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NOT AS GOOD AS THEY’D HAVE US BELIEVE… Kent Labour welcomes the findings of the Audit Commission’s Corporate Assessment of Kent County Council. Between November 2007 and May 2008 the Audit Commission assessed how well the council engages with and leads its communities, delivers community priorities in partnership with others, and ensures continuous improvement in everything it does. Kent County Council has held on to its status as an excellent authority. However, while it retained scores of 4 out of 4 for ambition and prioritisation, it failed to improve its previous score of 3 out of 4 for achievement. Its score actually dropped in two out of the five assessment categories, slipping from a 4 to a 3 for performance management and capacity. Mike Eddy, Labour Shadow Leader of KCC, said: “The Corporate Assessment rightly highlighted the County Council’s strengths, not least its able and enthusiastic staff, many of whom do tough jobs under difficult circumstances. “But the Audit Commission sent a very clear message that there are things KCC could do a lot better. “And funnily enough the Council’s current Conservative leadership are keeping pretty quiet about that, the same as they’re keeping quiet about the two categories where KCC’s scores have dropped since the last Corporate Assessment.” Dr Eddy continued: “We’ve always known KCC never found it difficult to be ambitious. But we’ve always said that it should listen more to other people’s ambitions – and the Audit Commission have backed us up by saying that KCC should adopt a more inclusive and listening approach. “We’ve always said that KCC’s current Conservative leadership is happy to take the credit for other people’s achievements – from Government departments down to small voluntary groups. And again, the Audit Commission agrees. It says that KCC needs to be more generous to its partners in its external communications. “We’ve previously picked up on areas where KCC is weak – equalities practice; environmental issues like recycling, waste volumes, and air quality; handling complaints about its own performance. And again, the Audit Commission’s agreed that the Council needs to deliver improvements on these issues.” Dr Eddy concluded: “Above all, we’ve said for a long time that Kent County Council’s main weakness is the attitude of the Council’s current Conservative leader, Paul Carter, and his Cabinet. “We’ve said that Carter and his gang don’t have enough respect for the views of their own Conservative colleagues, let alone Opposition councillors, and that they’re only willing to have their decisions and policies examined in public once they’re a done deal. “If elected councillors find it hard to make their voices heard, what chance have the people of Kent got? “The Audit Commission agrees. It has said that opposition and backbench councillors need to be given better support and earlier opportunities to take part in decision-making and monitoring performance, to make sure the views of all communities are fully heard before decisions are made. “It’s sensible advice. But anyone who saw Paul Carter’s recent outburst at Cabinet Scrutiny Committee knows he thinks strong leadership should mean taking decisions and then only having them looked at once they’d already been taken. He said right then that the findings of the recent Audit Commission inspection of KCC may disagree with his position, but he would be sticking to it. “I hope that KCC learns from its mistakes, but all the while Carter’s in charge, I can’t see it turning around those areas where its assessment score has got worse.”
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