Tonight I attended the Regeneration and Planning Strategy Overview and Scrutiny Committee to be called as a witness into the Council’s telephone mast fiasco.
I was astounded, that along with other colleagues the Lib Dem Chairman had removed me from the witness list, he had also removed my colleagues Cllr Leah Fraser, Cllr Andrew Hodson, Esther McVey and the Borough Solicitor, Roy Jones. When asked why he said for efficiency. Seems the truth is immaterial as long as efficiency is secured!
Conservatives on the Committee called for Merseyside Police to be called in to carry out an investigation. This was voted down by the Labour/Lib Dem alliance - No surprises there then!
Labour and Lib Dems then just went through the motions, and as usual just ratified the Cabinet decision – Scriutyn Scurnity Scrutiyn Scrutiny they can’t spell it never mind practice it.
I was delighted that the Wirral Globe reporter was present to witness this complete travesty of justice.
In the words of my colleague, Cllr Leah Fraser, “Labour and Lib Dems just want this to go away. It Won’t!”
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4 responses so far ↓
Wirral Council - “Not corrupt just incompetent!” « John M Meyer - The Conservative voice for Pensby and Thingwall // March 26, 2008 at 3:45 pm
[...] I unfortunately had to leave to attend another meeting so I am grateful for Chris Blakely for keeping us updated with his blog which can be found here. [...]
Michael // March 26, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Chris- well done for pursuing this matter, and I am sorry that a Police investigation was not authorised into this. There are still too many unanswered questions over this, and I do wonder how Mr Knight was able to conclude that there was no evidence of corruption/illegal activity leading to the “mistake”, when he himself admitted that he had not even been able to interview the person allegedly responsible for the error, as they had already resigned! (or taken early retirement as it is understood)
I am not surprised at the Labour-Lib Dem decision to sweep it under the carpet, and it probably will work, as people will move onto other thing over time… but this should not mean that it another case of the “lessons learned, ho hum” attitude, that is no evident at Wirral Council, and particularly in Technical Services. Senior managers are just as responsible for failing to lay down proper guidelines- such as having the Officers involved following up their cases to make sure the decision notice was sent, rather than palming it off to admin. I notice both the Planning officers involved are still working there, so again it doesn’t fill you with confidence that hard decisions have been taken.
johnmeyer // March 27, 2008 at 3:03 am
Chris;
The sad state of affairs is that the views of the Elected Members were (and not for the first time) ignored by officers of WMBC!
If in your former life, a junior manager were to ignore the will of the Board of Directors (which Councillors are!) what would his or her job tenure expectancy be?
And with that in mind, what would their Boss’s shelf life be?
Dave // March 29, 2008 at 9:18 am
Chris, is it not now time to have a good clear out at the council and get rid of some of the incumbent officers? I was a reading a post which said that the current malaise at Wirral Council goes much deeper than the incompetent Lib-Lab rulers, and must agree with it. Hopefully the Conservatives will get into power in May, and I hope you might consider reviewing the positions of certain council officers. Afterall, in all our workplaces we are subject to perfomance reviews, and if we were found to be consistently underachieving (or making huge gaffes) then we would be shown the door straight away. Unfortunately this ethos does not exist in the local government sector, where it only seems that some officials view it as a career choice, where the public are seen as annoying irritants rather than as the people they are meant to serve. At least if a councillor is underperforming they can be voted out by the electorate ——- can the same be said for Council officers?
Is it suprising we read of huge pay rises and pay rises for chief officials at a time when many councils are slashing budgets and axing front line staff? Obviously there are some councils which are run very well, and pay awards should reflect this. However, there are other councils (such as Wirral Council) which have been consistenly underperforming, yet the axe never seems to be taken to officals perks and allowances, but rather to dedicated front line staff. Do you understand how this type of action angers the public, and creates the contempt that many hold local government in?
Hopefully a Conservative adminstration might try and make local government more accountable, so that if another phone mast error was to occur, then this time there would be clear line of accountability, and heads would roll. Instead we have the situation where the CEO and the Director of Technical Services have the gall to tell the Scrutiny Committee that mistakes were made, but nobody has been sacked, lessons have been learnt etc etc —— this lesson was mant to have been learnt 7 years ago, when they made exactly the same mistake! To be fair, the Director of Technical Services was not in his post at that time, but why on earth did senior managers not take the blame for this error? Again, because there is no accountability
I would ask you Chris – what is the mechanism by which council officials or managers in the various departments can be removed? Is it at the discretion of the Executive, or the Councillors as a whole?