Agenda item

1.    The Leader of the Council or the appropriate Member of the Cabinet or the Chairman of a Committee to answer any questions on any matter relating to the powers and duties of the County Council, or which affects the county.

 

(Note:  Notice of questions in respect of the above item on the agenda must be given in writing, preferably by e-mail, to Democratic Services by 12 noon on 2 December 2020).

 

 

2.    Cabinet Member Briefings on their portfolios.

 

These will be circulated by email to all Members prior to the County Council meeting, together with the Members’ questions and responses.

 

There will be an opportunity for Members to ask questions.

 

 

Questions:

 

Notice of sixteen questions had been received. The questions and replies were published in a supplementary agenda on 7 December 2020.

 

      A number of supplementary questions were asked and a summary of the main points is set out below:  

 

           (Q3) Mrs Tina Mountain noted the positive additional provision of Extra Care Housing in Epsom and Ewell by Surrey County Council, noting the inadequacy of local community provision and closure of the Wells Centre by the Borough Council. She asked the Cabinet Member for Adults and Health whether she agreed that the new provisions showed that the Council listened to its residents by providing for its elderly and vulnerable.

 

In response, the Cabinet Member for Adults and Health agreed with the importance of raising the profile of the work that Surrey County Council was doing on providing accommodation for the most vulnerable residents across the county. She would continue to ensure the delivery of a substantial amount of supported accommodation in Epsom and Ewell as it was an area of high demand.

       

           (Q4) Mrs Clare Curran noted that the Community Impact Assessment (CIA) was a remarkable piece of work. One significant insight of the report was the impact of the pandemic on mental health and she asked whether the Leader could expand upon the way in which all providers were preparing to meet the inevitable surge in accessing mental health services.

 

The Leader of the Council recognised that there would be significant growth in the demand for mental health services over the coming months and years. He explained that early intervention was vital, the Council would be re-procuring the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) contract from next April which would bring greater capacity into the system and there would be a further rollout of mental health advisers in schools.

 

He noted the significant piece of work being undertaken by the mental health improvement board on mental health provision across the system and the further resources allocated to resolve the waiting list for mental health services, particularly on CAMHS. The Council and the system needed to continue to work together closely to address the provision of mental health services by ensuring adequate funding and capacity.

 

(Q5) Dr Peter Szanto asked the Cabinet Member for Transport on what else the Council was doing to support sustainable travel in addition to walking and cycling initiatives. 

 

In response, the Cabinet Member for Transport explained that Cabinet in November had approved £49 million to accelerate the introduction of the Surrey Ultra-Low and Zero Emission Scheme, of that £32 million would be allocated to removing around eighty of the most polluting buses off Surrey’s network, £6.3 million would be allocated to community transport and £9 million for bus priority measures which were essential to reduce private vehicle use and increase sustainable transport.

 

(Q6) Mr Mike Goodman asked if the Cabinet Member for Environment and Climate Change could explain how residents could apply for the grants listed in the response.

 

In response, the Cabinet Member for Environment and Climate Change noted that it was easy for residents to apply to the Green Jump Surrey Programme by contacting the delivery partner, Action Surrey, by telephone on 0800 783 2503 or via their website. 

 

(Q7) Mr Tim Hall thanked the Cabinet Member for All-Age Learning for her reply and asked whether the food vouchers for free school meals for disadvantaged families would be distributed via schools, and he also asked how people could access the Surrey Crisis Fund.

 

Mrs Clare Curran noted that she had been doing her best to publicise the availability of the Surrey Crisis Fund in her division but commented that it was not clear in any of the publicity as to who families should turn to in the first place, so had pointed them in the direction of the Coronavirus helpline. She stressed that clarity was needed as many families were not used to approaching agencies and asking for help.

 

In response the Cabinet Member for All-Age Learning noted that the County Council did have a comprehensive plan to feed children over the Christmas school holidays. She noted that there was a delegated decision made on 30 November 2020 on the use of the Covid Winter Grant Scheme which was allocated to upper tier authorities for the purchase of food, paying utilities bills and essential supplies and the Scheme was not restricted to vulnerable households in receipt of benefits; as many families were in the system for first time. She explained that tranche one had been paid early in December, the second and third tranches of funding would follow once the data was analysed and could be then distributed to cover the period up to and including the Easter school holidays. She explained that partnership work was being undertaken in conjunction with the Surrey Local Resilience Forum, headteachers, school catering systems, as well as the Voluntary, Community and Faith Sector (VCFS) to develop the proposal.

