Fife care homes: bid to oust Tim Brett voted down as ‘pointless personal attack’

A Labour bid to oust Fife’s social work chairman from his position has been dismissed by the region’s SNP/Lib Dem administration as nothing more than a political stunt.

Fife’s main opposition party had called for Councillor Tim Brett to resign as chairman of Fife’s social work and health committee, but a motion demanding his head was voted down by the majority of councillors at Thursday’s full council meeting in Glenrothes.

The Labour motion, moved by Tom Adams and seconded by Kay Morrison, said Mr Brett should be held accountable for the “ill conceived decisions and failures” of the administration in relation to social work services for elderly and vulnerable people. The motion pointed to the privatisation of care homes, the delayed discharge situation, the increase in home care fees, the cut in the pension collection and home shopping service, and the introduction of charges for community alarms as examples.

They added that the administration’s decisions have also threatened to “undermine the wide range of social services that have been built up over many years” for the benefit of Fifers.

However, the administration stressed that it was proud of the social work service amid unprecedented financial constraints and endorsed Mr Brett as chairman.

Councillors also hailed independent reports which suggested care services in Fife were the best in Scotland, the fact that Fife was named as the best social care provider in the UK in a survey of 14,000 older people by business group Saga, and that customer satisfaction surveys are consistently in the range of 90% or above.

After Labour leader Alex Rowley accused the administration of “knee-jerking into privatisation,” SNP councillor David Alexander angrily urged Labour to come up with alternatives.

He noted, “Stunts, headlines, never-ending hypocrisy from Labour — that’s all you get these days.”

Tory Roger Guy added, “Mr Brett’s resignation would not add one penny piece to the social work budget — it is a pointless personal attack that we should recoil from.”

Mr Brett did not wish to comment during the debating of the motion.