Minutes:
(1) The Leader stated that he intended to spend the majority of his time talking about the budget proposals for the year 2013/14 which had been launched the previous week, but that there were a number of other important issues he would briefly touch on.
(2) He said that he wanted to endorse the Chairman’s remarks on the success of the Olympics. It had been good to see one of the venues in Kent being used to its fullest and the Council was enormously indebted to Chris Hespe and his team, along with Mike Hill and Amanda Honey, for securing the Paralympic cycling to be held at Brands Hatch, it had been an enormous success and this had really showcased Kent at its very best.
(3) The Leader stated that the Council owed an enormous debt of thanks to all the individuals in Kent who volunteered to be Gamesmakers. He said that when you met people who had been to the Olympic and Paralympics, their work and engagement really made the Games such a phenomenal success and everybody he had met who had been to the Games had talked about the atmosphere those Gamesmakers helped to set. He said he had met a number of Kent volunteers at Brands Hatch who were Gamesmakers and they had done a phenomenal job.
(4) The Leader said that he had been in recent dialogue with Hugh Robertson, the Sports Minister. The dialogue had been about how the National School Games can mirror and reflect to a greater extent the extraordinary success of the Kent School Games where every year 30,000 young people participate and enjoy competitive sport and how to bring together the schools across the country and the professional sports bodies in really giving the National School Games gravitas so that there really is a long term legacy of getting more young people enjoying and participating in sport. He said that it was not just about those who are at the elite level, but those young people who are doing for the first time much more activity and much more competitive sport.
(5) The Leader then turned to one the prime priorities in supporting the Kent economy. He spoke about the recent engagement with Seven Hills, a new fresh marketing agency that had been engaged to really promote and put the East Kent economy on the map. He said that a presentation had been given in the lecture theatre and again at the Chairman’s reception in East Kent which had been enormously well received by the business community in East Kent and colleagues in local government of all political persuasions across the four districts. He spoke about getting behind the campaign to realise the enormous opportunity that the East Kent economy could deliver.
(6) He stated that since the Council last met, the transfer of ownership of the Pfizer site at Discovery park had taken place and that the Council must work to support the ambitious new owners who had a phenomenal track record of success in turning round some very challenging sites, particularly in the North East, to make sure to maximise the opportunity of creating really good employment prospects in East Kent and contributing to the East Kent economy. Likewise in West Kent, the Council had a very ambitious Regional Growth Fund bid before national government at the moment, working with district colleagues and Medway Council. The ‘Tiger bid’s’ aim was to be recipients of a significant similar Regional Growth Fund allocation to East Kent to really stimulate and help and support the Thames Gateway to get underway.
(7) He said that it was very refreshing to be able to announce, alongside Dartford Borough Council, some of the work that had been going on with national government to increase viability and start to get things happening in Eastern Quarry of a significant nature, for the first time after an enormous amount of negotiation and talking. Flexibility both from national and local government had lead to this happening. He stated that he was pleased to announce that in the next few weeks the Council hoped to announce the first recipients of the first loans from the Regional Growth Fund for East Kent which would hopefully be a significant contributor to building confidence in the East Kent economy, helping and supporting new and existing ventures to grow and expand.
(8) The Leader stated that as far as the budget proposals were concerned, he hoped everybody would agree that the document produced the previous week ‘Framing the budget’ was very fresh in the way that the document was laid out, not just in pulling together a number of figures , but also showing how the budget could be utilised to deliver that transformational service delivery around the four ‘P’s that he had mentioned in his last speech to full Council; greater investment in prevention, productivity, procurement and partnership. He said that this would all come to the fore, particularly around the health reforms, in trying to improve the quality of support and services to the elderly and vulnerable with better use of national health resource and social care resource.
(9) He stated that drafting the budget proposals really had been a quite extraordinary challenge. He reminded everybody that the 2013/14 budget would complete the three year journey of significant pain, imposed by national government on local government, with some 30%, outside of schools, being taken out of the budget. He said that the next year would be the completion of the three year programme and he thought that, in Kent, the County Council had responded very intelligently in a very innovative way going about transforming services to try and do more with less money and at the same time hopefully completing a three year freeze in council tax for the residents of Kent. Most importantly, the Council had a proven track record of delivering the past two years’ very challenging budgets and there was an indication in the quarterly monitoring report that this year’s budget was already starting to deliver a modest underspend in projections and the next year would be no different.
(10) He stated that in the proposals, the Council were still planning to maintain many discretionary services including; the Freedom Pass, Community Wardens and an ambitious capital programme, preserving member grants, continuing to invest significantly in the Kent economy, maintaining the Big Society Fund, introducing the first district partnership on the local authority mortgage scheme for first time buyers in the endeavour to help and support stimulating the housing market in Kent. He said there would also be a particular focus on trying to create employment opportunities for young people through the Kent Jobs for Kent Young People programme and he hoped that the proposals would be well received.
(11) Finally he explained that the proposals had been launched much earlier than before to give time for a comprehensive consultation with the residents of Kent, the businesses in Kent and partners in the voluntary and community sector in Kent to shape the final proposals which will come to the County Council in February and more importantly go through a committee stage to receive feedback from that consultation process and give more shape and form in continuation of transforming how front line service with less money deliver better support, particularly for the elderly and vulnerable in the county.
(12) Mrs Dean, as the Leader of the Opposition and Mr Cowan, as Labour group leader both responded to the Leader’s report as is their right under paragraph 1.19(2) of the Constitution.