Tag: Wirral Metropolitan Borough

Pension Committee (Wirral Council) 20th November 2012 Part 2

Pension Committee (Wirral Council) 20th November 2012 Part 2

So, after the vote to ban filming at the Pension Committee what happened next?

Well first a list of who was there (apologies for not including councillors from other Merseyside councils I don’t know the names of)

Pensions Committee
Cllr Patricia Glasman, Chair
Cllr Geoffrey Watt
Cllr Mike Hornby
Cllr Adam Sykes
Cllr Tom Harney
Cllr Adrian Jones
Cllr Sylvia Hodrien
Cllr Harry Smith
Cllr Ann McLachlan
Cllr George Davies
Phil Goodwin (trade union representative)

Wirral Council Officers
Colin Hughes
Peter Timmins
Pat Philips
+ others from the Merseyside Pension Fund

A declaration of interest was made as the person was a member of the Merseyside Pension Fund.

The minutes were agreed.

An officer gave a brief summary of a LGPS Update report which included the Merseyside Pension Fund response to the Department of Communities and Local Government on the impacts of the Public Service Pension Bill on the Merseyside Pension Fund.

No questions were asked, the report was noted and the letter was noted.

An officer then asked for approval for the Statement of Investment Principles which was an appendix to a report which they said “do not constitute a change in investment strategy”.

The Chair asked how long it would take? The answer given by the officer was that they intended to sign it by the end of November.

Cllr Harry Smith said that he understood the reason some documents were hyperlinked and that he had “calmed down now”.

Cllr Watt commented on the links, Phil Goodwin commented on the same issue and the Chair said it would be revisited next year. The recommendation was agreed.

Yvonne Caddock introduced the report on Annual Allowance Tax Charge and Scheme Pays Process, which related to how much a person can pay into the pension scheme each year without incurring a tax charge.

A councillor asked about the numbers of how many were likely to be affected?
Yvonne answered that they had got it down to about ninety members in the Fund, who they would have to issue pension statements for but that there may be seven or eight members that exceeded the new limit which would lead to a tax charge.

Cllr Geoffrey Watt made a comment. The recommendations were agreed.

Peter Wallach said they’d been shortlisted for the LGC Investment Awards 2012 and asked if the Pension Committee wanted to be represented at the awards ceremony and if so how many?

The Chair asked for comments. Cllr Harry Smith suggested three councillors, one from Labour, one from the Conservatives and one from the Lib Dems.

The Chair suggested that they add the Head of the Fund too. Cllr Geoffrey Watt asked which category they had been shortlisted in? The answer given was large pension fund of the year. They all voted in favour of sending three councillors and the head of the Fund to the awards ceremony at The Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, London in December.

 

Wirral Council Consultation: What Really Matters (Part 2)

An opinion piece on staff cuts at Wirral Council and the current consultation.

English: Wallasey Town Hall, Wirral, England a...
English: Wallasey Town Hall, Wirral, England as seen from the promenade. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

OPINION BY JOHN BRACE: Well as promised at last Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, Wirral Council has published its option papers for part two of the What Really Matters consultation.

As explained on the website the options are about 25% more than the savings required (so the consultation is really about the 25% of things Wirral Council does in the options the public would like to save). Despite stating on their website that the consultation lasts until January 31st 2013, some decisions will be have to be made at the special Cabinet meetings on December 20th 2012 to comply with legal requirements on consultation with the workforce.

There will be more unspecified “consultation events” and of course staff/trade union consultation too. What does this mean for staff working in service areas identified as a budget option? It means basically one of two things if you’re an employee in a service area that’s become an “option”:-

(a) you’ll could be lucky this year and end up in the 25% of options that aren’t cut, due to public/staff support in this current consultation or other reasons (but this doesn’t rule out your post being cut in future years),

(b) once the special Cabinet meeting (followed by the Employment and Appointments Committee) of 20th December 2012 meets your job could be at risk under the new (recently approved) less generous redundancy scheme

How many jobs will go at Wirral Council as a result of this? Well the law requires this kind of consultation for over twenty redundancies, the real figure partly depends on a bunch of decisions yet to be made, however if you add the predicted shortfall of £25.4 million next year to the current required in-year savings of £13.2 million, you get £38.6 million.

Obviously not all the £38.6 million will be staff’s salaries and some staff are directly employed by schools. These figures are based on full-time equivalents, as Wirral Council employs a lot of part-time workers, the real figures could be higher than this estimate.

However by my rough estimates it would be around 154 to 1,026 FT employees that will need to go to balance the books. With those types of numbers involved it won’t just the normal reasons people leave and there will have to be redundancies. The specifics of who, how many and which service areas has yet to be decided (apart from some Executive Team decisions on the current in year savings).

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Health and Wellbeing Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Wirral Council) 5th November 2012 Agenda and reports

Health and Wellbeing Overview and Scrutiny Committee 5th November 2012 (Wirral Council) agenda and reports

As Wirral Council are having trouble publishing the agenda and reports for Monday’s Health and Wellbeing Overview and Scrutiny Committee (5/11/2012) on their website they are available from this website until Wirral Council sorts out their issues.

Edit: Update 31/10/2012 The agenda and reports including the missing What Really Matters Consultation result (Cabinet report) are now on Wirral Council’s website.

