Further to Minute No. 134 of the meeting held on 1 October 2009 and Minute No. 5 of the meeting of the Cabinet Member - Health and Social Care held on 26 May 2010, the Cabinet considered the report of the Adult Social Care Director on the outcome of the review of the introduction of the flat rate charge on all service users who have transport arranged by the Council's Specialist Transport Service.
RESOLVED: That
(1) the report be noted; and
(2) a further update be submitted to the Cabinet in six months time.
Further to Minute No 134 of the Cabinet meeting held on 1 October 2009, the Cabinet Member considered the report for the Adult Social Care Director on charges for the Specialist Transport Service and indicating that a review had been undertaken to assess the impact of the introduction of the flat rate charge on all service users who had transport arranged by the Council’s Specialist Transport Service.
The report indicated that the a flat rate charge of £3.00 per day (£1.50 per journey) had been introduced on 1 October 2009 for all service users who had transport arranged by the Council’s Specialist Transport Service; that since that date, 49 complaints had been received regarding the charge; that the complaints centred around charging for trips which had not occurred and had been caused by miscommunication between Adult Social Care Department, the Specilaist Transport Unit and the care agencies. All parties continued to work to improve upon this issue.
As the charge did not come under the fairer charging policy there was no financial assessment. 34 appeals against the charge had been received and 30 had already been visited by the Department’s Finance Visiting Officers to submit financial information in support of their appeal. In response to the level of allowance given against expenditure over and above usual living costs claimed and to ensure that the system was not overly bureaucratic, a percentage allowance discount could be introduced.
The Cabinet Member and Spokespersons asked a variety of questions relating to Specialist Transport; welcomed the findings of the report as a “step in the right direction”; and thanked the Specialist Transport team for all their continued efforts to improve the services for all users, and requested that specific thanks be passed to Karen Lee, Team Leader, Health and Social Care Department and her team be for their valuable assistance and the additional workload they had undertaken to improve this situation. Colin Speight agreed to take details of any individuals experiencing difficulty due to the new charge from Members and follow up as appropriate.
RESOLVED: That
(1) the contents of the report be noted;
(2) the treatment of expenditure in reaching the decision on an appeal, as outlined in paragraph 8 of the report, be approved;
(3) the fact that a further report would be submitted on this matter in six months time be noted; and
(4) the report be referred to Cabinet for information.