Is Right Choice Solutions the “right choice” for building work?

Is Right Choice Solutions the “right choice” for building work?

Is Right Choice Solutions the “right choice” for building work?

                                       

By John Brace (Editor)

First publication date: 15th February 2021, 10:11 (GMT).

Another roof tile smashes to the ground
Another roof tile smashes to the ground after work by Right Choice Solutions

This needs to be published as a warning and is the first part of a series of articles, but let’s start at the beginning, the very beginning. Names have been changed in this article to protect sources.
Continue reading “Is Right Choice Solutions the “right choice” for building work?”

What do a car crash, road safety, A-boards, Wirral Council and the Merseyside OPCC have in common?

What do a car crash, road safety, A-boards, Wirral Council and the Merseyside OPCC have in common?

What do a car crash, road safety, A-boards, Wirral Council and the Merseyside OPCC have in common?

                                        

Councillor Michael Sullivan (Chair, Wirral Council's Business and Overview Scrutiny Committee) at a public meeting held on the 13th September 2016. His microphone is now... on!
Councillor Michael Sullivan (Chair, Wirral Council’s Business and Overview Scrutiny Committee) at a public meeting held on the 13th September 2016. His microphone is now… on!

Yesterday evening’s meeting of Wirral Council’s Business and Overview Scrutiny Committee was for once quite literally car crash TV.

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Business Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Wirral Council) 14th September 2016 (Agenda item 4 Road Safety – Reducing Pedestrian Casualties starts at 2m:21s) Part 1 of 5

However, the first main item at the public meeting was about reducing pedestrian casualties and road safety. You can read the reports for this agenda item that are linked to from this page on Wirral Council’s website.

Cllr Warren Ward reminded those present at the start of his declaration of interest by saying,

“Chair, I’ve got a declaration of interest.

In the report it mentions a quote from the Merseyside Police and Crime Commissioner.

In 2014, I was employed as a private secretary to errm the Police and Crime Commissioner Panel.”

 

I am of course welcome that Cllr Warren Ward brought this up, as Wirral’s criminal justice system caught up with Merseyside’s former Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner on the subject of road safety (although the embarrassing incident below wasn’t mentioned at last night’s meeting). At the time of the offence she was Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner.

Cllr Ann O’Byrne (who for the purposes of clarity and avoidance of doubt is a completely different councillor to the current Merseyside Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner Cllr Sue Murphy) according to a report in the Liverpool Echo pled guilty at Wirral Magistrates’ Court to two driving offences which were

driving “without due care and attention”

and

failing to stop after a road accident

 

after crashing into an orange BMW Mini. She pled guilty, was fined and had to pay prosecution costs of £565.

Of course there will be many regular readers who will see parallels between this behaviour and that of some politicians.

In the past some councillors have been accused of failing to stop going on after political accidents (such as the library closure programme only halted by a government ordered public inquiry), of generally being politicians behaving “without due care and attention” and also in the process of being more interested in scoring petty party political points and damaging the peoples’ trust in democratic systems in the process.

But then I shouldn’t be too critical as there are plenty of good politicians too that unfortunately get tarred by the same brush by association!

Certainly there is a lot of car crash TV I have filmed at public meetings over the years!

Moving swiftly back to the subject of the current Police and Crime Commissioner Jane Kennedy. She was asking questions on Monday afternoon about the effect on jobs of a joint Merseyside Police and Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service project (involving consultants Deloittes are doing) at an eleven minute public meeting of the Police and Fire Collaboration Committee (see video of the meeting below). You can read the agenda and reports to do with that on Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority’s website.

As this is a committee of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority, I had better declare an interest as an Appellant in a First-tier Tribunal case in which Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority are Second Respondent (case reference EA⁄2016⁄0054).

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Police and Fire Collaboration Committee (Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority) Monday 12th September 2016

On the subject of legal action, at the meeting of last night’s meeting of Wirral Council’s Business Overview and Scrutiny Committee, the subject of A-boards and pedestrian safety was raised with respect to a display outside a fruit and vegetable shop in Moreton which was previously covered by this blog in 2012 (including a photo of the shop display in question).

