council. Such a referral should only be made where the Co-ordinating Committee believes that the decision is outside the policy framework or contrary to or not wholly in accordance with the budget. The procedures set out in those rules must be followed prior to any such referral.

(5) If a decision is referred back to the decision making person or body it shall be reconsidered in the light of the written concerns of the Co-ordinating Committee before a final decision is made.

(6) If following a call in, the Co-ordinating Committee does not refer the matter back to the decision making person or body and does not refer the matter to Council, the decision shall take effect on the date of the Co-ordinating Committee meeting. If the Co-ordinating Committee does not meet the decision shall take effect from the date when the Committee should have met.

(7) If the matter is referred to full Council and the Council does not object to a decision which has been made, then the decision will become effective on the date of the Council meeting.

(8) If the Council does object the Council may take a decision, which is outside the policy and budgetary framework. Otherwise the Council will refer any decision to which it objects back to the decision-making person or body, together with the Council’s views on the decision. That decision making body or person shall choose whether to amend the decision or not before reaching a final decision and implementing it. Where the decision was taken by the Executive Board as a whole or a committee of it, a meeting will be convened to reconsider within ten working days of the Council request. Where the decision was made by an individual, the individual will reconsider within ten working days of the Council request.

(9) Call-in should only be used in exceptional circumstances where members have evidence which suggests that the decision was not made in accordance with the principles of decision making in the constitution.

(10) Call-in and urgency
(a) The call-in procedure set out above shall not apply where the decision being taken by the Cabinet is urgent. A decision will be urgent if any delay is likely to be caused by the call-in process would seriously prejudice the Council’s or the public’s interest. The record of the decision and the notice by which it is made public shall state whether, in the opinion of the decision making person or body, the decision is an urgent one, and therefore not subject to call-in. The Chief Executive must agree both that the decision proposed is reasonably in all the circumstances and to it being treated as a matter of urgency. Decisions taken as a matter of urgency must be reported to the next available meeting of the Council, together with the reasons for urgency.

(b) The operation of the provisions relating to call-in and urgency shall be monitored annually, and a report submitted to Council with proposals for review if necessary.

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