At Thursday's Children’s Services Cabinet Panel, 40 angry incredulous HomeStart managers, Chairs, volunteers and clients heard the Conservative members of the Children’s Services Cabinet Panel support the complete cut of support to the 9 HomeStart Branches in the county, worth £395,000 per annum from September 2015 as recommended by officers.  In so doing they voted down a motion from the Liberal Democrats that they should go to tender so that they could judge the relative value of the services HomeStart provide before making any final decision.

Members of Hertfordshire County Council Children’s Services Cabinet Panel yesterday received additional papers announcing the withdrawal of the annual £391,000 grant to the 9 HomeStart operations which cover the county. Their role will now be added to the increasingly complex range of tasks to be handled by the 91 Children’s Centres.

By withdrawing the £391,00 annual grant to the nine HomeStart centres across the county on the basis that it could be supplied by Children’s Centres , the Conservative County Council is putting the future stability of 395 client families at risk. Without the close support of the Homestart volunteers who help them in their homes, many of these families will disintegrate. Likewise the local HomeStart teams will almost certainly have to close for lack of sufficient funding.

Conservative-led Hertfordshire County Council have confirmed that the appalling state of our roads is set to get significantly worse.

The Finance meeting of June 10^th were told that Herts Highways had overspent their budget last financial year by £1.16m (budget £14.9m, spend £16.1m), despite the continual decline in the state of our roads and footpaths that is obvious to road and footpath users across Hertfordshire.