For Fairness in Dundee and Broughty Ferry

I welcome the draft For Fairness in Dundee Strategy and Action Plan on the Agenda of the Policy and Resources Committee on Monday 25 June 2012.  At a time when many household incomes are depressed by wage freezes or reductions, benefits are being cut back and household bills are rising, we need a strategy and action plan that will address poverty and deprivation throughout our city. While the statistics in the report show that inequalities are most concentrated in certain areas of the city, they also show that a smaller but significant minority of households in Broughty Ferry are affected by many of the indicators of poverty.

At the meeting, I will be asking whether the planned responses by the Council and agencies in the Dundee Partnership will really be fair if they exclude people living in parts of the city like Broughty Ferry. While The Ferry is generally more affluent, this is not universally true. This was illustrated by the statistics produced by the Dundee Citizens' Advice Bureau. Their annual report for 2011/12 shows that while the inquiry rate from people with Broughty Ferry addresses was lower than folk from other areas in the city, the problems that folk brought forward were the same across the city: benefit advice, debt and consumer issues.

I note in the report that we will be considering at the Policy and Resources Committee that advance consultation did not include the Broughty Ferry Local Community Planning Partnership. That and references to focusing responses on areas of multiple deprivation suggest that For Fairness in Dundee will be exactly that and will not extend to folk in Broughty Ferry. My job is to try to ensure that the benefits from the new strategy and action plan are widespread. Fairness needs to be seen to be fair not excluding people from participating in programmes and initiatives just because of their DD5 address.

Welfare Rights and Wrongs in Dundee

After nearly a year's deliberation, the Changing for the Future Welfare Rights Review Group on the city council have come up with a report. Unfortunately their report will not set the heather alight. 


This report will be considered by the Policy and Resources Committee on Monday evening.

In their strategy, the review group point out that:
 - many Dundee citizens are not claiming social security benefits to which they are entitled, 
- there are many 'Condem' government cuts to welfare benefits coming up over the next year or two and - that the combination of these factors already has a negative impact on the economy of our city. 

They also identify that many council staff might provide more comprehensive advice to the public and that better first time advice might reduce debts owed to the council in rent and council tax arrears. So far so good.

What  is inadequate is the level and range of responses by the Council. The report's preferred response is to redeploy our welfare rights advisers (based in the Social Work Department) to train other staff to improve their advisory skills. This small team of welfare rights staff are recognised as the elite social security  advisers in the city. If you had a social security appeal coming up, you would want one of these staff to advise you about the paperwork and represent you at the tribunal. These staff are also the only accredited advisers in the city in this particular field. So while this small and specialist team's resources are diverted into training others to provide better first level advice, the queue for help with the tribunals will just get longer. Additionally as more claims are submitted, it is inevitable that the volume of appeals in the city will grow. How will the already stretched Welfare Rights council staff and paid and unpaid staff in voluntary advice agencies manage? 

This report has nothing to say about these issues. 

More needs to be done to convince us that this strategy will really deliver. I think the existing specialist roles of the welfare rights service in the Council should be protected while also improving the quantity and quality of welfare rights advice in the city. 

At a time of continuing recession, economic insecurity and squeezed family budgets, Dundee deserves better.

Better Odds At School

Save the Children Scotland have produced a thoughtful and penetrating policy briefing 'Better Odds At School'. In this report they point out that children from Scotland's poorest families make less progress than their classmates from better off households.

The achievement gap in Dundee that the 'Better Odds At School' briefing reveals is a matter of great concern to me. I am a supporter of equality of educational opportunity and if this report is right, the difference between the SQA exam results in secondary schools in our city of pupils in receipt of free school meals compared with those pupils not in receipt of free school meals is very worrying and worthy of further investigation.

I call on Education Convener, Councillor Liz Fordyce to:

• ask the Education Department's statistician to check the analysis used by the report's authors and report back to the Education Committee;
• prepare a report for the Education Committee based on applying the Save the Children Scotland's analysis to the 2010 SQA examination results;
• invite Save the Children Scotland to give members of the Education Committee a briefing about their report and the analysis on which it is based and finally
• commit to applying a rigorous equality impact assessment on each of the cuts in Education she is planning for next year so that these will not impact unfairly on children from households with the lowest incomes."

Sign the Save the Children Scotland's Online Petition