Your views on the future of our children’s centre services and libraries

Overview

Norfolk County Council plays a huge part in people’s lives – ensuring children and young people have the best start in life, protecting vulnerable people, maintaining a safe road system and helping to create a thriving economy.  We’ll continue to spend over a billion pounds every year providing public services that you, your family and friends use every day.

Norfolk is facing some big challenges though.  Our population is growing, people are generally living longer and the type of services that people need is changing.  And as you know, the cost of living is going up.  As things become more expensive we also have higher costs, and the amount of grant we have coming in isn’t keeping up.  At the same time the grant that central government gives us has fallen by £189 million since 2011 and is expected to fall to zero by 2021.

Even though we are proposing to increase council tax next year, the amount of money we hope to raise wouldn’t be enough to balance our budget.  This means we have to make some difficult decisions about how we spend your money.

Since 2011 we have saved £334 million.  However, we now need to save a further £125 million by 2021. 

So, we are looking again at the services we provide, how they work together, whether they are reaching the people who need them and where they are provided from. Our aim is to create services that meet the needs of residents living in different parts of Norfolk, rather than have a one-size fits all offer.

We are proposing to locate our services together in the same buildings wherever we can, to provide one-stop access to the County Council. In some places we might base more of our services in the same buildings as other organisations, such as district councils, health services and voluntary groups. 

Why your views matter

As part of this work we are looking at the future of our children’s centre services. We want your views on:  

·       our proposal to review how children’s centre services are provided in each area of Norfolk

·       our proposal to focus children’s centre services on the families that need them most

·       our proposal for more of our children’s centre services and libraries to share buildings.

Together we think these proposals would save us £5.5 million over the next three years.

We will feed back the findings from our consultation to our county councillors as part of the evidence they will use to help them come to a decision about our proposals.

Find out more and have your say online by clicking on the feedback form below.

If you need a copy of this consultation document on paper or in a different format please email haveyoursay@norfolk.gov.uk

What happens next

We will take a report about the findings to this consultation to our Children's Services committee on 16 January 2018.  The report will feedback what people have told us about the potential impact of our proposal.  The feedback will also be reported at Full Council on 12 February 2018.  Members will use this as part of the evidence they take into account when making a decision about what savings to make.