Resolve Wirral's issues and save our money

WITH other residents, I have recently received a consultation survey from Wirral Borough Council about council tax.

The council wants our views about what is important to us in terms of spending. This is welcome, but asked at a time when several senior officers have been suspended from Wirral Council for months.

In at least some of these cases, the council has an obligation to resolve the issues within a defined time frame which was reached weeks ago.

While the questions remain unresolved - and for most of the officers any charges remain undefined – we council taxpayers are paying a lot of money to these officers to tend their gardens and, presumably, even more money to others to cover their work.

An immediate saving in council expenditure could be achieved if the 66 elected members were to pursue a prompt resolution.

Chris Teggin, Oxton.

Retired HR manager and retired councillor.

Comments(1)

johnbrace says...
10:17am Wed 3 Oct 12

Nice to hear your views on this Chris, but when the Birkenhead Lib Dems tried to suspend me in an ultra vires way for whistleblowing (in practices that are still seemingly going on to this day!), a Deputy District Judge Ireland in April 2012 found in the Birkenhead County Court an Oxton Lib Dem councillor liable for not giving me a copy of the complaint prior to the actual meeting deciding about what to do about it.

Under your own party rules that means the process ends there, but it seems I'm a special case because it didn't!

The complaint (which was a pack of lies in fact) was written by two of your former councillors and quite blatantly stated that I wasn't John Brace but someone else called Martin Morton and a person called Hugo. It also showed that it was part of the cover up into Lib Dem involvement in Department of Adult Social Services overcharging and the matters revealed by Anna Klonowski in her report.

Yet because it was conclusively proved at that meeting that a Lib Dem politician (and former Lib Dem politician) had lied about me the party went into "cover up" mode and strings were pulled!

The party's HQ (and indeed the whole party) was also found to be liable as they too had breached the law too, and the former Chief Executive left (only to be made a scapegoat for the whole thing to protect local Lib Dem politicians by someone in Lib Dem HQ called David Allworthy).

So whereas I realise you have the best intentions, to lecture the public on good Human Resources practices when it seems your own party either doesn't listen to your sage advice and can't stick to its constitution or the contract it has with its members (plural as practices went on involving others too), or manage to do something similar without leading to losing a lawsuit is strange (although I realise you weren't personally involved in the above saga) but as a party member you are subject to the court order. :)

However back to the issue in hand, it's obvious that once solicitors got involved regarding the Chief Officers you've mentioned (which they have), that it looks extremely likely that Wirral Council has managed to not follow procedure (or to be honest probably the law) which as its a procedural issue of unfairness (sound familiar after the above?) towards the suspended employees has to be resolved. The result of which could be massive payouts to the people involved and/or reinstatement and let's hope it doesn't result in compromise agreements!

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