A councillor formerly in charge of schools and education policy in Brighton and Hove said that he had not been properly briefed about changes to home to school transport.
Veteran Labour councillor Les Hamilton spoke out during a debate about the resulting problems with the service for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
He told a “virtual” meeting of the council’s Children, Young People and Skills Committee that “the director” told him that the changes had been decided by officials under “delegated powers”.
As a result he was given a cursory briefing when a new contract process was brought in which has been blamed for an “epic failure” affecting dozens of vulnerable children.
Councillor Hamilton chaired the Children, Young People and Skills Committee in the months leading up to the local elections in May last year.
It coincided with the introduction of a new “dynamic purchasing system” intended to save money for Brighton and Hove City Council.
During the “virtual” meeting yesterday (Monday 15 June) Councillor Hamilton said that he recently read that a decision was made in January last year.
But he said that he had “heard nothing” until much later, adding: “It wasn’t mentioned to me by the director until a later occasion.
“When I said, ‘when is the report going to the committee?’ he said, ‘it’s not going to committee. I’ve got authorised powers to spend up to half a million pounds.’
“That in itself is something we need to look at. If you’re spending that amount of money, it should go as a report to a committee.”
Cost-cutting consultants Edge Public Solutions were brought in on a contract worth up to £500,000 to try to save £300,000 a year from the £2.4 million annual budget.
But the system failed to generate savings and the ensuing chaos resulted in a £1.2 million overspend in the past financial year.
The council is now ploughing an extra £1 million into the service this year and is to reset the budget at a more realistic level.
An independent report into what went wrong criticised the lack of communication with elected members.
Councillor Hamilton’s revelation came as Greens and Conservatives pushed the Labour administration into keeping the Home to School Transport Policy Panel running until it was certain that the service was running smoothly.
One of the panel’s members, Conservative councillor Lee Wares, addressed the Children, Young People and Skills Committee and said: “We do not underestimate the huge amount of work put in over recent months by some officers and PaCC (the Parent Carers’ Council). They should be commended.
“However, we have no idea if the actions are the right ones. They appear to go some way to stabilising the service but there are serious questions about what the service should actually look like, how it should be funded, procured and delivered.”
Green councillor Hannah Clare, who chairs the panel, also said that it should continue its scrutiny of the service for up to a further six months.
She said: “We’ve had some very positive conversations so far. It’s not finished yet. We have a list of issues we have agreed to address in upcoming meetings and cannot say there won’t be more.”
Councillor Clare did not expect the process to take a further six months but added: “If it does, it does.”
Conservative councillor Vanessa Brown said that the panel should be able to assess whether the service was smooth running when children returned to school in September.
She said: “The administration must make sure nothing like this happens again. The changes were supposed to make savings and yet made a catastrophic loss.
“Worse than that, it caused so much heartache to children and their families.”
Labour councillor Kate Knight questioned the need for the panel to continue sitting. She said that there would be further reports to the Children, Young People and Skills Committee and monthly reports to a newly formed governance board.
She said that she was am concerned about demands on officials’ time when “the urgent focus” should be on the new school year starting in September.
The policy panel will, though, continue to meet, with the Greens and Conservatives voting together to keep it going.
The interim head of service Regan Delf said that a great deal of work had already been done – to deadline – to improve the service.
Communication with parents and carers and their representative groups PaCC and Amaze were helping to rebuild trust between the council, families and transport providers, she said.
For Hamilton to plead ignorance is utterly disingenuous: if it’s really the case that some mysterious figure known as “the director” has been given authority to spend half a million pounds of public money without scrutiny, then the question arises, who allowed them this authority – and who else has this sort of spending power?
There needs to be a full, independent audit of council employees’ access to our money.
So is Les laying the blame solely at the Director’s door, (I presume we are talking about Pinaki Ghoshal), no wonder he made a sharp exit. It would be nice if someone owned up too this mess. Les has been a good councillor, (locally), but I feel he failed to challenge or potentially understand what was happening here.
This is redolent of the way in which Labour cllrs Morgan and Robins claimed to be acting in “good faith” when going along with the closing down of Hove’s Carnegie Library before Opposition Councillors showed that the figures were bogus.