The campaign to return Adult Education classes to Dorking has taken a massive step forward with the announcement of a County Devolution Deal for Local Government in Surrey which will result in Adult Education provision in the county coming under the control of the County Council.

This will mean that the County Council will – once the funding for these services is transferred to the County Council in 2026/27 financial year – be able to bring Adult Education classes back to towns across the east of the county and reintroduce the “community learning” courses which have historically been popular amongst local residents whilst maintaining the part time qualification courses at East Surrey College at Redhill.

The introduction of appropriate speed limits, which are replacing national default 60mph speed limits in the rural lanes across the Parishes of Wotton, Abinger and Ockley and the Villages of Coldharbour and Westcott, has been completed with the reduction of the speed limit through the village of Okewood Hill to 30mph.

It is thought that this project, which covered 80 square miles of the county, is the first UK pilot of a rural area -wide reduced speed limit scheme with the speed limit on many roads reduced to 20mph and 30mph.

This has enabled the County Council to improve the safety of our rural roads in south central Surrey and has ensured that the most appropriate speed limit is applied to each road.

Before this project took place, most rural roads in the area were still subject to the national default speed limit of 60mph. This speed limit was clearly inappropriate for these types of roads and higher than the speed limits that had previously been introduced on the main roads through the area, the A24, the A25, and A29. It simply did not make sense that vehicles could turn off these main roads and then legally travel at higher speeds along the winding narrow country lanes.

The evidence suggests that implementing lower speed limits should reduce the number and severity of road collisions, whilst also helping to support the County Council’s active travel programme, improve air quality, and address concerns over excessive vehicle noise across the rural area.

A huge error by the Conservative Government has left schools in Surrey with millions of pounds less than promised.

Schools were initially told in July they would receive a 2.7% budget rise for the 2024/25 school year. However, in October it was revealed schools would only get a 1.9% rise.

The difference is equal to roughly £50 per pupil. Across all the schools in Surrey this means a loss of around £7.6m.

As a result, schools have spent two months expecting to receive significantly more funding than they will actually get over the next year and may have to redraw their budgets, causing a lot of unnecessary work and stress for headteachers.

171,417 children in Surrey have not been seen by an NHS dentist in the last 12 months. Furthermore, 830,842 of Surrey’s adults not seen by an NHS dentist in the past 2 years.

This research, commissioned from the House of Commons Library and based on the latest data from the health service, estimates the number of children who were not seen by an NHS dentist in the year to June 2023 despite the NHS recommending that under-18s see a dentist at least once a year.

In addition, 62% of adults in Surrey have not been seen by an NHS dentist in the past two years.

This data has resulted in the Liberal Democrats calling for a boost to be given for NHS dentistry so that no one is forced to pay hundreds of pounds for private care, a boost which will provide an emergency rescue plan for NHS dentistry which includes spending any funding that has gone unspent in recent years to boost the number of appointments available to residents as well as the removal of VAT on children’s toothbrushes and toothpaste.

New research published by the Liberal Democrats has revealed the impact of the social care crisis on the NHS trusts covering Surrey*, with medically fit patients left stuck in hospital beds waiting for care.

The figures reveal that 8,588 bed days were lost to delayed discharges from hospital in May. Of these, the majority of bed days lost involved patients who had been stuck in hospital for three weeks or more.

Delayed discharges take place when medically fit patients are unable to leave hospital, often due to a lack of social care. Across the country, the NHS lost over 128,800 bed days to delayed discharges from hospital, up 32% on the same period last year.

The Liberal Democrats warned that the government’s failure to tackle the social care crisis was having a “disastrous” impact on local NHS services, piling pressure on hospitals while elderly and vulnerable patients are left waiting for the care they need. The party is calling for the introduction of a Carer’s Minimum Wage, set at £2 above the minimum wage, to help address the huge number of job vacancies in social care.

The Liberal Democrats know that you can’t fix the crisis in the NHS without fixing the crisis in social care. We want to see the Government start valuing carers properly by bringing in a Carer’s Minimum Wage. This would help reduce soaring vacancies in social care and tackle the crisis facing the NHS.”

(*NHS trusts: Frimley; Royal Surrey; Surrey & Sussex Healthcare; Ashford & St Peters; Epsom & St Helier)

Stark figures uncovered by the Liberal Democrats have shown that, of the 2,768 burglaries reported to police in Surrey last year, the police only attended the scene in 1,356 instances, accounting for just 48.99% of cases. This means that 1,412 burglaries went unattended.

