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Wirral Council road safety malpractice: Letter to Wirral MPs
The following letter was emailed on 21 December 2017. Replies will be published here.

After 4 months, no replies have been received. This is not good enough. According to the 7 Principles of Public Life, "Holders of public office should ... be willing to challenge poor behaviour wherever it occurs" - see https://wacm.org.uk/80.html.

Malpractice in Wirral Council regarding road safety

To
Angela Eagle MP
Frank Field MP
Alison McGovern MP
Margaret Greenwood MP

Dear All,

I am writing to you about my concerns of malpractice within Wirral Council regarding road safety.

After 12 months, these have still not been answered by Wirral Council.

Put simply, my concerns are that Cabinet Member Stuart Whittingham and council officer Mark Smith lied in their report to the Business Scrutiny Committee meeting of 13 September 2016 in order to conceal Wirral Council’s poor road safety performance. My concerns are set out at http://wacm.org.uk/6.html .

Lying to a scrutiny committee when road safety is being scrutinused should be considered a very serious matter since it is likely to lead to avoidable serious injuries and deaths. Any expressed concerns should therefore be promptly and properly considered.

I sent my concerns in December 2016 to Cllr Phil Davies, the other Cabinet members, Cllr Sullivan (the Scrutiny Committee Chair), the other members of the Scrutiny Committee, and Mark Smith. Despite numerous reminders, and the intervention of my MP Margaret Greenwood, I have still received no written reply to my concerns.

The situation is analogous to that in Rotherham, Rochdale and other councils where genuine concerns regarding protection of vulnerable people were known about but were ignored. Furthermore, Wirral Council is in breach of the Hillsborough Charter, advocated by the Right Reverend James Jones, in not ensuring that processes are in place to allow the public to hold it to account - see The patronising disposition of unaccountable power at www.gov.uk/government/publications/hillsborough-stadium-disaster-lessons-that-must-be-learnt.

I am writing to ask if you agree
(1) that I should have received a proper written response to my concerns within a few months at most, and
(2) that I now have an obligation to publicise my concerns about the Wirral Labour administration as widely as possible, both (a) because of the potential harm being done to Wirral road users by failures to follow best practice and (b) because of the harm being done to the Labour Party and its programme of change by a culture where poor practice and malpractice are ignored.

I look forward to your replies.

Sincerely,

Ian Campbell MD


PS: I am copying this to
Cllr Phil Davies, Leader, Wirral Council
Cllr Stuart Whittingham, Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport
Cllr Matthew Patrick, Cabinet Member for Localism and Engagement
Cllr Mike Sullivan, Chair Business Scrutiny Committee
Mark Smith, Strategic Commissioner for Environment, Wirral Council.





Last updated: 18 Jun 2018