Author: Martin Shaw
Extra £5m earmarked for reserves should be spent on at Devon’s at risk services, Independent councillors will demand at Thursday’s budget meeting
The additional £5m that Devon County Council is squirrelling away in reserves this year should be spent on vital services, say the Independent Group, ahead of Thursday’s budget meeting.
This Thursday (15 February) will see the council set its budget and put back an extra £5m in the Business Rate Risk Management Reserve, in case of unexpected financial difficulty.
Devon’s four-strong Independent group of councillors – Frank Biederman, Claire Wright, Martin Shaw and Jacqi Hodgson (Green Party) are opposing this move and proposing instead that it is spent on funding vital services that are set to be lost.
The group’s proposal is that:
– no health visitor posts are cut (30 posts are proposed to be lost)
– no foster carer loses any income (there are proposals to reduce the income to some foster carers)
– there are no cuts to the schools counselling programme (there is no money for this)
– dangerous pavements in the county’s towns and villages are repaired (this is an ongoing problem and people are falling and hurting themselves)
Frank Biederman, Leader of the Independent Group said: “We’re frustrated at further government cuts, which means higher council tax, again, for far fewer services, again.”
Claire Wright, Deputy Leader of the Independent Group, who seconded the motion, added: Devon’s council tax has soared by almost 20 per cent in just seven years. That’s £250 for an average band D property.
“This year it is set to rise by a further almost five per cent. It’s quite wrong and it is adding huge pressures to those people on low incomes.
“I put the blame on the Conservative government and those MPs in Devon who yet again have voted in favour of unacceptable cuts that damage people’s lives.”
“It’s a predictable disgrace. We are asking Devon County Council to write an open letter to all Devon MPs, expressing disappointment to those who let down the people of this county yet again.
“The government finds money to fund the projects it wants to but unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to support the provision of public services.”
Devon County Council’s government grant has been cut by £155m (76 per cent) since austerity began in 2010.
A further £20m is set to be cut from this year’s county council budget.
Jacqi Hodgson said: “We need to encourage people into fostering, at a time when record numbers of children are coming into the service. Not reduce pay. We know the use of private homes is not in the best interests of children and are much more costly.”
She added: “Frontline services cannot be sustained with persistent chipping away at budgets; any available monies should be spent on keeping them viable, not squirrelled away.”
Cllr Martin Shaw said: “Average earnings for a full-time male employee increased by 0 per cent – nothing – in the last year, while inflation is at 3 per cent, i.e. a decline in real income of 3 per cent. That’s the context in which massive council tax rises are being proposed.”
“Ignoring our pavements is not good for local businesses and has a tremendous cost to the person and the public purse when slips, trips and falls happen.”
The full motion is below:
A – That this council does not put a further £5millions into reserves, at the same time as asking hard pressed, low paid Devon residents to pay more council tax for fewer services than ever before.
B – that part of the five millions is used to maintain the level of pay for all Devon’s Foster Parents, so no one sees a drop in their income.
C – That part of the five millions is used to maintain numbers of Health Visitors so that no posts are made redundant.
D – that part of the five millions is used to maintain the schools counselling services, currently likely to be lost via the public health budget
E – that this council writes an open letter to Devon MPs expressing deep disappointment with those who voted in favour of cuts to Devon’s council core funding
F – that any remaining monies as part of the £5millions, is transferred to repairing pavements in our city, town and village centres.
Frank Biederman added: “We hope Councillors from across the chamber support these amendments, we all have to stand together for the people of Devon, it is clear Rural counties like Devon are the poor relation, when it comes to government funding.”
Seaton to aim for ‘refill town’, supporting campaign to cut plastic waste
On Monday Seaton Town Council supported my proposal to promote the spread of free water refilling facilities throughout the town, to prevent the proliferation of plastic bottles and the pollution they cause. I gather Seaton Jurassic already offers this facility and I hope other places in the town – and throughout the area – will consider joining in. The idea is explained by Refill Devon.
Seaton Town Council keeps precept (almost) on hold
This is old news now, but in the absence of the View From, readers may not have picked up that, on my proposal, the Town Council decided in January to hold its precept to an increase of 0.58 per cent, well under the rate of inflation (3 per cent).
Council Tax will still go up substantially, however, with big increases expected from DCC, EDDC and the Police and Crime Commissioner, reflecting yet more large cuts in Government funding which are stripping services to the bone.
