New appointments have been made within Essex County Council’s (ECC’s) Cabinet.
Councillor Derrick Louis is now Cabinet Member for the new Transformation portfolio. Responsibilities include:
- Whole Council Transformation
- Lead member for armed forces liaison and engagement (military covenant)
- Property Strategy and Facilities Management
- Project and Programme Management
- HR
- ECC Continuous Improvement and Design
- Service Design
- Emergency Planning and Resilience
- Telephone and Digital Access
- User Experience
- Technology Services.
Other portfolio changes include:
- Councillor John Spence, Cabinet Member for Health, Social Care and Integration (formerly Health, Adult Social Care and ICS Integration)
- Councillor Tony Ball, Cabinet Member for Education Excellence, Life Long Learning and Employability (portfolio formerly did not include Early Years).
The cabinet is responsible for delivering our Everyone’s Essex plan for levelling up the county.
Councillor Beverley Egan leaves the Children’s Services and Early Years portfolio after three years. In that time, she has overseen an Outstanding Ofsted report for children’s social care services.
She will now chair the newly created Caring Communities Commission. This will explore local and community-based solutions to social care pressures on public services.
The commission will launch in summer and focus on early intervention and prevention in its first year. This will include:
- identifying and amplifying assets within Essex communities to support vulnerable residents
- building capacity within communities for improved resilience, better services and lower costs
- looking at all forms of provision to better support the changing needs of residents.
Instead of looking at how to pay the ever-growing cost of social care, this commission will seek to find radical, community-based solutions to meet care needs in a cost-effective way. It will be informed by the expertise and experiences of frontline staff, care users and their families.