Medway Council

The committee spent most of the meeting on the climate change action plan, with repeated requests for clearer budget, carbon, and procurement detail, including urgent follow-up briefings on climate spend and sustainability clauses in contracts. Members also considered the council’s digital performance, AI and automation savings, cybersecurity, recruitment pressure, and the year-end capital/revenue outturn, which highlighted a significant revenue overspend, adult social care pressure, debt write-offs, and borrowing costs. The meeting also noted petition-scheme changes and the work programme, but these were less procurement-relevant.

The board focused on progressing the joint health and wellbeing strategy, with members asking for clearer trend data, more tangible progress measures, and stronger links to upcoming ICB commissioning intentions. A major discussion covered neighbourhood health, including the need for a consistent model across Medway and Kent, public consultation, and better local pathways. The meeting also heard detailed presentations on neurological services and assistive technology, highlighting opportunities to shift care into community hubs, improve MDT working, and expand technology-enabled support for residents.

The committee considered several major health service changes affecting Medway: a planned closure of the Badgebury forensic rehabilitation ward and reinvestment into assertive outreach; a proposed IVF policy reversal after an earlier consultation failure; an ambulance service group model with no short-term local impact; integration of Kent Community Health and MCH; and a new eight-year older persons residential and nursing care framework. Across the meeting, members repeatedly raised lack of consultation, missing financial detail, workforce impacts, and the risk of service reductions or cost pressures shifting onto Medway residents and social care.

The meeting covered three main procurement-relevant themes. First, members scrutinised the termination of the Medway North facilities management arrangement and the move to a hybrid FM model, including TUPE, compliance gaps, and a £6m budget envelope versus an original £6.7m forecast. Second, the committee discussed bus services, with operators and officers focusing on congestion, service reliability, ticketing simplification, fleet electrification, and the implications of bus grant funding and possible franchising. Third, members considered developer contributions, mobile home licensing fees, and broader regulatory and infrastructure funding issues tied to growth, sustainability, and service pressures.

The committee spent much of the meeting on two major issues: the Youth Council’s conference report, which highlighted young people’s views on AI, screen time, harmful content reporting and digital literacy, and the Oasis Restore secure school update, which exposed major procurement and governance failures around defective doors, leadership weaknesses, staffing and training. Members also scrutinised children’s health and SEND services, including long waits for autism, speech and language and occupational therapy assessments, staffing pressures, and the impact of out-of-area provision and funding gaps. A later item covered the council’s sufficiency strategy, including pressures from unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, kinship care and care leavers, and the financial implications of external placements.

The committee considered multiple planning applications under the Article 4 direction, mainly for conversions from family homes or care accommodation into HMOs across Gillingham, Chatham and Strood. Members debated parking stress, HMO clustering, conservation-area impacts, waste management, balcony conditions and whether existing care homes should be retained. One proposed HMO at Medway Hospital was refused for inadequate communal space, while the others were approved with conditions or additional informatives.