The Cabinet member with responsibility for Social Care and Housing (Cllr Laing) in the City is likely to face some difficult questions when she holds her first “decision” meeting for 3 months on 12th December.
Not only has the housing waiting list almost doubled since she took over her responsibilities, but now it looks like the flagship programme for building new elderly care homes has also run into trouble.
Reports are emerging that the plan to build a replacement for the Fordland’s elderly care home in Fulford are being abandoned.
Worse, it seems likely the Lowfields Care Village (conceived by the last LibDem run Council) is now even further behind schedule, with the Council’s complex management plan blamed for tendering delays.
A behind closed doors decision was taken in the summer to advertise the contract for the management of the new Lowfields Care Village but, apparently, with the Unions being given advice on how to organise an in house bid for the contract. The Council had been promising http://tinyurl.com/York-15th-May-2012 completion of the care village by April 2014 but this now seems highly unlikely.
All this on top of a big increase in home care costs during the last 18 months.
The cost per client has almost doubled in the last year. Spend on home care contracts has increased from £54k a week in July 2011 to £80k a week in July 2012.
….and this despite 184 elderly residents, who were receiving home care, having been abandoned. They were assessed, under new rules introduced by Labour, as having only “moderate” needs and not worthy of Council support.
Such a catalogue of failure would normally lead to a Cabinet reshuffle but, with talent thin on the ground now that former Leader David Scott has been suspended from the Labour Group, it seems that York residents face another 2 years of poor leadership and financial mismanagement.