Tag: trade unions

A letter to all 66 councillors at Wirral Council on press freedom and censorship

A letter to all 66 councillors at Wirral Council on press freedom and censorship

A letter to all 66 councillors at Wirral Council on press freedom and censorship

                                                      

Wirral Council bans filming and public from public meeting

A picture reminder above of times gone by at Wirral Council

Below is a communication I will be emailing to those listed below later.

Dear Surjit Tour,
councillors
senior management team (Wirral Council)
Rt Hon Frank Field MP

I am publishing this response which relates to a dispute between myself and Wirral Council.

I believe there should be openness and transparency when it comes to public bodies and the press.

I will firstly deal with the recent Youth and Play Service Advisory Committee meeting. Prior to the meeting, as some councillors and officers will already be aware the meeting was delayed starting because of the filming issue. As it was the first public meeting of the Youth and Play Service Advisory Committee since August 6th (which officially consists just of councillors) I was willing to accede to a request on this occasion and pointed out I was not setting a precedent.

Since that I have also filmed (last week) a public meeting of the Birkenhead Constituency Committee at which four young people spoke, along with a youth worker during that public meeting. There were no objections, before, during or after this meeting about me filming it. Nothing has been brought to my attention about this.

Earlier this year (on August 6th) the Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014, which can be read at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/2095/contents/made came into effect.

The effect of regulations 3-5 were to amend (and in some cases repeal) legislation about public meetings of bodies in England such as Wirral Council, but also public meetings of other public bodies such as the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority and the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (amongst others).

Regulation 5 only at Wirral Council applies to Cabinet meetings, so I will be referring to regulations 3 and 4.

Regulation 3 alters the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960 and puts this legal duty on Wirral Council:

“in the case of a meeting of a relevant local government body, while the meeting is open to the public any person attending is to be permitted to report on the meeting.”

For the purposes of clarity Wirral Council is a “relevant local government body”. The definition of newspaper in that legislation is changed to include “in the case of a relevant local government body, for use in electronic or any other format to provide news to the public by means of the internet”.

There is a part added to state (which applies not just to meetings of Council, but also committees and subcommittees):

“(7E) Any person who attends a meeting of a principal council in England for the purpose of reporting on the meeting may use any communication method, including the internet, to publish, post or otherwise share the results of the person’s reporting activities.”

Therefore the law is quite clear on this matter.

On the 2nd December 2013 Council agreed the committee calendar for the 2014/15 Municipal Year. This includes the following entry for November 11th 2014: “COUNCIL (Youth Parliament)”.

The list of attendees is the list of 66 Wirral Council councillors and this meeting has in previous years been chaired by the Mayor. In fact the first item on the agenda is “Mayor’s Announcements”. The agenda frontsheet, which can be read on your website in fact states “Dear councillor
You are hereby summoned to attend a meeting of the Council to be held at 6.15 pm on Tuesday, 11 November 2014 in the Council Chamber, within the Town Hall, Wallasey”.

Therefore by your own words, by your own calendar and own agenda it is a meeting of all 66 councillors, chaired by the Mayor. It is therefore a meeting of a local government body and your arguments about the presence of young people (who like the councillors have been elected by their peers) somehow meaning that it should not be filmed are incorrect and frankly hard to comprehend. How can there be an expectation of privacy at a public meeting?

Wirral Council have no legal power any more to prevent filming at public meetings because the power you had in the past (but have no more) was as has been well documented abused numerous times and that is what led (in part) to the legislation change and repeals of earlier legislation that you relied upon previously. This change came into effect on 6th August 2014.

If Wirral Council carries on like this Wirral Council opens itself up to a legal challenge on ground of illegality, irrationality, proportionality, fairness and because of what happened at the Birkenhead Constituency Committee meeting legitimate expectation. These are also grounds in Wirral Council’s constitution for not engaging in what I perceive as misguided attempts to censor the media.

