Talking with Terry Cutmore, Leader of RDC and member of Essex County Council

(18th November 2013)

Rochford Life:  Terry, can we talk about the County Council first? I believe there are seventy five County Councillors aren’t there. This is a bit of a different ball game isn’t it from your experience in RDC?

Terry: There are. Forty two of them are now Conservative, there are nine Liberal Democrats, nine Labour, nine UKIP, two Greens and the rest are Independents.

RL: This size must give it a very different feel and, as you said to me recently, you’re a new boy. It must very much seem a big learning curve.

Terry:  Those were exactly the words I had in mind. It’s the learning curve and the   training for a vast organisation. I mean Rochford does its bit and punches above its weight, but the County Council is a vast organisation with vast resources and it also has vast problems and challenges going into the future.

RL: So it was all a bit high flying?

Terry: Well no. It was interesting; just after we got elected every meeting was a pothole meeting  or turned into a pothole meeting. It was really the buzz subject at the time, being just after the election and a lot of people had used it on their election material. I think they’ve got onto it now and the idea is that most of the main roads that you use will be done fairly quickly and the lesser roads will come second in the equation and then come the side roads. It doesn’t mean they won’t ever get repaired, it just means they won’t be done as a priority. They do produce figures and in comparison to other counties we’re doing well in Essex.

RL: So how did you handle this learning curve?

Terry:  Well there was a very comprehensive training programme initially, and so I was going in two or three times a week. Some days were a whole day of sessions and other days just one or two sessions. You really did have to learn about things because very much more than the District Council is concerned, it affects people’s lives. There is the Social Services side and the Children’s Services side and as we’ve mentioned, the Highways side, and these things really do affect people’s lives and literally their life. In the past I’ve been involved with County (it’s my tenth year as leader of Rochford now)  so I’ve had a great interaction with Essex anyway.

RL: Much of it to do with money presumably?

Terry: Yes, but more than that. There are things like the whole Essex Community Budget, for instance, which is about bringing all the public-facing organisations together, to work together and where necessary to pool budgets, making sure we’re not doing things side by side but together. It’s focusing on what is really needed, passing data to each other where it is appropriate and where we can, because there are barriers there that we have to overcome,  particularly unfortunately with government, and thus bring more efficiencies into the business.

RL: Can you give examples?

Terry: Well, a lot of it was around families, and this fits in well with what we are doing in Rochford and Castle Point, working with what we might call ‘problem families’. There are always a small number of families in any area who absorb at least 20% of your budget with the problems that they have, and that is being taken up not just at County level but also at National level. If you can target these families, rather than just worrying about saving money, although it will do that in the long term, you can go about helping people change their lives.  If you can nip some of those problems in the bud you change it for the children of those families as you break the cycle they so often get in. If you look at the costs – health service, justice, lifts, police – just one call out to a family costs.  One of the things we’ve really been focusing on - and the police are really coming up to the mark on this – has been domestic abuse, which is a hidden problem. They reckon it takes about fifteen incidents before something is reported but now if they have just several call-outs, they’ll take notice of it.  I’m very pleased about that because that is something we initiated.   

RL: I presume after training you must go through a phase when they start inviting you on to committees?

Terry:  That’s right. At the moment I sit on the Children’s and Adult Services Committee and I am also vice-chairman of the Audit Committee.  I am not officially a member of Overview and Scrutiny (there are five different ones altogether), just a substitute member, but because people have been away I have sat on the Economic Development Scrutiny Committee. Sitting on the scrutiny side you get to learn more because you are looking into things.

RL: I seem to remember you’ve been concerned for health issues as well. Is that still playing a part in your work?

Terry:  I did this before becoming a County Councillor, and sit on the Health and Wellbeing Board for Essex (View the Board) and I also chair the Health and Wellbeing Board for Castle Point  and Rochford as well. I still have that seat now so I represent the southern districts of the County on the Board. There are some very interesting things coming through. I don’t know if you have heard of Sir Thomas-Hughes Hallett. He was brought in to see how we can investigate how we can be more efficient and interactive and make things better for people in Essex as far as health provision is concerned. He has done a study “Who will Care? – Five High Impact Solutions to Prevent the Future Crisis in Health and Social Care in Essex”  (for a summary of the Report on CLICK HERE. To see the full Report CLICK HERE)

RL: What will be the outcome?

Terry:  Well there are these five things and they have all been adopted. It’s about using technology; it’s about giving more information. Suppose you have a relative who contracts Cancer, what services are there out there for you? Most people have no idea. Where do you go? What do you do? What are you entitled to?  You will need to know that information. There are also some very basic things – about how people can look after themselves.  

RL: You have taken all this on board as well as still being Leader of RDC. Isn’t this rather a lot?

Terry:  Well I’m just sixty one and there is a lot to do, a lot to see and a lot to learn. Initially with all that training and the other things I had to do, (and it was just at a time when we were reforming the cabinet and working the budget out), it was very, very difficult at first. I am getting into where I feel I should be more but, yes, I am a lot busier than I used to be just as the leader of the Council, but I think it’s enthusiasm, if you like, that keeps you going.    

RL: Have you been offloading some of the work to others?

Terry:  The others have all been very helpful and obviously I can’t be in two places at once but it has worked very well. It is about making sure that I have some time to do things – I have family as well – it’s falling into place where I am happy with it now. I’ve given up one or two things I used to do outside, some of the charity stuff.   

RL: Most people at sixty start to slow down but you seem to be doing the opposite?

Terry:  Well one thing that keeps you going is that every day is so different , with different things coming along, a different situation, a different meeting, another challenge, and I think that helps you; it keeps your mind active. You are also flitting about; I was in London last week, and then Cambridge. Last week it was the East of England LGA – local government association - and  we are at the forefront of issuing municipal bonds. Normally as a public body you have a thing called the Public Works Loan Board, a Treasury organisation, and you go to them and they give reasonable long-term rates for loans to councils and other public bodies for investing in projects which can be up to say thirty years. What we wanted to do was establish a bond that would divorce us from the Treasury, because it is very much under the Treasury control, while offering a good rate for those investors who want to come forward. As far as Rochford is concerned we have no debt. I can’t say in the future we won’t borrow for projects but we have the capacity to do that. We have no interest that we’re paying on anything at the present.  

RL: OK, you’re handling it! So what else is there with County?

Terry:  One thing that I think that Essex County Council together with the CTG’s now is into is joint commissioning . Joint commissioning is definitely something that is coming forward and government has recognised that and given councils extra money to use as far as joint commissioning and the social services side is concerned. That is very welcome money that has come forward and without it, I think they reckon that in twenty years the whole of the budget of Essex  would be spent on social services. If you go forward, because of the aging population it’s important that that’s done.  Children’s Services  is another interesting one because County have gone forward, so whereas once they were not very comfortable  with their Children’s Services they are now getting ‘good’ in this area. I think the number of children in care is down to about 1200 which, for a county the size of Essex with about 1.4 million people,  is not a bad figure, but we’d like to see it still lower. There are a lot of people out there fostering and adopting and that’s to be encouraged but it’s good to see that coming forward. It’s all interlinked and so, for instance, Adults and Children’s Services now talk to each other, which they haven’t always done in the past, and that is something I’m really involved in.

To continue to Part 2 of this Interview please CLICK HERE

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