Tag Archives: Just 42

Council reports, eXplore card, Jubilee, Just 42, Suffolk Circle, Suffolk County Council, Surgery, Your councillor

What’s been happening in Suffolk: June 2012

1 Comment
Woodbridge Jubilee beacon from across the Deben. The beacon was built and lit by 1st Woodbridge Scouts

Over the last month everyone was concerned with the Queen’s Jubilee. However I single out for special notice Suffolk County Council – who, for reasons best known to themselves, held a party on the evening of  4th June  to celebrate the  SCC Jubilee beacon being lit. They were clearly oblivious to the notion that any County Councillor worth their salt would  be on their own home patch enjoying local celebrations, and  their local beacon. At least I was.

Other things of importance:

Suffolk Circle If you remember, a couple of years back SCC committed £680,000 over 3 years to fund a ‘good neighbours ‘scheme in Suffolk. This was, to put it mildly, a controversial decision. Last month I told you that Suffolk Circle’s first year of operation was looked at in critical detail by the Scrutiny Committee to assess whether it was an effective/cost-effective means of providing support  to the over 50s. The main recommendations of the Committee were:

  1. Any proposed future partnerships between the County Council and third party organisations should be looked at by Scrutiny before any final decisions are taken by Cabinet;
  2. the Committee be provided with details of the outcomes from the Business Review of the Suffolk Circle ;
  3. the Business Review should take account of different mixes of income from tokens and subscriptions and developing closer working with the voluntary sector, in the context of planning for Years 2 and 3;
  4. the County Council and the Suffolk Circle should give consideration to how marketing could be used:

i.            to encourage members from rural communities to join;

ii.            to proactively reach out to the most vulnerable people in Suffolk;

iii.            to clearly demonstrate in plain English the benefits of membership to potential members;

  1. the County Council and Suffolk Circle take steps to improve communication with voluntary sector organisations, including a proactive approach to signposting services; and
  2. the Committee be provided with data regarding the number of membership renewals and the demographic make up of the membership, using Acorn data.

I will keep you up to date when I hear more from the County about the Circle.

New Chairman, New Travel Card The Annual General Meeting of Suffolk County Council took place on the 24th of May, where Cllr Jeremy Pembroke, the former leader and Conservative councillor for Cosford was appointed Chairman for the next year. Anne Whybrow, Conservative member for Stowmarket was also elected as the Vice-Chair.  At the same time the Lib Dem party announced that our Leader, Kathy Pollard, has stepped down, after a  prolonged brush with very ill-health, and is replaced by Cllr David Wood.

Cllr Mark Bee then gave a State of Suffolk Address, in which he highlighted the main aims for the year and reviewed the past year.   Interestingly, in this  he heralded the return on an Oyster-type young persons travel card because issues of transport are causing such harm to the education and employment prospects of the young people of Suffolk. Equally interestingly, he failed to mention that this was required to replace the  Explore young person’s travel card which his own administration (under previous leader Jeremy Pembroke) decided to cut halfway through the last academic year and which has already caused significant harm to the education and employment prospects of young people in Suffolk.

Any sign of a restoration is obviously a successful outcome for me, my party and the members of Just 42, amongst others: we  have been lobbying for the restoration of this card since it was withdrawn.  However the proposal is currrently limited to the young people of Ipswich, who  Scrutiny discovered have suffered least from the withdrawal.  It  must be extended as soon as possible if the Leader’s words are to mean anything at all. I have blogged, written and spoken publicly on how necessary this is if we are to support the badly-affected young people of rural Suffolk  to support themselves.

We also welcomed Cllr Bee’s announcement of a one-post Cabinet post reduction  for the next year. My party has been calling for such a reduction for two years.

Textiles Recycling Scheme Launched The Suffolk Waste Partnership has recently launched a scheme where residents across the entire County will be able to recycle clothes.  I do have some concerns about the effect of this scheme on charities, although the Council says that the aim is not to take away the clothes that would be donated, but to try to redirect some of the 7,000 tonnes of clothing that goes to landfill each year.   Having said this, they then supply a list of  those items that are deemed acceptable and unacceptable – many of which would be acceptable at a charity shop.

