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Archived Transcript for 19 October 2001: Pages
1 to 50
1
1 Friday, 19th October 2001
2 (9.00 am)
3 THE CHAIRMAN: Good morning, everyone. Mr Garnham?
4 MR GARNHAM: Good morning, sir. We have two witnesses
5 today. Ms Gibson is going to take the first of them.
6 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Ms Gibson?
7 MS GIBSON: Yes, good morning, sir. If I could call
8 Ann John to give her evidence?
9 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.
10 MS ANNE JOHN (affirmed)
11 MS GIBSON: Thank you, Ms John. Could you begin by giving
12 the Inquiry your full name and professional address,
13 please?
14 MS JOHN: My full name is Anne Marie John and it is the
15 London Borough of Brent, Town Hall, Forty Lane, Wembley.
16 MS GIBSON: If you could be supplied with a copy of your
17 statement, it is at volume 1, page 89. You have it
18 already?
19 MS JOHN: I have it in front of me.
20 MS GIBSON: Thank you very much. And are the contents of
21 that statement true to the best of your knowledge and
22 belief?
23 MS JOHN: There is one small correction I would like to make
24 please in point 1 which states that I was Deputy Leader
25 of the Council from May 1995. The year is incorrect, it
2
1 is 1996. I did not spot that before.
2 MS GIBSON: Thank you. And it is right that you are now the
3 Leader of the Council?
4 MS JOHN: Yes, indeed it is.
5 MS GIBSON: And from what date was that?
6 MS JOHN: January 29th this year.
7 MS GIBSON: Thank you very much. Can I begin by asking you
8 about your responsibility for children in the Brent
9 area? You are aware, I assume, of the letter from
10 Frank Dobson?
11 MS JOHN: Yes, I am aware of the letter from Frank Dobson.
12 MS GIBSON: And it is right that as a Councillor in Brent,
13 you are responsible for the well-being of children
14 within your area?
15 MS JOHN: Yes, I do understand that we are responsible for
16 the well-being of children in our area.
17 MS GIBSON: And what systems do you have in place for making
18 sure that you are informed of figures relating to
19 children?
20 MS JOHN: Well clearly my responsibility as Deputy Leader
21 before, and as Leader now, is to ensure that a balanced
22 budget is set, and that the right amounts of money are
23 apportioned to each area of the Council, which is
24 a multifunctional organisation, as you well know, and
25 that the money is distributed properly, and carefully,
3
1 following advice from service unit senior officers and
2 from our finance officers. Clearly we are all obliged
3 to follow the advice of our senior people, and we do
4 this within the framework that the Government sets us.
5 MS GIBSON: Looking at your responsibility in relation to
6 social services spending in particular, and going back
7 to the time we are dealing with, so 1999, what systems
8 did you have in place for informing yourself about
9 social services activity in relation to children in
10 Brent?
11 MS JOHN: Quite clearly, there is a collective
12 responsibility with Lead Members or Chairs of
13 Committees, as they were before that, of bringing to the
14 Leadership Group, of which I was a part, any issues that
15 they feel we need to know in any kind of detail,
16 particularly any claims that there would be on the
17 budget and any problems that there might be in the
18 service area that we would all collectively need to
19 address, and we would apply that responsibility to every
20 Lead Member, be it social services or anywhere else in
21 the Council.
22 MS GIBSON: How regularly would you meet with Members of the
23 Social Services Committee on your Council?
24 MS JOHN: We would more regularly meet with the collective
25 Leadership, which is now Cabinet colleagues, with Lead
4
1 Members from each of the service areas, and the
2 Leadership Group meet on a regular basis.
3 MS GIBSON: Can you give us some estimate of the frequency
4 of that?
5 MS JOHN: At the moment, we have a cycle of Cabinet meetings
6 where we consider reports from all the service areas,
7 including social services; they take place regularly.
8 We are beginning a fortnightly -- under the new
9 modernisation programme that the Government obliges us
10 to do, under the Local Government Act, we are now
11 meeting on a fortnightly basis. There are other
12 meetings in between of the Leadership Group, of the
13 Labour Group of the Council, and also if there are any
14 individual service area issues that a Lead Member wishes
15 to bring to the Leadership Group, they will come and
16 talk to us about it individually. It might be
17 education, it could be environment, and it could be
18 social services, and that is how we operate.
19 MS GIBSON: Ms John, I was asking you about the position in
20 1999, not now. Can you answer how regularly you met
21 with Members of the Social Services Committee?
22 MS JOHN: I think it is probably -- if I might expand in
23 answer to that, Chairman, in 1999 -- the budget
24 announcement for 1999 is made in the Chancellor's autumn
25 statement in November, and you will know that a large
5
1 amount of the SSA for children's personal social
2 services was removed overnight then, £8.3 million. The
3 Council's budget gap at that time, which we all
4 collectively -- we are obliged to set a legal budget
5 within the percentage increases that the Government
6 recommends us to do, it affected the 1999/2000 budget
7 and we had to cover a budget gap of £17.5 million.
8 I can honestly assure the Panel that meetings of
9 Cabinet colleagues or Chairs of Committees, as they were
10 at that particular time, took place regularly, because
11 this was a considerable budget crisis for the authority.
12 We not only had that £8.3 million removed at a stroke,
13 we also had the lowest percentage increase in our
14 monies, rate support grant from Central Government, of
15 any authority in the country, 1.5 per cent increase.
16 So this, coupled with the removal of the
17 £8.3 million -- the Council was faced with considerable
18 difficulties in covering that particular budget gap, so
19 meetings were frequent and regular, not only amongst my
20 own colleagues, but also among the general public out
21 there, who could not understand why this budget gap had
22 developed.
23 MS GIBSON: Ms John, I just asked you a simple question,
24 could I just have a simple answer? How regularly did
25 you meet in terms, was it monthly, weekly, daily? If
6
1 you could assist?
2 MS JOHN: On the budget, it was often daily, but different
3 colleagues, not just social services, which is what I am
4 trying to explain to the Panel. We would meet with
5 Service Area Directors and the Chairs of Committees to
6 deal with this budget leading up to the 1999/2000
7 budget.
8 MS GIBSON: Ms John, I just want to know the answer to my
9 question: how regularly would you meet with Social
10 Services Committee Members to inform yourself about the
11 position in relation to that area?
12 MS JOHN: I would say that leading up to the budget setting
13 for 1999/2000, it would be very difficult for me to say
14 precisely, but meeting with colleagues was happening on
15 a daily and weekly basis.
16 MS GIBSON: But in relation to social services, can you help
17 us with that?
18 MS JOHN: I am not sure I can pin that down absolutely
19 exactly. I can say to the Panel quite clearly that it
20 was frequently. This was a very difficult time for the
21 Council and we had to meet frequently.
22 MS GIBSON: Does "frequently" mean weekly, monthly?
23 MS JOHN: I would say it would probably be weekly, but
24 I cannot be sure of that. I do not want to mislead the
25 Panel in any way. We were meeting very, very regularly,
7
1 and quite rightly so too. We devoted huge amounts of
2 time to covering this particular budget gap.
