Transcript

[BLANKAUDIO] Sit to the building to your left, and I forgot to put my microphone on, and this will of course recur throughout today's meeting because I always forget about the microphone. [BLANKAUDIO] And I forgot to put my microphone on. And this will, of course, recur throughout today's meeting, because I always forget about the microphone. Can all attendees please mute microphones when not speaking? And in line with our guidance on social media, I'm happy for anyone attending today's meeting, including members of the committee, to use social media provided this doesn't disturb the business of the meeting. Couple of items of news. At the summer party for looked after children and their carers was held on Sunday at working leisure center. It was a really great event with lots of activities. And so many of the parents and children enjoyed themselves so much that they entirely spontaneously thanked us as they left and said what a wonderful time they'd had, which was amazing. So I would really like to thank Karen Basmagian and Rachel Arton and the rest of the team who put together such a fantastic day. And a special mention goes to our very own Rachel Lake and Adam Lake, who spent five hours in a very hot room with a very short break making candy floss and popcorn, and they contributed all of the ingredients themselves. You did a sterling job as well, Rachel, so thank you.

[APPLAUSE] And I think spurred on by Sunday's event, Rachel and I would like to ask all councilors to consider contributing 50 pounds from their community fund or personally to the Christmas party fund to buy tumbola prizes. So if you're happy to do this, please let me know and I will make the arrangements. Thank you for that. Moving on to our next item, apologies for absence. We have apologies from John O'Reilly, and he is substituted today by Becky Rush. So welcome, Becky. And now I'd like to move to the minutes of the last meeting and invite members to make comments regarding factual accuracy. Are members happy to approve the minutes as a true and accurate record of proceedings? I agree. Thank you. Declarations of interest next. Do any members have any interest to declare? Okay, thank you. We have only one public question and that comes from Amanda Lazenby. And I wondered whether Amanda, there was a follow up question that you wanted to ask. Good morning, yes. Just a very, very brief question from me, because I haven't really had time to digest the response, if I'm honest. But my question really is, can we make a commitment to monitor appeals lodged against the HCPs issued because to say that the recovery plan is a success, because you've reduced the waiting times for needs assessments is one thing. But if at the same time the appeals is absolutely through the roof, gone up to like 80 something percent, it's really important to quantify the HCPs quality. And can we decide we're going to do that and measure that and publish that alongside the amount of HCPs that are issued? Because they're meaningless if the plan is not right for the individual child or young person. Thanks very much for that, Amanda. And I will ask Claire Curran to respond. I will also say that this is a subject that we will be returning to in our penultimate item today, which is about performance metrics. But Claire, can I ask you to respond? Thank you, Chairman, and thank you to Mr. Lazenby for asking this question. And I wanted to reassure her that yes, I do monitor closely not only the number of plans issued each month. Also the number of appeals that are launched by parents and families in all categories. And I'm also closely monitoring the number of plans which are judged in our regular audits to be judged good or outstanding. So I just wanted to reassure her that yes, and I'm happy to make that commitment. Thank you, Claire. Okay, we now move on to item five, which is the cabinet response to select committee recommendations. And here again, I would like to make a few comments and then I'll invite other comments from members. We're looking at the additional budget allocation, the cabinet response to that. And to our recommendations on the SEND capital program. So if I start first of all with the cabinet response to our recommendations on the additional budget. So we hope that the report on the play and leisure research will address all the criteria we identified in item four of our recommendations. And we'd be grateful for confirmation that all the points we've identified will be addressed. For example, we believe it will be essential to understand the impact of any new strategy by comparison with today. The delivery details of the new integrated play and how transition will be achieved. Where integrated play will not meet the needs of children with additional needs and disabilities, and how it's anticipated that these needs will be met. So the response that we received to our recommendation number four about this report seemed a little bland. And we believe that there are very specific items that need to be covered. And so I would ask if cabinet and the service could look again at our recommendations and ensure that all those criteria are addressed in the report, which we assume we will see later on this year. Again, on play and leisure, and as everyone who ever comes along to these meetings will know, this is a subject which is close to the heart of members. So again, on play and leisure facilities for children with additional needs and disabilities. Committee members will remember that we asked that the all additional needs and disability schemes should be funded to ensure equivalent capacity in 24/25, as in 22/23. And we were really pleased that cabinet agreed to the estimate put forward by the service, the estimate of the cost to restore that provision in this year to the level in 22/23. But unfortunately, although cabinet agreed to the funding estimate of 370,000 from the estimate that was provided by the service. We've since learned that this estimate of what restoration would cost significantly underestimated the true cost, which is actually 630,000, an astonishing 70% underestimate. And the cabinet has not yet agreed to make up this gap. We've asked the cabinet to reconsider and I attended cabinet to make a direct appeal to make a direct appeal on the subject. And given the scale of the miscalculation and estimating the cost, we hope for a positive outcome. Before I move on to our comments on the response to the Senate capital program recommendations, would any members like to make any further comment? First of all, Rachel and then Johnson. Thank you, Chairman. I appreciate the fact that estimates or working to the future can vary. But as you said, 70%, I think our first response is, or my first response would be, that is a ridiculous ask from a budget that has already been set on the old figures. I appreciate, and I, like you, would look forward to the cabinet supporting our request for this new amount. But 70%, if we'd just gone in and said, can we have 70% more? I think the answer would have been no. But I think we should be investigating why it was 70% out. Because that, I would have thought, was a fundamental issue that needs to be dealt with. And like you, I hope that the cabinet will support us. But the truth is, in my heart, I can understand why, if it's too difficult, because of this very late change in the amount that we need, when budgets have already been set. Thank you. Thanks, Rachel. Jonathan? Thank you, I have comments on the other item, if that's okay, Chair. The report explains why the decision was made to continue with the proposed changes to the Send Capital program. My particular concern is with the Carrington School in Redhill, which is in the southeast quadrant, and the report says that that's okay, that it's a fair distribution across the quadrants, and it presents various tables. But it doesn't explain why what's being proposed is okay. It sets out how there's an even distribution of the different types of send provision, and an even distribution of send provision across the county. But what it doesn't do is set out whether or not the program going forward has an even distribution of the different types of send provision across the county. And it's that which will determine whether parents and families have provision near where they live, or whether this program will result in high home to school transport costs going forward. So, what my concern is, is I still don't understand the why in respect to it being correct in the cabinet size to not go ahead with the new send provision at Carrington School. I also don't see any evidence in the paper presented as to whether this is a good way forward. So, for example, the Betchwood Vale school proposed near Dorking. I always get that wrong, I won't say Betchwood, Betchworth, is a coin unit. So, where is the equivalent coin provision in the next two or three years going to be in the east of the county? So, I guess we can look at this in more detail through a task group. I just want to put it on record that the response, I don't think, is sufficient in terms of us being able to be assured that the provision going forward is what we need, and what our families expect us to provide. Thank you. Thank you. Chris? Yeah, just a quick follow up on what Jonathan's just said. When you look at the tables, there's a hell of a lot of red, saying they're a shortfall. Some of them are years ahead, some of them are much more frequent. Just like to understand, following on from what Jonathan said, how our plans will actually be able to deal with that. Because some of those are 100%, so we aren't going to get into any of those. So that just needs to be some clear explanation as to how that's going to be addressed. Thank you. I mean, I won't ask the cabinet member to comment, because it's probably unfair to ask you to comment at this stage. If there's anything you would like to say, Claire, then please do. I've got something to say about the Send Capital program as well. So I don't know whether you'd like to comment now, or not comment, or come in when I've said my piece. Thank you. Okay, picking, sorry, Jonathan? If there's no response now, I think what I'd welcome also is an individual response. And maybe other members close to other affected schools might welcome this too. Setting out the why in relation to Carrington School. So the head, before the new school term starts, has some more information than the table of data. And I have more information to go back to parents if they ask, in a way that can be shared publicly. Although there's some data here, as I've said, I don't think it's a complete set of data. But I think it's the commentary, the rationale underpinning it, which also needs to be shared publicly, which currently isn't. Thank you. I mean, I think it's appropriate for us to take that question away on Carrington School, and ask that you receive a specific response on that. I don't think it'd be fair to ask Claire to deal with that specific in this meeting. Is that okay? Good, okay. Just trying to summarize where we are in respect of the response to the Cent Capital Program. We recognize that our recommendations weren't agreed. And the response from cabinet is extremely detailed. But as other members have stated, we've still not been able to gain assurance that the current and projected needs of children and young people by locality will be met by the current and projected provision of places by locality. The data on need and the data on provision uses different types of categorization. And we're unable to compare it, it's not transparent. So the issue, as Jonathan has stated, is not just about the number of school places, it's about having the right school places in the right locality, or the best solution that's achievable, excuse me. Select committee members hear increasingly from parents about difficulties finding school places for children with the most complex needs. We hear from schools, especially primary schools, that teachers are on their knees, to quote from a recent survey conducted amongst primary schools. Because children whose needs cannot be met in a mainstream environment often appear to be stranded there. So we're unclear whether the required level of specialist provision will be available to meet increasingly complex needs. As I said when I spoke at Kappana, education place sufficiency has sufficient implications for the development, life chances and wellbeing of children and young people in Surrey. As well as for Surrey County Council's revenue budget on independent school places and home to school transport, which we're going to be discussing at length later, and some of the figures involved are just incredible. For this reason we've decided to set up a task subgroup to investigate whether we have the right school places in the right location based on comparing need with provision. We can't undo the cabinet's decision to proceed with the capital programme as proposed, but through scrutiny we hope to provide assurance that we have the best solution that can be achieved given the many complexities of the issues involved. Thank you. Claire, please do comment. But I understand that you won't be able to provide an answer to any specifics. That would be most unfair. Thank you, Chairman. I think all members here are aware that the ASCEND AP Capital Programme was actually agreed and launched back in 2019 when the capital investment of £260 million was put aside to deliver a really ambitious capital programme for ASCEND and for alternative provision to create around 5,700 state-maintained specialist places through over, well, around 85 different projects. And those are centres and specialist schools in partnership with a number of specialist free schools that are coming through the DFE and re-providing a number of alternative provisioned short-stay schools. We're at a position now where we have delivered 43 of those projects and we have 11 school projects in contract and due to complete between now and September next year. And there are just 15 of the remaining projects which are still to be awarded and projects mobilised. So, all in all, that ASCEND AP Capital Programme is absolutely in progress. Schools and centres are being and have been built and it is on target to deliver around those 5,700 places. Those 5,700 places are very closely aligned to targets which are in our Safe Devolve Agreement with the Department for Education and are absolutely necessary if we are to perform as we have undertaken with the Department of Education in terms of the conditions of that agreement. I very much welcome the select committee taking this additional work that they feel is necessary to scrutinise the Capital Programme. You will be very much aware from all the information I've circulated, not just to this committee, but to all members, that owing to really, really significant issues of inflation in the construction industry, particularly our current programme, just cannot be afforded within that £260 million overall budget. And so we were compelled to make savings against... To cut back on our programme to ensure that what we could deliver could be delivered within that agreed budget, the budget that was agreed at full council in February. And therefore we had to take six projects, as you're well aware, including the Carrington School project, out of the programme. You know, it's regrettable, but it's a fact of life that, unfortunately, due to the constraints of that £260 million budget, we just can't do everything that we hoped to be able to do back in 2019. So, as I said, I very much welcome the work that this committee will do. And I know that you're trying really hard to support the work that is being done by the service, and I hope that we can find ourselves in line. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Claire. I think we'll... Oh, Liz. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you for that, Claire. I do have to say that in my particular area, in Cranley and Newhurst Division, that, you know, I was really disappointed to see that the Gosden House withdrawal of expansion, I think that was an additional 62 places. I mean, I think we're really poorly served in my area, really poorly served. And I have got, you know, several cases ongoing at the moment of parents, you know, really feeling unsupported and, you know, trying to get their children into, you know, special schools is really difficult. And, you know, that reduction in our area of those places will be particularly heartfelt, I think. But more worrying than that, to be honest. I can understand, you know, the cost of increase and cuts, difficult decisions have to be made. And I do appreciate that, Claire. What is more concerning is the huge backlog of maintenance on that particular school as well. And that hasn't happened overnight. And, you know, we seem to be doing the maintenance work and foregoing the extra places. And that is worrying. And I would like to know more about, you know, separately, from officers, about how that maintenance work has allowed to build up perhaps, and what impact that has had eventually on those additional places. But my plea is also that, you know, where I am and in the eastern villages sort of area of Surrey, we really are, we really need more, desperately need more support. I'm trying to get some things going, you know, rhyme time for the library, which have been hugely supportive. And thank you to everybody in that library service for helping. And I'm currently trying to get like a stay and play for parents as well. But there is nothing really being provided by Surrey in my area. And that is deeply regrettable and something that does have to change. Thank you. Thank you, Liz. I think, Rachel, did you want to come back? I did, because everything that we've been saying really sounds very depressive. And I'm sitting here and I refuse to feel guilty because I've already had a free school built within the last few years. Opposite, I will be having a new all-through special needs school running approximately a year late. So I'm hoping it's one that's going to be completed next. And if the children from the previous site don't move into that, then the previous site won't become a satellite site for another special needs school in Weybridge. So all in all, my division has done exceedingly well out of the budget. But may I say that considering I joined Surrey County Council in 1997 originally, because I'm a recycled county council, I did eight years and then I came back in 2013. And this is my 19th year back. But my division was always classed as a division where we had a national deprivation level. We had high special needs. I still have primary young children crossing the water and going out to other villages to start school at five, because the main centre fills not only the schools in the centre but the schools in my division as well. So people living opposite a school in my division have to travel to go to school. So the fact that Walton appears to have been generously looked after, it has waited a very, very long time for it to happen. And so I'd just like to say thank you. It is happening. I'm seeing the results of the investment that Surrey made over the last few years. And that I'm sure they will get round to something for the other divisions as well. And I do think the task group will be an excellent way of feeding in the relevant information on where places need and desperately need and the time frame on that from that information. But there is one question that I'm not sure if it's going to come up later in the agenda, and it was something that Claire, our cabinet member, happened to say when she was agreeing about the AHC piece. And I'd like to say that if we determine that the quality is not meeting the standards that it should, will we be claiming back the money that we paid for these, because these are not inexpensive to pay for. They are very expensive pieces of work. And we have a large budget that's gone into these. So if we do find that it is the case that what appears to be quite a few have not met the basic needs, that we will reclaim that money back please. