The County Council's Conservative administration has recently decided to allow members of the public to submit petitions at meetings of the whole Council, not just at committee meetings. This is something that the Liberal Democrat group at County Hall have requested many times in order to open up the Council, but which until now has always been refused by the Conservative administration, even as recently as March this year.
The Liberal Democrats on Surrey County Council have for many years regularly suggested that the County Council could make significant savings by reducing its reliance on costly agency staff by reducing the number of agency staff and using its own directly-employed staff instead. At last someone has listened.
Proposals to cut "school special" bus services, in some cases from this September, brought such strong public opposition from parents and schools that none of them will be removed before September 2011. However, this is just a reprieve. All "school special" bus services across the county are still being considered for closure, with the Cabinet expected to come to a decision on 13 July.
For years services for young people such as the Youth Development Service have been Surrey's Cinderella. Budgets have been cut, with staff posts left unfilled and then frozen.This year a re-organisation at the top takes away the Youth Development Officers who lead the work in each Borough and District and further managers, replacing all thirteen posts with just four operations managers to run youth work for the whole county.
Improving services for disabled children was one of the requirements of the Improvement Notice issued to Surrey County Council in 2008, after inspectors said Surrey services for vulnerable children and young people were 'inadequate'. Yet Ruth House, the residential facility for respite care attached to Freemantles School for autistic children, is reducing the number of beds offered from twenty to ten, whilst the opening of Applewood, the new children's home at Banstead built to provide respite care for disabled children with complex needs, has been deferred, even though it has recently been approved by Ofsted as ready for use.
Following the problems caused by the severe weather last winter, which left residents stranded at home and many parts of the County isolated, Liberal Democrat County Councillors called upon Surrey County Council to prepare adequately to cope with ice and snow next winter. However despite their proposals receiving support from two cross-party scrutiny committees, the Conservative administration has rejected them.
