"COMPLACENT" Conservatives at Surrey County Council have been slammed by the opposing Lib Dem group for falling standards at the authority. The blast comes after Surrey became one of only seven county councils to drop a star in a national ratings system. It now stands at three stars. But the council's chief executive and the Conservative group have rebutted the claims, and say the Lib Dems have got it all wrong. After the revelations, Lib Dem leader Hazel Watson said it was "incredible" that the council would hail its rating by the Comprehensive Performance Assessment as a success. She added: "Some of the other councils in this region, like Hampshire and Essex, achieved four stars and their progress during the last year – the so-called direction of travel – is either improving well or improving strongly. "Out of the 19 councils in the South East, only three have a direction of travel under review, and one of those is Surrey. "The swathe of cuts brought about by last year's Business Delivery Review was supposed to wipe the slate clean, reduce the council's debt and give a platform for stronger growth. "The Liberal Democrat group did not support the BDR as the solution to the council's problems, and it looks like we're being proved right – the council has dropped a star rating, showing the services provided to Surrey's residents are not the required standard." However, chief executive Richard Shaw rebutted the claims, saying the drop in ratings related to new assessment of the fire service rather than anything to do with the BDR. Surrey is one of 16 councils with sole control over its fire service – the others are run by several authorities – and it was only assessed on three areas. Mr Shaw said: "Our actual fire service was rated at three stars in 2005, and will be rated again in April. When it came to the assessment, the CPA chose three very odd factors, which were entirely out of our control." He said the fire service fell down on having too many accidental fires for every 10,000 homes, having too many people who were injured in those fires, and having too many false alarms from automated fire alarms in businesses. He said: "Ask the members of the public if they would rather see a fire service getting to call-outs quickly and saving lives, or one that doesn't have many false alarms, and it should be fairly obvious which one they would choose. "It is just odd that the factors they assessed the service on dropped it to a two-star service, and so pulled the council's rating down to three." Mr Shaw also said the fact Surrey was under review for its direction of travel was because a decision was still to be made on how much weight would be given to the fire service ratings, given that only 16 councils could be assessed on running the service themselves. And the Conservative group issued a statement defending itself against the "ill- informed statements". It said: "We are of course disappointed that our CPA score wasn't as good as we had hoped, but this is due to a change in the way that the Fire and Rescue Service are assessed, rather than any other factors. "We believe that the assessment of the fire service is somewhat unfair, and we pay tribute to Surrey Fire & Rescue and their officers for doing a first-rate job in keeping the people of Surrey safe. We also agree with the Audit Commission's comments that 'the service is performing well and is committed to delivering an effective and efficient service'. "In addition, the Audit Commission's website shows quite clearly that SCC's scores were either the same or better as 2005 in every category except the fire service, and our score for the environment improved. "We understand that the council's 'direction of travel' is currently under review, and until the Audit Commission make any official decision it is very difficult to comment."
