Increasing the efficient use of transport so that more pupils can share transport should not have to be a problem in itself, although autistic children can find change and uncertainty very hard to cope with. But at the start of this term, disastrously bad implementation of new routes, with children arriving late or even, in some cases, not being picked up at all, was very distressing for them and for their parents.

There was an  ‘unacceptable failure by ATM [Atkins Transport Management] at Linden Bridge over the first two days of service’ at the start of this Autumn term. Ten new routes for school vehicles had been put together using the ’Trapeze’ software recently installed at Surrey’s Transport Co-ordination Centre, but very badly implemented.

The details were in a paper brought to the Children and Families Committee yesterday, and I don’t think I can do better than to quote from it:‘

‘It was apparent within the first hour of service i.e. by 08.30 on school day one that many ATM drivers had no idea of the route and had made no adjustments for the additional traffic found on day one of the new school term. One ATM driver resigned before 07.00 and by the time a replacement driver was found the route was 2 hours late. On a different route another driver failed to find the first pick up address after a 2.5 hour drive from Epsom to Blindley Heath at no time attempting to contact either ATM or the County Council. That driver decided unilaterally to move on to the next and subsequent children and deliver them to school. When informed by parents that no-one had arrived to collect their child, the TCC telephoned ATM to be informed that the driver had moved on ‘because there was no reply at the home address’. It was later admitted by ATM that the driver never found the address despite it being on the main A22 trunk road. It must be remembered that these routes do not just affect one child, and when a bus is late at the first pick up all parents become concerned and frustrated. 

‘Most routes arrived late at school on day one. Several routes were between 1 and 2 hours overdue. Neither Linden Bridge staff nor parents were contacted by ATM and advised of the late running. In most cases it was left to the TCC to inform parents and the school, once TCC became aware of the problems on the ground.

‘Parental hostility towards Atkins on the first morning of service was ferocious, the TCC having never experienced such a volume of calls from anxious, angry and frustrated parents in any preceding year. The call rate was such that there were not sufficient resources left to record the calls as the entire team was dealing with immediate issues, all officers being diverted from other duties to staff telephones. The ATM Linden Bridge operation carried some 60 students on school day one, and as every ATM route failed to operate on time, in some cases over 2 hours late, all 60 parents will have called at least once, many making multiple calls to the TCC and ATM in attempts to understand what was happening to the transport for their children. Each call to the TCC generated two more - one to ATM seeking an update, and another to the parent with the response. By lunchtime on school day one it is estimated that the 8 TCC Officers had taken / made over 300 telephone calls between them. ‘

The written reports to the Comittee were backed up by an unusually open and critical verbal acoount of Surrey’s seven-year contract with ATM (going back to the year 2,000 but with a 3-year extension in April 2006) given by Christopher Butler, the Transport Co-ordination Centre manager. (You can read the formal full account, quoted above on the SCC website here ; and there is also a paper on the implementation of SEN transport planning software here.)

Mr. Butler had been with Atkins when the contract started, and was one of the staff later transferred to the SCC. He said ‘Out-sourcing to Atkins’ had been ‘a very brave step’. If the company had enjoyed consistent management they ‘would have been leaders … we were at the cutting edge’ but later ‘managers couldn’t even see why we were doing this work’ and ‘the thrust to take this forward withered on the vine.’

On the situation with the Atkins contract now, he said: ‘ … there is no incentive for Atkins to do anything … we can’t do any more, they do what they like … it’s a ridiculous contract, whoever wrote it should be shot …’

 Contracts with other transport companies are now shorter and tighter: ‘no other authority is doing what Surrey did in 2,000 … [but] then was then, today is a different market place.’

He went on to explain that block arrangements, where only one company provides transport to any one school, can be helpful if they are well administered and allow close liaison with the school. Where this can be achieved, a 3 year contract with 2 additional years is possible - but the number of companies in Surrey willing and capable of taking on these relatively large and demanding contracts are limited. 

As a result only three schools are moving to this sort of arrangement: [we] ‘can only do three schools … with present Surrey contractors… it needs time to see how it actually moves forward … It is complicated, it is new, in this form we are the only local authority doing it.’ 

Mr. Butler was clear that in Surrey ‘we expect a first class service’ from contractors, and he and his staff are very aware of the needs of vulnerable children. He is intending to go and speak to the parents at Linden Bridge in person. One Councillor expressed what several of us may have thought, wishing him luck. I hope the parents will not eat him. 

An aside on Pegasus: 

A member of the Committee asked Mr. Butler whether he could say ‘anything about taking on [the] Pegasus idea’;  - Pegasus being the fleet of yellow school buses operating out of Guildford, often to be seen sitting idle in between times, although the intention has been that the Transport Co-ordination Centre would schedule community use during the daytime.

