More on half term help

Late yesterday, and following our previous announcement at the weekend, Kent County Council set out more detail about our half term support offer for families with children eligible for Free School Meals.

Families seeking help can complete a form that can be accessed via specific pages on the kent.gov website, or by calling a dedicated helpline 03000 412424. Families of children eligible for Free School Meals will be able to access a £15 supermarket voucher per child. 

The County Council is seeking to publicise this offer as widely as possible and there has already been a strong response from families.

You can find KCC’s additional statement here.

Holmesdale Hill

Resurfacing works are taking place yesterday and today at the corner of Holmesdale Road and Holmesdale Hill, going up the hill as far as the SLOW sign. The new surface will have higher skid resistance than the previous one

There there are also white line edge markings going in (or refreshed when already in place) on either side of the road and approaching and going round the bend. The cats eyes on the outside of the bend are also being replaced. These latter works may take a day or two longer to complete. 

Kent Highways officers will also examine, at my request, what other actions may be possible to address continuing concerns about traffic speed and safety on this stretch of road.

Help for families over half term

Kent County Council has announced a programme of help and support for families eligible for Free School Meals over the half term. 

Anyone whose child is eligible for Free School Meals and who is in need of assistance should contact the Kent Together service, launched at the start of the Covid-19 crisis. Kent Together can be reached either via its webpage:

https://www.kent.gov.uk/social-care-and-health/health/coronavirus/kent-together

Or you can call on 03000 41 92 92.

This initiative builds on KCC’s use of the Emergency Assistance Grant, for which the County Council received £1.65m from national government to support those struggling to afford food and essential items. This scheme has already helped many families, but the aim of this initiative is to target rapid support to families over this half term.

You can find KCC’s media release on this here.

Pilgrims Way East update

Following on from yesterday’s post, I can update on Pilgrims Way East. The road remains closed at present, but KCC’s Streetworks team have had confirmation from Clancy/ South East Water that the road will be reinstated tomorrow. It will then take some hours for the tarmac to set before the road is reopened, most likely later tomorrow. So the road is still best avoided until then, but should be open on Sunday and, critically, Monday morning. Once again, if I get any further updates I will post again.

Road closures latest

Yesterday and today have seen a lot of disruption in and around Pilgrims Way, Kemsing, and Pilgrims Way East, Otford - though the significance of this road as a link to the A225 has big effects on other communities such as Seal and Knatts Valley. There have been three different incidents in the last 24 hours + affecting the roads.

(1) Kent Highways (KCC) carried out works in Pilgrims Way between Cotmans Ash Lane and Heaverham Road to deal with a damaged verge. These works took place yesterday and were completed by the end of the day

(2) South East Water carried out an emergency closure of Cotmans Ash Lane because of a burst pipe. At one point it appeared that this could be closed until Monday. However, I have just been informed by KCC’s Streetworks team that the works have been completed and the road has now been reopened 

(3) The biggest effect however has come from an emergency closure by South East Water in Pilgrims Way East, also because of a burst pipe. South East Water are currently requiring an emergency closure until Monday. KCC Streetworks team have challenged this, pushing for patching works to be done and then the road to be reopened, with works then completed over the weekend. However, South East Water argue that the damage (and resulting hole in the road - see pictures) is too great for this, and in these circumstances it is the utility’s assessment which prevails

However, the Streetworks team will push for earlier completion of the works if at all possible, and I will provide an update tomorrow as to when the closure, and resulting disruption, is likely to end.

Asylum: end of the consultation

I have posted many times on the issue of this year’s large scale arrivals of Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC) and Kent County Council’s response. On 17 August, with more than 600 UASC in our care, social work caseloads at unacceptably high levels and our reception centres full, Kent County Council confirmed that we were no longer able to fulfil our duties and collect further new arrivals from the Port. This was my decision as Leader of the Council, on the advice of our Director of Children’s Services.

Since that time, numbers of UASC in our care have reduced (though still far above what government legislation and guidance would regard as acceptable) as the Home Office, working with other groups such as local government organisations  and the Regional Migration Partnerships, has placed many young people with other local authorities.

Over the summer, the Home Office has also consulted on a relaunch of a reformed National Transfer Scheme (NTS), the system introduced as part of the 2016 Immigration Act following the crisis of 2015, to achieve a more balanced and equitable distribution of UASC in local authorities across the country. The NTS worked relatively well initially, but ran out of steam by 2018 as local authorities, conscious of the costs and feeling under pressure in their children’s services, became increasingly unwilling to take UASC young people. The consultation proposes a regional rota system for taking UASC and - importantly - consults on the possibility of making the system mandatory. For KCC, this is of great importance; our biggest concern is that there should be no repeat of what happened (and did not happen) after 2015. This was the central argument of my letter to the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, in May, and the County Council has been arguing for a revived and strengthened NTS for a number of years. The consultation closes on Wednesday, and there is every indication that the outcome is genuinely open. I have been encouraged by something of a shift in opinion in the local government sector towards mandation.

I had the chance to discuss many of these issues when I gave evidence earlier in September to the parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee (picture). In the course of this, MPs from different parties gave warm tributes to the work of our social work teams in responding to the UASC issue. You can find a recording of the evidence session here.  

Kent Test: plans and preparations

On Monday the KCC Cabinet received a report on the experience so far of the return to school; you can find the report here. The webcast of the meeting can be found here, with the item on return to school starting at around 46:30 minutes in to the meeting.

One of the many issues arising from this year’s unique circumstances has been how this year’s Kent Test will be conducted. As previously reported, the Council set out our plans for the Test in the summer, with a delayed date of 15 October. However, the continuing impact of COVID-19 on schools, with some students having to self-isolate, has raised further questions as to how the Test should be managed under these circumstances. 

This week KCC sent advice to schools regarding the overall approach:

• Any child exhibiting Covid symptoms, or partway through a period of self isolation, will not take the test on the prescribed day

• If an individual child (or a small number of children) is unable to attend due to Covid, The remainder of the registrants will take the test and the child(ren) will be given an opportunity to sit it on their return

• If a class within a year group cannot sit the test, the same approach applies

• If the full year group cannot sit the test, they will do so on their return

• Schools have been advised to allow children (where possible) to settle back in before taking the Test, but not to delay too long as another period of isolation could be required. In particular, schools have been advised to contact KCC to help them apply variations appropriate to their individual circumstances

The County Council will continue to apply this approach of setting a pragmatic general framework while working with schools to take account of individual and local circumstances as we approach the Test.