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel. I think probably we should just take those questions away, actually, rather than putting Claire on the spot, because she wouldn't have been prepared for that. So if we could take those questions away, please, that would be great. Thank you. Our next item is actions and recommendations tracker and the forward work plan. And it's on pages 49 to 60, I must put my glasses on, to 68 of the agenda pack. I believe we are up to date in terms of responses apart from on adult learning and skills. So we haven't yet had a response to our recommendations on adult learning or adult learning and skills recommendations that we made at our April meeting. So those are overdue. But our next meeting is on the 12th. Oh, sorry. Sorry, we were expecting a response early next week. That's great. So we'll have them for our next meeting on the 12th of September. Just a reminder to members that we have a very meaty agenda in September, and I want everybody to have a good rest because you're going to need it for the 12th of September. We have scrutiny of the end to end HCP process review and the HCP recovery plan. A scrutiny topic. Miss children missing education. And we will also hear the results of the task subgroup. The recent task subgroup looking at the experience of parents and carers of children with additional needs and disabilities. So please set your expectation that the meeting will continue until probably 3 o'clock on the 12th of September. But it is a fairly meaty agenda. If we know it's going to be a very long meeting, may I suggest you order lunch in for everyone? Well, that's an excellent idea, Richard. I'll certainly ask. I don't know if I can say that we can definitely do it, but I will ask. Thank you. Moving on to the main item for today, which is home to school transport assistance. What we are doing today is receiving an update from the service on progress made since December 2023, which is when we last looked at home to school transport. We're going to look at the latest position on KPIs, the impact of the HCP recovery plan to date and how the service sees the future for home to school transport. And anybody who's looking for this report is on pages 69 to 118 of the agenda pack. So before introducing the witnesses, I'll just make a few comments. We have seen huge progress in the past year on improving home to school transport process, transport delivery and communications with parents. And the travel team, the whole team should be very proud of what you've achieved since our last update. As I said, in December, improvement work has continued as the family voice sorry report, which is included in the pack attests. However, some issues remain stubbornly difficult to resolve, such as ensuring that families have a clear roadmap from application to delivery, and most importantly, collaboration between the send admissions and transport team. This last issue has significant implications and needs to be prioritized for attention because we're in the position where parents may unwittingly choose a school or have a school allocated to them, which means a very long journey for their children when they might have they had a choice chosen a different school. And just to put the cost of home to school transport in perspective, and this is a cost that is challenging for every council in the country. We spent a staggering 65 million pounds on home to school transport in twenty three, twenty four. And already this year, we're predicting a seven point four million overspend. We're spending in excess of forty five million pounds a year and rising on taxis and the cost of taxi transport rose because of driver cost and fuel cost by twenty eight percent last year. It is a national issue, but it's also important to understand how we in Syria are looking to address this. And this is at least part of the reason why we are concerned to be sure that we have the best solution in terms of having the right school places for children based on their needs in the right locality. So at that point, I'd like to introduce the witnesses and we have read the report, so I don't think we need to go through the report. I think we'll go straight into questions. But I would like to ask Claire, who is the council member, if she would like to say a few words after members of the team have introduced themselves. So certainly early, early on, this is of a general nature, but it's to do with this report. Members not here, but there are many members are concerned at the length of this report. This is 50 pages plus we've had in a pre meet considerable concern about the length of the report. We had a meeting with Rachel and her officers about a month or so ago where we clearly said we were looking for reports that were much shorter. If they needed to be that long, put them in appendices. But there should be a summary. The summary should be of two or three pages, 10 pages, maybe 12 pages maximum. But for 50 pages, there are members here that found it particularly difficult to actually get through it all amongst other items that are on the agenda. That was mentioned at that meeting with Rachel and her officers a month or so ago. Now, I know officers want to give us as much information as possible, and I understand that. But we are lay people and we do not know the intricacies and details that officers may be knowing some of the subjects. And I think it's vitally important that this statement is made again. And it was agreed at the meeting with Rachel and her senior officers that they would take that comment on board. And at the next meeting, we have this is a really important subject that I'm not decrying any aspect of this. But when you have 50 odd pages to read, plus other items as well, it is very challenging for members of the committee to do that. And I'm not alone on that. Other members, some aren't here that feel really strongly about this. So I think we just need to be cognizant of that. I won't say it was a promise from Rachel, but she certainly took on board what was said at that meeting with the senior officers. And to have this back within a couple of months is disappointing. Let me say that not decrying the work of the officers in any way, and they want to give us the information. But I think they have to be aware that members have lots of things on their agendas and to actually have these sort of reports. More than one. And as the chairman's already said, the September meeting is going to be a real monster. We really need to be much more focused in how the reports are put together and the conclusions and recommendations. So that members can actually understand them quite clearly and don't have the 50 plus pages. And that's only one example. We can go back in time. We know of other reports that are much, much longer. So I just say that, Chairman. I think it needs to be said before we get into questions. That's of a general nature. That's just not on this report. This report is a good example. But it has happened before. And we did ask for that. And Rachel and her officers did understand what we were saying. Thank you. Thanks, Chris. As a result of the pre meeting, I did write to Rachel and ask if we could go to the format of an executive summary, no more than two pages of main body of the report, 10 maximum 10 pages and any data and supplementary information in appendices. And I think what must have happened is that the message that we delivered a few months ago obviously didn't make it through. Unfortunately, Chris. But I believe that it has now. And I guess we'll find out when it comes to the September reports. So on that note, can the team please introduce themselves? Good morning, everybody. I'm Jerry Hughes and I'm the assistant director for support services within Children, Families, Lifelong Learning. I'm Chris McShee. I'm one of the team managers in the school transport team. My role has been very much in the transformation work over the past 18 months. My background is actually eligibility as well. Good morning. My name is Matthew Wynette. I'm the travel assessment team manager. My role deals with the eligibility assessments and delivery of transport operations. Good morning. My name is Patricia Denny. I'm the director of quality practice, relationships and support responsible for home to school transport travel assistance. I'm wondering, Claire, whether it would be sensible to introduce Suzanne as well. Morning. Suzanne Smith, director of commissioning for transformation, and I've just started supporting the team with the new member steering group. Thank you. I think at this point, I'll hand over to Claire to say a few words before we open the questions. Thanks, Claire. Thank you. Thank you very much, Chairman. I didn't really want to say too much because I know there are lots of questions to get through on this report. I acknowledge this is a very full and very informative report, and I think it covers a lot of really important detail. And I know that that's what the committee had asked for when it was last scrutinizing this issue in December last year. So this report is setting out the performance of the service, really analyzing the demand for the service and how the service responds to that demand and puts transport in place for the very large number of children which are taken to school each day. It's setting out details of the performance of the service, how the performance stacks up against the targets which have been set. It's also detailing how the service has responded to the directorate recovery plan on EHCP timeliness, the action that has been taken and what priorities there are for realigning the service even more against demand for the future. One of the really important issues, obviously, that we'll touch on this morning as much as anything is the financial position of the service. And you'll know that even in month three of this current financial year, we do forecast that the service will be overspent probably to the tune of £7 million over the current budget that is set. Not a position that we want to be in, but the reasons for that are set out in the report. I just wanted to remind members that every single day this authority is spending more than £450,000 every day on taking children to school. And we have set up a separate oversight group to really drill down into the reasons for the level of spending and any action that can be taken to try to harness that and reduce spend for the future. And I know that both Jerry Trish and Suzanne are all supporting that with other members. I think that's all I wanted to say. I know there are plenty of questions on all aspects of the service. And I know that the officers here are very well placed to be able to help members with their queries. Thank you, Chairman. Thanks, Claire. The first question, then, is from Jonathan Essex. Thank you. This was just to kick things off. So I started with paragraph one of the report that this this sets out the scale of the challenge here in Surrey. Seven per cent of those attending school across Surrey qualify for home to transport, home to school travel assistance, and nearly half of those have additional needs and disabilities. How do those numbers compare to our statistical neighbours? Is seven per cent high or low? Is 50 per cent of those with SEND transport high or low? Thanks, Jonathan. So I've got some comparison data with benchmarking of neighbouring authorities of similar size, essentially counties. I can share that separately, but I think it's also important to focus on the breakdown of cohorts, whether it's SEND and mainstream. It does vary across different counties, and that could be for a variety of reasons. If you take Hampshire, for example, so we've got a roughly even split here and 5000 ish between SEND and mainstream students. And we've got around 15 to 16000 EHCP, so we transport around a third of children with additional needs and disabilities in Surrey. In Hampshire, they transport three just under 4000, but they transport nine and a half thousand mainstream students, which is really different to us. But it's the next county. And if you think about the cost, the unit cost for transporting a mainstream child is significantly lower that of SEND. It's around 8000 difference, roughly. So I think it's as much about the breakdown of the information in different authorities as much as how it varies across the counties. I mean, we've got Kent, they transport around 15000. It's roughly 50 50 percent. West Sussex, it's around 2000 SEND children and five and a half thousand mainstream students, which is around 70 30. And Buckinghamshire, it's around 2000 SEND and 5000 mainstream, which is roughly 70 30 as well. So it does vary depending on the county. But it's also about looking beneath that data in terms of children, the distances they're travelling, our children transported locally. How many HEPs and the numbers that vary across the counties. But that's the kind of overview of neighbouring authorities. Thanks. Thanks, Chris. Do you have a follow up? Yeah, I'd just say thank you very much. And I think we're really useful to understand how the overall figure 7 percent compares as well. So, you know, are we paying for more children or roughly what's expected compared to others? But welcome the follow up and maybe that would be useful for for our exercises that lead from this. Yeah, it'd be interesting actually to have that data compared to the size of population in each of these counties so that we can get a feel for the proportionality involved. So thanks, Chris. That would be helpful to have as well. Next question is Chris Townsend. Yes, thank you, Chairman. This is concerning the discretionary assistance, which we understand is the word discretionary is very key there for under fives. But we wonder why was the decision so and it was robustly implemented and not necessarily communicating clearly to the families before placements were actually finalised. I know there was a decision to made to suddenly robustly implement that. Considering that answer, what were they considered to be the extenuating circumstances where where did we actually tune it a little? And then finally, what proportion of the under five appeals have actually been successful? Because we know there have been a few. So I think they're all wrapped together. It would be useful to understand certainly the communication aspect where we suddenly change quite clearly how we were going to do understand the discretionary. But when we change it, we need to be clear to the parents what's going on. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Townsend. So as we know, our policy is not to make those children that are under five eligible for transport. And over the last two years, we've had some policy creep that has happened within that area. We scrutinised everything that we do with regard to our policy and looking obviously for cost efficiencies where we can and looking at our non statutory elements or those more discretionary elements. So last year we transported around 165 under five children and we made a decision within the service to look at that in a more stringent, take a much more stringent approach. So, of course, those pupils that are not in the education system, we don't know where they're coming from or them coming through. So to communicate with them ahead of time would have been a real challenge. However, when they applied for transport, we obviously started to have those communications with them. We were acutely aware that during this process and being much more stringent with the policy that we had family voice, families, schools coming to us to say no, no, no, this isn't right. People have been told that they will get transport. So we started to look at that into a bit more detail and we did find that some of our operational colleagues were suggesting that families may get transport as part of that. So sadly setting some of those families up to maybe think that they were going to get transport when actually in fact that they weren't. So we did some quite quick lessons learnt with that more stringent application of the policy and we became much more lenient around it. That wasn't to say everybody that applied would get that transport but they had to give us the reasoning why they couldn't transport their own children. And as we talk about extenuating circumstances and I'll go through those. So whilst we have taken a more stringent approach with the policy, we've been slightly more lenient while those communications go out. And the communications have been out to directly with families, through family voice, through the local offer, through schools. We've set up a new parent guide where all of this information is contained. So we feel that we're in a much more robust place to be able to communicate much more effectively with those families. But you're quite right, we perhaps, when we made the policy more stringent, we perhaps weren't aware that operational colleagues have actually been having a bit of a different conversation with families. So we will -- [Inaudible] Well, yeah, indeed, indeed. And that is a lesson for us to take forward. So with regard to extenuating circumstances, families really do need to demonstrate that holistic reasons why they can't transport their children. It will be taken into consideration where those children will be travelling to. Things like if you have a one-parent family with another child in the family with an EHCP, all of these things will be taken into consideration. And as I mentioned, we will take into consideration the distance that those children are travelling. Lots of families will say that they can't transport their children because of work commitments. And we don't usually look at those work commitments as extenuating circumstances. But we are also issuing a guide to more fully inform our families about what extenuating circumstances are and whether they fit into those categories. And your third part of that question, Councillor Townsend, was around what proportion of the under five appeals have been successful. So 28 out of the 59 were agreed, and 31 out of the 59 were declined. Thank you, if I could just come out of town. That's interesting numbers at the end. I think the extenuating circumstances, if you're going to have extenuating circumstances, it's dangerous game to play, but you need to lay out what they are. But of course, then what works for one doesn't necessarily work for another. And hopefully you've got families with more than one child, as you mentioned earlier, and something has happened before with a child and it hasn't happened again. I think my concern really, and I think to be fair, you've been honest about it, there was maybe a disconnect within a couple of departments. We need to have that clear identification when we do something quite a significant change, as you said, stringent. And so I think we need to understand, parents really need to understand. I think I would be concerned if you suddenly put down a list of extenuating circumstances. I don't know if that was what you meant, but if you're going to put out a list of extenuating circumstances, you're running for a fall really, I think that could be used against