Agenda and minutes

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

The Chairman welcomed all to the meeting.

Apologies had been received from Mr Ransley and Mrs Tassell.

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee meetings held on 17 January 2017 and 24 January 2017.

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

The committee considered the minutes of the meetings held on 17 and 24 January 2017.

RESOLVED

That the minutes of the meeting held on 17 and 24 January 2017 be approved as a correct record.

Matters arising: Mrs Jones provided an update on the outcome of the recommendations made by the committee at the last two meetings. A question raised by Mr Potter at the meeting on 17 January 2017 had been responded to by Mrs Peyman. Mrs Jones undertook to circulate this response to all committee members.

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.

There were no urgent items for consideration at this meeting.

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.

Mrs Apel, Mrs Dignum and Mrs Graves declared a personal interest in agenda item 10 as ‘friends’ of Chichester Festival Theatre and/or Pallant House Gallery.

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

No public questions had been received.

The Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Community Services is invited to present her priorities and areas of focus over the coming months and to answer questions from the committee on progress towards achieving the priorities within her portfolio which appear in the Council’s Corporate Plan.

The Chairman welcomed Mrs E Lintill, Cabinet Member for Community Services, to the meeting.

Mrs Lintill gave an oral report on her priorities and areas of focus over the remainder of the year and on progress being achieved against the projects which are part of the council’s Corporate Plan. She focused on the following areas and the teams supporting this work:

·             Chichester in Partnership - new Community Strategy and projects including Choose Work

·             Community Safety Partnership and priorities including antisocial behaviour and crime, child sexual exploitation, modern slavery, road traffic accidents, community tensions and domestic abuse

·             Think Family – keyworker, neighbourhoods, community wardens

·             Careline

·             Health and Wellbeing - wellbeing weight loss, pre-diabetes programme and other programmes, Corporate Plan objective on workplace health

·             Foreshores

·             Safeguarding - delivering level 2 training

·             Grants and Concessions Panel - managing applications and spend

·             Cultural Grants – managing and review

·             Consultations – such as the Chichester Vision

·             Youth Engagement through schools delivering the Ideas into Action days and Five ways to Wellbeing

·             Supports OSC TFGs on Educational performance and  Community Safety

·             Maintain relationships with parishes through the Community Facilities Audit/ New Homes Bonus (Parishes) Scheme/ S106 aspirations and spends

·             Supports Parish Forums

·             Advises on Strategic Sports provision needs, administer S106 sport funds, manage sports pitch bookings/ events in parks and liaise sports clubs/providers

Members had the following questions and comments, which were answered during the meeting:

·             Choose Work project – The financial advice provided is about budgeting and managing money. Budget management guidance is also provided through the financial exclusion project. People are signposted to agencies such as the Citizens Advice Bureau if this is considered more appropriate. The deeper needs of people working towards employment are reviewed such as self-esteem problems, mental wellbeing and the effects of this on their personal lives. Working with them does have a real benefit and payback

·             Referrals to Choose Work come from the Department of Work & Pension (DWP) up until 31 March 2017. After that there was a bidding process for the work. We also receive referrals from other agencies e.g. mental health treatment. We also go out and hold work fairs and advertise in village fairs etc.

·             DWP had announced £70,000 for the Choose Work project however the final terms of the offer are awaited and these will involve changed outcomes.

·             DWP allowances – There are two different allowances; job seekers allowance (JSA) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). As job seeker figures had reduced the focus had now changed to ESA; this is for those people who are further away from employment and have bigger issues. We have tools which measure their development and although they may not get work we can measure progress. This will enable us to offer more of the same services in rural areas; taster days and into more intense mentoring processes. We will also work with schools and colleges to prepare students for work. Further work will be done in outlying areas as capacity allows.

·             Child sexual exploitation - Effort has been  ...  view the full minutes text for item 149.

The committee is requested to consider and note progress against the 2016/17 Recycling Action Plan. The committee is also asked to consider the updated 2017/18 Recycling Action Plan and to recommend this to Cabinet for approval. Messrs Connor and Shaxson, members of this committee on the Waste & Recycling Panel, will contribute to this discussion.

­­The committee considered the report in the agenda (copy attached to the official minutes).

