Shoreham Village School: after Ofsted

As is now widely known, Shoreham Village School was rated as requiring Special Measures by Ofsted in a report published last week. This followed an inspection soon after the start of term in September. After its previous inspection in 2010, the school had been rated Good, so this was a steep decline.

As can be seen from the report, Ofsted's criticisms were wide-ranging, though the school's Key Stage 1 and 2 results for 2013 had been encouraging.

I attended a meeting for parents at the school on Thursday evening, along with governors, KCC officers and the acting head teacher, Mrs Eileen Mumford of Kemsing School, who will now be working at Shoreham 3 days a week. There were many questions and concerns as to how this situation had arisen, but there was also considerable goodwill towards Mrs Mumford and the staff at the school, including those (such as the SENCO) from elsewhere in the local area who are assisting the school's recovery. Mrs Mumford's clear vision and commitment won a lot of support.

Both as local County Councillor for Darent Valley and as Cabinet Member for Education, I have a deep interest in seeing Shoreham achieve a rapid turnaround. We owe that to the children at the school, their families and the village. For Kent as a whole, we are seeing a positive trend in Ofsted inspection results, with more schools (now up to 70%) rated Good or Outstanding. Our rate of progress is now outstripping the national rate. However, while relatively small in number, there are still too many schools falling into a 'category of concern' - in plainer language, failing their Ofsted. KCC has a range of measures in hand to identify schools at risk of this, including boosting the local collaboration between schools that is now being brought to bear to support Shoreham.

The next stage for the school's recovery will be the development of an action plan, to be submitted to inspectors in the coming days. Longer term, the kind of local support (in which KCC has been closely involved) that has been given to the school offers a promising way to secure Shoreham's future.  

Have your say: KCC budget consultation

Kent County Council launched its consultation on the 2014-15 budget, and our plans for the coming years, at the end of last week.

The County Council has already delivered significant savings (£269m over the last three years). Over the next three years, further savings of £273m (out of an annual spend of £1.43bn) will be needed, reflecting further sharp reductions in government grant and growing pressures in areas such as social care.

The budget consultation page on the KCC website sets out more detail on the financial challenge and our proposals for tackling it. We are currently proposing a 1.99% increase in council tax (having frozen the council tax for three years), along with wide-ranging plans to transform the operation of the council.

The budget consultation page also has a two-question survey and a more detailed online tool that helps you choose how best to balance the KCC budget. I hope that as many Darent Valley residents as possible take part.

A Pioneer for better health care

Kent has taken an important step forward in working for an effective health and social care system, and I'm pleased to be part of it.

In addition to my role as Darent Valley's County Councillor, I am the KCC Cabinet Member for Education and Health Reform. The 'Health Reform' bit relates chiefly to chairing the Kent Health and Wellbeing Board. The Board is a creation of Andrew Lansley's 2012 Health and Social Care Act - a widely-accepted part of very controversial legislation. It brings together local government with the new GP leaders of the Kent NHS to plan better, more joined up services between health (the NHS), social care (local government) and public health (which has now moved to local government).

In the summer, the Department of Health asked local areas such as Kent, working through their Health and Wellbeing Boards, to apply for 'Pioneer' status in bringing health and social care closer together. More than 100 areas applied, and today the Department of Health has announced that Kent is one of just 14 chosen.

This is a terrific endorsement of the work being done in the County, and means that we will be able to accelerate our efforts with support from national government in tackling some of the hardest obstacles, such as how information is shared and how the different workforces of the NHS and social care are brought closer together.

Nationally, the government is forcing the pace of change, chiefly through a £3.8 billion 'Integration Transformation Fund' that also looks to accelerate progress. In Kent, we are likely to combine much of our work on the aims of the Fund with our new Pioneer status. They are both about the same thing: bringing services together so that they are more responsive to the needs of patients and, by building up community services as an alternative to unnecessary admissions to hospitals and care homes, ensuring that services stay affordable even as we face the pressures of an ageing population. To me, these are things well worth working for, and it is terrific that Kent is at the forefront of doing so.

You can find KCC's press release about Pioneer status here, and the Department of Health's press release here. If you are interested in the work of the Health and Wellbeing Board, you can find out more about it on KCC's website.