Wirral Council could also face a claim for human rights damages as the legal argument would be made that as a public body it was breaching s.6(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998, more specifically Article 10 (freedom of expression). As I’m sure you will be aware there is plenty of existing case law upholding the rights of individuals to political speech and against the strong desire of public bodies to suppress views they don’t want the public to hear.

As management, the trade union representative has discussed the matter with me and union rule 1 has been discussed which states “At all times upholds and defends the principle of media freedom, the right of freedom of expression and the right of the public to be informed.”

Therefore that trade union member would be quite within their rights to refuse to work on 11th November and Wirral Council carries on taking such an intransigent attitude, I would be forced to implement industrial relations contingency arrangements. This is therefore becoming an industrial relations matter both internally within this organisation and externally with yours.

I fully expect however based on recent past experience and a conversation I had on November 5th that Labour councillors will neither side with the trade unions or the press on this matter. I fully expect from past experience that it is always awkward particularly for some councillors to be seen to be either promoting trade union interests, good industrial relations, people’s human rights, constitutional decision-making or in fact the public interest.

It is perfectly clear (at least to me) from past decisions made at the political level exactly what Wirral Council’s current policy is on this. These past policy decisions made on this are quite clear that any filming, photography, audio recording or other types of recording (whether during public meetings or not) is unrestricted in Wirral Council buildings. That policy came about because one councillor took a photograph of another councillor eating if I remember correctly a sandwich.

The recent legal change just implements Wirral Council’s existing policy and puts it on a statutory basis with regards to public meetings.

I have had these arguments with Wirral Council over filming for a very, very long time. Wirral Council’s position and the position of various individuals has been made abundantly clear to me over the years. I have been shouted at during public meetings, bullied and treated badly which considering Wallasey Town Hall is also my workplace is not the way for anyone to be treated. I have also seen another member of the press working for a local newspaper mistreated in the same way by a senior politician.

There are many other important matters that we should all be concentrating our collective minds on rather than Wirral Council deliberately picking battles with the press, which do nothing to improve Wirral Council’s tarnished reputation or that of senior officers and councillors.

I am making my position as clear here as I can make it. The only advice I can give you at this stage is to seek external independent legal advice on your position before this matter ends up being independently adjudicated by a court and I suggest you circulate a report on this to all councillors and myself ahead of the 11th November meeting (if it takes place).

Yours sincerely,

John Brace

P.S. The Monitoring Officer comments verbally on November 5th 2014 on my report (without having read it himself) of the YPSAC public meeting and my description of the young person at that meeting. I deplore censorship of any kind and when it relates solely to the political views of an individual in a protected minority with disabilities even more so. Before the meeting was held I advised the Monitoring Officer that he could have advised councillors to exclude the press and public. The Monitoring Officer chose not to advise politicians to do so but instead to advise to adjourn the meeting if I attempted to film, audio record or photograph it.

There was also attempted censorship in February 2014 of the Coordinating Committee meeting to decide the call in to consult on the closure of Lyndale School. Again this was meeting involved the political views of parents of children with disabilities. The parents expressed the view to the Vice-Chair (chairing the meeting) at the time Cllr Steve Foulkes (who will also be chairing the meeting on 11th November) that they wanted it done in an open and transparent manner. So there seems to be a running theme here at Wirral Council of gagging the press trying to report on matters involving the disabled, which even hark back to the days of gagging one of your own former employees who used to work in your Adult Social Services department from raising with the press serious allegations of wrongdoing.

I find this all deeply worrying and possibly arguably allegedly breaches of other legal responsibilities you have which have been already repeatedly brought up in letters before with you which are already in the public domain.

