Minutes:
(1) The Leader began his speech by stating that he thought it would be appropriate approaching the end of the year to reflect on some of the successes and challenges of the last year as well as looking forward to some of the significant challenges to be faced in the coming year.
(2) On the success front the Leader stated that he was delighted that the final series of Ofsted inspections of Children’s Services had taken the Council out of the inadequate category. In the coming year the Council had to build momentum and ensure it had the very best support for the young vulnerable young people living in Kent communities and build on the substantial recovery of improved Children’s Services with an aim to delivering the very best support in safeguarding arrangements across the county of Kent.
(3) Facing up to the challenge of delivering the same level of business with a lot less money had been a massive issue for the current year and would continue to be in the future, particularly as 2015/16 approached with the compounding effects of less money and the effect of further cuts being made to local government from 2015/16 onwards. The Leader stated he had been delighted that at the last Cabinet meeting it was reported there was a £4m underspend to date, projected to be the outturn for the current year and he hoped the Council could maintain that momentum.
(4) There was an on-going consultation on the broad proposals for the 2014/15 budget with the public and voluntary and community organisations across the county of Kent which was going exceedingly well. The Leader stated that the consultation would be discussed further at February’s budget setting meeting but generally the feedback from the consultation was that KCC was doing the right thing in the way that it was reengineering its services under the ‘Facing the Challenge’ heading and he would expand on this later in the morning.
(5) He wanted to concentrate on two other areas of significance which were taking up a significant amount of his time, appropriately as they were not only very important to the future direction of this authority but also more broadly the welfare of the residents in the county of Kent. He was absolutely delighted that Kent had been awarded Pioneer status for its groundbreaking ambitions on health and social care integration, one of only 14 authorities that were given that Pioneer status out of 99 local authorities up and down the country that had applied for it. It was the ambition, not only of Kent County Council, but also of lead clinicians and those sitting on the Health and Wellbeing Board (HWB), to set out where they believe health and social care integration needed to be. The HWB was working to define what good health service provision and social care provision should look like in Kent from 2018 and beyond. Many of these ambitious proposals were laid out in ‘Delivering Better Health Care for Kent’ and it was exciting to be involved in working alongside national government to revolutionise the delivery of health and social care and if this was done right much better use could be made of massive amounts of public money in delivering better health services for the residents in Kent.
(6) The second significant issue was ‘LEPland’, Local Enterprise Partnership land. From 2015/16 Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) across the country would have great significance with most of the local transport funds being put through them. Economic development and the single local growth fund, encompassing not just transport but a new pot for economic development proposals, was real new money which was not going to be top sliced from either district and borough or county councils although it had not yet been identified where the £2bn to fund this would come from. The Leader stated that business led LEPs, working with those in local government, would decide the priorities and the allocation of the money including a substantial amount of European money under the European Social Fund (ESF) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) from 2015/16 which was not far away.
(7) A final proposition, a single growth plan for Essex, Kent and East Sussex, was required by March 2014 and the Leader stated that he was determined that the chapter for Kent and Medway, working very closely with Medway, would articulate how a significant resource, some £100m a year every year coming in to Kent and Medway, was spent against the ambitious proposals to manage sustainable housing growth and growing successful economy in the county of Kent. The Leader stated there was going to be an enormous shunt of responsibility away from local government to business led LEPs, but he would rather deal with LEPs then the old Regional Assemblies which met endlessly, debated endlessly, and achieved very little.
(8) Finally, the Leader stated, in recent weeks he had had one to ones with the newly elected members on his side of the Chamber, and yet again, they had endorsed the extraordinary welcome that they had received in the authority and had reflected universally on how welcoming and open staff in the organisation had been to them. He stated that at this time of year we should reflect on that, and should be enormously grateful for the hard work, dedication, help and support the employees of the authority gave in the complex range of services they provided to the residents of Kent. He was sure everyone would like to join with him in thanking staff, wishing them and their families a very happy Christmas and looking forward to working with them in difficult times in the coming months.
(9) Mr Latchford stated that he had heard the Leader’s messages and he would address these but he first wanted to take the opportunity, on behalf of his group, to say a big thank you to Mrs Whittle for the work that she had put into the Children’s Centre issues. He said it had been clearly demonstrated that a properly researched project presented well for public consultation had ensured what many would consider to be the best result, although of course the loss of any resource was regrettable.
(10) Mr Latchford stated that the LEP would provide an opportunity to bring much needed money into Kent however the key word in the acronym was Partnership and he suspected that the Leader of Essex County Council, for example, was currently saying the same thing to his Council. Until the wrappings were removed and the gift was revealed what Kent would receive from the LEP and the benefits of this would not be known.
(11) As for being a Pioneer, Mr Latchford stated, this too would be a case of wait and see. Being a Pioneer was an opportunity to bring about efficiencies and have a say in setting up new organisations but the role of guinea pig was another gift to consider as the Council was undergoing the radical and challenging transformation process. However Pioneer status was excellent news.
(12) Mr Latchford stated that he had just had a note passed to him that the government had just announced they were ditching Option B on the Lower Thames Crossing and he presumed this would mean further consultation and delays.