3 MS GIBSON: And what did you do to implement the points set
4 out in Frank Dobson's letter to ensure that you received
5 regular baseline reports regarding the number of
6 children in need, for example, and how much is spent on
7 them, and also in relation to children on the Child
8 Protection Register, and spending on those children?
9 MS JOHN: The responsibility for ensuring that reports were
10 regularly sent to Members through the Children's
11 Subcommittee at the time, although the arrangement is
12 different within the Council now, would be the
13 responsibility of the Lead Member, who would take those
14 reports to Committee -- or chair a Committee, it might
15 have been before the changes in the structures of the
16 Council.
17 Councillor Cribbin was the Chair of the Social
18 Services Committee, now Lead Member; she would have the
19 responsibility for ensuring that those reports were
20 taken through the relevant committees of the Council and
21 that any issues that needed to be raised quite
22 specifically outside of that Committee would be brought
23 to the Leadership Group whenever she felt it was
24 important to do so.
25 MS GIBSON: Ms John, that is the position in relation to
8
1 Councillor Cribbin. I am asking about you, because
2 I assume you are aware from the Dobson letter that it is
3 your individual responsibility to inform yourself of the
4 position. What did you do to satisfy yourself?
5 MS JOHN: There have been regular meetings arranged around
6 "Quality Protects" to ensure that members of councils
7 are reminded about their corporate responsibility as
8 parents for looked after children, and we have been
9 having those regularly, with representatives of the
10 looked after youth in our borough, so we have put things
11 into place.
12 MS GIBSON: I am asking about what was happening in 1999.
13 What were you doing to inform yourself about the
14 position in relation to children in Brent?
15 MS JOHN: We would have been informed through the Lead
16 Member informing us, we would have taken on board the
17 contents of Frank Dobson's letter, and senior
18 officers -- in co-operation with senior officers, we
19 would have been putting in place the very meetings
20 I have just described, in fact we had one just recently.
21 MS GIBSON: And what reports did you personally receive to
22 satisfy yourself about what the position was in relation
23 to spending on children?
24 MS JOHN: Most of the information I would have on spending
25 on children would be part of the budget making process.
9
1 Anything outside of that, if there were any
2 difficulties -- and spending on children throughout the
3 borough, looked after children and children requiring
4 special protection, is quite separate from the spending
5 that we would be doing around the rest of the borough,
6 through education, through housing and all the rest of
7 it. The way we spend money on children is many and
8 varied. We are a multifunctional organisation who has
9 to fulfil, by statute, the responsibilities that we
10 have, and as Councillors, we are obliged to set legal
11 budgets every year within the framework set by
12 Government. We cannot not do that, and the money that
13 we have set aside for looking after children has been
14 consistent over the years, and we believe it has been
15 a good system.
16 MS GIBSON: Again, I am asking about you individually,
17 because I think as we have already established, you are
18 aware that you have an individual responsibility as
19 a Councillor to satisfy yourself about children's
20 services, and I want to know what you did to inform
21 yourself about whether Children's Services in Brent were
22 well managed at this time.
23 MS JOHN: I was informed about that, as I have explained
24 already, through the Leadership Group, which would have
25 had reports from Councillor Cribbin and others if there
10
1 were any difficulties that we needed to address, and
2 particularly I would participate in the meetings that
3 were set up through the "Quality Protects" programme, to
4 ensure that we were fulfilling our responsibilities as
5 corporate parents.
6 MS GIBSON: This is meetings with others, but I want to know
7 what you did as an individual. It is a simple question;
8 could you give a straightforward answer to that?
9 MS JOHN: I think I have given the answer that I have, that
10 we were informed in as many ways as possible about our
11 duties as corporate parents, not just the Frank Dobson
12 letter, but through our Cabinet meetings and in fact
13 through the reports that go through Cabinet, where we
14 will make decisions about various aspects of children
15 looked after, in order to ensure that they are better
16 provided for, and we have been doing that on a regular
17 basis.
18 MS GIBSON: What I want to know is what direct information
19 you received, I do not want to know about meetings with
20 other Councillors. What direct information from Social
21 Services did you receive to satisfy yourself about the
22 position of children in Brent?
23 MS JOHN: Well, I do not remember the original -- each
24 individual report, but I do know that we were constantly
25 reminded about our duties as corporate parents.
11
1 MS GIBSON: You were reminded about your duties, but what
2 did you see? What reports did you ensure that you
3 received from Social Services?
4 MS JOHN: As I have already explained, the reports would
5 have gone to the Children's Subcommittee at that time,
6 and through the new Council structure now, and it would
7 have been the responsibility of the Members of the
8 Social Services Committee to ensure -- you know, the
9 Children's Subcommittee and the Social Services
10 Committee to ensure that everything was in place that
11 needed to be and all Councillors were reminded of their
12 responsibilities, and also obliged to participate in any
13 of the structures that were set up to inform us as to
14 our duties as corporate parents.
15 (9.15 am)
16 MS GIBSON: So is the answer to my question as to what
17 reports you received direct from Social Services to
18 satisfy yourself that you did not receive any?
19 MS JOHN: No, I am not saying that.
20 MS GIBSON: Can you help us with what you did receive?
21 MS JOHN: Without going back to the records and sorting out
22 each individual report, which went through Cabinet,
23 I cannot give you a definitive answer. All I will say
24 is that over the period, we have been informed
25 regularly, and I cannot define exactly which reports or
12
1 how many, but certainly through Cabinet, I do remember,
2 for example, a report that we considered which made
3 available, through our sports and leisure centres,
4 something specific for looked after children in the
5 borough, so we were doing this at regular intervals, but
6 I cannot, in all honesty, sit here without having gone
7 back through the records and give you the definitive
8 number of reports and the dates on which we received
9 them.
10 MS GIBSON: But can you give us some idea of the type of
11 information you would require on a regular basis to
12 satisfy yourself about children in Brent? For example,
13 did you obtain figures about the number of children on
14 the Child Protection Register?
15 MS JOHN: Yes.
16 MS GIBSON: And did you obtain information about child
17 protection cases which were unallocated?
18 MS JOHN: No, I did not receive information on unallocated
19 cases. That would have been the responsibility of the
20 Lead Member or then Chair at the time, who would have
21 received that information.
22 MS GIBSON: But is it not part of your individual
23 responsibility, through the concept of the corporate
24 parent and the Dobson letter, to satisfy yourself about
25 these important matters?
