KCC annual meeting

Kent County Council held our Annual Council Meeting today: our first meeting of the new council, and our first face to face meeting since February 2020. 

This had both pluses and minuses. It was good for both new and returning councillors to meet in person, with the sense of companionship (cross-party) that it engenders. Yet with social distancing still required at a time when national government has refused to renew the regulations enabling virtual meetings - in the teeth of strong urging from local authorities, including us, to renew them - it is not possible to hold Full Council meetings in our Council Chamber. 

And so, at a significant cost in officer time, and with a direct hiring charge cost to the council tax payer, we have had to seek other venues. At the last minute, we had to move from our originally agreed venue at the University of Kent to Mote Hall Leisure Centre in Maidstone.

This made for a rather odd experience. Sitting in rows in a large sports hall was reminiscent of school exams. I delivered my Leader’s speech looking at a wall. The acoustics were erratic, producing one or two hiatuses in the process. Yet overall the meeting worked, and it is vastly to the credit of our officer team, headed by our General Counsel Ben Watts, that it did so, even after the need for a handbrake turn in the last few days. 

And the meeting itself? We bade goodbye to Graham Gibbens, who had served the Council well as Chairman (after a long career as Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care) in a difficult year, and elected the experienced and popular Ann Allen as the new Chairman. She and the new Vice-Chairman, Lesley Game, will make a strong team. I was elected Leader for the council term, and in my Leader’s report set out our plans for the next four years, addressing:

- Post-Covid recovery (economic, social and environmental)

- Quality of life in the county (as set out in our original, pre-Covid Five Year Plan of March 2020)

- Setting out our position in relation to government initiatives in health, social care and transport

- Being prepared to tackle ‘events’ such as the continuing evolution of Brexit transition and increasing numbers of arrivals of Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children

Because of the venue, the meeting could not be webcast live, but hopefully the recording should be available on the KCC website shortly.

Virtual Cabinet meeting: the formal version

Last Monday, as I previewed the day before, KCC's Cabinet held its first remote (or virtual) public Member meeting (using Microsoft Teams). The meeting was something of a hybrid; a Cabinet briefing, incorporating reports from Cabinet Members and answering questions put by Members. You can see that meeting here.

I closed the meeting by looking forward to the following Monday (tomorrow, 27 April) where we would have a further public meeting, but this time a formal meeting of Cabinet. The meeting will be from 10 am, and the agenda will include: a report on the Public Health-led Suicide Prevention Programme, which can point to some progress in tackling this most painful of issues; a presentation on our Kent Together programme, launched at the start of this month to enhance and support the extraordinary community efforts to help vulnerable residents during the Covid-19 outbreak; and (necessarily, but perhaps a little self-referentially) a paper on the governance requirements for virtual meetings.

However, the most interesting item is saved for last, under the rubric of 'Covid-19 Corporate Planning'. The Council's Five Year Plan, put forward for endorsement at the March County Council meeting which never took place because of the crisis, was a good and strong vision for the county and for the council - but is now entirely overtaken by events. We must now plan for a new world, and tomorrow's presentation and debate is the start of that process. We aim to prepare a Strategic Transition Plan for the autumn, to cover a 12-18 month period as the new environment post-Covid takes shape. This alone should make for an important and engaging meeting tomorrow morning.

A new style of council meeting

Tomorrow morning (Monday 20 April) I will chair the first of KCC's public meetings to be held virtually, with a Cabinet Briefing at 10 am.

Since the Covid-19 shutdown, the council has been running at full tilt to respond to the crisis, and like many organisations we have been able to operate effectively through remote meetings. Cabinet Members and senior officers have been working in this way for weeks. However, formal public meetings - such as public Cabinet meetings, or Council committees - have yet to work in this way. Government guidance making this possible - by relaxing the rules on, for example, the need for a quorum of Members to be physically present - was only published on 3 April. We have also had to work on ensuring that the more demanding technological requirements for a public meeting are in place. As Leader, I asked the Council's officers to undertake the necessary steps to make this possible and tomorrow the first meeting takes place.

The meeting will not be a formal public Cabinet, with full papers and agenda, but something of a hybrid: a public Cabinet briefing, comprising an updates from each Cabinet Member on recent activity within their portfolio, and an update from the Director of Public Health, Andrew Scott-Clark, followed by Cabinet Members answering questions put by non-executive Members.

The following Monday (27 April) will see a formal public Cabinet, for which the agenda has been published. 

You can find the link to tomorrow's meeting, and other details in this KCC media release.