A group of cross-party councillors say that Cornwall Council’s constitution should be changed after they were blocked from calling in a decision to sign a 30-year contract to provide extra care homes.

Cornwall Council’s Cabinet last month approved plans to sign a deal with Gloucestershire-based Mears to build extra care homes across Cornwall.

The new homes would be designed so that elderly people and those with care needs can live independently.

However there were concerns at the Cabinet meeting that the proposed contract had not gone before a council scrutiny committee.

The Cabinet said that this had not been possible due to the Covid-19 outbreak and said that if it were to go to scrutiny before a decision was made then it would delay the contract.

There was also a suggestion that if the contract approval was delayed then it could be at risk.

However a group of councillors – Jayne Kirkham (Labour), Loveday Jenkin (Mebyon Kernow) and Barbara Ellenbroek (Conservative) – decided to apply to call-in the decision which would have meant that it would have to go before a scrutiny committee.

But this application was denied by a council legal officer who said that it failed to meet the required criteria.

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In a statement the three councillors said: “As members of the Health and Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee we were very concerned about the decision made by Cornwall Council Cabinet to grant a contract to huge national company, Mears, for extra care housing that we had not seen or been given the chance to scrutinise. 

"The whole point of scrutiny committees is to carefully look at decisions made by the Cabinet/Council and assess their benefit for Cornwall. We were not given the chance to do that in this case.

“We believe the concept of extra care housing in Cornwall is a good one but, on seeing the papers for Cabinet, we had serious concerns about the contract.

"A number of questions were asked both before and at Cabinet by members but satisfactory answers to these were not received. So, we applied to ‘call-in’ the decision, which means our committee would have got to look at it properly and scrutinise its conditions.

"The fact that we made our application on a cross-party basis shows the genuine non-political nature of our worries.”

The call-in was made due to several concerns including:

- the funding of the contract and its potential to tie the council into a deal that it would be very expensive to get out of

- the fact that the report did not contain details of all the relevant contracts

- whether the care provided by Mears would comply with the Ethical Care Charter

- the strength of the social value offer and its enforcement

- compliance with the council’s affordable housing policies

- whether full investigation had been undertaken on Mears’ record.

Commenting on the decision of the council to decline the request the councillors said: “Our application to call the decision in for scrutiny was turned down by the council’s chief legal officer in an email received at 4.57pm last Friday.  Under our constitution, it appears that this council officer has the power to reject members’ request for call-in based solely on their opinion.

"It also appears that there is no procedure in our constitution to appeal that rejection.

“If the council’s constitution doesn’t allow councillors to properly scrutinise a decision that they are genuinely worried will backfire on the people of Cornwall, then the constitution is wrong and we must change it.

"It cannot be right that one officer can prevent this from happening. We will be pursuing this. The system is not serving the people of Cornwall if huge decisions taken on their behalf cannot be fully scrutinised by their elected councillors when they ask.”

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Conservative councillor David Harris has also raised concerns about the contract and the fact that a lot of information was kept in confidential papers.

He said: “Just looking at the commercial side I believe the people of Cornwall would be horrified at one of the financing options being considered but this, like so much else, is tucked away in the confidential papers.

“It is enough to say that if this route of financing was followed, which is the only route that can be followed if the Chief Executive’s statement in Cabinet that Mears were bringing £150 million to the table is to be taken at face value, the end result could make the £46m farce over using fancy financing tricks many years ago (Reverse LOBOs) look trivial.

“I also have great concerns  when we are not able to scrutinise this contract properly that there is something tucked away in the small print that will tie us into a deal that it would be very expensive to get out of and if it isn’t scrutiny’s job to look at this then whose is it because Cabinet doesn’t seem overly bothered?”