Posted by: clairekelley | June 18, 2009

Harrogate secondary school admissions

Today I have seen a letter from Cynthia Welbourn, Director of North Yorkshire’s Children and Young People’s Service, confirming that the Council’s intention is to consult on changes to its admission arrangements for the September 2011 entry.

This is based on the contention that, having received the revised decision on the 2009 complaint  on 3 June and with the decision on the 2010 complaint expected in July, there is insufficient time to consult and introduce new criteria in time for the 2010 entry.

So Harrogate children will remain firmly at the end of the queue until at least 2011.

North Yorkshire’s prevarication and quibbling has been deeply disappointing and I am saddened to learn that they are taking this approach.   Had they listened to the view of Harrogate parents from the start instead of constantly putting up barriers to change, we would be much further down the road.

We look to the new executive member to bring about the change that Harrogate parents and their representatives have been demanding for many years.

Posted by: clairekelley | June 17, 2009

School admissions update

There’s good news today from the County Council meeting where a Harrogate councillor, Jim Clark, has been appointed as Executive member for education.   This – I trust – signals that the Council has now accepted that Harrogate secondary school admissions need overhaul.   Cllr Clark told the County Council that he had publicly called for consultation nine months ago and still believes that consultation is required.

Time is short because the Adjudicator has indicated that the new arrangements should be in place for the 2010 entry:

28.       In determining the admission arrangements for Harrogate’s community schools for 2010 I note that the LA will need to have complied with the requirements of the Code and will need to have consulted with parents and others on those arrangements.

Cllr Clark will have to move fast because too much time has been wasted already.   I and my Liberal Democrat colleagues look forward to helping him achieve a more equitable outcome for parents and children from Harrogate.

Posted by: clairekelley | June 11, 2009

Infertility treatment – North Yorkshire

Selection pics 007

On Saturday, over a quick lunch in M&S, Phil and I chatted about our children and the joy that they bring to us.

It was therefore very poignant to receive a letter this morning from a local woman who cannot have the fertility treatment that she and her husband desperately want because of the financial restrictions applied by the North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust.    I have been very concerned for a long time that our local PCT has adopted what appears to me to be an unnecessarily heartless approach to the problem of infertility.   The North Yorkshire and York PCT funds one cycle of IVF treatment only, for patients between the age of 39 years and six months and 40.

In other words, they will allow one chance when it is virtually too late.  

Not only is this not in line with NICE and government guidelines which recommend NHS funding for up to three cycles of treatment for women between 23 and 39, but the cynicism that lies behind the age limits they have set strikes me as astonishingly callous for a public service.   If they are not going to fund IVF and other fertility treatments, then they should come out and say it.   Adopting a policy that ticks the box of one cycle of treatment, but restricting it until it is too late  in almost every case is in my book just plain wrong.

Posted by: clairekelley | June 6, 2009

School admissions – adjudicator decision

An early decision for the new North Yorkshire County Council will be to consult Harrogate parents about changes to the secondary school admissions system that has disadvantaged children living in the town for many years.   A second schools adjudicator has come to the same conclusion as the first who considered the complaint and the parents who have been campaigning for a change have been vindicated.

North Yorkshire’s Cabinet Member for Education must now accept the inevitable and conduct a full consultation on how the system can be adapted to make it fairer.

Posted by: clairekelley | April 29, 2009

More school admissions problems – primary this time

 

Parents in Knaresborough have been shocked and dismayed to learn that their children, due to begin school in September, have been offered places at schools in Harrogate whilst places in Knaresborough are being taken by children from outside the town. 

Several Knaresborough families who applied for places at St John’s School have been told that their children are to be admitted to Starbeck Primary School.    So whilst parents from Knaresborough will be driving their four year olds over to Harrogate to go to school, other families from outside Knaresborough, will be driving their children in.   Madness.

I contacted the Area Education Office this morning and have been given the following explanation:

There are enough places in Knaresborough primary schools for all the children living in Knaresborough so this is not a capacity problem.   However, under the new admissions procedures parents who express a preference for a particular school are admitted before those who do not express a preference for it.   It’s easier to explain this with an example.

Family A live in the catchment of Good School, which is not oversubscribed, but they really want their child to go to Another Good School, which is also close, but has a different catchment.   They just enter Another Good School on their preference form.

Family B live 3 miles away, and they have included Good School on their preference form.   

Family A do not get a place at their choice, Another Good School, because it has filled all its places with children fromthe catchment area.   And although they live very close to Good School, they are not allocated a place because they did not specify it.  

Family B do get a place at Good School.    Although they live some distance away, they specified a preference and therefore have a priority over a family living closer who did not express a preference.

