Why did Wirral Council not check an invoice from Weightmans for £2,185.20 was correct before paying it?
Why did Wirral Council not check an invoice from Weightmans for £2,185.20 was correct before paying it?
Wirral Council invoice Weightmans £2185.20 29th April 2013
Above is an invoice from Weightmans to Wirral Council for £2,185.20. However it doesn’t add up. If the hours part is to be believed then these are the real figures:
As the “Certified correct for payment” signature is blacked out, you can’t tell who at Wirral Council just paid it without scrutinising whether it was correct or not.
So perhaps somebody leave a comment answering are employees at Wirral Council supposed to check invoices are correct before paying them?
In Wirral Council’s constitution it specifies the following under “Financial Regulations”.
5.3.2 The key controls for ordering and paying for work, goods and services are:-
…
(v) payments are made to the correct person/supplier, for the correct amount and are properly recorded, regardless of the payment method;
5.3.5 Chief Officers are responsible for ensuring that all goods and services are properly ordered, received and paid for in accordance with Guidelines for Financial Systems.
Quite what the mysterious “Guidelines for Financial Systems” are I don’t know. The Chief Officer for legal expenditure would be Surjit Tour, although it’s clearly not his signature on the invoice.
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Incredible: Wirral Council shared 55,640 addresses of residents who live on their own with Merseyside Fire Service!
Incredible: Wirral Council shared 55,640 addresses of residents who live on their own with Merseyside Fire Service!
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Paul Murphy of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service explains how Wirral Council told Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service where all the people claiming a single person council tax discount live 19th March 2015
At yesterday’s meeting of Merseyside’s Fire and Rescue Authority’s Performance and Scrutiny Committee Paul Murphy (the fire service manager for the Wirral district) said something surprising (his interesting talk starts at 3 minutes 22 seconds into the video of the meeting above).
31 minutes and 6 seconds into the meeting, in answer to a question from a councillor he says, “What we did with the last Chief Exec is, that was the dilemma I was sadly in Councillor Stapleton, so the give away to me was to deliver that up. So we went to Wirral Borough Council and said “Would you do us a favour? Would you share your single person council tax, who are those people on that list?” and Wirral shared that with us.
So straight away it went from 320,000, it shrunk it down, I think it was around I can’t remember the exact numbers but it went from a global figure to a manageable figure and that goes on, on the fire stations they’ll have a Goldmine system of status reports. So if it’s for instance Paul Murphy, if I’m 65, I live alone, I’m a known smoker, I’ve been in hospital, I will build up a criteria, the vulnerable person index and then what the fire crews will do is they will prioritise those people especially if they haven’t had a visit.”
Just to summarise, a person lives on their own so quite rightly gets 25% off their Council Tax. Unbeknownst to them, Wirral Council shares this information with Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, so a fire engine and crew comes round offering them a free smoke alarm?
Does anyone other than me find this sharing of council tax data for other purposes worrying? There is a poll below so you can give your opinion on this.
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On Monday evening I asked Councillor Adrian Jones about councillor’s use of taxis during the public question time section of Council meeting. Below is a transcript of the answer he gave to my question (apart from one small section that is unclear) along with a transcript of my supplementary question and answer.
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JOHN BRACE: Thanks, as you said my question is to Councillor Jones.
Each year Wirral Council is required to publish annual totals of what councillors have claimed in travel expenses. Due to contracts with various taxi firms invoicing Wirral Council directly thousands of pounds of expenses weren’t included in the list for 2013/14.
The Members Allowance Scheme states that the use of taxis (or councillors’ own cars) for attending meetings is only permitted where public transport is either not available, or the journey by public transport would be likely to result in unreasonable delay.
For the taxi journeys made by councillors that were not included in the annual published lists for 2013/14 and those made since can you confirm:
(a) each journey was taken where there is no available public transport (or taking public transport would lead to unreasonable delay) and if not will councillors involved be refunding Wirral Council and
(b) what changes will be made so that the expenses for such journeys made in 2014/15 will be included next time the annual lists are published? Thank you.
CLLR ADRIAN JONES (CABINET MEMBER FOR SUPPORT SERVICES): Thank you for your question John.
The Council’s Members Allowance Scheme is detailed in part six of the constitution and paragraph 8(a) deals with travel costs but I’m sure you already know that.
The roles and personal circumstances of Members varies widely as do demands and expectations of their constituents and this has to be followed by considering which journey for Wirral that Members do.
