Reform fought to inherit this council – now it won't stop complaining about it

If you have a baby in Ipswich next year, a nurse may still come round to see how you are both getting on. Some of them are being kept. I can't tell you how many.

I asked twice at Tuesday's Cabinet meeting at Endeavour House, and nobody would say. When another councillor tried a third time, the Leader refused them an answer and invited them to put a different question instead.

In July, two months after taking over Suffolk County Council, Reform opened a consultation on removing the staff nurses who work alongside health visitors with new babies, and got 1,928 responses. On Tuesday the Cabinet changed course and agreed up to £1.4 million a year to keep some of them. A small mercy.

The Cabinet Member told the meeting that every staff nurse will be offered a role. Her paper says only that "some" will be kept. I asked for both promises to be written into the decision: the money beyond one year, and the offer of a role.

The money, an officer confirmed, is yearly, and the paper should not have limited it to 2027/28. Call that a small win, as far as it goes. The offer of a role was not written in. For now it is a sentence in a speech.

What did not survive Tuesday is the extra support for 92 young parents. That drew the strongest objections of all, and it lands hardest in Ipswich. A quarter of the town is under 20, the highest share in Suffolk. On the council's figures our rate of teenage pregnancy is well above the county average, and more than one child in five here lives in a low-income family.

The Labour group asked the Cabinet to let that decision wait until the family hubs meant to pick up the work had been settled, but it didn't.

Those hubs are now out to consultation themselves. There are 29, and Reform proposes to cut that to 17. In Ipswich, Hillside, Wooden House and Ravenswood would stop being family hubs, with their services moved into libraries. For Wooden House that means the County Library, nearly two miles away. Try it with a pushchair.

We sent the Cabinet Member responsible 18 questions on 24 October. The answers were due on 7 November. We are still waiting. The consultation is open, and anyone can respond.

So I can't tell you how many nurses. What I can tell you is whose fault it all is, because I was told nine times.

The word of the afternoon was "inherited". Reform's Cabinet had inherited "a significant financial challenge" in children's health services. By my count the word came up nine times from the Cabinet's side of the table in three and a half hours. That is one every 23 minutes, a better service than most of Suffolk's rural bus routes.

The inheritance is from the Conservatives, who ran the county council for 21 years, until May. Nobody in the Labour group is going to defend their record.

The Tory government played its part too. On the council's figures, the public health grant that pays for these nurses rose by 5.2 per cent in eight years, while prices rose by a third. Then, in a single year under Labour, it rose by 5.7 per cent. The council says most of the new money is earmarked for other things. But still.

Money is tight, and most of the Cabinet are new. But as an excuse it won't do.

Start with how Reform came by it. Unlike most inheritances, this one had to be fought for. "Reform brought this local election about," said the campaign material of one candidate, who is now a Deputy Cabinet Member for Efficiency. Then came the election itself, fought tooth and nail against its estranged relatives in the Conservative Party. Nobody fights that hard for something they didn't want.

And it knew what it was getting. The leaflet through my door was headed "The state of Tory-run Suffolk council's finances revealed", and gave the debt as £756 million, in red. Another said "Suffolk council is broken". Its letters boasted that Reform councils save money "not by cutting frontline services, but by cutting waste". Days after the election the Leader said they were "walking into a mess", so it can't have come as a shock.

Then there is who wrote the will. The firmest use of the word on Tuesday came from the Deputy Leader, who runs adult social care. His service, he said, had inherited a £10.2 million overspend "from the Tory administration that preceded us".

It's a good line. It would be a better one from somebody else.

The money was overspent in the year to last March. The council's voting records show him voting for that year's budget, as a Conservative, and for the three before it. Most people who inherit something were not in the room when the will was written.

By last February he had moved a few seats along to Reform and seconded its alternative budget. It left adult care exactly as the Conservatives had it and changed one thing: a smaller council tax rise, bringing in £4.6 million less. Same budget, new rosette.

The proposer was Cllr Hudson, another former Tory, who led Reform on the council before Cllr Hadwen did. He left the Cabinet at the start of November. He has not left the group.

And then there is what has happened since May. I look after the borough's finances, so I read the county's with interest. In September, in its first report on this year's money, the administration forecast a £7.8 million overspend. On Tuesday, in its second, the figure was £11 million.

That £756 million is worth another look too. Borrowing stood at £745.6 million at the end of March. The same report says it will be £756.4 million by next March. The leaflet turns out to have been a forecast.

The council now has three Deputy Cabinet Members for Efficiency. The word for that is oxymoronic, and I have checked the spelling.

I asked their Cabinet Member what savings had been added since May, with three deputies on the job, because all 18 in her report come from last February's budget. She said they were "working with a budget that we didn't set". So the savings are inherited too.

One of the three deputies represents Newmarket, where, the local paper reports, he was elected promising to do all he could to reopen the recycling centre. Last Friday the Cabinet said no. "The desire is there, but ultimately the money is not."

So that is the inheritance. They shaped it, fought for it, voted for it, and since they got it have done nothing but complain about it.

The budget comes to full Council in February, and it is where the money for your nurse has to be found. I hope they find it. It will be this administration's first, and by then it will have run the council for nine months.

Reform's leaflets set three tests for it. Council tax kept lower than any other party's. Less debt than the £756 million they printed in red. And savings that don't come from the front line.

I have kept the leaflets.

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