In the age of foodbanks what did “distinguished guests” eat on the evening Cllr Tony Smith was made Mayor of Wirral?
In the age of foodbanks what did “distinguished guests” eat on the evening Cllr Tony Smith was made Mayor of Wirral?
Retiring Mayor Cllr Geoffrey Watt 13th May 2019
UPDATED by JB on 19.5.19 to include detail on organisation doing catering and video clips of the public meeting on the 13th May.
UPDATED by JB on 24.5.19 to correct spelling of pâté
Yesterday’s public meeting of Wirral Council saw outgoing Mayor Cllr Geoffrey Watt (pictured above) leave and incoming Mayor Cllr Tony Smith start his term of office. Cllr George Davies is Deputy Civic Mayor this year.
Expense claim forms for Councillor Ann McLachlan 2013 to 2014
Expense claim forms for Councillor Ann McLachlan 2013 to 2014
Now we turn to the expenses claims of one of my very own Labour councillors for Bidston & St. James ward Councillor Ann McLachlan. Cllr McLachlan is Deputy Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Governance, Commissioning and Improvement. As you can imagine from such a senior councillor, her expenses claims are quite long.
Her expenses claims refer to trips to the local Gautby Road Play and Community Centre Joint Management Committee in (you’ve probably guessed already) Gautby Road, on which she represents Wirral Council’s interest. In fact I think she’s Chair of that. Yes that’s the committee that is in charge of the play area next to the community centre which is kept padlocked because the last thing we want is children using a play area!, Improvement Board meetings (which ceased in November 2013), Chrysalis (what’s that?), a trip down to London for a pensions conference, Cabinet meetings, a “transformation event” at the Floral Pavilion, Wirral Metropolitan College governors meeting, interviewing job applicants for the Director of Resources post, trade union meeting about redeployment, more job interviews and shortlisting, work on the Member’s (Members refers to councillors) Training Steering Group, the Chrysalis Board (again), a LGA Conference in Manchester, a “Strategic Communications” workshop at the Floral Pavilion, another redeployment meeting, “Visioning Training” at the Floral Pavilion, a meeting of the Democracy Working Party, the LGA Leadership Academy in Coventry (module 3) please, please no jokes in the comments about her being sent to Coventry where she spent £35 on taxis, another Leadership Academy in Coventry (module 2) when her taxi claim was £41.80 (maybe module 2 teaches you leadership skills such as how to get cheaper taxis to the same place), the Beechwood and Ballantyne Housing Association Board, interviews for a Strategic Director, shortlisting for the Director of Children and Young Peoples Department, more leadership training in Coventry where the taxi was only £10.40, the local Area Forum, a meeting to do with the Hoylake Golf Resort launch, full Council meetings, Youth Parliament, well you can see for yourself below how busy she’s been!
Cllr Ann McLachlan expenses claim 2013 2014 page 1Cllr Ann McLachlan expenses claim 2013 2014 page 2Cllr Ann McLachlan expenses claim 2013 2014 page 3Cllr Ann McLachlan expenses claim 2013 2014 page 4Cllr Ann McLachlan expenses claim 2013 2014 page 5Cllr Ann McLachlan expenses claim 2013 2014 page 6Cllr Ann McLachlan expenses claim 2013 2014 page 7Cllr Ann McLachlan expenses claim 2013 2014 page 8Cllr Ann McLachlan expenses claim 2013 2014 page 9Cllr Ann McLachlan expenses claim 2013 2014 page 10Cllr Ann McLachlan expenses claim 2013 2014 page 11Cllr Ann McLachlan expenses claim 2013 2014 page 12Cllr Ann McLachlan expenses claim 2013 2014 page 13Cllr Ann McLachlan expenses claim 2013 2014 page 14
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7 invoices during Wirral Council’s “spending freeze” are they all essential spending?
7 invoices during Wirral Council’s “spending freeze” are they all essential spending?