I repeat here what your legal duty is as Monitoring Officer under s.5(2) of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 c.42:

“it shall be the duty of a relevant authority’s monitoring officer, if it at any time appears to him that any proposal, decision or omission by the authority, by any committee, [or sub-committee of the authority, by any person holding any office or employment under the authority] or by any joint committee on which the authority are represented constitutes, has given rise to or is likely to or would give rise to—

(a) a contravention by the authority, by any committee, [or sub-committee of the authority, by any person holding any office or employment under the authority] or by any such joint committee of any enactment or rule of law [or of any code of practice made or approved by or under any enactment]; or

(b) any such maladministration or injustice as is mentioned in Part II of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1975 (which makes corresponding provision for Scotland), to prepare a report to the authority with respect to that proposal, decision or omission.

Section 5 then states:

(5) It shall be the duty of a relevant authority and of any such committee as is mentioned in subsection (4) above—
(a) to consider any report under this section by a monitoring officer or his deputy at a meeting held not more than twenty-one days after copies of the report are first sent to members of the authority or committee; and
(b) without prejudice to any duty imposed by virtue of section 115 of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 (duties in respect of conduct involving contraventions of financial obligations) or otherwise, to ensure that no step is taken for giving effect to any proposal or decision to which such a report relates at any time while the implementation of the proposal or decision is suspended in consequence of the report;

You as Monitoring Officer have statutory duties and there is a legal framework to follow when such matters involving Wirral Council’s decision making are raised with yourself and the Deputy Monitoring Officer.

It is of course up to yourselves what action you take (if any).

Wirral Council is not in the position where it can or it is advisable to censor the political views of the protected minorities of the Wirral population in an attempt to alter media reporting of Wirral Council activities or gag the press. These repeated attempts at censorship give me the personal impression that Wirral Council is not as open and transparent as Wirral’s politicians would claim it is. I am neither in a politically restricted post, nor am I a councillor or officer at Wirral Council.

There is therefore unless you propose either adjourning the Youth Parliament meeting (as you did with the YPSAC meeting) in response to the views in this letter or alternatively bringing a late report to the meeting of 11th November 2014 on this matter, I do not see that there is anything that can be done at this stage to resolve this current impasse.

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Wirral Council Employee Survey 2013: Industrial relations: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

Wirral Council Employee Survey 2013: Industrial relations: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

Wirral Council Employee Survey 2013: Industrial relations: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

                                                                                  

One of the quandaries you face in the press is just what you do over leaked documents. When I was working in print it was easy, the procedure was everything just had to be double sourced. With Wirral Council that has in the past often caused problems as two bits of Wirral Council would flat-out contradict each other over the same facts!

The particular document I am referring to is the Ipsos Mori “Wirral Council Employee Survey 2013”. This contains such classic lines such as:

“The contents of this report are of a commercially sensitive and confidential nature and intended solely for the review and consideration of the person or entity to which it is addressed. No other use is permitted and the addressee undertakes not to disclose all or part of this report to any third party (including but not limited, where applicable, pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act 2000) without the prior written consent of the Company Secretary of Ipsos MORI.”

Well thank goodness for a s.30 exemption to the copyright laws for the press is all I can say.

In an “open and transparent” public sector, where Wirral Council wanted to show how it had emerged from the nightmare of its past “industrial relations” issues, here’s just one industrial relations issue that would not be happening:

a) employee appeals/grievance hearings of Wirral Council employees now decided by Wirral Council management behind closed doors instead of councillors (unlike other local councils) at public meetings behind closed doors. Yes it was a Labour administration and Labour councillors that decided to change the constitution and go against the trade unions on that one!

b) excessive secrecy on HR matters (but I’m the press and I would say that wouldn’t I?), however it’s not just me but others that state the same thing?

The whole ninety-page document that is the Wirral Council Employee Survey 2013 (before you get to the appendices) is the kind of thing that councillors, the public, employees and others should be able to read, but I’m sure management would rather not like to ever see the light of day.

However considering management’s view on leaks, especially matters that relate to Graham Burgess, I will just remind people of part of the Chief Executive’s job description as Head of Paid Service:

“To act as Head of Paid Service to the Council and to provide workforce leadership for the Council.”

