Minutes:
(1) The Leader updated the County Council on events since the previous meeting.
(2) Mr Carter referred to the question asked earlier in the meeting relating to Furness School and explained the work that was being undertaken by Special School Head teachers to support the continuation of this school.
(3) Mr Carter mentioned the very pleasing third quarter’s monitoring report which had been received at Cabinet on Monday 23 March 2015. In particular he referred to the re-employment rates for 16 – 64 year olds, which were above the national average. Also the number of apprenticeships in Kent had doubled in the last 5 years and the number of 18 – 24 year olds receiving job seekers allowance was the lowest for a decade.
(4) In relation to the education outcome statistics reported with the monitoring report, Mr Carter stated that for the first time in 17 years, Primary Schools were achieving national levels of attainment and Ofsted reports produced since Aug 2014 were showing a considerable improvement in performance.
(5) Mr Carter also referred to the significant improvements in adoption rates and the reduction in the number of children being taken into care. Also there had been a substantial improvement in the stability of placements for young people in foster care over the last quarter.
(6) Mr Carter made reference to the third quarter’s revenue outturn report, which showed a projected underspend of £3m, which would be the thirteenth year running that a revenue underspend had been achieved.
(7) Mr Carter then mentioned the devolution debate, and the three independent reports produced by the Local Government Association (LGA) and the County Council Network (CCN). The LGA report had been produced by Ernst & Young and had identified key points that would be a requirement for devolution. These included a cohesive and coherent economic area; an area with significant scale to manage a wide range of public services; strong relationships across those local public services; mature governance arrangements and robust and visible leadership. He expressed the view that generally Kent and Medway were well positioned to achieve this and had with a very positive relationship with all the parts of the public sector.
(8) Mr Carter referred to the recent meeting of the Kent and Medway Economic Partnership, which had agreed that post-election it would request that Kent and Medway be the accountable Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) for this area. In addition the Kent Leaders’ Group had unanimously endorsed this approach and had agreed that KCC with district Chief Executives would begin to look at what a proposition for a combined local authority in Kent would look like. It was intended to put a very compelling case that Whitehall must and should let go and empower local government to deliver better services for less public money.
(9) Mr Latchford, the Leader of the Opposition, referred to the Strategic Plan “Increasing opportunities, improving outcomes” which was being considered at this meeting. He welcomed the Plan and supported it in principle but expressed concern about the commissioning route. He emphasised the need to ensure that all contracted services were effectively monitored and had a majority input and influence in outsourced services in general.
(10) In relation to the revenue budget outturn he thanked officers and Members for the third quarter results.
(11) Regarding the third quarter’s monitoring report he was pleased that waste and landfill was being monitored. He referred to his concerns about the cost of providing this service when so many companies seemed to be making a profit for providing the same service. He acknowledged that the monitoring system was working effectively and that the monitoring report to Cabinet clearly demonstrated improvements but he would continue to raise areas of concern for examination.
(12) Mr Latchford referred to the Leader’s views on English devolution and stated that his group fully supported the devolution of power to the County Council.
(13) Mr Cowan, Leader of the Labour Group, acknowledged that the third quarter’s monitoring report was a good one and congratulated the Leader. He referred to the performance monitoring results which showed that the percentage of all schools with good or outstanding Ofsted reports showed good improvement in most areas. However, there were still 106 schools that required improvement and 24 schools that had been judged as inadequate by Ofsted which was about 25% of schools that needed serious attention.
(14) Mr Cowan referred to the likely revenue underspend of £3m which he welcomed on financial grounds but he highlighted the implications of the cutbacks in relation to the loss of some excellent staff and its impact upon children’s centres and youth facilities. The cuts imposed on local government had been more severe than those faced by any Whitehall department.
(15) In relation to devolution Mr Cowan mentioned the reference made by the Chancellor in his budget speech the previous week to the large cities as the engine room of growth. However there were other larger areas such as the old Kent coal fields which needed regeneration. He believed that the CCN was right to press for devolution to areas such as County Councils in order to generate economic growth.
(16) Mrs Dean, Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group, welcomed Mr Wood back to support the County Council and offered her congratulations on the balancing of the budget. She expressed the hope that some of that underspend would be re-directed to the switching of the street lights at night
(17) In relation to devolution, she stated that this had been Liberal Democrat policy for decades and expressed the view that decision making was more effective the nearer it was to the people it affected.
(18) Mrs Dean referred to performance monitoring of educational achievement and specifically that there was a link to the impact from the revision to education finance from the County Council introduced by the Liberal Democrat/Labour controlled County Council in 1997/98. In addition she referred to the contribution by the additional premium funding to children from deprived backgrounds by central government. She requested the Leader to instigate some research into what can be learned in relation to raising attainment from the King George VI grammar schools who took 20% of their cohort from deprived backgrounds and how that has been reflected in their results.
(19) Mrs Dean stated that the reputation of the Council was enhanced by good Performance Indicator results, however there were lessons that could be learnt from the process for the introduction of the street lighting policy.
(20) Mr Whybrow, Leader of the Independents Group, endorsed a lot of the good news in the Leaders report but stated that this should be balanced against the human consequences of government cuts. Also it was becoming increasingly harder to balance the budget with some services, such as Specialist Children’s Services struggling to remain within budget. He was pleased to note that some of the underspend would be rolled over for the troubled families programme and the social fund. In relation to the social fund he stated that he would welcome feedback from people who had accessed the service about how it might be improved, but acknowledged that the additional funding was good news.
(21) Mr Whybrow expressed his support for devolution of powers to County Councils and referred to the motion later in the meeting regarding re-investing fuel tax and suggested that something similar in relation to Council Tax would give the County Council greater control over its own destiny. He welcomed the pressure that the Leader was putting on central government in relation to devolution.
(22) In replying to the other group leaders’ comments, Mr Carter stated that he noted the general agreement on devolution and thanked Mr Simmonds for delivering the £3m underspend. He reminded Members of his promise to fund £1m of road maintenance if there was an underspend and he was discussing this with Mr Balfour to achieve this efficiently. He confirmed that he agreed with the comments made on the challenges placed on local government, which were greater than any other part of the public sector and hoped that central government, would recognise that this could not continue.
(23)
Regarding education, Mr Carter referred to the
substantial improvements that had been made at key stage 2 since
some schools went into category 2 or 3 years ago. He was confident that when these schools were
re-inspected there would be a number that would come out of
category.
He agreed that the investment in early year’s education a
number of years ago had contributed to this improvement.