Nottinghamshire County Council's leader has denied claims of "silencing" Labour over the recommissioning of a safeguarding service for new-born children and mothers. The authority said in a report last month that the current contract for the Nottinghamshire Healthy Families Programme was due to expire next March.
The programme provides care to children and families from before birth to late teens, with services including child development assessments and keeping children safe. The service is currently run under a contract with the Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT), the sole bidder for the contract when it went out to tender in 2017.
The council says beyond March 2024, it wants to enter into a 'co-operation' arrangement with NHFT to deliver the service. This means that a competitive tendering process is not required.
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But concerns were then raised that this decision "may not have been made in accordance with the law", given the non-public "informal meetings" about the matter that had taken place. The decision was therefore called-in and the council's overview committee has now recommended that the cabinet should reconsider its decision.
This recommendation came in a report presented to the cabinet meeting held on Thursday (April 20). Leader of the Labour Group on Nottinghamshire County Council, Councillor Kate Foale, had requested to speak at this meeting to raise concerns about the impact of the previous decision on "the safeguarding of new-born children and mothers."
This request was denied by council leader Ben Bradley, with Councillor Foale saying: "The decision by Conservative Leader Ben Bradley to refuse the leader of another group to speak and raise concerns at cabinet is very worrying, and certainly feels undemocratic. Although I have been silenced by Ben Bradley, I will still attend as I want to hear clear reassurance from cabinet that they are aware of the concerns we have regarding the safeguarding of new-born babies and mothers."
Councillor Foale also said she wanted an assurance that the informal meetings about such matters would be held in public going forward. But on the claim that Kate Foale was silenced, Ben Bradley said: "It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the process.
"I didn't allow Councillor Foale's question on the Healthy Families Programme because we were not discussing it at cabinet today. We were simply noting the report asking us to reconsider the decision, which we will now go away and have a think about.
"That call-in process has been very public and Councillor Foale, along with councillors of all parties, have been able to feed into that. So I don't know how this can be an example of being silenced, this to me shows our system working as it should."
Thursday's meeting saw cabinet members approving the report which asked them to think about reconsidering the decision to enter into a cooperation agreement on the Healthy Families Programme. A report is now due back within the next two months in which cabinet members will formally respond to issues raised.
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