Mr Riley presented the report, assisted by Mr Shaxson and Mr Connor, members of the Waste and Recycling Panel,

The committee made the following comments:

·         Manufacturers have to meet packaging regulations and are encouraged to become more environmentally friendly; recyclates had reduced in weight which had reduced its effect on recycling/landfill and transport costs;  polystyrene goes to landfill; is it perhaps time to consider targets which look at better environmental outcomes rather than just tonnage?

·         Plastic bags and plastic sealers are being considered by the plastics and packaging industries at a national level

·         EU recycling figures have become adopted in national regulations.

·         Fly tipping and street sweepings are deducted from the council’s recycling figure. More tonnage is going into residual waste figures which deflates our recycling rate.

·         Fly tipping has increased significantly in our district but it was increasing before WSCC made the changes to recycling facilities; this will act against our recycling rates.

·         Fly tipping – some prosecutions where evidence of ownership has been identified.

·         Increase in fly tipping; Waste and Recycling Panel will consider statistics and make representation to County.

·         Food waste needs to be better coordinated; supermarkets have done some work and Stonepillow receives some waste food from restaurants and food outlets.

·         Output from anaerobic digestors is taken to a farm outside Tangmere which produces methane gas and compost for land reclamation and leisure.

·         We receive an income from the sale of recycling materials through the Ford site however we do not receive an income from output from anaerobic digestors, nor do we receive an income from green waste.

·         Food waste collection has been considered however we are dependent upon WSCC to develop outlets for this.

·         All hard food plastics are recyclable, but not the films on top.

·         Material picked up by mechanical road sweepers (bits of grit and road aggregate can be used again); separation of street sweeping would achieve in the region of 2% increase on recycling figures; there would be a cost to this collection of recyclates.

·         Some materials are expensive to recycle and government should impose a ban on manufacturers using this material.

·         Some small commercial recycling sites will accept bricks for free. Increase public awareness of this to avoid fly tipping.

·         Heavy duty plastic envelopes had recently been introduced for council papers as the former envelopes were flimsy; members asked whether an intermediate strength envelope could be used which was recyclable. Mrs Jones will investigate.

·         Horsham biological treatment plant is due to close soon; there is an alternative plant in Redhill.

RESOLVED

That progress against the 2016-17 Recycling Action Plan be noted.

RECOMMEND TO CABINET

1)          That the updated 2017-18 Recycling Action Plan be approved.

2)          That parish councils be encouraged, through parish forums, to separate recyclables when organising clean ups to assist the district’s recycling campaign.

The committee is requested to consider the final report from the task and finish group established by this committee to carry out a review of education in the district.

The committee considered the report in the agenda (copy attached to the official minutes).

Mrs Dignum (Chairman of the Task and Finish Group) presented the report.

The committee made the following comments, which were answered by Mr Hansford and Mrs Lintill:

·             Cynicism amongst school heads and welfare impact on staff and pupils in chasing statistics – Mrs Dignum responded that stress was inevitable and some schools had not had time to look closely at the requirements of the new curriculum. There was no evidence that children were disadvantaged but teachers were using different phraseology in asking the children to carry out tasks and this had been managed. 

·             Problems with recruitment and discipline with amount of extra bureaucracy – Academies had trained their own heads from existing staff.  Discipline was not something covered in the review.

·             Rother College not mentioned - Mr Hansford advised that TKAT academy had been invited as a witness as they had both primary and secondary schools in the district. Mrs Dignum advised that the results of Midhurst Rother were included on the spreadsheet of results considered by the group. Mrs Apel noted that academies were not always very receptive to WSCC going in to review progress whereas the state schools were. 

·             Ofsted ratings good level in this district – It was suggested that a letter be sent to heads and teachers congratulating them on the results. Safeguarding was paramount and where this was not being followed to the letter schools had been penalised.

·             Concern at demands of the new educational assessment system and the difficulty in understanding it - Mrs Dignum advised that it was designed to keep a closer degree of control on things. WSCC had acknowledged its error in withdrawing financial support in the assistance they gave to schools and had realised that certain schools had fallen beneath their radar and were now visiting every school on a termly basis. Schools also had access to a school link worker.

