It’s been a big week in Kent politics with the visit of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and KCC’s Full Council which saw lots of announcements on spending.
KentOnline’s KCC Insider columnist has been keeping an eye on developments at County Hall…
A lot has been said this week about the policy and costs of transporting children from home to school and back.
It started with Nigel Farage balking at the near £100 million cost, with the biggest element of this being for youngsters with special educational needs.
It was also mentioned at the Full Council meeting by leader Linden Kemkaran.
As I have said before, the devil is most certainly in the detail, and it should be pointed out that, like local authorities across the land, KCC has a legal responsibility to ensure these youngsters get to and from a suitable school or college.
Kent in particular has faced an increasing number of children being given Education, Health and Care plans, which stipulate they are entitled to transport.
This is costly but huge strides have been made, and last year we actually came in under budget for SEND transport after really looking hard at things like taxi contracts and single-user journeys.
We really looked at the analytics. We also increased the use of personal transport budgets for families.
Cllr Kemkaran said she was looking at the issue and would report back at the next meeting. She’s wise to take her time.
Where KCC has actually gone over and above its statutory responsibility is in helping post-16 and post-19 learners.
The previous Tory administration was actually looking at tightening up on this before Reform took over.
You could look at that situation and ask: Why are you spending money you don’t have to?
But what you’ve got to remember is you’re dealing with people’s lives and you have to weigh up what are very tricky decisions where you’re quite possibly cutting off their lifeline to future employment and productive lives.
Yes, £100 million sounds shocking, but the whole issue is complex and often very emotive.
In her speech to Full Council, Cllr Kemkaran also spoke about getting KCC staff back in the office – meaning not selling Sessions House and halting the relocation to Invicta House.
According to her, this would save £14 million.
However, a big chunk of that was due to be spent on Invicta House, which has maintenance issues, including with its roof.
Perhaps the leadership will leave that for the new council, which will inherit the buildings in 2028 under local government reorganisation?
She also mentioned how they can avoid a future increase in capital spending by “scrapping the Net Zero Renewable Energy Programme of property modifications, saving £32 million over four years”.
Added to this is “the Net Zero transitioning of the KCC vehicle fleet to electric vehicles, we will save a further £7.5 million by 2030”.
It’s important to highlight that these future projects were never actually set in stone – they were subject to KCC finding affordable funding solutions – meaning it was never 100% they would go ahead.
Essentially, they have highlighted big headline sums of money as potential savings, which quite likely would never have been spent anyway.
Something else which caught my eye was the stopping of subscriptions to organisations, which “can save up to £180,000 by giving notice on various memberships”.
To the average person in the street, £180k is a lot of money and every little helps, but to put it into context, it probably equates to running the adult social care department for a couple of hours or so.
Finally, back to Nigel Farage who floated the idea of KCC holding a referendum asking Kent residents what they thought about local government reorganisation, which will see KCC vanish.
As Cllr Kemkaran quite rightly pointed out, such a vote would cost more than £1 million. That’s a huge amount of money on something which might just be a waste of time.
Previous leadership spoke about whether to hold a legally required referendum on increasing council tax by 5% or more.
They decided against it as it was too expensive, and who on earth would vote for higher taxes anyway?
