Cornwall Council has scrapped plans to change its charging policy for adult social care just days after admitting that consultation on the plans was not up to standard, writes Local Democracy Reporter Richard Whitehouse.

The council was looking to change the way it charges for adult social care and had been carrying out a public consultation on the proposals.

However after some relatives and service users claimed they had been told about the consultation too late the council extended the deadline to allow people to respond.

Recently Cabinet member for adults, Rob Rotchell, issued an apology for the mistakes that had been made with the consultation and said the council would review the way it carried out such exercises in the future.

Soon after the consultation period closed Mr Rotchell issued another statement to announce that the entire plan to alter the council’s policy had been scrapped.

In a briefing to councillors he said: “The consultation process closed on Monday 23rd April at 5pm and after considering the responses we have received I will now be taking the following actions: no policy changes will take place based on the feedback we have received from the consultation.

“We are in discussions with Healthwatch regarding the commissioning of a ‘lessons learned’ exercise to help us identify where the process went wrong and improve our approach to future adult social care consultations.

“We will now start work to reshape our engagement approach to ensure we improve our relationships with all service user groups.

“I reiterate my apology for the flawed consultation process and commit to forming positive relationships with this client group and their representatives in the future.”

Speaking at a meeting of the council’s health and adult social care overview and scrutiny committee, Mr Rotchell repeated his apology.

He said: “Effectively no policy change will now take place. We are having discussions with Healthwatch about the ‘lessons learned’ exercise. The consultation process wasn’t good enough. The next consultation that we do must be better."