KCC Budget Consultation until 28 November

KCC is consulting on its annual budget. As was the case last year, the key feature is the need to find savings as a result of declining goverment grants and increasing demand for some of our services.

Over the last three years, Kent County Council has achieved £269m in savings (this compares with a net budget of a little under £1bn). It will need to achieve a similar annual rate - some £81m - in the next financial year (2014-15). Proposals have been set out that bridge most, though not quite all, of this gap. It is clear that, with the public sector remaining under the austerity cosh for years to come as central government seeks to eliminate the budget deficit, and with local government taking its fair share and quite a lot more of the savings pain, more will need to be found (some £209m over the next three years).

The County Council aims to meet its financial pressures partly through the Facing the Challenge programme, which sees the authority as above all a commissioner of services, looking for the most efficient way for those services to be provided (whether by the council itself, by the private sector, the voluntary sector or others). In addition, it is carrying through major programmes of change ('transformation') in social services, both for adults and (more recently) children; this also links to our increasingly close relationship with the health service, in which I am deeply involved. We are proposing a small council tax increase of 1.99%. Finally, while we have successfully minimised the impact of the savings programmes on front line services, some difficult changes are being proposed, as with the consultation on community wardens.

You can find the budget consultation here; it is open until 28 November. You can answer three short questions on how you would like KCC to meet the budget challenge, or can go into more detail in setting priorities though an online budget tool. You can also find a short summary of the budget situation by KCC Leader Paul Carter and a webchat with Cabinet Member for Finance John Simmonds, which took place last Friday. Last year saw a big increase in public response to our budget consultation, and I hope that many Darent Valley residents will take part this year.  

Making Kent (and Darent Valley) Quicker

As described in an earlier post, Kent County Council has been working for some years to bring faster broadband to those parts of the county - around a quarter of properties - that will not benefit from the unaided commercial development of the network. In my previous Cabinet role at KCC I oversaw our agreement last year with government agency BDUK and BT and I remain involved in our monitoring of that programme and our development of new broadband initiatives.

Last year's agreement - part of the 'Making Kent Quicker' scheme - involved a £40 million investment (£10 million of it from KCC) to ensure that at least 91% of Kent properties had access to superfast broadband - defined as download speeds of 24 Megabits per second (MBpS) or faster - and that all properties had access to at the very least 2 MBpS in the project area. This would bring superfast broadband to over 120,000 properties across Kent and be concluded by the end of 2015. The main method of achieving this is to bring fibre to each of the BT cabinets that you will see dotted around the area by adding an extra cabinet next to the existing one.

By the end of September, more than 50,000 properties had been covered by the scheme. More immediately relevant to Darent Valley residents, Sevenoaks District was within Phase 2 of the scheme that ran from March to September, i.e. it has just been concluded. The Farningham exchange, serving much of the Division, was one of the later exchanges in the District to be enabled to supply fibre to the cabinets it serves, but this took place in early September.

You can check out the position for your own home using the postcode checker onwww.kent.gov.uk/broadband  This is updated very rapidly after fibre is brought to each cabinet, so the information should be very current. You will then need to contact your Internet Service Provider to upgrade. Some of the most remote areas may not have been covered in this phase but will be part of a final, County-wide phase in the latter part of 2015.

Longer term, there will be a Phase 2 to Making Kent Quicker, to which central government and KCC are each committing £5.6 million with the aim of achieving at least 95% superfast coverage by the end of 2017. It is anticipated that the contract for this will be awarded in April 2015. BDUK are currently developing a Phase 3 programme to tackle the most difficult areas of all ('the final 5%').Kent is a national pilot area for work currently being undertaken by BDUK, to trial new technologies, which will inform these plans to achieve full coverage. 

Pinks Hill: update with the Highways Agency

Accompanied by Kent Highways officers, I met recently with representatives of Connect Plus and the Highways Agency. 

We reviewed the follow up to our site meeting in June. HA/ Connect Plus contractors carried out a range of short-term works (clearing vegetation, in particular around the ditch, cleansing bore holes) earlier in the year and this will be repeated at the time of the usual cycle of maintenance on the lagoon next spring. CCTV work has been carried out to understand flows to and from the lagoon, though more remains to be done to build up the complete picture that is needed to establish the works that will be needed to enhance the lagoon's capacity. These works are likely to involve increasing the overall size of the lagoon and/or adding another deep borehole, but this will be confirmed once the further CCTV works are carried out.