Mr. Butler said: ‘ … one of the options available [is that ] … Pegasus as a brand might go on [using an] MPV / taxi  style vehicle … and wouldn’t we love to do that? - yes, we would, but it depends on a drive from the Executive … on the back of accessibility proposals. … At the moment it has the dead hand of bureaucracy on it.’

Quote of the day came earlier in the meeting during item 7, ‘Interim service arrangements’  (ie, re-organisation of high-level management.) It came from Conservative Laurie Burrell:

‘Three years ago [we] went through BDR - and we’re back here today and we’re back to square one.’  

Even when I’m doing my best to pay attention, it’s quite hard to keep track of exactly what’s going on even in the corner of County Hall I know.

At the Children and Familes Committee yesterday Jim Leivers, Interim Head of Children’s Service, confirmed that the Secretary of State was issuing a Notice to Improve, and said it would be issued that day. The ‘Notice’ makes explicit what she expects Surrey to do over the next 18 months to two years.

(This is all quite heavy stuff. I understand that with such a dire Joint Area Review report the Government did have the option to come in and take over chunks of running Surrey services instead of leaving it to SCC and the PCT to put their own houses in order.)

There will be an ‘Improvement Board’ with a Chair independent of the ‘lead agencies’, ie SCC and the Surrey Primary Care Trust.

In Surrey, the Executive is the equivalent of the Gordon Brown’s cabinet and is in charge of what happens. Scrutiny will happen both through the select committees,  and through a   Member Task Group meeting more frequently. There are two Councillors on this group who aren’t Conservatives, and I’m the Libdem nomination. It’s not a public meeting (it doesn’t look as if the ’Improvement Board’ will meet in public, either) so I can’t report back on it, but there will be public documents and information to which I can draw your attention. 

So - look at the now-published Action Plan and the first recommendation, for immediate action. It reads ’Ensure that an appropriate way is found for the successful dissemination of the findings of this report to children and young people in the area’.

A central plank in the plan for doing this can be found here:

It is a version of the report, intended for Young People. The preface, fronted by Dorothy Mitchell, one of the Exectuive members,  says ‘This document has been written by young people, for young people.’

Read for yourself and weep, if you believe that the young people of Surrey are already into writing such watered-down, minimally critical, blandly bureaucratic material, unless they are being heavily directed by their elders.

One consolation is that young people are unlikely to find this document. This was the route through the menus on the web site I eventually followed, knowing that the document was there:

About your council - How the Council works - Our Performance - Joint Area Review of Services for Children.

 - and it is only at the bottom of this page you find the link to it. Even putting ‘Young Persons Jar’ in the search box does not turn it up in the first ten results, and after that re I at least lose the will to search further.

This is action 1 of 22 in the Action Plan, most of them far weightier - number 8, ‘For immediate Action’ is a real tester: ‘Ensure that sufficient resources are allocated to deliver comprehensive health services, including school nurses, midwives and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) which are able to meet demand at all levels of service.’

If my involvement in any way helped us to a point where this was fully the case, I would feel that by itself went a long way to justify my last five years as a Councillor. The actions under (8) do look a lot more far-reaching and demanding than the actions under (1), but the contrast between the intention and reality of (1) is both comic and deeply worrying.   

Cllr. Angela Fraser is the Chairman of Surrey SCC. She has in the past battled unsuccessfully to persuade Councillors to get through the business at a quick enough lick to finish by lunchtime - 12.45 on the dot. She likes a long lunch, and a selection of Councillors are normally invitated to take a drink with her before eating. After that, usually the rest of the agenda is quickly despatched, not least because a significant number of Councillors have left.

On Tuesday, however, she took everything at a relaxed pace. It was as if she knew I had to get back to Woking for an urgent dental appointment … but no, I must not get paranoid …

 Unison petition

Angela even allowed Colin Caswell, representing Unison, to hand her a petition from Unison about staff mileage rates (there’s no provision in the Constitution for petitions to be presented at Full Council in the normal way.)

You can read about the protest here - it involved a Car Convoy to stop traffic, but I’d arrived quite early by train and bus and was only reminded about this by the number of staff taking up the chairs at the back of the Chamber and in the public gallery.

Iceland Statement

Nick Skellett, the Council Leader, made a statement about the £20M Surrey has on deposit with Icelandic banks - £10M each with Landsbanki and Glitnir.

This is out of £350M in deposits, which are still earning enough between them to keep interest income on budget this year, so ‘there are no short-term implications for front line services or jobs … ‘.

