At this evening's Croydon Council meeting dozens of cases were raised of our Labour-run Council letting down our most vulnerable residents. It's just not good enough. I spoke in favour of the motion: This Council needs to do more to protect its most vulnerable residents – and apologises to all those it has let down to date.
Tonight we have heard dozens of examples of this Labour Council failing our most vulnerable residents.
We’ve heard about small businesses closing saying it’s due to a lack of support from the Council.
We’ve heard that since 2015 Labour have not finished one, single affordable or Council house – with many left stranded on the housing waiting list.
We’ve heard about elderly, vulnerable residents, living among their refuse, left to rot for months on end and when they ask for help with their assisted collection they are ignored for weeks at a time.
We’ve heard that immunisation of our young people is among the worst in London. We know that health visitors have such huge caseloads that they aren’t able to support the many vulnerable families who need their support.
We all know about Ofsted’s damning children’s services report which revealed in its update just last month that this Council is still suffering from ‘drift and delay’ - leaving vulnerable children in worrying circumstances for far too long.
Madam Mayor, it’s not just children. We know that when vulnerable adults try to access the contact centre for support, they are often left unaided and unacknowledged.
Earlier this year the Council had to pay out thousands of pounds to ‘a young man with complex needs’ for ‘failure to provide suitable respite care’ which caused him and his carer ‘extreme distress.’
Throughout the complaint, the Social Care Ombudsman was ‘concerned by the Council’s lack of engagement’. It took a total of 12 weeks for the Council to respond to his enquiries. Then when the Ombudsman drafted a report, the Council failed to respond to that! He said: ‘this was particularly concerning given the significant failings identified by the investigation and the resultant injustice to a young man with complex needs and his carer.’
This is not an isolated case. There were 226 other complaints made this year alone.
Now, this motion asks Labour to accept what they have already accepted via the Ombudsman and many times tonight – with Cllrs Butler, Collins, Avis and others already apologising for the cases they've heard raised by our side. Our motion asks that they do more to protect our most vulnerable residents – and it asks that they apologise to those they have let down to date.
I hope – I sincerely hope – that the Labour speakers following me are going to be humble, that given the mountain of evidence presented this evening, that they will accept that an apology isn’t an unreasonable request, and that it’s the least our residents deserve.
Madam Mayor, I sadly support this necessary motion and hope Labour does too.
Sadly every Labour Councillor voted against the motion, and the speeches that followed were far from humble. A real shame.