The Highways Agency will shortly be issuing its new severe weather plan, on which Pinks Hill will be identified as a vulnerable location. This should aid the prospect of securing funding for the lagoon works, building on previous plans that were drawn up before last winter's floods. It will also ensure a more timely response in secondary resources attending Pinks Hill.

In the more immediate term, Kent Highways and HA/Connect Plus are agreeing a protocol to deal with crises over the coming winter. It is helpful that both sides use Hydrocleanse for a range of services, such as supplying tankers and carrying out CCTV surveys. It was therefore agreed that residents should be advised to use Kent Highways as their first point of contact; Kent Highways will then dispatch Hydrocleanse tankers and funding will be sorted out between Kent Highways and HA/ Connect Plus afterwards. The soakaway by London Road has enormous capacity and can be used to discharge from tankers.

A process map, setting out the roles and responsibilities of all parties, has been drawn up and agreed.

There is also a need to protect specific properties. Kent Highways is raising an order for bunding work to protect the properties opposite the ditch. Residents will be asked nonetheless to contact Kent Highways if the ditch is threatening to overflow, since there will then be a need to bring tankers into the area before the Kent Highways drainage is overloaded and other parts of the estate are threatened. Kent Highways will also act to deal with other vulnerable individual properties. 

Eynsford's Public Art Trail gets under way

 

A happy task this morning: a group of us met outside Anthony Roper Primary School to unveil a mosaic of the buildings and wildlife of Eynsford. There were villagers, parents, representatives of the Eynsford Village Society, the Parish Council and the school (including both the Head Teacher, Lynda Newton, and the head boy and head girl, who jointly unveiled the artwork). This is the first part of a public art trail that the Eynsford Village Society aims to establish throughout the village.

The work is a colourful glass mosaic designed by the school art TA Janet Murray and the mosaic artist Oliver Budd with the help of children at the school.  It looks terrific in its place at the old 'Out' gate of the school, drawing together images of the village. Congratulations are due to to Sally Coston and EVS for leading this project to completion; a second artwork is expected by the spring, and there should be more to follow in the coming years. I was delighted to be able to support this project with £1,000 from my Combined Member Fund - and to join a number of those taking part in an excellent breakfast in the Riverside Tea Rooms immediately afterwards.

Road issues in Horton Kirby and South Darenth

I recently joined a meeting of the Parish Council, District Council, Kent Highways officers, The Mill management company and others to discuss a range of traffic and highways problems in Horton Kirby and South Darenth.

In addition to the parking issues discussed and picked up by Sevenoaks District Council, we also addressed the continuing and problematic presence of HGVs in parts of the village; on this I undertook to check on the ongoing work that KCC does with the SatNav companies, as well as looking into 'Not Suitable for HGV' signs.

Kent Highways has undertaken to remove the unwanted rumble strip outside Gifford Cottages. There is also a wish to replace the temporary bollards there with something more permanent. I am looking into the possibility of covering that - possibly co-financed with others - from my Combined Member Fund.

Finally, we are looking again at speed surveys, notably on Dartford Road (for which there has been a petition to reduce the speed limit) as well as reviewing the results of past surveys that I paid for from my (then) Member Highway Fund.

Community Warden Service consultation

KCC has launched a consultation on the future of its Community Warden service. The wardens have been a popular and successful innovation in the parts of the county that they have served since they were introduced in 2002. Much of Darent Valley is well served by wardens, tackling low-level crime and antisocial behaviour, working with the police and other agencies and engaging with many of the most vulnerable members of local communities.

Nonetheless, there are communities that do not benefit from the warden service, while we also need to make significant savings. Our community warden service has been asked to deliver savings of nearly £1.3 million.

The consultation document proposes a reduction in management structures; among other changes, team leaders will be reduced in number from 12 to 6, with each one overseeing two Districts. Each will oversee a network of 6 or 7 wardens who will work across the area. While wardens will no longer be attached to specific parishes, parishes will still get a regular service from them, as will urban and other areas that have not so far been covered. It is proposed to reduce the number of wardens from 79 to 40. KCC is also looking at the possibility of external funding for warden posts in some areas and building up volunteer support for the wardens.

These are important proposals for a valued service. If you would like to comment on the plans, the consultation is open until 9 November. No formal decision will be taken until then. You can comment by completing an online questionnaire, or by completing a hard copy version of the questionnaire and sending it in to:

FREEPOST RTKS-UABE-USGJ
Community Warden Service
Invicta House
Maidstone
Kent
ME14 1XX