Richard Foord Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Defence)  10:07 am, 22nd March 2023

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Sharma. SEND services in Devon have been in serious crisis for a long time, probably three or four years, with the situation deteriorating lately. Last year, Devon County Council apologised for failing to improve SEND services, and promised that things would improve and that it would redouble its efforts. We are continuing to see a problem around a lack of political leadership and of oversight at the council. My postbag is heavy with correspondence from constituents who are at their wits’ end trying to get the support and educational placements that children need.

The wait times for assessments are far beyond the statutory 20 weeks. The lack of educational psychologists is leaving families uncertain, having to juggle work commitments and looking after their child at the same time. It is definitely leading to people being outside of the workforce who would otherwise be fulfilling an important role in it. The looming threat in Devon of these services being placed in special measures, or removed from the council’s remit, shows that things must change. The promise of more money in the forthcoming council budget is welcome. The Government’s recent announcement of a new SEND school at Cranbrook is again welcome, but we need to ensure that taxpayers’ money is being spent effectively to deliver the SEND placements that our children deserve.

I have had constituents contact me to highlight situations where a child is allocated a placement that is wholly unsuitable for them, and the child cannot take it up but remains on the school roll, with the funding also remaining assigned to that school. We need to ensure that money follows the child and that appropriate frontline services are delivered regardless of where the child then moves. I have seen for myself in East Devon that SEND pupils are being taught in cupboards and storage rooms, and I know that that is not unique to my part of Devon, because I have also seen it reported on the BBC. We should not allow that to continue. I cannot help but admire the parents who are pushing Devon County Council and the Government on this. Devon SEND Parents and Carers for Change staged a protest at county hall in Exeter last month, and they are trying to shine a spotlight on some of these failings.

It is not all gloom; there are some examples of best practice. My constituent, Danielle Punter, has written books and a blog—autability.co.uk—with tips on education and support in understanding neurodivergence. Danielle pointed out last month that when partial school closures happen as a result of lockdown or strikes, it is often special needs school pupils who are most affected, because those schools need to be fully staffed in order for children with a high level of SEND requirements to get the best possible care, otherwise they need to stay at home. In short, we need to get to grips with some of these repeated failures, particularly in Devon, and that will require political leadership and political oversight.

Owl can always dream!

(Councillors also agreed that evidence of alleged “misconduct, wrongdoing and failures” by previous senior leaders that led to its £1.6bn of “toxic” debt would be handed to the Met Police for investigation.)

A crisis-hit London town hall is preparing to take “unprecedented” legal action in a bid to claw back some of the £437k payoff its former chief executive received before the council was forced to declare bankruptcy.

Rachael Burford www.standard.co.uk

Jo Negrini got the substantial payout when she was laid off as chief executive of Croydon Council in August 2020, just months before the local authority admitted it could not set a balanced budget and would need a Government bailout.

Since then it has issued three bankruptcy notices. Earlier this month the council signed-off a record 15 per cent council tax rise.

During a meeting on Thursday night–in what is thought to be a first for a British council–members backed instructing lawyers to recover as much of Ms Negrini’s payout “as is legally possible”.

Councillors also agreed that evidence of alleged “misconduct, wrongdoing and failures” by previous senior leaders that led to its £1.6bn of “toxic” debt would be handed to the Met Police for investigation.

This includes details of former cabinet members and their involvement in a botched refurbishment of Fairfield Halls, which was delayed and £37.5 million over budget.

Croydon’s Conservative Executive Mayor Jason Perry said he will write to Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove asking him to “urgently review councils’ powers to hold individuals to account for catastrophic failures in governance”.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life, the House of Commons Select Committee on Local Government and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) are also being asked to scrutinse the proposals.

Mr Perry, who became leader of the council last May, said: “Like so many residents I feel angry about what has happened to my hometown.

“The scale and severity of the financial collapse is unprecedented and that is why we are recommending unprecedented steps.

“The council has £1.6bn toxic debt in total and has had to seek permission to borrow £369m from government.

“It is completely unacceptable that individuals who held positions of trust should escape the consequences of their misconduct. Nor should they be rewarded for their failures while our residents, businesses and partners continue to pay the price.

“I will also be making the case to government that councils must have greater powers to hold former officers and members to account for misconduct – without risking further costs to the taxpayer.

“This is something that I will be asking government to look at as a matter of urgency.”

