A NEW report shows good progress is being made to protect Warrington’s most vulnerable residents, regenerate the borough and provide an improving education offer.
Warrington Borough Council’s latest quarterly performance report reveals key areas of improvement, including:
Vulnerable adults
More than 83 per cent of older people accessing the council’s re-ablement service were at home 91 days after their discharge from hospital. Out of 144 clients, 120 were successfully re-abled and only two residents were
admitted to residential or nursing care.
The council’s adult social care transformation programme, which launched in June last year, has delivered its first key phase. The programme has helped to redesign a new “front door” for customers, ensuring
that residents who contact the council for services are supported to remain as independent as possible by maximising their existing networks. The programme has delivered £1.9m of savings so far.
The council is also committed to supporting people at risk of homelessness – 374 people were successfully prevented from becoming homeless since April last year.
Vulnerable children and young people
The work currently being undertaken to reduce the number of children in care is having an impact. Figures show that the number of children who came into care in 2016/17 reduced by 11 per cent on the
previous financial year.
The council’s Edge of Care service provides high levels of intervention for families at risk of breakdown, which helps reduce the number of children coming into care. The latest report estimates that around 55
children have been prevented from going into care since July 2016, with children and families receiving necessary and timely support from this new service.
Education
The latest secondary school data shows that Warrington pupils are achieving above the national average. Schools in the borough have some of the highest performance in English and Maths, and Warrington is ranked 3rd out of the 23 North West local authorities for the percentage of pupils achieving a strong pass (grades 5-9).
While Warrington schools as a group perform better than those in most other authorities in the region and better than statistical neighbours, the council still needs to work to close the achievement gap between disadvantaged children and their peers.
Regeneration
The council is making good progress on key economic investments across the borough. The town centre and Stadium Quarter are starting to attract significant private sector investment and the council has secured a funding allocation of £19.69m to deliver the Warrington West station, which is expected to open in late spring next year.
The council’s lead member for personnel and communications, Cllr Hitesh Patel, said: “I’m pleased that we continue to make good progress in delivering vital services to some of our most vulnerable residents.
Our schools continue to perform well and I’m pleased that we are on track with our key infrastructure investments.
“I’d like to express thanks to council staff who continue to work hard to overcome the financial pressures we are facing, with the Government having cut a third of our budget since 2010. We still have plenty to do, but we’re making very encouraging progress.”
2 Comments
What Cllr Patel (Labour) fails to mention is that the situation under a Labour Government regarding local government funding would at best be no different to what it is now, and quite possibly worse as money would be shifted by them to different priorities and that their economic policies would quite probably lead to an economic downturn, increased debt and increased cost of servicing that debt. My understanding of both Labour and Conservative policy is that local government should become more self funding, so that central government becomes less accountable for what goes on locally.
The Localism Bill seems at present to mean all things to all men.