A 4 year record of sound financial management and service delivery.
No Council Tax increase for the last 3 years.
We have:
- Reduced bureaucracy by over 30%.
- Reduced the number of County Council Offices and will operate from 4 offices.
- Drastically reduced our energy consumption and now rank 17th out of 2097 companies in the latest Performance League Table.
- Frozen Councillors’ allowances for 3 successive years.
We are:
- Investing 8.250 million from reserves to pay for drainage schemes, cleaning out ditches and repairing the roads that have been affected by the flooding. 1.25 million has been allocated for community self-help schemes.
- Investing £145 million in building schools and classrooms and other schemes the next financial year to provide 1665 additional much needed school places.
- Helping the local economy by investing £15 million in Kick Start Project including £6 million in Broadband to help the local business community.
- Investing 9.6 million on the Shoreham Bridge, to provide a safe, modern access to and from the town.
- The first County Council to implement the Green Deal Scheme, which will help improve energy efficiency in homes across the County and we are working with District and Borough Councils across East and West Sussex. To make this happen we used 2 million from our Kick start Fund
Unlike other authorities we are not cutting out grants but investing more in the community.
The West Sussex Big Society Grant which helps community initiatives because of huge demand has increased to £330,000 for the next financial year. Community Infrastructure Fund available through CLC has increased to £426,000. A total investment of £756,000 into West Sussex Communities.
We are supporting The Troubled Families initiative through our think Family Partnership. We are allocating £11 million and working with partners such as the Police and District and Borough Councils over the next three years to help families to help themselves in the future.
A recent Ofsted Survey has recently rated our children’s Safeguarding as adequate. All parts of our Children’s Services are now rated either as adequate or good.
- We supported Adult Learning Services to convert to a Social Enterprise Company called Aspire, which recently achieved 2 national awards for excellence.
- We are supporting schools to convert to Academies 26 to date with one free school established and 2 more in the pipeline.
- We are transferring community buildings back to the community to be run by the community for the community. 4 buildings have been transferred; The Yews, Sidney Walter Centre, Holbrook Centre and Glebelands.
- We have committed £10 million for improvements to the A27.
- We have invested in our libraries, all Libraries have automatic check in and check out of books.
- We have successes in Developing Dementia Care Services across West Sussex through the Memory Assessment services, Dementia Crisis Teams and Specialist Day Services
People with dementia, their families and carers have benefited from new memory assessment services in West Sussex. The Introduction of memory assessment services has been a significant step to ensuring that people with dementia, their families and carers have the best possible help and support available.
Memory Assessment.
The service came into operation on September 1st, 2012. Teams work out of four ‘hubs’ – Worthing, Chichester, Horsham and Haywards Heath as well as clinics in Shoreham, Littlehampton, Bognor, Midhurst, Burgess Hill, Crawley, East Grinstead, Storrington and the Witterings. Since the team began operation in September12, the teams have received 2527 referrals, undertaken 1624 assessments and diagnosed 475 people with dementia.
Dementia Crisis teams across the County
The teams offer 72 hours initial intensive support in a dementia crisis, then up to six weeks ongoing support in partnership with local care agencies. Between April and December 2012, the teams worked with 471 people. During that period, the team avoided inappropriate admission to hospital for 200 people.
We have introduced Specialist Day centres which are modelled on national best practice. There are 14 day centres (8 run by West Sussex County Council and 6 by our partner Shaw Healthcare). They support people with complex needs and
Dementia and the role of the Community Connector has been developed to support people to identify services to move on to and be part of their local community.
Other Adult Care successes are:
- A number of new and innovative preventative services have been put in place.
- My Network and My Network Plus
- Prevention Assessment Teams (PATs)
- Wellbeing Hubs and website
- Community Connectors in specialist day centres
- Expanding support services to Carers
Wellbeing Hubs
There are seven Wellbeing Hubs across the county which are coterminous with the boundaries of the district and borough councils and serve as a 'one stop' source of information on wellbeing in each district.