In other words the buck stops at him. OK answerable to the public then are councillors who are Cabinet Members, but from an officer perspective ultimately Graham Burgess (or whoever replaces him after the end of this year) sets the culture of the organisation when it comes to workforce matters.

For example is Wirral Council an organisation where councillors, management and the trade unions work harmoniously in partnership or is it one where senior officers (backed up by councillors) make veiled threats to cancel a meeting because of industrial relations matters in an attempt to somewhat avoid legal protections in order to damage openness and transparency?

It was during Graham Burgess’ tenure as Chief Executive/Head of Paid Service that the changes to the grievance and appeals procedures were changed. One of the reasons given at the time was that with large-scale redundancies, councillors would’ve been snowed under dealing with employee appeals.

That may be a legitimate reason to put forward for the change (and yes I have heard at least one former councillor moan during a public meeting about how terribly long-winded some employee appeals/grievances were). However taking councillors out of grievance appeals meant that any future whistleblowers would only be heard by management. Then management have a vested interest in making sure issues are resolved behind the scenes (such as paying off whistleblowers to leave and keep quiet) and then the underlying issues are not talked about by councillors in public meetings (making life easier for management) or indeed written about in the press.

I think it is about time I published some of the Human Resources related invoices to do with Employment Tribunals and employee issues so that the public can see how expensive to the public purse it is to not have effective internal processes to deal with employee matters. Previously such procedures (despite their flaws) relied not on the more independent decisions of councillors but now it’s purely officers who decide instead. I’m not saying councillors would make decisions that were less likely to result in large expensive legal bills, it’s just I personally disagree (a rare political point on my part) with the lack of political oversight in employee matters as it means councillors are less likely to know what’s going on.

I fully realise matters have been dealt with behind closed doors, but there is a point where too much secrecy can be counter productive in the public sector as it results in no one being personally accountable for the results of their actions.

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Is Lyndale School under threat just so Wirral Council can provide a further £2 million to a company that already has plenty?

Is Lyndale School under threat just so Wirral Council can provide a further £2 million to a company that already has plenty?

Is Lyndale School under threat just so Wirral Council can provide a further £2 million to a company that already has plenty?

                                             

Councillor Tony Smith (Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services) at the Special Cabinet Meeting of 4th September 2014 to discuss Lyndale School L to R Cllr Stuart Whittingham, Cllr Tony Smith, Cllr Bernie Mooney and Lyndzay Roberts
Councillor Tony Smith (Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services) at the Special Cabinet Meeting of 4th September 2014 to discuss Lyndale School L to R Cllr Stuart Whittingham, Cllr Tony Smith (Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services), Cllr Bernie Mooney and Lyndzay Roberts

Last Thursday morning I visited Lyndale School in Eastham. This was my first visit, although regular readers of this blog will know that I have written extensively on the topic and filmed many public meetings of Wirral Council on the many stages involving its potential closure in January 2016.

Regular readers of this blog will also know that despite promises made in February 2014 by senior officers at a call in that matters would be dealt with in a completely “open and transparent” way, that the recent 13 page letter received from Surjit Tour turned down a request for a meeting between myself and Wirral Council on this matter.

Thankfully the Lyndale School appears to be behaving in a far more “open and transparent” way than Wirral Council is!

I wanted to start this piece by describing my impressions of the school as some of my observations about a visit to Lyndale School raise further unanswered questions.

On the same plot of land as the Lyndale School is also Eastham Youth Centre. Clearly the current consultation is about the Lyndale School, however I know relatively little about this Youth Centre. Is this Youth Centre open, closed, working or threatened with closure itself? I don’t really know the answer to that question and would appreciate somebody better informed, or more closely connected to Eastham than I to leave a comment.

Moving to the Lyndale School itself, it looks from the outside like many other primary schools do on the Wirral. Unlike when I went to school in the 1980/1990s where there literally was an “open door” policy at primary schools, these days (as is common with all other schools on the Wirral now) you need to press a buzzer on an intercom system to be let in.