 

The Cabinet Member for All-Age Learning clarified that the first port of call for struggling families was the Surrey Crisis Fund which could be contacted via telephone on 0300 200 1008 Monday-Friday 9am-5pm, it was also contactable online as well as through the Citizens’ Advice Bureau.

 

She noted that school leaders and welfare leads considered that vouchers were an effective means of targeting food support during the school holidays and work was also being undertaken with foodbanks as well as district and borough colleagues. She noted that more work needed to be done with district and borough colleagues on the use of the allocated funding.

 

She concluded that other families who would not be targeted for extra support for children on free school meals could be targeted via the Surrey Crisis Fund and that data from early years providers identified low income families entitled to free education and childcare for two year olds and three and four year olds on pupil premium, enabling further support.

 

(Q9) Mrs Hazel Watson asked whether the Cabinet Member for Transport wouldinform himself on the funding allocated to Mole Valley’s highways by looking at Mole Valley Local Committee’s Highways Forward Programme 2021/22 – 2022/23; which showed the inadequate amount of funding available for road safety schemes including the twenty miles per hour speed limit scheme.

 

Mr Jonathan Essex noted that across the country around twenty million people lived in twenty miles per hour speed limit areas and he asked the Cabinet Member for Transport to confirm what the comparable figure was for Surrey. He also asked whether appropriate locations for twenty miles per hour speed limit schemes would extend beyond the individual sites listed in the response and into neighbourhood areas. 

 

In response, the Cabinet Member for Transport explained that the budget noted in the question was what Mole Valley Local Committee had decided to allocate to locally approved highways schemes. As noted in the response, Mole Valley had a significant amount of funding and he had again increased the funding available to Local and Joint Committees - who were responsible for allocating that funding to their chosen priorities.

 

The Cabinet Member for Transport responded that there were twenty miles per hour speed limit schemes planned in neighbourhood areas such as Guildford, which was currently going through consultation. He fully supported twenty miles per hour speed limit schemes in neighbourhoods where appropriate such as around schools and high pedestrian areas, as opposed to a blanket scheme across the whole of the county.

 

(Q10) Mr Robert Evans noted that in the last ten years Surrey’s population had risen by over 60,000 to nearly 1.2 million people which meant more homes, businesses and residents to protect. Over that same period one third or approximately two hundred full-time equivalent (FTE) firefighters in Surrey Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) had been cut. He asked whether the Cabinet Member for Communities was concerned with the cuts and whether she blamed the Council or central government for those. 

 

In response, the Cabinet Member for Communities explained that the State of Fire and Rescue - The Annual Assessment of Fire and Rescue Services in England by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Fire and Rescue Service, provided a rounded assessment of every Fire and Rescue Service in England with the inspections focussing on three pillars: effectiveness, efficiency, and people. Effectiveness concerned the operational service provided to the public including prevention, protection and response, efficiency concerned how well services provided value for money, allocated resources to match risk and collaborated with other emergency service partners and people concerned how services looked after their employees.

 

     She explained that HMICFRS’s assessments and inspections were designed to enable the public to see how each Fire and Rescue Service was performing across a number of key areas including changes over time, as opposed to focussing on the number of FTE firefighters employed which did not itself correlate to appliance availability. She noted that it was important to also look at the number of flexible part-time contracts and that the Fire Brigades Union had agreed to a reduction of crewing figures from five to four within that ten-year period. She explained that SFRS had built in resilience for both large scale and long duration incidents and business continuity plans which ensured the deployment of staff into positions which they were able to deliver.

 

(Q11)Mrs Angela Goodwin asked whether the Leader would share the evidence that showed the difference that the Council’s funding was making to reduce the demand for help for people being discharged from hospital, to support the rise of individuals suffering from domestic abuse as well as ensuring the safeguarding of vulnerable adults, and to address the increase in individuals seeking help due to the breakdown of unpaid carer arrangements.

 

In response, the Leader of the Council noted that he had given a full answer to the points raised in the original question and suggested that Mrs Goodwin may want to investigate the matter further through the Adults and Health Select Committee.

 

(Q12) Mr Jonathan Essex noted that the freedom of information (FOI) request within the original question stated that in January 2020 delays in achieving hot commissioning of the gasification facility and or full service commencement beyond March 2020 would unlikely be affordable by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). He asked the Cabinet Member for Environment and Climate Change to confirm whether that position was still the case and if it was, what the cost implications were for the Council of going beyond that commissioning deadline.

 

In response the Cabinet Member for Environment and Climate Change noted that the information was confidential and was happy to share it with Mr Essex outside of the public domain.

