Chichester District Council
Agenda and minutes

Agenda and minutes

Venue: Committee Room 2, East Pallant House. View directions

Contact: Bambi Jones on 01243 534685  Email:  bjones@chichester.gov.uk

Items
No. Item

180.

Chairman's announcements

Any apologies for absence that have been received will be noted at this point.

Minutes:

The Chairman welcomed all to the meeting. Apologies had been received from Mr N Thomas.

 

The Chairman advised that she had recently attended a Centre for Public Scrutiny event which had considered the progress of the Communities & Local Government Select Committee’s review of overview and scrutiny in Local Government. The council’s scrutiny process worked very well on the whole however there were areas for improvement. She would be developing a paper to a future meeting with suggestions for better working.

 

Members of the committee were requested to put their nameplates on end as an indication to the Chairman that they wished to speak during an agenda item, remembering to put them down when their question had been asked. This new process would be tested to establish if it was useful to retain in future.

 

181.

Minutes pdf icon PDF 574 KB

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee meeting held on 12 September 2017.

 

To receive an update on progress against the committee’s recommendations to Cabinet and Council.

Minutes:

The committee considered the minutes of the last meeting held on 12 September 2017, making the following comments:

 

Minute 177 Southern Gateway, Chichester – Implementation:

 

·             Page 6, second bullet from the bottom – Queried the statement that a bridge would be considered as part of consultation on the Masterplan. Members were informed that the bridge had not been found to be financially viable. Cabinet and the Development Plan and Infrastructure Panel had looked at alternatives, along with consultants, and the final draft Southern Gateway proposals would be reported to Council at its meeting the following week where members had the option to debate the masterplan.

·             Page 7, fifth bullet from the top, first sentence ‘The masterplan would be a live flexible document’ - The use of the words ‘live’ and ‘flexible’ were contested. Members were informed that the masterplan was not prescriptive; it was flexible in that it allowed for a range of uses to be considered for a particular site. Once adopted by Council however the masterplan would become a supplementary planning document, which would be operational for some years. Members were concerned that it would not be possible to revisit the masterplan as there was no procedure in place for amendment and requested the removal of the word ‘live’.

 

Members requested that any updates which officers or those presenting to the committee agreed to provide following the meeting be circulated with the minutes.

 

RESOLVED

 

That the minutes of the meeting of 12 September 2017 be agreed as a correct record subject to the above amendment.

 

182.

Urgent Items

The Chairman will announce any urgent items that due to special circumstances are to be dealt with under the agenda item below relating to Late Items.

 

Minutes:

There were no urgent items for consideration at this meeting.

 

183.

Declarations of Interests

Members and officers are reminded to make any declarations of disclosable pecuniary, personal and/or prejudicial interests they may have in respect of matters on the agenda for this meeting.

Minutes:

No interests were declared at this meeting.

 

184.

Public Question Time

The procedure for submitting public questions in writing no later than 12:00 on Monday 13 November 2017is available upon request to Member Services (the contact details for which appear on the front page of this agenda).

Minutes:

No public questions had been received.

 

185.

Business Improvement Services Portfolio Holder address pdf icon PDF 17 KB

The committee has invited the Support Services Portfolio Holder to present his priorities and areas of focus over the next year and to answer questions on progress towards achieving the aims and targets of the Council’s Corporate Plan priorities.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Cabinet Member for Business Improvement Services, Mr P Wilding, gave a presentation to the committee on progress towards achieving the aims and targets of the Corporate Plan priorities and his areas of focus in the future.

 

The committee made the following comments and received answers to questions as follows:

 

·       Queried the future use of East Pallant House and emphasised the need to be adaptive to loss of space without losing business – We are currently working with consultants and looking at market information to consider our options. If there was a large capital receipt to be made then this would need to be balanced against the suitability of an alternative office accessible to the public. Discussions are taking place with WSCC regarding a possible building in the city centre and with the local court to establish the possibility of establishing a pop-up court a couple of times a month which would bring in revenue. It was possible that we could contract our existing footprint in the building and rent out more space to bring in revenue to reduce our operating costs. Cabinet would be asked to consider future options with costings, following which a PID would be developed.

·       Queried whether the committee would be given the option to review the ICT Strategy – It was possible that the committee could consider this before it went to Cabinet in March 2018. Members questioned the demise of the IT Panel and were concerned that IT matters did not have adequate member involvement before being considered by Cabinet.

·       Queried whether the council used innovative ways of communicating with the local community – A number of online forms had been provided online to avoid the need for our customers to come into the office; direct debit use had increased; green waste was renewable online annually; current projects being developed to enable Council Tax payers to manage their accounts online and to enable a housing benefit risk based verification process. We were continuously looking for new ways to assist our residents and businesses however were always mindful of those without IT capability.

