Speeches by Hall.

“Warrington is leading on that as well.”

“Are you seeing take-up from other areas? It is quite an ambitious programme, but it is incredibly effective. Essentially, the aim is keeping children out of residential settings and keeping them at home, but having that base where they have support from social workers, the police, CAMHS and all sorts under one roof. It…”

“On regional collaboration—you probably recognise this as well—there are often unofficial agreements among local authorities not to bid against one another for placements, but sufficiency is just so dire that that often goes out the window. A lot of the time, that is where you see the costs going up as well. Is that som…”

“I declare an interest: before coming to Parliament, I was the cabinet member for children’s services in Warrington for several years. I fully recognise a lot of the challenges and the issues that have been raised. During my time we started a programme to bring children’s homes back in-house, which has proved to be very…”

“Before I come to my line of questioning, I want to touch on one point that you made, Susan, about the wider care system. I again declare an interest: I was the cabinet member for children’s services in Warrington for a number of years. I saw that the edge-of-care or Lighthouse model was—or is—incredibly successful, but…”

“Thank you; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furness. I am grateful to colleagues for securing a debate on this issue, because it is something that I am hearing more and more about in Warrington South. When people come to see me about it, they are usually exhausted and upset. Their home is supposed …”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. On roads where people have raised families for decades, homes are being bought up, divided and converted into HMOs, often in what feels like a matter of days, and often by scalpers from out of town who are looking to turn a quick profit. My constituents tell me t…”

“5. What steps he is taking to encourage investment in businesses.”

“According to NHS data, while the number of people waiting for an autism assessment is levelling out, the time they are waiting is rocketing; the average wait time is 200 days more than it was a year ago. In order to reduce waiting times, integrated care boards should follow the NHS England national framework and operat…”

“In Warrington, Platform is transforming the former Unilever site where Surf and Persil were once produced into a next-generation modular data centre that will provide the capacity, resilience and connectivity needed to power the UK’s AI revolution. From Persil to pixels, Platform is taking a brownfield industrial site …”

“One of the issues I hear about is that a lot of the information is very siloed at the moment—it is based in the Department and not cross-departmental. Is that going to be changed down the line? It would obviously cut down a lot of time, for instance.”

“To carry on with my favourite topic—legacy systems—what practical improvements are needed in data capture and collection, Bonnie and Andrew?”

“With a culture change this significant, having that wraparound support is going to be absolutely critical.”

“And if things are not quite going the way that had been planned, I guess you also have that financial support—that knowledge—to say, “Let’s sit down again and look at how things can be done a little bit differently and tweak them.” Is that how you are actively doing it? Rather than coming up with a plan and then disapp…”

“Yes.”

“In terms of helping to persuade Departments to provide support, how do you foresee that happening?”

“Is setting productivity targets, for instance, something that you foresee that support doing, focusing people’s minds? Also, this is a big culture change for Departments. Having that financial expertise, do you foresee that being a challenge—a barrier—or is it possible? It is a big thing to change.”

“Me again. I want to look at the finance role. We have already established that the finance role is incredibly important in supporting Departments and ensuring that they take the issues that we have discussed today seriously. Andrew, my question to you is: what support do those delivering services within Departments nee…”

“That is what needs to be monitored. I fear that that has not been monitored in the past, or not as closely as it could have been, and that is why we are at this point.”

“Will it be monitored quite closely?”