Family A are allocated the nearest school with vacancies when all preferences have been allocated, which turns out to be in another town.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by: clairekelley | April 9, 2009

Councillors’ discounts scrapped

Harrogate Borough Council’s Conservative Cabinet has bowed to pressure from the Liberal Democrat opposition and from the public and scrapped their scheme offering discounts to councillors using council run leisure facilities.

Posted by: clairekelley | March 25, 2009

Another Council U turn

Does the Conservative right hand at Harrogate Borough Council know what its left hand is doing?   Last week we learned that in February the Conservative group voted against membership of the leisure discount scheme that they introduced only in January.   The same Council leader who a few weeks ago was urging all members of the Council to take advantage of this offer suddenly turned against it and bizarrely tried to blame political opponents for his own administration’s poor decision.

Today another swift U-turn has been performed.   On Friday, the Cabinet Member for Planning and Transportation explained in the Harrogate Advertiser that he was conducting a consultation on the introduction of yet more pay and display parking in Harrogate town centre.   Local people will be aware that pay and display parking has been greatly extended in the five years of Conservative control at Harrogate Borough Council and that the Council’s parking income has increased by 64% during that period, compared to an inflation rate of 21%.   

Now, only five days later, the same Cabinet Member has changed his mind and announced that Harrogate is to have no additional pay and display parking in the town centre.  

Of course I’m delighted that they have seen sense on both issues, but I’m beginning to wonder when this Council will get a grip and stop wasting public money on consultations and schemes that they have not thought through properly.

Posted by: clairekelley | March 19, 2009

Councillors’ leisure discount scheme

News reaches me that the Conservative Leader of Harrogate Borough Council – who you may remember back in January was urging councillors to take advantage of the discount scheme that his administration had brought in – is now asserting that the Conservative group has withdrawn from membership of the scheme whilst the Liberal Democrats have not.

This comes as a surprise to Lib Dem councillors, who did not know that they had been signed up for the scheme without first being consulted.   The information sent to them by the Council when the scheme was launched clearly stated that to become a member, they would have to have an induction session with a member of the Leisure Centre staff and, of course, agree to pay a monthly fee,  to be deducted from their pay.   I find it hard to believe that councillors have had a gym induction session without noticing.

Nowhere in any of the information about the scheme did it suggest that membership was automatic.   Could this possibly be an attempt by the Conservative group to extricate themselves from an embarassing policy decision?

Posted by: clairekelley | March 17, 2009

New Council homes?

There can be no doubt that one of the most acute problems facing this area is the acute shortage of affordable homes.   No other single issue comes anywhere near this in the frequency with which it is raised in Phil Willis’s constituency surgeries or in his postbag.   

Numbers of the Council’s housing waiting list have increased steadily since the Conservatives took control of the Council in 2003, as this graph so clearly shows, so that by 2008 the numbers were virtually double those in 1997.

housing-waiting-list

It should therefore be extremely welcome news for homeless families that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has recently announced that the Government is planning to allow councils once again to build homes, to keep all the rent from them and to retain the whole capital sum should the homes be sold in the future.   Grants are to be available to local authorities in the same way that they currently are to housing asssociations.   This frees local authorities to provide the affordable homes that are so urgently needed.

Will Harrogate Borough Council respond positively?    They have recently been praised for their speedy reallocation of vacant homes, their timely repairs service and their effective collection of rents.    It would be good to see that they also aim to provide homes for at least some of the thousands of local people who at the moment live in overcrowded, unsuitable or unfit dwellings.

Further welcome news from the Department of Communities and Local Government is that they are offering additional subsidies to local authorities who reduce their rent increases in line with new guidance from the Department.    Authorities have been asked to bid for these new subsidies by the end of April.

Posted by: clairekelley | March 11, 2009

Silent phone calls

Silent phone calls cause worry and distress and are the second greatest cause of complaints to Ofcom – over 1000 such complaints are made every month.

Most silent calls are not malicious in intent, but a result of automated dialling from call centres for marketing.   When there are insufficient staff to deal with automatically dialled numbers, this can result in a silent call.

Because of the anxiety that they cause, Ofcom introduced guidelines requiring call centres using automatic diallers to play an information message to prevent silent calls, but often this does not happen.   Ofcom takes action against companies who do not meet the guidelines – Barclaycard and Abbey National were among the companies tackled by Ofcom about this last year.   

If you receive a silent call, Of com have the following advice:

  • Try to identify the caller by dialling 1471
  • Complain to Ofcom – report the name and number so that they can take action
  • Register for the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) – it is illegal for a company to call someone registered for marketing purposes.    

Further advice is available from Ofcom.

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