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Response by the Cabinet Member: Thank you for your email which has been shared with Emma Palmer, the Leader and Cllr David Thomas as per your request. Thank you also for your time discussing the Sustainable Powys programme on behalf of the Council and your constituencies. County Councillors are crucial in enabling constructive and progressive engagement between the Council they represent and the local Town and Community Councils within their wards and we recognise this can be challenging. As you will know from the Sustainable Powys Councillor workshops, the Sustainable Powys programme was established because the financial pressures on our budget have become unsustainable. Part of the solution is “place-based planning” which divides the county into manageable areas for strategic planning and service delivery. This is further explained in the attached Sustainable Powys Information pack and a brief overview is below: • The first “level” of division is the 5-core area model which is focused around the 5 largest towns in the county • The second “level” is the 13 localities which have been utilised for several years • Supporting these levels are digital, out-and-about and at-home solutions. The first level seeks to ensure equity of provision across the county by utilising council buildings in the five larger towns for core services. The second level aims to use community buildings for any necessary outreach services, recognising that these services may be different for each locality. Alongside this, the second level aims to work with local communities to help them be more self-sufficient. The digital, out-and-about and at-home provision underpin these two levels: • Digital solutions enable service users to self-serve at their convenience, freeing up phone lines and support services for those needing additional assistance. • Out-and-about solutions address the necessity of connecting communities for work, leisure, and support. This involves maintaining infrastructure such as highways, public transport, carparks, and EV charging stations. • At-home solutions acknowledge that some individuals require services at or near their homes, such as waste and recycling collections, social services, and home maintenance. Through introducing these different levels, and by working with communities, it is hoped we can ensure both rural and urban communities are resilient and can thrive during this time of significant change. We are collaborating with Town and Community Councils, County Councillors, and staff to determine which services are most appropriately provided at each level within different parts of the County, based on local needs. Additionally, we are planning further engagement activities with communities, which will involve input and support from County Councillors, to help define service provision at each level. We appreciate your input and support. Your conversations with Community Councils are crucial for identifying solutions that benefit urban and rural communities equally. Your conversations are helping to lead in this effort, and we look forward to working with you and your local community on the next steps. As we work more closely with communities and build a better picture of their existing and anticipated needs on a locality basis, we can start to map out how they work together as more self-reliant, self-sufficient places, using the best of what Powys and local town and community councils, other public services and voluntary bodies can contribute. As part of the ongoing conversation with Town and Community Councils, we are developing an interactive online hub which will enable the councils to interact with each other, as well as with PCC and which will also provide further data and information in a single accessible space. Town and Community Council meetings “Round two” of the Town and Community Council meetings is currently being scheduled, with a view to holding the meetings in April and May. We will, of course, be letting Councillors know the dates for these meetings once they have been booked. This next round of meetings will also be an important platform for yourself and Councillors (Community, Town and County) to come together on the locality and core-area basis so that the issues impacting your more local councils can be shared and workshopped together with others in the wider locality and core area. Locality engagement An initial workshop has been held with a cross-section of more front-line staff to gain their insights into the best ways to engage service users. Councillors are also key to this and your ability to bring the community together to have positive practical discussions will be very much valued for this work. The Council is here for all Powys residents and the points raised in your email are important. These have been responded to below by the relevant Heads of Service: Road safety and maintenance: The Council demonstrates a reasonably practicable approach to delivering its winter service. It is neither reasonable nor practical for any local authority to maintain the same level of service across their entire road network. Resources must be assigned on a priority basis, with a network of priority routes. Our current gritting routes are based on a priority need. There are around 6 school bus routes in your area, with some being treated on the primary those that operate on the B4520 and with the others being on the secondary routes. As you will be aware, we have now completed the consultation process on the new winter maintenance matrix and this will be going to Cabinet in the near future. For information on current gritting routes please