Cumberland Council met for its full meeting on Tuesday 8 September in the Cathedral Room at the Civic Centre in Carlisle. Here is a summary of the main items, focusing on the parts I and my Liberal Democrat colleagues were most closely involved in.
Keeping Cumberland’s health links with the North East
I proposed a Liberal Democrat motion, seconded by my colleague Councillor Brian Wernham, on proposals to reorganise Cumbria into a single Integrated Care Board. Those proposals could see Cumberland drawn towards the Lancashire health system rather than keeping our established links with the North East. Concerns have already been raised by North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust and by the local MP.
For residents here in the north of the county, our hospitals, specialist services and patient journeys look to Newcastle and the North East, and any restructuring needs to reflect that. The motion called on the Council to raise its concerns formally, to write to our MPs, NHS leaders and neighbouring councils setting out our objections, and to press for a full public consultation and a transparent assessment of the impact on patient access, the workforce and accountability before any changes are made.
The group accepted some helpful clarifying amendments from the Labour Group, and the amended motion was agreed unanimously by the Council.
You can read my speech on the motion below.
Liberal Democrat questions
Liberal Democrat councillors put a range of questions to the Council’s Executive:
- I asked how changes under the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, and the new 2026 regulations, will affect the ability of local residents and elected councillors to have their say on planning decisions.
- I also asked whether the Council has assessed the level of digital exclusion in Cumberland, and what it is doing to reduce it.
- Councillor Roger Dobson asked for figures on the permanent Traffic Regulation Orders made since Cumberland Council was set up, including speed limit reductions such as 20mph limits and what they have cost, and for details of the Council’s recent voluntary redundancy scheme.
- Councillor Brian Wernham asked how many “red” rated findings there were in the Council’s annual CIPFA external assessment, and what progress has been made in reducing them.
- Councillor Chris Wills asked whether the Council is confident it can meet the Government’s aim of offering everyone sleeping rough a route off the streets by Christmas, and about the social housing in the planning pipeline.
The answers to our questions are below:
Other groups asked questions on council finances and budget forecasting, council tax, planning enforcement, traffic orders and preparations for severe weather.
Improvement Panel stands down
Council received the final report of the independent Improvement Panel, which was set up after Cumberland received Exceptional Financial Support from the Government in 2024. The Panel concluded that it has served its purpose and that the Council now has the plans in place to continue its improvement without external oversight. It also highlighted areas that still need work, including recruitment to the finance team, more timely financial reporting and financial planning in children’s services, and recommended a Local Government Association peer challenge within the next year.
I asked the Chair of the Improvement Panel whether he was reassured that the Council had making good financial progress, given the challenges of financial deficit in future years, failure to make cuts and the increasing scale of the capital programme.
Other business
Council also considered starting a Community Governance Review for the unparished area of Carlisle (agreed that this should take place after the local elections) and a report on the future conduct of the Maryport Community Governance Review. A Green group motion asked the Council to sign the Councils for Fair Tax Declaration.
The full papers for the meeting are available here: Cumberland Council, 8 September 2026.
As ever, if you have any questions about any of this, or there is anything I can help with, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Speech on Health Links with the North East
hank you, Chair.
I am pleased to move this motion on Maintaining Cumberland’s Health Links with the North East on behalf of the Liberal Democrat Group.
Chair, this motion is really about something very simple: when we organise our health services, the interests of patients and the delivery of good healthcare must come before administrative convenience.
For many years, health services here in North Cumbria have developed strong links with the North East.
Patients travel to Newcastle and elsewhere for specialist treatment. Our clinicians work within established clinical networks across the North East and North Cumbria. Our workforce is recruited and trained within those networks.
These are not simply lines somebody has drawn on a map. They are relationships which have developed over many years because they make clinical sense.
And that is why I am concerned about the proposal to move North Cumbria into the Lancashire health system.
We are told that patients will still be able to access the same services. Indeed, that assurance has already been given publicly during discussions about these proposals.
And Chair, I absolutely accept that assurance is being given in good faith.
If these changes happen, I don’t expect that on day one somebody will suddenly tell patients from Carlisle that they can no longer go to Newcastle for specialist treatment.
My concern is what happens in five years’ time, or ten years’ time.
What happens when the new organisation is looking for savings? When it wants to simplify services? When somebody quite reasonably asks why one part of its population is being referred outside its own system rather than to services elsewhere within Lancashire?
It seems fashionable in this chamber at the moment to refer back to our previous jobs in Greater Manchester – so perhaps I can do just that.
I remember a hospital trust there which was created by bringing together four separate hospital trusts.
At the time, of course, there were the usual reassurances about local services.
But after a few years, the new organisation inevitably began looking across the whole of its new footprint. It looked at duplication, efficiency and how services could be rationalised.