13
1 MS JOHN: They are important matters, I do not underestimate
2 their importance, and we had an extremely competent Lead
3 Member -- Chair for this particular service area, who
4 kept us fully informed at all times, and in fact you
5 will know that when a significant budget problem arose
6 in 1999, it was addressed immediately by Members
7 collectively. Councillor Cribbin came to us to say that
8 it was necessary to address the problems arising in
9 Children's Services by going into balances and making
10 arrangements to put a further £250,000 into Children's
11 Services in July 1999.
12 MS GIBSON: Can we look now at the reports from the Social
13 Services Inspectorate? Were you aware of those reports?
14 MS JOHN: Yes, I was aware of those reports.
15 MS GIBSON: Did you read those reports?
16 MS JOHN: Yes, I have read those reports.
17 MS GIBSON: Did you read those reports at the time?
18 MS JOHN: I did not read the 1996 report at the time because
19 my responsibility was different, and I should explain,
20 if I may, please, because I think it will help the
21 Panel. In 1996, when that report came through -- and
22 I did hear reference yesterday to a number of dates, and
23 I wish to sort of give a full picture of what was
24 happening at that time. In 1996, when the Inspection
25 Service came in, we were running the previous
14
1 administration's budget. In 1996, we took control of
2 the Council in April, we were a group of 28 Labour
3 Councillors, and we took control with the help of five
4 Liberal Democrat Councillors. The largest group on the
5 Council at that time was 33 Conservative Councillors.
6 The Conservative Councillors ran the authority from 1994
7 to 1996 on the casting vote of the Mayor. We then ran
8 it again on the casting vote of the Mayor, but in
9 co-operation with the Liberal Democrats.
10 I should say that the budget for that year was set
11 in March; it was a Conservative budget which included
12 a Council Tax reduction. It included the removal of
13 35 social services posts at a stroke. It excluded
14 £1 million for special educational needs spend, and we
15 were faced with running that budget until the following
16 year, when we were able to set a budget of our own.
17 MS GIBSON: Ms John, I did not ask you about that aspect.
18 What I am asking is about your knowledge of Social
19 Services Inspectorate reports. Did you, when you were
20 Deputy Leader of the Council, inform yourself about the
21 concerns expressed in the report of 1996?
22 MS JOHN: Yes indeed I did, but it is important that the
23 Panel understands the context in which we were operating
24 there, because I think an impression may have been given
25 to the Panel that the Council is chaotic now, which it
15
1 is not. It was chaotic I believe before 1996, and we
2 certainly have been the solution to the Council's
3 problems, and not its problem of itself, and I think it
4 is important that the Panel is made to understand that,
5 so that they can see that the amount of money that we
6 have put into all services -- the Council spent below
7 SSA in every area of the Council's spend, except in debt
8 repayment, and reversing that trend with the year on
9 year reductions in Council Tax which occurred from 1991
10 to 1996, it took a long time to get down to that
11 artificially low level, and we have spent quite
12 a considerable amount of time building that back up
13 again.
14 In fact, since 1998 we have increased the Council
15 Tax by 36 per cent where the Council's budget has risen
16 by 12 per cent, SSA has only gone up by 9 per cent, so
17 I think we can demonstrate that we are not frightened to
18 raise the Council Tax, to invest in our services, and in
19 fact the unprecedented period of calm in the Council
20 since 1998 has allowed us to develop the services in
21 a much better and more coherent way, and you will see
22 a very different picture throughout the Council, and
23 this is reflected I think in our residents' attitude
24 towards the Council and its services.
25 It is not that we have a lot of money to spend, we
16
1 do not, we are a needy borough, and to have actually
2 £8.3 million removed from us for the ethnicity drivers
3 when we are a multiethnic borough, the most diverse in
4 Europe, to have that removed from us at that time, it
5 was very hard to explain to our local people, because
6 the ethnic minorities in our borough make up the
7 majority, and the latest census will show that that
8 percentage is even greater than it is now, at over
9 50 per cent. So to have that taken away by Government
10 shows how crude the SSA is as a measure of what is
11 spent. It is a method for distribution of grant, it is
12 not a spending target.
13 MS GIBSON: We will come to that in due course, but I am
14 asking you now about the position, and your state of
15 knowledge, about the state of affairs in social services
16 from 1996 through to 2000. Do you accept that the SSI
17 report of 1996 showed that there were serious
18 deficiencies in child protection services in Brent?
19 MS JOHN: There were undoubtedly weaknesses, but there were
20 also elements of that particular report which were
21 praised, and the Child Protection Team element of it did
22 in fact come in for praise from the Social Services
23 Inspectorate. So there were weaknesses, I am assured
24 that they have all been addressed. We knew that at the
25 time, there was an action plan of which all the
17
1 recommendations were actioned, and certainly we would
2 expect that to happen. We take advice from senior
3 officers and they give reports back on the progress of
4 the implementation of the recommendations of the SSI,
5 and we as Councillors expect them to be done.
6 MS GIBSON: If we could have a look at volume 14, it is the
7 SSI Inspection Report of 1996, page 8, please.
8 First, can I begin by asking you when you first saw
9 this SSI report?
10 MS JOHN: It would have come to Committee following its
11 publication in 1996, I do not remember the actual date.
12 MS GIBSON: Can you help with when you read this report?
13 MS JOHN: I would have read it shortly after that. I do not
14 remember the date, I am afraid, but 1996.
15 MS GIBSON: So at page 8, we see that despite significant
16 developments, inspectors were seriously concerned about
17 practice.
18 MS JOHN: Yes.
19 MS GIBSON: Do you see that? And then if we could go to
20 page 18 of the bundle, at the "Findings" section at the
21 top of the page:
22 "... significant questions remain about the
23 competence of staff in the field of child protection."
24 MS JOHN: I am not sure I have the right page. 17?
25 THE CHAIRMAN: Page 18.
18
1 MS JOHN: Would you mind repeating that, please?
2 MS GIBSON: At the top, in the "Findings" section:
3 "The recent history of Brent Social Services
4 Department has been one characterised by inadequately
5 trained staff, mostly working less than efficiently."
6 MS JOHN: Yes, I can see that. This is an issue that was
7 addressed; in fact, in many respects, I think staff in
8 all sections of the Council were not best served by the
9 arrangements which were put in place previous to 1996
10 where the Council was restructured, and I know the
11 Inquiry Panel has been advised of this before, but the
12 Council was divided into a huge number of business
13 units, with a business unit ethos, each having their own
14 cheque books, their own hiring and firing practices.
15 Corporate standards disappeared from across the Council,
16 and in fact the central core was quite deliberately
17 stripped out, because the political imperative at that
18 time was to reduce the Council Tax. So I am not
19 surprised that they did not feel well supported around
20 the Council, it would not have just applied to social
21 services staff, and actually putting those kinds of
22 investments back into the Council centrally is something
23 we have quite specifically done, particularly with
24 regard to services like legal services, like financial
25 services, like HR services, so that the service areas
19
1 out there are properly supported, and proper training is
2 given to staff.
3 Now putting all that back is not something you can
4 do in one year, it is like turning a huge liner round,
5 it takes a long time, and certainly this report would
6 have been actioned, but I think you will see from 1998
7 onwards when we were a majority administration, we were
8 able to -- much more direct, without having to
9 co-operate with other people, although we could not
10 always get our own way, we were able to invest into the
11 public services of this Council and improve things
12 beyond measure and if you come to any section of our
13 Council today, you will find an extremely different
14 picture.
15 MS GIBSON: But looking at this, this report at the time
16 must have caused you serious concern?