Maybe their IT department is as overworked as ours is. 😉

Health and Well Being Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Date: Monday, 5 November 2012
Time: 6.00 pm
Venue: Council Chamber, Wallasey Town Hall

Contact Officer: Lyndzay Roberts
Tel: 0151 691 8262
e-mail: lyndzayroberts@wirral.gov.uk
Website: http://www.wirral.gov.uk

AGENDA

1. MEMBERS’ CODE OF CONDUCT – DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST/ PARTY WHIP
Members of the Committee are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary and non pecuniary interests, in connection with any application on the agenda and state the nature of the interest.

Members are reminded that they should also declare, pursuant to paragraph 18 of the Overview and Scrutiny Procedure Rules, whether they are subject to a party whip in connection with any item(s) to be considered and, if so, to declare it and state the nature of the whipping arrangement.

2. MINUTES (Pages 1 – 12)
To receive the minutes of the Health and Well Being Overview and Scrutiny Committee held on 10 September 2012.

3. CONSIDERATION OF FINDINGS – WHAT REALLY MATTERS CONSULTATION
Report to follow

4. DELIVERING THE CORPORATE PLAN: 2012/13 SECOND QUARTER PERFORMANCE AND FINANCIAL REVIEW (Pages 13 – 24)

5. WELFARE REFORM (Pages 25 – 40)

6. TRANSFORMATION OF DAY SERVICES – OSC SUB GROUP REPORT
To receive a Verbal Update Report

7. PROGRESS REPORT OF ACTIONS TAKEN TO IMPLEMENT OUTSTANDING RECOMMENDATIONS IN RELATION TO DASS: PERSONAL BUDGETS (Pages 41 – 50)

8. TACKLING THE LIFE EXPECTANCY GAP (Pages 51 – 64)

9. FORWARD PLAN

The Forward Plan for the period September to December 2012 has now been published on the Council’s intranet/website and Members are invited to review the Plan prior to the meeting in order for the Committee to consider, having regard to the Committee’s work programme, whether scrutiny should take place of any items contained within the Plan and, if so, how it could be done within relevant timescales and resources.

10. WORK PROGRAMME
The Committee was requested to consider what issues should form the basis of its work programme for the ensuing municipal year.

11. ANY OTHER URGENT BUSINESS APPROVED BY THE CHAIR

Wirral Council burying bad news in a supplementary agenda

 

OPINION PIECE BY JOHN BRACE

Normally the papers for a meeting have to be (it’s a legal requirement) published five days before a meeting on Wirral Council’s website expect in certain exceptional circumstances.

However when your report is the snappily titled Revenue Monitoring 2012/13 Month 4 (July 2012) detailing exactly why Wirral Council has a projected £14.4 million overspend (or at least it did at the end of July 2012, let’s hope it’s not more now two months later), it’s understandable why somebody wouldn’t want this going out with the regular agenda through the post to councillors on the Council Excellence Overview and Scrutiny Committee before the next meeting on Monday.

In fact publishing on Friday afternoon is a time-honoured way to “bury bad news”, and believe me the news is bad and explains the matters that led to the spending freeze about three weeks ago. By the time anybody has read it and has any questions, most of the relevant Monday to Friday 9-5 Council officers will be enjoying the weekend.

The advantage of course to the online version is it’s in colour, whereas to save costs the Council prints things in black and white (although obviously the lucky few councillors recently given iPads will be able to view it in colour).

However let’s have a look at the highlights and the slightly strange use of statistics and selective quoting of facts. The overspend for months 1 and 2 of Financial Year 2012/2013 seem to be missing from the graph, with no explanation given in the report as to why. However the projected overspends don’t seem to originate from the Department of Finance (who predict a £2.5 million overspend), but the two “usual subjects” of DASS (Department of Adult Social Services) at over £10 million of overspend and CYPD (Children and Young Peoples Department) at around £5 million.

Even the Department of Law, HR and Asset Management headed during some of this period by Bill Norman is projecting a £2 million overspend.

The report of course mentioned that the Labour Cabinet’s response this year has been to spend a further £677,000.

So how does this breakdown compare to what the Budget should be (according to report anyway)? The answer in the report is £3 million over budget on employee spend, £1.3 million overspend on premises and an £11.5 million overspend on “supplies and services”.

The report explains also why Cabinet had to dip into £7 million of reserves (the Working Neighbourhood Fund). So when will we find out what’s happened in month 5 (August), well that’ll be October 18th…. with the “Executive Team” of Council Officers finding out on 4th October… course if the CYPD had submitted the correct figures to the Department for Education then Wirral Council would have a further £1.6 million to spend on education. Oh well…

 

Cabinet (Wirral Council) 6th September 2012 Part 1 Political Assistants Scrapped

There weren’t enough copies of the motion (on item 5) of Cllr Phil Davies last night for everyone there so it is below.

ITEM 5 – CABINET, 6 SEPTEMBER 2012

Add the following:-

The Council is facing significant financial challenges, both in-year and over the next three years.

As the Administration, we need to show leadership and demonstrate how we will also contribute to immediate savings, whilst ensuring that all Elected Members are equipped to deliver their roles with appropriate and integrated support.

Cabinet resolves:

1. That current arrangements for scrutiny support are revised to become a more integrated part of the Council’s management structure to provide advice and support for all political groups.

2. That the political groups no longer be supported by Political Assistants funded by the Council Tax payers and these posts be deleted accordingly with a view to realising savings in-year of up to £50k and a saving of £135k annually, which will be used to support front line services.

3. That all Elected Members and the Administration are supported by a Central Policy Unit and Member Services, which will include a new casework management system, as part of the improvements in political leadership and governance.

4. That the Acting Director of Law, HR and Asset Management and Head of Human Resources and Organisational Development begin formal consultation with the staff directly affected by these proposals in accordance with the relevant Council policies.