Frank’s Blog

Might I take this opportunity to hope Birkenhead’s residents enjoyed a Happy Easter? Easter this year brought two hugely exciting pieces of news for the town’s children. Many parents might have used the break to buy their children new school clothing to accommodate the warmer weather. Such clothing of course can often come at a hefty cost. But, over the next month, help is at hand. The Oxton Gateway community project helps to deliver Wirral’s free school uniforms service…

The campaign against Britain’s rip-off merchants is gathering pace. Last week the markets regulator announced that households on pre-payment meters could gain a £90 cut in their energy bills as early as next year, and then right the way through to 2020. This week I can report that LINK, the national cash machine network, has made a major commitment to protect Birkenhead’s residents from being ripped off when they take out money from a cash machine. My campaign against…

I will begin with some really good news, if I may, on the back of last week’s column. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) poured scorn last Thursday on the energy companies who levy rip-off charges on mainly poorer households on prepayment meters. The CMA’s main remedy is to place an overall cap on what the energy companies can charge prepayment customers. The cap is likely to apply from next year until 2020. It will save every such household £90, on…

The Liverpool City Region Child Poverty and Life Chances Commission, which I chair, this week put energy companies in the dock for making Merseyside the nation’s rip-off capital when it comes to charging for gas and electricity. The commission highlighted from the most recent official data that prepayment meters are more heavily relied upon in Merseyside than in anywhere else in Great Britain, with 23% of electricity customers and 21% of gas customers reliant on this payment…

Barely a month has passed since I raised grave concerns about tenants’ treatment at the hands of their landlord. Sadly I write this week with similar reports from tenants living adjacent to Birkenhead Town Hall. Councillor Jean Stapleton, Councillor Phil Davies and I met with a group of Pierhead Housing tenants last Friday. From what they told us, the tenants have been dealt a rough hand by their landlord. We were told how the tenants had had to put up with inadequate heating, a poor…