Take part in the Darent River survey

As its name implies, my Darent Valley Division includes much of the course of the River Darent and many of the villages that sit on it: Shoreham, Eynsford, Farningham, Horton Kirby and South Darenth. The river's future is important to us all. Many people remember how the river was severely diminished around the turn of the millennium, and at a meeting of the Lullingstone Liaison Group (which I chair) in early 2012 many of us were concerned about a possible repetition after two dry winters - but then the heavens opened.

The North West Kent Countryside Partnership are undertaking a survey (link below) to help shape the Catchment Improvement Plan and develop projects and priorities for improving the river. It is important to get a wide cross section of responses to ensure that the Catchment Improvement Plan reflects the views of everyone who cares about the river and the valley.

The survey can be found at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YM5JLJZ

Seismic exploration: update

In February this year, I liaised between parish councils and KCC concerning the seismic exploration work being carried out in Darent Valley by Tesla Exploration on behalf of Northdown Energy (post of 9 March). Initial contact had been made with KCC (as well as Bromley Borough Council) in January.

This project was treated as permitted development rather than something that required planning permission, since Northdown already has a Petroleum Exploration and Development License (PEDL) from the Department of Energy and Climate Change that covers a large part of the Sevenoaks area (you can see a map here. To challenge this and force an application for planning permission, Kent County Council would have had to issue a so-called Article 7 Direction, which there were no good grounds to do.

The survey work, which essentially involved lorries travelling around the area and undertaking a two-dimensional (2D) seismic survey (through emission of vibrations) took place in May. The areas of Darent Valley covered were Badgers Mount and the Lullingstone part of Eynsford; Shoreham was on the original route but this was not carried out because of the narrowness of the roads and the possible impact on utilities.

I recently made some enquiries as to the outcomes of the survey. I understand that specialists at Northdown are still looking at the data, and that this is likely to be a lengthy process, matching the findings with geological and other information from the area. At present, there are no plans to undertake further exploration and, if this did take place, KCC would be notified. Were the eventual findings to indicate that there were exploitable hydrocarbons, then the next stage – probably drilling an exploratory borehole – would require planning permission, including extensive assessments of environmental and other impacts.

I will continue to monitor the situation and provide further updates if and when there is new information.

Dartford Road improvements due in weeks

Just before Christmas, I organised a site meeting on the A225 Dartford Road - right on the Horton Kirby-Farningham border - with local residents and Kent Highways officers concerning speeding problems (post of 21 December). These are particularly acute around the junction with Calfstock Lane and to the north of the junction with Franks Lane. Visibility is poor and traffic approaches at high speeds as cars try to pull out from houses or junctions onto the main road.  

On the day, it was agreed that there would be new signs on posts - in particular, to draw drivers' attention to junctions - as well as adding to and improving the SLOW signs in the road. There has been something of a delay in getting these works carried out, but I have followed the matter up and I am told that the works have been ordered and should be carried out within four to six weeks. I also understand that a Highways steward has been to clean a number of the signs.

This has taken longer than it should, but hopefully we should now see improvements to this worrying stretch of road.

Crockenhill: further measures to improve junction

Earlier this year a series of measures, paid for from my Member Highway Fund, were installed to improve safety at the junction of Cray Road, Main Road and Broadway. These included Slow signs, an interactive sign for traffic coming from the Orpington direction and high friction surfacing.

The final stage of the scheme was to add granite sets that would further encourage drivers to slow down. However, at a late stage it emerged that these would require road closures of ten days each to be set up - which, with sets proposed for all three directions approaching the junction, would clearly have a major impact on the village.

Some alternative options have been canvassed, both by Highways officers and the Parish Council, and late last week we all met on site to examine the issue. Kent Highways have brought forward a widely-used German technology, which takes only three days to bed in and promises to be highly durable. This looks to be the best way forward, and we are now examining ways in which any road closures can be achieved with minimum disruption.

We also looked at the need to introduce Slow signs and improved signage further back on Green Court Road (near the brow of the hill), coupled with staggered railings at the edge of the village green; these measures can be paid for from my Member Highway Fund. Back at the junction, we examined options for a crossing. A full zebra crossing is problematic in terms of both cost and the practicalities of how it can be implemented; we agreed that Kent Highways would look into the possibilities of a more informal crossing, as well as some temporary or experimental buildouts at the junction that could encourage traffic calming and help us examine further the best options for any crossing.