Take a bow, Danial Webb!
If Herefordshire Council aims to obstruct proper scrutiny of what is really going on in Children’s Services, then their current Scrutiny Officer is the right man for the job.
Read on to understand why Danial Webb has been dubbed the Avoid-scrutiny-at-all-costs-Officer by parents and politicians who are trying to raise the alarm about ongoing failures in Children’s Services.
On 23 May 2025 at the Annual Council Meeting, Councillors voted through a recommendation from the report of the Scrutiny Officer, Danial Webb, to curtail the rights of the public to ask public questions. We are pleased that Cllr Liz Harvey, former Deputy Leader of the Council and the recent Vice-Chair of Children’s Scrutiny has resigned from her position on the Children’s Scrutiny Committee over this matter.
This was the text of her tweet after her resignation:
…and on Herefordshire Council… Tories and Libdims vote to retain overblown scrutiny system and to restrict public questions. Nice work. I’ve resigned from Children’s Scrutiny.
We now have an example of what this vote means in practice: Councillors have effectively given officers the right to reject reasonable and important questions of substance from the public about matters directly affecting them. Worse still, under the new rules, rejected questions will not even be aired in public. There will be no Council record of rejected questions and Committee members will not even know that a question has been rejected.
The question below was rejected by the ironically named “Democratic Services” team on the grounds that neither the Scrutiny Officer nor Toni Fagan, the Chair of the CYP Committee, can answer it. It is not clear whether they “can’t” answer the question because
(i) they don’t know the answer or
(ii) they are simply unwilling to answer the question because the answer would not be flattering
Neither reason is acceptable when the question is asking about the possibility that significant harm is being caused unnecessarily to the public by Herefordshire Council employees.
The rejected question draws attention to the risk that social workers are commencing highly invasive child protection inquiries without following due process and in doing so may be breaching the Article 8 rights of multiple families every year and causing untold stress and worry. You can read more about this issue here.
But the Chair of the Scrutiny committee and the Scrutiny Officer are now allowed to reject the question on the grounds that they cannot answer it “directly” whatever that means and the rest of the committee won’t even know the question has been asked. This is a sure sign of institutional sickness and cowardice.
There will be many more rejected questions in the wake of the decision taken by Councillors. If your question to the Children’s Scrutiny Committee is rejected, please let us know by emailing facherefordshire@proton.me and we will be able to publish it for you.
Example of rejected supplementary question:
The original question:
I understand that Children’s Services currently subscribe to “online comprehensive suite of services to support every aspect of social care procedures”, provided by Herefordshire Councils partner:
https://www.trixonline.co.uk/about-us
“we specialise in expertly creating, updating, and hosting procedures that not only enable you to meet statutory requirements and regulatory standards, but that also reflect best practice and empower your team to achieve the best possible outcomes for children, families, adults and carers. Our innovative platform also provides…”
All sounds like a good thing but Children’s Services also have locally created and published procedures.
So how would a Social Worker, newly arrived in Herefordshire, use and interoperate trixonline (https://westmids-herefordshire.trixonline.co.uk/)
with locally created ”Herefordshire Safeguarding Children Partnership Manual”?
The rejected supplementary question:
So you have regional Safeguarding procedures:
https://westmids-herefordshire.trixonline.co.uk/chapter/assessment
“Each child who has been referred into the Local Authority children's social care should have an individual assessment … when determining what (if any) services to provide under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989, and before making decisions about action to be taken to protect individual children under Section 47 of the Children Act 1989. …”
But in
https://www.herefordshiresafeguardingboards.org.uk/documents/right-help-right-time-levels-of-need
Page 17:
“Whenever there are child protection concerns, a ‘section 47 (Children Act 1989) enquiry’ is undertaken … and will ALWAYS be started following a strategy discussion …”
To a simple man like me this appears to be significantly different wording that if acted upon to the letter, could be very damaging for family life, career and relationships.
So which version is correct?
The email rejecting the question:
Dear Mr XXX
Thank you for your supplementary question.
On 23 May 2025, at its Annual Council meeting, Herefordshire Council resolved to “restrict public questions to scrutiny committee matters that can be answered directly by the committee chair or statutory scrutiny officer.”
The Monitoring Officer has therefore rejected your supplementary question as it does not relate to scrutiny committee matters that can be answered directly by the committee chair or statutory scrutiny officer.
Kind regards
Councillor Services