During the meeting, current chief executive Katherine Kerswell added: “What has occurred at Croydon has clearly been very damaging to our finances and ability to perform our key public service functions and most importantly undermined public trust in this council.

“As such, the council’s current leadership are duty bound to ensure that those responsible for the situation are fairly and properly held to account.”

The Conservative’s won control of the council from Labour last year.

Several internal investigations have been published into its financial collapse since then.

The Penn report, published last month, found that the council was a “highly dysfunctional organisation” under the previous Labour administration with a small number of cabinet members making decisions without appropriate scrutiny.

Workers interviewed for the probe described Ms Negrini as having a “bullying style”, the report said.

“The decision to take this unprecedented action was fully supported by Croydon’s Labour councillors. We understand entirely the public’s desire to see former senior leaders at the council properly held to account,”  Croydon Labour Group said in a statement.

A source from the previous administration told the Standard that Ms Negrini had always appeared to be “engaged” in council business and “competent” .

This doctrinaire Government has flogged off the Vaccines and Manufacturing and Innovation Centre once fast tracked at the beginning of Covid to fill a strategic hole in our response capability.

Just think how successful water privatisation has been in serving public needs.

Next time we will be well and truly stuffed- Owl 

Britain is less prepared for a pandemic now than it was three years ago, thanks to the sale of a key vaccine manufacturing plant, leading scientists have warned.

Tom Whipple www.thetimes.co.uk 

Professor Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute, which was responsible for the Oxford Covid vaccine, said that the recent loss of the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC) in Oxfordshire, which had been created to respond to outbreaks, showed that the UK had been going backwards since the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s less that we haven’t learnt the lessons — we’re aware of the lessons,” he said. “We just haven’t taken the action that’s required from those lessons. And we’re looking at our toes again, rather than doing something about it.”

• Have we learnt any lessons from the dystopia of Covid lockdown?

The £200 million tax-payer-funded facility was set up as a not-for-profit company, partly in response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak. It was intended to help vaccines from a diverse set of technologies into manufacturing and quickly increase production during pandemics.

When coronavirus struck, the facility was repurposed with a view to mass manufacture, but now that the vaccines are being made by pharmaceutical companies, it has been sold to Catalent, a US company. This means that the UK is once again without a flexible manufacturing facility that can respond to outbreaks. A government spokesman said: “VMIC Limited has always been a private company and the government had no role in the sale of its manufacturing centre. Catalent is a highly-regarded global company and its expansion in the UK will further strengthen our biotherapeutics industry.”

Hill said the loss of control was baffling. “The man in the street thinks the UK is really good at this, thanks to all the publicity about what we did during the pandemic, and probably feels we’re in a relatively good place. Well, we’re actually in a worse place than we were three years ago.”

Professor Robin Shattock, from Imperial College, a former chair of VMIC’s board of directors, said he thought the decision to sell had been made on cost grounds. “Suddenly they were worried that they’d built this big white elephant, and they’d be on the hook for the next umpteen years with it ticking over. It probably would have cost £5 million a year — pretty small in defence terms, if you think of it as defence against infectious diseases rather than military defence. But I think that ship has sailed.”

The government recently announced a ten-year partnership with Moderna, the mRNA vaccines manufacturer, to include vaccine manufacturing.

Inside the lab preparing for the next pandemic

Professor Sandy Douglas, from the Jenner Institute, said that in the early stages of an outbreak, when it is not clear that it will spread, it is not enough to rely on pharmaceutical companies. In particular, he said, a system would be needed that took action when “there’s a 10 per cent chance it’s going to be a problem for the UK, rather than waiting until it’s a 99 per cent chance”.

He also said that to combat unknown future threats the UK needed to rely on more than mRNA. “In 2020, everyone was saying never again,” he said. “But entirely predictably, we’re back in the position where a pandemic is something which is probably not going to happen in this parliament and so it’s off the priority list.

“It’s not really clear to me whether the UK has any system for thinking about emergency commissioning. Is there someone in government who would say, ‘Hello, Oxford, we’d like you to make a vaccine against this quickly?’ I’ve no idea.”

Kate Bingham, former head of the Vaccines Task Force, said she still hoped that the government would seek an alternative mechanism. “The sale of VMIC was a definite loss. But I’m still hoping the government listens to these serious concerns and doubles down on advanced biomanufacturing,” she said. “The chancellor said that the UK life sciences sector could shape and define this century. To do this, we need to reinstate our commitment to working with innovators to scale-up and test new vaccines and biotherapeutics which needs leadership and funds.”

