Important to keep improving children's services in the county says leader of Herefordshire Council
Councillor Jonathan Lester was re-elected into the role at last Friday's council meeting
The leader of Herefordshire council says improving children's services remains one of his key priorities in the role after being re-elected.
Herefordshire’s children’s services were judged inadequate by Ofsted in August 2022.
In the recent Ofsted report published in March this year following a visit in February, inspector Alison Smale announced since the last monitoring visit in October 2024, the local authority had “started to build up some pace in the improvement of services for vulnerable children”.
'Children's services going in the right direction'
Councillor Jonathan Lester from the Conservatives has been leader of the council since May 2023 and had also previously been leader between 2018-2019.
He was re-elected at a council meeting last week, describing the role as a 'privilege', and says it's important work continues on the children’s services.
“What I made a top priority for when I came back as leader of the council was to improve children's services,” he said.
“Children's services is continuing to improve, it's going from strength to strength, there's still lots to do, but we're confident that we're really going in the right direction.
“This coming year, we're also going to be spending another £10 million on resurfacing A and B roads and £1 million on C and U roads and that's a real positive investment to the highway network.”
Challenges
The leader also highlighted while it's important to continue delivering the services people need, it is also vital to make sure the finances of the council are being managed.
He said: “The biggest challenge to local government at the moment is how local government is funded and all councils up and down the land have got financial challenges.
“That's why we're really pleased that next week we'll be reporting at cabinet that the budget that my administration set for 24/25, we've come in budget.
“We have been extremely clear with ourselves that we need to manage every single penny, we spend it wisely, and make sure that we're a resilient council financially and we've taken on new measures to make sure we know how every penny is spent.”