Babergh and Mid Suffolk District Councils
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Agenda and minutes

Venue: King Edmund Chamber, Endeavour House, 8 Russell Road, Ipswich. View directions

Contact: Committee Services 

Items
No. Item

39.

APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE

To receive apologies for absence.

Minutes:

39.1     Apologies for absence were received from Councillor Gasper, Councillor Lawrenson, Councillor Long, Councillor Steer and Councillor Williams.

40.

DECLARATION OF INTERESTS BY COUNCILLORS

Minutes:

40.1     There were no declarations of interest.

41.

BC/17/31 TO CONFIRM THE MINUTES OF THE MEETING HELD ON 20 FEBRUARY 2018 pdf icon PDF 289 KB

Minutes:

It was Resolved:-

 

That subject to pages 14 and 16 being amended to read Councillor A Bavington the Minutes were approved as a true record.

 

42.

BC/17/32 ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM THE CHAIRMAN AND LEADER pdf icon PDF 24 KB

In addition to any announcements made at the meeting, please see Paper BC/17/32 attached, detailing events attended by the Chairman and Vice-Chairman.

Minutes:

42.1     The Leader reported that the Chief Executive, the Assistant Director for Planning and himself had attended a meeting arranged by James Cartlidge MP with Secretary of State Sajid Javid to discuss housing delivery. A two-page briefing had been prepared to explain the current situation and contained information about the applications the Council had approved, houses built and major stalled sites, along with an explanation of why the Council didn’t have a 5-year land supply and what the Council was currently doing about it with a list of things the Council would like or need.

 

42.2     The Secretary of State had agreed to help with three of these, which could prove to be very useful for the Council. These were:

 

1.  To assist the Council should it wish to implement a CPO against a stalled site.

2.  To assist the Council with expediting the new Joint Local Plan.

3.  To support the Council if it were able to put together a local housing deal with partners (e.g the wider Ipswich HMA) to increase the HRA borrowing headroom.

42.3     The Leader added that he felt that this was a good meeting and he would be keeping in communication with the Secretary of State about progressing these items.

 

42.4     The Leader reminded the Council about the presentation of the iESE 2018 Public Sector Transformation Awards that was taking place at 10.30am on Tuesday 1st May.

 

42.5     The Leader also took the opportunity to welcome Cllrs Davis and Lawrenson to the Cabinet and thanked Cllr Parker for his contribution to Cabinet.

 

43.

TO RECEIVE NOTIFICATION OF PETITIONS IN ACCORDANCE WITH COUNCIL PROCEDURE RULES

In accordance with Council Procedure Rule No. 10, the Chief Executive will report the receipt of any petitions.  There can be no debate or comment upon these matters at the Council meeting.

Minutes:

43.1     There were no petitions reported to Council.

44.

QUESTIONS BY THE PUBLIC IN ACCORDANCE WITH COUNCIL PROCEDURE RULES

The Chairmen of Committees to answer any questions by the public of which notice has been given no later than midday three clear working days before the day of the meeting in accordance with Council Procedure Rule No. 11.

Minutes:

44.1     There were no questions submitted from the public.

45.

QUESTIONS BY COUNCILLORS IN ACCORDANCE WITH COUNCIL PROCEDURE RULES

The Chairman of the Council, the Chairmen of Committees and Sub-Committees and Portfolio Holders to answer any questions on any matters in relation to which the Council has powers or duties or which affect the District of which due notice has been given in accordance with Council Procedure Rule No. 12.

Minutes:

45.1     Questions were asked in accordance with Council Procedure Rule No.12.

 

45.2     The Chairman informed Council that in the absence of Councillor Williams a written response would be circulated.

 

Question 1

 

Councillor Williams to Councillor Ridley (Cabinet Member for Assets and Investments)

 

1.          Please supply a full copy of the Asset register of Babergh District Council before the office move to Needham Market and Endeavour House, itemising description and book values for each.

 

2.          Please supply a full copy of the Asset register of Babergh District Council after the office move to Needham Market and Endeavour House to the current date itemising description and book values for each.

 

3.          Please supply a full listing of the Assets appearing in 1 above but not 2, along with:

 

3.1   Their current location and to whom sold and/or donated by full   name and address;

3.2   If sold, the amount agreed as consideration and the amount paid; and a full explanation as to why assets were given away or sold at less than book value.

 

4.          Whether any assets in 3 above could be recovered and at what cost.

 

5.          Whether there are any assets now held in Hadleigh, Needham Market and Endeavour House and if so please supply a full description with their acquisition cost and current book values.