CPRE Devon to produce report on housing needs, to help challenges to major development proposals
Gigaclear announce superfast broadband rollout by 2020 in Branscombe, Weston, Farway and Offwell – postcode checker available online
It is intended that work will start in Q3 of 2019 (Q4 in Offwell) and finish in 2020: Q1 Farway, Q2 Branscombe and Offwell, and Q4 (Weston). You can see the map and check your postcode HERE.
Although a Carillion company has been contracted for some of the work, Ian Thomas quotes statements suggesting that Carillion’s collapse will not affect the programme.
FORCE cancer charity funds chemotherapy first in Okehampton – this is exactly the kind of service we need in Seaton
Encouraging news – the RD&E and FORCE have agreed that the cancer charity will deliver chemotherapy to patients in Okehampton Community Hospital.
The RD&E press release also says ‘It is hoped that the service will also be offered at a third location in East Devon later this year.’
We have an active local fund-raising group for FORCE – I was at a well-attended coffee morning in Colyton Town Hall three months ago – and this is exactly the kind of service that we would benefit from in the wider Seaton area, with our elderly population. This is the kind of thing we need to discuss in the community conversation on health matters which will take place in March, and I very much hope FORCE will be able to come.
The press release adds:
The charity began funding a pilot outreach chemotherapy project at Tiverton Hospital in July. The feedback from patients and nursing staff has been so positive that it is being rolled out as quickly as possible in Okehampton.
The benefits to patients include:
- Treatment closer to home so less travelling time and expense
- Easier parking
- Quieter location and treatment area
- Reduced waiting time for treatment, both in Okehampton and Exeter
- Experienced oncology staff from the hospital to deliver treatment
- Access to additional FORCE services to support you and your family
Devon looking for care and support workers – new campaign
Go to http://www.devonlive.com/special-features/devon-looking-care-support-workers-1115792
34 per cent of children in Coly Valley, 24 per cent in Seaton, living in poverty says shocking new report
From devonlive – The End Child Poverty coalition has collated the data: altogether 251 children in the Coly Valley (34 per cent) and 232 in Seaton (24 per cent) are likely to be living in poverty. The figures are estimates of child poverty in different areas, calculated using HMRC data and the Labour Force Survey.
Sam Royston, Chair of End Child Poverty and Director of Policy and Research at the Children’s Society said: “It is scandalous that a child born in some parts of the UK now has a greater chance of growing up in poverty, than being in a family above the breadline.
He added, “There can be little doubt that the Government’s policy of maintaining the benefits freeze despite rising prices is a major contributor to the emerging child poverty crisis.”
Care at home – ‘When GPs ring the single point of access number asking for rapid response or night sitting, the carers are not available. This is partly due to lack of resources and partly due to difficulty with recruitment.’
Claire Wright’s blog gives the speech made by Dr Mike Slot at Health Scrutiny: “If community hospital beds was intended to be offset by increasing the capacity of community care so that patients could be cared for in their own homes. This may or may not have been realistic since many of the patients in the hospital system cannot be managed in the community even with excellent community services.
However, with or without community hospital beds it is an excellent idea to expand community services so that all those patients who can be cared for out of hospital can remain at home. Unfortunately there is not sufficient capacity in the home care services to do this job.
When GPs ring the single point of access number asking for rapid response or night sitting, the carers are not available. This is partly due to lack of resources and partly due to difficulty with recruitment. I suspect that part of the difficulty with recruitment may be due to the terms and conditions. If the carers only get paid if they are required then this may not be particularly attractive.
We understand that a hospital only functions well with a maximum of 85% bed occupancy, and similarly with the home care service we need to accept that there will be some unused capacity otherwise the service is never able to accept unexpected cases. Thus we need to allocate enough resource so that we can offer both an attractive rate of pay and attractive terms and conditions.
This is in fact an essential part of the answer to the problem the entire NHS is experiencing. If the level of water in a reservoir is steadily rising and then overflows, you can either try and build the banks higher in which case it will just overflow a bit later, or you can look at the streams going in and going out of it.
Similarly when you see an overflowing A&E or hospital you can buy more A&E or acute beds (very expensive) or you can increase community capacity to prevent people going in and facilitate people coming out (relatively much cheaper but you still have to pay a proper rate for it).”
Seaton & Colyton MATTERS 