Agenda item

a)        Buckinghamshire Council update

b)        Consultations

c)        Questions (submitted in advance)

Buckinghamshire Council Updates

The Council’s updates are appended to these Minutes.

The Chairman reported that Misbourne School sports hall had opened last week. It was noted that the hall was not just for the school but would benefit the community also. However, there were issues around parking/traffic around the school which will be looked at.

It was agreed that Liz Charleston would publish the link to the Council’s current budget consultation. (See link below):

https://yourvoicebucks.citizenspace.com/corporate-services/budget-2023-24/

Elaina Quesada, Service Director of Adult Social Care, introduced herself and explained that she was the Community Board’s adopted service director. She wished to draw the Board’s attention to Helping Hands (link below to the relevant page on the website) which was a Council run service to cover food and other essentials costs at this time of need. Board members were encouraged to point anyone they might know who would benefit from this service to the website.

https://www.buckinghamshire.gov.uk/cost-of-living/

There were community hubs open which were welcome, warm spaces, serving tea and coffee for anyone to access. Currently these were mainly located in libraries but other venues were being looked at.

Adult Social Care

Elaina reported that the government had initiates social care reforms for October 2023 which centred around the creation of a cap for lifetime care costs and a reduction in the levels of savings people could have which, in turn, meant the council would support the costs of adult social care for a big proportion of Buckinghamshire residents. In practical terms, this meant that more residents would contact the council and the council would have a higher demand to undertaken social care and financial assessments.

A key focus of this could be about improving advice and information and simplify the messages to residents.

The council would also be disseminating some wider communications about the social care reforms to residents in the next three months.

The Chairman stated that this was likely to cost the authority particularly if no funding from central government was forthcoming. Elaina Quesada stated that financial planning was already underway.

Messaging was being worked on, particularly as there were three different websites to cover, which included Care Advice Bucks, Family information Service (which lists local offers for mainly young people, some with Special Educational Needs). Lessons would be taken from other Local Authorities.

The Chairman thanked Elaina Quesada for her input.

It was noted that there was ongoing support for the Ukrainian visitors of which the Council was support 700 families currently. It was hoped that help would be provided to enable these families to gain places to live, employment and/or training. It was noted that Bucks was the authority with the second largest contingent of Ukrainian families being helped across the UK.

The Chairman mentioned that many people had experienced issues with the bin collections following the introduction of a new contractor. Residents were encouraged to report missing bins online. However, it was noted that the number of missed bins was decreasing which meant that the issues were being addressed.

Consultations

There were none.

Public Questions.

There were none.