 

(Q13) Mrs Hazel Watson noted that given the ‘Climate Emergency’ declared by the Council last year, would the Cabinet Member for Environment and Climate Change revisit the emails sent to her that showed that the officers from the Land and Property Service had already reviewed the site in Dorking that she was proposing for planting an urban forest as part of the Council’s initiative to facilitate the planting of 1.2 million trees by 2030.

 

In response, the Cabinet Member for Environment and Climate Change found her original question disingenuous as she was not prepared to break lockdown to make the visit. The Miyawaki Forest principle that Mrs Watson requested needed more maintenance than a normal planted woodland. She noted that she would visit the site with officers in due course but could not guarantee that it would be brought forward as there were other suitable sites across the county.

 

(Q14) Mr Robert Evans asked whether the Leader was aware and or concerned that many councils seemed to be making it increasingly complicated to apply for postal votes for the upcoming 2021 local elections, especially for those without internet access.

 

Mrs Fiona White sought clarification on whether European Union citizens who were registered to vote in the UK would be able to take part in the 2021 local elections next May and to ensure that there was sufficient publicity if that was the case.

 

In response, the Leader of the Council noted that the Chief Executive of Runnymede Borough Council and Returning Officer was working closely with Surrey County Council’s Chief Executive and Returning Officer for the 2021 local elections. He explained that preparations were underway to ensure that polling stations would be Covid-19 safe by assigning a marshal to every polling station, there would be adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) for polling staff and voters would be instructed to wear masks. He noted that he was not aware of extensive difficulties for people to register for postal votes which could be done online, by post or directly in local council offices; and was happy for Mr Robert Evans to provide him with specific instances of difficulties experienced.  

 

The Leader of the Council referred Mrs White to the GOV.UK website concerning the requested information.

 

(Q15) Mr Jonathan Essex noted an incident concerning parking which could not be controlled due to double yellow not being enforced, he had shared a list of sites for the Cabinet Member for Transport to address. He asked the Cabinet Member for Transport to confirm that as his response indicated a safety-first approach, whether a missing sign at the entrance of a local twenty miles per hour speed limit area could be installed.

 

In response, the Cabinet Member for Transport would follow up the specific incidents that had been reported if Mr Essex could share the reference numbers.

 

(Q16) Mr Jonathan Essex asked the Cabinet Member for Transport to confirm whether the decisions on spending the capital budget to implement the Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans (LCWIPS) would be taken via the Local and Joint Committees or whether they would be taken centrally.

 

The Cabinet Member for Transport responded that next year’s capital budget was a draft version at present. He noted that Surrey was successful as it had received the third highest award from the Government’s Active Travel Fund. He noted that a number of the LCWIPS including Woking were going to be funded from that Fund. He explained that the money might be allocated centrally or via the Local and Joint Committees, but that the Local and Joint Committees would have full involvement in the process. 

 

Cabinet Member Briefings:

 

These were also published in the supplementary agenda on 7 December 2020.

 

Members made the following comments:

 

Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families: on the Children’s Single Point of Access (C-SPA), a Member noted that following the visit by the Children, Families, Lifelong Learning and Culture Select Committee to the C-SPA last year, she asked how it had been coping with the increased amount of contacts and referrals received during the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

In response, the Cabinet Member noted that in spite of Covid-19 the C-SPA had carried on with transformation improvement since the Select Committee’s visit by establishing a Learners Single Point of Access (L-SPA) which would co-locate with the C-SPA at Quadrant Court, Woking. Furthermore, she noted that concerning business as usual activity the C-SPA had experienced a thirty percent increase in calls compared to the same time last year - they were taking five hundred calls or one thousand three hundred emails weekly. Despite the increase, a 95% rate of answering calls within twenty seconds had been achieved and it continued to meet the two-day working average response rate for progressing contacts to social care or on to early help services even with the greater volumes. She summarised that in the last six months over five thousand five hundred assessments had been completed which was over one third greater than the same time last year and in 94% of those assessments those children were seen even during the early pandemic and PPE issues. She noted that caseloads had increased initially in some cases doubling but had reduced to around fifteen. It remained vital to ensure the wellbeing of staff with support from partners to reduce caseloads via triage. She thanked officers, the interim Director of Children’s Services and the frontline team for their work and welcomed the select committee back for a future visit.

 

A Member noted the three district and borough councils in Surrey which did not support a unified care leaver offer and asked the Cabinet Member what Members and officers could do to encourage those outstanding councils to join the offer.

