From the Surrey County Council

15/03/2002

Buckland Road and Smithy Lane Junction with A217, Brighton Road

As most of you will know there was a serious accident at this junction recently involving two vehicles. Fortunately the drivers and the two young children passengers were not as badly hurt as was first thought but it was a horrible experience for them all. This accident has brought home to all of us that some action must be taken to make this junction safer. There will be a meeting soon with the County Council's Accident Working Group. I shall be working closely with the County Highway Officers, the Surrey Traffic Police, the Lower Kingswood Residents' Association and the Borough Councillors to see what is the best way forward. The options could be closing the gaps so that there could be no right hand turns from Buckland Road and Smith Lane, traffic lights or a roundabout. I am conscious that whatever the experts recommend, we shall not be able to please everybody but I feel the safety of the residents of Lower Kingswood is so important.

Children and Young People Select Committee

One of my duties as a County Councillor is as a member of the Select Committee for Children and Young People. This Select Committee's role in the new way of working is to scrutinise or look at in detail matters in connection with education and all other services for children and young people. In future all these services will be provided as a single Integrated Children's Service. This is the largest area of expenditure for the County Council so it is important that a careful watch is kept that the budget is spent in the most effective way.

In our area the County Council provides itself or contributes through partnership funding to pre-schools, nursery schools, primary schools, secondary schools, special schools, a children's services office in Redhill, a family centre in Redhill and a family placement office in Reigate - this looks after foster carers and children who have to be placed in care. As a County Councillor I am a "corporate parent" which means I try to ensure that adequate arrangements are in place so that the "looked-after" children in Surrey (of which there are about 600 at the present time) are satisfactorily cared for in foster homes or small children's home and are given as good a start in life as possible. I visit one of these children's homes, which provides long-term care and respite care for children with disabilities on a regular basis.

I recently attended the annual party for foster carers, which is held to say thank-you to those wonderful people, who provide homes for children whose parents, can no longer care for them. Others of those children are fortunate to be adopted and have a new family to bring them up.

The County Council also provide facilities for young people at the Youth Centres in Banstead and the Phoenix at Merland Rise, as well as an outreach youth worker in Preston who goes out and about to work with other young people who would not usually join a youth club.

County Council Budget

The Budget for the forthcoming year was agreed at the County Council Meeting on 5th February. In order to fund the existing service and cover the increasing expenditure required for Schools and Children's Services, as well as the care of the provided by Social Services and to provide cover by the Fire and Rescue Services for emergencies, I am sorry to say that an increase of 11.4% over last year is necessary. Unfortunately Central Government has not provided Surrey with sufficient grant and the budget gap has to met out of the Council Tax. Last year it was a lower increase and it is to be hoped that next year it will not need to be as high.

Diana Bowes
County Councillor for Banstead South (covering Burgh Heath, Kingswood, Lower Kingswood, Tadworth and Walton-on-the-Hill)