WARNING Scenes in this trailer may not make the final cut, but are based on published information. Some readers may find the information contained in this post disturbing.  

Big Close Up:

Woking’s Youth Development Service. The Youth Development Officer, responsible for organising provision in Woking, faces redundancy. So does his immediate boss, the Service Manager for West Surrey.  They face cuts to sessional budgets, bought-in activities for young people, and administrative support.

Surrey’s Woking Local Committee being asked to agree that the Local Delivery Plan for Services for Young People ’forms a robust basis for supporting young people in the Borough 2010/11′.

Pull out to show:

School Special buses taking children to local schools from places like Worpleston, Pyrford and Bisley under review.

A knife poised over local road schemes. Road surfaces continue to deteriorate unchecked. The chances for a controlled crossing outside Sythwood School in the next five years are heading towards zero.

Cut to group shot of Surrey’s Children, Schools and Families Directorate under fire. There are three figures: Schools and Learning; Children and Safeguarding; Services for Young People 

Across the Directorate this current year’s expected spend of £160.4M falls to a budget of £154.7M in 2010/11.

It falls again steadily in the following years to reach £138.4M in 2013/14.

There is upward pressure on all three service areas. More school age-children means provision has to be expanded. Improvements to ’safeguarding’ children are still needed after the Childrens’ Service was disgraced and found inadequate, nearly two years ago now. There are more children in the care system, more care packages are needed, more placements for children in care.

Schools take a £1,465,000 hit in the area of Special Educational Needs.

£400,000 to be taken from Educational Psychologist staffing.

SEN transport has to save £1,500,000 by continuing to squeeze numbers considered entitled, and by and using mini-buses and group transport to replace individual taxis and escorts wherever possible.

Children’s Services:

 - found inadequate just over a year ago - cuts back on a range of services. This includes: £676,000 net out of respite care. £1,000,000 less in voluntary sector support grants. £100,000 less into the shared budget with the PCT for CAMHS, the mental health service for children and adolescents.

Services for Young People - £1,014,000 budget reduction overall.

All 11 Youth Development Officers and both Service Managers senior to them (13 posts) are to be replaced by four operations managers. as featured above. Sessional budget reduced by £365,000, activity from outside providers reduced by £24,000, and £75,000 taken from administrative support.

Youth Justice loses £140,000; Inclusion Service lose £478,000.

The Big Picture 

In the background looms the threat of a Conservative government stalling Britain’s slowly adapting and recovering economy by over-enthusiastically cutting back on public service spending.  

Surrey County Council won’t know until next Autumn how much money whatever government is in power will let it have in 2011/12. But the assumption being made by Officers and Conservative polititians is that by 2013/14 overall income will fall from this year’s £662M to £660.2M.

£2M down - not too bad, at first glance. Stay as you are, maybe sell off a couple of childrens’ homes. Sorted.

But there is an enormous increase from now to then in ‘Central Income and Expenditure’, from £-11M this year climbing steadily to £42.7M in 2013/14. This increase appears solid and necessary: pensions, ‘invest to save’ capital, redundancy payments, a (small-ish) contingency fund in case some of the required savings can’t be made.

To make up for it, the budgets for every service area have been shrunk like clothes in too hot a wash.  

Even more dramatically, their wearers - the needs covered by these budgets - get bigger and bigger. 

Real and reasonable need is growing fast - more older people requiring care; Surrey’s infrastructure, especially roads, inadequate for increased numbers of people, heavier use, and changing weather patterns; increasing landfill tax.

There is also serious bureacratic obesity, and failure to keep in trim by using new technology effectively. There are in too many managers in proportion to staff ‘on the ground’; failures to recruit and retain essential workers instead of paying for agency staff; and amazingly poor project management.

Andrew Povey (the ’strong leader’) didn’t have to commit himself to only a 2.5 rise in Council Tax. He didn’t have to go with such severe assumptions about falling revenue funding in future years. Following internal revolution in the Tory group, he is heir to the previous administration which failed to make the reforms now promised.

Dr. Povey stands poised with a knife.