Tag Archives: privatisation

'Divesting' services, Buses, Cabinet, cuts, eXplore card, Libraries, Lollipop patrols, New Strategic direction, Suffolk County Council, Transport, Uncategorized, young people

SCC’s new Leader – where do we go from here?

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Most of Suffolk must be as relieved as I was at Monday’s election of  Mark Bee as future Leader of Suffolk County Council.  Mark, who replaces Jeremy Pembroke, was elected in the first round of the Suffolk County Tories’  AV style election process, by a significant majority.

The first signs are  in many ways encouraging: Mark was not in the Cabinet , not  tainted with creating any of the lunacies of the New Strategic Direction,  not on the committee that appointed the Chief Executive. Indeed he has shown every sign of being Suffolk County Tories’ quiet voice of reason.

However, we cannot forget that all Conservatives , backbench as well as front bench,  voted  for every single New Strategic Direction proposal at full council.   It is hopeful that Mark Bee should say

” if we are to expect others to help, we have a duty to listen to them in return, to hear their concerns, and to build solutions together, at a speed that we can all follow… That is why I’d like the time between now and the council meeting on May 26, to be a time for reflection and review.”

That any member of the current administration – let alone the Leader elect  – should be officially sanctioning the listening and hearing of Suffolk  people’s concerns is refreshing!   Personally I do hope the portfolio-holder in charge of libraries will take heed.

But at the moment  Mark Bee continues to maintain  that “the direction in which we are heading is the right one“.  He hasn’t yet – despite the Evening Star’s headlines – actually gone so far as to ‘save ‘ the school crossing patrols.   All he has said is  that “in the areas where the patrols are most needed, we will look to continue to fund these, unless or until a suitable alternative arrangement has been found.”

This is far from being the same thing.

Mark says he wants to spend the next few weeks in reflection and review – hopefully about many of the most contentious of recent cuts forced on us by Suffolk County Council’s NSD  (all of which we Lib Dems provided alternative costings to retain back in February)

  • Will school crossing patrols be reprieved? Suffolk received more petition signatures about this than any other petition in the history of the council!
  • What hope is there for the libraries? The so-called ‘consultation has – so far – been a thinly veiled arm-twisting of local communities to take over these, or lose out.
  • And how about transport? The cutting of the Explore card, halfway through the school/college year has already caused extreme hardship amongst the young  and poor – particularly the young and rural poor who are seeing additional barriers in the path of  aspiration and education.  Not only to them, but to their parents. Similarly the ‘working hours only ‘ demand-responsive solution to cutting scheduled service, and the new conditions being placed on concessionary travel card holders are causing huge hardship for people without other choices in the countryside.
  • Will Mark Bee reflect on problems such as these, and having reflected, have a Damascene conversion?

Now, wouldn’t that be lovely!

'Divesting' services, Buses, Cabinet, Care homes, Council spending, cuts, Libraries, Lollipop patrols, New Strategic direction, Schools, Suffolk County Council, Woodbridge, young people, Your councillor

Cuts in Suffolk – don’t ever forget who’s holding that knife!

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As your county councillor I am horribly anxious about so many different  things simultaneously.  

This week  its been the almost certain loss of Suffolk’s libraries, school crossing patrols, care homes, bus services, the eXplore card, and services for families  that has  been most worrying me.  That, and the impact of these losses on the people of Suffolk.

For clearly, Suffolk residents are  likely to be losing all of these, losing them irrevocably, sacrificed to the ideological insanity of an ‘enabling’ council, run by affluent, untroubled  people who say:  “Do as I say, not as I do!”   It is  a Topsy Turvey world where those who run it can demand  pay moderation, job cuts, and employment freezes for everyone else but themselves;  can parrot the mantra of “Greenest County” and drive everywhere in a 4×4; can declare themselves determined to protect ‘the most vulnerable’  but do not include in this category the elderly, the very young, the disabled , or the disadvantaged.  

Pah!  

However,  I would urge you not to confuse national policies with our current disgraceful  local vandalism. For a start, such confusion could – no, WILL –  let those responsible off the hook! The New Strategic Direction has been a long time in the planning. It is making cuts greater than required in services the administration doesn’t value. A cynic would suggest that it is using the national situation as a cover for doing so.

