Friday brief: Another terrible inspection about special educational needs services in Northamptonshire
Plus taxi drivers accuse North unitary of dismantling the industry and news from across the county
“There are widespread and/or systemic failings leading to significant concerns about the experiences and outcomes of children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), which the local area partnership must address urgently.” Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission
This is the top line from the Ofsted inspection published yesterday about special educational needs provision in West Northamptonshire.
The report by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) comes a few months after a similar inspection in the North of the county where similar failings were found.
These reports have been a familiar occurrence in Northamptonshire since before the days of the collapse of the county council and yesterday the bodies responsible for the service - the unitary authority, the integrated care board and the children’s trust - issued the usual apology. The lack of partnership working, a common issue cited in various reports in the previous decade, has again been identified in the new report.
It contained a catalogue of failings including:
Children and young people are waiting too long for health services such as speech and language therapy, mental health services and neurodevelopmental assessment. The report said this is limiting the chance of success for children in need of support.
Area leaders are not working together closely enough to ensure that children and young people with the most need are prioritised, particularly those with needs across different services.
Low quality educational health and care plans which are late; inaccurate and sometimes finalised without contributions from all who should be involved. The plans in some cases are inaccurately identifying what children need. Despite knowing of the issues, the report said area leaders are only just beginning to take action.
Some children leaving nursery do not have their needs identified in time.
Some children who are at an alternative provision (outside of mainstream education) may not have been there if their needs had been identified earlier.
A shortage of alternative provision places means that some children are left without anywhere to go, or have to travel many miles from where they live.
The inspectors listed the following areas for priority action:
Create a joint commissioning agreement so that the needs of the child can be known.
Address the long wait times in speech therapy, mental health and neurodevelopmental assessment.
Ensure that when they are issued, EHC plans are accurate.
Areas in which the inspectors thought the organisations are effective are:
Leaders are ambitious and recognise the problems. They have created an ambitious SEND and AP strategy but the impact is not yet known.
The professionals work together well with the working groups that have been established to implement the strategy.
Children who are assessed, benefit from an early help strategy.
The specialist school nursing team was praised.
Children with hearing or visual impairment are well supported.
After the report was published we asked council leader Adam Brown if he still had confidence in cabinet member Fiona Baker to lead the children’s service in Northants.
He said:
“Leading children’s services is an incredibly challenging task at any time, particularly in light of the unprecedented demand we’re facing.
“Cllr Baker has been instrumental in bringing forward the proposals which will see our SEND services make significant improvements in the coming years. Furthermore, she has overseen improvements in performance across the other Ofsted rated areas within her portfolio and has a passion and understanding that few could match.
"I have every confidence in Cllr Baker and will continue to support her in delivering the changes we all recognise are required.”
The North unitary council has been accused of ‘dismantling’ Corby’s taxi industry, as it decided to create one overarching taxi zone to cover the entire authority area.
Despite petitions and much opposition from drivers in Corby, the executive led by Cllr Jason Smithers, approved the plans yesterday to abolish the existing four hackney carriage zones (which ran along the former borough council geographic areas) and replace with one from next April.
At the meeting the authority was accused of ‘riding roughshod’ over the opinions of customers and drivers.
Taxi owner Neil Reilly said:
“I’m not going to sit here and try and change your mind with actual facts and figures, trade knowledge and public petitions. We’ve done that and you refused to listen.
“Everyone in this room knows that this decision has been predetermined.”
Referencing an earlier taxi licencing meeting, he said:
“I sat with an open mouth as I sat listening to councillors and officers who had absolutely no clue about what they were talking about. Discussing the first stages of dismantling my industry. Over the last two years you have done so much damage to this trade, it is probably irreversible and it’s put many owners out of business, with many more on the way.”
Next year over 90 per cent of the drivers in the Corby area have their licence expire. A vast majority of these are either approaching or past retirement age. Many have no intention of renewing and will simply hand back their plates, like many have already done across the county.”
He accused the Conservative councillors of not caring because it did not affect them and said residents would have to deal with the consequences of their decisions long after they’d gone.
Some of the reasons why the Corby trade has objected is due to a new knowledge test across the whole North Northants area, taxis from other areas coming into the town and claiming dezoning would reduce the number of hackney carriages available for hire for existing customers.
Taxi owner Paul Jeffrey said:
“It is patently obvious that you neither care nor think of the consultation process because that was clearly in favour of non dezoning. You have overridden that. You have no regards.
“It’s just getting pushed through, irrelevant of the consequence of our customers and us as businessmen.
“You have ridden roughshod over every opinion given by us and by the public.”
Cllr David Brackenbury said there was something of a misunderstanding about the council’s attitude towards the Hackney carriage trade and he said ‘we don’t want it to wither and die on the vine. We want to support it.’
He said he had looked at all of the 221 responses to the consultation. 102 responses to the consultation strongly disagreed with the proposal. The proposal was unanimously agreed by all members of the executive.
News in brief:
The appointment of a deputy police, fire and crime commissioner will be decided by a panel today.
Marianne Kimani, who had been the Labour candidate for Daventry but lost out to Conservative Stuart Andrew last Friday morning, was named as the preferred candidate to deputise for Labour’s Danielle Stone who was elected in May, replacing Stephen Mold. He did not have a deputy commissioner.
Marianne Kimani, who will be paid £55,000 has been a special constable and currently works as a patient safety investigator for St Andrew’s Healthcare.
The Northants police, fire and crime panel meeting takes place at the guildhall at 1pm.
