Highly-controversial issues that have dogged Wirral Council for more than two years look set to resurface tonight.

The chief executive will be asked to give a definitive explanation as to why two senior managers were paid-off with six-figure sums after signing gagging orders just 24 hours before a report probing their part in a social services scandal was published.

He will also be pressed to explain the reasons why, nearly two years after that report was released in September 2011, the administration is still unable to find an acceptable resolution with whistleblower Martin Morton.

The questions will take the form of a notice of motion from the Conservative opposition group to a meeting of the full council on July 15.

They centre around Mr Morton’s decision to blow the whistle on systematic overcharging of vulnerable and disabled residents living in council care homes.

His revelations lit the fuse that eventually led to a highly-critical review by consultant investigator Anna Klonowski.

Back in 2008, two unnamed senior managers were suspended from work when the Globe first exclusively revealed Mr Morton’s allegations.

But they were soon reinstated having been exonerated by an internal inquiry.

However, four years later in the week when the explosive Klonowski investigation was published, they were suddenly paid-off and left the council’s employment "by mutual consent” under compromise agreements.

It later emerged that the pair, never named in any public council document, were paid a staggering £220,000 between them to leave their jobs.

The notice for council says Mr Morton, a former manager in the Department for Adult Social Services, has received no justice.

It says “his life has been ruined even though the Klonowski report vindicated him.”

It continues: “Let us not forget Martin stood up for those vulnerable adults who couldn’t stand up for themselves - and was hounded out of his job for doing so.

“Council is therefore extremely dissatisfied that over two years on from the publication of the reports, the administration have been unable to find an acceptable resolution with Martin Morton."

It adds the council is "further disappointed to note that, along with the public, it has never received an adequate explanation into the sequence of events that allowed the two senior members of staff implicated in the Martin Morton whistleblow to leave under compromise agreements less than one working day prior to the publication of the Klonowski report."

And it demands an account of exactly what role the then leadership of the council had in that decision.

The notice goes on to request chief executive Graham Burgess to brief the three party leaders about the current state of discussions with Mr Morton and produce a timeline for resolving them.

Mr Burgess also will be asked to conduct a review of the circumstances surrounding the decision to allow the two senior members of staff implicated in the whistleblow to pick up huge pay-offs and leave.

Under new rules, Mr Morton will be given the floor to put his own questions to the ruling group tonight.

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What Klonowski discovered:

The town hall was rocked in September 2011 when the 250-page report from Anna Klonowski was presented.

Among the allegations it contained were:

  • Men with baseball bats turning up at a home run by an independent, unregistered “service provider” demanding money, involving “an individual who had previously investigated by the police for drug money laundering;
  • A member of a “service provider” staff had a conviction for assault with a deadly weapon;
  • A claim of rape made by one of the vulnerable adults;
  • Bank accounts being set up in the names of vulnerable adults and their benefits then removed from those accounts without permission.

A supplementary report by the same consultant looked into the council’s corporate governance, and was also damning.

It concluded practices other authorities would consider abnormal had been allowed to become commonplace in Wirral.

Alarmingly, it said the council was in the grip of a “corrosive and inward-looking culture where the needs and rights of residents have become submerged under its own bureaucratic machinations".

Since then the authority has set up an improvements panel overseen by the Local Government Association, which is tasked with turning round the council’s performance.

An LGA review recently found Wirral had made “remarkable progress” towards that goal.

Several of the town hall’s most senior officers have left either on early retirement or under voluntary redundancy.

Mr Burgess, appointed in July 2012, brought in a new policy which banned the use of gagging clauses in compromise agreements for outgoing staff.

The council also agreed to repay more than £700,000 to care home residents overcharged for their accommodation under the flawed “special policy” - which at first the local authority denied even existed.

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