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.

PPE: progress but always precarious

There has been huge, and justified national attention on the issue of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the Covid-19 crisis. Pressures are felt at the levels of national and global supply chains, but Kent County Council, working through the Kent Resilience Forum and our commercial company, Kent Commercial Services, has undertaken extensive work to deliver PPE within the county. 

This is separate from, and additional to the several drops of supplies from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), which I and other senior Members and officers have consistently lobbied for. All this was done from a starting point where KCC held only modest stocks of PPE for the use of our own staff,  while care providers sourced their own supplies. 

At close of business on 23 April, we had supplied over 1.4 million pieces of PPE in over 700 separate deliveries since the 3 April.  The table below provides details of the equipment delivered – all of it essential to support the safe provision of services to the most vulnerable. 

Items	Total
Type IIR Masks (or equivalent)	258,400
Respirator masks (or equivalent)	10,660
Extra-large gloves	10,260
Large gloves	251,420
Medium gloves	380,300
Small gloves	155,400
Aprons	319,200
Protective Goggles	14,307
Sanitiser 100ml	4,825
Sanitiser 500ml	120
Sanitiser 5L	112
Clinical waste bags.	16,000

Deliveries have happened every day, with the exception of Easter Sunday, and even that day was covered by our daily out of hours service.  The weekend of 18 and 19 April saw 170 separate deliveries.

All PPE and deliveries have been made free of charge.  By working closely with our partners in the Kent Resilience Forum our supply chain, which includes Kent based suppliers, has got and continues to get more robust.  We now have more substantial stocks of some key items including over 600,000 of the Type IIR Surgical Mask with more on the way, which were in very short supply only a few weeks ago. 

None of this is plain sailing and some items, such as Respirator Masks, are still quite scarce, albeit we have now sourced a reliable supply.  Demand for equipment and deliveries from KCC continues to rise.  The average daily delivery of Type IIR Masks over the last 21 days has been 12,300.  On 23^rd April 25,000 were despatched with over 29,000 already ordered for delivery on the 24^th April.  Forecasting demand has been and continues to be very difficult, exacerbated by the evolving national guidance on the correct use of PPE which has been a challenge both in terms of supply but also for our own services and provides in their provision of clear guidance to front line carers and staff.

There have been recent reports that a national online portal allowing primary and social care providers to order supplies of PPE will not be fully operational for another five weeks.  This acts as a reminder that even with the huge amount of work described here, the situation will always remain fragile, reflecting the rapid use of the equipment, changes in national guidance and fluctuations in deliveries from the centre.  Given these extreme difficulties that are widely acknowledged to exist in this area, it is right to be proud of the excellent work that has been done by KCC and the KRF. But the situation continues to evolve and remains precarious.

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.

MHCLG announces £1.6 billion for councils

Last week I wrote about the allocation of emergency Covid-19 funding to councils. Since then, the issue has remained high-profile, with councils highlighting the pressures that they face.

Today Robert Jenrick, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) announced a further £1.6 billion in funding for councils. This doubles the support previously announced, and was accompanied by a letter from the Communities Secretary to Council Leaders and Chief Executives praising the actions of councils and their workforce: "the unsung heroes as we tackle this virus."

This follows the government's earlier announcement that it was bringing forward £850 million in social care payments, and deferring councils' payments of £2.6 billion to central government relating to business rates. These are, however, timing differences in payments to assist cash flow; the £1.6 billion is additional money.

The sector, including the County Councils Network, has welcomed the announcement, while urging that, with major uncertainties regarding both revenues and expenditures, the need for support to councils must be kept under review. It is not yet clear how the funding will be allocated between councils; the MHCLG announcement says this will be communicated "as soon as practicable."

Eynsford Road flooding: still more to do

The small section of Eynsford Road set back from the main A225 and near the junction with Farningham High Street has been subject to flooding problems for many years. I have been trying to get the matter resolved and have written about it here before. Kent County Council drainage engineers have been working on the site on a number of occasions over the last two years and I have been present at a number of site meetings.

