Speeches by Hall.

“Sorry to interrupt, but a lot of regions are already doing this unofficially, as I mentioned earlier. The challenge still comes: you can predict what you need collectively, but if the placements are not there, that is still going to be a barrier going forwards, which is what we are seeing at the moment. People are havi…”

“That leads me on to my actual question, which is about data. This is to you, Isabelle. In terms of the data and understanding the needs of children in the homes and settings they are in, the NAO Report says that the Department for Education “lacks up-to-date information on the support children need, demand for places, …”

“Having that information and knowledge is important for future planning as well. In terms of that wider strategy, are you confident that you know what placements are going to be needed down the line, and are you putting steps in place to provide that going forwards, or enabling it to be provided going forwards?”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“On the capital, do you think that, rather than pots of money being intermittently available to bid for, it should be a more sustainable, long-term influx of funding so that local authorities, if they choose to do so, can follow the invest-to-save programme? In my experience of the children in our children’s homes, it h…”

“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…”

“I understand that, and it sounds great but, in terms of that support, the project that I talked about before—the children’s mental health and complex-needs hub—came on the back of a conversation that I had with my director because nothing else was being proposed. There were no other streams of funding and no other supp…”

“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 …”

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

“On a more granular level, the NAO Report gives examples of techniques like job costing, process costing and activity-based costing. These are things that are happening in the private sector. Are they things that could be passported over?”

“Thank you, Chair. I want to focus a bit more on the benefits of understanding the costs of services. We know that identifying the drivers of the costs gives us the basis for understanding the full cost of the services. With that in mind, and looking at how we realise those benefits, what are the quick wins to give a se…”

“I suppose the faster you can do it, the more you can benefit from and utilise a lot of the AI. A lot of the legacy systems, as we said before, and data are not usable at the moment. You said that there is a road map, and that is great, but we really need to focus on having those milestones to work towards rather than a…”

“You must be working towards something, though. You must have an ambition as to when this needs to fit together.”