There is then a reception area on the right, which at the time of my visit had many stuffed toy animals on the counter. To the left is a visitors book for visitors to sign and visitors badges on which the names of visitors can be written. On the wall is also a photo of each member of staff who works there and their job title.

My personal view on the latter point, is that organisations that do such a thing, tend to be more open and transparent than those who try to hide behind a bewildering, faceless and largely unaccountable bureaucracy.

As we had both been walking up from Eastham Rake train station, someone we both knew, who lives in Eastham had been passing in their car and had kindly offered us both a lift to the Lyndale School. So we both arrived earlier than I expected, which gave me a chance to see people coming and going for a while and how things were going. Despite the pressures the Lyndale School is going through, staff were professional and the “open door” policy referred to at the call in I saw in action as one of the parents arrived while we were waiting. If a decision is made to close the Lyndale School, this is one of the matters that the parents of the children at Lyndale School have expressed concern about as they cannot see this in operation at the other schools suggested.

There is obviously a lot of trust that exists between the parents of children at Lyndale School and the staff there. Certainly there is (despite the stress the School is under because of the political issues) a lot of goodwill between the parents and staff at the school. That’s something that never appears on Wirral Council’s balance sheet as it’s something that can’t be quantified. This is part of the reason the parents of children at Lyndale School want the School to stay as it is, as they don’t see the same ethos at Lyndale School at either Stanley School or Elleray Park.

Echoing what I have heard Julia Hassall (Director of Children’s Services at Wirral Council) say many times, I will also make the following point. Some schools are closed down because they are “failing schools”. Lyndale School doesn’t fall into that category and that is not one of the reasons behind the consultations on its closure. I wish to make that as clear as I can (as has Julia Hassall at many public meetings). The view from the public can be to jump to the conclusion that schools are only threatened with closure because things at them are going pear-shaped. This is not the case at Lyndale School and I will also point out that no final decision on closure of Lyndale School has yet been made by Wirral Council’s Cabinet.

I have referred before in articles describing Lyndale School as a “hospital school” as personally I think it is probably a more accurate description of what goes on in Lyndale School. Think of the political fuss that would happen if say in the lead up to a General Election (and I’ll point out now that I know of no such plans) that there was a consultation on closing the children’s ward and the hospital school at Arrowe Park Hospital? Think of it purely from that perspective and you can perhaps see how emotional an issue it is for both the people directly involved and the wider community.

There are many new matters involving Lyndale School I could write about but instead I will explain what I was at Lyndale School for. There was a very interesting meeting of the Friends of Lyndale School Association held there which was a private meeting, so there is a limit about what I will write here about it.

However, I had better explain what and who the Friends of Lyndale School Association are. The Friends of Lyndale School Association are a small charity set up in March of this year and registered with the Charity Commission in June. Their charitable objects are:

To advance the education of pupils in the school in particular by:
developing effective relationships between the staff, parents and others associated with the school;
engaging in activities or providing facilities or equipment which support the school and advance the education of the pupils.

It’s hard to describe exactly what the Friends of Lyndale School Association is, but the closest easily understood comparison to it, is a parent-teacher association or PTA for the Lyndale School. As with all PTAs they raise money to be spent on their charitable objects and you can (if you wish) donate to them online on the webpage on Justgiving website for the Friends of Lyndale School Association.

If the Lyndale School closes, the Friends of Lyndale School Association have made it clear that any remaining funds would be donated to Claire House (which is a children’s hospice on the Wirral). The Wirral Globe are also printing interviews with the parents of Lyndale School (which if you wish to read the first three are on the Wirral Globe website starting here, continuing here and the most recent one is and I will at this stage (and I don’t often do this about someone else in the local media) thank Emma Rigby of the Wirral Globe for her reporting in the Wirral Globe of this story.

