Sheffield City Council – Cabinet Meeting - 20th May 2020

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For the first time in it's 100+ years history the Leaders of the Council met remotely via internet services to enable at least some semblance of democracy to continue during these unprecedented times. This is my very concise report on the proceedings.

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The Council's normal service is highly affected currently, both by the Pandemic and by Government changes to the way they are enabled to maintain services and make decisions during the crisis. This is impacting to some extent on the democratic process and is not what we would like to see happening but strange times can lead to unhappy circumstances and we must do what we can as organisations and individuals to maintain scrutiny of those in power and the decisions they make.

If the least we can do is to continue speaking truth to power then that is what we must do.

The meeting started a little after 2pm and, as is usual for what would normally be the first meeting after the Council's AGM it is essentially a short agenda. On this occasion, with the normal AGM having been cancelled all the faces of the Cabinet Councillors remained the same and in the same roles (this is unusual). The meeting was opened by Cllr Julie Dore, as leader, with some brief opening comments and effusive thanks to the people of the city for their forbearance through the 9 weeks of lock-down to date. She commented on the difficulties we have all faced adjusting to the restrictions and offered particular thanks to Council staff and Social Care staff for their dedication.

The agenda was still able to handle Public Questions, though it is now necessary to have the question in 2 days in advance if you want to be part of the meeting, On this occasion there were two questions;

Ibrar Hussein, for the Taxi Trades – asked about the plans for the Clean Air Zone in the current circumstances, the slow progress of putting licensing applications online and the slow response to petitions. This was answered by Cllr Bob Johnson and would be followed up with Mr Hussein direct.

Mike Hodson – Carter Knowle & Millhouses Community Group, asked about the engagement plans for the Director of Public Health and communities/groups in light of Public Health England guidelines and the fact of different 'r' rates (infections) within the country and region. This was answered by Julie Dore who is asking the DPH to respond to Mr Hodson.

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The meat of the meeting was, not surprisingly, a report on the Covid 19 pandemic and the city's response and plans for the future.

This section of the meeting was introduced by the (Interim) Chief Exec, Charlie Adan and then heard from the Executive Managers responsible for the city's response. Key amongst these was Greg Fell as Director of Public Health. I won't give a blow by blow on his report, or the other Executive Managers there but highlight some of the key points that piqued my interest.

The DPH reported that, using reports to NHS111 of people using their infection algorithm, as well as normal figures of hospitalised cases, he was able to estimate that a truer figure of cases in Sheffield was 30,500. This is a useful extra level of information that continues to show how official figures are misleading. He also commented that, following Sheffield Hospitals testing programmes and a generally good response from the Sheffield public to the lock-down, Sheffield's ICU beds always maintained the capacity to deal with the cases that needed hospitalisation. Sadly 304 people to this date had died from the virus or complications associated with having the virus.

I did have some cause for concern over one or two of the comments;
How can we be certain that, as the DPH commented, those infected have developed any immunity or how long this may last? (inevitably I will be asking for evidence on this considering we test so little in this country)

I am also concerned that we continue to support following HMG guidelines when so much of what they have done to date has either been the wrong decisions or utterly confusing messages.(You can see further comment from me on these issues and more in this The Public Interest article )

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An interesting point came up during the report on the logistical efforts the city has been making to tackle the pandemic, by John Mackilwraith (apologies if that's not correct, poor screen resolution makes the name difficult to make out) He reported that Sheffield quickly became the hub facilitating PPE deliveries for the whole of South Yorkshire, Public Services and Independent Sector. The city had supplied 85% of the Regions needs with the rest being drops from the HMG stock. As a result of some very hard work the Sheffield service had managed to maintain some 5 days supply at facilities across the South Yorkshire area and is also holding approximately 4 weeks stock for contingency.

A well organised public sector response in sharp contrast to the Central Government debacle on behalf of the NHS.

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Lastly I want to highlight some of the financial impact that the Council have had to absorb to tackle this crisis. Eugene Walker, Executive Director for Finance, reported that the response to Covid 19 is currently estimated to cost the Council £77M and that £50M of that will be this year. Government is expected to provide grant support of £34M, leaving the city £16M short. This means that without further Government support and with the impact of current spending cuts to take into account the city will have to draw on it's reserves to fill this gap. Even then the city's reserves will be exhausted in 2022.

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After the reports from Officers it was time for the Cabinet Councillors to make comments on the report. I comment briefly on these and first of all note that each of the Cabinet Councillors mentioned staff and workers and colleagues to thank everybody for their efforts during the crisis.

Abtisam Mohamed- Cabinet Member for Education and Skills Praised the efforts on ensuring that children on free school meals were provided with 4,000 food hampers over the Easter break and highlighting the lack of Government funding to allow for similar provision during Half Term and the Summer holidays. Also thanked the medium & small Voluntary Sector organisations for their exceptional efforts.

George Lindars-Hammond- Cabinet Member for Health and Social Care Highlighted the excellent response on PPE within S. Yorkshire, being facilitated by SCC and succeeding where HMG failed.