And the proposals that followed included closing two maternity units and one A&E department.
That experience has stayed with me.
Because organisational boundaries do matter. Perhaps not immediately. But over time they influence where decisions are made, where investment goes and how services develop.
And that is why we should listen particularly carefully to the people actually delivering healthcare in North Cumbria.
North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust has made clear that its preference is to maintain the existing relationship with the North East and North Cumbria health system.
Those concerns are shared by Julie Minns, the Labour MP for Carlisle, who has spoken about the importance of protecting our existing healthcare relationships.
And Chair, I welcome her intervention, because this really shouldn’t be a party-political issue.
The question for all of us is simply: what arrangement gives the people of Cumberland the best healthcare – not just next year, but ten or twenty years from now?
I understand the attraction of making NHS and local government boundaries line up neatly.
But administrative tidiness is not more important than established clinical relationships.
So this motion doesn’t say that NHS structures can never change.
It asks for something much more reasonable.
Listen to our clinicians. Look properly at patient flows, specialist services and workforce recruitment. Consult the communities affected. And demonstrate that any change really is in the long-term interests of patients.
Because once those long-established relationships have been weakened, rebuilding them will be much more difficult.
Chair, if the clinicians responsible for providing our healthcare believe maintaining our links with the North East is in patients’ best interests, I think we should listen to them.
I commend the motion to Council.
Answers to Liberal Democrat Group Questions
Questions from Councillor Pickstone
- Could Councillor Kelly, the Portfolio Holder for Environment and Planning update members on what the authority is doing to tackle the problem of ‘fly-camping’ (illegal and irresponsible camping) that is blighting some of our most important natural landscapes?
Cumberland Council introduced a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) in November 2024 to provide the necessary powers to manage issues of concern. Since then, we have undertaken a number of joint patrols with partner organisations to engage directly with those camping in sensitive areas.
It is important to emphasise that the presence of a tent or campervan on a lakeshore, field, or similar location is not, in itself, a breach of the PSPO. For enforcement to apply, there must be evidence of anti-social behaviour, or a likelihood of it occurring.
Our Enforcement Team has engaged with many individuals and groups, issuing fixed penalty notices where breaches have taken place, and also making use of restorative justice outcomes. For example, one group received a fine and made a donation to the John Muir Trust to replace damaged trees. Just this past weekend, a group of young men from Wigan were required to carry out litter picking around Ennerdale Lake after leaving a mess during their camping trip. The Enforcement Team escorted them for 12 miles and collected every piece of litter.
The Council is committed to protecting and respecting our outstanding natural landscapes. We will continue to take firm action against those who cause harm, while also leading the way nationally in encouraging behaviour change to safeguard these places for the future.
(Further response on this question received later by email)
Dear Councillor Pickstone / Councillors
At the recent meeting of Council under Questions on Notice, Councillor Pickstone asked in a supplementary question:
‘Whether the Council had undertaken an audit of the services which it provides to make sure that all services can be accessed by means other than by email or online’
Please find a response to this question below
The Council has not undertaken a corporate audit of every service specifically for this purpose. However, when designing, transcforming and reviewing services we actively consider accessibility and digital inclusion to ensure residents are not excluded from accessing support. Alternative access routes remain available across our services, including telephone contact, face-to-face support, postal correspondence and assisted digital services where appropriate.
The Council’s approach is to provide services through a range of channels so that residents can choose the method that best meets their needs. This principle is reflected in our customer and digital service design work, which seeks to ensure that digital channels complement rather than replace traditional routes of access.
Customer Services continues to handle significant volumes of customer contact through telephone and other non-digital channels, and many operational services maintain dedicated arrangements for telephone, postal and in-person enquiries. During 2025/26 Customer Services and the Single Point of Access team handled approximately 400,000 customer contacts including;
- 280,000 calls
- 75,000 digital forms or emails
- 45,000 face-to-face
It is evident from the face-to-face figures that our move to a Community Hub model is already seeing success in co-locating our staff and services within local community settings, including at; Wigton, Keswick and Millom.
We continue to learn from this work and will review customer access arrangements as part of ongoing service improvement and transformation activity to ensure residents can access services regardless of their digital circumstances.
Further questions and answers
- Could Councillor Cannon the Portfolio Holder for Financial Planning and Assets update members on the progress that has been made to deliver on the recommendations made by both our external auditors and the external reviews undertaken by CIPFA? In particular what actions are outstanding?
As part of our commitment to be a ‘learning organisation’ on a journey of improvement and transformation, the Council has taken the recommendations from our external auditors, CIPFA’s assurance reviews, MHCLG, and the independent Improvement Panel to prepare a consolidated single Improvement Plan. The Improvement Plan sets specific objectives and action plans across a range of key priorities including financial management and sustainability, ICT, people and culture, asset management, performance, commercialisation and more.
