Issue - meetings

The chairman will make any specific announcements for this meeting and advise of any late items which will be given consideration under agenda item 13 (a) or (b).

Apologies for absence will be taken at this point.

[DETAILS IN THE MINUTES]

Mr Dignum greeted the members of the public and Chichester District Council (CDC) members and officers, and the two press representatives who were present for this meeting.

He particularly welcomed Karen Dunn, who was attending her first meeting as a recently appointed local democracy reporter with the Observer series of newspapers. Ms Dunn’s appointment was part of a pioneering project by local media organisations and the BBC to ensure that local politicians were properly held to account.

There were no apologies for absence and all members of the Cabinet were present.

There were no late items for consideration.

Although he had no specific announcements, Mr Dignum said he would provide a narrative overview of the agenda business for consideration at this meeting to demonstrate how the Cabinet’s remit today and typically was not a set of disparate ad hoc matters but was strongly grounded in CDC’s policies and the current administration’s values.

Agenda item 5 was the annual report for 2017-2018, which summarised the enormous range of work which had been successfully accomplished in the past year by officers in accordance with decisions made by members. The decisions due to be made at this meeting or by the Council later in the month would assist CDC to achieve another range of successes in 2018-2019. He also highlighted: (a) further actions proposed to improve residential housing, in particular to help prevent homelessness and secure higher standards for tenants living in homes with five tenants or more (item 6); (b) seeking to secure substantial cost savings in CDC’s business waste disposal costs (item 8), exemplifying the drive to make its services steadily more efficient; (c) demonstrating CDC’s priority to look after the most needy by proposing for the seventh consecutive year, unlike almost all other local councils, not to reduce the assistance given to the area’s least well-off council tax payers (item 9); (d) the leadership shown by the chief executive in finding a way of providing disabled facilities grants to those needing them more swiftly, more simply and more cost-effectively (item 10); and (e) considering whether The Novium Museum should be retained in-house, having looked unsuccessfully at alternative ways of providing the city’s museum service, and for officers to produce a plan to take it forward as one of the four pillars of Chichester’s cultural offer to residents and visitors alongside the Pallant House Gallery, the Chichester Festival Theatre and the Cathedral (item 12).

[Note Hereinafter in these minutes CDC denotes Chichester District Council]

[Note Minute paras 545 to 558 below summarise the Cabinet’s discussion of and decision on agenda items 2 to 15 inclusive but for full details of the items considered in the public session please refer to the audio recording facility via this link:

http://chichester.moderngov.co.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=135&MId=979&Ver=4]