David Rees (a road safety manager at Wirral Council) made it clear at the meeting that Wirral Council hadn’t received any legal claims for compensation from pedestrians arising from A-boards on the footway.

Conservative councillor Gerry Ellis stated that the person who had raised the issue with Wirral Council about the A-board outside a Moreton shop had been threatened with legal action by Wirral Council and asked a senior manager at Wirral Council (the Head of Environment and Regulation Mark Smith) to explain why.

However the Labour Chair of the Business Overview and Scrutiny Committee Councillor Michael Sullivan intervened before Mark Smith had a chance to answer. I will also point out that from my recollection at least one Labour councillor expressed the view at the meeting that Wirral Council employees should not be criticised by Wirral Council councillors.

The Chair decided unilaterally that in his view the report was purely about pedestrian casualties and that as he knew of no recorded accidents known to Wirral Council involving A-boards, Cllr Sullivan told Cllr Ellis that Wirral Council’s Business Overview and Scrutiny Committee wasn’t the forum for discussing such matters and ended any debate on the matter.

Finally, the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner have been in touch with me.

During the 30 working day inspection period this year (which finished mid-August 2016) I requested some invoices. However I challenged whether some of the blacked out bits were done properly in accordance with the legislation. Technically not providing the information inside the 30 working day inspection period is unlawful (although it’s a civil law matter).

So I challenged it and around a month later got back three invoices from the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside with less redaction.

Can the citizens of Merseyside expect the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside to understand the law? Would that be expecting too much considering these invoices are to their “legal services department”? Or was this a genuine mistake? Or am I too robust in press scrutiny of the local public sector?

As it’s a related topic to the issue of police appeal tribunals I’ll point out that Cllr Mary Rasmussen is proposing at a meeting of Liverpool City Council tonight at the time of writing (14th September 2016 if you’re not reading this on the day it is published) a boycott by vendors and retailers selling the Sun newspaper in Liverpool over its reporting of matters involving the police Hillsborough. The three invoices are for the following:

1) An invoice from Drystone Chambers (based in London) for the services of Mr Gregory Perrins (a barrister) at a Police Appeals Tribunal held on the 4th December 2015 for £1,632.

2) An invoice from Mishcon de Reya (a London-based firm of solicitors) was for £6,000 for supply of legal services in the matter “Royal Mail – VAT Invoices for Postage Services”)

3) An invoice from Slater and Gordon UK LLP for £2,221.92 (a Manchester based firm of solicitors) for professional charges involving criminal defence and disbursements.

 

Each invoice is an A4 page and all 3 invoices involving the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for legal services 2015-2016 financial year are provided here.

I am of course grateful to the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for resolving these issues so quickly in a month, rather than the over three years it takes Wirral Council to properly consider the redactions on an information request (request made 29th March 2013, information provided in redacted form 19th May 2016)! In the interests of openness and transparency I had better declare I was Appellant in that case where Wirral Council was Second Respondent.

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Why is Wirral Council being charged £49,047.35 a month for VAT on school meals by Edsential Community Interest Company?

Why is Wirral Council being charged £49,047.35 a month for VAT on school meals by Edsential Community Interest Company?

Why is Wirral Council being charged £49,047.35 a month for VAT on school meals by Edsential Community Interest Company?

                                                   

Wirral West Constituency Committee 30th June 2016 Left Cllr Jeff Green Chair Right David Armstrong Assistant Chief Executive
David Armstrong (right) Assistant Chief Executive (a company director of Edsential Community Interest Company) at a recent meeting of the Wirral West Constituency Committee (30th June 2016)

Updated 15#47;8#47;16 following responses by Edsential and Wirral Council

Below is an invoice from Edsential Community Interest Company to Wirral Council for school meals in December 2015 and operation charges from December 2015 to March 2016.

