Tag: Wirral Council

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 27th September 2012

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1. Declarations of Interest 00:01
2. Minutes of the last meeting

CHILDREN’S SERVICES AND LIFELONG LEARNING
3. Child and Family Poverty Budget Option

STREETSCENE AND TRANSPORT SERVICES
4. Highway and Engineering Services Contract – Value for Money and Annual Review
5. Highway and Engineering Services Contract – 2014 and Beyond
6. The Flood and Water Act 2010 – Ordinary Watercourse Consenting and Enforcement
7. West Kirby Marine Lake Refurbishment, Consultant Appointments – Contract Price Increase

REGENERATION AND PLANNING STRATEGY
8. Local Development Framework – Core Strategy – Publication of Proposed Submission Draft

HOUSING AND COMMUNITY SAFETY
9. Implementation of Local Authority Mortgage Scheme in Wirral

IMPROVEMENT AND GOVERNANCE
10. Recommendations from the Improvement Board
11. Any Other Urgent Business
12. Exempt Information – Exclusion of the Press and Public

STREETSCENE AND TRANSPORT SERVICES
13. Exempt Appendices – Agenda Item 4 Highway and Engineering Services Contract — Value for Money and Annual Review
14. Exempt Appendices – Agenda Item 5 Highway and Engineering Services Contract – 2014 and Beyond
15. Any Other Urgent Business Approved by the Chair (Part 2)

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 28th September 2012 Any Other Urgent Business Approved by the Chair

Any Other Business, Wirral Council’s Cabinet 28th September 2012

Interest declaration: The author is a member of a trade union and a member of the media affected by this law change.

There was an Any Other Business item at Wirral Council’s Cabinet last night, with a recommendation from Surjit Tour, the Acting Director of Law, Human Resources & Asset Management (which was agreed). It seems to be in response to a point I made a week ago by email to a Wirral Council councillor when the Cabinet agenda was published and follows on from this blog post, as the law referred to came into effect on the 10th September 2012.

I had previously brought it up with my trade union, that Wirral Council didn’t seem to be complying with the new law, which is why I followed the approach suggested and brought it up with Wirral Council’s legal team and the people involved. One councillor on the Cabinet has asked for an email about it which I will write in the near future.

URGENT BUSINESS

Recommendation

That Cabinet authorises the Council’s Chief Officers to seek all requisite consents and/or agreement on behalf of Cabinet from relevant persons as required by The Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Meetings and Access to Information) (England) Regulations 2012 where an item to be considered by Cabinet includes exempt information and it is not possible to provide at least 28 clear days notice of that item.

Personally, it’s not quite resulting in the outcome of considerably more openness and accountability I had hoped for (although most legislation has caveats and loopholes that can be exploited). It is however, a step in the right direction as it (hopefully) provides a check and balance on the executive power of the all-Labour Cabinet’s future attempts to make decisions behind closed doors resulting in less scrutiny from the press and public, as really (because to do so without giving 28 days notice they have to first seek consent from the Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee first) should (unless officers and councillors are deliberately trying to make an administration make major decisions in secret) only happen very rarely.

This seems to be one small step on the way to complying with the legislation (whether the spirit and intent behind the legislation is followed depends how Wirral Council implement it in practice), which means regulation 5(2) and 5(3) don’t have to be complied with (see regulation 5(6)) if the part of the meeting held in private is “urgent and cannot reasonably be deferred” and they get the agreement of the relevant Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee (or if they’re not available others are mentioned)).

Personally as last night’s Cabinet meeting (it wasn’t a special meeting but a regular one) was in the calendar of meetings decided on the 12th April 2012 and it was a matter that had been known about since 26th June 2012, why wasn’t the 28 clear days notice given (which would’ve had to have been given around the end of August 2012)? Well firstly, the Colas matter did need urgent attention (as Colas have been behaving churlishly since the public interest report by the Audit Commission as to how the contract was awarded to them was published and announced they don’t want the contract past 2014. So who’s Cabinet Portfolio does these two items fall under? It’s Cllr Harry Smith’s (Labour), the Cabinet Member for Streetscene and Transport.

Personally I think it should be the relevant Cabinet Member or Cabinet asking for consent from another councillor rather than Chief Officers on their behalf, although the legislation can be interpreted in different ways. In my opinion what was agreed last night puts too much power in Chief Officer’s hands, whose powers of persuasion over Wirral councillors are well-known.

Wirral Council breaches expenditure limit by £741,000 and loses out on over £1 million of funding

English: Wallasey Town Hall, Wirral, England a...
Wallasey Town Hall, Wirral, England where the Schools Forum will be held. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a report going to Tuesday’s School Forum (Agenda Item 13) Wirral Council admit they breached an expenditure limit by £741,000 in 2012/2013 (which relates to the Children and Young People’s Department, which has democratic accountability through the Cabinet Member for Children’s Services and Lifelong Learning, Labour Cllr Tony Smith (Upton)).

In addition to this £741,000 needed, a further £333,000 is needed for the “Private Finance Initiative Affordability Gap”, £32,000 needed for “Other” (which is probably a knock on effect of these other changes) and £71,000 extra needed for the Carbon Reduction Budget which brings the grand total required to £1.177 million.