He was asked about why the Council has so much invested money. The answer was in terms of adding to the council’s ‘worth’ of £100-£200M, largely in terms of property, to balance long-term borrowings of £500M. He said it is also ‘just the nature of the business’ that large sums of money have to be kept in reserve for later use - for example, the £60m held for schools in school balances.

In terms of the effect on Council Tax, he said ‘I think we’ll have to wait and see there  … I think the UK Government is going to do something about that [in term of frozen assets, so there’s a] … good chance of getting something back.’

The Liberal Democrat group took the view that when the deposits were made the banks’ credit ratings were the best available, and that criticism based solely on the benefit of hindsight would not be fair or useful.

Questions

… as usual brought out a number of interesting issues: how and why SCC got its money out of HBOS just before the Lloyds merger was announced; about difficulties with road adoption on new estates in Epsom mean they are even less far advanced than in Knaphill’s Brookwood Hospital Estate; late applications for school places; which roads get routine tree maintenance; and too much else to report right now …

 Motions

There were four motions to pick over:

1. Ours, about last year’s £58M underspend of capital, which got amended to become an appreciation of how nicely a small proportion of this had found its way into transport. See the Surrey Libdem Website here 

2. Theirs. A congratulatory motion about the Olympic Games and Surrey being ‘determined to play as full a part as possible in the 2012 Olympics.’ One of those motions you can’t vote against, and we didn’t try amend it. Even without opposition, we still managed to spend getting on for an hour talking about it, before and after the hour and a quarter lunch break.

3. Theirs. A motion regretting the ongoing illness of the Chair of the Stronger and Safer Committee, and appointing a Conservative to the post in his absence, over the head of the Vice Chair, Dave Goodwin, a Libdem Councillor. There was no point arguing against a political reality, but Jean Smith, from the Residents Association, was gracious enough to say what a good job Dave had been doing as Acting Chair.

4. Theirs. Another congratulatory motion about Cycle Woking, which I tried to amend to get a stronger assurance that the money used for this would not be allowed to compromise road repairs and needed road schemes, though I still supported the overall sentiment.  

The response to this seemed to me to clearly indicate that the responsibility for Cycle Woking stays very much with us in Woking. The Executive Member did not want to ‘fetter the discretion of the Local Committee,’ and was sure that ‘this project will not swallow money up’ or take money from other projects, unless that was what we ‘wanted at the time.’  Nick Skellett, the Leader of the Council, said much the same - we have to ‘decide locally in the Committee what you want to do …[it should be] debated locally rather than us give you a direction.’

This is fine, but I would have liked the recognition that Cycle Woking is a big extra commitment for our Highways team, and Woking needs a fairer share of highways money to implement it.

 A Mayor of Surrey?

A final item of interest, which will be voted on in a special meeting on 9th December, was whether we should have a mayor, or a strengthened Leader, in Surrey. There was an on-line consultation hidden in Hitchhikers-guide style on the Surrey Website that came out with 87 preferences for a Mayor and 47 for the Leader and Cabinet model.  Not much of a steer, from a population of something like 1M.

Have I mentioned that I’m on the cross-party Member Task Group working with the ‘Youth Project Team’ at the development of Youth Services in Surrey? Possibly not, because its meetings are not held in public, and so it would be difficult to sift out what is still confidential and what can be published.

But coming out of that, the Youth Project Team has now sent a key report to the Executive (Surrey’s ‘Cabinet’) for consideration next Tuesday, 21st October.

You can find it on SCC website here.

The main officer report with the recommendations is here

There’s a lot that’s not to disagree with in there - IMHP there’s a door opening a crack towards making better use of Youth Centres and the resources we have in Surrey,  even though we’re not going to get fhe County Council itself providing everything parents and youngsters would like to see on the ground.

I’m posting this now because it is the first major public statement in what I suspect could  become a fierce debate, early next year we come to the last budget of this Council  

brookwood-hospital-roads-oct-08.pdf

The file above is a dossier on Road Adoption on the Brookwood Hospital Estate, with a table giving brief road by road information about the current stage reached in the process. It comes with the ‘health warning’ that altough it is as correct and full as I can make it, the situation is complex and I cannot guarantee total accuracy. 

Road Adoption is a  problem across not just in Surrey, but across the whole country; on the Brookwood Hospital Estate, where a number of developers have been involved, very few roads have been brought up to the standard necessary for the County Council to take them over and look after them. This is immensely frustrating for the residents, who quite reasonably expected, when they bought their houses, that there would not be a problem years later with getting standard street repairs and improvements carried out, just as with roads in other parts of Knaphill.

