Looking ahead to 2024

Well, that’s almost it for 2023. 

It was another tough year. Tougher than the year before. Which is awkward, because that is what I said at the end of 2022. 

So, in issuing a New Year message, it’s hard to avoid a sense of Groundhog Day. My wonderful colleague, the late John Simmonds (KCC Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance) used to like to quote Enver Hoxha, the Communist dictator of Albania: ‘This year will be harder than last year. However it will be easier than next year.’ Perhaps an unusual source for a Conservative county councillor, but John wasn’t wrong - and it has felt especially apposite in the last couple of years. 

This reflects, above all, the financial pressures that we have experienced, as have councils up and down the country. Not that this is the only issue we face; since the summer, a series of court judgments (including our successful Judicial Review of the Home Secretary) have highlighted the impact of asylum, and in particular our responsibilities for Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children. But the financial issue is the most pressing. 

In the last couple of years, this has not reflected cuts in government support; settlements have been quite generous by historic standards (whether they have been adequate is another matter). Nor do they reflect, in the short run at least, the familiar pressures of demography. Instead, they reflect massive increases in costs as a result both of general inflation and of broken markets in adult social care, children’s services placements and transport (though home to school transport, in particular for children with special educational needs, is also seeing big increases in numbers in step with the rise in Education, Health and Care Plans).

I am pleased that, faced from the summer with evidence of severe financial pressures, we have developed a comprehensive and coherent response, seen in our Cabinet papers of 17 August and especially 5 October, which launched our programme Securing Kent’s Future. We will see a further stage of that work as we present our budget in the New Year, but that is not the end of the process; our financial position will not change fundamentally and so we will need to develop further our multi-year approach to ensuring our financial viability. 

However, as I have emphasised in my New Year message, we have to be concerned with more than just survival. Last year, I suggested two areas through which we could look beyond the immediate financial challenge. The first was our work with the NHS. Here we can report progress. A revised and enhanced Integrated Care Strategy is due for approval by our Cabinet on Friday (4 January). It reflects much wider engagement than was possible with the first iteration of the strategy (which under national requirements had to be put together to a rapid deadline of 31 December 2022). From here we can develop detailed action plans that can deliver the strategy’s aims. This is the best, most systematic approach to collaboration between the NHS and local government so far, and offers a real prospect of much shared better management of our resources and services.

The second area was that of devolution, and this has been much harder to deliver. The approach of the end of this Parliament has made councils less willing to commit to new arrangements than might otherwise have been the case; as a result, while we submitted an Expression of Interest to government in the summer, it was clear that there was not support for the more radical options of a Combined County Authority (including a mayor). This added to the challenges of the summer. 

Nonetheless, it is important that we continue to develop a vision of what devolution can mean for Kent and Medway; it is only by this that we can address the key issues for the county in skills, infrastructure, economic development and transport. The exact form this will take remains unclear but both major parties remain committed to the concept of devolution and we must pursue this. 

Finally, amid the challenges, we still carry out vital roles in shaping and supporting life in the County and the interests of our residents: whether in environmental protection and enhancement, support for our vulnerable residents through the economic crisis of recent years, delivery of vital (and high quality) services to vulnerable children and adults,  work with our voluntary and community sector and much more. All this we will continue and redouble in 2024.

I wish all Kent residents a very happy New Year.