Measures taken so far include cleaning the gullies and building up the kerb to deflect water as it comes down the hill on the main road. These have yielded some relief but have proved ineffectual when - as has been the case so often - there has been heavy rainfall.  Officers have identified the system in and around South Hall Close as a likely source of the continuing problem, and have sought to investigate it. However, it has proved hard to investigate a drainage system  running through private land and which has been altered in the past without these alterations having been documented. 

Between January and early March, KCC spent a total of seven days excavating the unregistered lane to locate the pipe. However, it could not be found, leading the Drainage Engineer to believe that at some point a section of it may have been removed. A new job has been raised to return to site and excavate in South Hall Close, where the pipe is undoubtedly still in existence and to work back from there. Once engineers can see what has happened to the pipe, whether it has been removed or redirected, they can then plan how to reconnect it with the existing system. This work should be carried out within the next 28 days - subject, of course, to the possible impact on contractors of staff sickness or absence in self-isolation because of Covid-19.

Residents in Eysnford Road have had to endure many years of flood problems, and recent severe weather has made the problem more acute. Hopefully, the changes to the paperwork can be identified and a solution found.

IFS: who is getting the funding?

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has published a useful analysis of the £1.6bn that the government has made available to councils to help respond to the Covid-19 crisis.

The IFS points out that the basis for allocation of the funding - driven by 2013-14 needs assessments, in particular for social care - is open to question (and many of the critiques of this allocation approach were reflected in the pre-crisis Fair Funding Review). County Councils had been deeply critical of this funding methodology.

The funding formulas are over-general and out of date, including with respect to differences in population growth. The formula also makes very little available to District Councils, who are deeply exposed to risk on council tax collection (although how this risk is crystallised in two-tier areas is unclear) and massive losses in parking income.

The paper argues that it might make more sense for the government to relax rules on councils' ability to borrow to meet day to day spending, with government looking (subject to suitable record-keeping and safeguards) to reimburse councils for crisis spending. Councils have argued for this, and ministers have insisted (including at meetings and on calls in which I have taken part) that they will back councils in spending what is needed.

What is also clear - though not so much a focus of this report - is that, with severe spending pressures in areas such as social care and support to vulnerable people in the community, and with revenues at significant risk or already falling, the £1.6bn support to councils is unlikely to be the end of the story. KCC's share of that grant is £39 million, and it is not hard to see how that can be quickly committed and spent.

You can find the IFS statement on the release of the report here, with a link to the report itself.

Refunds on Kent Travel Saver

Kent County Council has had enquiries from a number of parents about possible refunds for their payments to the Travel Saver (formerly known as the Freedom Pass or the Young Person's travel Pass) once it became clear that schools would close for some considerable time. We've been approached in relation to both the Travel Saver and the 16+ Travel Saver. I have been approached on this by constituents and other parents and we sought to come to a quick decision.

Although application fees have now been surpassed by the cost of the scheme to the Council and KCC's normal policy has always been not to provide refunds, it is clear that these are not normal circumstances. Many families are feeling financial pressures during the current lockdown, and for the present they have no reason to use the service. And while the Travel Saver is heavily subsidised by the County Council (to the tune of almost two-thirds of the cost of the bus journeys that it entitles young people to), that effect is spread over the entire school year. KCC is therefore currently reviewing the level of any refund that can be provided and how it can be delivered.  Once this is determined, it will be communicated to parents.  For anyone paying by instalments, KCC arranged for the cancellation of the final payment, which was due on 28 March.  

KCC will be in touch with parents about the arrangements for any refund due once it has been possible to establish how this will work.

This is the right thing to do, and it's essential that KCC supports parents at this time. At the same time, it is a relatively small example of the much greater financial pressures that face local government during this crisis, with income being foregone (as in this case) and expenditure in areas such as social care under upward pressure - something that I, and my counterparts elsewhere in the sector, continue to emphasise to ministers.