RESOLVED

1)          That the effect of changes to the assessment process on the comparative performance of schools and the overall positive direction of travel be noted.

2)          That should the committee wish to revisit educational attainment when the new curriculum and testing regime are better established, that a) a more broad look at temporary and permanent exclusions and b) the readiness of school leavers for further education or employment, be considered.

3)          That a letter be sent by the committee to school heads and teachers in the district to thank them for their hard work in driving up standards and attainment as well as coping with changing demands and a difficult financial background.

The committee is requested to consider the final report of the task and finish group established by this committee to carry out the statutory annual review of the performance and strategic direction of the council’s Community Safety Partnership.

The committee considered the report in the agenda (copy attached to the official minutes).

Mr Cullen (Chairman of the Task and Finish Group) presented the report. Unfortunately Mr Connor, the elected Chairman of the group, had been unwell during this time and therefore Mr Cullen had been elected by the group as Chairman. 

Mrs Lintill stated that the Police and Crime Commissioner had maintained her financial support to Community Safety Partnerships at the same level since she had been in post. Mrs Lintill had spent a Friday night out with Sussex Police to see the kinds of incidents they were dealing with and was going to repeat this shortly.

The committee made the following comments, which were answered by Mr Hansford and Mrs Lintill:

·             The annual consultation on the priorities of the Community Safety Partnership seemed meaningless as there had been so little response - Mr Hansford advised that for over ten years he had tried to get a better level of response to this consultation. His team had tried promoting the survey in supermarkets and had sent the survey out to a number of different organisations, parish councils, individuals, partnership organisations, and put it on the front of the council’s website. He had lost resources over the years and there was only so much the team could do to resource this consultation.

·             PCSOs in rural areas and the effectiveness of Neighbourhood Watch – Mr Hansford drew members’ attention to recommendation 6.3 which encourages members to promote community safety within their wards. Neighbourhood Watch was still in place in some areas but the police had discontinued their dedicated support officer for this initiative. We are moving to borderless policing so that any resource can be used across borders. PCSOs are part of a larger team across Chichester and Arun. Sussex Police had introduced ‘community messaging’ which targets messages to get a response rather than put articles in local magazines; they still had intelligence officers and we received daily feedback from the police where one of our networks or community wardens were able to do something. The police suggest that the community forums are a mechanism for the community to meet and discuss local issues, not necessarily with the police. Neighbourhood Watch was something for the community to take forward and the council would support this where it could.

·             The current position with PCSOs – Mr Hansford advised that when the new job description was issued PCSOs were given the option of taking voluntary redundancy. Some considered that they wanted to join the police as a full officer. We now have 27 PCSOs across Arun and Chichester which is the full complement.

·             Wildlife crime issues – Mr Hansford advised that there were various watches e.g. horse watch, farm watch etc. There was a dedicated wildlife officer at police headquarters who liaised with the RSPCA to support investigations. This area does get occasional issues with sheep rustling, ‘lamping’ and horse tack theft.

RESOLVED

1)    That it be noted that the required level  ...  view the full minutes text for item 152.

The committee is requested to consider and approve the Terms of Reference for this review and to appoint the members and the Chairman of this group.

RESOLVED

1)          That Mr Galloway, Mr Hicks, Mrs Graves and Mrs Apel be appointed as the representatives on this group with Mr Hicks chairing the review.

2)          That the Terms of Reference be agreed.

Mr Hansford advised the committee that this task and finish group would also be tasked with considering the new contracts and agreements for the cultural grants post 2018.

Following the meeting Mrs J Tassell also agreed to take part on this review.

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

The following issues were raised by the committee for consideration:

·             Mr Lloyd-Williams asked how the government’s decision to invoke Article 50 for the introduction of Brexit would be considered by the authority.  Mrs Jones advised that this would be considered by the Strategic Risk Group which reviewed the council’s strategic risk register. This meeting was due to take place later this week and report to the Corporate Governance and Audit Committee, responsible for the governance of and risks to the authority.

·             Consideration of the South Downs National Park agreement – Mr Hansford advised that a temporary extension to the contract had been agreed until September 2017 and that the new contract from that date was being negotiated. The committee would be consulted about this at its next meeting in June 2017.