Yesterday evening there was supposed to be a meeting of all councillors at Wirral Council. However as most people probably know already a lot of public sector unions went on strike and that meeting was shifted to the evening of the 20th October 2014. One of the matters on the agenda is a minority report (no not the film Minority Report with Tom Cruise this refers to something different) but a minority report about the recent Lyndale School call in.

In fact there are five minority reports about various matters. There is one about the Lyndale School call in submitted by various councillors in the Conservative Group that you can read on Wirral Council’s website. The minority report procedure hasn’t been used for a long time and I think most people are unsure whether it’s an item that could trigger a debate or whether it would just be voted on. Had it not been for the strike yesterday, this would probably have already happened.

After the call in meeting on 2nd October 2014, the second consultation on closure of Lyndale School should’ve started as the Cabinet delegated this matter to Julia Hassall. She therefore probably knows more the timescales than I do. As far as I know (and Wirral Council’s constitution has been through a lot of changes in the past few years), a decision of a call in committee is still implemented by officers even if a minority report is submitted to the next Council meeting (which should’ve taken place yesterday evening but was I would guess put back a week because of the strike).

My concerns about the entire process in this matter over the last year and how this has all been done I’ve written about before. I am not going to repeat myself here. There are however concerns about corporate governance at Wirral Council about this matter that I haven’t expressed in public.

Personally I think it is a crying shame, that on an issue as sensitive as Lyndale School, that all political parties now represented on Wirral Council (whether Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem or Green) can’t come to an agreement (behind closed doors if need be) to pause this whole process and have a review.

Wirral Council claim that they can’t keep the Lyndale School open in 2015-16 due to a shortfall between what the Lyndale School predicts they will need and what Wirral Council is willing to give them. The shortfall will be
~£190,000.

I have written on this blog before that Wirral Council could easily find this small amount of money if they wished and move it around from existing budgets if the political will was there. In fact papers that went the Wirral Schools Forum last week showed that through reductions in this year’s budget they found ~£2 million. So where’s this money going? It’ll be put in a reserve and used next year to go to Wirral Schools Services Limited who have a PFI Schools contract for various schools (and two city learning centres) with Wirral Council as part of a ~£12 million/year contribution.

Wirral School Services Limited’s account show that for 2014 they had £1.93 million in cash assets, which is £6.33 million in assets minus their £4.39 million in liabilities.

What’s amazing is that a Labour Council, who trumpets its “socialist values” in election leaflets, it is seemingly happy to make £2 million of cuts in year to the Wirral Council’s Schools Budget for this year (which obviously need Wirral Schools Forum approval and Cabinet approval) to help plug a financial gap in the 2015-16 Schools PFI contract, but when it comes to an amount ten times smaller than that to be found no report I’ve seen so far even lists finding the money to keep Lyndale School open in 2015-16 (from such as underspends in existing budgets) as an alternative option!?

Despite the words of Wirral Council in the past that they would put vulnerable people such as the pupils of Lyndale School first, it seems that the school is under threat whilst capitalist greed gobbles up the available funds. If Wirral Council so wished, it could either end or renegotiate the Schools PFI contract. The schools system should not be run to feed the profits of private companies!!! Nor should vulnerable children have such a low priority!!! These are two of my main frustrations with the current situation.

I will repeat again, if you wish to donate to the Friends of Lyndale School Association you can here. The Justgiving website takes a 5% cut of all donations and charges £18 a month to the Friends of Lyndale School Association. However the other 95% (minus £18/month) is paid directly to them.

I know I will continue to get criticism (and I really don’t mind comments on this blog attacking me) from some quarters for how I’m reporting the Lyndale School issue, there has been however nothing so far that convinces me that all the decisions taken by Wirral Council so far have either been taken in the right way or for the right reasons. If everything was done so far “by the book” and in an “open and transparent” way, I would not be as irked by how the matter has happened as I am.