Wirral Council’s Cabinet recently voted to consult on closing Lyndale School because of a projected shortfall this year in Lyndale School’s budget of £15,667 and next year of £72,000.
The Wirral Council invoices below are all for 2013, after Wirral Council instituted a freeze on “non-essential spending” in the Autumn of 2012. As usual you can click on the thumbnails for larger versions of the invoices. What is or isn’t “essential spending” is quite subjective, but if you have a strong opinion on way or the other please leave a comment.
Invoice 1
This is for £64,800 to a London-based company called The Ten Group Limited. The invoice is for answering governors questions at a one hundred and twenty Wirral schools. Surely Wirral Council could either direct governors questions to the Wirral Schools Forum or its own officers to answer? Even hiring someone full-time to answer governors questions would be cheaper than outsourcing it!
Invoice 2A/2B
The first of these two invoices is to a Rotherham based company called U-xplore Ltd for £23,256 for renewal of twenty-four full U-Explore licences. It’s for online careers advice. The company also charged £1,720.80 for “one month hosting” although what they’re hosting isn’t specified on the invoice. As part of the Greater Merseyside Connexions Partnership Wirral Council already contract with Connexions for careers advice who provide a jobs explorer database to schools and colleges, access to software, as well as face to face careers advice. So why the duplication?
Invoice 3A/3B
These two invoices total £10,368 to Theatre and Ltd (based in Huddersfield). It is for a four-day safeguarding think family training workshop. The money is for development, scripting, rehearsal and includes £249.60 in travel & mileage costs. Couldn’t Wirral have hired a more local company (which would’ve meant a saving on mileage) & surely everything anybody needs to know about safeguarding could be covered in a course of less than four days? I’m sure a local college or university could have put on a bespoke workshop for less than £10,000! Finally how many people actually went on this workshop?
Invoice 4
This invoice is from Wirral Metropolitan College for £3,240 for 27 hours of training about home based caring for up to twenty people for a course run over ten days for staff in the Wirral Council’s Surestart team. It ties in with my point about the earlier invoice that Wirral Council can get training from local providers cheaper and with the added bonus of supporting local employment!
Invoice 5
This is for £1,194 to Veryan for a “Veryan WorkPlace annual licence”. Veryan is a Hampshire based software company and workplace is a piece of software to manage work experience placements. I don’t have a problem with using software for this, although it’s the kind of simple application based on a database that Wirral Council could easily write in-house (which would save the cost of an annual licence fee).
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Present
Cllr Phil Davies (Chair)
Cllr Ann McLachlan
Cllr Adrian Jones
Cllr Anne McArdle
Cllr Chris Meaden
Cllr Tony Smith
Cllr Pat Hackett
Cllr George Davies
Cllr Harry Smith
The Chair, Cllr Phil Davies welcomed those present to the first Cabinet of the municipal year. He hoped in the future they would have a more focused agenda and not a shopping list. Cllr Phil Davies said that they would be looking at corporate governance and the new corporate plan at a special Cabinet on Monday 9th July. The good news of £40 million of investment in Port Sunlight by Unilever was also something he wanted to highlight. Hillbark Hotel had been awarded a five-star rating and was the only hotel awarded five stars on Merseyside. He asked for any declarations of interest.
Cllr Ann McLachlan declared a prejudicial interest in item 19 (Lease of Land at the Oval Leisure Centre) by virtue of being a governor at Wirral Metropolitan College.
Cllr Pat Hackett declared a prejudicial interest in item 22 (Portas Pilots Round 2) as he had helped the Town Teams with their bids.
Cllr George Davies declared a prejudicial interest in item 12 (Tranmere Rovers Sponsorship Agreement 2012/2013) as he was on a Tranmere Rovers board.
The Chair said he would bring item 19 (Lease of Land at the Oval Leisure Centre) forward as there were a number of people here for it. Cllr McLachlan having previously declared a prejudicial interest in the matter left the room.
