A Sefton councillor said it would be a “waste of time” to discuss failures at the council which led to a damning Ofsted report into its children’s services.
Cllr Paula Spencer made the remarks as members of Sefton Council ’s overview and scrutiny committee discussed the aftermath of the inspection report. The report, which was released earlier this year, led to government commissioners being appointed in a bid to turn the children’s services around.
At the meeting, director of education and children’s services Martin Birch spoke of aims to submit an improvement plan to Ofsted in August, before being brought to councillors at the committee in September.
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Vice chair Cllr Spencer asked why the committee could not see the improvement plan before Ofsted. Mr Birch said this was “just how things were done” – although Cllr Paula Murphy said that after the council’s previous damning inspection report, the last improvement plan was made available to councillors before being submitted to Ofsted.
Cllr Spencer said: “If we don’t get to actually see it, take a look at, before it goes to Ofsted, how are we supposed to fulfil the function of this committee which is to scrutinise?”
Mr Birch said that timing was part of the issue, with a deadline of mid August for submitting the plan, which must first go to the council’s children’s service improvement board before being sent to Ofsted for approval, although he agreed to provide an advance copy two days before submitting to Ofsted.
Cllr Leo Evans said he was concerned the scrutiny committee was “skirting around the subject” and was being “sidelined” as there had been no opportunity for councillors to discuss the details of the inspection report.
He said: “We haven’t had a chance to look at it as a committee, have those conversations and look at how these failings have been allowed to happen.”
Cllr Evans added that it could be six months after the inspection before the committee actually discussed what was in the report, stating: “That’s not scrutiny and it sort of feels like we’re being sidelined.”
Cllr Spencer said: “I appreciate what’s just been said but my priority is that yes there were failings and at some point we need to sit down and look at the issues of how that happened, but the priority at the moment is to fix it.”
Cllr Andrew Wilson said doing the two were not “mutually exclusive.”
He added: “Obviously there is a time scale to get in touch with Ofsted and it is also only appropriate to discuss what the report said and have the opportunity of debating that – you can still go ahead and submit to committee the improvement plan but we also need the opportunity to look at the report.”
He said it was important to “learn from mistakes in the past” and not to do so risked “brushing under the carpet” the causes of the department’s failings.
Cllr Spencer said one solution could be a special meeting.
However, she added: “We’ve just discussed the time scale, we don’t want to waste time spending an emergency meeting discussing how we failed. We know we failed, everyone knows we have.
“Are we going to have a meeting saying we failed? What should we have done? We should have done better. Let’s have a meeting instead into how we can fix it.”
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