Derbyshire County Council

Debate between Toby Perkins and Nigel Mills

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Perkins]

It would not be an Adjournment debate without the hon. Gentleman’s contribution and I am grateful to him for it, because his point is well made. The budget cuts we have seen in Derbyshire have come alongside an increase in the population and there is an argument, which many of us in Derbyshire have made, that the authority has been particularly badly treated on the finances. The point he makes is a very valid one.

When the UK and Derbyshire were both run by Labour administrations, there were 56 of these children’s centres, but after 14 years, if these plans are approved, there will be just 12. The centres provide essential services such as health visits, speech and language development, healthy eating, parenting, school readiness, family support, parenting groups and help to improve family relationships. We know that the work done by the staff in the centres has a massive benefit to the children and families that they help.

I was first elected to this place in 2010. During the election campaign, the issue of whether Sure Start was safe if the Conservatives were elected was a key plank of the Labour party campaign. The Conservatives furiously denied Gordon Brown’s claims that one in five Sure Start centres would be endangered if the Conservatives were elected. Well, in Derbyshire, Gordon Brown was indeed wrong: we have seen not one in five of these children centres close, but four in five. Now, the Government wonder why they are spending more than ever on the costs of failure, but they have failed to invest in the early years. When the Minister responds, can he tell us whether he believes that the loss of 44 of Derbyshire’s 56 children centres during the past 14 years of a Conservative Government is primarily down to electing a Conservative Government or down to electing a Conservative council?

We will come on in due course to the authority’s failings in special needs education, but at every school I visit, experienced headteachers say to me that they have never seen so many children with serious special needs. Has anyone in the Government considered whether the stripping away of these early years services may be contributing to the huge increase in the number of children presenting on their first day at school without being school ready and often in need of support with speech and language, dressing and toileting?

The authority got in touch with me and with other Derbyshire MPs to ask us to lobby Ministers for more money, which I and many other MPs did, as the authority was being charged excessive amounts by private providers of children’s services. Derbyshire has embarked on a savage programme of privatisation of services and so would be vulnerable to private sector overcharging, because it has crippled the strong publicly provided services that it inherited.

One feature of this Administration’s approach has been the unfortunate habit of marrying serial incompetence with careless arrogance and indifference to public opinion. The closure of these buildings is a case in point. Jon Pearce, Labour’s parliamentary candidate in High Peak, has teamed up with local Labour councillors to support the community’s plan to create a community hub and preserve the centre at Gamesley, which houses a youth club and boxing club in one of Derbyshire’s most deprived communities. Those clubs were shocked to receive a call out of the blue from DCC to say that they had a matter of weeks to find another venue, because the decision had already been made to close the building.

The community is attempting to form a constituted community organisation and has secured a three-month extension, but it is engaged in a race against time. We have also recently heard that Derbyshire County Council is looking to close two thirds of the care homes that it manages, as well as eight older people day centres. The right to dignity in old age is a sacred covenant in this country. Old people should know that when they work hard for their entire life and make a contribution to society, they should be able to retire with a degree of comfort and security. I feel that the covenant is now disintegrating before our eyes.

The governor from a school in Brampton was in such despair at the situation that she attended the most recent full meeting of Derbyshire County Council to set out that, to meet budgetary constraints while continuing to deliver the required level of care, the school is being forced to cut 160 teaching hours a week.

The cost of living crisis, spiralling rents and ever increasing mortgage rates are destroying the social contract in real time, and the inability of a council to provide services that facilitate for the most in need is a damning indictment of 14 years of Tory rule and local mismanagement. This situation could mean 162 vulnerable residents being turfed out on to the street. The council is now closing its own centres and using the private sector more—it is spending more and getting less. Spending on private care homes has increased by 61% since 2018-19, at a time when the authority has had to close seven of its own care homes, losing 156 beds. It has also closed 140 beds in its remaining 16 care homes and has around 30 vacancies. Where is the county’s duty of care to those living in its care homes? It is not as if the council is efficient. While Labour-run Chesterfield continues to enjoy the lowest council tax in the country, the Tory administration on the council has raised council tax by almost 5%. The need for social care for adults is only going to grow and grow as people live longer lives. I am sure we can all agree that this is a good problem to have, but more funding is needed from Government if councils are to be able to provide essential services such as this. Can the Minister set out the guidance he has provided to county councils and authorities to plan for the delivery of services in the context of demographic change and real-terms cuts to budgets?

The children of Derbyshire are suffering massively under the current council leadership, too. Spending on private schools for children with special needs has increased from £5.7 million in 2018-19 to £24 million in 2023-24, according to the schools forum report, while investment in council provision falters. At almost every single one of my weekly surgeries, I have parents in attendance who have children with special needs who are unable to get into a dedicated special needs establishment. Often, these children are excluded from their mainstream school—these children are missing months or, in some cases, years of their schooling—and are unable to make a mainstream placement work, but unable to access specialist provision.

