A commissioner’s report into the future of North East Lincolnshire’s failing children’s services is set to be handed to the government.
The council could be temporarily removed from control of them depending on the recommendations. It comes after a damning Ofsted report labelled them ‘inadequate’ and warned that children were put at risk.
The Department of Education named Peter Dwyer to look into the state of the borough’s services in January. He will have the power to issue orders to the council on how to rapidly improve its services, with his report was due to be submitted by the end of March.
Council leaders promised to fully co-operate with the report, and say improvements were already being made. A new cross-party scrutiny group was set up to address the issues.
The government notice earlier this year said: “North East Lincolnshire Council has systemically failed as its children’s social care services have been found to be ‘inadequate’ across all of the key judgements in the recent Ofsted inspection report.
“There is a presumption in cases of persistent or systemic failure that children’s social care services will be removed from local authority control, for a period of time, in order to bring about sustainable improvement, unless there are compelling reasons not to do so.”
The Labour group called for the resignation of cabinet members over the issue at this month’s full council meeting. Opposition leader Councillor Matthew Patrick said the Ofsted report had been “the darkest months for this council”.
Conservatives defeated the motion, arguing that services had already been in poor shape when they came to power. Leader of the council Councillor Philip Jackson said the authority was working hard to turn them around.
“A lot of local authorities’ children’s services have been going into stormy waters over the last two years. An improvement plan was put into place in 2019, but this was frustrated by the Covid pandemic,” he told the meeting.
“This led to an increase in referrals up and down the country. It made staff recruitment more difficult, making us overly reliant on agency workers. Face-to-face meetings became almost impossible during this time.
“The very first meeting I had with the Chief Executive the morning after the 2019 election was about the state of the children’s services.”
New social workers have also been hired, audits have been increased and a new deputy director has been appointed.
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Nominations are open for schools and education settings to be recognised in the 2022 Lincolnshire Education Excellence Awards.
The event is organised by Stonebow Media, publishers of The Lincolnite, to celebrate the best school and teachers in Greater Lincolnshire.
The headline sponsors making the awards possible are Lincoln College Group.
Twelve categories are now open for nominations. The deadline for nominations is June 3, with a judging lunch scheduled for June 7.
Nominations are open from parents, carers, friends, families or education settings themselves, so if you know someone who deserving of winning now is the time to vote!
The awards ceremony will be held at the Engine Shed on July 7.
It’s been a week since the controversial statue of Margaret Thatcher was installed in Grantham’s St Peter’s Hill.
The £300,000 bronze monument immediately caused a stir and debate from both supporters and opponents of the first female Prime Minister of the UK.
Within hours of its 7am installation last Sunday, it had already been egged by a man later revealed to be 59-year-old Jeremy Webster, a deputy director at the Attenborough Arts Centre at the University of Leicester.
Mr Webster’s mother-in-law recently described his actions as “childish”.
Quoted in the MailOnline she said: “Margaret Thatcher lasted a long time in power. She was a trailblazer as the first woman prime minister and she had such energy, even though I know she slept very little.
“I’m very surprised to hear about all of this [egg throwing]. I’m going to have to call my daughter. I wouldn’t have thought Jeremy would be the sort of person to do this. It seems very childish to me – he has a responsible job.”
There have been reports of other antisocial behaviour taking place including people urinating up the statue, but investigations into these are yet to be confirmed by officials.
Away from the statue itself, others took to social media to react to the new monument.
Twitterer @BolsoverBeast thought Mr Webster’s actions should be expanded as a way to… get more people involved?
I think it would be a good idea to put Thatcher’s statue on a low loader and tow it slowly around the country so that we all have a chance to throw something at it. pic.twitter.com/uftMqr0LgR
— Chloe Schlosberg (@ChloeSchlosberg) May 19, 2022
Some called back to the fate of other statues
@Irritatedllama called back to the fate of slave trader Edward Colston who was thrown into the Bristol Harby in June 2020.
It's absolutely disgraceful that people are throwing eggs at the Margaret Thatcher statue in Grantham! We need to deploy a taskforce to give it jolly good wash!#Granthampic.twitter.com/RKftKUls4u
It wasn’t long before a parody account of the statue was set up on Twitter – nor before “she” was interacting with other parody accounts.
It was awful. I could see almost all of Grantham
— That Statue of Thatcher (@thatcher_statue) May 18, 2022
A… positive view?
There were supporters of the statue, however, Darren Grimes from GBNews was one of the few popular posts calling on people not to “give in to threats of petty vandalism”. He later posted the statue should be in parliament – where it was previously rejected from.
I honestly think Margaret Thatcher would have found this first round of petty vandalism of her statue to be utterly hilarious.
The statue looks absolutely glorious.
Almost a decade on from her passing, she’s still winding them up!
Some, like @Jonnyhibberd were more measured in their response.
I don't see a problem with a Thatcher statue and I also don't see a problem with people throwing eggs at it. Thatcher is an important part of our history, and so is what a lot of people thought about her.
— Jonathan Hibberd 🇺🇦 (@Jonnyhibberd) May 18, 2022
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