Acceptable items: all clean clothing, socks and shoes, boots, wellies, slippers, hats, scarves, gloves, bed linen, blankets, sheets, pillowcases, handbags, belts, clean underwear, curtains, towels, tea towels and stuffed toys

No thanks – dirty or oily items, duvets, quilts, sleeping bags, pillows, cushions and carpets.

All I say is, please remember to give to charities anything you would have given before  – and only hand clearly unsaleable items to the recycling scheme. Re-use is better than recycling any day of the week.

County Councillor surgery My next surgery is this upcoming Saturday, 16th June, in the Woodbridge library. As ever, everyone is  welcome

eXplore card, Just 42, NEET, New Strategic direction, Suffolk County Council, Woodbridge, young people, Your councillor

“Attention – this policy is reversing!” U-turn on young people’s travel

1 Comment

Hurrah – direct action and real democracy has finally paid off.

Yesterday – fifteen months after their short-sighted,  mean-minded and pennypinching  abolition of Suffolk’s Explore young person’s travelcard (halfway through the academic year, let me remind you!) –  the Conservatives on Suffolk County Council have announced a U-turn.   SCC will now be developing  an Oyster-type card “to help provide reduced travel costs for education, training and work-related travel” for young people, because – as Leader Mark Bee acknowledged -travel is such a problem for young people in our rural county.

As my son would say, no shit, Sherlock!

What Cllr Bee says is perfectly true. But it  is  hardly news. It’s now exactly a year since the County Council received that  6,000 signature petition and the personal representations from a huge range of people (including some very vocal, determined – and polite – members of Woodbridge’s Just 42) telling them just this!

When  the Conservatives originally argued the necessity of the Explore  cut on the grounds of cost, they were too shortsighted to recognise the costly damage it would cause to the educational, work and training prospects of a whole cohort of young people.  This harm was clear to anyone who looked at the facts rather than the ideology of the New Strategic Direction.  Indeed, in the middle of last year the Conservatives heard this information directly from me and other Lib Dem councillors, from schools and colleges, from parents and – most of all – from the young people affected.

We all told the Conservatives that scrapping the Explore card would – and did – cause huge problems to those who wanted to get an education and a job.  But -as the Cabinet member for Roads and Transport so memorably said -“you can’t spend a pound more than once.”   In such  circumstances, the wise idea is to choose carefully what you do spend your pounds on in the first place. This was the same Cabinet that agreed the expenditure of really quite a lot of pounds on Suffolk Circle.

Thursday’s announcement is welcome news – but sadly it is too late for some.  And the current announcement – despite the fanfare – is currently limited to Ipswich.Yet  Scrutiny established  at the end of last year that the young people living in Ipswich remained  best supported by bus services after the Explore cut. It was those in the rural parts of Suffolk – those with large distances to travel and no access to cars or petrol -who were most badly affected.

Now that this decision has been made, I urge the council to go beyond spin on this occasion and to roll out this new Oyster-type scheme as quickly as possible. We we need to reverse, wherever possible,  the harm they have caused and are continuing to cause to the next generation of Suffolk!

'Divesting' services, Cabinet, Carers, Council reports, County Council Surgery, Just 42, Mobility Vehicles, Social care, Street lighting, Suffolk County Council

Whats happening in SCC – March

Leave a comment

This last month at the county council   Cabinet decide to ‘remodel’ Adult and Community services – and seem once again to be relying on that good old standby – the volunteer – to sort out the inevitable gap in provision. Truly extraordinary that a mindset  that blandly declares that  ‘ you have to pay to get the best,’  and  ‘there is no such thing as society’ is also the one that is so keen to rely on others’ free labour and ‘the community’  for the really important things in life (like caring for the elderly and running public libraries).
This month too SCC started looking at the  proposed Suffolk Heritage organisation, which is set be run by the Museum of East Anglian Life  for the compelling reason that ‘they were the only organisation to tender for it’. Thank goodness it was a museum, eh? 