It can now be revealed that, throughout this period of hardship, Derbyshire County Council has received around £17.5 million of capital funding from the Department for Education since 2019 for additional special school places, but has spent a paltry £1.5 million. That means £16 million, or 91% of the budget it has received, is sat in Derbyshire County Council’s coffers, while parents of special needs children lose sleep every night at the lack of provision in our county. It is nothing short of a betrayal of those parents and their children. What can the Minister do to work with colleagues in the Department for Education to get this dysfunctional authority to deliver special needs placements for Derbyshire children?

The case of Brampton Primary School, which I referred to earlier, encapsulates all that is wrong with Derbyshire County Council’s budget allocation and service delivery. The school has an excellent special needs unit, but also has a tremendous reputation for how it has supported special needs children within its mainstream provision. As a result of this reputation, many parents from well outside the Brampton catchment area who have special needs children will choose it for their children. However, this reputation for inclusivity comes at a tremendous cost to Brampton.

The primary school has 317 children on its roll, with 31% of these children having SEN. It is proud of its reputation for creating a supportive environment for children who have additional needs, but each child who has an education, health and care plan has the first £6,000 of their extra costs covered by the school before any central funding comes in. On top of that, dozens of children are waiting for special needs assessments from the overwhelmed county council education service. While the children and their families wait for their assessment to be heard, the school receives no additional funding for these pupils at all.

A school that has gone out of its way to support those who have the greatest needs is crushing into the rocks of an inadequate funding mechanism and a county education service that is failing to support those children. Can the Minister explain how we can ensure that schools such as Brampton are not penalised for their own success in supporting special needs children?

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this important debate. I agree with the points he is making about the need for Derbyshire County Council to get EHCP assessments done much more quickly and much more accurately than they are currently. I pay tribute to the three special schools in my constituency, especially Alfreton Park, which is a brand new—rebuilt—school that was opened last year, which is a sign that there has been some investment.

Does the hon. Member agree with me about the importance of keeping respite care centres open? That is not least to provide parents with a bit of a break, but also because, if they close, there is a real risk that some parents will not be able to cope, and we will end up with the cost of having those kids in full-time residential care and costing the county council more. It is also the last thing parents want to happen.

[Mr Perkins]

I join the hon. Member in paying tribute to the special educational needs placements he talks about. Their work is outstanding. I was intending to be at Ashgate Croft School on Monday, but, unfortunately, I was unable to make it, and I will be returning there soon. He is right about the importance of respite care, and the perverse impact that cutting those services ends up having on the amount of money the authority spends. I agree with him on both those points. Although the council’s budget has been dramatically reduced by the Government since 2010, its use of the precious available funds has been nothing short of appalling. Budgetary constraints have produced an atmosphere of pressure within public sector delivery bodies, and I have a profound respect and pride for workers doing their utmost in trying circumstances, but the leadership of the council can and must do better.

Derbyshire enjoys the dubious honour of being the pothole capital of the UK. The Beatles may have sung about 10,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, but research by Mac’s Truck Rental found that Derbyshire was home to over 90,000 potholes, and I am pretty sure I have been over them all. Potholes are a serious problem, with profound consequences for road users and public safety. At the behest of a constituent, I recently drove from Ashgate Avenue along Old Road towards Old Brampton, and then to Loundsley Green. The number of potholes I saw on that stretch alone was staggering. I have had to replace two tyres and a spring this winter, and the state of our roads is the No. 1 local issue raised by my constituents when we are out speaking to them on the doorstep. While potholes are a danger for drivers, they are lethal for cyclists.

I have not yet found the courage to tell the enraged motorists of Chesterfield that the Conservative leader of Derbyshire County Council claims that the council is one of the best in the country at pothole repairs, but I have seen how a penny-pinching approach creates even more work for the council, often returning to the same holes over and over again. Some 24% of Derbyshire’s principal roads need repair, compared with the second worst county councils, Kent and Sussex, at 6%, way below. The leader of the county council, Mr Lewis, was closer to the mark when he admitted that his authority adopted a

“patch-up and sticking plaster approach”

to improving our roads. When the figures are investigated it all becomes clear: Derbyshire spends just £54.81 per head on road repairs, the lowest in the country, with an average spend across councils of £86. Derbyshire is allocating 36% less than the average council per head on road repairs. No wonder potholes are so omnipresent across our county.