On a personal note, I realise there has been a deterioration in relations between Wirral Council and those associated with the Lyndale School. If other special schools on the Wirral think they will escape whilst Wirral Council’s focus is on Lyndale School, they will need to have a drastic rethink and not bury their heads in the sand. I will repeat here what I said at Lyndale School on Thursday.

There is a current consultation that the government is running on the draft Schools and Early Years Finance (England) Regulations 2014. These are the regulations (a type of law) that Wirral Council has to conform to when setting schools’ budgets annually.

At the moment, because of a part of the law known as the “minimum funding guarantee”, for this 2014-15 year Wirral Council could not drop school budgets such as Lyndale Schools by more than 1.5% based on what their previous year’s budget allocation was.

However the draft regulations being consulted on, whereas they (in draft form) keep the minimum funding guarantee for mainstream schools, get rid of the current minimum funding guarantee for special schools. Personally and I’m going to get quite political now, I think it is morally wrong to protect mainstream funding for mainstream schools, but at the same time allow local councils to (if they so wish) to totally change the budget (and therefore nature) of special schools which can in extreme cases ultimately force them to close. Obviously the draft regulations may be altered post consultation, but you can respond to that consultation run by the Department of Education here. That consultation closes this Friday (17th October) at 5.00pm.

If the new regulations (following consultation) abolish the existing legal protections for special school budgets, it will be perfectly legal for local councils (such as Wirral Council) to come up with a schools funding formula for 2015-16 that leads not just to the potential closure of schools such as the Lyndale School but dramatically changes the funding allocated to other special schools as the new banding system was agreed earlier this year at a call in a controversial 8:7 vote.

Wirral Council has shifted money out of the agreed budget for special schools to cross subsidise other parts of the education system, such as PFI. This is of course entirely legal if officers get the necessary approvals from the Wirral Schools Forum and others. However in other local authorities, an underspend in the special education side of matters would not be used to plug financial holes and financial instability elsewhere. Other Schools Forums take the prudent approach that underspends on the special educational needs side are put in financial reserves earmarked for that area of education.

The spare capacity such as underspends of money that was agreed should be spent in the special schools system, has instead been used to cross subsidise other parts of Wirral Council’s Schools Budget. The money however always seems to flow out of the special schools system and never back to it. Had these political decisions not been made, there would be more than enough money to keep Lyndale School open (at least for the 2015-16 year and possibly beyond). However instead the influence of a large company such as Wirral Schools Services Limited with large financial reserves has been listened to, whilst the pleas of Lyndale School parents merely to continue with what they already have, have so far been met with a lack of political will to explore alternative options and a knee jerk reaction to blame the situation on the Coalition government, the Church of England and even the Lyndale School itself, without apparently getting across to the public the personal responsibility that politicians at Wirral Council must take for each decision they make.

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Councillor Leah “answer the question” Fraser asks Cllr Adrian “humane” Jones to quantify compulsory redundancies

Councillor Leah “answer the question” Fraser asks Cllr Adrian “humane” Jones to quantify compulsory redundancies

Councillor Leah “answer the question” Fraser asks Cllr Adrian “humane” Jones to quantify compulsory redundancies

                       

I thought I would start my write-up of last night’s Council meeting with a short tale of last night’s Council meeting. This is about the bit where councillors get to ask questions of Cabinet Members and it was Councillor Adrian Jones’ turn.

Conservative councillor Leah Fraser asked him about item 1 on his report. She said that now the date had passed for people to apply for early retirement or voluntary severance had passed, how many compulsory redundancies would there be?

Labour Councillor Adrian Jones replied to Cllr Fraser by reminding her that a previous Conservative administration had made 1,100 staff redundant, to which Cllr Fraser heckled “answer the question”. Then she got told by the Mayor it was not her role to interrogate Cllr Jones to which she replied he’s not answering the question.

Councillor Adrian Jones continued by commenting on what a previous Conservative administration had done and commented on the funding that the government had taken away before moving to other councillor’s questions about the Merseyside Pension Fund and software.