Remodelling of Adult and Community Services    At their last meeting,  SCC’s Cabinet decided to remodel Adult and Community Services in Suffolk.  They propose  that ‘the community’ will increase its dealings with  ’smaller’ care-related issues, while the County picks up cases needing ‘ more permanent care solutions’.  The proposals will now go out to consultation. There is as yet  little information as to how this  shakeup will affect communities, carers and those in care.

Apparently the SCC is running a trial in Felixstowe from 1st of April. 

Points of concern:

  • In the risk implications it states that “ACS has to deliver budget savings of £24m over 2012/13 and 2013/14, of  which £3.7m has to be delivered by 13/14 by reducing demand” Is this actually achievable?  The new plan is to to be fully rolled out across the County over the course of this year – yet SCC have only just started to consult. Is this possible?
  • An impact assessment  has already been undertaken –  yet it is too early to assess the impact of the model.
  • Is this another case where the administration intends to rely on volunteers to solve all the problems of  ‘smaller’ care-related issues? SCC seems to forget that the bulk of care is already undertaken by voluntary carers – the family carers (such as myself) who underpin the whole of social care by working upaid for 168 hours a week out of love. Working 24/7 as it is,  SCC needs to recognise that will not be possible to get them to work any more.

Consultation on the proposed Suffolk Heritage organisation. Many of the responses of the consultation concerning  the new heritage organisation were from members of the public,  however, a number of organisations also took the opportunity to respond. Many of  these had a number of concerns.

In particular, English Heritage stated that the proposals are not developed enough to enable a proper response, plus they raised many questions about how it might operate. They add  ‘It is worth noting that other authorities in the East of England have considered outsourcing archaeological services into a variety of trusts, and have not done so after further due diligence’.

Suffolk Institute of Archaeology provided a four page letter summarising their main points of concern about the proposal (finishing, rather glumly, by saying that ‘SCC is almost certainly going to proceed with the creation of the Suffolk Heritage Trust, so that, whatever individual views might be, outright opposition is likely to be futile and counter-productive’).  Their main concerns were:

  • SCC has not yet explored all the available options
  • In view of the number of serious questions that had been raised, the Suffolk Institute had serious doubts that a comprehensive and convincing full business case could be put together in time for approval in Spring 2012.  The process should not be rushed or avoidable mistakes will certainly be made.
  • SCC should not proceed with the Trust proposal unless it is prepared to ensure that the new organisation has adequate funding.

Suffolk Local History Council were very concerned about the viability of these proposals – ‘Suffolk is almost alone in seeking to cope with Government cuts by divesting itself of vital services (an approach rejected by Norfolk County Council and others)”.  

It is also far from clear as to what will happen if the  heritage lottery grant which SCC seems to be relying on doesn’t materialise. The people of Suffolk have not been given a plan B.

New CareAware Service in Suffolk Suffolk County Council have recently launched CareAware, a service which looks to help those people seeking financial information about how to fund long term care.  This service is not run by Suffolk County Council but a national not-for-profit organisation which offers free and impartial information and advice about later life planning and how to pay for longer term care.

 CareAware can be contacted on 08009540091 or emailed at suffolk@careaware.co.uk

One month left to sign up for better broadband   There is only one month left for both residents and businesses to show their need for better broadband across the County before the deadline passes. The Council aims to get 10,000 residents or businesses to sign up, and you can sign up by heading to http://www.suffolk.gov.uk/broadband 

Mobility vehicles  As there is some confusion in Woodbridge and other local areas as to what rules govern mobility vehicles, where they are allowed and under what (if any restrictions) I have covered the subject very thoroughly on my blog -link here 

Just 42 I’m sure everyone in Woodbridge will be as pleased as I was to discover that our superb local  youth group was shortlisted for the High Sheriff’s Community Group of the Year award, and went on to receive a High Sheriff’s charity  grant at a ceremony in Bury St Edmunds cathedral last week. It is good so see their good work being recognised!

County Councillor surgery  My monthly surgery will take place on  Saturday 17th March, 10-12pm at Woodbridge Library

Street lighting: Just to remind everyone, the dimming/switching off of night lighting in Woodbridge will take place in the week beginning 26th March. Further finetuning can be then done on a light by light basis, so do please contact with any difficulties and report problem areas – if there are any!