Opaque by Design - How Wirral’s Voting Records Fall Short of Public Expectations

—and What We Found When We Looked

✍️ Author’s Note

This article is the result of independent analysis of publicly available council records, carried out in the interest of open democracy and local accountability. It is not written to target any individual councillor or party, but to highlight structural barriers that make it difficult for the public to understand how decisions are made—and who is making them.  

All observations are grounded in verifiable documents, primarily committee meeting minutes published by Wirral Council. AI-assisted tools were used to help analyse and categorise patterns across a large volume of text, but interpretation and conclusions are entirely my own. 

The aim is not to provoke outrage, but to prompt reform—towards a more transparent, accessible, and participatory local government. 
— Rory Wilmer, New Brighton, June 2025.
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📄 Background

When I tried to look up how my local councillors voted on key decisions, I was met with silence. Wirral Council's own "How Councillors Voted" tool returned nothing. Not a single vote recorded from any councillor between 2010 and 2025.

Wirral Council Website: Not a single vote recorded from any councillor between 2010 and 2025.

In response to my enquiry, the Council confirmed that voting records are not kept in any structured format. Instead, they rely on the meeting minutes. That’s where the legal requirement ends, they said. But if you want to find out how a councillor voted? You'll need to read hundreds of pages of PDFs manually.

So I did.

🔹 Methodology

With the help of AI tools, I analysed 25 separate committee meeting minutes from the Environment, Climate Emergency and Transport Committee, spanning 2021 to 2025. These were scraped, parsed, and broken down by:

• Councillor mentions

• Voting records (if any)

• Mentions of Core Active Travel Network (CATN), cycling, modal filters, and active travel schemes

• Language patterns, delays, and decision structures

This work took under 3 hours with AI. A human alone would need several weeks, maybe more. It would take hundreds of hours to read.

Summary Table of Findings

Metric	Count / Summary
Committee Meetings Analysed	25 (2021–2025)
Total Agenda Items Reviewed	~230+
Named Votes Recorded	0
Abstentions Noted	4 meetings (typically unnamed)
Formal Amendments Offered	Rare (~3 documented cases)
Instances of “Subject to” Phrasing	40+ across multiple meetings
Delays / Deferrals Identified	15+ cases with vague follow-up
CATN / Active Travel Discussions	19 meetings referenced cycling schemes
Clear Councillor Voting Patterns	Not publicly discernible

What We Found

🔢 Voting Records Are Not Fit for Purpose

• No structured voting data was found in the minutes.

• Named votes are almost never recorded.

• Most motions were passed with phrases like "it was resolved" or "carried unanimously," with no detail on who supported or opposed.

• Abstentions were occasionally noted, but not attributed to named councillors.

• Council procedure allows for named votes only if requested before the vote (by five members) or immediately after. This rarely, if ever, happens.

🚧 CATN and Cycling Infrastructure

While the specific phrase Core Active Travel Network (CATN) was rarely used, the committee frequently discussed:

• Segregated cycle lanes

• Modal filters

• School streets

• Bus prioritisation and road space reallocation

Many of these were indirectly CATN-related, suggesting that the work is happening, just not framed as a cohesive strategy. That obscures accountability and public understanding.

🤐 Councillor Behaviour & Participation

• Cllr Liz Grey (Chair, Labour) was mentioned in all meetings and typically introduced motions or responded to queries. As Chair, this is expected.

• Contributions were uneven. Some councillors made regular procedural motions but rarely contributed to debate.

• There was no visible evidence of proactive motions by backbenchers or opposition councillors on CATN or cycling.

• Most meetings followed a tightly defined script, with few amendments or deviations—suggesting decisions may be made before meetings, likely in party group discussions.

🕐 Language of Delay

The minutes are full of strategic ambiguity:

"Subject to officer review" "Pending funding confirmation" "Deferred to a future meeting" "Awaiting consultation outcome" "Not yet agreed"

These appear frequently, especially around:

• Funding allocations

• Active travel projects

• Bus priority measures

• Cycling infrastructure

This is not isolated. It is patterned language, embedded across years of minutes.

🔺 Common Scenarios Identified

• Conditional Commitments: Motions are often approved "in principle" but left to future decisions or assessments, which are rarely revisited transparently.

• Delays Without Clarity: Schemes are pushed from meeting to meeting without updates. Some reappear over multiple years.

• Repeated Phrasing: Stock phrases like "subject to necessary approvals" appear structurally designed to defer or dilute accountability.

⚠️ Strategic Use of Procedure

The vague language and pre-meeting decision structures are especially prevalent when decisions involve:

• Reallocating road space

• Installing cycle lanes

• Prioritising public transport

  
  

These schemes, though often supported in principle, are treated as politically sensitive and routinely stalled.

🚴 CATN in Disguise, and Who’s Actually Driving Change?

Core Active Travel Network: Visible, But Never Named

Across 25 meetings of the Environment, Climate Emergency and Transport Committee, the phrase “Core Active Travel Network” (CATN) is almost entirely absent—but its components are unmistakably present.

Rather than a coherent, named strategy, CATN appears fragmented across dozens of itemised schemes:

• Segregated cycle lanes

• Modal filters

• School access improvements

• Pedestrian zone enhancements

These schemes are presented individually, often labelled as “active travel measures” or “connectivity upgrades.” While each has its merits, the lack of integrated branding and strategic narrative makes it difficult for the public—or even councillors—to grasp the overarching ambition. It also weakens scrutiny.

Examples from the Minutes

• Fender Lane corridor discussions span several meetings, bouncing between “awaiting officer update,” “pending consultation outcome,” and “subject to detailed design.” Concrete action remains elusive.

