Steve Double, Member of Parliament for St Austell and Newquay, has welcomed an announcement from Cornwall Council that following the conclusion of their consultation on Adult Social Care charging policies, they will not be making any changes to existing arrangements.
In the statement, released to all Cornwall Councillors earlier today, Lib Dem Cornwall Councillor and Cabinet Member for Health, Rob Rotchell, who had already apologised for the way in which the consultation had been conducted late last week, said:
‘The consultation process closed on Monday 23rd April at 5pm and after considering the responses we have received I will now be taking the following actions :-
- No policy changes will take place based on the feedback we have received from the consultation.
- We are in discussions with Healthwatch regarding the commissioning of a "lessons learned" exercise to help us identify where the process went wrong and improve our approach to future Adult Social Care consultations.
- We will now start work to reshape our engagement approach to ensure we improve our relationships with all service user groups.
I reiterate my apology for the flawed consultation process and commit to forming positive relationships with this client group and their representatives in the future.’
Commenting, Steve said:
“Following the administration at Cornwall Council’s admission that they had not carried out this calamitous consultation properly earlier last week, it was fairly obvious that this was going to be the final outcome.”
“Another unnecessary consultation that no-one asked for that got answers everyone already knew.”
“How much did this whole exercise cost Cornwall Council and therefore the Cornish taxpayer, and how much will it cost Healthwatch to carry out the sadly necessary ‘lessons learned’ exercise.”
“I very much hope that Cornwall Council will think long and hard before commissioning any further consultations and certainly take into account the worry and stress they are causing to the vulnerable service users who are affected.”