17 MS JOHN: I think any report which is critical of any
18 service of the Council causes us serious concern, and
19 this is particularly --
20 MS GIBSON: So is the answer to that question yes?
21 MS JOHN: Yes.
22 MS GIBSON: So seriously concerned about social services,
23 but can you now look at the same volume, page 76? There
24 we see at paragraph 7 that service reduction in 1997 --
25 you are now in power -- led to ten Children's Social
20
1 Work posts being deleted and a further thirteen
2 vacancies being frozen.
3 MS JOHN: Yes, 1996/1997 was a budget not set by us.
4 1997/1998 was a budget set by ourselves in co-operation
5 with another party. I have to say that this is very
6 difficult for us to do --
7 THE CHAIRMAN: I think, Ms John, you can assume that we have
8 now got the political situation understood in Brent, as
9 you describe it, so -- take it as read that we
10 understand your interpretation of the political
11 situation.
12 MS JOHN: Right, and budget pressures were still an enormous
13 problem for the Council as a whole, this is all sides of
14 the Council, and balancing that budget -- and as you
15 know, the next budget, the Council Tax was increased by
16 over 21 per cent, so we did try to address the
17 underfunding in there, and I can see the concern you are
18 expressing here about service reductions in social
19 services and other services.
20 MS GIBSON: And you can see there, towards the bottom of
21 paragraph 7, in relation to staff, they worked long
22 hours and stress sickness levels were reported to be
23 high.
24 Do you regard that as a satisfactory state of
25 affairs relating to staff working in a very important
21
1 service, safeguarding children in Brent?
2 MS JOHN: No, I do not regard that as satisfactory. I do
3 not think any of us regard that as satisfactory, and
4 addressing the problems of an underfunded Council is
5 what we have been about, since 1998 particularly, but
6 even before, in the year you are talking about.
7 MS GIBSON: And how long does it take to address these
8 problems?
9 MS JOHN: I would say that actually restoring funding --
10 I must remind everybody that 80 per cent of our funding
11 comes from Central Government. Only 20 per cent is
12 raised through local taxation, and although we have
13 concentrated on the Council Tax as an issue here, it is
14 Central Government funding which is key, and we have had
15 very low settlements since the formula freeze was
16 introduced in the Chancellor's statement in 1998, which
17 affected the 1999/2000 budget and so on, so I think this
18 is something that we have found extremely difficult to
19 address, and it does take time.
20 MS GIBSON: We are looking at what you actually did in this
21 situation. Were you aware of that report? Did you read
22 that report at the time?
23 MS JOHN: This report?
24 MS GIBSON: Yes.
25 MS JOHN: Yes, I did.
22
1 MS GIBSON: In relation to what was happening in social
2 services, and again, what response did you have to those
3 concerns about staff working long hours under stress, in
4 this important service?
5 MS JOHN: Well I think it is an important service, and
6 I think staff in our authority, throughout the
7 authority, have been working long hours under
8 considerable stress, and it applies to social services
9 staff as well. We had to balance a budget at the time
10 and we did try to address all the problems that came in
11 front of us, as and when they arrived.
12 (9.30 am)
13 MS GIBSON: So one would expect, having seen that report,
14 that we would see an improving picture, but if we could
15 now look at the inspection report of May 2000?
16 Volume 41, please, page 36, paragraph 1.4.
17 MS JOHN: Yes.
18 MS GIBSON: "We were advised that budget caps had impacted
19 severely upon the middle management of the department
20 and staff to support primary services."
21 Paragraph 1.6 mentions the difficulty in recruiting
22 and retaining staff, which led to dependence on agency
23 staff on short term contracts.
24 MS JOHN: Yes.
25 MS GIBSON: Do you regard that as a satisfactory situation?
23
1 MS JOHN: No, I do not regard that as a satisfactory
2 situation. There is a considerable problem in
3 recruitment of a lot of professionals in London,
4 particularly social services staff, and I think that is
5 generally recognised and we have a problem in
6 recruitment, along with many other London authorities in
7 particular, but there is a nationwide shortage.
8 MS GIBSON: And your response to recruitment issues, I think
9 we heard from Mr Charlett on Monday, was that newly
10 recruited staff were brought in to work on longer hours
11 and for less pay. How was that supposed to attract more
12 staff to social services?
13 MS JOHN: Are you referring to London weighting?
14 MS GIBSON: Yes.
15 MS JOHN: Right, the London weighting issue, and the single
16 status issue, the implementation of that, has not been
17 completed in Brent. Part of that -- and to explain to
18 the Panel, Brent is a Outer London borough, and for
19 purposes of apportioning funds, we get Outer London
20 weighting. The authority, over a good many years, has
21 paid Inner London weighting across all its staff, not
22 just social services, but across all staff. This, of
23 course, we get no SSA allocation for. We only get SSA
24 allocation for Outer London weighting, and there has
25 been a lot of negotiations with appropriate trade unions
24
1 to put together a package which addresses this, and the
2 difference in the two London weightings I think is
3 £1,200, and Outer London weighting is now paid to all
4 new staff coming in. But specifically to address the
5 social services recruitment issues, scarcity payments
6 have been introduced which apply to social services
7 staff as part of a recruitment and retention strategy
8 package.
9 MS GIBSON: Is this now we are talking, rather than then?
10 MS JOHN: Yes, but the now is the response to this report.
11 MS GIBSON: Can you turn to page 37 of that bundle? There
12 is reference there to a department lacking in any clear
13 vision or sense of direction. It is a very sorry state
14 of affairs, is it not, Ms John?
15 MS JOHN: Could you indicate where this is on this page?
16 MS GIBSON: Volume 41, page 37.
17 MS JOHN: 1.7, yes.
18 MS GIBSON: You have that?
19 MS JOHN: Yes.
20 MS GIBSON: It is a sorry state of affairs, is it not?
21 MS JOHN: Well, I think it is a sorry state of affairs, yes,
22 and, of course, we have done an enormous amount to
23 address the criticisms that the SSI made in this, and
24 you will know that there were regular meetings with the
25 SSI all the way through this, and one of the areas that
25
1 the SSI certainly praised Brent about was the political
2 and managerial commitment to making change here, and
3 certainly the politicians who were in the appropriate
4 roles prior to myself and others were regularly meeting
5 with the SSI to try to ensure that we put all the right
6 things in place to address the problems here. They were
7 taken very seriously; there were many meetings at the
8 highest possible level with the senior staff in Social
9 Services and the senior politicians, because it was
10 taken so seriously, and you will no doubt have a record
11 of that.
12 MS GIBSON: Yes, but if you can turn now to page 38, you
13 will see there that at paragraph 1.17, there is
14 reference to the Child Protection Team being more
15 stable, but the quality of initial assessments was
16 variable "and we found some evidence of a recurrence of
17 incidence of child maltreatment, when an earlier such
18 incident had been investigated and closed."
19 Again, that is very worrying, is it not?
20 MS JOHN: It is very worrying -- well, of course it is
21 worrying, I cannot deny that it is worrying and
22 certainly the meetings that were being held at the
23 highest possible level were there to address this, and
24 all of these things have been actioned now and you will
25 find a very different Social Services Department were
26
1 you to visit Brent today.