 

6.          Can you please supply also:

 

6.1   The cost of the move to Endeavour House in actual terms with a  

       breakdown; (A)

6.2   The current annual running costs of operating from Endeavour

       House; (B)

6.3   The annual running costs of operating from Corks Lane in its final full financial year (C); and

6.4   The projected annual saving or loss (D) where:

(A + B) – (C ) = D

 

6.5    The projected saving or loss over the next 5 years.

 

6.6    The projected costs of a return to Corks Lane.

 

6.7   The projected annual loss to the economy of the move from Corks Lane to Endeavour House for:
              

6.7.1 Hadleigh

6.7.2 Babergh District

 

6.8   The extent to which the Council analysed the data available to it        whether in actual or projected terms) in 6 (but not 6.6) above before deciding to move to Endeavour House.

 

6.9  Details of any reports commissioned as to the effect on the community and its views of the move to Endeavour House and all conclusions drawn therein on the representational benefits /disbenefits of operating the HQ of Babergh District Council outside and from one end of the constituency (Ipswich).

 

6.10 When I attended the Joint Audit and Standards Committee on 12th March I was made aware that Babergh Residents in large numbers were turning up at Endeavour House expecting to have their issues dealt with. They were being told to go to Stowmarket and Sudbury. I discovered this by listening to the complaints in the queue of people before me and by questioning the receptionist. I find this entirely unsatisfactory.When will the initiative be taken to reposition our HQ back into our District and in a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 45.

46.

TO RECEIVE REPORTS FROM CABINET MEMBERS pdf icon PDF 71 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

46.1     Councillor Ward introduced the reports and informed Council that the presentation of the quarterly Cabinet member reports was an initiative that both Council Cabinets had agreed to provide in order to improve information about what each Portfolio was doing. The reports were for information only but Councillor Ward invited questions from Councillors and said that these would either be answered now or in writing or Councillors could approach the portfolio holders for a 1:1 discussion if required.

 

Questions

 

Question 1: Councillor Bavington to Councillor Ward

 

In the Timetable of meetings 2017/18 a Babergh District Council Cabinet Briefing is shown and is taking place about two weeks before each Cabinet meeting please tell the Council in as much detail as possible what form these briefings take, for example but not exclusively do they consist of a cosy fireside chat between the Cabinet and the Chief Executive without papers or other officers present or do they replicate the full Executive arrangements for a committee or a cabinet with a full range of officers present, a written agenda and written papers, or something in between. If written papers and agendas are involved are these subject or have they been subject to freedom of information requests?

 

Response from Councillor Ward, Leader of the Council:

 

In many respects Cabinet briefings are exactly what they say on the tin. They are an informal opportunity for Cabinet Members to collectively discuss emerging ideas or work that they may have been developing in principle with their respective Assistant Directors so there is collective accountability by the Cabinet.  The meetings themselves are usually attended by the Chief Executive, the Strategic Directors and then relevant Assistant Directors depending on the topics under discussion. The meeting usually takes 3 forms, firstly to review draft Cabinet reports just prior to publication, secondly to ensure work scheduled in the forthcoming decisions list is on track, and thirdly to provide opportunity to consider other items that the Cabinet would like to see on the forthcoming decisions list in future.  The papers involved in the meetings are not subject to the FOI process under the exemption of necessity to hold a full and frank discussion on their contents.

 

Question 2: Councillor Bavington to Councillor Ward

 

In the Timetable of meetings 2018/19 the current year a BDC briefing is not shown as taking place about two weeks before each cabinet meeting, does this mean 1. cabinet briefings will no longer take place from May 2018 perhaps that should be April. 2. If not how will Cabinet Members manage without briefings from officers. 3. If so what is their form again in full detail as above and 4. if so why are the meeting dates not shown on the timetable of meetings.  Are they to become so secret that we the elected members of the council may not even know they are taking place?

 

Response from Councillor Ward, Leader of the Council:

 

Cllr Bavington there is no conspiracy of secrecy I can assure you.  As I  ...  view the full minutes text for item 46.

47.

BC/17/33 COMMUNITY INFRASTRUCTURE LEVY (CIL) - CIL EXPENDITURE FRAMEWORK pdf icon PDF 132 KB

Cabinet Member for Planning – Nick Ridley

Additional documents:

Minutes:

47.1     Councillor Ridley introduced the report and MOVED the recommendations within it. He informed Council that it had been essential that a detailed expenditure framework was developed and a cross party Panel was set up to develop the proposed scheme. Some of the Panel’s key outcomes were resolving the difference between strategic and local infrastructure and the amount of CIL money to be saved. The Panel had also agreed a communications strategy and timetable for delivery.

 

47.2     Councillor Ward seconded the report and reserved the right to speak.

 

47.3      Councillor Arthey stated that as a member of the Panel he had felt that it was an excellent piece of work and thanked the staff involved in the process for their hard work and support of the work of the Panel. 