  
  

• Liscard to Seacombe route connectivity, raised in 2023–2024, was repeatedly acknowledged as necessary but parked due to “budget implications” or officer workload.

  
  

• Modal filters—introduced as low-traffic neighbourhood-style interventions—often encountered vague resistance. Several were deferred indefinitely with language like “scheme redesign required following member concerns.”

Despite this, not a single meeting presented CATN as a structured, borough-wide plan. This suggests an intentional vagueness—an avoidance of the political weight such a comprehensive shift in mobility might carry.

🔥 Other Recurring Hot Topics

Beyond active travel, the committee routinely tackled (or attempted to tackle) several high-stakes issues:

🚌 Bus Infrastructure & Franchising

The committee repeatedly heard updates on regional discussions around franchising, route viability, and funding shortfalls. However, decisions were almost never made. Key actions remained “noted,” with delivery pushed onto regional authorities or third parties. There’s little evidence of Wirral-specific bus strategy being meaningfully shaped by this committee.

🌬️ Clean Air Zones

Monitoring station updates and pollution reports appeared often—but real interventions were scarce. High-pollution areas were identified, yet no Low Emission Zone or similar scheme was tabled. Several air quality measures remained “under officer consideration” for multiple meetings in a row.

🌱 Climate Emergency Planning

The council’s declared climate emergency didn’t seem to translate into tangible action plans. Many proposals were phrased as in-principle aspirations, subject to national policy or “external funding streams.” There was little sign of carbon budgeting, resilience planning, or meaningful retrofit strategies.

🧠 Decisions Made Elsewhere?

Possibly the most troubling insight from our review was how little genuine debate takes place in the meetings themselves.

• Amendments are rare

• Named objections are almost non-existent

• Discussions often conclude with unanimous—or abstention-heavy—votes, despite the contested nature of the topics

This raises the question: are decisions already made before these meetings?

It certainly appears that councillors often show up to ratify, not to challenge. This process—by design or inertia—leaves very little space for transparency, challenge, or community intervention.

🧍 Who’s Actually Driving Scrutiny?

Here’s the most revealing—and perhaps uncomfortable—conclusion from this review:

It’s not the councillors who challenge decisions. It’s the public. Throughout the minutes, real scrutiny comes via:

• Public deputations

• Consultation responses

• Petitions

• Resident questions during committee sessions

And yet, the council’s response is depressingly familiar:

• Acknowledged with thanks

• Noted for the record

• Deferred to officer comment

• Referred back to future reports

In contrast, councillors—across parties—rarely propose amendments or initiate challenge. They often respond only to what's placed in front of them, rather than question the logic behind those placements. Meetings are tightly structured around officer-led reports and procedural updates. The result is performative debate, not democratic scrutiny.

Many decisions appear to be predetermined before the meeting, with little appetite for deviation. In effect, public engagement becomes a box-tick—not a lever for change.

👁️ A System Not Built for Scrutiny

Even with AI tools, it took significant time and effort to trace patterns. For the average resident, it would be nearly impossible to determine how their councillor voted on a major cycling route or traffic scheme.

This is not what transparency looks like. This is bureaucratic opacity, papered over with legal minimums.

If we take transparency seriously, we need structured, searchable, named voting records. We need digital tools that work. And we need minutes that are designed for scrutiny, not just to tick statutory boxes.

⚖️ What the Law Requires (And What It Doesn’t)

Wirral Council, in its response to public concerns, stated that meeting minutes satisfy the legal requirement to document decisions. They’re right—technically.

Section 100 of the Local Government Act 1972 says councils must make minutes available to the public for six years. However, those minutes:

• Do not require named votes unless formally requested

• Do not require searchable or structured data

• Do not offer a way for the public to compare voting behaviour across meetings

That may meet the bare minimum. But in 2025, it falls far short of public expectation.

🌐 Best Practice Elsewhere

Other UK councils show what’s possible:

• Hackney publishes named votes in a database and provides accessible dashboards.

• Leeds uses open council voting APIs.

• Bristol links votes directly to councillor profiles.

• Greater Manchester Combined Authority posts searchable PDF transcripts and linked actions.

They meet the same legal obligations—and go further.

🧾 Conclusion: Not Illegality—But Inaccessibility

Wirral Council is not breaking the law. But it is not meeting the spirit of open democracy either. It relies on the fact that if voting information exists at all, it’s buried in scanned PDFs, hidden behind procedural language, and invisible to anyone without hours to spare and an AI to help. That’s not good enough. With better tools, greater transparency, and a proactive publication strategy, the Council could rebuild trust and make local democracy meaningful again.

Until then, the system remains opaque—if not by malice, then by design.

🏛️ Time to Modernise

1. Wirral Council relies on the Local Government Act 1972, drafted before email or the internet. While it outlines the minimum standard, it is no longer enough.

2. Councils are capable of open data, structured transparency, and public tools. But they must choose to do so.

3. Wirral must stop hiding behind legal minimums and start delivering the democratic maximum.

   
   

📜 Notes

• Based on a review of 25 committee meetings from 2021 to 2025.

• Analysis conducted using PDF extraction, language modelling, and metadata tracking tools.

• All quotes and patterns taken from official Wirral Council minutes.

• No individual councillor is accused of misconduct.

This analysis is based on publicly available material and is offered in the public interest. All statements of fact are verifiable. Opinions expressed are the author's own. This analysis was conducted using a combination of manual review and AI-assisted tools to process and examine over 25 sets of committee meeting minutes from Wirral Council’s Environment, Climate Emergency and Transport Committee. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy and transparency, the use of AI does not guarantee the capture of every nuance or procedural detail. Readers should consult the official minutes for full context, and any errors or omissions remain the responsibility of the author.