Jackie Drayton- Cabinet Member for Children & Families Emphasised the great work done in Social Care with shielded people in sheltered accommodation and those adults with learning difficulties, who required a different approach

Paul Wood- Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods and Community Safety Highlighted the staff's fantastic job at responding to emergency situations in the midst of the crisis and often within a matter of hours.

Mazher Iqbal- Cabinet Member for Business and Investment Commented on those in the public & voluntary sector who were often working very long days and 7 days a week to address the crisis. Also commented on the difficulty of making the mixed and confusing messages from HMG into something that SCC could deliver. Rhetoric – v – reality.

Bob Johnson- Cabinet Member for Transport and Development Praised the willingness of staff to take on redeployed roles during the crisis. He is also keen to progress some of the active travel proposals he has been working on with City Region and pleaded with Officers to make an announcement by the weekend.

Mark Jones- Cabinet Member for Environment, Streetscene and Climate Change Accepts there have been some problems of people not doing what they should, down to confusing and misunderstanding of Government messaging. Pleased Sheffield maintained open recycling centres and also important to continue efforts on climate change and flood defences to avoid additional crisis issues this winter.

Mary Lea- Cabinet Member for Culture, Parks and Leisure Expressed her upset at having to introduce such harsh measures with respect to bereavements and understands that even the announced relaxation is still difficult for people in grief. On a lighter note she was pleased that the investment in e-books had kept access to some library services available and that the city's parks had maintained an open status even if facilities were closed. They were clearly a lifeline for many.

Terry Fox- Deputy Leader & Cabinet Member for Finance, Resources and Governance Praised the speedy response of 'Mutual Aid' groups in the city and the work they were undertaking to keep communities functioning. Also commented on the flexibility of Council staff and their Unions in responding to the pandemic.

It will make an interesting backdrop to the 'Big City Conversation' around Neighbourhood Decision Making when that programme resumes.

Finally Julie Dore summed up by commenting that, at the time when she and the people of the city most needed to trust Government, we were unable to do so and how difficult this made every step. She also praised the work all Councillors of all parties for their efforts and contributions in the crisis.

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Afterword

Inevitably the tone of the report and the Cabinet comments were of a positive nature, stressing the exceptional efforts of the workers and people of the city. There was no comment on the fights in Page Hall or the issues of Gang crime & shootings in Nether Edge.

I understand this, in a context of maintaining morale and compliance within the population, and hope that these issues are being dealt with by Cabinet members within their portfolios. It would be a serious mistake for us to take a fully 'Keep Calm & Carry On' approach when so much of what this Government has done so far has been detrimental to the Health & Wellbeing of the people of the country.

I will be engaging, I'm sure much to their delight, with members directly on some of the issues but recognise also that things may take a little longer than normal to get responses. I'm used to this however, still waiting on answers to questions for some three years.

We are by no means out of this crisis yet, we need to be prepared for further waves of infection, possibly worse than the first, and the way we work, shop, play and learn may well have changed forever. I hope and trust that key business leaders, including the relevant Cabinet members, are taking the need to review current plans for the City to heart and will include a broad range of stakeholders, including the public, in this ongoing effort

I encourage you to watch the archive of the meeting and to access the report papers both available here .

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On a Lighter Note

The first remote Webcast of the Cabinet Meeting was also notable for the, shall we say, mixed impact of the visuals. There were a number of members who seemed to take the floating head approach to their appearance, others including officers, had some distortion to their features from proximity to their cameras and there were an interesting array of fake backgrounds on offer. All mildly amusing and not too distracting but if I had some advice it would be this;

Perhaps a harmonised background for the Officers – Be aware of your framing – Be aware of what you are doing with your hands etc. (at one point Bob Johnson looked as if he was giving a puppet show but lost his puppets).

However, all in all, a good start and at least retaining some level of scrutiny and public engagement. We shall see if other committees can match that.

Sheffield's 'Devolution' Deal – The Last Lap?

Friday's special Full Council meeting voted to approve the ratification of the so called 'devolution' deal that first came out of it's closet in October last year.

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Until October, following Manchester jumping first, the deal was in the offing but because of secretive negotiations, any details were entirely unknown. The deal hit the ground running with a public signing ceremony complete with the Chancellor and the four Metro Council leaders of South Yorkshire looking cosy, right before the Conservative Party Conference. Despite later insistence from the council leaders that this was a 'proposal', a signed document committed them to a process to agree the deal, either as it stood or subject, as it turns out to some further negotiation.

From that point on and with the relentless pressure of Government timetables snapping at their heals, the councils of the Combined Authority have acted with what some would call undue haste to ensure a deal was done. Questions and concerns from community groups and members of the public were played down, particularly around issues of a Metro mayor with veto powers and the wide range of clauses within the deal that were vague and uncertain. Funnily enough the Mayor's veto later became a 'red line' issue for Sheffield council.

