Agenda item

Mr A J King, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Corporate Support and External Affairs, and Miss J Clarke, Head of Communications and Media Centre, will attend the meeting from 11.30 am to 12.00 noon to answer Members’ questions on this item.

The Chairman introduced this item and explained that it had been initially raised by Mr Christie but also but a number of other people outside of the Council, who had concerns over the phraseology of this press release.  There was a lack of reference to the fact that it was a Government scheme rather than solely a Kent scheme, except in a brief note to the editor at the bottom of the press release.

Mr Smyth stated that there was reluctance when issuing press releases on government funded schemes such as this to register the fact that it is Government funded.  The implication of the press release is that it is more likely to be the Kent County Council that is funding the scheme rather than the Government. 

In response to Mr Smyth, Mr King quoted a paragraph from the “Kent on Sunday” newspaper which acknowledged the ‘government programme’ in its report and the “Kent Messenger’s” report “government’s flagship rebuilding programme known as the Building Schools for the Future’.   He added that credit should be given to KCC for proceeding with BSF at a difficult time, and to our partners in the consortium, all of which had recognition in the press release.

Mr Smyth commented that the KOS and the KM information came from the Labour Group’s press release which did recognise the Government funding.

Mr King stated that is was very clear in the Note to Editors and in addition KCC did not have £1.8 billion to put into schools on its own. 

Mrs Dean stated that by and large KCC press releases were balanced and fair; the odd one slipped through which was not balanced and this press release was an example of where that had happened.  Mrs Dean asked whether a basic checklist existed for Officers preparing press releases which asked, for example, whether the funding source had been acknowledged. 

Miss Clarke assured Members of the Committee that the Comms and Media service would seek to be more vigilant and she stated that the Code of Recommended Practice was taken very seriously by officers within her Team.

Mr Truelove asked why, in situations such as this where there is a good news story for the whole of Kent, there was no opportunity for a quote from the Leader of the Opposition?

Mr King stated that it was the Leader and the ruling group that make the decisions, but there were occasions when it was appropriate to quote the Leaders of the opposition parties and those were usually broad Council issues. 

Mr Simmonds asked that in future acknowledgement was also given to the tax payer, whose funds have enabled the projects to go forward as well as the capital commitment that Kent has made to such projects. 

Mr Hart stated that the BSF project was the biggest Christmas present that Kent had ever had, however the press release was not a balanced way to report on this project.

Mr Horne asked Mr King whether the 10 schools concerned would get a complete package of funding, which wasn’t interrupted by phases, to enable each school to be completely rebuilt as necessary.  Mr King responded by stating that his understanding was that each school would be completed, there would be no halting to the work on an individual school project.  The Chairman confirmed that Mr Horne’s points regarding the phasing of school projects would be followed up and reported back to a future meeting of the Cabinet Scrutiny Committee.

Mr Cowan asked what percentage of £1.8billion KCC was putting in to the project.  The Chairman agreed that the figures relating to the funding KCC was putting in to the project would be reported to Members of the Cabinet Scrutiny Committee. 

The Chairman stated that it had been mentioned previously that this press release was cleared by the Director of Law and Governance, the Chairman had put in a Freedom of Information request shortly after the press release was issued and no email had been received from the Director of Law and Governance clearing the press release.  Mr King agreed to report back to the Committee on this issue.  Mrs Dean stated that not all press releases were referred to the Director of Law and Governance and Miss Clarke confirmed that that was the case.   

RESOLVED:

1)     That Miss Clarke and Mr King be thanked for attending the meeting to answer Members questions on the issuing of the press release.

2)     That in light of the information provided at the meeting in response to questions the Committee agreed that they did not need to make any formal comments to Cabinet.