Tories refuse to back down on legal action against 1 Star Rating

12.00.00am GMT Wed 25th Mar 2009

Administration has 'lost touch with reality' say Lib Dems.

Conservatives at Surrey County Council today rejected a Liberal Democrat motion calling for the Council to put an end to its legal action against the 1 Star Rating it recently received from OFSTED.

The Liberal Democrat motion had requested an end to the legal action - a judicial review against OFSTED's assessment of 'inadequate' children's services - saying the money and management time would be better spent improving front-line services. Instead, the Tories claimed they had to defend their reputation - using taxpayers' money - to avoid, among other things, future serious problems with staffing and further inspections.

Lib Dem councillor Chris Slyfield said there was already a serious problem with staffing - social work vacancies for instance are at almost 25% - and Surrey was facing greater inspections anyway because of the ruling last year that three out of five categories of children's services were inadequate. The real reason, he said, that the Council was disputing the findings in children's services was because that had automatically brought its overall rating as an authority down to 1 Star.

"After 12 years of a majority Conservative administration, the County Council has been awarded the lowest star rating of 1 Star, clearly demonstrating its failures," said Chris Slyfield. "Its legal action is simply to save face and that is no justification for wasting potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds of Surrey council taxpayers' money on legal bills - in fact, it faces double costs if it loses, paying the Council's and OFSTED's.

"It's outrageous for the Conservatives to gamble with council taxpayers' money like this - perhaps it has more to do with the fact it doesn't want to be branded a 1 Star council in the run up to the County elections in June!"

Instead of pursuing the expensive legal action, the Lib Dems suggested the administration paid closer attention to improving children's services - most of which are longstanding and serious. "The children's service has a severe shortage of social workers, large numbers of expensive agency staff and a £14m overspend on its budget," added Cllr Slyfield. "We have been calling for action for a long time - we argued against staff cuts back in 2006 with the Business Delivery Review but the administration has been slow to face up to the problems and to tackle them. They've lost touch with reality."