Remember, in Suffolk the Liberal Democrats are not in any kind of coalition – they are very strongly the opposition party.  And as you know, both I and my colleagues have been fighting these cuts from the day they were first heralded, back in last September. Let us be clear here – although we are in opposition,  Suffolk Lib Dems are fighting this New Strategic Direction as a matter of common sense rather than party-political politicking.  We are fighting it because the effects will hit people of all ages, and backgrounds and political hue.

We – like any sane, sensible people – think there IS such a thing as society, and that  actually in Suffolk we had – till recently – a society that ran quite well. One that looked after its old and its sick and disabled, that tempered the wind to the shorn lamb. We think a  County Council should respond to its residents and their needs:  that the council is there to represent  and protect them and serve them. We are not so arrogant that  we forget that SCC  is paid for by the people of Suffolk, out of their own money! We feel that those who pay the piper should be allowed to call the tune!

 The council’s current bizarre ‘New Strategic Direction’ (which seems to combine ‘selling off of the family silver’ with dumping some of it in a skip) does not seem to think  this way. Far from intending to deliver ‘the best’ for the people of Suffolk,  the NSD  does not intend to deliver anything at all!

 Care homes, libraries, bus services and school crossing patrols:  all of these are not just ‘optional extras’ to be dispensed with and disposed of  by those who do not use them (and seemingly fail to remember they do not own them).  Yet there is such a thing as society in Suffolk, and all these services are ones that make you proud that it still exists.

Suffolk County Council is cynically using the cuts in central government grants to justify what it plans to do, but central actions (whatever we think of them) do not in any sense explain what is being done here in Suffolk.  The Coalition government is not going to win any popularity contests while trying to recoup the eye-watering deficit bequeathed by Gordon Brown and the last thirteen years.   However it should not be expected to carry the can for the ‘scorched earth’ decisions being made – without reference to the public or even a business plan – by those who have created the ‘New Strategic Direction’.

But the CEO and the Tory administration at Suffolk County Council are not the only people to blame for this mess. There’s also the sheer apathy of all too many of the people of Suffolk to factor in!    

In late October/November last year I  – together with many other colleagues – trudged around a large area of Suffolk Coastal delivering 23,000 copies of an emergency leaflet which tried to alert the people of Suffolk to what lay ahead. 

The administration accused us of ‘scaremongering’ – yet our direst predictions were less terrible than the truth.

We did our best and gained a huge amount of support from those prepared to listen – but it was not enough. Far too few people took notice. Some hoped it wouldn’t  really happen under a Tory watch, others hoped to regain popularity for the Labour party by standing on the sidelines and letting our society crumble, others  just hoped that the problem would go away if they shut their eyes and buried their heads in the sand.   

So, once again I urge you to put aside party-political differences and take action!  After months of refusing to listen to the people it represents, Suffolk County Council has finally  put up an e-petition site. Register on it and add your name  to an existing petition or  start a new one. Or best – do both!

http://petitions.web-labs.co.uk/suffolkcc/public/

You can sign any petition – the only qualification is that you need to live, work or study in Suffolk (for example, I have signed all the Library petitions as I believe in an integrated service for the county) but current petitions that particularly affect you are :

Save our School Crossing Patrols – the St Mary’s School Woodbridge lollipop man is going to be cut along with the other 97 lollipop posts across Suffolk, to save a sum of money that equates to to less that 80% of the Chief Executive’s annual salary!

Save Woodbridge Library: it will not be closed –  but it is still in danger of ‘divestment’.