Edsential invoice to Wirral Borough Council 2nd January 2016 Wirral Schools meals and operation charges £404084.10
Edsential invoice to Wirral Borough Council 2nd January 2016 Wirral Schools meals and operation charges £404084.10

I’m puzzled as to why the school meals element for £245,236.75 attracts VAT at 20%, when Her Majesty’s Revenue and Custom’s guidance note on VAT on school meals would seem to (at least by my reading) state that school meals (apart from those to staff and visitors) are exempt from VAT.

Therefore I’m puzzled why this element of the bill attracts VAT of £49,047.35, when surely the amount should be different than this (if it was just for staff and visitor meals)?

However Wirral Council’s paid the VAT on the school meals charge from Edsential. This is per a month (and some of December no school meals will be served because of the Christmas holidays), so over the year it means the VAT could be a few hundred thousand?

This is well below the level of materiality or triviality which is why it probably doesn’t get picked up routinely, after all Edsential is a relatively new arrangement.

But when the taxpayer is funding free school meals, what’s the correct tax situation?

Both Wirral Council and Edsential have been in touch since this article was written and their responses are below.

Wirral Council reclaim the VAT back from HMRC and state that no VAT is charged to pupils for school meals, Edsential claim the VAT they charge Wirral Council is correct.

Updated 13/8/16 A reader, h/t to Nigel Draper points out this explanation about how VAT on school catering works from a different local authority.

Updated: 12/8/16 some replies on Twitter state that if Wirral Council was providing these services to schools then the catering services would be exempt from VAT, however the issue of whether schools are exempt from paying VAT on catering services are in related to a limited company owned by two local councils rather than the Wirral Council itself.

Updated 15/8/16:

Ian McGrady (Managing Director) of Edsential has responded with, “As a matter of policy we do not comment on commercially confidential relationships with our customers. However, I can confirm that our management of VAT complies with all HMRC guidance appropriate to our status as a Community Interest Company.”

Peter Molyneux of Wirral Council confirmed that when Metro Catering (an arm of Wirral Council) were providing a school meals service then VAT was not chargeable. Now Wirral Council contract with Edsential, Edsential charge Wirral Council VAT which Wirral Council then claim back from HMRC.

So Wirral Council do pay the VAT, but then claim it back on their monthly VAT return.

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Why did Merseyside Recycling & Waste Authority spend £24,000 + VAT on 4 half hour TV programmes and a short promotional film about re-use and recycling called We Are Stardust?

Why did Merseyside Recycling & Waste Authority spend £24,000 + VAT on 4 half hour TV programmes and a short promotional film about re-use and recycling called We Are Stardust?

Why did Merseyside Recycling & Waste Authority spend £24,000 + VAT on 4 half hour TV programmes and a short promotional film about re-use and recycling called We Are Stardust?

I’ll start this piece by declaring an interest in that I receive money from working in the broadcast media.

This is a continuation of a series on my experiences doing a citizen audit of local Merseyside public bodies relating to the 2015/16 financial year that started last Friday with Would you like to see 2 invoices (totalling £153,250.61) for pre construction work on the Saughall Massie fire station project?. As a local government elector I obtained this information by exercising a time limited right (there is a 30 working day window each year) using the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014, s.26.

Below is a short note about some information revealed to myself on the 19th July 2016 by Merseyside Recycling & Waste Authority (the public name of Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority).

Just for information, Merseyside Recycling & Waste Authority received £15.531 million from Wirral Council in the 2015/16 financial year and the two councillors from Wirral Council currently appointed to it are Cllr Steve Williams (Conservative) and Cllr Irene Williams (Labour).

The below documents are details of £24,000 + VAT spent with Brightmoon Media/Bay TV on four 30 minute TV programmes (plus a short promotional film) with a working title of We Are Stardust.

The producer was Roger Appleton and the Executive Producer for Bay TV Chris Kerr. The Executive Producer for Merseyside Recyclicing and Waste Authority was Stuart Donaldson.

The programmes are about waste prevention, recycling and reuse. As far as I know I haven’t seen the programmes myself, but I just thought you dear reader would like to know the detail about how local council taxpayers’ money is spent. So I include what was provided to myself below by Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority (whose motto is Merseyside… a place where nothing is wasted).

Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority Contract S 5011 C Brightmoon Media Bay TV Page 1 of 7
Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority Contract S 5011 C Brightmoon Media Bay TV Page 1 of 7
Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority Contract S 5011 C Brightmoon Media Bay TV Page 2 of 7
Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority Contract S 5011 C Brightmoon Media Bay TV Page 2 of 7
Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority Contract S 5011 C Brightmoon Media Bay TV Page 3 of 7
Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority Contract S 5011 C Brightmoon Media Bay TV Page 3 of 7
Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority Contract S 5011 C Brightmoon Media Bay TV Page 4 of 7
Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority Contract S 5011 C Brightmoon Media Bay TV Page 4 of 7
Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority Contract S 5011 C Brightmoon Media Bay TV Page 5 of 7
Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority Contract S 5011 C Brightmoon Media Bay TV Page 5 of 7
Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority Contract S 5011 C Brightmoon Media Bay TV Page 6 of 7
Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority Contract S 5011 C Brightmoon Media Bay TV Page 6 of 7
Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority Contract S 5011 C Brightmoon Media Bay TV Page 7 of 7
Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority Contract S 5011 C Brightmoon Media Bay TV Page 7 of 7

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3 invoices about the Wirral Waters Section 106 agreement with Peel which raises a VAT question?

3 invoices about the Wirral Waters Section 106 agreement with Peel which raises a VAT question?

3 invoices about the Wirral Waters Section 106 agreement with Peel which raises a VAT question?

                                                    

I’d better start this piece by declaring an interest in that I can see the Wirral Waters site from where I live as it’s not that far away.

Below are three invoices that however many times I look at them don’t make much sense to me. However maybe through writing about them I can make more sense of them. I may have this wrong, so if I have please leave a comment as elements from one invoice appear on the other ones so maybe I’m not counting things correctly.

All three are from Eversheds LLP (a firm of solicitors) with an office in Manchester. I’ll put them in chronological order:

20/2/13 Interim Invoice | Wirral Waters Section 106 agreement (to November 2012) | £10,000 + VAT £2,000 = £12,000 | £10,000 paid by Peel Land and Property (Ports) Limited | £2,000 paid by Wirral Council (VAT element)

15/4/13 Interim Invoice | Wirral Waters Section 106 agreement (to November 2012) | £8,133.90 + VAT £1,617.58 = £9,751.48 | £8,133.90 paid by Peel Land and Property (Ports) Limited | £1,617.58 to be paid by Wirral Council (VAT element)

29/4/13 Invoice | Wirral Waters Section 106 agreement (28 June 2011 to 31 July 2012) | £8,000 + VAT £1,577.20 = £9.577.20 | £8,000 paid by Peel Land and Property (Ports) Limited | £1,577.20 to be paid by Wirral Council (VAT element)

Total (across three invoices) paid by Peel Land and Property (Ports) Limited: £10,000 + £8,133.90 + £8,000 = £26,133.90
Total (across three invoices) paid by Wirral Council : £2,000 + £1,617.58 + £1,577.20 = £5,194,78

Which leads me to the obvious question about VAT. When a developer such as Peel Land and Property (Ports) Limited have a legal firm (in this case Eversheds) to draw up a section 106 agreement between themselves (Peel Land and Property (Ports) Limited) and Wirral Council, why does Wirral Council pay the VAT?

I’m not an accountant, so maybe somebody out there with a better understanding of the tax code and VAT issues can help me! Please leave a comment if you understand this better than me!

Wirral Waters section 106 agreement interim invoice Wirral Council 20th February 2013 £12000
Wirral Waters section 106 agreement interim invoice Wirral Council 20th February 2013 £12000
Wirral Waters section 106 agreement interim invoice Peel Land and Property (Ports) Limited 15th April 2013 £9751 48p
Wirral Waters section 106 agreement interim invoice Peel Land and Property (Ports) Limited 15th April 2013 £9751 48p
Wirral Waters section 106 agreement invoice Wirral Council 29th April 2013 £9577 20p
Wirral Waters section 106 agreement invoice Wirral Council 29th April 2013 £9577 20p

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