 

47.4     Councillor Busby welcomed the fact that ward Members would be involved in the process and asked if the 5% that the Council would receive for administration costs could be used to fund feasibility studies and infrastructure work?

 

47.6     In response the Key Sites and infrastructure Officer stated that the 5% CIL admin costs are already factored in against staff costs so had already been allocated. The Panel had discussed the issue of feasibility studies and had agreed that a feasibility study would not guarantee whether the project would actually come forward for a bid and that would therefore mean that money could therefore be wasted. However, there will be a review of the scheme and that could be revisited when that happens.

 

47.7     Councillor Bavington queried paragraph 4.2 in the report and asked if the 15% and 25% residual percentage that went to the Council were required by the government or whether it was a choice the Council had made at some point?

 

47.8     In response Councillor Ridley confirmed that it was part of the CIL regulations.

 

47.9     Councillor Hinton felt that in appendix A bullet point 2.1 the paragraph was very wordy and asked when applications came before the Planning Committee where an ask of the 1, 2, 3, list, or a potential ask of the 1,2,3, list from the County Council has been £350,000 and the CIL is only going to produce £250,000 so is it a CIL as in Babergh as a whole community or do we have to go back to some of the legal decisions recently and bring the boundaries down a bit? Also please can you clarify that anything over £150k has to be a Cabinet decision?

 

47.10  In response the Key Site and Infrastructure Officer stated that In connection with the first question in order to make residential development acceptable you need infrastructure in order to mitigate the harm from the development and the Panel were very clear on the fact that they felt that if communities were going to accept the growth then they ought to have the infrastructure to support the growth which would impact on their communities so if that’s a little bit wordy in the document that’s something  ...  view the full minutes text for item 47.

48.

BC/17/34 STATEMENT OF COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT REVIEW pdf icon PDF 100 KB

Cabinet Member for Planning – Nick Ridley

 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

48.1     Councillor Ridley introduced the report and informed Council that the Statement of Community Involvement was a joint planning document with Mid Suffolk that explained how the Council would engage with the public and other stakeholders in the preparation of planning documents and in determining planning applications. The current version of the Joint Statement of Involvement for the two Councils was published in March 2014. It had been necessary to update this document to reflect greater use of the Councils website, the move to Endeavour House and the opening of the Customer Access Point in Sudbury, to also reflect the support offered to Neighbourhood Planning Groups in producing a neighbourhood plan, to acknowledge the introduction of the Community Infrastructure Levy, and to detail the introduction for pre-application charging service. The 2017 planning regulations also introduced the requirement to review the Statement of Community Involvement every 5 years. This Statement of Community Involvement draft update will inform the preparation of the wider communities and communications strategies being prepared by both Councils. It is recommended that a 4-week public consultation is undertaken on the draft update in May and June, a final decision would come back to Council for adoption later this year.

 

48.2     Councillor Ridley then MOVED the recommendations in the report.

 

48.3     Councillor Ward seconded the recommendations and reserved the right to speak.

 

48.4     Councillor Busby raised concerns relating to public access.

 

48.5     Councillor Ridley whilst accepting that there had been some problems with the website stated that we were now in a digital age with many people preferring to use digital access to Council services and this needed to be recognised in the Statement of Community Involvement.

 

48.6     Councillor Davis added that whilst he accepted that there were problems contacting the Council as the Cabinet Member responsible for Communications he would be working hard with officers to address the problems.

 

48.7     Councillor Bavington added that he had tried to contact the Council about an urgent ward matter and had not been able to contact any officer and he felt that the technology was worse.

 

48.8     In response the Chief Executive stated that he wanted to address the points that had been raised but also reminded Members that the report was about the Statement of Community Involvement in relation to planning. In terms of contacting officers, changes have been made in which the chasing system works, a call hunting system has been introduced and when a mobile phone is engaged or not answered the phone will automatically move on to the next mobile phone in the hunt group.

 

48.9     Councillor Hinton felt that a four-week consultation period was not sufficient to consider an extensive document especially when a lot of it will have to go before parish councils.

 

It was Resolved:-

 

(i)               That Council note the draft update to the Babergh and Mid Suffolk Statement of Community Involvement: Planning Issues, which updates the March 2014 adopted version.

(ii)             That Council agree to public consultation for four weeks during May and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 48.

49.

BC/17/35 PAY POLICY STATEMENT FOR 2018/19 pdf icon PDF 187 KB

Report by the Chief Executive (Head of Paid Service) attached.