you. So I'd be interested to see how you do handle that situation. The numbers are interesting as far as the appeals, but we'll leave that for the moment. I've been on appeals, and the point you made about working and such, I fully understand and I've been on an appeal where it's happening. I think possibly one of the most worrying aspects of this actually was that parents of children with an EHCP were being allocated schools. They had no idea that they would not receive transport. And I think that was part of the issue because it had happened. It was custom and practice, and had been for the past few years. So, you know, when I spoke earlier about, and we've spoken about this before, Gerry, about the need, you know, to not have such a stovepiped approach to this, I think that's really, really essential that parents are aware right at the outset, you know, whether they are likely or unlikely to receive transport, because it does make life quite difficult for them. Certainly, and then I'll come on to Les. Yes, and thank you, Fiona. One of the things that we have been acutely aware of and have been working on for the last 12 to 18 months is that we need to be in attendance at those panels where decisions are made. So, transport can be brought together and spoken about at that, you know, that particular moment. Some of the things that we are working on are automated application forms that can be filled in with the family when the placement is discussed. And these are all things that are coming through the pipeline that we are working on as a service. And we have been in attendance at significant amounts of panels. Again, more around educating our internal colleagues and operational colleagues around what can and can't be done, because, as we know, transport is a very, very complicated matter and it's something that we really do need to come together and make sure that those families have that conversation once and not several times, or thinking that they might get something and have to go through, you know, different sort of hurdles to get there. So we're absolutely acutely aware that is one of our priorities for the sort of -- that has been one of our priorities and will continue to be. Thank you. Yeah, the thing that I would say about having an automated form is that I certainly know a few families who have children with EHCPs and who would need transport and they can't use laptops, so they have various disabilities. And I'm not sure that we properly allow for those circumstances. So given the transformation work that's happening, I think it would be helpful to understand how those particular families can be helped. I totally agree. And actually we attended phase council with specialist head teachers and that was one of the learnings we found from that as well. So it's something that we need to reprioritize. The automated application form doesn't need to be filled in by the family. We as officers can sit with those families and work it through with them by having a conversation with them. And that's something that we need to prioritize over the next couple of months. I think it's also around language. We've done a lot of work over the past 18 months around language. We're looking at easy read guides. We do have paper versions of the current forms that we work with the contact center on. But I think it's as much around parents understanding as much as how they communicate with us. And I think one of the next phases of us is looking at everything that we do and everything that we issue to ensure that there's an understanding across the different demographics of the county. And we've got a lot of work to do, but we have made some progress. There's time, Zand. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. I think it's deeply regrettable that when you decided to actually make the policy more, you know, stringent -- and I can appreciate there being policy creep in that -- that the impact on those parents who already -- that you didn't anticipate the impact on those parents that were already getting the travel. Obviously, any change in policy or applying policy in a more stringent way would have its impacts. And we've sat in this room, and apologies if I sound slightly frustrated, I do apologize, in that we've sat in this room and talked about departments talking to each other. You know, the different services and areas talking to each other, whether it's admissions or whether it's home to school transport and, you know, and it's really important that you speak about your operational colleagues were doing something, you know, that you weren't aware of. But to be honest, it's really important for parents that all the services know what each other are doing and are talking to each other, because this has been going on -- obviously, home to school transport has been such an issue for such a long time now. And it is really important that whenever the policies are tweaked or applied more stringently, that the risk assessment to the parents that are receiving travel is fully -- travel assistance is fully investigated. And whilst, you know, the outcome may have been the same, but at least parents would have been more informed about it. And, you know, and talking about forms and things and completing, you know, very often people might have a caseworker or a social worker, perhaps, that they're dealing with, and we know that those are changing, you know, that they don't have consistency. So it's not just about the forms and the completion of the forms, it's also about these parents getting consistent support from their caseworker, their social worker, in order to apply for these things and it not becoming too complex for people. So I just think, and I know the problems within those areas, you know, and recruitment and retention and all of that, but at the end of the day, you know, a lot of this is just down to fundamental communication. And that communication can be bad news at the end of the day, but, you know, it has to happen. Parents have to be kept informed and not left waiting in this void, which is really stressful for them and for the children as well. Thank you. I think we'd all agree with that, Liz. Rachel and then Bob. I was trying to indicate, Chairman, that Bob was trying to reach your attention. Bob. Thank you very much, Chairman. I'm delighted to hear that where it's needed, the forms are filled in by officers. There is, of course, underway under Liz Mills a comprehensive customer transformation program. Will the department be cooperating with that and working with them so that we genuinely don't have anybody who can't communicate with us? Thank you, Councillor Hughes. Yes, very exciting times ahead with regard to the customer champions. I have sitting with me a customer champion, so very much part of that work and, you know, collaborating with what we can do. We have done quite a lot of work in this area with regard to streamlining a number of our aspects of the service. And actually we're showcasing those as part of the customer champion work as well. So, yeah, so we are, yeah, very involved. Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you. Next question for Mark. Thank you, Chairman. I'd like to ask a question on the dual placements policy. The report says the approach to dual placements has not changed. So could you just clarify what that approach is? Secondly, can we have clarity on the policy for, excuse me, for AP and education other than at school? And then a final question, what are the exceptional circumstances for post-16s? Thank you. Hello there. Yes, so dual placements, I'll start with that. So the policy is that where a pupil has a school named in the EACP, that's where we'll look at eligibility in terms of travel assistance. Dual placements often can be where the school might organize somewhere else other than the school site for the pupil to be educated. Where that is the case, the policy is that the council wouldn't be responsible for that travel assistance. The eligibility criteria is within where the pupil is named for that school, and that's what we're looking at. And that's where we'll approve or deal with the transport arrangements. EOTIS, education other than school, the policy for that is, I'll just start actually with the law, which is in the Children and Families Act 2014, which actually details that where there is education other than the school, there's no duty on the authority to provide travel assistance. However, within our policy, we are saying that we, again, we'll look at the circumstances, individual circumstances of the pupil. Obviously, we understand that there are families who are in the education other than the school where they haven't been able to secure a place at a school. And so, you know, are in that situation because of that. So our policy is that, again, we'll look at that and look at the exceptional circumstances for that. Did you want to do the post '16 part? Yeah. Just to add to the discussions around education other than the school and EOTIS. We know that, and this is in line with the kind of move towards more integrated decision making. So we know that there are children awaiting school placements at the moment. And we've met with colleagues in SCND talking about transport and travel assistance. And we've produced some guidance for case officers. We know that often there are really challenging phone calls that have been had with families at the moment. Families might ask if the authorities are going to offer a particular package, how they may get their child there. We're going to provide some guidance that's really key, really clear. It's in line with what Matt has just outlined. But we understand that there are challenging circumstances with families at the moment. We want to support where we can that's in line with policy or where extenuating circumstances have been demonstrated. And here's a case by case basis. We understand that there are challenging set of circumstances. We've met with colleagues in SCND and commissioning. And it's actually moving more towards collaborative decision making when we're meeting with colleagues before placements are being discussed, which I think is really key. We're also looking at discussing around whether it's an EOTIS package, whether SCND colleagues can discuss transport or the package could be agreed at source rather than it coming to us. But that's being discussed at the moment. We haven't got a sense of the numbers yet, but we're trying to work really closely with those colleagues to ensure that those families are supported as much as we can support them within the policy. Or if any circumstances have been demonstrated, we will look at that too. Just to sort of further demonstrate that we have quite a lot of, well, we meet regularly with our alternative learning provision head teachers. There's an awful lot of dual placements that happen in that arena. And we're working through sort of bespoke timetabling. And actually, with that collaboration, managed to save about £45,000 just in a term because of the understanding how transport needs to be arranged and just being much more collaborative. So that's been really useful as well. Thank you. Can I just pursue the question of exceptional circumstances, however, for post 16s. Looking at paragraph 55, it would appear that an updated post 16 statement was issued in April of 24. And there's an amendment to the payment due date for where local authorities can level a charge for 16 to 19 travel. But the second bullet point states while we will in exceptional circumstances continue to provide travel assistance in the form of contracted transport. Can you just clarify what are those exceptional circumstances? Thank you. So I think it's worth just focusing on 18 months ago when we issued the statement in 2022. And we've started to move away from offering contracted transport and offering a travel allowance in line with other local authorities. I'm sure members and colleagues are aware of the kind of pressure that we've been under in terms of service financially but also that it's a discretionary service. While simultaneously understanding that there are certain circumstances where we will offer contracted transport. I think there are a certain number of schools within the local authority where a family can demonstrate that it's very challenging for the child themselves to get themselves to that placement. And it could be a particular health need. And we know there are certain schools where arguably there's always a discussion around whether we can provide contracted transport or not. In terms of discretionary service of post 16, so we have created -- we've worked with family voice quite a lot over the past few weeks in providing lots of guidance. I'm going to read out a section of guidance that we've produced that talks about what families need to demonstrate. So the council will need to be satisfied that a parent, carer or other family member has demonstrated why they for social, medical, financial, personal reasons cannot facilitate the young person's access to education without support of the local authority. Now, mindful of what I said earlier, we need to provide some easy re-guidance on this because it's become quite contentious, particularly around under 5s and post 16 as discretionary services. The bar for contracted transport in terms of taxis is higher, I would say. And it is often to do with the level of needs of the child and also where they're going, the particular setting. But we're on a journey of post 16. We started this around 18 months ago. We do still have a number of post 16 students who are receiving transport via taxis and minibuses. And that will always remain in place. But I think we are trying to provide more clarity in an easy way for families when they go through that process. I think the one thing that strikes me actually is that I'm not sure that communication has been, you know, in the transformation work. It seems to me that transformation, transformation where it hasn't prioritized communication right at the outset. Because, I mean, I think what you're talking about now I think is exactly right, you know, and putting it in plain simple English is excellent. But I think the fact that that clarification is only happening or being developed now with Family Voice Surrey is a concern. In the same way as the communication about the discretionary, the fact that under 5s transport is discretionary. So can I make a request that communication is an absolute priority? I mean, I do understand that, you know, you're trying to get things sorted out and then you think then we will, you know, we'll look to understand how we can communicate this. But actually I think communication in terms of the project plan needs to make its way further up the project plan. Because I think our experience is that families would really welcome understanding exactly how it is earlier on. And as Liz suggests, you know, for many families, you know, it's not going to remove the difficult conversation or cheer them up. But they absolutely need to know the position ASAP. And I sense from what I've heard today that it hasn't been the absolute priority to get communication out. But I also appreciate that you recognise how important that communication is. So I think it's a question of timeliness really on communication. And by the way, it's something that I would say about many areas of the council that we just don't communicate particularly well. I think one of the next phases for us is arguably transport should be discussed before we get involved. And that is happening. But we need to ensure accuracy of messaging. Now, I think we've done a lot of work over the past 18 months in the transport team looking at the communications plan. We've written to a lot of year 11 and year 10 families talking about how we're looking at post 16. There has been communication embedded operationally from within the transport team. But upstream, and this isn't a criticism, we need to ensure that that messaging is accurate. And it could be things like a draft DHCP letter going out to an under five family providing clear information as to what the expectations are. That's the entry point. And it's the comms plan for the authority as much as for the transport team, I think. And from the start to end of a journey that we're making, I think we are making strides in. The interim review is really pivotal in that, I think. But I think, yeah, the progress for us is ensuring that families are informed about transport to manage expectations as early as possible. My question was actually going to be on comms, so I thought I'd chip it in here. As Fiona says, this comes up in different areas when we're dealing with children about the strategy, really, of how comms is built into the project as a whole from the start. And normally, in a corporate environment, the comms discussion would be happening all the way through the development with comms specialists about who requires the comms, what are they likely to ask, what are the things we can deliver, how do we cover the things we can't deliver, what are the pathways, online conversations, different advisory, different parts of your own organization. And that is tested and challenged at the outset, and then the very second the strategy goes out, you will start to be aware of issues, and that being ready to go on having that discussion with all the stakeholders should be part of the strategy going right the way through. Now, my sense is that we develop a strategy and then work out, we've got to communicate this, but I'm not sure the right people around the table when that discussion is taking place because this keeps happening. And that, you know, parents and people within the organization seem to be unclear, quite often of things which are positive things we can deliver. So, I think the actual way we go about building comms in anything we do is, is not the integral part of formation of the strategy in the first place. And that's not how it's done elsewhere. So I don't know if we've just got into a habit, which isn't how we do it in the 21st century in comms. And by the way, I come from that background so that's why I'm saying this. Because it's just happening too often now that we're creating problems for ourselves because the wrong information is going out. We're saying it in the wrong place, we're not necessarily saying it to the right people, or some parts of the stakeholder deliver us are not aware of things that we've already agreed to or done or reflected on. And dealing with poor communication takes a lot of time than getting it right in the first place. I think we probably all agree with you actually Barony. If we move on now to Rachel Lake's question, so thank you for that. Thank you, Chairman. I think the majority, if not everyone in the room appreciates the fact that the government allows us to be paid, or to pay out 45p a mile for any claims it's made, and that's what we pay parents if they offer to transport on their child on our behalf. The thing is 45 pounds. So, I wish it was pounds, mile 45 pence a mile. I cannot believe pays for anybody's car. When you add in servicing petrol costs tire replacements and everything else that you pay on your car. I doubt if there's a car on the road can run for 45p, but that is the tax level on it. Have we done a cost analysis, if we paid more, because if we're paying something like two pounds a mile, if not more to taxi drivers and I have a feeling it's probably a lot more than that. That would it not be fairer to pay parents more per mile to encourage them to take some of our own children. Now I can see you jumping for the bell already. Because that