00:00Councillor Cam Caron, thank you so much for coming on to KMTV. We're going to talk a little
00:03bit about the LGR proposals. I'm going to start by asking you about your Proposal 1A.
00:08Obviously this is a proposal that imagines a single unitary authority for the entirety
00:13of Kent's 1.9 million people, three area committees sitting underneath it. I want to know how
00:17you think this is going to allow Kent's people to be empowered when perhaps some of the decision
00:22making will be taking place in the centre, quite far away from perhaps where their needs
00:25and where they live are. Well, you see, the irony with LGR is it is meant to be giving
00:31more power to people, but I think it actually does the opposite. I think by the government's
00:35plan to effectively carve up Kent into unitary authorities, I think that removes power from
00:42people in the way they have it now, where they can vote for a parish, town, district or borough
00:47councillor and then a county councillor. I think the whole prospect of LGR worries me because
00:52I think it removes power from there and shoves it up the chain to Westminster. So I find that
00:57profoundly undemocratic. So that's why at Kent County Council, we rejected the plans to carve up
01:04this beautiful county of ours and sort of force it, squeeze it into a preordained model that had been
01:09sent down by central government. And we came up with our own plan, which provides Kent and Medway
01:15with one council, the strategic authority, the Kent Council. And underneath that, we have three area
01:22assemblies, which provide place-based services, so that the people that live in those area assemblies
01:28still feel that sense of locality, and they have representatives who are plugged into what's
01:33happening locally. And what would the division in terms of what the services that those committees
01:38would provide versus the sort of single unitary authority? And you've got sort of things like
01:42licensing and housing and planning that are often quite specific to localised needs. Would those
01:48committees be able to reflect those local needs relative to the unitary authority?
01:51Well, I think if option 1A does become successful, I think it gives us the chance to sort of shake
01:57all the pieces up and lay them down in a better way. So our idea is this. So at the moment,
02:02Kent County Council provides the core services, the adult social care, the children's care,
02:08the education, you know, allocating school places, and of course, highways, which is really important,
02:14maintaining our roads and motorways. The Kent Council would still provide those core big services.
02:23So again, one of the dangers with the other plans for LGR is dividing up Kent into unitaries.
02:28How on earth do you disaggregate those big services and apply them to three or four or possibly five
02:34unitary authorities? At the moment, Kent County Council can provide those services at scale,
02:39which means we can save money. So we retain that ability with our plan, option 1A. And the local
02:45area assemblies will have a very similar structure to the district and borough councils. So they'll be
02:51able to provide local services. They'll be able to advise on planning. I think the Kent Council would
03:00have strategic authority. So we'd be able to look at Kent and Medway as a whole and decide on the big
03:05things like where new housing estates should go, if at all, how much land should be given over to
03:10other projects. But it is those area assemblies which will provide the link to local people.
03:16That is how democratic our plan is.
03:20We spoke to the leader of the opposition at KCC, Anthony Hook, earlier. He said that it's not a serious
03:25proposal. It doesn't have backing from Kent's councils. And I've even heard some comment that it doesn't
03:30fit the government's guidelines to have 500,000 people in each sort of segment of Kent and each
03:35segment of the authority. How do you respond to those criticisms of the proposal?
03:38Well, I think the opposition feel duty bound to object to anything I say and do. And that is quite
03:43right and proper. That is their place. They are not in charge. They don't have the say in this. I do.
03:49Look, I think the thing is, the government has tried to force Kent, which is a very unique,
03:55it is unique. We are not like any other county in this country. We are very big. We are very
04:02populous. And we also have very wide and varying geography. We also have pockets of huge wealth
04:11concentrated mainly around the northwest areas of the county. And we have pockets of huge social
04:17and economic deprivation in parts down by the coast, for example. It is not an equally split
04:23county. So my worry with the other unitary proposals is as soon as you start trying to divide
04:28up Kent, parts of it, parts of our county are going to be hugely disadvantaged. Because at the moment,
04:34we all support each other. The council tax goes into one pot. It is allocated to support everybody
04:41who needs it. You start carving up, say, the east coast of Kent, we're in trouble. How are those areas
04:49going to support themselves? Because they have the most number of elderly people who need support.