·       Queried involving others in testing web and form functionality - The Web Team invites services to review new forms and functions for usability. Residents were invited to provide feedback on usability of web pages and any difficulties were fed back to the service area for review.

·       Queried whether customers who had given up on using the council’s website and can’t travel to the council offices were tracked in order to understand the volume. Customers were asked questions on how they accessed the service and how they travelled in to the offices. On commercial sites such as Careline and green waste we monitored a reduction in customers.

·       Queried members’ responsibilities under GDPR.

·       Queried Public Relations resourcing – Two members of staff on PR and two on advertising and sponsorship. PR had a regular schedule to provide information on social media and staff had access to social media. The Local Plan and the Southern  ...  view the full minutes text for item 185.

186.

Consultation Review 2017 pdf icon PDF 59 KB

Further to minute 179 of 12 September 2017 the committee is requested to consider the council’s public consultation procedures and to make any comments or suggestions for its improvement.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Mr Hyland presented his report informing the committee of the differing styles of consultation e.g. consultation carried out on a planning policy document in contrast to consultation on use of a local park.

 

The council uses a range of consultation tools. There were two software systems in use: Snap Survey is used for the majority of consultations. Responses are automatically drawn into the back office system for analysis therefore further data entry is not required. The Limehouse system is used to carry out consultation on planning policies which require that the wording of the policy is displayed paragraph by paragraph for comment.

 

The Southern Gateway Masterplan consultation had necessitated a consultation on the Masterplan document itself, and Limehouse was used to allow for detailed commentary on the wording of the document.  It was also recognised that residents directly affected by developments in their areas would welcome a briefer summary of the main issues and to comment on those, so a Snap survey was also used.  Clear signposting from one to the other was placed on the website. A very good response rate had been received to both forms of consultation.

 

There was concern that the Limehouse consultation tool was not particularly user friendly. There was a facility to provide a hard copy of the consultation for completion however this was not encouraged as a) it would require to be entered manually onto the system and b) interpretation could be required in preparing the information for entry.

 

The committee made the following comments and received answers to questions as follows:

 

·         Concern that the process should be user friendly to ensure a better response and increased user satisfaction.

·         Concern about the level of response to consultations – It was difficult to define a ‘good’ response to a consultation. From a statistical point of view it was possible to determine a level of accuracy with 100 responses. A 10% response rate would be good in other situations. If the issue involved a large body of people and a complex issue that level of response would be very difficult to secure.

·         The issue of double consultation – Where the council, interest groups, residents’ associations or other such body consults their members for a combined response on behalf of that group and consultation which is carried out with the district’s residents and parishes directly.

·         Concern at the lack of a consultation policy - As there was a breadth of types of consultation it would be difficult to have a single policy to cover all those scenarios and the guidance available was considered adequate.

·         Concern at the lack of resources available to carry out this work - There was currently one full time and one part time officer dedicated to consultation work, however this was under review. Devising the methodology of the consultation and the analysis of the results once the fieldwork was complete was often very resource intensive and regularly involved staff from the service areas. The Chichester Vision consultation was resourced by five or  ...  view the full minutes text for item 186.

187.

Communications between CDC and South Downs National Park Authority (SDNPA) - Update pdf icon PDF 76 KB

Further to minute 163 of 13 June 2017, the committee is requested to note and comment on the outcomes of the meeting with the SDNPA pursuant to the recommendations of the committee on 13 June 2017 and Cabinet on 11 July 2017 to the SDNPA, and to comment on whether the concerns previously raised have been satisfactorily addressed.

 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Chairman welcomed Mr M Dunn, the council’s appointment to the SDNPA.

 

Mr Whitty presented the report giving an update on the background to this issue. Due to timeliness and appropriateness the protocol had not been included in the SDNPA Agency Agreement. The SDNPA had made a number of commitments, reflected at 5.1 in the report, which would be drawn into a protocol to improve communications between the council and the National Park Authority. Members were asked to confirm whether their concerns previously raised had been satisfactorily addressed.

 

Mr Dunn welcomed the liaison undertaken with the SDNPA advising that the agency arrangement between the SDNPA and the council equated to a significant sum in the SDNPA budget so there were going to be queries about the level of service provided by each party to the other and he supported the sensible set of commitments agreed by the SDNPA. He continued that although he was the council’s representative on the SDNPA he was regularly reminded that he was a member of the SDNPA and should not be ‘Chichester specific’. He reminded members that there was always an opportunity for them to attend the SDNPA Policy & Resources Committee to give their views.

 

Mr Shaxson was concerned that it was important to ensure that there was no gap in enforcement issues dealt with by either authority.