Labour’s opposition on West Northamptonshire Council have hit out at the opening date for Northampton market and questioned the spiralling costs.
The authority announced September 20 as the opening date for the market square, which has been under renovation since February 2023, with traders having to move off site to an unpopular nearby location while the works have been done.
Shadow cabinet member for local Economy, culture and leisure Cllr Koulla Jolley said in a statement:
“The Labour Group and I are very disappointed at the announcement from West Northants Council that Northampton Market Square will not be reopening until 20 September.
“Traders, the public, and members were repeatedly told throughout the past eighteen months that traders would be welcomed back in the summer of 2024, and that work was always on course for completion on-time.
“But late September is NOT summer. The traders who sacrificed earnings by going down to Commercial Street will now not be able to make the most of the warm weather to boost sales.
“Questions also remain around the increased cost of the redevelopment, from an initial £8.4m to over £10m, and where exactly this money has come from. I will be asking questions around this at full council next Thursday.“The traders who make up our historic market have been repeatedly taken for fools and I expect the council to give them every support once they return to their home on Market Square to ensure they can remain.”
Trader Les at LJB Rutherfords, which offers key-cutting services, watch repairs and other services, said he was hopeful his business would be able to thrive again once the move back to the Square was complete.
“My business up until coming down here was very good- the last 18 months it’s been down here it’s been a disaster,” he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
“Everyday it’s rubbish- it’s like groundhog day. We come down here, we stand around like a pair of lemons for six hours and then we go home again.
“I think the light’s at the end of the tunnel. This time last year we’d been down here for a few months and we knew to not think about it- you just turn up, turn your brain off and look forward to the end of the week.
“Now we know we’ve got a date and we know what we’re working towards so it’s nearly over, this pain.”
All elected members of West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) will now be vetted with basic criminal record checks after calls for them heightened when five women made allegations of abuse against the ex-leader.
The authority has said the DBS checks were a key request during talks with domestic abuse charities directly after Jonathan Nunn resigned as Conservative leader earlier this year. Mr Nunn has strenuously denied the claims of abuse.
New leader, Adam Brown, said he hoped it would help to “establish trust” in the council and “demonstrate that none of us sat around this cabinet table have anything to hide”.
Northamptonshire Domestic Abuse Service said the checks are a “positive step forwards” and that they support any move to hold councillors to account.
As best practice, the council will undertake basic DBS checks for all councillors and enhanced criminal record checks would also be in place for elected members who have direct responsibility for decisions relating to children and vulnerable people.
Cllr Brown told his cabinet at a meeting on Tuesday:
“I’ll address the elephant in the room which is obviously when we had the debates around the conduct of the previous leader there was a very strong demand from members of the public, charities, members of the council that we as a council adopt DBS checks.
“When I met with representatives of local domestic abuse charities one of their key asks of us was that we implement a policy of DBS checks for members.“I’m pleased to say a little over five weeks later we’re fulfilling that promise to them. I think it’s an important step to establish trust in this council and this executive and to demonstrate that none of us sat around this cabinet table have anything to hide and nor do any of our members on key committees.”
A basic DBS shows unspent convictions and conditional cautions, whereas the enhanced method shows all spent and unspent convictions and cautions plus any information held by local police that is considered relevant to the role.
If checks are undertaken and offences are found WNC’s chief executive and monitoring officer will assess the risk and seriousness of the incident and act accordingly.
Report by Nadia Lincoln, local democracy reporter
Westminster Watch
The county’s newly elected MPs started their jobs in Westminster this week. They’ve been posting on social media about their first days in the role.
Only Wellingborough’s Gen Kitchen, who was first elected in the February byelection and Conservative MP Stuart Andrew, who was a former Yorkshire MP, have worked in parliament before.
Labour’s Lee Barron (Corby & East Northants), Rosie Wrighting (Kettering), Lucy Rigby (Northampton North) and Mike Reader (Northampton South) are all first MPs as well as Conservative Sarah Bool who replaces Andrea Leadsom as MP for South Northamptonshire.
Stuart Andrew has been given a position in Rishi Sunak’s shadow cabinet as the opposition chief whip and was sitting on the opposition front bench this week.
The decision of the Police and Crime Commissioner to appoint the recent Labour candidate for Daventry as her deputy seems somewhat inept. I have no criticism of the candidate concerned, I know nothing about her but the timing does not look good. Lose an election on Thursday be appointed to a £50k the next day- by a fellow Party member. A job by the way the previous inept Tory Commissioner didn't seem to need (and he was prone to appoint mates) Danielle was very clear that she was going to clean the Police stable .This is not a very good look. By the way even if the Tory dominated 'panel' questions the appointment-they an do nothing about it. Once more the absurdity of the Police and Crime and Fire etc Commissioner reveals the dangers of giving so much power to one person.£50k of public money could certainly put another Police officer on the beat-just a thought.
I just read the Northamptonshire Telegraph reporting on Friday 12th July confirmation hearing for a Deputy (the failed MP) for the new Commissioner Danielle Stone. For the past 12 years there has been no necessity for a Deputy.
Since taking office eight weeks ago Stone has made numerous exaggerated claims about how difficult the job has been up until the general election she was fully supported by Mike Reader. Now there is complete silence from him. If a Deputy is now required for her to do her job than, it goes without saying, that she should resign as she appears weak and out of her depth. Also when compared likes for likes the staff in her office is four to five time bigger. That is not VALUE FOR MONEY in my opinion.