Cost of investigation and disciplinary process re senior council officer-UPDATE

Wirral Council has responded to the Freedom of Information request as follows:

Good Afternoon,
Thank you for your email below. I have now had sight of the invoices which the Council received and paid in relation to the independent Investigation, and they are from, and paid to North West Employers. I hope this has been of use.
Kind Regards

M Smith has replied:

Dear Ms Corrin,

Thank you for that information. In order to clear up any confusion, would it be possible for you to establish whether or not the investigation was sub-contracted by North West Employers to Vic Hewitt Consulting Ltd?

Regarding the second element of my request, you say there were no separate associated legal costs, as the legal work was all done in house by Wirral Council Employees.

Please will you provide an estimate of the cost of this investigation, as I assume the employees were not working pro bono. This can be calculated from the number of
man-hours entailed and the salaries of those concerned.

Also I understand that Mr Martin Moreton, a Council whistle blower, stated publicly at a recent meeting of the Audit and Risk Management Committee that Wirral Council paid his solicitor's fees, in relation to the disciplinary investigation, from its
commencement in 2008.

Thank you

Yours sincerely,

.

.

Cost of investigation and disciplinary process re senior council officers-LATEST

M Smith has responded to Wirral Council regarding this FOI request:

Dear Ms Corrin,

As a result of the annotation made by Veridici I made a telephone call to North West Employers. They confirmed that Mr Hewitt did indeed retire early last year, well before the investigation was ordered by WBC.

In view of this I think it best that the internal review go ahead in order to establish whether the information with which you have been provided is correct.

Yours sincerely,

This brings the number of requests awaiting internal review to twelve, with another seven overdue.

.

© copyright . Reproduced under fair use for the dual purposes of comment and news reporting
.