In a letter sent to households in the past few days, signed by Conservative Group Leader Cllr Philip Skinner, he criticises EDDC’s current leadership for being “wasteful” with taxpayer money, and also for “increasing council tax significantly whilst doubling car parking charges and looking to close public toilets.”

Let us not forget our former Tory administration was prepared to make speculative developments on purchasing property “assets” at the same time as over-running costs of Knowle relocation and the sale of Knowle itself…

The independent-led council scuppered the risky investments (though it could do nothing about past risks) and, as a result, is the only council in Devon that has balanced its books without dipping deep into reserves. It also raised council tax by less than the permitted 5% and well below inflation. 

Here are a couple of posts from the run up to the 2019 election:

Oh-nooooo, 20m investment fund to be set up so East Devon can buy property and raise cash to balance books (Feb 2019)

More than £86.6 million in outstanding loans is owed by EDDC (April 2019)

The local council in deep trouble is Conservative run Devon County which raised council tax by the full whack.

A local councillor has condemned the East Devon Conservatives for sending out letters encouraging people to apply for postal votes with an application and free return envelope addressed to their own party.

sidmouth.nub.news 

The Conservatives said in the letter that they would “make sure” they forwarded the postal vote application to the electoral office. 

Cllr John Loudoun (Independent East Devon Alliance, Sidmouth Rural), who is also a district council cabinet member, said he viewed the pack as “cynical electioneering” and “blatant data harvesting”.

The East Devon Conservatives were approached for comment but did not respond by the time of publication.

The letter, signed by Conservative Group Leader for East Devon Cllr Philip Skinner (Conservative, Tale Vale), criticises the district council’s current leadership for being “wasteful” with taxpayer money, and also for “increasing council tax significantly whilst doubling car parking charges and looking to close public toilets.”

With regard to postal votes, it reads: “We’ve included a postal vote application with this letter.

“It takes just a moment to fill it in. You can then return it to the local council… or you can send it back to us free of charge using the envelope provided.

“We’ll make sure it’s sent on to the electoral office within two working days.”

District and town council elections will be held in East Devon on 4 May. You can apply for a postal vote here.

We now have an additional piece of the jigsaw puzzle and it’s this:

“The Commissioning Group received further information on Tuesday afternoon which, if accurate, it believes has the potential to materially affect some elements of the Verita Report that was due to be considered by EDDC Councillors on Thursday evening.

“Once this new material has been validated, assessed and properly considered a meeting will be reconvened to consider the Verita Report at the earliest opportunity.”

[The Commissioning Group is led by Simon Davey, Chief Finance Officer, and comprises Cllr Ian Thomas (Council Chair), Cllr Sarah Jackson (portfolio holder for transparency and democracy) and Cllr Jess Bailey.]

By Ewan Murrie BBC South West

A report into how a council handled child sex abuse allegations against a councillor has been withdrawn after new information came to light.

John Humphreys was convicted of sexually assaulting two boys in 2021, and jailed for 21 years.

He was first questioned in 2005 and arrested in 2016, but remained an East Devon District Councillor until 2019.

The report was due to be discussed on Thursday but was withdrawn while the new information is investigated.

The BBC has asked the council what the new information is, but no comment has been provided.

An East Devon District Council (EDDC) spokesperson said: “The Commissioning Group received further information on Tuesday afternoon which, if accurate, it believes has the potential to materially affect some elements of the Verita Report that was due to be considered by EDDC Councillors on Thursday evening.

“Once this new material has been validated, assessed and properly considered a meeting will be reconvened to consider the Verita Report at the earliest opportunity.”

The report was published earlier this week but has now been removed, and the investigation has been reopened.

Council Leader Paul Arnott said he did not know what the new information was.

He said: “It’s very disappointing that a conviction having been achieved in the summer of 2021, that we still aren’t getting to the bottom of this matter.

“We have tried really hard as a council, to make sure that in the interests of the victim, and in the interest of safeguarding for young people and others of east Devon, that we have a proper investigation.

“And yet here we are, at the 11th hour the meeting is cancelled.”

The report found a member of staff was told about the police investigation, but was bound by stringent confidentiality rules and could not tell anyone.

As a result, no safeguarding risk assessment was done and Humphreys was able to carry on coming into contact with children from his arrest in 2016 until standing down from the council in 2019.

In that same year the former mayor of Exmouth was also given an honorary title of alderman.