ConservativeHome's Local Government Blog

Harry Phibbs: In 2008 are surgeries still an effective use of local councillors?

Harry is a Hammersmith & Fulham councillor.

Councillors are not supposed to be full time but to bring some sense of reality from the outside world into Town Halls. Given each Council has a budget of tens of millions, usually hundreds of millions, it is a huge responsibility to keep track of it all so our time is very precious.

Like MPs, councillors have surgeries. Sometimes people go to the wrong one. When people have raised immigration or the NHS with me I have passed the details on to our MP. But more often the traffic is the other way, with people raising problems such as housing with their MP rather than the councillor.

When first elected in 2006 I was a bit put off surgeries because nobody turned up to the first couple I did. I had a book to read - but it was still a bit of an anticlimax. Meanwhile vast amount of case work came through by email. Cases brought by telephone comes not far behind (in a fit of accessibility which bemuses colleagues I have my mobile phone number listed on the Council website.) Then there are also plenty of causes I am given to champion by people I bump into in the street. In crude numerical terms surgeries are stradlers in terms of case work.

So to manage time sensibly I take the surgeries on a rota with my fellow two ward councillors rather than us all three turning up to each one. We have also reduced the frequency from weekly to monthly - with the offer to arrange to see someone straight away for anything urgent. Rationalising the time spent allows us to keep in touch with residents in other ways - not least canvassing regularly not just at elections.

But I am a convert to the value of keeping surgeries as an option for those residents who wish to use them. Often people want to show me papers, sometimes complicated diagrams in the case of planning applications. Not everyone has email. Often people prefer to discuss their problems face to face rather than over the phone. Perhaps they feel awkward asking for a separate meeting - feeling it would be a special favour while regarding a slot at a surgery as their due.

Those who come to surgeries are often at the end of the line. Baffled by jargon. Driven witless by bureaucracy. They are victims of the system that was supposed to help them. "My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised," declared Jesse Jackson when he was running for US President in 1984. Sometimes at the end of a surgery I'm reminded of his words.

Cllr Harry Phibbs: Improving adoption rates

Harry is a Hammersmith and Fulham Councillor.

Congratulations to Conservative Home for launching this new section.  We have too many arm chair generals in our Party grumbling about how David Cameron and the Shadow cabinet should be taking a tougher line on cutting tax, or fighting crime or raising school standards but at the same time ignoring the considerable power that we already have in local government to make a difference in these and other areas.

One of the most important tasks of a local councillor is as a "corporate parent" to the several hundred children in care that each Council looks after. But are we doing a good job? Statistically the answer must be: "No." Vast amounts are spent but the life chances are dismal. Getting more children out of institutional care and adopted into permanent loving homes is not easy - but it is critical.

So I regard being on the Adoption Panel - with its fortnightly Wednesday meetings preceded by the heart rending telephone directory sized reports that come thudding down before each one, as the most important thing I do.

Frequently problems such as crime and disruptive pupils in class are caused by 'Looked After' children.  Despite the dedication of social workers and foster parents the harsh reality is that the state makes a bad parent. It also makes for a phenomenally expensive one. How many of those Councils that insist it is quite impossible for them to reduce the Council Tax have made a serious effort to increase their adoption rates?

In 2005-06 only 12 children were placed for adoption in my local Council. In the last year the number more than doubled to 25, including 11 in the new category of Special Guardianships which is recognised by the DFES as equivalent to adoption. Adoption transforms the life chances of the child compared to be brought up in care.

Together with improved preventative measures and the decrease in teenage conception this means that the number of children in care fallen over the past year from 393 to 373. There is a target to place 45 children from adoption this year.

Political correctness needs to be confronted by Tory councillors rather than deferred to - especially when it is particularly black children who are perversely denied loving homes in the name of Political Correctness. It is a great pity that statutory requirements prevent us from having an entirely "colour blind" approach to adoption. But while looking for an ethnic match is a requirement we are quite entitled to balance this by the need to be flexible and avoid delay. Any Conservative Council worthy of the name should ensure that this is the approach adopted by its Social Services department.