The legal team at Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council has designed a training course to prepare council staff to act as witnesses in court cases as a reaction to the so-called compensation culture, it revealed this week.

The courtroom skills course, which recently received a national training award from the Learning and Skills Council Greater Merseyside, is intended to reduce the risk of payouts by ensuring council staff are well prepared.


Wirral: reduce risk of payouts
The course features a mock trial as well as individual and group work, with pre-course preparation and follow-up support as well as the core one-day session. It has so far been delivered 36 times to small groups of six to 12 council employees, with 94% of attendees considering that it met all their learning needs.

The training sessions have generated income for the council by attracting staff from local authorities in the north-west and north Wales as well as Wirral.


Wirral MBC staff development officer Norma Gordon said: ‘In this litigious society, the council is increasingly becoming involved in court cases and tribunals. We became aware that staff were becoming stressed when acting as witnesses.


‘When we investigated, we found that evidence was not always well prepared, staff were anxious, and even frightened, of going into an alien situation, and in many cases the standard of record keeping was inadequate to support their testimony.’


She added: ‘The authority is now better equipped to withstand the impact of the claims… The financial benefits are substantial, and could be huge, since payments can reach five or six figures.’


The training was provided by Mark Reamey, acting monitoring officer and proper officer at Wirral MBC, in conjunction with the council’s education and cultural services department.