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 have explained the purpose of the Cabinet briefings it is clear that they are an essential part of the process and will remain an the essential part of the process but the Cabinet briefings are both on the 2017/18 and 2018/19 Timetables on Connect for information for Councillors and officers, however they are not on the public version on the website as they are not public meetings.
Supplementary Question
Well they are not on the calendar of meetings paper that I was given and I am old enough to have a fireside and to rely upon the papers that I am sent I happen to have a copy of the cabinet briefing papers for a meeting some time ago and of course I cannot reveal my sources to how I came by that but it appears to me to be a complete pre-cabinet piece. It has an agenda it has apologies it has papers it has minutes it has everything else and it seems to me particularly having attending many cabinet meetings and heard cabinet members saying I have nothing to say in this meeting I am happy with the briefing that I have had, it seems to me that this is full cabinet in secret, I don’t think we should be doing that, I don’t think the law should allow us to do that, and I think we should have cabinet meetings that actually take place in public and are real meetings taking place in public, don’t you think so?
Response from Councillor Ward, Leader of the Council:
Yes I do and we do have real Cabinet meetings with Cabinet decisions that take place in public but I will draw your attention to the first purpose of the briefing and that is to review the draft cabinet reports just prior to their publication so obviously we are going to have a full set of Cabinet papers but they are only draft Cabinet papers and quite frequently there are changes to those before the actual Cabinet meeting itself.
Question 3: Councillor S Barrett to Councillor Ward, Leader of the Council
I was surprised at the announcement regarding Lavenham TIC where did this decision come from it wasn’t on the work programme - does the Cabinet know what it is doing?
Response from Councillor Ward, Leader of the Council:
The issue regarding the Lavenham TIC was on the Forward Plan for Cabinet, it was a pink paper because there were sensitive issues that we had to discuss with the staff but having done that we have informed Members including the ward Member and in terms of the overall tourist strategy yes we are working on an overall tourism strategy but the future of one TIC is only a small part of that, there is a wider tourism strategy and as you have heard from me earlier there are considerable savings to be made from the Lavenham TIC there is no justification for continuing it in its present form and I am sure if you were still Cabinet Member for the Economy you would be supporting that decision. We are looking at alternative tourist information provision just as I stated earlier other Councils elsewhere are doing and we will have something in place for Lavenham.
Question 4: Councillor Ferguson to Councillor Campbell, Cabinet Member for Environment
What assurances can you give me and the context of the option for extending the SERCO contract by 7 years. Anyone who reads the papers at the moment will see that Capita is in serious problems they are outsourcing, SERCO have had their own problems with outsourcing so a 7 year commitment to SERCO for this particular service I think would be unwise it would be cavalier this is a low margin business and I would judge it to be high risk, even though they are only providing the manpower so what I would like to know from the Cabinet Member is what risk analysis she has done and if I can read from something in the paper this morning – local authorities have said they have contingency plans in place should suppliers run into financial difficulties that is exactly what is happened with Capita this week, I can see that happening potentially with SERCO because SERCO has been there before so I would like to know what contingency plans we have in place and I would like to know what price indexation has been put in place for the next 7 years on that contract to make sure the SERCO is adequately covered for salaries which it is difficult to predict at the best of times ?
Response from Councillor Campbell, Cabinet Member for Environment:
We are going to be looking at three options, one is to retain the contract which is under review at the moment with new routes being worked out, to take the service inhouse or to partnership with another neighbouring Council. This will take a while to work out the contract isn’t due until April 2019 and it will be a 2-year process. I can’t give you answers to the other questions off hand but I will get back to you on it.
Question 5: Councillor Hinton to Councillor Ridley, Cabinet Member for Planning
I shall be addressing agenda item 8 CMU1 with comments on page 21 and 22 concerning the disposal and potential regeneration of the old Council offices at Corks Lane. Basically the final preferred plan as it states at the top of page 22 will be put before councillors for their approval and authority for officers to submit a planning application, will that include unlike the papers that have been put before the public any form of justification as to why option 2 rather than options 1 or 3 has been chosen because at the moment it seems like a rather arbitrary allocation of the options and it is says that the plans are progressing well so presumably they have got that information and that should be available to us.
ResponseCouncillor Ridley Cabinet Member for Planning
As Cllr Hinton will know there have been 2 consultations with people in Hadleigh and I understand that those have been very positive I have to say in favour of what is being put forward as the likely application to that particular site. There was I believe a meeting this morning which I was not at which I think our Leader was at which again was on this particular issue and I am perfectly satisfied that we are looking in a proper way at all the options and that the option that we have before us is one that we have looked at after proper advice has been given. Quite clearly we need to take a decision and in order to take that decision we shall have to resubmit a planning application eventually but it will come before the full Council before we in fact go out to submit it to a planning application. I think the timetable is probably planning for some time in the early autumn, that is all I can tell you at the moment.
Question 6: Councillor Hinton to Councillor Campbell, Cabinet Member for Environment
On CMU4 page 33 where under 3.4 environmental protection and environmental management there is a whole paragraph starting BEE Anglia Business Energy Efficiency Anglia through our membership of Suffolk climate change partnership Mid Suffolk businesses have benefitted it goes on to talk about lots of businesses mainly in Mid Suffolk there is not one single mention of Babergh district council anyway on the rest of that page. Could she explain why that is the case and does that we mean that we have actually done nothing in Babergh and if so what have we been doing with our time?
Response Councillor Campbell Cabinet Member for the Environment.