The council has no plan for co-ordinating disruption to road services from different organisations, so why do the Government not adopt Labour’s plan to have oversight of those contractors so that motorists do not go through the inconvenience of a road being dug up and patched up by one contractor, only for someone else to dig it up again the next week? Having benefited from support throughout covid, instead of investing extra money in its services the council chose to award Tory councillors by creating additional cabinet posts, and lifting its spend while cutting back on services. It also scrapped the chief executive role only to create the post of managing director who, at a princely £176,000, is paid more than the Prime Minister and is a £38,000 increase on the previous incumbent.

I am afraid the answers for Derbyshire lie at its own door. The services provided by Derbyshire bear no relationship to those that existed in 2009 when Derbyshire and Britain were run by Labour Administrations. We cannot go on like this. On 2 May the voters of Derbyshire have an opportunity to send a message to those who have let our county down so badly, vote for a Labour Mayor and police and crime commissioner, and start the process of rebuilding our shattered public services in our beautiful county.

Fire Services (Derbyshire)

Debate between Toby Perkins and Nigel Mills

Monday 25th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to his knowledge and the tremendous work he has done on this issue.

The publication of the desired locations for new stations enables the current owners of the land to increase the sale price significantly. That will cost the taxpayer yet more cash. If we let the people who sit on the land know that we want to buy it, that will obviously push the price up. Similarly, a fire authority sitting with a used fire station asking, “Who wants to buy it?” will lead to a financial catastrophe.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my bemusement that the Amber Valley proposals will cost £3 million in capital and have an extra running cost every year of £150,000? If the proposals are motivated by a funding problem, that seems to be a strange way to fix it.

[Toby Perkins]

I certainly do, and the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The proposals are financially illogical, while being dangerous to the people in the community. In service terms they are inadequate and will mean 108 fewer full-time firefighters overall, and more reliance on retained firefighters and 30 operational community safety officers.

Where will all the retained firefighters come from? On average, it takes six months from the day of recruitment for retained firefighters to be fully trained and ready to fulfil their role. Working as a retained firefighter requires individuals to be within five minutes of the fire station’s location for 120 hours a week, and the allowance received for that equates to approximately 50p an hour. There are already difficulties in recruiting and the changes will require a significant increase in recruitment. The proposal does not seem to have taken into account the impact on retaining existing retained firefighters or the cost of recruiting replacements.

I have worked with the FBU to assess the impact on existing retained firefighters and the conclusions make sobering reading. For the current 13 staff who work at Duffield fire station, only two can make the five minute “turn in” time for the new proposed station at Milford—the other 11 staff would need to relocate to keep their jobs. None of the Dronfield retained firefighters are able or willing to be within the five-minute perimeter of Eckington fire station. Chapel-en-le-Frith has 11 staff, none of whom can make the “turn in” time. None are willing to relocate nearer to Furness Vale. There is a similar story in New Mills, Alfreton and Ripley. Derbyshire fire service says it is offering a relocation package, but the FBU expects many firefighters not to take it because of family or personal commitments.

In just 2011, the emergency cover review undertaken by Derbyshire fire and rescue service stated that the current fire stations were in the right locations. Why would retained firefighters move their family away from schools and work, when it is not their main job and decisions about the future locations of fire stations seem to change so arbitrarily and so quickly? If implemented, these changes would effectively mean a 10-year recruitment freeze for full-time firefighters—a huge deskilling as a whole generation is told: “No vacancies here”.

The location of stations, appliances and firefighters is crucial to response times. The weight and speed of response are crucial to saving lives and preventing serious injury for the public and firefighters. The fewer fire stations there are, the longer it will take firefighters to attend incidents and the worse the fire will be. There is also the risk of flooding, as we know from the great floods of Chesterfield in 2007, when more than 500 homes were flooded but mercifully no lives were lost. Precisely that sort of extreme weather requires help in numerous places at once over a wide area of the county but it is centred on one service.

On the “Sunday Politics” show, the Prime Minister responded to a copy of the Derbyshire Times showing the scale of cuts facing us in Derbyshire by saying:

“I praise local councils for what they have done so far to make efficiencies without hitting front line services.”

That was, to put it kindly, a factual inexactitude of breathtaking audacity. The front line is being hit—in the police, social services, libraries, Sure Start centres, accident and emergency departments, and most certainly the fire service. No wonder the Conservatives have chosen to delete their “no front-line cuts” pledge from their website—but they will not remove it from the memory of people in Derbyshire so easily. Could anyone claim that the closure of 11 fire stations and the loss of 16 fire engines and 108 full-time firefighters is protecting front-line services? This plan does not just mean millions being spent upfront on the basis of future savings; it does not just mean the millions spent a few years ago going up in smoke; it does not just mean dedicated firefighters being thrown out of work; it does not just mean years of experience lost and thousands spent in recruitment costs; it means people in Derbyshire being less safe tomorrow than they are today.