Save Woodbridge Buses  Cuts – confirmed yesterday – to SCC subsidised services will leave Woodbridge without any evening, sunday or bank holiday bus services, plus cut easy links to other towns and villages. This will cause huge problems to those who can’t, don’t, or can’t afford to drive 

Save the Explore Card  Up till now young people have had this card to help with travel costs to post-16 education, to work and to find work, and for socialising. Explore cards were available free to students 16-19, and have enabled them to pay only half adult fares on buses and on many off-peak rail journeys. Additionally, the SCC post-16 transport policy relies on the fact that all post-16 students can have an Explore card to help with fares – and a very good thing too!. The proposed abolition of the card would mean there will be more cars on the road because many more young people will be driven or drive to school, college, employment etc. It will put more, less confident cyclists on busier roads. It will lead to less take-up of FE education because of difficulties of access. It will harm young people’s chances of going for job interviews and training. The proposed abolition is a retrograde step that threatens the very education and employment opportunities that our young people need in order to help us out of our current economic crisis. It also makes a mockery of our ‘Greenest county’ aspirations 

(NB: A word of warning sometimes the e-petition links work poorly. If so , go to the site and navigate from there! And if it doesn’t work, keep trying until it does.)

'Divesting' services, Cabinet, Care homes, Council spending, cuts, New Strategic direction, Social care, Suffolk County Council, Uncategorized

Social care: Suffolk Tories ‘riding roughshod over democracy’

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Suffolk County Council Liberal Democrats are accusing the Conservative administration of once again running a ‘sham consultation’ – this time on the future of council-run care homes in the county. Its sham because the Tories have already made a unilateral decision either to close or to sell them all off.

On Thursday last  (13/01) representatives of Suffolks boroughs and district councils were invited to “Have Your Say on the Future of Suffolk County Council’s residential care homes” by Suffolk County Council’s Adult and Community Services portfolio-holder Colin Noble. The meeting took place at SCC’s Ipswich headquarters.

It became apparent at the start of the meeting that the decision had already been made, even though the issue was still officially out to consultation. The public had been asked to only comment on and prefer one of three preselected options for the future of the county’s care for the elderly:

  1. Gradually close the homes and use only independent care homes
  2. Sell all the homes as ‘going concerns’
  3. Close six homes and transfer the remaining homes to the independent sector.

There was no option to keep any of the homes within council control. There was also no option for individual management buy-outs.

Cllr Noble’s opening salvo was:    “We have made a decision at cabinet level that we will no longer pay for care homes. So if you have come here wanting us to continue running care homes, you’re wasting your time. The decision has already been made.”

This statement came as a surprise to elected members who were attending the meeting , including me.   

Cllr Noble seemed to be confusing a cabinet decision to ‘consult’ on options for divestment with a final decision taken by all councillors at a formal council meeting. Now,  Suffolk County Council consists of 75 members from a range of parties. The Cabinet consists of ten members of a single party: the Conservatives.

They are riding roughshod over democracy.

Whose council is this anyway? The Council’s care budget, and the care homes themselves are not in Cllr Noble’s gift  – nor in  that of any other official, elected or otherwise. The budget and the care homes belong to the people of Suffolk. The Council holds them in trust and should administer them wisely on our behalf.

My colleague,  Inga Lockington, Lib Dem Spokesperson for Older People, points out that:

“All councillors must  have a chance to vote on this important issue on behalf of their constituents.

Cllr Noble is pursuing a policy which will lead to many frail older people being evicted from their homes. When care homes close, the health of frail elderly people can be seriously affected and it can even hasten their deaths. Cllr Noble needs to acknowledge this when pursuing such a policy, in the face of so much concern within our community.

I am also concerned that taking nearly 200 care places out of the County’s care provision, in the face of the increasing incidence of dementia, will  create a waiting list and a “Market” which will result in the most needy finding themselves at the end of a lengthening queue.”

Many local residents in Suffolk continue to be alarmed at the SCC administration’s proposals to ‘divest’ themselves of their care homes – particularly in the fact that the decision came before the busniess case.    In fact we’re STILL WAITING for ANY business case. .

Bryan Hall, who is the district councillor for Wickham Market (where a specialist care-home for dementia patients is threatened with closure and sell-off for development) says:

“I am very concerned that Suffolk County Council have decided, without public mandate, to stop being social care providers. In particular, residential homes such as Wickham Market’s Lehmann House, which has a large number of residents suffering from dementia is, in my view – and that of my constituents –  irreplaceable. For a start, it is in the heart of our town – which is where we want our old people to stay. There may possibly be private homes somewhere in Suffolk able to provide a similar service, but there is no guarantee they are anywhere near the Wickham Market area. It is not right that old people who have served their community all their lives, should be excluded like this in their last years.”