At the full meeting of Surrey County Council (SCC) today, the Leader of the Council, Cllr Tim Oliver, reaffirmed the Conservative's commitment to delivering on residents' priorities.
This includes:
- Creating more SEN places in both mainstream & special schools to support our children & young people who need extra support
- Undertaken a rapid review and put in place a clear plan for improvement for Surrey’s roads, highways verges & flooding
- Dramatically reduced the pothole backlogs
- Boosted the number of grass cuts on the schedule
- Progressing a devolution deal for Surrey
- Supporting local community projects through Your Fund Surrey
SCC is creating more SEN places in both mainstream and specialist schools across the county, with hundreds more places created over the last couple of years. with further places to be created still to come backed by committed funding, investment and sites identified. SCC is also investing in additional staff to help create these places including with the provision of educational pychologists.
Over the past couple of months, officers from SCC Highways and Countryside teams have worked alongside senior cabinet members to review the service delivery, policies and communications, and to put in place both immediate actions where possible and a series of recommendations that will result in noticeable improvement for residents across the county. The backlog in Highways repairing potholes has been dramatically reduced, more frequent grass cuts have been added to the schedule following the poor job by previous contractors, and a surge in additional line painting is underway.
Whilst letting verges re-wild, this has to be balanced with common sense in areas where good visibility for road users is required, such as at junctions and roundabouts. SCC has taken a review of the verges it manages, and identified verges that are appropriate for re-wilding, and those that are not, and these are to be clearly signposted so that the benefits of increasing biodiversity is better understood.
The current Conservative administration has been working hard to get a County Deal for Surrey, based on the Devolution Framework in the Levelling Up White Paper. A County Deal will enable the council to meet its climate change commitments, address health and education inequalities and unleash greater economic opportunities, all of which will play a key role in the council’s overriding ambition to ensure no one is left behind in Surrey.
Commenting, Cllr Tim Oliver said:
"It is my responsibility as the Leader of this Council, to set the tone of the organisation and it’s a responsibility I don’t shirk from.
"I am clear that we must continue to drive harder and faster our transformation agenda and improve the quality of the services we deliver to the benefit of our residents."