This’ll (assuming the Schools Forum agrees to the change) be made by reducing the Schools Contingency Budget, the Early Years Contingency Budget and the Academy LACSEG central budget.

Basically when a school converts to become an Academy (as some have this year), the new Academy receives what it would before from the Local Authority (in this case Wirral), plus the local authority share of the grant Wirral Council receives from government (this covers the Academy’s costs of things they now have to pay for like assessing eligibility for free school meals, special educational need support services, certain staff costs etc).

However the transfer to the new Academies follows a long process that Wirral Council’s Children and Young People’s Department should have known about at the time of setting the 2012/2013 Schools Budget (earlier this year), which begs the question, why weren’t assumptions that certain schools would become academies factored into the Budget when it was set earlier this year (or is this too much crystal-ball gazing to expect of Wirral Council)?

This means the Indicative Schools Budget will be reduced by 18% to factor in Wirral Council’s overspending and faulty Budget assumptions. Certainly while one expects minor in-year budget adjustments to reflect unforeseen circumstances (usually using reserves set aside for this), these Academy changes have been “on the cards” for some time! If some of Wirral Council’s departments continue to overspend in this fashion (as they have for many years), eventually the cuts in 2013/2014 will have to be more severe, to make up for any 2012/2013 overspend. As we’re already halfway through the 2012/2013 Financial Year, some of that 2012/2013 Budget has already been spent.

P.S. And as if the above wasn’t bad enough Wirral Council lost out on ~£1.6 million of education funding (agenda item 4) because they gave the Department for Education the wrong numbers for Early Years learners, from the report this happened because “this was not identified at the time due to a breakdown in validation checks in Wirral” .

Interim Chief Executive (Wirral Council) Graham Burgess

Graham Burgess As regular readers of this blog will know the previous permanent Chief Executive of Wirral Council Jim Wilkie retired early on the 7th July 2012. Since then to great fanfare a Graham Burgess was appointed to the role of Interim Chief Executive on Monday evening 16th July 2012 (although technically until he signs an employment contract he’s just a member of the public).

Fine you may say, for once things are running “smoothly” at Wirral Council and they’re not spending around a year trying to recruit someone? Well not exactly, as the plan is that Graham Burgess won’t be stepping down as Chief Executive of Blackburn with Darwen Council and NHS Blackburn with Darwen Care Trust Plus for another three months (which takes us to October 2012 September 2012). He’ll be the fourth Chief Executive Wirral Council has had this calendar year. All these Chief Executives (as Wirral’s constitution reserves this power to them) have been appointed by Wirral Council councillors.

Wirral Council’s DASS: “The Airing of Grievances (Part 2)” Appeals SubCommittee 3/7/2012

I notice the delayed grievance appeal from the 5th March 2012 (adjourned for a whopping 17 weeks (119 days) is going ahead tomorrow afternoon (as I write this on the 2nd July 2012).

It seems there is a delayed grievance appeal from an employee of Wirral Council’s Department of Adult Social Services. Representing the historically dysfunctional Department of Adult Social Services at the March meeting was none other than Employee 19 of the AKA report, dramatic drum roll Mr. Richard O’Brien.

No, it’s not the famous Richard O’Brien who used to present the Crystal Maze on Channel 4 in the 90s, and yes I invite you in the comments to state the similarities between Wirral Council and The Crystal Maze, but a guy that goes by the shorter moniker of Rick O’Brien. Who’s Rick you may ask? He is the Head of Branch, Personal Assessment and Planning (whatever that is!?).

Basically he lines managers the managers (that manage the social work teams) for Wallasey, Birkenhead, West Wirral etc… so it must be to do with an employee in that branch of DASS (which doesn’t narrow it down much!)

Brenda Hall is representing the other side, as she’s a branch negotiator for Wirral Council’s UNISON.

Getting out my handy “Who’s Who at DASS”, I find Rick O’Brien’s email address is richardobrien@wirral.gov.uk, which is interesting as Rick O’Brien (as reported as an exclusive on this blog last year) was one of the people who Bill Norman emailed on the 12th December 2011 about not publishing AK’s preliminary draft report.

Wasn’t he the same Rick O’Brien getting criticism in the comments section of the Wirral Globe and mentioned by name in a response to a FOI request involving four week delays in care packages?

Oh and also mentioned in this Wirral Leaks post about the Commissioning conference in London?

Hmm, well he certainly manages to get himself mentioned a lot (and it seems sometimes for all the wrong reasons)! But then it seems, a Pete Sheffield is just met with stony silence over a FOI request for Rick O’Brien’s job description.

But if memory serves correct he was also “Employee 19” in the now infamous “Anna Klonowski Associates Ltd (AKA) Independent Review of the Council’s Response to Claims Made by Martin Morton (and Others)”.

Ahh yes, that Rick. Oh well, apart from my frivolous uses of the <A HREF></a> tags, it’s nice to see there are still people at DASS with grievances to air. I had high hopes for the new Director of DASS, Graham Hodkinson, but it seems that he’s inherited a lot of problems from his predecessor in the role, Howard Cooper. How long will it before the public and employees again trust Social Services/Wirral Council to do the right thing and have a bit more accountability?

I feel at times writing about Wirral Council that it would be so much easier if getting information out of it wasn’t about as painful as pulling teeth, but it’s getting late so I will bring this to a close.