Scrutiny

What does this select committee do?

The Family Services Select Committee examines topics related to:

• social services provision for children and families; 
• education, training and youth services and support; 
• early years, childcare and play services;
• sports education; 
• libraries and other related topics.

Current priorities for the select committee

The topics for review for the current municipal year were prioritised by members and formally proposed at the council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee. The topics include:

• Health and Wellbeing in children aged 0-5 
• Children and Young People Children and young people not in education, employment, and training
• Safeguarding, fostering and adoption

You can find Meeting papers and agendas on our Committees pages.

The Select Committee will undertake detailed reviews of these topics throughout the municipal year. It will carry out these reviews in a variety of ways, including reviewing reports at formal meetings, carrying out in-depth scrutiny at single-issue meetings and setting up working groups. In these reviews the Select Committee will seek to gather evidence in the community and to hear from local people and other experts.

Holland Park School

In line with its scrutiny duty to listen to and to be the voice of residents, time at the Family Services Select Committee 21 March 2022 meeting was arranged to discuss the current developments at Holland Park School, following a request by a group of concerned parents (the Parent Collective). 

The Select Committee provided parents the opportunity to speak, be heard and share their experiences of the processes affecting the school.  You can listen to the discussion of this item at the meeting below.

The Select Committee listened to the Parent Collective, the Lead Member for Family and Children’s Services, Councillor Josh Rendall, as well as to councillors including those representing North Kensington wards. 

After the meeting, Cllr Janet Evans, Chair of the Family Services Select Committee wrote to the Regional School Commissioner, to the Secretary of State for Education, the local MP and to the school’s governors and trustees with the following recommendation from the meeting:

We would urge you to pause this process and ensure that parents and students are widely and adequately involved, and their voices fully considered in any future option for the school.

You can read the letter below.

Letter from Cllr Janet Evans

Dear Dame Kate, 

I am writing to you in my capacity as Chair of the Family Services Select Committee at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, to set out the conclusions and the recommendation of the committee members after listening to parents of Holland Park School students at the meeting of 21 March 2022.    

In line with our scrutiny duty to listen to and to be the voice of our residents, time at the scrutiny meeting was arranged to give a group of concerned parents (the Parent Collective) the opportunity to speak, be heard and share their experiences of the processes affecting the Holland Park School.  I have noted below what we heard from parents, and I invite you to listen to parents themselves here. 

At the meeting parents described their frustration, concerns and worry over a process that in their view would transform the character and ethos of their children’s school –a much loved and respected school in Kensington — irreversibly.   We heard from parents about a process that we agree happened too quickly, lacked transparency and was devoid of consultation.  I have expanded on these points below and set out what we heard at the meeting:

• Only four months ago the school was issued with a Notice to Improve. Only one of the ten recommendations was for governors to consider joining a multi-academy trust (MAT).  In that short time, trustees decided to join in a MAT and settled on which MAT to join. The trustees, moreover, quickly moved from one choice of MAT to another one earlier this month. 
• Parents and students have been furnished with little or no information of the process followed and of the criteria developed by governors and trustees to firstly, decide to join a MAT, and secondly to choose which MAT to join. 
• There has been no consultation or engagement with the school’s key stakeholders: its students, parents and teachers. Parents feel left out of important decisions for the future of their children’s school, and they wish to be involved in those decisions. 

Having heard from the Parent Collective, from the Family and Children’s Services Lead Member, Councillor Josh Rendall, as well as from councillors including those representing North Kensington wards, the Family Services Select Committee has unanimously come to the following conclusion and recommendation: 

We would urge you to pause this process and ensure that parents and students are widely and adequately involved, and their voices fully considered in any future option for the school.

The reasons for our recommendation are that:

• After the Grenfell tragedy the Council has recognised that our local communities require us to work with local people in making decisions that affect them. In line with the Hillsborough Principles, putting our communities first is a commitment by the Council, and our values include a commitment to put local people at the heart of decision making in everything we do. 
  This school serves our North Kensington communities. It is a shock to local people, and to us as councillors, to find that governors and trustees of Holland Park School are satisfied to simply follow a process which has no room for the communities they serve. We believe this behaviour has no place in our borough. 
• There is a local bid developed by Kensington Aldridge Academy which made the long list of MAT partner-considerations by trustees but did not make the shortlist. We understand that this bid is a proposal which would be co-sponsored by the Council, and which would also count on the experience and expertise of Sir David Carter, former National Schools Commissioner. We think this proposal should be considered as an option with potential to strengthen the governance and financial management arrangements and to gain wide-ranging local support.  
• We are concerned that, at this time of upheaval to the school and when parents have lacked a formal role in the process, the two parent-governor positions, which would provide parents with a voice in the decision-making process, are vacant. We take this opportunity to urge that elections for the two parent-governor positions are held speedily. 

On behalf of my Committee, I thank you for your time and consideration of this letter and look forward to receiving your response for the benefit of our school community. 

Yours sincerely

Cllr Janet Evans
Chair of the Family Services Select Committee, RBKC 

Current reviews

Call for Evidence - Serious Youth Violence Scrutiny Review

Serious youth violence affects local communities, local children and how we go about living our lives. It particularly affects the most disadvantaged. When children and young people are affected by serious violence, gangs, or knife crime it has a devastating impact on them and their families. 

Central government has recently introduced a Serious Violence Duty that requires authorities –among them the Council— to work together to prevent and reduce serious violence. In the context of this duty the Council is currently developing its refreshed Serious Youth Violence Strategy and the Family Services Select Committee (scrutiny) is looking into it.

The Family Services Select Committee would like to invite parents and carers of children and young people affected in any way by serious youth violence, as well as voluntary and community organisations who support children and families affected, to hear about your experiences and your views. Members also welcome the views of children and young people. 

It is an opportunity for you to have your views on this issue heard and amplified.

Committee members will ensure that anonymised results are fed back to the Council and will use what you say to make recommendations to the Council’s Lead Members, Leadership Team and the Council as a whole. 

It is important for the Committee that you have a say in matters that affect your life. We are really grateful for your participation and would very much value your contribution to this review, aimed at improving the services and support that the Council provides to the children and young people affected and to their families.

How to respond

Please email your responses by 23 January 2022 to us at: [email protected] and write ‘Serious Youth Violence submission’ in the subject line. 

If you are unable to use email, please post your responses to:

Scrutiny Team
Kensington Town Hall
The Town Hall
Hornton Street
LONDON
W8 7NX

Past reviews

• Education support provided by the Council to the pupils affected by the Grenfell Tragedy
• School exclusions in Kensington and Chelsea
• Childcare needs of the communities affected by the Grenfell Tower tragedy 

If you have any suggestions for the Family Services Select Committee members of wish to know more about the work they do please email the Scrutiny Team at: [email protected].