Some Members for various reasons have no reason to use taxis in order to carry out some of their duties. It’s the responsibility of those Members concerned to determine when to use a taxi and in doing so Members are trusted to make a judgement that is consistent with the Members Allowances Scheme.
Members in exercising that judgement will take account of a number of factors such as the public transport arrangements available at the time in question, including the frequency of service, the length of time between connections and the consequent time it’ll take to get to and from their destination.
This is also balanced against other factors including personal and family circumstances, other conflicting commitments including a Member’s employment, other engagements and appointments to be attended that day and also for safety issues, health and safety issues that may arise at a particular time such as late night travel and …
The Council has negotiated competitive prices and entered into contracts with a local taxi company to provide transport for Members in accordance with the Members Allowances Scheme. The taxi company submits its invoices and the details of the Members that used the taxis each month directly to the Council for payment. The advantage of this arrangement is that the cost of transport by taxis is always at the negotiated rate and is a more efficient way to manage the service.
Now these costs have not been published on that basis previously, however in future the cost of Member’s taxi journeys undertaken pertinent to these taxi contracts will be published on the Council’s website as soon as practicable after the end of each financial year.
I will just add John that I’ve no doubt in targeting your question to the use of taxis you may be thought to have missed the big picture as the use of private cars is also charged to the public purse and that’s a point that will go over on both sides of the room.
Various councillors: Hear, hear.
Mayor: Do we, are we allowing the press a supplementary? You want a supplementary? OK.
JOHN BRACE: Thank you for that answer Councillor Jones.
The information about taxi journeys made by some councillors was provided to me on the 23rd January 2015 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
Since that time I have made four further FOI requests that have not been answered at all within the statutory twenty days, there are a further six that have not been responded to and only this morning I received an email from the Information Commissioners Office that said they would be drafting a decision notice about the Council’s failure to respond to an internal review request that was made on the 12th of November last year.
Will he apologise tonight for the way that this Council is ignoring my requests made under the Freedom of Information legislation and send me a written answer before the elections in May as to what is happening to improve Wirral Council’s performance when requests for information are made using the Freedom of Information Act legislation?
CLLR ADRIAN JONES: I’ll ask for a report as on why your question wasn’t answered and I’ll get back to you soon.
JOHN BRACE: Thank you.
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In answer to Councillor Jones’ point about use of councillor’s own cars to attend meetings being part of the bigger picture I refer him (and readers) to the fact I published all these (for 2013/14) last year:
Why has Wirral Council spent £6,003,273.07 on temporary staff over the past 10 months?
Why has Wirral Council spent £6,003,273.07 on temporary staff over the past 10 months?
I found out today that Wirral Council had won the “Most Improved” Council award.
However here are some eye-watering amounts that Wirral Council have spent on agency staff over the last year (the amounts in pounds are the fourth column):
Why are Wirral councillors trying to kill off press freedom by a new public meetings filming ban?
Why are Wirral councillors trying to kill off press freedom by a new public meetings filming ban?
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Video of the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee from 3rd March 2015, the item on filming starts 43 seconds into the meeting
Surjit Tour (Monitoring Officer at Wirral Council) gives councillors his opinion at the meeting that he doesn’t think the draft policy banning filming breaches the Human Rights Act 1998 3rd March 2015
Last night councillors (as you can see from the video above) on Wirral Council’s Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee agreed to bash the final nail in the coffin of press freedom to report on public meetings of Wirral Council and recommended to all councillors at the next Council meeting on the 16th of March that press freedom remain dead and buried (that is they recommended a draft policy on the reporting of all public meetings of Wirral Council).
Labour councillors on the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee last night repeatedly prevented any discussion by opposition councillors on the controversial subjects of the closure of Lyndale School and library opening hours. If councillors from the ruling group can’t respect and listen to viewpoints they may not agree with, how can democracy actually function at all on Wirral Council?
The draft policy (if approved by Council) will mean that at the start of the meeting the Chair will ask anyone if they have any objections to the meeting being filmed. If someone does object the Chair will stop the meeting being filmed. However any legal powers Chairs may have had to stop filming of public meetings were repealed by the Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014 last year.
The policy goes much further and states a ban on editing filming, photography or recording of a meeting that could cause “reputational harm”.
Wirral Council seem to not recognise the importance of the independence of the press and councillors on the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee don’t seem to think there is anything wrong with this policy.
If you’re from the Wirral and would like to make your views known to your local councillors ahead of the Council meeting on the 16th March, their contact details are on this page. As emails to councillors are no routinely filtered, I would suggest phoning or writing by mail.
