Last week Bury’s Councillors met together for an important extraordinary meeting. This was to consider the outcome of an investigation in to senior staff, which had resulted in the resignation of the Council’s Chief Executive and Executive Director of Children’s Services.

This is an important and serious issue, and one which you will probably have seen reported in the media.

Background
An investigation was initiated by the Council at the start of this year around an incident which took place in April 2015. The Council commissioned an independent report into the incident, which resulted in the suspension of senior staff. This was followed by a formal Human Resources Panel and legal investigation which has resulted in the two members of staff mentioned above resigning from the Council.

The details of the case have been reported extensively in the press. Essentially they relate to how senior people in the Council did not follow proper procedures when informed of a criminal investigation of a then Labour councillor for possession of child sexual images. The incident occurred in the run up to the 2015 General Election, and the information was incorrectly kept out of the public domain until after that General Election.

Outcome
Two very senior members of staff (Chief Executive and Executive Director of Children’s Services) have resigned and are no longer employed by the Council.

It is important to stress that the Council, at the start of this process, put in place strong interim management arrangements to ensure that the important functions of the Council are working as they should be.

The Future
Councillors met to consider a joint motion agreed by all three political parties on how we need to move forward from this very serious incident. This has now been agreed by all councillors.

For us there were three things we particularly wanted to ensure happen:

1 – Learn from what has happened
The external experts have made recommendations on how some of the rules that determine how the Council operates are strengthened (particularly the Members Code of Conduct), and there are a number of actions that are recommended coming from the report. We are very keen to make sure that any changes, actions or improvements are taken, and as quickly as possible.

2 – Investigate Elected Member involvement
The investigations so far have been into the paid staff of the Council. There remain questions which are unanswered about whether or not any elected Councillors knew, or were involved, in this process. It has been agreed that there will be an independent investigation into these councillors which we fully support. You may have seen in the press that the former Leader of the Council has been suspended by the Labour Party, pending these investigations.

3 – Review the Culture of the Council
At a senior level it is very important that the different roles of councillors, and the professional paid staff we employ to run the Council are understood. They need to work closely together, but there also need to be clear boundaries in place. We have asked for an all-party review of the culture of the Council at a senior level, which has now been agreed.

This is a very serious issue so if you have any questions you want to ask the Liberal Democrat group at the Council please do not hesitate to get in touch with our Group Leader tim@burylibdems.net.

The papers for the Council meeting are here.

Justine Greening has announced £1.3bn of additional funding for schools that she has said will come from “efficiencies” from within the education budget.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Education Secretary Layla Moran said: “This is a desperate attempt to pull the wool over people’s eyes. Instead of providing the £4bn of extra funding promised in their manifesto, the Conservatives are recycling cash from the education budget. It is robbing Peter to pay Paul. Schools are still facing cuts to their budgets once inflation and increasing class sizes are taken into account. Children only get one go at education. We need to invest more in our schools to ensure that no child is left behind.”

The money includes cutting £280m cut from the free schools budget and £315m from “healthy pupils” projects. The DFE is promising £416m extra for schools from `savings” in 2018-19 and a further £884m in 2019-20.

A joint statement from the NUT and ATL teachers’ unions accused the government of “smoke and mirrors”. “Whilst any extra money is welcome this isn’t enough to stop the huge cuts that schools are making,” said the teachers’ unions.

They pointed to evidence from the National Audit Office and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which warned of £3bn funding gap and schools facing an 8% real-terms budget cut.
During the election, the Conservatives had promised an extra £1bn per year, which on top of planned increases, would have meant the core schools budget rising by about £4bn in 2021-22.
Most of this extra funding was going to come from scrapping free meals for all infants, a policy which was subsequently ditched.

Our two local NHS walk-in centres will remain open for at least eight more months. NHS Bury CCG has confirmed that the centres, at Prestwich and within Moorgate Primary Care Centre in Bury, will remain operational until at least March 31 2018.

The CCG says that: “The CCG remains committed to the redesign of urgent care services in Bury in order to ensure the best possible care for the GP registered population of Bury. We will communicate further updates on the next steps in this process following the release of further national and Greater Manchester guidance.”

The public consultation on the future of urgent care services in Bury was paused in March to allow for the release of further national guidance. Since then it has been confirmed that the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership is also considering the composition of urgent care services across Greater Manchester. Current indications are that it is likely to be September 2017 at the earliest before this further guidance is released.

The consultation will remain paused until the further guidance is received.

Earlier this year the Liberal Democrats collected a significant number of petition signatures, handed into the CCG before it considered the closure. Thank you to everyone who supported this campaign – this was the only petition received by the CCG.

Our view is that it is great that the centres get a reprive for another 8 months, but the fight to keep them open is far from over.

Full story Bury Times.

Letting agents fees look set to be banned in this year Queen’s Speech following pressure from the Liberal Democrats.

The fees cost on average £223 per tenancy but under the new plans they will be banned and tenants will be given the opportunity to recover illegal fees imposed upon them.

Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords, Olly Grender, who has led a campaign against the fees, said:

“I am absolutely delighted that the ban on letting fees set out in my Private Members’ Bill is now being proposed as law. It’s time we made them a much greater priority, including by introducing a public register of rogue landlords.

Theresa May is expected to have dropped plans to scrap free school lunches for infant pupils from today’s Queen’s Speech.

It comes after the Liberal Democrats strongly criticised the Conservatives during the election campaign over the plans which would have deprived 1.7 million children of free school lunches, including 700,000 living in poverty.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Education Secretary Layla Moran said:

“I’m glad Theresa May has bowed to pressure and agreed not to scrap free school lunches.

“This is a victory for families across the country. Thousands of children living in poverty will now continue to receive a free nutritious meal a day.

“I am proud of the role the Liberal Democrats played in first introducing free school lunches and then protecting them from Theresa May.

“We will now fight to ensure the Conservatives rein back on their plans to extend grammars and reduce school funding.”