was my thought, if I, and I know how lucky I am all the time, but if I was asked to transport my own child and offered 45p a mile, why would I? When it was the responsibility of the local council to transport them because they had difficulties. Because it would cost me money, it would take me time, it would make two commitments a day there and back twice. Why on earth would I? And that's probably why our figures are so low. But have we done a cost comparison? Because I am sure we have a lot of parents, if we paid a reasonable amount, which would still save us a lot of money to what we're paying on taxis. And the fact that taxis are so short, it would take the pressure off for those that are really in need. And that, if we did a cost analysis, or have we ever done a cost analysis on that please? Thanks Gerry, you're going to answer that. Thank you Councillor Lake. So you'll be pleased to know we did a significant piece of work last year which did have an appropriate strategy and communication plan and we did do that piece of cost analysis. And we now, instead of an independent travel allowance, we offer a personal travel budget. And that personal travel budget comes in three tiers. Yes, the lower tier is 45 p.m. mile for four journeys to and from school. We have a second tier and that tier would be used with families that want to transport their own child, they might need specialist equipment, or their children might have behavioural needs or medical needs that they can much better fulfil within the family. And then the third tier is for those children that have got significant needs. And we pay at three different rates for each of those tiers. They're called personal travel budgets because they are bespoke for each of the families and each of the children. And what we don't want to do is get into those if we have a proper parameter whereby we apply those parameters to the families because we know that families talk to one another, and one family with one set of needs will be very different to a family with a different set of needs. So they are very bespoke to those families. We also not only did communication plan around that, but we also did surveys around it and got feedback about would you, you know, and ask the questions about costs. And of course, a lot of the parents would say yes, we'd like more money to do that. But I think that what we've got, and we've benchmarked that with other authorities as well, that actually what we're doing, it feels like a fair, having these separate levels. Well, I'm going to sit and disagree with you, because if your basic one is 45p, I mean, Councillors, I don't know those of you that have been here longer, I used to get 59p a mile, and I've got the same car, by the way, had it since 2008. I used to get 59p a mile from a local authority to do any work for Council, and it was a Councillor's decision in Surrey County Council to reduce our own amount to the 45p acceptable level, because a lot of it was taken away in tax before we saw it. And we would rather that residents of Surrey got that additional money than the tax man. So if the tax man is sorry with me, but that was a Councillor's decision at the time. But I agree, if you ask a parent, would you like more money, of course the answer is going to be yes. And I appreciate what you're saying, and I also appreciate that some exceptional circumstances that some children need a lot more support on travel than what others do. But I'm talking about on the ones where it's safe and it's reasonable that that should be a target area, and though you say you only did it last year, you still went out on 45p, I think it should be explored further to increase that amount, because there is a huge cost benefit to Surrey County Council. Even if we doubled it, there would still be a huge amount to Surrey County Council. Thank you. Thanks Rachel, I'm going to come to Liz Tynesend and then to Bob. Thank you, and thank you for explaining the personal travel budget, different thresholds there. I mean as to whether or not an additional amount would act as a better incentive, obviously that is something that perhaps you've looked at or you will look at in the future. I just wonder as well, what other provisions have you actually looked at, because we seem to be slightly held to ransom in a way with the taxes occasionally, because the costs just keep on increasing, and that may be reflective of their costs, but it does seem to be extremely expensive. And so I just wonder what other provision, is there any in-house provision that's been looked at for certain children, you know, it would be interesting to know what kind of hybrid approach has been looked at or is being looked at. Thank you. So we work with our Freedom to Travel colleagues and they're doing a piece of work that's cross-cutting across the council, looking at our community transport providers. We're also going to be looking at the fleet of school buses that sit on playgrounds to see if there is an offering there that we could make the school, potentially in conjunction with electric buses, and to scope out an offering that would be much more viable for them to potentially look to pick up local children. But that needs to be sort of scoped out more fully at the moment, because at the moment it's just an idea. We're constantly looking at our operators, the commissioning of those. We're looking at things like sole providers, so we have many taxi companies going into one school. From a quality perspective, it's better to have one provider going into a school, because of course they get to know the school and the children and have much better dialogue with families. And actually whilst we thought that was driving quality, it actually drove cost as well and actually managed to reduce costs with a number of those elements. So yes, we're constantly looking at that commissioned offer. The fleet that you mentioned, we look at that probably on a yearly basis because it was previously done and Matthew's been around for quite a number of years and actually came in when we did have our own fleet. We do that cost analysis since I've been here every year because it is a moving feast, as you know. So at the moment it's not viable for us to have an internal fleet because it would cost too much money and we are always looking at those sorts of things. But there are a number of other aspects as part of our transformational work that we're looking at to drive down those costs. I wonder if I could just say, I visit a lot of schools and in particular I've been out to visit a lot of our specialist schools and I, if possible, I try to be there at the end of the day and you will see a lot of community transport providers lined up in the playgrounds outside and minibus companies. So there is a very wide range of different solutions being used by the service. Les, do you want to come back on that? No, that's fine. That's interesting. It would be interesting to see how that progresses over time and the split between those and what you're forecasting going forward. Thank you. Bob. Thank you very much. I think it would be fair, talking about the ITA, to congratulate the officers on the significant move towards that. I think that is impressive and hopefully there will be more movement in that direction. I'm not a tax expert, but I would have thought that if we go beyond 45p we're likely to land people, and the tax expert is sitting next to me, we're going to land them with a tax bill and then we'll get complaints about that. I don't think that would be attractive at all. What would be attractive is a problem I've had, and this incorporates my question 13 which comes in this. For a couple of people, one in particular, I think I had to write nearly every month to say could you now pay the bill that is owing to this family. I think that is going to be off-putting to people if people felt they were just going to have to wait for ages for what is after all sometimes a very considerable amount of money. I'd like some reassurance that that will be streamlined because I'm sure it will help get people onto booking their own transport. Thank you. Hopefully we've adjusted a lot of our processes recently and that shouldn't be an issue, but if there is an issue for an individual I'd like to know about it so we can resolve it. The young woman's left school now so it won't happen. I think we're going to have a situation whereby where some children don't attend school and their rate falls below 80%, we also then have to look at clawback. So we don't pay in advance, although we do pay a month. It used to be two months in arrears, but we now pay a month in arrears. But we also have to have the ability to look at our figures to make sure that we are also clawing back because there are some children that are in non-attendance at school and we're paying an independent travel allowance or a personal travel budget so we have to be acutely aware of that as well. But we are looking to automate that, but we're hopeful that our governance now around our process is really robust. I just wanted to come back to Mark actually, because Mark I realised that I didn't give you the opportunity to ask about the difference between ITAs and travel budgets. Do you feel that's been addressed? Thank you. I had a couple of the questions coming up later, so I was planning to get this question in. So just for clarity, because I know what you've just said, what exactly is the difference between independent travel allowances and personal travel budgets? Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Sugden. So an independent travel allowance was an old term. There were several terms. Independent travel allowance, bursary, and we found them all very confusing. So we're actually moving away from independent travel allowances and everything will be called a personal travel budget. So we're just trying to phase those different terms out because it's very confusing. Thank you. We're aware that some of our geographic neighbours pay considerably more as a pens per mile than we do. How do they manage that and why do they do it? Okay, I'll just come in on this one. I think it's kind of difficult because I've heard different legal interpretations or advice on this and different advice even from transport officers like myself in the industry. So if I were to just ask a rhetorical question in when does reimbursement become earnings? You mentioned about the tax and it's probably that. Now, if you're paying someone to transport someone, then technically they have to be licensed through licensing burrows. So there is a way that obviously we're talking about personal travel budgets and there is a way to obviously pay a bit more given if you take, for example, if we're paid 45p a mile, if I travel somewhere different, if I have a passenger in my car, there's an extra 5p a mile that you can claim. So there are things that you can do within it but it doesn't need to be a reimbursement and not an earning and it's just being careful around the amount you do there without sort of giving people the difficulty of that tax bracket and also falling foul of potentially the licensing which would come under the Miscellaneous Provisions Act 1976, which is a perhaps misunderstood provision. So I think we've done benchmarking with other authorities and what we feel with the personal travel budget is that that's a kind of acceptable level that we can and have gone off and spoken to families about and try to promote that but we'll do some more analysis to try and find out what others are doing in that space. I mean, I can see the difficulty but it strikes me that if there is a way, back to Rachel's point, if there is a way of incentivizing parents to take their children to school, then we should absolutely do that. And actually, I haven't heard that we have really looked into this in detail. I think that in several other areas, we have been behind in understanding that if we pay a bit more, you know, the benefits will be disproportionate to the, to the cost. You know, I think there was a problem paying foster carers. We've had a problem paying social workers, we've been behind our neighboring authorities and our statistical neighbors in all of those areas. So I'm wondering if this is another area where we are potentially behind. And I think I would really welcome a really good, some really good research on whether it would make a difference, because it could potentially make a significant difference. As I say, what worries me is that we have been behind, you know, in many areas in terms of being willing to pay what it costs to incentivize people to do things, and I really hope this isn't another one of those examples. So, you know, it would be interesting to understand, because I mean, I do understand the SACS situation, and I appreciate that it isn't straightforward, but I think we should really be looking at it. Sorry, Chris, you were going to... Just to provide some context, we've got around 11 to 12% of families accessing the travel hours, which I think is actually quite healthy. We've increased opt-in, irrespective of what we offer. Post-16 over the past 18 months, we've increased by 30%. Families being assigned the allowance, and that's the trajectory moving forward. So I think it's about the detail as much as the conversation. Matt may correct me here, but I know that we will provide it if it's the most cost-effective form of assistance. Now, some shared routes are actually lower than offering the allowance, so we just need to be careful by doing any benchmarking to be only sure we actually pay more, which is what we'll have to do. So I think 11 to 12% I think is actually quite good, and we've increased that quite a lot over the past two years. And I think with post-16 in particular, as we move more towards moving away from contracted transport, those numbers will increase. We need to do some promotional work around statutory school age, but obviously families, you know, for a number of years, there's an expectation around, you know, a child at a level of additional needs. They're going to be offered contracted transport, and we need to ensure that we have that capacity to do that. So I think the devil is in the detail, and I think the numbers are relatively healthy, but we could do more. Thanks. Rachel, you wanted to come back? Just a quick one, Chairman. It was earlier when a clawback was mentioned when we talked about the timings, and a month behind is obviously a lot better than two months in a race. But do we also take into consideration like special holidays, coronations don't come along very often, but insect training days do, and we attend a lot of schools with insect training days. Are they also on clawback? I presume that they were. No. So if a child is not expected to go into school, we don't clawback for those days because it will be worked out on that allocation. So there will be a certain amount of days that a child is expected to go to school, and those insect days will be deducted from it. Yeah, yeah. Right, Jeremy, you're next. Safeguarding, I don't know who I should address this to. What proportion of safeguarding incidents are being responded to within 24 hours? And the second question is, has there been a reduction in complaints since the section on safe service standards was added to the parent guide? So I don't know if it's Gerry or Chris or... No, I don't mind taking that one. So all safeguarding concerns would be addressed within 24 hours. However, they may take longer to investigate, so that initial response to a family will be within 24 hours. But as I say, some of our investigations take a little bit longer than that. And the second part of your question was, since the parent guide, I think generally across the board we've had a reduction in complaints. I know Claire is sitting over in the audience and she is our complaints lead. And I think that we were heralding the fact that we hadn't received any complaints in June. Not sure that it still stands, but a significant reduction across the board, yes. I think that would be, I don't know whether Claire has that data or not, but I think it would be very interesting to know how many complaints we've had in June. If it was down to zero, I think that would be miraculous. I think that's pretty spectacular, actually. So I think you should all award yourselves a gold star on that one. That's very impressive. Can I just say that, just further to Jeremy's point, responding to safeguarding incidents within 24 hours is really important. But one of the things that parents who were involved in some of these incidents mentioned to us was that, you know, resolving it can take a very, very long time. And they find that a very difficult and onerous process. You know, most will be resolved pretty quickly, but where it's a difficult issue, it can be really elongated. And I wonder if you had any success in improving those timescales. I would have to get further data on that, Fiona, but, yeah, I take that point on board and, yeah, we'd have to look in that into more detail. I think all of our areas, we're transforming, we're improving, but that's not to say we're resting on our laurels with the ones that we've already done and things like personal travel budgets. And this type of thing, we need to constantly look at, constantly renew and constantly ask for feedback. Next question's with Ashley. Thank you, Jo. We've got a number of questions relating to the budget, so this comes back to the page 76, which is where you talk about the financial position in the report. So if I kick off talking about the budget and asking a question, I think we can all appreciate that inflation repressures last year were significant when inflation was running at about 11% in the early part of 2023. So, therefore, it's not surprising there was some overspend in the '23, '24 budget. And maybe some of the increases of numbers due to the Senate recovery plan couldn't be accurately forecast, but they obviously had an impact on home-to-school travel. So the question is, what are the implications of that £10.3 million overspend of budget in '23, '24, and also the current overspend of £7.4 million in '24, '25, with an additional risk of £2.5 million? What are the implications, I guess, both in short and medium term on both the service and on future budgeting? Thank you. I am ably supported by Matt Marsden, who is obviously on screen, but we do have a number of target savings this year within our medium term financial plan, and we are on target to our efficiencies are £2.6 million. We've done an awful lot of work with our analysis and evaluation team, as well as corporate finance, to make sure that we have properly financially projected those savings and looking at those in quite some detail. With an increase in spend, it's partially driven by an increase in those pupil numbers and the distance that they are travelling. And also, whilst it isn't as prevalent as it was post-COVID, but the scarcity in the market with regard to transport providers, we're still acutely aware of. But we're focusing on a number of efficiency targets across the financial year. Certainly, we've talked about the discretionary for post-16 and under-5s, but there are a number of other areas that we're working on. Certainly with our commission bidding, we go into something now called hidden bidding with our DPS system, so that is driving down costs. But there are a number of other efficiencies that we can sort of detail more clearly to you, so you can see that where we're particularly targeting and focused on. Was your second question around shortage of specialist provision? We sort of come to that in a moment. I think Jonathan's