21 February -
“Eye-watering sums”
“Whatever happened to the Children’s Services and Education Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting report?, said no one ever!”
I listened to the webcast so that you didn’t need to but did not detect anything particularly exciting in it.
I learned that the number of exclusions from a couple of secondary schools was
at a worrying level which may explain the following reader’s comment.
Must be 95% of pupils in Bexleyheath awaiting a bus are of African descent.
They were competing so strongly to get on a 301 to Thamesmead that the driver
closed the door and pulled away half empty.
Another snippet of interest was that the [unspecified] number of “exploited” children in Bexley is at worrying levels. As a
child of the fifties I remember child exploitation fairly well. Two shillings for
polishing every glass pop bottle in the local grocery store and a little more
for pumping Esso into ancient Austins in all weathers but I have no recollection
of the issue being debated by Mr. Mackey (†) who was in charge of Farnborough Urban District Council.
Presumably the problem in 2024 is on a whole different level to what it was in 1954.
Councillor Ward-Wilson (Conservative, Crook Log), making her BiB debut, was presumably paying attention at
the last
Cabinet meeting (29th January) because she summed up the 90 minutes of Scrutiny pretty well
by saying that the child care costs were “eye-watering”.
(More than £4,000 a week for every one in residential accommodation.)
Someone who took a slightly different view was Councillor Wendy Perfect
(Labour, Northumberland Heath) who somehow missed Cabinet Member Read on the 29th saying the number of children requiring
care was at an all-time high because of Covid. (Covid caused lockdowns and lockdowns caused
mental health issues, and mental health too often led to domestic abuse.
Domestic abuse is driving child care numbers.)
Instead of asking a question about the £11 million child care overspend she launched a
122 second long soliloquy (Chairman Lisa Moore's description) blaming the
Tory Government for the situation which may well be true but It is not
something Bexley Council can do anything about. They have already said their
lobbying for a fairer Local Government Grant has failed. Presumably
Councillor Perfect’s solution would be a higher Council Tax rate. (Who’s for another 40% increase?)
The Chairman asked for her question three times but it never quite came.
Councillor Perfect was scrutinising H.M Government and not Bexley Council
and was unwilling to wait for the election.
Cabinet Member Philip Read was not best pleased with her. The overspend was
a consequence of Covid and to say otherwise was “ill-informed nonsense”. It
is not unique to Bexley and it will not go away quickly. “It is time to be honest about it.”
Cabinet Member David Leaf who habitually has all the figures at his
fingertips said that the Government had provided extra funding for child
care (another £500 million this month) but Councillor Perfect argued otherwise.
† I remember the name because his son Michael was in my class at school.