Agenda item

(Questions may be submitted to be answered by the Scrutiny Committee, or Council officers who are attending the meeting as witnesses, on any item that is within the scope of the Committee. Please see the procedure for the submission of questions at the end of this agenda)

Question received from Mr Ingham:

I’ve attended Full Council on 29-11-23 and 18-07-24, Improvement and Scrutiny - Resources on 22-01-24 and 09-05-24, Improvement and Scrutiny - People on 01-05-24 specifically asking questions relating to ASCH and/or its in-house Residential Care Homes. Questions asked covered matters such as staff composition, vacancies, bed occupancy numbers, internal demand analysis.

In relation to the concluded consultation on Engagement of the Older Adults Service Redesign I note 1742 people responded to the consultation either by attending and contributing to the debate during a virtual meeting or by completing a questionnaire, writing a letter or email or by contacting the Council by phone.

For context can this 1742 number be split down by each grouping above to understand how many out of this total number attended a virtual meeting, completed a questionnaire etc  and also can you inform me of the specific number of these individuals that stated they had a lack of confidence in the consultation indicating a disbelief in a genuine consultation process and also those that reported a belief that background work had not been sufficient to warrant the rational for the proposals, and that the proposals did not sit with current trends or needs?

Response:

Many thanks for your question for Scrutiny Committee on 30th October regarding the Older Adults Services consultation, please see below for the information you have requested.

Total attendance

• 1766 people attended a service meeting, virtual meeting, or library drop-in session
• 1742 of these people gave feedback by comments, views and completion of questionnaires, emails, letters, and phone call
• Breakdown of attendance and responses are below

Face to face establishment meetings

• 393 people attended the face-to-face meetings at services
• 110 were residents or attendees of DCC day centres
• 283 were carers and relatives

Online meetings

• 4 online evening meetings were arranged and offered for the public to give their views
• Two of these meetings went ahead due to no bookings being received for the other two
• Session 19/06/24 - 4 people
• Session 26/06/24 – 28 people

Library drop-in sessions

• 94 people dropped into library sessions across the County

Questionnaires

• 1174 questionnaires completed

Email comments

• 50 people chose to email with their views

Telephone conversations

• 3 people chose to give their feedback via telephone calls

Letters

• 20 letters were received with feedback about the proposals

Themed responses

• 102 people responded with comments themed as ‘lack of confidence in the consultation’ 
• 83 people responded with comments themed as ‘rationale for the proposals’

I hope this helps to answer your question.

Supplementary question asked by Mr Ingham:

I’m conscious that the April report for cabinet was based on financial modelling at the time.  All predicted savings and figures to be taken at face value and in good faith with no detailed explanation of background calculations and originating from different sections of the Council/officers. 

Can assurance be given that any metrics/financial information/data being relied upon previously and going forwards is fully understood/validated from start to finish, known how the data/financial information was extracted, how it has been analysed/formula checked/officers work double checked before further  and detailed reports are submitted to Cabinet as once Care Homes are sold or closed there’s no going back even if latterly projections are found to be incorrect. 

This assurance is requested given the Council has confirmed an error, in nothing less, than in the previously published 2022/2023 financial statement of accounts. Senior officer numbers earning above 55k,60k, 65k,70k,80k, 95k was under reported due to 1.24 million in sacrificed salary remuneration for additional pension provision being wrongly omitted from calculations.  If such a significant error can occur in corner stone financial accounts, then every metric/financial statement within any report going forwards to Elected Members for informed decision making purposes should undergo strenuous validation.

Officers confirmed that Mr Ingham would be provided with a written response to the supplementary question.