click here: Winter gritting - Powys County Council As per the highways Act 1980, Powys County Council has a duty to maintain the highway, so far as reasonably practical. In demonstrating this statutory duty, our roads are regularly inspected, and safety defects are rectified from either inspections or reports. Programmed works are undertaken on a priority basis and ranked accordingly. You can report a pot hole or other road defect by reporting it here: Report a problem with a road or pavement - Powys County Council Drainage and flood risk: As a result of climate change, there has been a recent increase both in frequency and intensity of storms across the UK, impacting our highway infrastructure. Our road network is mainly historic, and not built to new build standards, thus having a lower resilience to the new challenges presented by climate change. However, we continue to maintain our highways so as far as reasonably practicable, in accordance with our statutory duty. We would welcome discussions with yourself and your communities around anything that local communities can do to work with us on things like ditch and culvert clearance. Access to services: We acknowledge that accessing services in remote or rural locations can be a challenge, this is often due to a lack of providers able to deliver capacity within these areas rather than people being denied a service. We constantly review data pertaining to unmet need to inform our service plans and work with colleagues in the third sector via the community connectors and early help and prevention collaborative to understand what is needed across all thirteen localities to create community resilience. This includes both statutory and non-statutory capacity which meets the needs of that specific locality although acknowledge this is not without its challenges and can take time to develop. Under our Modernising Care at Home programme, we have increased the domiciliary care capacity across hard to reach areas by creating a rural rate which considers the additional costs providing in such localities incurs. We have worked with providers to incentivise fragile care runs which do not provide economies of scale by offering retainers where appropriate to do so and have a bridging team we can deploy to deliver urgent support in the absence of a provider whilst we try and develop capacity. This programme of work has seen nine new providers sign up to our dynamic purchasing system and the delivery of over 1500 additional hours of support a week in the last year. We have successfully worked with providers in the North and South of the county where we have established sponsored staff to resolve the localised issues in these areas. Our next area of focus will include Pontfaen, Merthyr Cynog and Upper Chapel and we have identified a provider who will be able to create sponsored staff in these areas from the end of March increasing capacity and response times for domiciliary care. I would encourage you or members of your constituencies to contact myself (Sharon Frewin, Head of Adult Services) or ASSIST if they experience issues accessing support so we can understand where we need to develop further. Education: The process to merge Cradoc CP School, Mount Street Infants and Mount Street Junior Schools was carried out in accordance with the Welsh Government’s School Organisation Code 2018 which included formal consultation with all stakeholders. The rationale for the proposal plus the views of stakeholders, and a community impact assessment, were considered by Cabinet throughout the process. Ysgol Golwg Pen y Fan opened in September 2024 across the 3 existing sites and continues to provide education for the community. Finance and request for information: Powys County Council’s overall gross budget is funded by Welsh Government grants, fees and charges, and council tax. Many services have always been delivered out of our main catchments like our Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs) or meeting front line staff such as social workers, planners or housing officers. Services such as waste collection and highways maintenance will continue to operate locally through all communities in Powys. The Council’s funding model continues to ensure it prioritises its growth into front line services and they are delivered equitably and are accessible by all. Council tax is a tax on domestic property, not a direct payment for specific services. It is designed to fund a wider range of local services collectively, rather than being allocated to individual services or wards based on usage. While the town and community council precept element of the council tax bill flows directly to the town or community council, the county council and police elements do not. The funds are pooled to ensure that all residents, including those in rural areas, benefit from the availability of essential services such as social services, education, waste management, fire and rescue services and the police. As you have noted, having a better understanding of our costs and opportunities at a locality level would help to drive more meaningful conversations about where resources can be prioritised, which will differ from place to place. Unfortunately, we don’t have the means to provide a detailed breakdown of the costs involved in delivering all council services at a locality or ward level. This would take considerable administrative work to compile and would result in a diversion of essential funds from front-line services to do so. Thank you again for your email and for encouraging and supporting these important conversations with local communities.
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