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So, by leaps and bounds, the process moved on. Discussions continued, behind closed doors, yet until late December the public was largely omitted from the process. A public consultation did happen over Christmas & New Year, (great timing) and the results were finally reported to the City Region mired in positive spin. Then councils started their ratification processes. Barnsley, Rotherham & Doncaster voted for the deal in very short order. No surprise really, the leader of Barnsley had commented at a Sheffield City Council scrutiny meeting that 'without this deal he would be unable to provide public services in Barnsley in the very near future'.

The North Midlands councils voted in favour, some agreeing to become full constituent members of the City Region, enabling them to vote for the Mayor. Only Sheffield remained. Before the meeting on Friday, Julie Dore's 'red lines' were apparently resolved to the council's satisfaction and the stage was set for a yes vote.

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As a Full Council meeting there was a space for public questions. Only two members of the public were there to ask questions and, no surprise, I was one of them. In my question I outlined the litany of broken promises, pledges and targets typical of the last six years of 'austerity' and the essence of my question, rounded out by a number of technical points, was;

“Does the Council believe it can trust the current Government to honour it's commitments with respect to this so called 'Devolution' deal?”

The response came from Julie Dore, as Council Leader. The response was, essentially, no we cannot trust the Government. The Council will have to work ceaselessly to ensure the commitments are met and if they renege on any of the promises within the deal, we will withdraw. She also pointed out that until the order approving the deal went before Parliament there was still time to do so.

The Leader commented that this was the only deal available at the moment and that no-one could afford to miss the boat. Without this deal our city and our economy would fall even further behind the rest of the Cities in the country and that, even though the Government continue to control the purse strings, they can cut funding now or in the future with impunity anyway.

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The chamber then went on to debate the deal amongst the political parties. At this point it all becomes quite acrimonious and playground behaviour. The gist of most of the contributions however were to the same effect. It's the only deal on offer, we know we can't trust the Government, any extra money is better than none, we make better decisions locally.

The missing links for me were around responsibility and blame. Nobody really acknowledged how the deal will enable the Government to place some of the responsibility for future austerity in local hands as well. If the deal falls apart through funding cuts, no matter what the facts of the situation, the blame will fall on the City Region and therefore the councils. That may not be true nor fair but that is how it will play out in the political spin olympics in Parliament and in the hostile media.

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So with fingers crossed and hearts full of hope and dread in equal measure, it would seem, the Labour and Lib/Dem Councillors in Sheffield have set sail on Osborne's great experiment. The final act will be the ratification of the deal by the City Region Combined Authority , on the 31st March, followed by frantic, no doubt secret, discussions to try and get all the uncertainties resolved before an order is laid before Parliament towards the end of the year.

'The Public Interest' – Future Campaigns, by Nigel Slack.

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This is just a quick post to ask for some feedback. The issue that got me started on this stony path two years or so ago was transparency. I was shocked by the level of money that the Council spent with private companies to deliver public services and disturbed that more information about these contracts was not known. To me it simply would not do that with over £700M (as it was then) being paid to private companies there was next to no information about what they did for that money, whether they were any good at whatever it was they did and most importantly, how much of that huge sum was profit for these companies?

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That was the root of the campaigns and issues I now work on. That transparency drive will also remain the main focus of what I do. Don't get me wrong however, Sheffield City Council is considered very good at transparency, compared to other local authorities. They welcome the public, mostly, into decision making meetings, to ask questions or deliver petitions, many councils do not. They publish far more on their website than many others I have seen, possibly why it is so difficult to navigate.

I still maintain they could be better and in one area in particular we are way behind the majority of councils in England. Sheffield City Council do not webcast meetings, either live streaming or as archive material. This, for me, is important for two reasons, (amongst many positive aspects of webcasting) it allows people to see how their councillors contribute to the decision making in the city and enables them to work out whether they are doing a good job, It also vastly increases the amount of information available about the meetings that take place. The formal minutes of a meeting are essentially just a record of decisions made. Democratic Services in Sheffield try their best to add more information, particularly around questions asked and comments made by Councillors. However a large part of the goings on in council meetings is simply lost.

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So those are the two main planks of my efforts in Sheffield. I am working with others, mainly Sheffield for Democracy, on other issues such as the council's Community Engagement policy, local devolution and the voting system, TTIP and such. What I'm looking for from my readers, however, is a set of ideas that may form a future agenda. I have ideas of my own and some of those are mentioned on my current 'Campaign and Issues' page. As one man I clearly cannot do everything and I need to be aware that there will be some things that I cannot tackle directly (austerity is an issue for everyone, national policies can only be influenced, until ballot time) but I will always do my best to address peoples concerns, if not by my own actions, at least with advice.

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So to summarise;

The Root Issues.
Transparency – of 'Outsourcing Arrangements.'
Webcasting – of Decision Making meetings and Public Engagement events.

So let me know your ideas, on my blog comments, through my 'Public Interest' facebook page or through my 'Twitter' feed using @SheffCityNigel.