London council loses control of child protection
It's not about Lewisham, which is good, not just for us locally it's probably a case of 'no news is good news', but also because it might help me defend myself against any suggestion that I pick on Lewisham - it's just the borough I happen to live in. It's also interesting that things can go badly wrong in leafy outer London boroughs as much as they can in more deprived boroughs such as Lewisham.
What interests me here is the evidence of London boroughs not having the capacity to do what they are supposed to do, how such problems are addressed, and what happens then. It does not appear, in this case, as if formal local government structures had anything to do with highlighting the problem - instead it was done by the national quango OFSTED.
Can Council insiders really have been that unaware? Was there some process of box ticking reports resulting in apparent excellence which meant that the local authority leader was so terribly shocked? Where there any other councillors, of independent minds and expertise on scrutiny or audit committees who took the trouble to scrutinise what was happening?The unpublished Ofsted report, seen by the Standard, found the department as a whole “inadequate” — the lowest possible rating.
The borough is the first in the capital to have been forced to give up control of safeguarding children. Kingston will lose responsibility for children in care, social services, adoption and keeping children safe in local schools.
The Lib-Dem local authority leader described the “poor” rating by inspection Ofsted watchdog as a “terrible shock”.
It comes as a particular blow to the council as it had been awarded an “excellent” rating the previous three years in a row.
Council insiders were stunned at how suddenly the council’s child protection services had declined.
What is going to happen now is that the neighbouring Borough of Richmond is going to take over control. Who decided that? I presume some Department of Education and DCLG officials, using the evidence of OFSTED - if so, I'd not have any problem with this, since it would illustrate a process of important decisions being taken away from incapable local government structures. It's a point I've made on various other threads, most recently yesterday evening re the failure of local councillors who should concern themselves with questions of finance to do anything effective - Sydenham School major demolition and reconstruction
People are quite naturally sceptical about our local democracy, but the way to deal with its problems is not the 'localism' the Coalition advocates, which will mean trying to involve smaller structures, with even less capacity, in decision making, but more effective local government at the level people do identify with, and of a more or less coherent economic region. In other words London as a whole.