Consultation Hub

For your comments on a four page document that outlined the County Council’s Vision, Principles and Values for Education in West Sussex.

The document proposed aims and objectives for School Organisation and School Improvement which the Education and Skills Directorate will focus on over the next four years. It suggested an approach to build sustainable capacity for school places and incorporated the policy to challenge and support schools to improve by targeting resources, broadening the services that are traded and enabling school-to-school support.

• You broadly supported the Vision, Principles and Values.
• You were concerned about what it might mean for smaller schools in rural parts of West Sussex and wanted more explanation and clarification about what this will mean in practice.
• You told us how much you value the School Improvement Team, but had concerns about visits reducing or a model that relied on school-to-school support.

1. Had additional discussions with School Leaders and Governors on the detail to respond to concerns raised during the consultation period.
2. Considered all consultation responses and feedback and the final strategy and its implementation will; 

• Refine our approach to focus on the sustainablity of schools in the rural localities.
• Increase the minimum number of contacts fro the School Improvment Team to 'good' or 'outstanding' schools.
• Develop school-to-school suport over time and in partnership. 

We asked all the frontagers of Queens Road, Church Avenue, Gordon Road and Bridge Road about proposals to introduce speed cushions in Queens Road, a 20mph speed limit in all the roads and a 7.5 tonne weight restriction (except for access) in Queens Road between Mill Green Road and Bridge Road.

As a result of distributing around 450 letters and drawings and an online Have Your Say webpage we received 88 replies.

From those:

- Regarding the proposed speed cushions, 69 were in favour and 19 against;

- Regarding the 20mph speed limit, 75 were in favour and 13 were against;

- Regarding the 7.5 tonne weight restriction (except for access), 83 were in favour and 5 were against.

(1 paper was returned blank)

These responses indicate significant frontager support and as such we are proceeding to Statutory Public Consultation so that we may introduce these measures subject to receiving any further comments or objections from our statutory public consultees or the wider public. The process of Statutory Public Consultation is expected to happen over the next few months and any measures would be introduced in the coming financial year i.e. between April 2019 and March 2020.

The purpose of the consultation was to:

• Gain a better understanding of the VCS in West Sussex
• Gain a deeper insight into the needs of the Voluntary Community Sector (VCS)
• Gather your views on the current Voluntary Community Sector Infrastructure support
• Understand more about the challenges that the VCS are facing. 

Survey was live from 19^th February to 16^th March.  We received 163 responses from a range of organisations. Your greatest challenges were:

• Funding
• Recruitment and retention of volunteers
• Keeping track of changes in policy and/or legislation
• Engagement with Statutory Sector eg WSCC, D&B’s, NHS
• Premises
• Skills and Training

The results are part of the ongoing consultation process with the Voluntary Community Sector and were shared at the VCS Engagement Event in April as well as sharing findings with the Infrastructure Organisations.    Following on from the VCS Engagement Event and survey results, a series of focus groups will be set up on the following themes: 

• Volunteering
• Partnerships and networking
• Voice and communications
• Funding
• Training, governance and voluntary sector advice

We are hoping that group discussions on the above topics will take place over the coming months looking at different issues and identifying solutions that will make a positive difference going forward.