Countdown to May county council election begins as parties outline spending plans
Perpetrators are going unpunished in Sussex, our investigation reveals, with just three suspects charged since 2015
The countdown to May’s county council election – if it goes ahead during the pandemic – has begun with the main political parties setting out their spending plans.
Tory-led West Sussex County Council signed off its 2021/22 budget on Friday, which will see its portion of an average council tax bills rise by £71.82. This will take its share of a Band D bill to £1,510.56 – just over £4 per day.
It amounts to a 4.99 per cent increase, three per cent of which goes to adult social care.
Jeremy Hunt, cabinet member for finance, said: “Raising council tax is not something we do lightly, and we are extremely conscious that many people may be struggling financially at the moment. However, the alternative would be to cut essential front-line services which our residents rely on.
“Now more than ever we know that people need the services which local government provide so we will continue to look for ways to make efficiency savings, whilst still providing these
vital services.”
Despite predicting an overspend of £5.5million in September, the council managed to present a balanced budget – something it is legally required to do. Mr
Hunt told the meeting that the shortfall had been covered using contingency funds and there had been no need to draw on reserves.
There will be an extra £12million to improve the condition of the highways, and £10million over the next five years to address the challenges of climate change, helping the council to become carbon neutral by 2030.
Mr Hunt warned the meeting that West Sussex faced a £54million budget gap between 2022/23 and 2024/25 if the government did not provide more certainty about funding.
The meeting saw two amendments to the budget tabled – one from the Liberal Democrats and one from Labour – both of which were voted down. Both called for money to be invested in the county’s children and family centres, as well as the Find It Out youth help centres, and for huge cuts to be made to the council’s communications budget. On top of that, the Liberal Democrat amendment called for a three per cent increase in discretionary fees and charges, to raise £600,000, while Labour proposed a ten per cent cut in senior management posts to save £400,000.
After running through a list of the council’s recent failures and expenses – such as the golden handshake to the former chief executive and huge problems with children’s services – James Walsh, leader of the Lib Dem group, accused the leadership of ‘smugness and complacency’ when it came to previous budgets.
He added: “Enough is enough. We need a break from ongoing Tory austerity with a better budget and a nonConservative council elected in May.”
Presenting his group’s amendment, Labour leader Michael Jones said: “We want to demonstrate that another future is possible – a better one for this county.
“It does not have to be like this, no matter what the cabinet put forward, no matter what flimsy reasons the Tory group put up to make excuses for why they won’t vote for any of the amendments put forward by the opposition groups.”
Sussex Police has charged just three suspects with modern slavery offences since the 2015 Modern Slavery Act was passed – giving it the third lowest charge rate in England and Wales.
The landmark legislation was designed to crack down on the ‘appalling crime’, which ranges from forced prostitution to domestic servitude, with simplified offences and tougher punishments.
But a JPIMedia investigation has exposed the extent to which perpetrators are escaping justice.
Just 4.4 per cent of modern slavery offences recorded by English and Welsh police forces between 2015 and September, 2020, resulted in a charge.
Dame Sara Thornton is the independent anti-slavery commissioner – a role created by the 2015 Act. She said the current lack of risk to criminals ‘fails to counter the economic reward of trafficking in people, or prevent organised crime groups acting with impunity’.
Sussex Police has charged just three people since 2015, despite recording 601 modern slavery offences. This results in a charge rate of 0.5 per cent.
Detective Chief Inspector Kris Ottery said modern slavery was ‘a complex and challenging world of investigation’ but ‘certainly something that is right up there on our priorities’.
“We really do aspire to get that charge rate up,” he said. “We want to hold people to account if they are exploiting people.”
A breakdown of crimeoutcome figures showed that in almost half of the 255 modern slavery offences recorded by the force in 2019/20, no suspect could be identified.
DCI Ottery said: “If you take the example of a county line drug dealer, it may be that we encounter the young person but actually we’ve got no trace back to the person who’s exploiting them.
“So we may feel that they’re being exploited, they may tell us they’re being exploited, but unless we find something to link them to that third party, that can be challenging to identify a suspect.”
Giving another example, he said: “It may be we go to a report of a pop-up brothel.
“When you go to the address you may encounter a sex-worker in the premises, but again, potentially nothing there that leads to any trace of the other person involved.”
Another common reason why investigations fail is that victims do not support further action. This was the case for a third of the crimes recorded in 2019/20.
DCI Ottery said there were many reasons why victims might be reluctant to support investigations. “Some of them are really concerned and in fear to what may happen if they do,” he said. “They might be under some debt bond or some threat if they’re not to comply with the people who control them.”
In view of this, many officers have undertaken specialist victim support training, and DCI Ottery said charity workers and translators often accompanied police on raids to help engage with victims: “So that from the outset we’re able to make that person feel more comfortable, less frightened.”
Modern slavery cases often involve organised crime groups who were ‘quite sophisticated’. “We may get victims who are scripted to tell whoever may be enquiring into their circumstances a certain story to detract attention from them,” he said. “[The perpetrators] don’t want to be caught, so they don’t necessarily leave evidence on a plate for us. If we get a victim who is not willing to engage, and then in the particular location that we are operating there is no evidence, then we are really struggling.”
But he said police would always try to achieve evidence-based prosecutions ‘even where there might not be that victim support’, because ‘we need to put a stop to this behaviour’.
At the same time, criminal charges were ‘not the whole picture’, he said. Police work closely with organisations with different powers that can be used to disrupt perpetrators. “There’s so many other partners that can help us make Sussex hostile to the exploiters, so it’s really hard to actually pay someone below the minimum wage, or you can’t put lots of people in a house of multiple occupation in poor living conditions,” he said.
In a recent example of this, the Health And Safety Executive (HSE) took action after two Romanian men were found living in ‘filthy’ conditions in the former TJ Hughes site in Eastbourne last month – with no hot water and no shower facilities or protective equipment. The HSE issued an immediate ‘prohibition notice’ on the building to prevent workers from sleeping there again, due to lack of fire precautions, and issued a Notification of Contravention (NoC) because the site had no hot running water, no means of heating food or flushing toilets.
Police have also launched an investigation into possible modern slavery charges in relation to the incident.
Safeguarding Minister Victoria Atkins said the Home Office had allocated £2million to support police with modern slavery work this year and had invested £11.3million over the past three years into the Modern Slavery Transformation Programme to boost prosecutions.
We really do aspire to get that charge rate up... to hold people to account KRIS OTTERY Detective Chief Inspector