Councillor Leah Fraser was not happy! In fact I’d go so far as to say she looked visibly annoyed. She wanted an answer to her question but how would she get it? So question in hand she got up and strode across the chamber to the Mayor Cllr Foulkes and handed her written question to him. He repeated her question. Cllr Adrian Jones asked him to repeat the question so Cllr Foulkes did and it was asked for a third time.

Cllr Adrian Jones answered that Wirral Council were not making staff redundant but the government was through its cuts and followed up by saying that he felt it was being done on a more “humane basis” that a previous Conservative/Lib Dem administration had done so.

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Government gives Wirral Council 6 months to publish information on contracts, land, grants, trade unions & parking

Government gives Wirral Council 6 months to publish information on contracts, land, grants, trade unions & parking

Government gives Wirral Council 6 months to publish information on contracts, land, grants, trade unions & parking

                         

The government on the 1st May published the Local Government Transparency Code 2014. The aim of it is to make local councils more transparent. The code’s published using a legal power the government has by s.2 of the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980 and applies to county councils, district councils (such as Wirral Council), some parish councils, fire authorities (such as Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority), joint waste authorities (such as Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority), combined authorities (such as the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority) and other types of public bodies. However it doesn’t apply to Police and Crime Commissioners.

The transparency code lists at page 9 information that must be published by these bodies starting with expenditure of over £500 (which is already published monthly on Wirral Council’s website). The main difference the transparency code introduces in this area is a need to publish for each transaction VAT that can’t be recovered.

Details of invitations to tender for contracts of a value of £5,000 or more will in future be published by Wirral Council because of the transparency code. Details of any “contract, commissioned activity, purchase order, framework agreement and any other legally enforceable agreement with a value that exceeds £5,000” will also need to be published. This will include descriptions of the goods/services provided, amounts paid or estimated annual spend, supplier details, start/end/review dates and whether the supplier is a small to medium-sized enterprise or voluntary or community organisation. The topic of the public knowing what they’re getting from suppliers to Wirral Council was discussed at a previous Birkenhead Constituency Committee meeting.

In addition to the invoices and contracts information the following information will need to be published annually:

  • local authority land,
  • grants to voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations,
  • organisation chart,
  • trade union facility time,
  • parking revenues,
  • controlled parking spaces,
  • senior salaries,
  • constitution and
  • the pay multiple.

For example on land, Wirral Council will have to publish details of all its freeholds, leaseholds, properties occupied or run under Private Finance Initiative contracts, other properties they own or use, surplus or vacant properties, undeveloped land, lease agreements and information on some other land related categories.

Information on grants (such as the Love Wirral scheme) to voluntary, community or social enterprise organisations will also have to be published such as a description of what the grant is for and the amount. The organisation chart showing the top three levels of management will mean that for each member of staff that this covers that their grade, job title, department and team, contact details, salary in £5,000 brackets and salary ceiling will have to be published.

The information required to be published on trade union facility time will include the trade unions involved, total number of staff who are union representatives, total number of staff that devote at least 50% of their time to union duties and an estimate of the spending on trade union duties as a percentage of the total pay bill.

Parking revenue data will be how much Wirral Council collects from on street parking, off street parking and parking enforcement notices. Wirral Council will need to publish the numbers of on and off street parking spaces.

The requirement on senior salary details goes further than the current requirements and includes bonus and payments in kind details for senior employees earning £50,000 or more and publishing a list of responsibilities for senior staff. The list of responsibilities means the services and functions that they are responsible for, budget held and number of staff.

The requirement to publish Wirral Council’s constitution on their website is already met by Wirral Council. The requirement to publish the pay multiple is the ratio between the highest paid salary and the median salary of the whole workforce.

The transparency code also includes details of recommended items that local councils should publish such as transactions over £250, transactions on corporate credit cards, numbers of free parking spaces, details of their counter fraud work and other matters. Councils and other public bodies have six months to publish the mandatory information required by the new transparency code.

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