(13) The day’s agenda concentrated on the transformation issues and also waste and recycling with much more detail in both papers. Ever since he had joined the Council he had regularly been informed by the Leader at Group Leader meetings, however the detail had only been released with the publication of the papers before Members. He noted there would be staff reductions from within the organisation; however, it appeared to his Group that the top tier management and costs needed further review and the commissioning proposals would need intense scrutiny to ensure that all tendering processes were faultless; executed to ensure the best value for KCC and that the functions definitely could not be carried out in-house at a more beneficial rate.
(14) Mr Latchford finished by echoing the Leader in wishing everyone a very Happy Christmas and thanking Members and officers for the support they have received since they came to the Council in May.
(15) Starting his response with LEPs Mr Cowan stated that when they had first come about he had felt that they were too big, too massive and open to running out of control. Now that LEPs were more business led they were closer to what the first letter stood for, ‘Local’, but while it was all very well having the status the bottom line was that they needed to deliver.
(16) He said it was very good that KCC was one of the 14 Pioneers of health and social care integration. In a recently published report local surgeries across the country had been found to have maggots, out of date vaccines and medicines, personal data left lying about and dirty furnishings but Mr Cowan had been thankful that none of these surgeries were in Kent. He stated that he would watch the development of the Pioneers with interest.
(17) Turning to consultations Mr Cowan said he had often asked whether KCC consulted with the community to see what they wanted or to tell the community what they were going to do. Mrs Whittle had announced in July that she was going out to consult on the closure of 23 children’s centres and would not make her decision until the consultation closed. Mr Cowan congratulated Mrs Whittle on what he called a true consultation stating that she had gone out on the ground, listened to people, engaged with all concerned groups and had agreed to retain 11 of the centres and reduce hours in many others proposed for closure. He hoped that this would be the way consultations were run in the future.
(18) Mr Vye, on behalf of Mrs Dean, stated that the services of the County Council were entrusted to all Members not just the Administration and he was sure all Members were glad when they succeeded. He was very pleased that health and social care integration by the Council had been marked in the way that it had and with the LEP being embarked on he hoped there would be a special emphasis on the support and promotion of small and medium size enterprises (SME) which were the backbone of the economy of Kent.
(19) Referring to Children’s Services, Mr Vye said he was delighted that they no longer had the label of inadequate round their necks and all credit was due to those who had worked so hard to produce this result. He pointed out that there was still a big challenge facing the Council; in Specialist Children’s Services there was a steady increase in children in care leading to a predicted overspend of £1.3m on fostering, a greater need for preventative services leading to an overspend of £790k and more money needed for care leavers which actually had a £1.2m overspend and there was a huge saving of £4.6m marked in the draft Budget papers for the coming year.
(20) Speaking of food banks and the Kent Supported Assistance Services (KSAS) Mr Vye stated that the numbers of people who had used and applied for these services and help had increased dramatically and this level of poverty would have an effect not just on Children’s Services but also on Education. Later in the day he would be offering to work with the Administration to remedy this situation but that a clear idea of the task ahead was essential, one indicator of this would be for risk assessments of each proposal for savings from the Transformation Plan going to the Cabinet Committees for debate and discussion.
(21) Mr Whybrow, in his maiden speech in response to the Leader’s report, stated that he wanted to emphasise that the creation of his group was purely for practical reasons with no additional cost.
(22) He stated that as the fourth responder there was the potential for duplication but he did offer his thanks to Mrs Whittle for the work she had done on Children’s Centres.
(23) Mr Whybrow echoed Mr Carter’s thanks to staff for their dedication and services, he had taken up any invitation to visit or shadow officers and groups and he had been hugely impressed.
(24) In his response, the Leader stated that he had just received a letter from Edward Timpson, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children and Families, dated 11 December which said that having received all the evidence he no longer considered the improvement notice to remain in place for Children’s Services and was therefore lifting the notice. Mrs Whittle’s role in this had been significant and he was very grateful for her hard work.
(25) Touching on Transformation, which he would address more in the later paper, he assured Mr Latchford that the market engagement would be vigorous and the selection would be based on those best able to deliver the best value for money and the best services. He also stated that he was glad the opposition Group Leaders had joined him on the Transformation Board.
(26) As all Group Leaders had touched on the Welfare Reform paper which had been withdrawn from the Policy & Resources Cabinet Committee the Leader assured them that it would go to the mid-January meeting and would be a paper marginally modified at the periphery. He stated that he had wanted to include the right evidence to support some of the statistics and he hoped that those who compared the original with the new report would agree that the changes had been made with honesty and very much a straight bat.
(27) Turning to some of Mr Cowan’s points Mr Carter stated that the carve up of the country in relation to LEPs had not been well done. He hoped that Mr Pickles would do as he has suggested upon the creation of the South East LEP, the largest LEP in the country outside London, and ‘make it worth their while’ when the single growth fund was allocated.
(28) He stated that Mr Cowan’s comments on GPs being involved in the shaping of health reform agenda in the county was interesting but it was absolutely essential that the reforms were delivered with the patient at the forefront of every change and this needed to be clinician led. Services needed to be designed around patients by those who knew what was needed to produce the service that was best for them.
(29) He agreed with Mr Vye that balancing the books in the years to come would be a significant challenge but added that an investment in preventative services, both adult and children’s services, alongside the investment from health partners was absolutely essential to reduce demand on services. He hoped that the new Transformation Programme would help to with some of these pressures.