Minutes:

49.1     Councillor Patrick introduced the report on behalf of the Chief Executive. Commenting further he went on to say that the report sets out the Pay Policy Statement for 2018/19 which under the Localism Act 2000 has to be reported to Council on an annual basis. The report sets out information about the remuneration of Chief Officer, the lowest paid employees, and the relationship between the two. The main change in the statement compared with 2017/18 was the removal of the role of Deputy Chief Executive from the structure with effect from 1 April 2018.

 

49.2     Councillor Patrick then MOVED the recommendations in the report.

 

49.3     Councillor Ward seconded the report and reserved the right to speak.

 

49.4     Councillor Arthey queried the gender pay gap and drew attention to the results for Babergh as female pay was nearly 23% lower than male pay and asked what the reasons were behind this?

 

49.5.     In response the Chief Executive advised that Government had introduced the requirement for Councils to have openness and transparency in relation to any gender pay gap and that is why the information had been included within the covering report even though it did not form part of the pay policy itself. On that specific point the Council was obliged to report for Babergh and separately for Mid Suffolk. As Council was  aware, doing so was a nonsense because the basis on which each individual member of staff happened to be employed differed, he happened to be a Babergh employee, colleagues may happen to be Mid Suffolk employees but everybody works for both so you could only really get a true picture of the gap by looking at the two combined Councils because looking at the two separately tells you nothing but the Council was obliged to report it in that way and that’s why the figures that Council were looking at, specifically for Babergh really are meaningless. To comply with the regulations a snap shop was taken in March 2017, now that it is beyond 31st March 2018 this can now be recalculated to give the Council an updated position.

 

49.6     Councillor Bavington requested that going forward the actual figures were included in the report and whether the gender pay gap was closing over time.

 

49.7     Councillor Melanie Barrett asked following the recent redundancy of the Deputy Chief Executive if, in future, recruitment was made to that that post would approval need to be sought from full Council?

 

49.8     In response the Chief Executive informed Council that if he were to bring forward any significant change to the structure of the Senior Leadership Team, creating a new Deputy Chief Executive post would be a significant change, that would come forward to full Council and in addition to that all Senior Leadership Team appointments are made by Councillors so Councillors would both be involved from a full Council perspective in agreeing the structure but then more specifically in any appointment. He also gave his assurance that he had  ...  view the full minutes text for item 49.

50.

BC/17/36 POLITICAL BALANCE AND COMPOSITION OF COMMITTEES pdf icon PDF 83 KB

Report by the Monitoring Officer attached.

 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

50.1     The Monitoring Officer introduced the report and informed Council that following a change to the membership of the political groups, Council was being asked to approve the recalculated composition of the Committees.

 

50.2     Councillor Busby queried why the Cabinet was not included in the calculation for Committee places?

 

50.3     In response the Monitoring Officer informed Council that Cabinet was not a Committee of the Council and the legislation that was used to calculate the composition places only related to Committees of the Council.

 

On the proposal of Councillor Ward and seconded by Councillor Hinton

 

It was Resolved:-

 

(i)              That the Committees' size and numerical allocation of seats be approved as detailed in Appendix 1 to the report.

 

(ii)          That the revisions to the appointments to Committees as set out in Appendix 2 to the report be noted.

 

51.

APPOINTMENTS

That the following appointment be made:

South Suffolk Leisure Trust Board

Jennie Jenkins (replacing Sue Ayres)

 

Minutes:

51.1     On the proposal of Councillor Ward and seconded by Councillor Jan Osborne

 

It was Resolved:-

 

(i)                  That Councillor Jenkins replace Councillor Ayres on the South Suffolk Leisure Trust Board.

 

52.

EXCLUSION OF THE PUBLIC (WHICH TERM INCLUDES THE PRESS)

To consider whether, pursuant to Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972, the public should be excluded from the meeting for the business specified below on the grounds that if the public were present during this item, it is likely that there would be the disclosure to them of exempt information as indicated against the item.

 

The author of the report proposed to be considered in Part 2 of the Agenda is satisfied that the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

Minutes:

It was Resolved:-

 

(i)                  That under section 100(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the public and the press be excluded from the meeting for item BC/17/37 on the grounds that it involves the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in Part 1 of schedule 12A of the Act in the paragraph registered against the Item.

 

 

53.

BC/17/37 BMS INVEST: PERFORMANCE, RISK AND GOVERNANCE UPDATE (Exempt information by virtue of Paragraph 3 of Part 1)

Report from the Chair BDC (Suffolk Holdings) LTD attached.

Minutes:

53.1     Councillor Ridley introduced the report and moved the recommendation within the report.

 

It was Resolved:-

 

(i)                  That the performance report be noted and agreed as an accurate reflection of Babergh District Council’s current performance across its investment portfolio.