2 MS GIBSON: Just while we are on this page, 1.18:
3 "The administrative support to the Duty and Child
4 Protection systems had broken down, with hundreds of
5 contacts and referrals that had not been recorded, and
6 were therefore not able to be linked to past or future
7 contacts or referrals. We judge this as creating
8 serious risks ..."
9 MS JOHN: Well the Social Services Inspectorate were very
10 concerned at that time, there is no question about that,
11 and the politicians and the senior managers took this
12 situation extremely seriously and we were in contact
13 with the Social Services Inspectorate at all times
14 during that period, in an effort to address these
15 problems and to get them right.
16 MS GIBSON: Did it surprise you that this system was in this
17 state in May 2000?
18 MS JOHN: It was not satisfactory. I cannot say we were
19 surprised, because these meetings had been taking place
20 all the way along, so the conclusions that were in here
21 were not unknown to us.
22 MS GIBSON: So you had known throughout your administration,
23 from 1996 onwards, that these sort of problems were
24 occurring in the system?
25 MS JOHN: No, I do not think it is correct to say that,
27
1 because the kind of weaknesses and the criticisms made
2 by the SSI, in the various reports, were actioned by
3 officers in the Social Services Department.
4 MS GIBSON: That is the SSI, but it was your responsibility,
5 I think we have established, to find out what is going
6 on in Children's Social Services, not simply to wait
7 until the SSI come periodically. The fact that you have
8 not picked up on these concerns, if that is the
9 position, is in itself a serious defect, is it not?
10 MS JOHN: I do not accept that that is the position. The
11 SSI comes in -- we have inspection systems on local
12 authorities on a regular basis now, in education and
13 everywhere else, and we have -- there are findings from
14 those inspections which we are obliged to address in all
15 areas of the Council's functions, and we do do that, and
16 we had no reason to suppose that any of these actions
17 were not being taken seriously, and were not being put
18 in place, and this applied to all of them.
19 MS GIBSON: Just to go back to the original point, did these
20 conclusions surprise you or were you fully aware of this
21 situation?
22 MS JOHN: What I said to you before was that it was not
23 a surprise in the sense that the meetings with the
24 Social Services Inspectorate had revealed that there
25 were serious concerns, the Inspectorate had serious
28
1 concerns about a number of areas, and it was known to
2 the senior politicians, certainly to the then Leader,
3 the Lead Member for Social Services, and indeed Lead
4 Officers, like the Chief Executive, and so on, and the
5 Director of Social Services, so yes, it was -- the
6 lead-up to this final report was known about, and
7 certainly the findings have indeed been actioned.
8 MS GIBSON: So you knew about these concerns throughout this
9 period, that the Children's Social Services Department
10 was -- well, to look at page 39, the conclusion of this
11 report, it was a situation which the Inspectorate found
12 to be very serious, and you were aware there was a very
13 serious situation brewing in your Children's Social
14 Services Department. What did you do about it?
15 MS JOHN: All Members of the Council were made aware of the
16 visits by the Inspectors, it was well-known when they
17 were in the Town Hall, and who they were speaking to,
18 and the relevant Committees were informed about the
19 meetings that were taking place.
20 MS GIBSON: Committees were informed; what I am asking is:
21 what did you do about the serious situation in
22 Children's Social Services?
23 MS JOHN: All of the recommendations here were actioned.
24 MS GIBSON: But you were saying you were aware of this
25 situation in advance of the report?
29
1 MS JOHN: We were aware -- I personally was aware that the
2 Social Services Inspectorate were coming in on a regular
3 basis and meeting with colleagues, both political and
4 managerial, at the highest possible level, and that
5 there was a serious situation which needed to be
6 addressed, we were all made aware of that, and when the
7 report was written and the conclusions were found, they
8 were addressed.
9 MS GIBSON: But if you had had a proper system in place for
10 keeping yourself informed about the state of social
11 services, you would not need the Inspectorate to tell
12 you in 2000, you would have addressed the problem
13 before. You cannot have it both ways; either your
14 system for informing you of the situation is inadequate,
15 or your response is inadequate. Which one is it?
16 MS JOHN: I think it is much more complex than that, and
17 I do not think it has a simple answer. I think the
18 inspection teams, when they come in, meet regularly with
19 people. We all knew about this, and we knew that there
20 would be a report written which had findings which
21 identified weaknesses, and we were all informed of that.
22 MS GIBSON: But which of those situations is it? Is it that
23 you did not know the position, or that you knew about it
24 and did not do anything?
25 MS JOHN: But my colleagues were the ones who were involved
30
1 in the meetings and were the ones who were involved in
2 doing something about it. All of the rest of the
3 Council actually, not just myself, the rest of the
4 Council were informed about the meetings taking place,
5 and the fact that everything would be actioned, and the
6 Leader of the Council was involved, the Lead Member for
7 Social Services and the Lead Member for Education, so
8 that children's services were properly addressed.
9 MS GIBSON: But do you not accept, and we go back to the
10 Dobson letter, that you as an individual Council and
11 perhaps more particularly then as Deputy Leader of the
12 Council have an individual responsibility to inform
13 yourself of the position and to take action accordingly?
14 MS JOHN: On the way along, it was being dealt with by
15 colleagues and senior officers. When the report was
16 written, of course we were -- it was available for all
17 of us to read and look at.
18 MS GIBSON: Do you accept that it is not an adequate
19 response to rely on colleagues? You have an individual
20 responsibility as a Councillor.
21 MS JOHN: Well I believe I played my full role here. I do
22 not feel that I have neglected my duties in any way
23 here, and I would think that if other colleagues were
24 here also, they would make the same argument. The fact
25 was, there were meetings at the highest possible level
31
1 that included the most senior Councillors in the
2 authority; it included the most senior officials in the
3 authority, including the Chief Executive, and that the
4 conclusions of the Inspectorate were going to be made
5 known to all of us, and indeed they were.
6 MS GIBSON: But looking at this position we have been
7 through this morning, would you not agree that the
8 report of 2000 paints a bleaker picture than the 1996
9 report, so we have seen a deterioration over these four
10 years?
11 MS JOHN: No, I do not accept that. I do not accept that,
12 because I think any inspection report on any service in
13 the Council, including children's services, would always
14 reveal examples of good practice, and areas of weakness,
15 and I do not think that any of these inspection reports
16 are exceptions to that, and certainly 1996 and 1998 had
17 elements within it which they found -- examples of good
18 practice in the Social Services Department and so on,
19 and the commitment politically and managerially was
20 quite specifically praised in the 2000 report, which is
21 in the body of this report.
22 MS GIBSON: But there are, you must accept, serious concerns
23 expressed in the body of that report.
24 MS JOHN: Yes, I do accept there are certain concerns, of
25 course.
32
1 MS GIBSON: Can we now go on to look at budgeting; can
2 I begin by asking you, how do the Council justify
3 spending approximately 50 per cent of the standard
4 spending assessment on children's services?
