19 year old in charge of Children’s Services for Leicestershire Council

[MmeChoufleur]

Reform have appointed a 19 year old, Councillor Charles Pugsley, to run Children’s Services for Leicestershire County Council, . How would you feel about this if you lived in the borough and had SEND children?

Does this make a mockery of democracy, handing over such an important role to a person with no experience in the workplace, certainly not at any high level?

Will this make Reform voters sit up and think about the consequences of voting for this party?

Lol at the idea of being a Reform councillor being any sort of achievement!

If you look at the calibre of the average Reform candidate, it is immediately obvious that the party was picking from a very poor pool. It is also pretty obvious from the results that the Reform supporters would have voted for a pig with a Reform rosette if it had had its picture taken with Nigel.

Don't be ridiculous @MmeChoufleur He can't be running Children’s Services.

Directors of CYPS have graduate training and many years at senior levels in social work or education.

He could be the council member assigned to Childrens Services. All councils have them, regardless of party. In fact, I'm not sure which party our member is part of.

He will have such a lot to learn in his role in holding to account senior LA leaders.

You do have to remember that he has been voted in by the people of Leicestershire. They must have confidence that he has the experience and background to carry out such an important role in being the elected voice for children and families in the area. 🤔

About 11% of registered voters in Leicestershire chose reform.

Only 32.28% bothered to vote at all, but of those that did, 67.6% chose NOT to vote for Reform.

So not an overwhelming vote of confidence from people in Leicestershire at all, actually.

ETA that obviously people also didn't know when they were voting that this 19yo would be handed such a significant portfolio to oversee. Perhaps, if they had realised, even some of the 11% might have changed their minds.

I looked him up, he got just over 1000 votes
Charles Andrew Frank Pugsley(Reform UK)1,146(35.1%).
Not a bad win in his constituency but I can't find any specific info on him, or if it's in a place where the people just voted Reform.
I don't have a problem with his age for being a councillor, but he is very inexperienced to have a portfolio.

To add, Leicestershire had a population of around 712,300 at the last census.

1146 of those people voted for Charles Pugsley to become a County Councillor.

Hardly the choice of "the people of Leicestershire".

Oh the middle class travelling, yes that grows you up much more than running your own home and having a 4 year old by the time you're 20.

Of course it does.

And people voted for him?!

An already strained service in Leicestershire, then we put a child in charge of it! I'm beyond fuming. I am disgusted that Reform members are allowing this to unfold, I truly believe in a succession plan but this is absolutely insane. And A 24 year old in charge of Adult Services... let that sink in.

Nearly 7000 of the 10,170 people who were registered to vote in his constituency couldn’t be bothered to vote. The turnout in local elections is usually very low, and then the people who didn’t vote seriously think they’ve got a right to complain about who is elected to their local council.

The whole problem is the quality of councillors is very poor across the board regardless of political party. I have come across councillors from Labour and Conservative who I wouldn't want to assign the job of tying shoelaces let alone making important decisions about the future of the local citizens. If you look at how many councils are being financially mismanaged and about to go bust it is really scary.

Two major issues:

People don't get off their backsides and vote. How many moaning on this thread took the time to read up on the candidates and go and vote?

Being a Councillor is a nightmare. I worked out I spent as many hours on council work as I did on my full-time job - partly because of the 3 of us in our ward, one couldn't speak English (but secured a nice block vote) and the other was lazy and just vanished. The main committee I ran often finished at 3am having started at 7pm. Pre-meetings, scrutiny committees, council meetings, ward surgeries, emails and calls in the hundreds a week. And all for £300 a month in expenses...

How do you manage that work load plus a job alongside kids or normal life? I did it with a small baby and it nearly killed me.

Cabinet posts were full-time and didn't pay enough to cover the mortgage and zero job security.

If you want really good councillors then you need to pay really good wages to get them. But it's taxpayer's money that funds it all.

Current system ends up with very young and very old, people who don't need to work, and people who are incompetent but have the time (and are mainly interested in getting Cllr added to everything as it's the most exciting thing they have ever achieved).

Exactly. One councillor local to me is a convicted puppy farmer but the public keep voting him back in so 😱

I wouldn’t say that couldn’t be bothered to vote is necessarily accurate. Perhaps they thought there was nobody worth voting for. Out of the last few general elections, I mostly didn’t vote for this reason - all options bad.

Ridiculous of course, but it's not as if his is a professional appointment where he could do real harm

He's a "cabinet member" and likely to be more or less confined to talking shops where they all flatter themselves that they operate "just like the real government" and can often be safely ignored

I feel so fortunate to be represented on the council by a wonderful guy - I did not vote for him but I certainly will in future. He is youngish ( to me anyway!), has a full time job and a family but finds the time to work tirelessly on behalf of the community.

We have an active local FB group and if he reads about something in his ward that needs attention, he will sort it out and post back the outcome. Recently a bus stop was vandalised overnight and there was glass all over the pavement as well as dangerous exposed metal posts. As well as reporting it to the appropriate council office, he went round and swept up the glass then put tape around the shelter to keep school children who use it safe. He cycles to and from work and regularly highlights dangerous potholes or faulty traffic lights etc to the council.

I don’t know how he finds the time to do as much as he does and keep us informed of what’s going on but I know everyone really appreciates his hard work. People from other wards sometimes comment that they wish he was their representative!

NRTFT yet, but…
Yep agree with this. If it’s anything like our council, most of the lead councillors just do a rubber stamp job on recommendations made by officers. It’ll be an eye opener for him though!

Councillors don't run anything and have naff all power in my experience. Age is irrelevant it depends on his experience and knowledge.

Yep totally agree.

Do you really think that 70% of the electorate do t vote because they don’t think there is anyone worth voting for? Most constituencies have candidates representing at least three parties in local and national elections, and a large proportion have many more as well as independents. If you can’t support one party enough to vote for them surely you vote for the party that you feel is the least worst option, or at the very least, make the effort to go to the polling station and make a protest by spoiling your ballot paper. If you don’t vote, you give up your right to complain about anything that the winning party chooses to do.

Oh yeah? What next? You gonna resurrect historic words like n*gro to describe black people too, because you want to?

If a community tells you to stop using bigoted ableist/racist slurs that have been used to oppress and persecute them for centuries, then you stop. Or else, as Jimi Hendrix put it, one day you're gonna end up on the floor with your teeth knocked out when a member of that minority group overhears you saying it.

Wait til Deform get into government and appoint an unemployed rightwing gammon as chancellor of the exchequer or minister of health!

Is this a satirical post?

I never realized there were so many Deform supporters on this site.

Not a supporter, but it's attitudes and posts like yours that might mean I vote for them next time.

This.

The council officers are the ones running it.