Key decisions have been made on education funding, equality, school cleaning and more issues by bosses at Bracknell Forest Council.

The executive committee made up of councillors from the ruling Conservative party met  online to agree spending on education, spend money assisting needy families to buy food, purchase bedsits for the homeless and more important decisions.

The meeting took place on Tuesday, November 16.

Here are the key decisions they made:

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Agree a new spending strategy for education and learning from 2022-26

The committee chose to enact a new Capital Strategy for Education & Learning 2022-26, which involves allocating funds from the council’s capital spending budget.

The decision was sent to councillor Dr Gareth Barnard (Warfield Harvest Ride), the executive member for children, young people and learning to implement.

Approve the council’s Equality Scheme 

The key objectives of the scheme are making the council inclusive in everything it does, accessible to all, accountable and fair, having a diverse workforce, and making sure the council bounces back from the pandemic.

The equality scheme was published by Cllr Paul Bettison OBE (Little Sandhurst & Wellington), the executive member for council strategy and community cohesion (who’s also the council leader).

Acquire an ‘All Age Advocacy’ provider 

The committee agreed to devise an ‘all age’ care service to help people from youth to old age.

Council officer Thom Wilson, explaining the rationale for the move, said: “We are making this move to an all age service because we particularly want to support young people as they transition to adulthood, I think it’s a particularly important time for continuity of support, and also because it allows us to have a larger and more resilient contract that will support us as we develop the service.”

Cllr Dale Birch (Little Sandurst & Wellington), the executive member for adult social care, agreed to enact the policy.

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Spend £555k of Government funding to assist needy families to buy food 

The committee was asked to endorse the spend of £555,468 of the Government’s Household Support Fund from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

It was agreed that this money will be distributed to needy families as supermarket vouchers.

You can watch the decisions being made on Microsoft Teams using this link: https://democratic.bracknell-forest.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=102&MId=10442

The stream was then stopped so the committee could make decisions in private.

Listed below are the decisions that were made in private.

Agree on the changes to the Public Protection Partnership (PPP)

Here, councillors received a report on changes to the PPP.

The PPP has until now been a shared service between Bracknell Forest Council, Wokingham Borough Council and West Berkshire Council.

But Wokingham Borough Council gave notice that it will be leaving the PPP in April 2022.

READ MORE: The new arrangement for Wokingham public protection services

This means there will be changes to the PPP, with the service going to ‘Mark II’ of its existence, with Wokingham Borough ‘buying in’ to certain PPP services such as trading standards, food standards, air quality management, animal welfare, and financial investigations, but bringing other services like anti-social behaviour response,  licensing, development control and food hygiene into its own control.

Extend the school cleaning contract

The executive commitee agreed to the extend the council’s current contract with the company that cleans Bracknell Forest’s schools until August 30, 2022.

Spend £1.17m on accommodation for the homeless 

The executive commitee agreed to spend  to £1,177,200 to buy six one-bed or bedsit properties from the housing market to provide  affordable rented temporary housing to meet the needs of rough sleepers and other single homeless households.

Of the £1.17m spend, £727,200 will come from borrowing, and £450,000 will be spent from unallocated developer funding from S106 agreements.

The council has said the borrowed sums will be paid for by net rental income.