got a question on that. Thank you for your answer, but it is the impact on future budgeting and the impact on the services of these budget overspends. I think it's slightly alarming that there's already a total of nearing £10 million overspend this year, when there was also £10 million overspend last year. And you wonder whether the forecasting for the budgeting is accurate enough. I think Matt's got his hands up as well. Matt, all I wanted to say was that one of the results of last year's budget having been overspend was, of course, a significant increase in the budget for home to school transport that we agreed in February last year as part of the directorate's overall budget. Because I wanted to remind the committee that home to school transport comes out of general fund, it is not coming out of the high needs block, so it's funded from council tax, so it is very much part of the council's budget. So we tried as much as possible to increase the budget, increase the home to school transport line of this year's budget appropriately. However, as I said in my introduction, we are already at month three looking that we could potentially be up to £7 million overspend on the higher level of the budget this year. And I'll hand over to Matt who might want to say a bit more about that. Hi, Matt, please do come in and then I think there are a couple of other questions we'd like to ask you once you've dealt with this one. Yeah, sure. So just to try and assure people there's been an awful lot of work being undertaken in terms of the forecasting modelling that we do within finance in support of the home to school transport team. So getting a more detailed understanding of the dynamics and just say that it is a highly complex area. So when we think about rates, rates isn't just about the charge from the supplier, it's about the complexity of the child, it's about the distance being travelled, it's about the number of people on a route, et cetera, which makes it really, really difficult to try and predict and project forward. But I think our understanding of some of that stuff is getting far better. And we've developed a model now which gives an indication for some of that stuff and helps us with our ability to project forward. That's something that we didn't have at the time of the budget setting. I think just in terms of the general point around the budget pressures, we are continuing to see increasing numbers of sent children and numbers on transport arrangements. So we're not necessarily expecting to see that drop off anytime soon. Although in sessions yesterday, we were looking at forward trajectories into 10 years hence and the potential for that plateauing around 2030, 2032 or something like that. But as I say, you know, we're getting into much more detail and a far better understanding in the hope that actually we can get better at forecasting these costs and giving a sort of earlier indication to help with that budget setting and that planning around the budgets and how we can address that. Thanks, Matt. Chris. Just to follow up, we had a tremendous backlog of EHCPs and that's now being cleared and we're getting up to some sort of reasonable standard. But those EHCPs have an impact on home to school transport. And I wonder how we're looking at that. If we had that backlog, obviously that was going to impact us going forward and what's just been said, I'm slightly worried about state stability in 2030, 3032, which is a little way away. But are we still taking account of the EHCPs that are coming in because they will have an impact on home to school transport. And in fact, there could be a significant impact. And are we dealing with this looking ahead? You're talking about talking about the future. But if we've got EHCPs still outstanding, and we are getting on top of them, but we're going to go forward with more and more of these, the impact on home to school transport could be exceptional. And therefore, the budget here, which is extremely, as Claire quite rightly said, it's out of the general budget. It's very important. So is that being handled appropriately and are we taking account of that backlog and then the streaming through as they come through over the coming months and years on the budget of the home to school? If I may respond, if that's OK. Yeah. So we're working very closely with the same team and we look at their trajectories going forward. Now, there's no guarantee that an EHCP is necessarily going to result in a transport arrangement. And we estimate roughly 37 percent of EHCPs issued result in transport. So we use that as our assumption. But we do have a profile trajectory of what EHCPs we anticipate coming through in the coming months with a sort of more generalistic view of later months, which are obviously outside of that 26 week timescale for EHCPs. Yes. Monte Carlo analysis required here, I think. Alas, Jonathan. Thank you. I've got two questions I think might be easier just to ask both at the same time. So firstly, about the costs. So Ashley's talked about the cost increases last year and also this year. And earlier you mentioned a 28 percent increase in in taxi costs this year for driver and fuel reasons. How does how does that stack up against other councils? So I mean, do you have data on average unit costs per kilometer for our mainstream and send home school transport provision? And do we benchmark that against our system neighbors so that we're assured that that increase in cost is is not just for us and that we're still getting good value. And then just in terms of OK, these these overall increases are big and and clearly they're increasing amounts of provision as as we're dealing with the EHCP backlog. The unit costs are going up. But earlier on in this in this meeting, we looked at the the current SND and alternative provision that we're investing in. And that table one on page 42 looked at the additional send transport budget that's predicted based on the future projected shortfall in provision. So if if if we don't provide places where we want, we have to transport children to where the provision currently is. So how much maybe maybe as well as looking at the unit costs of of taxis, how much of the of the increase in budgets last year and this year are due to the current shortfall in our special needs and alternative provision. And do you see that continuing? Because clearly, if we if we have the right provision of places, both in number and in terms of where they are, then hopefully some of this costs will go down. I'm guessing so we're overspending clearly. I guess that's the question, really. How much of the current spending is is good spending? And is there an amount which we're overspending now, which will reduce in the future once we get the provision that we want where we want it? Thank you. I think I think I think that latter element of the question may be quite difficult to predict at this point. But but I'll certainly ask Claire and the team. Could I just start by saying so I completely understand the question that Jonathan has asked. The the forecast from the send AP capital program is to increase the number of specialist places across the county to just under 6000. But I think he I think the committee needs to bear in mind that we already have over 15,000 children and young people with EHCP. Now, not all of those young people will need a place in a specialist school, but some of them will, undoubtedly. And but overall, what what we want children in Surrey, what we want for children in Surrey is to be educated close to home and in their own communities and to remain rooted in their own community. And for many of those children and young people, what we would hope is that in future their needs can be supported and met in more for more of them in a mainstream setting. So although we are we do have a very ambitious program which we are fulfilling to build a lot of specialist accommodation, specialists maintain accommodation, it isn't that we already know it doesn't meet the need for specialist schools at the moment. And we can't build enough to meet all the needs. So even even with the fulfillment of our complete capital program, we will not have built our way out of the problems of sufficiency in in specialist provision. We know that we are we will have four additional news, free schools as well. But even with those those schools, there still will be children and young people for whom we cannot meet their need in the in the maintain sector. I just want to start it off by saying that because, you know, our our our capital program is not a panacea for all issues in the system. Yeah, I think that's a very fair point. Jonathan, do you want to come back? Yeah, so table one sets out what the costs of not dealing with a short forward be and then it follows that from page 42 onwards talks about the changing scope of the send capsule program. So if we know what the costs are before we change the scope, presumably we will know what the costs are after we've changed the scope because this is the same modeling exercise based on the same data. If those costs are going down, presumably that will have a good impact. I'm just I'm looking for a good story here. I'm struggling to draw it out here, but be really good to know if before we made the changes, we know what the costs were going to be after we've made the change predicted change, which we've set out in this report in public. Well, is there a benefit financially as well as to our children? I'm sure there is because we quantified the one that you haven't yet quantified the other and then the question was about comparison to our statistical neighbors. I guess that's something I'd like to ask Matt, which is, you know, how has this paper taken account of the decisions made as a result of the send capital program, or actually was the paper prepared before that decision was made, so it wouldn't have been appropriate to preempt it. And certainly in our forecasting, we've allowed for an improvement in terms of the number of children on transport because of increased efficiency within Surrey, but we've not gone into the detail around how that actually works. But there is a definite benefit built into the forecast based on increased efficiency within Surrey. Okay, I think it's useful to understand that assumption and I guess the issue is, you know, how soft or hard that assumption is, but this may not be quite the place to actually look at those figures, but I suspect that's something that we might be able to pick up in the task and finish group. Jonathan, would you like to raise anything else in relation to that table? I think you asked, was it a yes or a no, and it definitely wasn't a yes/no answer, so maybe it can be taken up separately, but the remaining question was about benchmarking. Thank you, Councillor Essex. We are very involved with ATCO, which is the Association of Transport Coordinators, and they provide us a yearly report with significant detail benchmarked against what the different authorities are actually doing. We're not only a part of ATCO, we're all members of ATCO, but also Matt is the co-chair of the regional ATCO, so we host regular meetings with them and are constantly talking to other authorities about benchmarking, and we've got that detailed report and I'm more than happy to share it as well with members. I guess the question wasn't really asking for a detailed report, it was just really asking for the headline number. We talked earlier on about we can be buried in detail but not see the executive summary at the front, so if you're able to just give that headline number in terms of are our costs higher or lower than our statistical neighbours maybe now in the meeting? I'm grateful to see the more detailed data afterwards, but just to know where we compare to our statistical neighbours is probably something you and your team will have on your fingertips if you chair the regional collaboration on this. So certainly I think one of the questions a bit later on is around Kent County Council and actually I think there was a comparison that they were projecting a $7,000 spend and we were a $9,000 spend. Actually that has changed quite considerably because the figures that are given are out of date and actually when Kent were projecting the seven, so were we, and they've moved and we've recently spoken to Kent who are in exactly the same place we are, so around $9,200 per child. So we are comparable with our statistical neighbours. At the risk of being tedious about this, can I just ask the question, in terms of the projections, the forecast costs for home to school transport, have they taken account of all of the data that was provided in respect of the SEND capital program, i.e. where there will be places, where there are places and where there are children? So has that need and provision been fed into a forecast for home to school transport? If I can come back on that, I think the simple answer in terms of the financial forecast is no. That's fine. I mean, you know, there's no reason that it should have been taken into account, but I think just given the significance of the decisions and the changes that were made in June to the SEND capital program, I'm just wondering if it might be interesting to have a look at what the current plans are likely to project going forward in terms of cost. Because we know where the children are locality-wise, we know where the places are because we do have that data, and there will be, taking some assumptions into account, there will be a calculation to be done about what that means in terms of cost going forward based on the current assumptions that are built into your cost model. Again, if I can respond to that, so we had a meeting yesterday whereby there is a piece of work being undertaken looking at SEND trajectories, and that is looking at trajectories by provision type. So I'm not clear actually whether or not that's going to address what you've just highlighted there. Hopefully it will, and hopefully it will give us a far better basis for being able to project our financial projections. Thanks, Suzanne. If you could add a bit more detail to that, that would be helpful because, you know, we did get a very full answer in response to our recommendations on the SEND capital program. So clearly there's a lot of data there, and that data fueled the decisions taken on the SEND capital program. So it seems a pity if that data is not similarly being used to project forward in terms of home to school transport costs, and where potentially some of those costs might be mitigated going forward. So as part of the work that's been initiated by the new member-led group, we've got a task and finish group that is focusing on the forecasting methodology, and the first meeting of that I think is next week. The intention of that is to look at some of these things. So, you know, forecasting isn't an exact science, it is exactly that. So we've got some work to do to kind of build on what's been done in the past. So yes, these are things that we know have happened. These are things that we predict will happen. But there's also softer stuff, isn't there, about our instincts and our professional judgments about things that might happen. And I think part of the intent of that group is to work through those different scenarios and to really kind of test that methodology to make sure that we're confident that it's the best forecasting methodology that we can come up with. So I think as part of that work we can absolutely pick this up alongside a variety of other things like key stage transfer numbers, like other intelligence around what our assumptions were last time around versus what's actually happened. Thanks, Suzanne. Can I just clarify who that group is? It's an internal group, is it? Yes, so Matt and myself are on it, Jerry and a couple of people from the team, people from data, people from finance, so kind of a multidisciplinary team to come together. I want Sena, of course, are in that too. I mean, I think that's interesting in terms of, you know, our task and finish group. I think because one of the dilemmas we have for our task and finish group looking at sufficiency around send places is actually to get comparability of identification of category of need with category of provision. Because it's not the data that we currently have that was provided in the response to our recommendations isn't comparable. So I think if that information is being revised in terms of how those needs are categorized, then I think that would be very helpful for us to understand as well. I guess I don't think the task and finish group that we're doing around the school transport methodologies will go into that. Because we'll be looking at it through that transport lens, so it'll be much more about the type of vehicle that a child is likely to need than it will be about their needs. But I understand what you're saying, but just to be realistic. Okay. So I understand. So it's the child's transport needs as opposed to, you know, their education needs. Okay. Thanks for clarifying that. Because, you know, I could easily have gone down Tangent Boulevard for a while on that one, so thank you. The next question is with Chris Townsend. Yeah. Thank you, Chairman. Just a brief aside, something that Jonathan mentioned earlier about getting a headline idea of numbers is out how you could reduce the length of report. You do the headline and then you put the data behind it in an appendices. That would be very useful. Also, Paragraph 32 is where I'm referring to. And again, I said we lay people, but, you know, you read these reports and sometimes you come across stuff and you think, what the devil does that mean? This may be being offset by continued new routes at greater distances in solo taxis. So blind bidding was introduced, understand that, in 2024. He's having a positive impact on actual rates being paid. Now, I just need to understand what this means. But this may be offset by continued new routes, not new routes, but continued new routes at greater distances in solo taxis. Now, just explain what you mean by that. Simple as that. Very simple question. Maybe it's not a simple question, but I just don't understand what that means. Explain probably the whole paragraph, but certainly the bit about continued new routes at greater distance. I just don't understand what's being said there. I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm just trying to be, you know -- this is one of the problems you have. You read a big report and you suddenly come -- bits of it, you think, we're in a different world here. So I'd be happy to answer this with two examples. So I was really fortunate a few weeks ago to be invited by Jerry and her team to spend a day, an afternoon with the team, seeing the work that they were doing and really get an insight and understanding of the service. So while I was there, I think Chris and Matt were trying to sort out two specific new routes for children who had been placed in new placements. And each of those routes, when they were priced, were coming out at an annual cost of around 40,000 to 50,000 pounds. That's per child, per route. So on that afternoon, two team members had to commission, you know, almost 100,000 pounds worth of new expenditure on two children. So -- and similar -- separately, another colleague was taking commissions for -- was inviting bids for those routes. And through using blind bidding, he may well have made some savings on those accounts. But it would be nothing like the collective cost of one or two new routes agreed. Because on one route, you're not going to save that amount of 40 or 50,000 pounds a year. [ Pause ] Yes, those were two solo taxi routes that had been agreed. [ Pause ] Just to add as well. No, I think it's -- so we have a statutory duty to provide travel assistance to children who are eligible. If a new school is -- if a child is placed at a new school, a brand new provision with no one going there, that's a solo route. Irrespective of where it is. If it's the nearest appropriate school, and we can evidence that, we have a duty to provide transport. Now, that number increased last year in terms of who we were transporting and where. And Matt provided the figures. But that is an increase in solo transport. Now, I know that there's a shift this year in terms of looking at local provision, keeping children in mainstream school, and also looking at EOTIS packages. But solo routes invariably can rise and fall depending on where children are placed. And if it's a completely new setting, we will have to provide transport if they're eligible. So I think it's also about that. Now, the distances of these provisions, you know, understanding the capital program and where it is, if children are continually going to be transported further away, but they're eligible for transport, we have to ensure that we provide a taxi, and that will be a solo route. So it's often dictated by where they're going and where the distance of that placement is as well. And we've seen that increase over the last year or two. In some respects, that isn't surprising, because I think we're very conscious as councillors that we hear a lot more about children with more complex needs, children who potentially could not be accommodated in any sort of mainstream unit. So maybe that's part of the reason for it. I think it's also probably around tribunals as well, where I haven't got -- I mean, I know anecdotally that the success of local authorities defending tribunals, but simultaneously, if a family advocate for a particular placement, and it's a brand-new placement for us, and it's however further away and they win, we will provide transport. So there's a few bit -- the context is quite broad in terms of why solo numbers might increase. And I think that there's a number of reasons why at the moment. Yeah, it's also on paragraph 32, because I'm quite interested. It says work continues to analyze the data to get to a clear understanding of this position. I'm just interested in what sort of data you would be analyzing on that. Paragraph 32. So one of the things that we are -- I think there's maybe an assumption, is that depending on the type of placement, transport is often required. So often, if it's a special school or an independent school, transport is generally required. And we will get an application, and often the eligibility rate is high. And I think it's about understanding, in terms of intelligence, that information from upstream. And I think Matt, Miles, and others have sort of attested to this earlier. There's a lot of work looking at the data of where a child is placed and the comparative transport costs. And none of those have been an ask around projections, you know. If there are 100 children who's going to be offered a special school, I would assume that 100 will require transport if it's the nearest available school, irrespective of distance. So I think it's just more of an understanding of the information upstream. And we are looking into that as well, and we are doing work on that. We're in key stage transfer meetings quite regularly with colleagues from Commissioning and SE&D. We're part of the interim review. We're meeting with colleagues in the SEND recovery plan. But I think it's just that analysis. And actually, whether we can provide information to families earlier in the process. If there's an expectation that transport will be required, you know, Jerry mentioned the automated form earlier. As an example of where we can provide that at the front end when the decision of placement is made. So I think it's around a bit more analysis of where children are going. And that broken down by the type of placement. Thanks. Just a quick one, please. So with that, for instance, I mean, I doubt that there are loads of vacancies anywhere on SEND places or what have you. But where we're allocating places, does this take into account other factors of availability versus distance, versus cost, versus other factors said that it drives decisions not just in school transport, but it drives other decisions as well? I think I think it's quite difficult, actually, for the team to answer that. There is a -- I mean, I can remember sitting here probably maybe a year ago, and Rachel Wardell was very clear that the principal need that has to be met is that a child is placed in a school that is, you know, as stated, as stipulated by the EHCP. And that actually at that point she said, you know, where that school is at that point is irrelevant. The first obligation of the local authority is to meet the needs of the child as stated in the EHCP. I'm not sure we can answer the rest of your question, actually. Does anyone feel that they can -- They don't have to answer it now, but I would like an answer to it. Okay. So I think your question is, in terms of the factors that are taken into account when a child is allocated to the school, what other factors are taken into account, and are all of the costs associated with that decision looked at in the round? Is that -- and how, therefore, you know, the decision about placements, there's a decision about transport, there's a number of other factors that have been brought in here, and presumably there is some sort of weighting on those factors to sort of drive an overall decision. What I'm slightly sensing is that there is a drive to try and make that come together, but I'm not clear on the factors that they're putting together to make that come together, rather than the very separate decisions I think that were made in the past that we talked about at the previous time this was brought up. I'm trying to get nearer to how they are getting nearer to trying to bring an optimum result, not just we've landed on this, so ergo, we've got to do this. So I think it is about understanding, you know, are some obligations more important than others, and looking at all of the costs and the rounds, so just understanding, you know, is it possible for the transport team to link up with the SEND team to ensure that the right decision is made, right decision in terms of the needs of the child plus the costs associated with that, but I think that's probably a question that we should take outside. Let's say you've got, and I'm not saying this is a, well it was actually a case but a long time ago, so it might not be relevant now to when I first became a counsellor, but from the outside looking in it seemed quite odd that there was a placement for a child that was actually time limited, they were only likely to be put in this placement for a very short period of time. The other child was likely to be in that placement for the full length of the, you know, that their age and appropriateness for this establishment. They both, and it was reversed in the end, but the decision was sort of made to send the one who was likely to be in the situation longer, further than the child who was going to be in the situation for quite a small period of time, and I don't know how they got to that decision, but it was actually reversed in the end. This is sort of the thing where you've got several children and several parameters and specifics and transport and logistics, they kind of need to come together so that that sort of situation can't, because in the end you are paying an enormous amount of money needlessly because there was a decision to put a child in a particular place rather than saying they could have gone to the other place. Yeah, I mean I think there are lots of different issues there and I think it would be helpful if the services could come back to us and talk about, if you like, the priority of obligation and whether these things are looked at in the round or whether, you know, as Rachel implied just over a year ago, that actually the principle decision is about finding a place that meets the specific and identified needs of that child and how we can then, you know, ensure that we can, you know, look at the whole position without in any way compromising that obligation. Rachel, sorry, Claire. Thank you, Joan. I was going to just make a suggestion. At your next meeting I think you're taking a paper on the end-to-end review of the SEND service, which will look at the different stages that a family will go through the SEND process, and I wonder if that will be more appropriate. I think the question that Councillor Muir is asking is entirely valid, but perhaps a little broad for the scope of what you're scrutinising today. My suggestion would be actually if that is the sort of question that could be wrapped up into when you look at the end-to-end review at your next meeting. That's an excellent suggestion and we'll definitely make sure that's one of the questions that we highlight when we make our requirements for the report. So thank you, Barony. I know that Mark has been very patiently waiting to come back. Would you like to contribute or have we gone past that point? Sorry, Matt. Oh, dear, there's one every day, isn't there? Matt, would you like to come back in and then I will move to Mark for his question. Thank you. I think it's been covered, thanks. Okay, thanks a lot. Mark, I recognise that you have the two last questions. We may already have dealt with question 15. Question 15 we've dealt with on comparisons with other authorities, so I just got one question. But just before that, we ask lots of questions, we do probe. I just wanted to say from my personal perspective, I would like to give credit to the whole school transport team for what they have done over the last 12 months. And I can only speak particularly for my division. I've not had a single resident contact on home to school travel in the last six months. So I know there's lots to do. I know lots has been done. But I just wanted to convey from my perspective to not just the people here and to the team. There's still lots to do, but thank you for what you have done and what you are doing. Now if I can move on to my question. So what, if anything, and this may be just top line at the moment, could be the expected effect on home to school transport costs from the new Labour government's decision to impose VAT on independent school fees, which they have now indicated will be imposed from January 2025. And I was going to ask if this encourages transfers to state schools, so I suppose I'll be open on that. But every indication is that it will. We just don't know how many. And what is that going to do in terms of how we react to it? Do we have the resources? Do we have the personnel? And what's the potential financial impact? Thank you. We haven't done any analysis on that. But I think it would depend on the children coming through the system who will be, well firstly applying for school places through school admissions as well, particularly. And from that, that cohort who would request transport or travel assistance, if they're attending their nearest available school. We introduced a policy this year, actually two years ago, and we focused more on whether the nearest school was added to a school's application form. So that would be a part of that process. But what I'm unsure of is the children in the private sector who have got an EHDP, who would require provision within the state sector, and as a result of that, who would come through to a transport request. I think it would impact more on mainstream families. And obviously the average spend on mainstream is about $7,000 lower than SE&D, so it's around $2,000 a year. So in terms of cost, I think we've got a finance group that Matt has set up. I think we could add it as a particular finance workstream. I think that's probably something to think about. We need to do some analysis for the school admissions because they will really know those numbers coming through on the application form. And from that, of those families, who does submit an application for transport, because some of them won't be, but it's something we need to pick up on. I understand its early stages. I know I asked a question at the last full council meeting, and following on from that, how many inquiries we'd had at that time, which I think was about 600, as I best understand, which also was published in one of the national newspapers because they'd asked for the same information or FOI. And I realize it is unclear. It will not just be through homeschool transport. There will be other areas, but obviously it is something now that is definitely going to happen. It would appear, unless there's any legal challenge, and it's going to happen very soon. Thank you. Thanks, Mark. I'm very sorry. We're going to close the session there because I think we have had a very robust session this morning. But I would really like to reiterate Mark's point that I think our questions have been robust. They always are, but I wouldn't want that to detract in any way from our appreciation of all the efforts that you make as a team to make improvements in this area in terms of improving the experience and ensuring that actually we have many fewer complaints coming through. So thank you for all that you're doing. Clearly, you're being successful, and we hope you will continue to make the sort of progress that you've made already. So thank you for that. We will now look at the draft recommendations, please. And I don't want to dwell too long on these because I think they're mostly straightforward. I just want to clarify whether there is agreement on them. Jonathan? So if they're the same ones that we've been circulated in advance, I think we've had a lot of discussion here about communication and the importance of improving communication, both internal between departments as part of the transformation, also externally. And I think the recommendations as drafted 1, 4, 5, and 6 all are on that subject, so could be pulled together. And recommendations 2 and 3 are quite different and might sit better after that because they're about innovation and cost benefit work. I think it would be worth adding on the one on innovation to look further at what other local authorities are doing, because I think we've heard today that some work in this area is already certainly underway, so just to maybe add the word further in. But I wonder, Chair, if we might add an additional recommendation at the end. We talked a lot about budgeting and how it relates to forecasting. Our feeling, so this end of the table, I've been discussing it informally, is that forecasting is improving. A couple of years ago it felt that the home school transport budget was suddenly bigger, and then it was a reactive response in what can we do to keep it under control, whereas now it feels that we're glimpsing, as item 5 on page 42 illustrates, table 1, that the department is looking ahead and has an idea of future costs, both in unit costs and also the volume costs through particularly more send placements where we don't want them. So I think something around recognising that shift from reactive approach to more proactive forecasting and hoping that there might be some proactive forecasting work linked to budgeting that links together the home to school transport forecasting with the send school places forecasting and that we are shared with that data where we are now as well as waiting for that to improve in the future once the forecasting methodologies are wrestled through and improved. So accepting that work is already going on and they're getting better, but we don't hold back in sharing, seeing what the numbers are now before the perfect happens. I think it's fair to say that as we have more maintained school places ourselves, we may be moving from crystal ball territory to perfect forecasting. So the gap between crystal ball and good is perhaps unbridgeable, but now we've got more school places being provided ourselves. Maybe we've got to a point where realistic proactive forecasting may be possible and valuable rather than maybe not give us what we want. I think those are all good points and my suggestion is that we revise the recommendations and send them around the committee to highlight, as you've identified, highlight priorities, collapse one or two of these recommendations because maybe they can be dealt with in one point and also to add the point about proactive forecasting allied to send school places and to look at what other authorities are doing. So we will revise the recommendations with all those points and send it around the committee. I always find it incredibly difficult to actually summarise the recommendations in flight. I'm not sure I can read those actually. To agree the revised recommendations in principle? That's a very good point. So is there agreement in principle to these recommendations including the revisions that Jonathan has suggested and then we will send round the full set for agreement once they've been completed? Is everyone okay with that? Chairman, on the one where you say family voice, that the transport team provide regular engagement sessions throughout the summer that parents and carers can book on to. The thing is they do that and they're not really taken up as best that they can. I think we need to lift the profile on that. Say that they run specific surgeries on the paperwork and information because I know they run regular engagement sessions. They're just not taken up. Therefore we need to use something that will encourage the people involved and I think running surgeries on a particular thing like the paperwork might have more of an impact. I think that's a good point actually. I think it's a fairly recent departure that the transport team have actually engaged collaboratively with family voice. I think family voice have been doing it for a while. But now what they're doing is they're bringing in the transport team so that the discussions and the surgeries are better informed. So yes, absolutely, I think that would be a useful addition, certainly. Okay, if everyone is agreed in principle with the recommendations, we'll take them away and revise them and share them with everyone later on. Thank you very much. So we move on to our next topic which is item 8 on the agenda which is the corporate parenting board report and the performance report in relation to looked after children for years 22. Corporate parenting board, what a mouthful. Corporate parenting board annual report for 23/24 and the performance report for looked after children in 22/23. And that's in pages 119 to 184 of the agenda pack. I have to admit, having looked at all of the data, I'm not sure I really know how to summarize where we are. I think we're making steady progress. I think that both the performance report and the corporate parenting board annual report, I think we're encouraging. There's perhaps on performance, as we'll talk about later, there's perhaps a little more variability than maybe we would choose to have. But it's not significant variability. So from a personal perspective, I think the picture looks pretty good, actually. A couple of areas of concern and I'm not sure there's much more I can say, actually. The picture looks pretty stable and I think looks pretty good. I don't know if anyone else has anything. I know Jonathan has a specific question to ask. I don't know if anyone else would like to comment on those two reports. Barony and then Rachel. Of course. I'm so sorry, Claire. That's quite all right. I very, very quickly just