Minutes:
(a) Partnership Achievement of the Year Award
(1) The Chairman informed Members that Mrs Jenny Whittle had won the Partnership Achievement of the Year award in the 2014 Councillor Achievement Awards.
(2) The Partnership Award is for someone who had made significant personal commitment and drive to make working in partnership an integral part of how the council delivered outcomes locally, and shown improvements in service delivery, efficiency savings and delivery of outcomes as a result of the partnership working that this councillor had been involved with.
(3) Mrs Whittle was nominated for her work with Coram to improve the adoption service in the county, moving to a cross-sector partnership model.
(4) On behalf of the County Council, the Chairman offered his congratulatins to Mrs Whittle.
(b) FareShare Kent
(5) FareShare was a national UK charity supporting communities to relieve food poverty and it was at the centre of two of the most urgent issues that face the UK: food poverty and food waste.
(6) FareShare Kent had been established as a Community Interest Company, wholly owned by the Children and Families Ltd charity. Fareshare would establish a network of Community Food Members able to utilise the surplus food available to their benefit, in return paying a reasonable administration fee that helped build a sustainable business into the future. FareShare Kent would also develop employment training programmes to help its mainly volunteer workforce develop valuable skills and experience to enable them to move more easily into local full-time employment.
(7) The Chairman had been asked by Miss Harrison, the local Member for Sheerness, to present a cheque for £28,055 to Alan Bayford, from Fareshare Kent on behalf of Miss Harrison and 44 other Members of the Council who had contributed to this amount from their Member Grants.
(8) Mr Bayford spoke briefly to offer his sincere thanks.
(c) Winter Olympics and Paralympics
(9) The Chairman informed Members that Kent had had one competitor in the Sochi Winter Olympics, Lizzy Yarnold, from Sevenoaks, who had won Gold in the Skeleton event. Group Leaders had unanimously agreed that the Kent Invicta Award should be presented to Lizzy Yarnold and along with it a cheque for £5,000 for the charity of her choice. The Chairman stated that he and officers had been trying to arrange it so that the award could be presented to Lizzy Yarnold at this meeting but this had not been possible. He was adamant that, whenever the presentation did occur, Members would be involved.
(10) Paralympics GB had nominated four individuals to run with the Paralympic Torch in Russia ahead of the Paralympics, and one of those four was from Kent. 20 year old student Andrew Norman was a School Ambassador and student at Valence School in Kent who regularly contributed to many areas of school sport and activities, wider community events, regional competitions and cultural performances.
(11) Kent also had two competitors in the Sochi Winter Paralympic Games. One, Millie Knight, the 15 year old from Canterbury who carried the Flag at the Opening Ceremony was Team GB's youngest ever competitor in a winter Games. Millie would be one of the Baton Bearers of the Queen's Baton Relay in June. Millie was a visually impaired skier and KCC provided grant support to her in the run up to the Paralympics (£250).
(12) The other Kent athlete at the Paralympics was Charlotte Evans (technically, Medway), who won Gold (Britain's first ever Gold at a Winter Paralympics) as the sighted guide to Kelly Gallagher (a visually impaired skier).
(13) On behalf of the County Council, the Chairman offered his sincere congratulations to all those competitors and their supporters in the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.
(d) Flooding
(14) The Chairman announced that he had received a letter from the Mayor and Leader of Carlisle City Council expressing their heartfelt commiserations to the Council and to the residents of Kent on the recent flooding in the county.
(15) Having been faced with devastating floods themselves in 2005 the Council had sympathy with what has been experienced and the not considerable clean-up operations that have occurred and were still ongoing.
(e) Petition
(16) The Chairman stated that he had taken receipt of a petition from the Chairman of Langley Parish Council. The Parish Council had been campaigning for some time to get a reduction in the speed limit along the A274 Sutton Road in Langley, from the beginning of the parish at Langley South to Five Wents Crossroads. The Chairman then formally presented the petition to Mr Brazier, Cabinet Member for Environment & Transport, for investigation and response.
(f) “Time to Change” Pledge
(17) Time to Change was a national anti-stigma campaign run by the leading mental health charities, Mind and Rethink. Time to Change aimed to improve public attitudes towards people with mental health problems. On the 6 February 2014 Graham Gibbens, on behalf of KCC, signed the Time to Change organisational pledge. The pledge was a public statement of aspiration where an organisation wants to tackle mental health stigma and discrimination. This was a commitment that KCC would be taking serious action with and it was hoped would reduce mental health discrimination across the County.
(g) Karen Mannering
(18) Karen Mannering in Democratic Services was due to retire from KCC on Friday 28 March having joined the County Council in the summer of 1969, some 44 years ago. The Chairman state that he was sure all Members would agree that this was a tremendous lifetime of commitment to public service and this County Council. On behalf of all Members, the Chairman wished Karen a long, happy, healthy and thoroughly well-deserved retirement and gave his sincere thanks and appreciation for all her hard work on Members’ behalf.