Wirral sorely needs a new style of leadership
Thank you to the Auditor for recommending six steps of immediate action. The Council's budget is well underway, so I'll talk about two other action points.
Firstly, "Ensuring the Council has the necessary organisation grip ... at scale and pace"
Organisation grip starts at the top. Wirral Council sorely needs a new style of leadership. Leadership focussed on good outcomes for people and environment - not on doing the wrong things but in the right way.
On the one hand, Tory austerity and cuts have not helped. The Tories certainly know about deny and delay. New car park charges should have been generating income for Council services years ago. But only four months ago, Cllr Jeff Green said in the Echo, https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/council-accused-going-the-easiest-30040387
"If someone is saying the council is so short of money that it needs to [introduce car parking charges], then frankly I don't believe it."
And on the other hand, there is Labour mismanagement. Because not all Councils need government loans - not once but twice in 4 years.
It was Wirral's Labour cabinet that decided to build not one but two new office blocks, in July 2020. Every day, thousands of people see the empty office blocks in the centre of Birkenhead. As Wirral Unison say, "the decision to rent a building we did not need (Irvine) in the forlorn hope of being able to sub-let it" is a "£4 million pound millstone around the Council's neck".
That's over £10,700 wasted every single day, while precious jobs and services are facing the chop.
Some of the very same councillors are still driving our council to the brink of bankruptcy yet again. Cabinet minutes show four current councillors, including Paul Stuart, approved the confidential business case for the office blocks in November 2018. And more of the Labour leadership ploughed on with decision to build two office blocks at the last cabinet meeting in July 2020, regardless that millions of people had been working from home for four months.
It's difficult for Wirral Council to fix the mess we're in while the Labour leadership don't accept their part in creating it.
For my part, I was a Labour councillor at the time. To be crystal clear, I did not support building two office blocks, there's no evidence the decision came to full Council, and I did not vote for it. Actually, I tried to call the decision in for scrutiny, but couldn't find enough other councillors to join the challenge.
Another visible symbol of current leadership's ongoing lack of organisation grip is their extravagant waste of Council money on buildings. Wallasey town hall was mothballed during lock down, re-opened for a year, stood down again, and last year, Labour and Conservative cllrs voted to re-open it again. The unlucky building doesn't know if its in or out or doing the hokey cokey. But each move takes hundreds of thousands of pounds away from front line services.
Another recommendation I’d like to talk about is, "Ensuring that member oversight ... is optimal".
Member oversight includes councillors being provided with the information we need and have repeatedly asked for. Such as, ‘What are the costs of statutory and non-statutory services?’ And whenever possible, making information about public money, public. Rather than hiding behind confidentiality as we saw at the last Policy & Resources committee.
Optimal councillor oversight includes bringing all of the talents of all of the parties to this terrible situation - even if that means sharing power and paid chairs of committees.
Wirral Council desparately needs leadership. Leadership that:
* Shows organisation grip
* Shares power fairly and democratically
* Welcomes challenge
* And above all, puts Wirral's people and environment first - not private profit nor personal promotion.