5 MS JOHN: The standard spending assessment is a mechanism
6 for distribution of grant, it is not a spending target.
7 I do accept however that people judge these spending
8 issues by whether it is at, below or above SSA. Of
9 course, the Council has -- it is a multifunctional
10 organisation, employing thousands of people, and it is
11 obliged to set a legal budget. The Government cannot
12 assume that we are going to spend at the SSA apportioned
13 to each service, otherwise it would not have removed
14 £8.3 million at a stroke. It is clearly a crude
15 mechanism, so there are other responsibilities that the
16 Council has, and other costs, which are not counted in
17 the SSA, which we have to pay for.
18 (9.45 am)
19 MS GIBSON: But can I ask you what your spending is now in
20 relation to the SSA? What proportion do you spend up
21 to?
22 MS JOHN: We are just below SSA now, and if we were to set
23 a budget for next year which was at SSA in all the
24 Council's services, we would have to increase the
25 Council Tax by 13 per cent, which I do not think the
33
1 Government would permit us to do in fact, and we would
2 incur penalties -- I mean, the Government has the
3 capping regime as reserved powers, but it also has
4 something which you may be familiar with, which is
5 called the Council Tax Benefit Subsidiary Limitation
6 Scheme, and councils which spend below SSA, as we have
7 done over many years, are penalised more heavily and in
8 fact we will be going into this next budget round
9 knowing that we will be penalised, we will pay this
10 penalty straight into the Treasury. If we were to spend
11 at SSA, we would be paying almost £1 million straight
12 into the Treasury from our Council Tax payers, so the
13 Government does have severe penalties outside of
14 capping. It also has this yellow card arrangement which
15 you may well be aware of, which councils like Bromley
16 and Kingston have fallen foul of by raising their
17 Council Tax over the percentage levels that the
18 Government recommends.
19 MS GIBSON: When you say now you are spending just below
20 SSA, is that in relation to children's social services
21 or social services globally?
22 MS JOHN: In fact, there was a letter that you put up
23 yesterday which I think Mr Daniel is going to address in
24 his questioning, which appears to indicate that we are
25 going to be spending less this year on this service,
34
1 which actually is not correct, and I think the
2 opportunity will be given to Mr Daniel to correct that,
3 and certainly we did not actually see that letter before
4 it appeared on the screen yesterday.
5 MS GIBSON: Perhaps we will leave that with him to deal
6 with. But looking at the position, you are now spending
7 significantly more of the SSA on children's services
8 than you were previously?
9 MS JOHN: Yes.
10 MS GIBSON: So the position is that there is the ability to
11 do that when you choose to do it?
12 MS JOHN: I do not think it is when we choose to do it. The
13 Council has responsibilities that the Government places
14 upon us, which is governed by statute, and we have
15 actually far less discretion in setting budgets and
16 things like that than -- I think people really assume
17 that we can move money around at will. This is not the
18 case, and our primary duty as elected Members is to set
19 a balanced budget within the law, and certainly some
20 budgets that have been set in Brent have been only just
21 on the edge of lawful.
22 Certainly since the disastrous settlement of
23 1999/2000, we have set growth budgets every year, which
24 have invested in many Council services, but including
25 social services, and we are proud of that. We are
35
1 a caring administration, and we would like to do a great
2 deal more than we have been able to do, but certainly
3 since 1998, the period of calm in the Council, the
4 political and managerial calm, has enabled us to do that
5 investment.
6 MS GIBSON: But the position is that back in 1999, you could
7 have spent more on children's social services if the
8 will had been there, it was not impossible for you to do
9 that?
10 MS JOHN: I do not accept that that was the situation we
11 found ourselves in. The budget gap we had at that time
12 was absolutely huge. When there was a significant
13 problem identified in social services, we turned to
14 balances in order to address that particular problem.
15 I should say incidentally that previously the
16 Council sold off all its assets, £100 million worth of
17 asset sales took place between 1991 and 1996, and when
18 we took control of the Council, there were no balances
19 on which we could draw to cover the risks that the
20 Council faced in the coming year; not least was
21 temporary accommodation, bed and breakfast, homeless
22 families, which currently cost the Council £11 million
23 a year and there is not a specific SSA which covers
24 that, which is why SSA is such a crude indicator of what
25 the Council should be spending and does not actually
36
1 cover things like our contribution to regeneration
2 programmes in the borough and so on. So the SSA of
3 itself, applied to each service, is a very crude
4 indicator and I think the £8.3 million removal by
5 Government indicates that.
6 MS GIBSON: It may be a crude indicator, but you were
7 spending approximately half of the SSA.
8 MS JOHN: But the SSA is not a sum of money, it is a grant
9 allocation that the Council --
10 MS GIBSON: It may not be a sum of money, but it is an
11 indication of how much the Government thinks you would
12 need to spend on that area.
13 MS JOHN: The fact remains that when the Government removed
14 £8.3 million from children's personal social services,
15 we did not take that out of children's personal social
16 services, we spread that pain across the whole Council,
17 in order to make sure that children's personal social
18 services' budget was protected.
19 MS GIBSON: But the position is that in setting your budget,
20 you have to prioritise, correct?
21 MS JOHN: Yes.
22 MS GIBSON: And if you had chosen to prioritise children's
23 social services, you could have done so?
24 MS JOHN: We did prioritise children's services and we did
25 not change the spend on it. It was maintained; in spite
37
1 of the budget difficulties, in spite of the budget gap,
2 we maintained that.
3 MS GIBSON: You say you maintained it, but what you were
4 maintaining was a service which was seriously
5 inadequate.
6 MS JOHN: I have to say that the funding of services
7 throughout the Council was seriously inadequate, and
8 that has been something which this administration has
9 addressed since 1998. Every single area of the Council
10 was not spending SSA.
11 MS GIBSON: If you had wished to spend at SSA, what would
12 have been the consequence in terms of Council Tax
13 payments?
14 MS JOHN: Well, we could not have -- every single year since
15 we have set budgets in this Council, whether it is in
16 co-operation with another party or whether it is
17 ourselves, we have raised the Council Tax above the
18 percentage level recommended by Government every single
19 year. The first year we set Council Tax in co-operation
20 with another party, we raised it by 21 per cent. We are
21 going to raise the Council Tax again in this coming
22 year. We have not had the rate support grant settlement
23 yet, that comes at the end of November/beginning of
24 December, but when we do, we will undoubtedly raise the
25 Council Tax again, and included in it, agreed growth
38
1 already, is an extra £1.3 million for children's
2 services specifically and there will be a total of
3 £4 million for social services in general. Now we hope
4 to add to that as the budget-making process unfolds over
5 the next few months, but that is the situation at the
6 moment, so we are committed to investing in these
7 services, and I think I have demonstrated that this
8 morning.
9 MS GIBSON: Your pledge in the vision document for the
10 Council is to keep Council Tax at or below the London
11 average.
12 MS JOHN: Yes, that is right.
13 MS GIBSON: Looking at the situation in 1999, would you have
14 been able to achieve that and spend more money on social
15 services?
