Birkenhead & Tranmere Labour Councillor, Phil Davies and his wife Sheena, have this summer completed an immense 504 mile cycle around the Isle of Skye and the North West Highlands to raise money for local charity, The Reader Organisation.

Phil and Sheena’s epic 504 mile journey retraced the path taken by writer Dr Samuel Johnson when he toured around Scotland in 1773. After twelve days of effort and endurance, they raised £1,147 to support the charity’s weekly Get Into Reading sessions with looked-after children in Wirral. Phil & Sheena presented a cheque to the Get into Reading Team at The Lauries Centre in Birkenhead.

Councillor Phil Davies, says: “I’ve been a supporter of Get Into Reading for many years and I wanted to undertake this journey to raise funds to help them in their valuable work here in Wirral.”

Kate McDonnell, Get Into Reading Wirral Project Manager, says: “We’re so grateful to Phil and Sheena for their hard work and generosity. We’re going to spend the money on books for our looked-after children projects in Wirral, enabling us to continue to inspire a love of reading, and build confidence and self-esteem, with these young people.”

Your three Labour Councillors have been working with Keep Britain Tidy and other Council partners, to tackle dog fouling issues across Birkenhead & Tranmere. As part of a Wirral wide campaign, Cllrs. Phil Davies and Brian Kenny (pictured left) attended an event held on Wednesday 31^st August, at Bentinck Street field, Birkenhead. 

We were very pleased to promote the campaign. This was a fun event, but at the same time, we wanted to ensure that we got the message across that this is a serious issue that residents feel strongly about. 

Birkenhead & Tranmere Labour Cllr. Brian Kenny, who is also Cabinet Member for the Environment, commented: “Dog fouling remains one of the issues that residents feel most strongly about. Thankfully, nowadays, most owners do clean up after their pets and it’s just a minority of people who leave mess littered on our streets and Parks.

 “It is those people who we need to educate – the message ‘bag it and bin it’ really is as simple as it sounds; it doesn’t have to be in a special bag and it doesn’t have to go in a special ‘dog dirt’ bin. Unfortunately, some dog owners act irresponsibly and allow their dogs to foul. Where this takes place and we have the evidence we will prosecute and there have been a number of successful prosecutions inBirkenhead and Tranmere over the past twelve months.”

Clifton Park Community Association organised a ‘Fun in the Park’ event last Saturday in The Woodlands Community Park. The event, which was well attended by residents,  included games, cakes, a disco, face-painting, football and Henna Tattoo. A big thanks goes to members of the Community Association who helped to organise the fun day and also to Venture Housing Association who made a number of skips available around Clifton Park so that residents could get rid of excess rubbish. Your three local Labour Councillors, Jean Stapleton, Brian Kenny and Phil Davies, also attended. Commenting on the fun day, Cllr Jean Stapleton said: “I would like to thank Clifton Park Community Association for organising a brilliant fun day. All the residents I spoke to really enjoyed themselves and it was great to see the community coming together to enjoy themselves.”

Labour Leader of Wirral Council, Steve Foulkes (pictured left), at a meeting of the Council’s Cabinet this evening, announced a lump sum payment of £250 to be paid to all Council workers earning less than £21,000 per year. This will be paid immediately and will be net of tax and national insurance. By making this bold step, Labour confirmed its position as the champion of poor and vulnerable people. Only Labour is able to provide a strong voice for communities who are being hammered by the Tory/LibDem coalition and their programme of spending cuts, tax rises and benefit reductions.

Steve Foulkes made the following statement at tonight’s Cabinet meeting:- “I want to talk for a moment about the position of low paid workers, inside and outside this Council. The opposition made a concerted attempt at Council on Monday night to portray this administration as being opposed to increasing pay for low paid workers. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 They have absolutely no right to take the moral high ground here. It was a Labour Government that introduced the minimum wage, against fierce opposition from the Tories. It was a Labour government that specifically targeted funds like the Area Based grant at authorities with high levels of deprivation, and it was a  Conservative/Liberal Democrat government which abolished those funds, to the very real detriment of this Council. It was the Conservative Liberal Democrat administration locally that chose not to do anything on the low pay issue last year, although it was well within their power to do so.

 Monday night was political grandstanding of the worst kind, with this Council’s lower paid workers as the pawns in the middle. That is not acceptable, and I can only apologise to any staff who feel they were caught up in the middle of this. Imposing any kind of arbitrary cut off for pay increases can create all kinds of anomalies, which we were seeking to explore responsibly as an executive in order to provide as fair a solution as possible and avoid a situation where one worker is pitted against another.

 Over the long term, the issue of low pay and its consequences are matters for discussion with the Unions, and also for discussion within the Council. These are matters which need to be considered as part of our anti-poverty strategy. They need to be considered as part of our Public Health Agenda, where poverty is a crucial factor in the staggering 10 year mortality gap between the poorest parts in the East of the Borough and the wealthiest parts in the West of the Borough. They need to be considered in the context of the Council leading the way to other employers. These are discussions we must and will have.

 So here’s what we are going to do.

 «        We will pay a lump sum of £250 to each low paid worker earning less than £21,000. Frankly, at this point, a lump sum will be more useful to our staff than an extra, non consolidated, few quid a week.

 «        We will pay this sum net of tax and national insurance, which means the staff will actually receive £250 and the Council will bear the cost of tax and NI

 «        We will treat each payment separately in order to ensure that no one is accidentally disadvantaged in benefits terms because a threshold has been triggered.

 «        We will agree this now, tonight, no delays or further reports. To that end I have asked the Director of Finance to prepare me a special report on the details which will allow this Cabinet to take the decision.

«        I will table this report, with a formal resolution, now.

The issue of the Living Wage, to which we are very sympathetic, is more complex, particularly as we have just completed a job evaluation exercise, and we need to explore how it can be delivered without creating a knock on to other, more highly paid, posts throughout the Council. To that end we will refer this to the relevant officers to bring a more detailed report back to Cabinet following discussion with the Unions.

I have recently set up a new group which brings together the Council’s Chief Executive, Head of HR and the Trade Unions, which I will personally lead, in order to help us work together constructively in the coming year. I will also make sure that the issue of low paid workers forms part of those discussions.”