Issue - meetings

Mr K Abbott, Director of Resources and Planning Group

(10)     Mr Abbott gave his presentation using overheads (attached as appendix 2 to these Minutes).  Mr Abbott highlighted the responsibilities of his service division, which included; Communication and Information Governance that included the work across the Directorate and electronic communications across schools, Workforce Development of the Advisory Service, for the work with staff in schools and the Children’s Social Services, School Crossing Patrols, Free School Meals and Student Loans.  His team also had a wide range of responsibility for the management of the Directorate’s budget, schools budgets and managing the Medium Term Planning and Freedom of Information requests.  

The service division had a budget of £27m gross and £22m net and an income of £5m, of which £1.2m was through selling financial services to Kent schools and some contracts with Medway and Sussex. 

He highlighted key headlines and statistics which included; that there were five Freedom of Information requests in the first year, 2005, to date this had risen to 417 in 2009, for which one and half full time staff had to be employed to deal with those enquiries, and the bulk of the enquiries were mainly from the public. 

The number of applications for free school meals had risen, he felt due to the recession, from 20,000 to 26,000 applications per year. 

CRB checks had risen in supporting schools in recruiting qualified teachers.

The successes included; the first Finance Annual Conference was held this year, which brought together county wide bursars.  There had also been positive responses on the consultation process of the Early Years Providers Review. The Kent workforce and the Annual Census went well which had been a huge demand on schools and KCC, but there had been a 100% response.

(11)  Members were given the opportunity to ask questions and make comments which included the following:

(12)    In response to a question by Mr Tolputt, Mr Abbott explained that there was a long wind down since the announcement that Local Authorities were losing the responsibility for supporting student loans. The Government was moving this service to Student Finance England with a 3 year wind down. Kent use to support 20,000 students and families on student loans and guidance; including 3000 face to face interviews.  Kent was now down to 3000 existing students as all new students had to use the online service of Student Finance England.  In two years time Kent would no longer be dealing with student loans. However there was concern, which Kent had raised nationally, on what would happen to students like those that Kent had helped through the process during this summer that could not easily access the online system as their family circumstances were more complex and did not fit into the drop down questions on the online system.

(13)          In response to a question by Mrs Rook, Mr Abbott advised that where charges could be made, for Access to Information requests (where 18 hours of work was  ...  view the full minutes text for item 15