 

Mr Whitty advised that following this meeting he would send the SDNPA commitments which had been agreed by this committee to the SDNPA for their final agreement. The SDNPA had undertaken to hold further meetings as required.

 

RESOLVED

 

1)          That the outcomes from the meeting with the SDNPA, pursuant to the recommendations of the committee to the SDNPA on 13 June 2017 and Cabinet on 11 July 2017, be noted.

 

2)          That a report comes back to the committee in 12 months’ time with an update on progress.

188.

Corporate Plan Task and Finish Group Final Report pdf icon PDF 58 KB

Further to minute 178 of 12 September 2017 the committee is requested to note this report from the Corporate Plan Task and Finish Group and to confirm that it is satisfied that the Council is achieving satisfactory levels of performance against the targets and activities in the 2017-18 Corporate Plan mid-year progress report.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The committee considered the report attached to the agenda.

 

Mrs Dignum, the Chairman of the Corporate Plan Task and Finish Group, gave an oral report on the deliberations of the group. Members requested to have sight of the minutes of the Corporate Plan Task and Finish Group and the updates provided by Ms Bushby, Community Safety Manager and Ms Thomas, Health & Wellbeing Manager. (Post meeting note: These documents are provided in an attachment to these minutes)

 

The committee made the following comments and received answers to questions as follows:

 

·       Concern when discussing crime rate increases to provide the figures behind the percentage to give the context.

·       Concern at the red indicator relating to nine conservation area appraisals to be completed by 2018 – As the district had a number of areas of outstanding natural beauty, a national park and a number of historical areas of interest, carrying out conservation appraisals had a direct impact on how the council went about planning and delivering new housing in the district and queried whether this was due to a resourcing issue. Due to a recent restructure the team has been combined within Planning Policy and a new Conservation and Design lead officer was currently being recruited.

·       Concern at the formula for calculation of the Covalent traffic light system in the reports and in particular the indicator relating to time taken to process Housing Benefit Claims and its status showing green when in fact it should be showing red. An update would be provided. (Post meeting note: an update is provided in an attachment to these minutes)

·       Concerned at the apparent increase in rural crime to 24.4% (an increase from 1567 to 1949 incidents) – This was possibly due to a prolific offender however it should be kept under review. The Communities Intervention Manager had requested an analysis of crime data from Sussex Police. There was a multi-agency cross border working group in the north of the district and a proposal to form a rural group.

·       Concern at the sickness and absence figures - The Senior Leadership Team considered these figures (including long term sickness) in detail. This had been static over the last few years; it had been below other benchmarked authorities’ figures the previous year. The sickness figures were skewed by long term sickness resulting from accidents at the depot. It was suggested that benchmarking should be undertaken more widely and not just against other local authority’s outturn. An update was requested. (Post meeting note: an update is provided in an attachment to these minutes)

 

RESOLVED

 

1)          That the written and oral report from the Corporate Plan Task and Finish Group be noted.

2)          That the committee is satisfied that the council is achieving satisfactory levels of performance against the targets and activities in the 2017-18 Corporate Plan mid-year progress report.

 

189.

Budget Review 2017 pdf icon PDF 39 KB

The committee is requested to consider and agree the Terms of Reference for this task and finish group and to nominate three members to take part in this review.

Minutes:

Members considered the Terms of Reference and Scoping document.

 

RESOLVED

 

1)          That the Terms of Reference for the Budget Task and Finish Group be agreed.

2)          That Mr J Ransley, Mr S Lloyd-Williams and Mrs P Plant be agreed as members on this task and finish group.

 

190.

Forward Plan (November 2017 to February 2018) pdf icon PDF 133 KB

Members are asked to consider the latest Forward Plan (attached) and to consider whether it wishes to enquire into any of the forthcoming decisions.

Minutes:

The committee considered the Council’s latest Forward Plan (Nov 2017-Feb 2018) for items to raise for scrutiny.

Mr Ransley was disappointed to see that there was no initiative relating to affordable housing delivery in the area for local people and keyworkers; no approach to elderly care; conflict in our Local Plan capacity or capability to respond to Government’s increasing demand for delivery of greater housing numbers in the area without addressing in a meaningful way delivery of associated infrastructure; and no mention of perhaps considering developing one or two new villages in the area.

 

Mrs Dignum queried the fact that there was no existing council policy for care homes. She requested Mr Frost to review the Local Plan to consider the needs of older people as part of the council’s equality duty.

 

RECOMMENDS TO CABINET

 

That Cabinet considers this committee’s comment on its Forward Plan and responds by way of advising on its schedule of innovative projects planned for February 2018 to February 2019 to respond to local need for housing, wellbeing and greater housing number delivery.

 

 

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