In his response to a letter from my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire, the chief fire officer admitted that the huge capital outlays were early action and would be funded by raiding the reserves to spend money today to save tomorrow. With the Labour party committed to a fairer funding formula for the fire service, Derbyshire should rethink its plans and Members across the House should send the Minister the strongest possible message that these plans would reduce the service and increase the likelihood of loss of life.

Police Forces

Debate between Toby Perkins and Nigel Mills

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing this important debate. She was right about many things, in particular that the police struggle to speak for themselves—they are one of those services that cannot strike—so it is right for Members to have police debates, when we can speak up for them.

I have the pleasure of being on the police parliamentary programme, spending about 15 days with the police this year. I am always cautious speaking in a police debate, because if I say anything that they do not like, the chances are that I will find that out the hard way on the next day that I spend with them. My next day with them involves going up in a helicopter, so they will have scope to show me whether they like the things I say.

The police are facing a variety of what they probably regard as attacks from all angles, such as the funding cuts and the changes to the pay and conditions of police officers, although we should draw a distinction between those for uniformed police constables and those for police staff, who, I suspect, are often in an even worse position. The Government are also making structural changes to the accountability of the police force, which the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) discussed.

This is the fourth or fifth policing debate that I have spoken in over the past year, and I always start by urging the Government to review how they allocate funding to various police forces around the country. If we look at the impact on forces, we need either to implement the existing funding formula, so that forces actually have the funding that the formula calculates for their needs, or to find a better formula and implement that. We cannot, however, remain with a formula that calculates for Derbyshire police £5 million more than they actually get, and yet each year say, “That’s difficult, we will leave that for another year.” I am sure that the Nottinghamshire police force of the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) is in a similar situation and that we will get the same pleas from his force. If we need to be more efficient, can we start with fair funding in the first place? Derbyshire police force thinks of itself as extremely efficient—it has had to be for years, because in its view it has been underfunded. The concern of Derbyshire police is that, while it accepts the scope for more efficiency and further savings, it is hard to keep getting more blood out of the stone when it sees other forces not being forced to make the same level of efficiency savings. I have made that plea almost half a dozen times now. I hope that a different Minister will give a more encouraging answer to my police force, but I fear that that might be beyond his role today.

In common with all Members present, I have been lobbied by various serving and retired members of the police force about the impact of the proposed changes to their pay and conditions. All of us who have been in employment, and who have experienced threats to the business in which we are working or announcements of change and redundancy reviews, know that such times are horribly unsettling and uncertain. One lesson that I have learned is that the time of uncertainty should be as short as possible for it to be as fair as possible on the people affected, so I am concerned that many weeks have gone by since the Hutton and the Winsor announcements. Serving police officers do not yet have any idea which of the proposals will be implemented by the Government, which will not and how the proposals will impact on individuals. If we want to get police morale trending back upwards, we need to resolve what the Government proposals actually are, although I understand that they are under negotiation and that it is hard to come up with any public statement. Human nature, however, is to flick through the reports, find all the worst possible scenarios, add them all together and envisage a situation that, I suspect, is far worse than the reality will be.

[Toby Perkins]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has highlighted the situation in Derbyshire, which we both represent. At the Police Federation conference, Derbyshire representative Sarah Adams reminded everyone of what the Home Secretary said at an earlier conference:

“If you come with me, I will make this promise: I will always back you, I will always support you, I will always fight for you.”

Sarah Adams finished by asking the Home Secretary

“how can you expect police officers or the communities we serve to trust you or your Government?”

Our representative from Derbyshire said that to the Home Secretary. Does that make the hon. Gentleman feel neither that the police have misunderstood nor that the Government have failed to explain, but that the policy is wrong?

[Nigel Mills]

I have had some great times with the police going around the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, because we are advised on the police parliamentary scheme not to go around our own seats in case we attract more attention than the police do themselves. I would not go as far as he did in his intervention. Without doubt, we have a huge deficit, which has to be tackled, and there is no way that police forces can be shielded from that—they will have to pay their share, and I think that they accept that. I am sure that we will disagree about how large the share should be, but, when pay accounts for three quarters of police budgets, there is no way around the fact that that is what must take a fair chunk of the strain.

My point is that it is only fair on people to tell them what the changes will be as quickly as possible, rather than dragging out the uncertainty for months. Some things in the Winsor review and, in particular, the Hutton review are welcome. Hutton singles out the police force for a better deal on pensions than other public sector workers can expect, because they will be allowed their pension at 60, rather than the age rising to 66 or 67.