wanted to start off this agenda item. I know that the actual performance data is of necessity historic. But I did want to say to the committee that naturally the corporate parenting board looks at much more up to date information every time it meets. And that we are not looking at things that are 14 or 15 months old. And in particular, I wanted to talk about the report from the corporate parenting board itself. And I know we have members of the corporate parenting board here in the room. And just to say that over the last year in particular, what I'm trying -- I chaired the corporate parenting board. And what I've been trying specifically is to -- through the board to look at the impact that the board is having and the progress that individual area -- that has been made in individual areas. Because I think it's important as a board, we don't just exist and have a good overview of what's going on across the area of corporate parenting board. But really to hold ourselves to account and say what difference have we made as a board? What have we tried to influence? What impact have we had as a board? And most importantly, what difference have we made for the children in the care of the council and for care leavers? What have we achieved for them? And I hope that that theme comes out through the corporate parenting board report. But just to reassure you that that is the driving mission of the corporate parenting board. And I think it's a really good point that we remember that actually, because that is the purpose of that report. You know, what is the board contributing to the well-being of children and young people who are looked after and sorry? So thank you, Claire. I think that's a really well-made point. The first person with the question was Barony and then Jonathan, please. I've just got one question. And forgive me if the data is in the pack and I haven't seen it, but I can't find it. It says for looked after children under five years old and continuously looked after for 12 months or more, there's been a decrease in developmental checks. Now, how significant is that? Because I can't see that data in the pack, you know, the annex. What was the original figure and what's the decrease in developmental checks? If it's not in the pack, I will also have to double check and I will do so because I don't want to give you the wrong percentage. But it is significant in the sense that we need to understand the children's developmental rates and what any concerns there may be so that they can get addressed as quickly as possible. But I need to check the exact -- sorry, if it's not in the pack, I'll need to check the exact figure for you. And part two of that question is why? So what is the decrease in the developmental -- well, what was the original number? What was the decrease and why has there been a decrease? If there's been a decrease, it's likely to be either in relation to available appointments within the NHS and/or foster carers' availability to get the children to those appointments. Because I really would like to follow that up if I could because, you know, we all know that that first, say, five years is crucial to the life outcomes of any child, let alone a child that's maybe had the cards stacked against them a bit or a lot. So if we could just -- I'd like to build on that, not necessarily here. I'm seeing it on the summary page now. It's actually on page one, eight and nine. It's on the summary page, isn't it? It's on the report. And actually, interestingly, Bernie, there is narrative there to explain what's happening. I miss that. So, yeah, absolutely. I mean, but it might be worth looking at that. And if you're not content, then please do ask a question. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's to do with children placed outside Surrey, that I think the ability to do those initial health assessments within the required time scale appears to be more difficult. It's more difficult to maintain consistency when the child isn't in Surrey. But whose responsibility is that, then? Where it's placed or with us? It's where the child is placed in terms of an NHS response to -- So if we're replacing some children in a place where they're not getting these checks, we have no responsibility. That's not the development. Yes, it is. But often developmental assessments get done at a similar time or within the same clinics. And if the clinics are struggling with paediatricians, the same issue will arise. I think we need to build on this. Despite what's in there, I want to know a lot more about this. Actually, I was going to say that looking at the new contract for children's community health care, one of the big risks is that one of the potential contenders for that contract identifies, or the team preparing the contract has identified, is the availability of developmental paediatricians. So I do think it's an area that we probably need to be looking at. It's part of the reason behind the question, to be honest. Yeah, I thought it might be. Thank you. I know that Liz Townsend had a query, and then Rachel. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. I just have a query on number 26, which is the Surrey County Council has looked after children who had a strength and difficulties questionnaire completed. There was a significant decrease from 95% in 2022 to 67% in 2023. Obviously, it goes on to say about the importance, and this will provide more formal clinical consultation and support where necessary. So I was just wondering, there is a significant decrease, and looking at the table at the back which provides the sort of rag rating for it, the benchmark against statistical neighbours is 87%, and then for England altogether it was, I think, 75%. So it has dipped quite a bit, and I just wondered whether there was any further information around that at all. It's something that we ask carers to complete on behalf of the children as they get to know them. We've previously had a robotic system in the IT part of the world that helped us understand or correlate all of that, and we've had some problems with that, but I think they are now resolved. Well, I know they're now resolved. I have put considerable focus on it this year, and it has improved this year, because obviously this is old data. Rachel? This is very much sort of leading on from that. I noticed on sort of actions and recoveries, the pathway plan surgeries, it says that they're offered to social workers and team managers. Well, is the pathway plan is so exceedingly important? Isn't the word offered extremely light? Shouldn't this be a piece of effective or essential training or refresher training, because there's so many of them so late? It's just offered to all social workers, et cetera. I think it's essential that they do them, and refreshers, particularly if we're so far behind with them. Thank you. It's one of those things that once you've missed it, it will be behind for 12 months, so that you'll see very slow progress, which is happening month on month. The difficulty we've offered to all social workers is that not all social workers have a looked-after child that would require a pathway plan, and we see a real difference in the timeliness of them for the children in the looked-after system, where it's part of their day job, and they do them all the time, to the children in the adolescent safeguarding and family safeguarding services, where they may only ever have one child. For a social worker to go to training when they don't have a looked-after child, and then not have one for a year, the training by then is out of date or out of their mind. It's about getting the training to the right people at the right time, so I think that's why it's worded like that, but there isn't any less focus on those people who've got a looked-after child need to understand how to complete a pathway plan, and we've got surgeries there for them when that happens. Does that make sense to you? A little bit, Chairman, if I may. If it's only specific social workers that have a child that is relevant that will need a pathway plan, then can we still make that very clear on the recovery that it is essential training for them? I mean, let's split it up. It is only essential if you have a pathway plan to deal with if you have a child. I'm disappointed that it only happens once a year, but for our social workers to be fit for purpose, they need to have training in that, whether they've really got a child or not, but I appreciate resources and the time that's lost, so could we specify it's just that for those people to be offered, I think it needs to be a little bit more firm. Okay, point taken. Thank you. I think the next question was Jonathan. Thank you. This question, or framing this question, involves reading between the lines. So page 131 compares foster placements, where we're reasonably comparable to authorities. But if you flip to page 133, which is about placed within 20 miles from home, and then 134, which is placed within local authority boundaries, you can see that we're not in line with other local authorities, and we're not going in the right direction. Now, where foster carers are within Surrey, there are Surrey foster carers, where they're outside of Surrey, they tend to be independent fostering associations, far more expensive. So what it looks like is that the amount of foster carers in Surrey isn't going up, or perhaps it's not going in the right direction. I know we've done quite a lot in the county to improve the packages to support foster carers, and there's been lots of energy to re-energize recruitment and retention in that area. But just looking back, with all the knowledge of all the good things we're doing, the data, the outcomes, don't look like they're yet moving in the direction we want them to go. So why do you think that our foster carer sufficiency program, so more foster carers in Surrey rather than outside, seems to have effectively stuck? I think that's a very difficult question to answer, Jonathan, and if I knew the answer I'd have implemented it long ago. Whilst we went down by 1% last year, statistical neighbours and nationally, people went down more than that. So statistical neighbours went down by 5%, and nationally by 2%. Whilst it's not an excuse, I do think it's part of a national context of people are not feeling that foster care is something that they want to do currently. We looked at our rates, and we did that, as everybody here knows, that very kind of long-standing real root and branch review of all our rates and all our different types of payments, and that in itself has increased numbers. When I've talked to carers and to staff in the fostering service, whilst the cost of living crisis has been an issue, it's had different implications for different carers. So, for example, I've been told of a number of carers whose own grown-up children who previously rented accommodation and can no longer afford it have since returned home, reducing their bedroom capacity to be foster carers. Now, that isn't something that's nationally reported on, and it's a bit anecdotal, but I've been told that by a number of foster carers and a number of staff. So things like the cost of living are significant. We've talked a lot this morning about the complexity of children, and that continues in the looked-after population. So our children have very complex needs, and a lot of carers are struggling to meet those needs, I have to say, and are finding it very emotionally draining. And if you look at the final performance today on turnover of foster carers, you will see changes in circumstances, which is a choice that carers can use because it's in the DFE reason, but actually the emotional drain of looking after children has been significant for a number of carers. And we have tried to do things about that, so we have got a good offer for them in terms of the skills that we give them, the support we give them, including one-to-one support, you know, when they've had difficult times with children and difficult move-ons. But I think there has to be a recognition that caring for the current children that are looked after is a very difficult job and not one that as many people currently want to do as did in the past because of the complexity of the children, which is different to how it was in the past, you know, and I can't pretend it isn't. You know, I think that's a really good point, actually. Slightly tangentially, I've asked a question of committees in common tomorrow, which is not a public meeting, it's a private meeting, but I have been concerned about the assessment and diagnostic support for children who have potentially fetal alcohol syndrome disorder. And if the number of looked after children, you know, if the number of looked after children who could potentially suffer from that syndrome is as high as some predictions, 25, 27%, then it worries me hugely that FASD is not an area that we have much support for in terms of community health contract that is being put in place. I wasn't reassured by the response that I got to my questions, and I have a supplementary to ask tomorrow, but it does bother me because I think that we have heard from a number of special guardians and adoptive and foster parents that actually, you know, if they had had better support in, you know, when children are young and getting better assessment for children, you know, they felt that their job would have been easier to manage and not so emotionally draining as it became. And I, you know, there is a, you know, there's a trajectory in all of these things, and I think we're not paying as much attention to that sort of assessment and support as we could do. But it is worrying, actually, that, you know, the needs of children are becoming more complex, and it's a very challenging situation for a foster carer. Are there any other points that people would like to address on the Corporate Parenting Board report or the performance? Okay, then I think we'll close that topic, but thank you very much. I mean, it's a very, very comprehensive overview of what we're doing in respect of looked-after children, and it contains a lot of very insightful information, so thank you for that. The next item on our agenda is Ofsted reports published since the last meeting of the Select Committee, and there were none. But I think we'll probably have one coming up for the September the 12th meeting. We will have, and we'll probably have a busy summer with them visiting us. Really? Do Ofsted inspectors only like going out in the summer? Well, they don't cease in children's homes during the summer. In fact, they quite like it because the children are there. Do you know, you'd never guess that, but it does make sense, actually. There was actually one that's just been published. That will be published with the September agenda. Sorry, it wasn't published in time for this pack, but it was a good outcome. It retained its good status. So they're maintaining their positive record and positive trajectory, which is really excellent news. Okay. The last item on the agenda is the performance overview. I'll just say a few words, and then I'll open the floor to anyone else who would like to make a comment on performance. So, you know, we discussed the latest performance reports with the QA team before each Select Committee meeting. And there were some items that really stood out in our discussions this time around. So we saw a significant drop in early health assessments, and we're told that's because of a new way of working, and the data isn't yet comparable with the old data. So, you know, that's an outlier, and we probably -- we're told, reassured, that we shouldn't read too much into that. Worryingly, though, the number of working days from MindWorks neurodiversity pathway first appointment is currently, or was in May, at 248 days and rising, which seems to suggest that closing the assessment path for so long to improve first appointment performance hasn't really worked very well. And I think that the whole MindWorks arena remains a subject of concern to us, particularly in respect of neurodiversity. And hopefully, in the autumn, we'll learn much more about the MindWorks response. This was a subject brought up at the Joint Adult and Children Select Committee back in May, and our conclusion was at that point that we were not reassured that MindWorks really had a handle on how to deal with admittedly burgeoning demand, but simply handing it to schools when MindWorks is the responsible agency in Surrey cannot be acceptable. So we look forward to learning more about that in the autumn. A point that was raised earlier, actually, was that, you know, we are reassuringly back at the -- certainly in June, back at the 22 performance level on the HCP timeliness within 20 weeks. So we were back at 61 percent in June '24, as we were in the summer of '22. But worryingly -- and we have discussed this earlier -- worryingly, an audit of EHCPs produced as a result of the recovery plan identified only 22 percent of them rated good or outstanding. We also noticed that only 45 percent of EHCP annual reviews have been completed on time. It feels like we focused on getting the numbers out in terms of the recovery plan, but actually the quality of the EHCPs and, you know, having the annual review must be nearly as important as having an EHCP in the first place. So I really feel that we dropped the ball. You know, parents tell counselors -- and we have discussed this already -- that an incomplete or inaccurate EHC, education, health and care plan, is nearly as bad as not having one. And a late annual review has an equally detrimental impact on the future and the well-being of a young person. So I really do hope this situation is remedied pretty soon, because it's -- you know, we're making progress on one hand and deteriorating apparently rapidly on the other hand, which is very worrying. Another really worrying statistic is social work retention and recruitment. So I think we've all discussed in the past, you know, it's an off-stead mantra that having a stable, permanent social work workforce is an essential feature of the journey of a local authority to a good rating. And our permanent establishment of social workers, other than non-qualified social workers or apprentice social workers, sits at 55 percent, and our target is between 80 and 85 percent. So we also have more entirely vacant roles without locum cover than we had 12 months ago, although our turnover is reducing. The social work figures are particularly disappointing, because I think we felt, you know, within the last 12 months that we'd begun to make progress on that. And for myself, you know, I don't think I need to say any more about EHCPs, because, you know, I think it's been said, but I would be very interested to understand what's happening in terms of recruiting and retaining permanent social workers. So if I could ask that question, please, and then I'll ask other members whether there are any items that they would like to question. Sorry, I've just realized we've also got Tracey and Liz on the line. So, Patricia, would you like to -- Tracey, I wasn't going to -- well, maybe you would like to say something about the quality audit of the EHCPs and the annual reviews, but can I come to Patricia first, actually, on the subject of social workers? Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. We're now into the afternoon. So in terms of social work recruitment, as you know that there is an RRC board, recruitment, retention, and culture. It has a wide membership, and we work very closely with our colleagues in HR and other services. We are doing everything that we think possible in terms of trying to, you know, word of mouth, you know, making our recruitment and retention packages attractive, our adverts more attractive, you know, because it isn't always just about money. It's about people thinking, actually, when they arrive, they will have good supervision, they will have good training. So a lot goes into our recruitment to try to get people to be really interested in coming to Surrey. As we know, and we've said it so many times here before, one of the things that's really difficult for Surrey is because of where we're geographically located and the cost of living in Surrey in terms of rented accommodation and buying and having a mortgage here. So we are -- you know, we are -- we have a struggle because we -- you know, there will be -- Hampshire will pick up from us, you know, West Sussex will pick up from us, and the London boroughs will pick up from us. Now, just to say that Surrey is in a similar position to all of those other boroughs as well, it's a national issue in terms of recruitment and social work. People are making life choices in terms of thinking, actually, I don't wish to do this job anymore. It's not for me. And also, the younger generation have more than one career, you know, so us dying hearts, Tina and I in the room, we're social workers. But we know that the younger generation coming through will have different careers. You know, I am confident that the RRC -- I don't sit on that, but I know that Matt is constantly talking about the RRC, and we -- you know, he constantly talks to Tina and I. We have regular weekly meetings to look at what can we do differently. And what we really hope is in terms of the retention that our social workers that are in Surrey, and then what is really good is that turnover isn't as great anymore, is that those social workers will be telling their friends in other boroughs about the attractions that are coming to Surrey. And we do actually have a really good training offer. You know, it's -- so I don't really know what more we can add because we've given money to the family safeguarding teams. It isn't -- we can't rely on money across all of the teams because we don't have the money for that. We haven't quite got a detailed analysis as to whether or not the money has made the difference yet in the longer term. We know that we've got a greater level of stability at the moment, less turnover, and time will tell. But I just want to reassure people we are doing everything we can to attract people in, and if you look at the videos in terms of what goes out with our application packs about, you know, what's it like to live in Surrey and all the promoting of the green leafy Surrey and the schools, you know, because we want people to come here and live here and raise their families here. I don't know if you have any questions. Sorry, Chris, and then Jonathan. Yeah, I mean, well, myself, Jonathan, Jeremy, attend the RRC board, and I think what Patricia said is probably absolutely right. I think, Matt, the teams there, they are multi -- cross-party, cross-group teams, and I think they are working very hard. I think the points you've made are absolutely valid. I think the housing one, which is maybe where Jonathan might want to go, because I know Jonathan's raised it a few times, and I'll let him speak about that. But I think on the recruitment side, I think also about younger people and the choices they have is also a major factor. But I do think the RRC is trying -- the only other thing I wanted to add is I asked at the last RRC meeting a week or so ago, we talked about having support for social workers doing the desk work, the actual reporting, and I think somebody at RRC has gone away to check, because I thought we'd agreed that, and I think there was even a budget potentially for that. The ability to recruit those people is still extremely difficult, and also just form-filling is not actually just form-filling for the social workers. We understand that, and that came up at the meeting that I asked the question. But I just wondered what had happened to the budget and whether it had been disappeared or -- you know, I think we did get a budget to try and deal with that, and somebody was going to come back, and I was expecting -- I mean, maybe you can answer now, but somebody is going to come back at the next RRC meeting. So I think we are trying to do things to recruit and support both our current social workers and those going forward. But I'll leave it at that. I mean, I think Patricia has said it quite clearly. I'd just be interested to know what's happened on that particular subject of support. Yeah, I believe it was two financial years ago where there was additional money placed into business support, and I know it took some time to recruit people, and we really struggled for quite a while, but I think all of that recruitment has taken place. But, of course, as we discussed in our performance meeting in the subcommittee, that our business support play an absolutely critical role, and it is really important that social workers don't get bogged down with things that actually administrative roles take -- you know, can do for them. But one of the things administrators can't do is can't write up the business, and we had that discussion the last time, didn't we, Jeremy, in terms of, you know, in the past, if you did a visit, you could have handed a piece of paper to your administrator, your team class, and they would have ticked the box for you. But it's not like that anymore, and it is only the social worker that can write the narrative of that visit. And, you know, our recording demands increase all of the time. No, it's useful to understand that. I mean, it sounds as though, you know, on both recruiting foster carers and recruiting social workers, you know, that's different issues, but similar results. Some similarities, too, yeah. Yeah. Jonathan, you had a question. Yeah, it was just, if I may, just coming back on your response to Fiona's question, Patricia. So my understanding is that you said that London will pick up from us, and currently they quite often do, partly because they have a housing allowance as part of their package, and we don't. And also, one of the problems we have, I understand, of retention is we recruit from overseas. People come from overseas to the UK. They have a contract to stay here for a certain amount of time. Then afterwards, I think, well, actually, I can have a better standard of living, which includes a house and an overall more real-life money that I can spend if I move from Surrey somewhere to the north of us called London or somewhere further to the north than that. So as long as we continue to recruit from overseas but don't provide any housing as part of our social worker package, we can do all the kinds of things we'd like to under the Recruitment Tension Board, and it feels like we are, but the fundamental trends don't look like they're going to move. Is there now a commitment from us that we're going to stop recruiting as much from overseas and that we are going to start to support social workers with a housing package, or do you have a magic wand to solve the problem in a different way? There is no housing promise to any social worker. We don't have T-worker housing for social workers in Surrey. But, yeah, I understand that's the case now, but do you have any intention to address that? Because as long as we continue to recruit from overseas but have no social worker housing package or any other key worker housing package to that matter, then exactly what you said will happen in the future. London will pick up from us, is your words. Well, that's because they can get housing, and we don't provide it. Yeah, Chris might want to answer to that, but I mean, I think there was certainly appetite and Tina will recall it was in 2019, 2020, where there was lots of exploration and we had a dedicated member of staff who looked into the whole of the housing market issue and there wasn't an appetite from private landlords or, you know, housing associations to accommodate that. Chris, you may well have more information to provide from the RRC, but I'm not aware of it. That's why I said I'd leave Jonathan to speak on it. He has been banging on about it for quite a while at the RRC, which is not something that Jonathan's just brought up. I think he brought it up probably about 18 months ago when we first joined the RRC. So it's been something that's been running for a while. Matt's abundantly aware, I have to say. I think Jonathan's, and I will support, I think what was worrying is that we're sort of saying, no, we can't do it and are we really looking at it? Are we trying to move forward and pursue it? Because it is a definite block, you know, and I think what's annoying is we know it's a block. So, you know, we need to take some maybe more dramatic action, but I'll leave it at that. Sorry, can I just come to Jeremy quickly and then to you, Liz? I mean, I've had the honor of doing the job and distancing this. I went to work for West Sussex, and in a duty team, one of my first experiences was being told off by going down the stairs at Crawley Library to talk to someone who came in to ask for help. I have always thought that it's the design of the role sometimes. I came back to social work expecting to talk to children and parents and that. I didn't expect to spend so much time in front of a computer screen or doing admin or managerial work. And, you know, I've said this before, and it's a national thing. Until you actually redesign the role, so to be what people expect them to be, you will have these issues. Why would I stay in social work if I'm going to talk to a screen? So that's such a general point. I know you would appreciate it, particularly Tina and you. Yeah, I think Tina would too. Yeah, absolutely, I think the role is very different from when we were fledgling social workers. Come to Liz. Thank you. I just want to ask a quick question. You mentioned fleetingly earlier to apprenticeships, and I just wondered whether or not that we're using our full levy, the apprenticeship levy, whether we're making full use of that. I know it's just not for the social work or for your particular department, but whether or not that is being utilised as fully as it can be. Chris might be able to answer better. Certainly in terms of social work, we are. We've got our placements and the ones that we can manage and fund, so that's taking place. In the wider area, I know that we each, as directors, are always being asked about whether we have apprentices. Now, I happen to have apprentices in my service because I have UVP, so I have apprentices and some of my other services have apprentices too. In terms of the wider council and children's social care, Tina might be able to answer that best, but I don't know that it's not so easy to be an apprentice in a frontline team unless you're in an administrative role. And I'm not sure how much we use. I thought our relationship with the colleges was something also. Jonathan might be, you know, we had a report last year that I led on and it was one of the recommendations is to talk to the colleges about the courses they're doing. And I think some work was done on that, but I don't think it's actually bore any fruit. I'm not, again, sure how aggressively we actually talk to the colleges about that. I don't know if Jonathan may have more information from his college, I know specifically. I was just going to very briefly say Patricia mentioned UVP. For those who are listening outside, it's not a health condition, it means use of voice and participation. Oh, sorry. My apologies. I should have said that. And my apologies, I've got a go. Yeah. Claire is indicating here on my right-hand side that we are actively taking placements and so we are utilizing lots of, we're supporting apprenticeship schemes. I think maybe this is a subject we can come back to at a later session to better understand. Maybe have a report from the recruitment and retention board so that we properly understand what's happening. That's probably the best way of dealing with it. And that might be an opportunity, if we feel strongly that housing, you know, is axiomatic in this issue, then maybe that's something we can raise at a time. No, I'm really sorry, Chris. I'm really sorry. I really want to give Tracy the opportunity to come back to us and talk to us about what has happened in terms of this audit of EHCs, which identified that only 22% were of good or outstanding quality, because it really does feel like we have succeeded in one area and dropped the ball in another. And I'd really like to hear what Tracy's view is. Thank you. Thank you, Fiona and members. I might also come back around the annual review data, if that's OK, Fiona, just to put that into context. But obviously, it has been a challenge to manage the backlog of the overdue EHC needs assessments and maintain quality and maintain annual reviews. As colleagues will understand, the teams have had to work very, very hard to achieve what they have. In terms of the quality, there has been a drop. It was 26% in January 2024 judged as good and outstanding. And it dipped down to 22% in January 2024. And that was for a couple of reasons, really. The first, just to put into context, that seems terribly low and is of concern when reading it in that cold context. But it must be taken into account that when we judge EHCPs in terms of their quality, any requires improvement or inadequate judgment on any part of the plan will bring the judgment down. So those that are judged as good and outstanding are good and outstanding across each element. So I just wanted to set that context, first of all, so that colleagues get a sense of what the judgment actually means. In terms of the thing that specifically changed, there are a couple of points. One is it seems that the education health care plans that have been issued more recently are not telling the child's story as fully as they did previously. So our records are indicating that the voice of the child is not ringing through in quite the same way as it did before. Then there are also concerns around the way that health provision is recorded and indeed social care provision is recorded. Those two concerns have been consistent. And essentially an education health care plan quality is only as good as the advice that you get in. So if the advice from other professionals is written in a high quality way, then that advice is able to be incorporated in a plan, therefore producing a high quality plan. So we need to work with our colleague partners who are providing advice as part of the EHDP process to improve that quality of advice. And we've been doing some work along the way on that already. But it isn't to do with getting the plans out quickly. It is to do mostly with some continuous improvement that we were already working on. The issue around the voice of the child is a concern and I think that does reflect some of the speed at which the plans have been issued. And we are doing a workshop on making sure that our CEN colleagues understand how better to promote the voice of the child in the plan. But I hope I can provide some reassurance that the elements that describe educational needs, educational provision and educational outcomes are on the whole strong. They need some work around time bonding and measurements and making them smart. But actually the plans do reflect the child's needs and the type of provision that should go into place. If anyone has any concern about the quality of a plan that's been issued recently, it's possible to call an early annual review and a plan will be revised. And additionally, there are times where we with parental agreement have finalised the plan before we've had all the information in to try and get a resource into the school as soon as possible. And then as soon as that final piece of information has been received, we have then called an annual review and rewritten the plan with that piece of information in. So I'm hoping that provides an explanation and a context to the data. We're not complacent. We want to improve quality. We certainly weren't ignoring quality at the expense of timeliness. It is equally important and it remains equally important to us. So I'll pause on quality and then if I may, I would value just giving a bit of context to the annual review data if that's OK, Chair. Please do. OK, so I'll move on to the annual review data. Again, I can understand that the data is not at all where we would want it to be. It has actually moved on significantly since the report you've seen. We've been working on improving the annual review data because in July 2023, the completion of annual reviews on the system was at 25%. So we are now currently at a 59% rate of completion of annual reviews. So this is something that has been progressing rather than deteriorating. To be clear, what I'm talking about is getting the annual review outcome on an IT system. We know that annual reviews are happening in schools and the vast majority of annual reviews, and that includes colleges as well, and sometimes early education provision. The vast majority of annual review meetings result in a no change to a plan with a minority there needing a change, and the bit of the process that we haven't been routinely doing is uploading the information onto the system, and that's the data that you see. So we've had a recovery plan in place and a team dedicated to this work since September 2023, which has led to that increase from 25% to 59%. We're on track to achieve 75% by December of all children. But within those annual reviews, we've been specifically prioritizing, making sure we're on top of the vulnerable children's annual reviews. That includes children looked after, children missing education, children who are on complex packages of support and so on. And we have 78% of vulnerable children's annual reviews now up to date, aiming for 100% by Christmas. So again, it's not an area of work that we are feeling complacent about in any way, shape or form. We've got work to do, but we're making very good progress as quickly as we can in this area. Thank you. It's good to hear that work is actually happening. I think it is a bit concerning, actually, that the quality of the EHCs has been as bad as it is for so long, and I'm wondering if there isn't a need for some sort of quality control process when it comes to EHCs. But I do take your point that in terms of the critical area for parents, and that's educational requirement and assessment, you're saying that the quality there is actually pretty good. So I mean, I'm happy to accept that, but I think that an audit turning up 29%, 26%, 22% remains concerning, even though, as I say, in the critical areas you've provided some reassurance. And I would hope that it would lead to some sort of quality control process or better management of the reports that are actually being produced just because of the potential to really impact children, young people and their families detrimentally, because it's a very difficult process anyway. So to come out of it with a report which is inaccurate or incomplete is traumatic for children and families. On that point, I think we need to close the meeting. I'm very sorry. We've run over a little already. I'd like to thank everyone very much. It's been a very in-depth meeting. I think we've visited quite a lot of subjects and revisited quite a lot of subjects, but I think it's been a very helpful meeting. And on a final note, I'd just like to wish everyone a very happy, warm and sunny recess. And I'll see everyone for a bumper edition of the Select Committee on the 12th of September. Thank you all.