Nationally, the position is very similar with almost four in ten burglaries in the country not resulting in a visit to the scene by a police officer based on data provided by 19 police forces in England. Another 14 forces refused to provide their figures.

As a result of these figures, the Liberal Democrats are calling for a new “Burglary Response Guarantee,” which would create a guarantee that all domestic burglaries are attended by the police and properly investigated. This will require a return to proper community policing where officers are visible, trusted, and have the time and resources needed to focus on solving crime.

The Liberal Democrats believe that it is shocking that so many burglaries in our community are not being attended by a police officer and that no family should be denied justice after suffering the distress and trauma of being burgled.

The Liberal Democrats recognise that ULEZ is a huge concern for many in Surrey and three Liberal Democrat run Councils in Outer London have led the criticism of the expansion of the ULEZ scheme, calling for a delay in its extension and a wider scrappage scheme to give people more time and flexibility to help us make a just and fair transition.

A new analysis by the Liberal Democrats has found there are 157,338 cars in Surrey that are not ULEZ compliant. This means that many commuters, including key workers such as teachers, nurses and police officers, who have to drive into London from the county are unable to access car scrappage schemes despite ULEZ being expanded to outer London in August and these commuters will then be forced to pay ULEZ charges every day for travelling to work.

To address this, the Liberal Democrats have called for a commuter car scrappage scheme for the South-East of England to mitigate this issue caused by the expansion of the London Mayor’s ULEZ.

The Government has provided over £800 million for car scrappage schemes in other cities around the country as part of clean air zone initiatives but has failed to offer any funding for London’s ULEZ expansion. The Liberal Democrats have slammed this as “a betrayal of London and the commuter belt” and urged Government Ministers to step in.

Under the Liberal Democrats’ proposal, anybody with a non-ULEZ compliant car in areas surrounding London who has a legitimate reason for regularly driving into the capital such as for work or caring duties, could claim a grant of up to £4,000 to switch cars. For example, a nurse working in an outer London hospital or somebody who drives just inside the Greater London boundary to care for their elderly relative would be eligible for the grant.

The Liberal Democrats are also calling for small businesses to be provided with financial support as well as more incentives for electric vehicles and more electric charging points across London and the South-East.

Liberal Democrat County Councillors have called the backlog in issuing Education Health and Care Plans (“EHCPs”) – legal documents drawn up by the County Council following an assessment which describes a child or a young person’s (aged up to 25) special educational needs, the support they need, and the outcomes they would like to achieve – “completely unacceptable”.

In December 2022 there were 988 active requests for EHCPs in Surrey, of which 284 were known to have already exceeded the 20 week statutory limit for being carried out and without the personal EHCP the child or young person cannot access the education that they need.

The County Council has attributed a large part of the delays to staffing issues, in particular a shortage of educational psychologists who were needed to complete the plans.

As Liberal Democrat councillors, we believe that these excessive delays are just not acceptable and undermine the Council’s ambition that no one should be left behind.

The children and young people affected are already disadvantaged in terms of their education and the situation is made worse for them and their families by having to wait such a long time for their EHCP to be put in place.

We recognise that the County Council has been focusing on the recruitment and training of additional caseworkers and the workforce is now around 80 per cent staffed across the county, with the staff doing their utmost to improve the timeline for applications. However, this is little comfort to the families who have not received the ECHPs for their children.

We will be keeping the pressure up on the County Council to make sure this issue is resolved and that Surrey’s children and young people receive timely assessments and the education provision that they need.

The Conservative Leader of Surrey County Council has admitted that “we have let some people down” following the chaos in the Home to School transport service that organises travel for mainstream and special needs pupils.

The County Council’s own figures showed that 435 mainstream pupils and 337 pupils with special needs were all still waiting for their applications for Home to School transport to be assessed and determined at the end of September when decisions should have been made before the start of the academic year.

The County Council has, without doubt, a number of challenges in providing this service, including rising fuel and other costs and the issue of existing service providers no longer providing the service, but the stress and costs put on families who struggle to get their children to school despite qualifying for this service when the service fails is unacceptable.

The County Council urgently needs to improve its processes for handling Home to School travel applications to ensure pupils’ education is not put at risk.