With much technical struggle - if computers used ink like old-fashioned pens, my fingers would be covered in the stuff - I’ve duplicated the more general information on a separate page of this site (link up in the top left corner) together with a pdf file  holding only the road-by-road table.

If you have problems with either pdf, try saving it to your hard drive and opening it from there. Alternatively, contact me through this website and I will e-mail you a copy.

I will continue to check with the SCC Officer working on Knaphill Road Adoptions regularly, and post a revised version of the dossier when there are changes.

After the first flurry of Committee meetings at the start of September it hasn’t exactly gone quiet - people are still very discontent with the state of their roads; Highclere Road still floods; Barleymow Lane is still hazardous for pedestrians; the Vehicle Activated Sign near Warbury Lane is still not working; the Old Library is still an eye-sore. And more beside.

Alight!

One small miracle did happen over the Summer, though I did not notice it until the darker evenings: the light column replacing the one outside Beaulieu in the Chobham Road has come on. 

 J

I’ve been trying to get it fixed for getting on for five years  - it was one of my first pieces of ‘casework’ after I became a Councillor, and has been a constant reminder of how powerless (literally!) Surrey seems to be when faced with EDF

Youth Services

I’m also involved in some ‘task groups’. One is concerned with the future of Youth Services in Surrey. Things have got to change - progressive underfunding is weakening the good work that does happen; while some buildings, such as Lakers on Goldsworth Park, remain very underused. There would have been more cuts, including reducing the number of staff even further, if an extra half a million pounds had not been found at the last minute from some ad hoc corner of last year’s budget.

The Youth Development Service can’t do everything, and may be best specialising in the intervention work its staff do very well.

There remains Surrey’s obligation to take a lead in making sure there is a good ‘Youth Offer’ of positive activities, even if it does not provide them itself. 

There has been a study over the summer of what Surrey’s Youth Service does, and what young people want. The results were unsurprising: more safe places to meet, more interesting things to do, better transport to reach them.

The Youth Petition

What I’d like to see happen in Knaphill and Golsworth West is summed up in the wording of the petition which Cllr. Olly Wells will be taking to the next Local Committee meeting:

We the undersigned ask the Woking Local Committee to endorse the view that Surrey County Council should take a full leadership role in providing more ‘places to go and things to do’ for young people as part of the overall Youth Offer within Surrey. We ask that underused youth centres and school premises are regarded as a resource that can be ‘brought to the table’ locally in partnership with authorities such as Woking Borough Council and with Voluntary organisations to provide a wide range of positive activities for young people out of school hours, with affordable access by public or community transport. In the Knaphill area, we request that a Youth Offer be developed which includes:

·        Lakers Youth Centre open regularly at evenings and weekends as a ‘youth hub’ and including youth café style provision.

·        Youth café style provision compatible with its present use being developed at Woking Youth Arts Centre                                                 

·        An additional ‘drop in’/youth café facility on the Brookwood Hospital estate and within walking distance of any new housing.

·        More sports opportunities for all local young people using existing school facilities and recreation grounds.

We have several hundred signatures so far, and could easily have gathered more.

It’s all happening at the Library …

The new Knaphill Library has also absorbed some time and effort, though generally in a fun way.

I was the only person at the First Thursday book group to totally enjoy ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, but we had a good conversation. Not wholly about the book. Actually, not much about the book.

I’ve also stood in a couple of times this month leading the Rhymetime session for toddlers (with their mothers) on Friday morning. Fortunately the mothers generally know the rhymes and actions better than I do, and only want someone to put together a running order and keep them together. But this morning I introduced one of my favourites - ‘There was an old woman tossed up in a basket’ - which is sung to the tune of Lillibulero.  They (the mothers) did now know it.  I tried to sing.  Apologies are due to all present.  

Apologies are also due to all readers of the upcoming Goldsworth Park News. There is going to be a talk at the Library at 4.30 on Saturday 11th October - not the 18th of October - about tracing your family tree. This will be given by a speaker from the Surrey History Centre. Admission will be by ticket, for a small fee to cover the cost.

If you are interested in genealogy and would like to share your knowledge and experience with other people, there’s scope for a group to meet more often in the library - where there’s also the draw of being able to make use not only of the computers, but of Surrey’s subscription on your behalf to services such as Ancestry.

We’re also still hoping to form a second, daytime book group, and have more sessions on Local History.

Looking forward

 Serious political notes will return with the next Full Council on the 14th of October, and I expect outcomes from the JAR to be getting clearer in the next weeks. In the meantime, I will put together my notes on another very sore issue - the adoption of roads on the Hospital Estate in Knaphill - where the complexity of the situation seems almost overwhelming, especially in present economic conditions with developers changing and permutating their names faster than management consultants!