16 MS JOHN: In 1998, we gave five key pledges to the
17 electorate, one of which is the one you have just said,
18 which is at or below the London average Council Tax. We
19 also had the corporate strategy for the whole Council.
20 We had a clear vision of where we wanted the Council to
21 be at the end of our four years. At or below the London
22 average for Council Tax is not incompatible with having
23 growth budgets and improving services. The projected
24 average Council Tax for London, band D, for this coming
25 budget-making process is forecast to be about £907. At
39
1 the moment, our Council Tax is £799.49; the London
2 average is £842. So we are below, not enormously below,
3 but we can still keep our pledge and we can still raise
4 the Council Tax and invest in services, particularly
5 Children's Services.
6 MS GIBSON: Thank you, Ms John. I have no more questions.
7 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Ms Gibson. Mr Turner,
8 please.
9 MR TURNER: Ms John, when did the Cabinet arrangement that
10 you have described to Ms Gibson come into being?
11 MS JOHN: We introduced that -- we began thinking about it
12 in 1998, because the Government was going to introduce
13 a Local Government Act which was going to oblige
14 councils to modernise the way they took decisions, and
15 we introduced that in -- we had a special Council
16 meeting in September 1999 to bring in interim
17 arrangements.
18 MR TURNER: So prior to the latter part of 1999, it was the
19 old arrangement, with you meeting with Chairs of various
20 Subcommittees and so on?
21 MS JOHN: Yes.
22 MR TURNER: Did you ever feel deprived of information about
23 the details of what was going on? Did you feel you had
24 a good handle on things as Deputy Leader, as you then
25 were?
40
1 MS JOHN: Yes, I did feel I had a good handle on things. Of
2 course, I did not have an actual responsibility for
3 a service area, like the Chairs, now Lead Members, do,
4 and there are different responsibilities, but I felt
5 a strong sense of duty about collective responsibility,
6 and still do. I am a long term resident of the borough
7 and I am passionate about my borough, I really am.
8 I want to see it succeed and I want to see Brent Council
9 being up there amongst the best, and I am totally
10 committed to that.
11 MR TURNER: I want to grapple for just a moment further with
12 this SSA point, because it has been repeatedly made, and
13 if it is a good point, then obviously you can be judged
14 on it, but if it is a bad point, we need to be clear
15 about it.
16 First of all, why was it not realistic for Brent to
17 spend the full SSA on Children's Services?
18 MS JOHN: It was not realistic at that time because we had
19 the budget problems that we had, and we were not
20 spending at SSA throughout the Council, and not only
21 that, if we had tried to raise the Council Tax to cover
22 our budget up to SSA, we ran the risk -- and in lobbying
23 Ministers, this risk was pointed out to us -- that we
24 would be capped, and not only that, we would incur
25 penalties, which we did do, under the Council Tax
41
1 Benefit Subsidy Limitation Scheme, which is a very
2 draconian scheme, which affects, strangely enough,
3 Councils who spend below SSA much more than councils who
4 spend above.
5 MR TURNER: You touched on this penalty arrangement, the
6 CTBSL, as it is called. Did I understand your evidence
7 right that if the Council this year, this financial
8 year, spent at SSA, there would be nearly £1 million in
9 this penalty?
10 MS JOHN: Yes.
11 MR TURNER: I am right about that?
12 MS JOHN: This is for the budget-making process we have just
13 begun, so it is setting the Council Tax for next year.
14 MR TURNER: That is for 2002/2003?
15 MS JOHN: Yes, if we set a budget at SSA, we would have to
16 increase the Council Tax by approximately -- I do not
17 know the exact percentage, but it is around about 13 per
18 cent and we would incur penalties under the Council Tax
19 Benefit Subsidy Limitation Scheme of £948,000, it is
20 getting on for £1 million anyway, which would go
21 straight to the Treasury.
22 MR TURNER: Are we to deduce from the fact that in the year
23 1999/2000, the children's SSA dropped from, in round
24 figures, 28 to 21, in other words that nearly £8 million
25 dropped out of the picture, that somebody in Central
42
1 Government took the view that Brent's needs had reduced
2 by that figure?
3 MS JOHN: No, not at all. That was a formula change, which
4 removed the ethnicity criterion from children's personal
5 social services, thus reducing it by £8.3 million.
6 MR TURNER: Tell us in just a sentence what that ethnicity
7 criteria -- how it operated, what it meant.
8 MS JOHN: It means that there is extra -- in the SSA
9 formula, a regard is given to the extra costs involved
10 in delivering services to a multicultural borough like
11 ours, where there may be language problems, there may be
12 extra deprivation problems associated with particular
13 community groups, which are addressed in that way. The
14 Government believed that it no longer needed to pay
15 ethnicity as a part of the SSA system, thus penalising
16 boroughs with high ethnic populations across London, but
17 not exclusively London, also it applied to Birmingham,
18 to Leicester, to quite a number of other councils who
19 lost significant amounts of money. We were the biggest
20 loser.
21 MR TURNER: When that £8 million-odd went, you have told us
22 that that obviously could have been taken out of
23 children's services; was it?
24 MS JOHN: No.
25 MR TURNER: You have told us it was spread across the
43
1 borough. What other sort of needy areas were impacted
2 by that reduction?
3 MS JOHN: Well, for example education, it is a priority of
4 the Government's, and we are criticised year on year by
5 not passporting the whole of the education SSA straight
6 to schools. We have had letters on a regular basis from
7 David Blunkett's office, criticising us for not doing
8 that. Clearly we have to balance it and children's
9 services in comparison to schools, housing, environment,
10 which have a higher priority.
11 MR TURNER: Putting this very crudely in lay terms, there
12 are, I imagine, a number of things an authority can do
13 in your position to raise more money; these are things
14 you might have done, I guess, in 1998/1999 and
15 1999/2000. First of all, I suppose you could raise
16 Council Tax. Did you?
17 MS JOHN: Yes.
18 MR TURNER: By how much?
19 MS JOHN: I cannot remember the figures for 1999/2000 -- we
20 have raised above the Government percentage every year
21 since we have set a budget. May I look in my paper --
22 MR TURNER: If you have made a note that will help, yes,
23 give us the exact figure.
24 MS JOHN: The budget of 1999/2000, 15 per cent.
25 MR TURNER: Council Tax raise?
44
1 MS JOHN: Yes.
2 MR TURNER: You have told the Inquiry you are about to raise
3 it again --
4 MS JOHN: Yes.
5 MR TURNER: -- in the present budget; by what anticipated
6 percentage?
7 MS JOHN: At the moment we are looking towards between 9 and
8 10 per cent, although we do not have the rate support
9 grant settlement yet, so we cannot make a final --
10 MR TURNER: I understand. Practically speaking, would it
11 have been realistic to raise Council Tax any further?
12 MS JOHN: We would not have been permitted to do that,
13 particularly in the year that you are referring to,
14 1999/2000, I think it was made clear by Government, they
15 knew that Brent was in a particularly difficult
16 situation, and in fact because the Government's
17 imperative is to keep Council Tax rises at what they
18 regard as a sensible level, they did in fact help us out
19 with a damping grant of £2.4 million.