Ian Brand, Head of Asset Management gave a verbal report summarising the report on the agenda. He said there had been an objection to the disposal of the land, but that a decision had been made to lease the land to Wirral Metropolitan College for new facilities. Section two outlined the planning permission granted on the 24th May, which had been advertised publically. The objection to the sale of the land was outlined in 2.10, there was a request that call-in be waived, so that work could start as soon as possible.
Cllr Adrian Jones said he was mindful that Cllr Stuart Kelly had made representations, but it was necessary to make a decision. He had made a delegated decision to proceed and the local councillors had been involved. The college had arranged a briefing and the decision had been published. Cllr Jones thought it was a win-win and was surprised there were suggestions for further consultation as the opportunity for consultation had been there, he believed he’d taken the right decision.
Cllr Phil Davies said he had concerns that it had taken three months to respond to the complaint and that corporate governance needed to get better so that they dealt with complaints promptly. There was a criticism that officers were not impartial and he believed the complaint should’ve been dealt with more quickly.
Cllr Adrian Jones moved the recommendation at 12.1 .
Cllr Phil Davies asked the Acting Chief Executive if it was ok to waive call-in.
Ian Coleman said he was satisfied that they did.
Cllr Ann McLachlan returned.
Cllr Phil Davies said he had been made aware there were a number of members of the public here about the item involving Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory on Bidston Hill. Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, Bidston Hill (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Ian Brand said that it was a request from their tenant NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) to demolish the modern building constructed in 1973 on which they held the ground lease. The tenant would still remain responsible for the rent and maintaining the boundaries. NERC had tried to dispose of their interest, but failed, it was costing NERC money to maintain and the intention was to demolish the building.
Cllr Harry Smith said he had had a conversation with a concerned constituent who had made reference to the Unitary Development Plan from 2003/2004, but there was nothing about the UDP in the item, did Ian have information about that decision?
Ian Brand said that section 11 dealt with planning and that demolition did not require planning consent.
Cllr Harry Smith said he had been quite specific about the Unitary Development Plan and asked for deferment until there was further investigation.
Cllr Adrian Jones said that in principle he supported delaying the decision, he had had a phone call from Graham Clark who was best known for his association with the egg run who had similar reservations.
Bill Norman said the decision could be delegated to the portfolio holder.
Cllr Harry Smith said he was not happy and had further questions, he asked for it to come back to Cabinet.
Cllr Phil Davies said there were alternatives uses suggested at 2.5 and 2.6 and that they could use the special Cabinet meeting on the 9th July to have a report back on the alternative uses and UDP.
He have notice that he wanted to take an urgent item of AOB on the Liverpool City Region City Deal.
On item 3 Cllr Phil Davies had the following proposals.
On minute 360, it was consistent with the Improvement Plan, but could be brought to the special Cabinet on the 9th July and the Improvement Board. Minute 361 reflected on how they operated in practice, but there was the danger of adding another layer of decision making and bureaucracy, he said they had the scrutiny committees and Improvement Board, but he’d like to suggest a Leader’s Board which would be a forum to meet together to discuss issues of strategic importance. It would be an advisory not executive body. This was agreed by the Cabinet. On minute 362, he needed to confirm there was the £250,000 required and asked for a further Cabinet report. Minute 365 was the suggestion of the new administration, there would be a peer challenge in July and they would appoint an interim Chief Executive, he suggested they park the idea with the exception of the performance development and appraisals process. Minute 367 referred to an independent external ombudsman to deal with employee concerns, Cllr Phil Davies was not convinced this would add value to the organisation, he said there were already a raft of procedures on whistle blowing and grievance that they had to make sure worked effectively, so he wanted no action on minute 367. He agreed with 368 which he had read again and was a good document, he confirmed that since minute 372 a new procedure on compromise contracts had been agreed by the Employment and Appointments Committee.