04:55They have the most number of families who maybe the parents can't find a job, children with special
05:01educational needs. You know, that's the problem with LGR. And that is why I could not, in all
05:07consciousness, agree with my fellow Kent leaders, because in this process, Kent County Council is
05:13the biggest, but we're all levelled out as leaders. So I don't have any more say in this process than,
05:20say, the leader of Maidstone Borough Council or Fanet District Council. We are all equal in the eyes
05:25of LGR. So I couldn't agree with them. They couldn't agree with me. So sadly, I know the government would
05:32have liked Kent to put forward one proposal. And we did start trying to gain a consensus. It wasn't going
05:37to happen. So that's when I felt duty bound to come up with my own proposal for Kent that helps the
05:44entire county rather than just areas of it. On that sort of provision of services and just sort of
05:49different places needing different things, you mentioned before that sort of under this proposal,
05:54the unitary authority would be taking up a lion's share of big things like spending on adult social
05:58care. Now, I think it's no secret that the spiralling cost of adult social care is causing
06:02problems for KCC and Medway across the county, trying to balance the budgets and deliver the
06:06services that Kent residents need. How do you foresee this option or LGR more broadly as helping
06:12with that? Or are there more structural problems, do you think? Well, I think broadly, at the moment,
06:17the government's plans for LGR do not help with coping with the huge problem that is adult social
06:23care. Adult social care, unfortunately, in Kent County Council has been allowed under the Tories
06:29to spiral wildly out of control. Your viewers should thank their lucky stars that reform got
06:36elected when we did, and we gained control of that council when we did, because in six months,
06:41we have uncovered a horror show of budgets in adult social care that were allowed to literally run
06:48completely out of control. You know, the Tories left us a horrendous legacy. And I think the reason
06:54for that is that they were not prepared to make very difficult decisions. They were not prepared
06:58to recover debt that has been run up by elderly people who can no longer afford to pay for their
07:05care home fees. They were not prepared to even have the conversation about potentially moving elderly
07:12people whose own money has run out from luxurious accommodation into more affordable accommodation
07:18if Kent County Council is picking up the fees. I think the Tories were just content to throw
07:22taxpayers' money at the problem in the hope that it would go away. We are realists in reform. We know
07:27that this problem is not going away. We also know the government has kicked the can so far down the
07:33road with adult social care. It is an absolute joke. No government has addressed this. There is a lack
07:39of joined up thinking between adult social care and the NHS. We've discovered since coming into
07:45power back in May that Kent County Council has been used as effectively a blue light service when it
07:51comes to adult social care. We are not a blue light service and we should not be used as such. But
07:55however, that is what's been happening. So I've made some major changes to that department in Kent
08:01County Council and your viewers can be assured that we will get it under control. We are getting it
08:05under control. However, at the moment, we're having to deal with this huge overspend that's been allowed to
08:11happen under the Conservatives. We're putting the brakes on the runaway train. But as you can imagine, a
08:16runaway train takes a little while to slow down because the momentum is so great. But we have applied those
08:21brakes and we've applied them very vigorously. We are slowing that train down to a point where we can get it to
08:25stop. We get everything back under control. And then we continue.
08:29You mentioned there that adult social care, the cost of it is a national problem. And it's
08:33something that the government's kicked down, kicked the can down the road. Obviously, we're talking
08:36about LGR and reorganisation of government today, local government that is. And one of the, under the
08:42government's devolution white paper, the idea is that every place will have a mayor, eventually,
08:46which will lobby for better funding and more power for localities to do things on skills and
08:52things like that. Do you foresee, do you think basically Kent needs a mayor with that kind of
08:57more effective lobbying power to be able to solve some of these more structural problems?
09:02Well, there are several things going on here. There's the mayoralty, the mayoral strategic authority,
09:07and there's a devolution priority pathway, and there's LGR. The government has really screwed
09:13Kent over, in a way, with asking us to submit plans for LGR without putting us on the devolution
09:18pathway and without putting us on the mayoral strategic authority pathway. So we're kind of
09:23left out in the cold. That was another one of my huge reservations about LGR, whether it's the
09:28right thing for Kent. No, it's not, because the government has not provided us with any kind of
09:33guidance as to how that overall strategic authority will be managed if we go down the LGR pathway.
09:40So that, again, is another reason why we created option 1A, because it creates the Kent Council
09:46as the strategic authority, which will have power over things like strategic planning,
09:52the core services, without having to disaggregate them and try and remake them on smaller bases
09:57around the county. You know, it makes perfect sense in a way, because we are in this no man's land,
10:01again, through no fault of our own. This is the government's doing. I have no idea why they
10:06haven't put us on either of those pathways, but it has deprived us of an awful lot of forward
10:10planning ability, and it's deprived us of a hell of a lot of money.
10:13That's great. Thank you so much for coming on, Councillor Kim Curran. That was great. Thank you.
10:17It was a pleasure.
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