20 This had the effect of not improving the base budget
21 position of the Council, which would have been helpful,
22 because that would have gone into the next year, but
23 instead was a damping grant for one year only, so could
24 only have been put against the costs of raising the
25 Council Tax, so in fact it effectively lowered the
45
1 Council Tax. Every £1 million of spend is £11 on the
2 Council Tax.
3 MR TURNER: Very well. A second area whereby money
4 I suppose may be raised is through cuts in services.
5 MS JOHN: Yes.
6 MR TURNER: You have set out in great detail the historic
7 background to that, and I need not ask you to repeat
8 that, but during 1998 to the present, have you had to
9 implement cuts in services apart from, first of all,
10 social services?
11 MS JOHN: We had to do that in the budget for 1999/2000,
12 there had to be cuts to cover this £17.5 million gap,
13 and we had to go out and explain that to our residents
14 as well, and all our community groups. But actually,
15 the kind of savings that we have tried to find in each
16 area of the Council's activities have been efficiency
17 savings which should be able to be found year on year to
18 enable us to redirect spend to the areas we regard as
19 priorities.
20 MR TURNER: The third area, I imagine, from which a local
21 authority can get any money is its reserves, its
22 savings. You have told us that Brent was not in a happy
23 position about savings; can you give us any more detail
24 about the picture from 1998 to the present in relation
25 to savings?
46
1 MS JOHN: Our District Auditor, Pricewaterhouse Coopers,
2 were very critical of the Council, not run by us but by
3 others, when the reserves were down to virtually nil,
4 because the Council's risks could not be covered that
5 way. Since then, we have strenuously sought to slowly,
6 slowly build up until we have around £4.9 million in
7 reserves now which is what our District Auditor thinks
8 is the minimum we should have to cover the Council's
9 risks.
10 MR TURNER: Just to set that in context, what sort of figure
11 ought you to have if the money was there?
12 MS JOHN: Councils like Camden for example have reserves of
13 something like £73 million.
14 MR TURNER: During that difficult period, 1998 to the
15 present, have you drawn on reserves for social services,
16 and in particular for children's work?
17 MS JOHN: Yes, we did. That is precisely what we did and
18 what was referred to yesterday. In July 1999, we took
19 £250,000 out of reserves to put that straight into
20 children's social services. We have also just recently
21 done that as well to address issues from the Social
22 Services Inspectorate, and we have drawn on reserves
23 again to put money in which in a full year would be
24 £420,000. This will of course go in the base budget for
25 next year.
47
1 MR TURNER: You have explained to the Inquiry something
2 about the London weighting picture, and the bringing
3 into line of Brent as an Outer London borough. What
4 were the alternatives at that time? It is stating the
5 obvious to say "makes it less attractive for new staff"
6 if they are getting £1,200 a year less, and that is
7 a fairly obvious point. Were there other alternatives
8 at that stage realistically, or not?
9 MS JOHN: We did turn our attention to how we could address
10 this, as a Council-wide issue; there are other
11 professionals which it is difficult to recruit as well,
12 but particularly in social services a package of
13 recruitment and retention measures has gone into place
14 now which includes a scarcity payment. There is the
15 honorarium referred to yesterday, but there are now
16 a package of measures and a real strategy for dealing
17 with this.
18 MR TURNER: I am just projecting back a little bit to
19 mid-1999 --
20 MS JOHN: I am sorry.
21 MR TURNER: -- the period the Inquiry is concerned about,
22 just to get a picture of the alternatives at that stage
23 to the remodelling of Inner and Outer London weighting.
24 MS JOHN: There was an alternative and sometimes you can
25 strike a balance between, if you are paying Inner London
48
1 weighting to all of the staff in the authority, you can
2 be then charged with the fact that you are not spending
3 enough on frontline services in a particular area.
4 Clearly if we were not having SSA allocations which
5 reflected Inner London weighting, we should be doing
6 something to address that, so the authority could have
7 a more balanced view, and it applies to all staff.
8 MR TURNER: Am I right that at that stage, when those
9 difficult decisions were being made, existing staff
10 stayed on their Inner London weighting, that was not
11 changed?
12 MS JOHN: No, that was not changed. We would have had
13 significant problems with our trades unions if we had
14 tried to lower the salaries of staff already employed by
15 the authority.
16 MR TURNER: Understood. The hours difference under the old
17 and new arrangements was the difference between 35 and
18 37; am I right about that?
19 MS JOHN: Yes, and in fact there are different hours worked
20 by different groups of staff across the authority. It
21 is another of these anomalous situations which have
22 built up for historical reasons.
23 MR TURNER: And am I also right that in relation to manual
24 workers, the position remained unchanged?
25 MS JOHN: The position remained unchanged.
49
1 MR TURNER: They continued to get the enhanced London
2 weighting?
3 MS JOHN: Yes.
4 MR TURNER: But not, in that instance, social workers. How
5 do you grapple with that sort of issue, Ms John, when
6 you are faced with it?
7 MS JOHN: The issue gets grappled with through negotiations
8 with the trade union. What we needed to do was to have
9 a coherent policy across the Council and in fact in many
10 instances -- again, I do not want to burden the Inquiry
11 Panel with keep continually repeating this, but the
12 business unit culture raised anomalies of pay across the
13 Council which are unacceptable and now insupportable,
14 and addressing that and making that right with existing
15 staff and the recruitment of new staff is something we
16 have been grappling with over a long period of time.
17 MR TURNER: Mr Bamford, in his evidence, described in detail
18 the sense of sort of shrinkage in his section brought
19 about by corporation contributions, and I would like you
20 just to talk about that. He talked -- and it was not
21 entirely clear what period, but I think 1998/1999; he
22 talked about 5 per cent followed by 3 per cent followed
23 by 1 per cent; we were approaching cuts of 10 per cent
24 I think on his very broad figures. How did corporate
25 contributions work, and are they still the arrangements?
50
1 MS JOHN: No, corporate contributions ceased in 1998/1999.
2 They came about because -- again, it is to do with
3 devolving the Council down into its separate business
4 units. There was no provision for paying for, apart
5 from one unit buying a service off another -- it was
6 a crazy system which we objected to and we have tried to
7 address since; buying services off another unit, but in
8 order to pay for the central costs -- and in fact
9 I think it has been referred to to the Inquiry Panel,
10 the fact that human resources advice was not clear
11 across the Council. Corporate standards disappeared.
12 So this was a way of paying for things like IT and so on
13 and was paid to the centre of the Council.
14 Of course, the best value accounting system now
15 requires us to include centre costs --
16 MR TURNER: Infrastructure costs?
17 MS JOHN: Infrastructure costs in the SSA, it is allowed for
18 in the SSA.
19 MR TURNER: You mentioned a number of things that are not
20 allowed for in the SSA, and you specifically mentioned
21 the question of £11 million in Brent in respect of
22 homelessness.
23 MS JOHN: Mm.
24 MR TURNER: Is that homelessness figure reflected at all in
25 SSA?
|