 

In response, the Cabinet Membernoted the difficult 2018 Ofsted report on Children’s Services and the voices of Surrey’s young people in care and care leavers who received the unequal offer in different parts of the county. Since that inspection, colleagues across the county had been encouraged to support care leavers via a Council Tax exemption. She commended the work of the Member for Woking South who championed the matter, Woking Borough Council was the first in Surrey to agree the Council Tax exemption for care leavers until the age of twenty-five. She noted that in the last two years Surrey County Council had agreed to that exemption, with all but three district and borough councils following suit. She commented that it would be beneficial if those councils signed up to that exemption so that it could be reported for the next Ofsted inspection that Surrey had a standard offer for care leavers, ensuring the provision of the Council’s corporate parenting responsibilities.

 

Deputy Cabinet Member - Support for the Leader: on libraries, a Member sought assurance that divisional Members would be actively involved regarding any changes to the library service over the coming year.

 

In response, the Deputy Cabinet Member assured Members that they would continue to be consulted on any future changes concerning local library service provision and was happy for Members to contact him discuss particular matters. He noted that as part of the empowering communities’ transformation project including co-designing library spaces, there would be roadshows around the county.

 

Cabinet Member for All-Age Learning: provided more information in response to previous comments made by Members. Regarding the All-Age Autism Strategy she noted that the consultation closed on 21 September 2020, workshops were being run during December and that a children’s partnership board had been established to ensure the involvement of children and young people and would meet for the first time in January 2021. She was pleased to be taking the Autism Strategy forward as an all-age approach, recognising the diverse treatments and conditions within Surrey’s SEND cohort and noted that the Council was planning additional specialist place provision and making capital investment in SEND education settings. She explained that as no new government funding for SEND had been allocated in the Spending Review 2020, she would continue to make representation to government for funding which reflected the increased demand and additional responsibilities for local authorities.

 

To the point made earlier on the consultation she noted that Cabinet received a report on 24 November 2020 on Surrey Schools and Early Years Funding 2021-22 and explained that Schools Forum was the body that made a number of decisions around the funding formula for the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) and the High Needs SEND block. The next meeting with the Schools Forum was scheduled for 10 December, and in January there would be further discussion on the best use of top-up funding and independent support for pupils, so that schools would have their own flexibility to address the needs rather than the current formulae where funding follows the child retrospectively. She noted that the Chairman of the Children, Families, Lifelong Learning and Culture Select Committee could look to bring consultation proposals on to the Select Committee’s forward workstream. She provided assurance on the preparations that were underway as the allocated money from the funding formula would not apply until September 2021.

 

Cabinet Member for Resources: on the point that residents might expect a 4.99% increase in Council Tax which was composed of a 3% adult social care precept on top of a basic Council Tax increase of 1.99%; a Member sought clarification on the increase which was contrary to the Leader’s comment in his statement noting that the increase would be well below 5%.

 

In response, the Cabinet Memberexplained that at the time of writing no decision had been made on the Council Tax increase, subsequently the Leader confirmed in his statement that the increase would be less than 5%. 

 

Cabinet Member for Transport: on the number of requests received for highway tree planting, a Member welcomed that data but noted that it was the experience of many applicants in Epsom and Ewell for their request to be rejected, application fees cost £25 and were non-refundable. The Member asked the Cabinet Member to publish the total number of applications as well as the statistics on the number of successful and unsuccessful applications. He also asked whether the Cabinet Member had an annual target for the number of successful applications, both as a total number and as a percentage of the applications made.

 

In response, the Cabinet Member noted that the Council was proactive in facilitating the planting of 1.2 million trees led by the Cabinet Member for Environment and Climate Change, with many of those facilitated on Surrey’s highways. He noted that he was happy to discuss the specific statistics requested in more detail with the Member outside of the meeting, as it appeared as though the statistics requested mixed the two different projects - one for residents concerning highway tree planting and one for the Council to facilitate the planting of 1.2 million trees in Surrey.

 

A Member noted the positive progress made on the conversion of streetlights to LED technology and asked the Cabinet Member if there were any plans to revisit the night-time switch off in certain roads, as a result of the reduction in electricity consumption.

 

In response, the Cabinet Member noted that there were no plans to revisit the night-time switch off as it reduced costs and carbon emissions. 

 

Cabinet Member for Environment and Climate Change: on the Epsom Community Recycling Centre (CRC) trial which would come to an end at the end of the calendar year, a Member asked what the plans were beyond that from January next year.

 

In response, the Cabinet Membernoted that the trial had been successful apart from a small number of residents that booked but did not arrive to deposit their rubbish. She explained that the trial was being reviewed and she would provide the Member with further detail as soon as possible as to whether it would continue.