The Audit Committee approved the Improvement Plan on 28 April 2025. A copy of the Improvement Plan and progress update was included in the published papers for that meeting. Since then, updates have been reported at the Senior Leadership Team meeting on a monthly basis. Progress reports are brought to each monthly meeting of the Improvement Panel for review, check and challenge and, thereafter, to the Audit and Risk Committee as part of regular reporting, most recently on 1 September 2025. Members of that Committee asked for the Improvement Panel Chair’s report to be referred to Council and you will see it is on the agenda today.
Since the last Improvement Panel, the following updates have been made to the plan:
- Ongoing discussions with external auditors, training, and development of a timetable associated with completion of statutory accounts;
- Revisions to the MTFS and Capital Programme are ongoing through strategic planning processes and are on-track following Fair Funding consultation and Government Spending Review;
- Reports on proposals to generate capital receipts through assets disposals were approved by Executive in July 2025;
- Recruitment to the Council’s leadership structure is now complete. A start date in October 2025 has been agreed with the Chief Officer for Innovation and Commercial;
- Alignment of our performance framework and council priorities has been achieved through development of the Council Plan Delivery Plan 2025-27.
While many of the actions will be completed within this year, it is recognised that this plan can act as a catalyst for development of medium and long term activity on the Council’s continued improvement and transformation. As such, priorities and actions to extend over the next 24-36 months are currently being developed as part of our strategic planning processes with reference to the MTFP, directorates’ Service Plans and transformation plans and the ongoing work of the Improvement Panel. Longer term activity will be incorporated and implemented into the Improvement Plan on an ongoing basis, subject to regular review, reporting and monitoring.
Separately, the Audit and Risk Committee received a report from the s151 Officer to its meeting on 1stSeptember. In that report, she set out the progress which has been made in responding to the statutory recommendation issued by Grant Thornton focusing on strengthening financial reporting capacity and accelerating the completion of the 23/24 and 24/25 statement of accounts.
4. Question from Councillor Dobson
At the 29th April Meeting of Council a motion concerning VE and VJ Day was passed unanimously. The following day I requested that the Roll of Honour Board for Carlisle City Corporation employees who died in the Second World War be moved from an obscure alcove in the Civic Centre reception to a more prominent location.
Will the Leader confirm that the Roll of Honour work will be moved in time for this year’s remembrance events in November?
I can confirm that officers have considered the location of the Roll of Honour Board. The Board is in an accessible location within the Civic Centre reception area, there are no immediately obvious locations to relocate it and whilst it is not in an overtly prominent position the location is considered to be reflective and respectful, positioned away from the day to day activities and noise that is sometimes experienced around the customer service desks ensuring that anyone seeking to view the Board can do so in a calm environment.
5. Question from Councillor Wernham
The Public Account Committee report (Feb 2025) found the Government’s NHS Dental Recovery Plan has failed, with dental activity projected to rise by only 1%. In Cumberland, access is dire: only one NHS practice is listed as taking patients, with a four-year wait for check-ups—creating a “dental desert.”
The Council has previously debated this issue, written to NHS England and Government, and convened a Scrutiny Task Group that made recommendations on workforce, contracts and prevention. Yet no improvement has been seen locally.
Has the Leader taken any further action in the past 12 months to secure regular, preventative NHS dental care—especially for lower-income residents?
It is clear that access to NHS dentistry is inadequate in Cumberland, as indeed it is throughout the whole country, and as Cllr Wernham says, the Council has made this very clear through discussion at full Council, through Scrutiny, and through the Health and Wellbeing Board. However unfortunately securing access to NHS dental care is something that the Council has absolutely no control over. It is the role of NHS England, and now Integrated Care Boards, to commission dental services, but even they struggle to do so given the constraints of the national dental contract. So I’m afraid to say that there is nothing we can do locally to resolve this issue; it needs the NHS and dental organisations to negotiate effectively at national level to sort this out, and these negotiations are ongoing.
6. Question from Councillor Wills
Please can the Leader provide an update on the progress being made to reduce the number of agency staff being employed by Cumberland Council?
Reducing the number of agency workers remains a key focus for the Council.
There are ongoing initiatives aimed at reducing reliance on agency workers. They include campaigns for overseas workers into permanent employment in Social Worker and Care Work in Adult Social Care and Children’s Services. Social Work Academies continue to bring in new cohorts of permanent employees and this will continue with planned activities for 2025/2026.
Recruitment campaigns for hard to fill posts will also continue with renewed activity to support any emerging changes to the recruitment market. All initiatives are monitored and reviewed to measure success and adapted and changed as required.
The Council continues with developing skills and ultimately filling permanent roles by internal and external apprenticeship routes. Further work will continue to develop graduates and career development pathways.
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