The paragraph begins by saying that officers are leading a project to obtain 100% grant from Highways England for the 20-mile interval rapid charging points for electric vehicles, so they have been working on that. There is plenty going on here and I am bit baffled by the question. There is work on the national grid we have been looking at battery storage in the leisure centre which is coming up soon, several things are being looked at to make the whole area more energy efficient as you know the housing has had solar panels put on. There is plenty going on with fly tipping, litter prevention, there has been £10K to go towards a scheme to try to prevent the litter that collects along the highways but basically that goes down to education and we need to have a policy in place to prevent this and educate people to take pride in their environment.
Supplementary Question
On page 33 starting on para 3.4, the second paragraph of that yes there are going to be rapid charging points put along the A11 none of it in our district, A14 very little of it in our district it skirts one part of it, A12 yes it comes up through I don’t know how many electric charging points we are going to have on that stretch between the Essex border and Copdock Mill. That is the first paragraph but it then goes on to talk about the business energy efficiency Anglia and talks about Mid Suffolk businesses benefitting, it talks about grants being put out 35 businesses in Mid Suffolk have received free audits, there is not one single mention of Babergh, the climate change partnership, SCCP in brackets, Mid Suffolk District Council together with other Suffolk authorities have been awarded almost 2.8 million. No mention of Babergh. Is this a report that was destined for Council at Mid Suffolk or it is supposed to be a report for us?
Question 7: Councillor Busby to Councillor Patrick, Cabinet Member for Finance
CMU5 on page 37, which is for Cllr Patrick, 3.4 at the bottom, we are talking about the 3rd quarter so that is ending September to December, even December is four months out of date, but here we are we are talking about it, just in one line there is £1.227 million favourable variants on our general fund. I thought we were short of money. £1.227 million variants how many percentage points on council tax is that at £50K equalling 1%, that is a lot of variants, I think it deserves a bit more of an explanation than we were lucky, and we have just put into the pot somewhere.
Response from Councillor Patrick, Cabinet Member for Finance:
I think it should be understood Chairman that we were asked to produce reports on the activities which we as a Cabinet have been undertaking in the 6-9 months up until the time of the publication of these reports which was at least a month ago. And a lot of background data has been included in it for the edification of Members opposite and for our back benchers, so if they often wonder what we have been doing with our time and indeed what the officers have been doing with their time we have been trying to put something together and there is an awful lot of stuff here. Now had the worthy Councillor attended the Cabinet meeting on 8 March he might have been there I don’t know, but if he comes to these Cabinet meetings and sees our progress reports, Cllr Anthony Bavington certainly comes, you will understand how the movement of monies progresses and how we deal with it quarter to quarter and in fact at the next Cabinet meeting we will be having our out-turn for the year, please do come. This £1.227 million favourable variants, admirable that it is I am afraid it is already accounted for, we have had to allocate to cover deficits elsewhere, we have put monies aside to cover known deficits and to be prepared for areas of expenditure where we do actually have a reasonable expectation of problems so we are being careful and sound as I hope you would expect a good chartered accountant to be.
Question 8: Councillor Hurren to Councillor Campbell, Cabinet Member for the Environment
CMU4, 3.7 second paragraph, the food and safety service involved in an investigation into 3 linked cases of legionnaires disease, could we possibly know a little more about this, are they all on the same premises is it 3 different places and could we have an update please of where we are with that.
Response from Councillor Campbell, Cabinet Member for the Environment:
Anywhere there is water and the public are involved the water must be run for 30 seconds because legionnaires exists in that and it is like a flu virus so everywhere where the public comes in all these water facilities have to be tested, it is there everywhere, I have actually done the training and I would advise everyone even getting into your own shower in the morning run it for 30 seconds before you use it, there is nothing we can do about it, it is something that exists as a microcosm. It has been cleared, there was a scare at one particular place but I think it has all been resolved and these are stringent tests it is something that we have to be extremely careful about it and I would urge every individual to always take these precautions.
Question 9: Councillor Hurren to Councillor Patrick
CMU5, 4.8 the conditions of working together staff survey Peter. I would love to know what the questions were and I would love to have a more detailed report of the answers, is it possible to have that may I ask?
Response from Councillor Patrick, Cabinet Member for Finance:
Yes you may ask Cllr, the responses are currently being considered by the Senior Leadership Team, they will then be discussed with members of staff and they will be made available to yourselves in due course, probably in two months’ time.
Supplementary Question
The first part of the question Chairman was could I be informed of what the questions actually were, how was this phased? You can ask genuine questions of staff in the form of a consultation or it could be one of these more Comres types things which I feel I would be quite unhappy with and I would state as a long term Councillor who knows a lot of staff and does walk the floor a bit, I can tell you that probably in excess of 50% of our staff in the customer access points are seeking other jobs. Now that is a quite a serious statement to make and I think that shows a high level of dissatisfaction amongst those we employ. I notice in the annual statement in the pictures there was a picture of a lorry saying we have moved to Endeavour House, but it didn’t show what had fallen off the lorry did it and I would be very interested to know the result of this survey amongst our staff and I would definitely like to see the questions and how they were served.
Response from the Chief Executive:
I just wanted to give some reassurance to Councillors I have got absolutely no vested interest in asking staff any questions that don’t elicit honest and detailed answers so we can learn, develop and grow as an organisation. The questions asked were long, there were lots of them, they were carefully asked in a way that wouldn’t provide any leading answers and also provide detailed balanced answers so people could respond for example do they strongly agree with issues or do they strongly disagree with issues or honestly did they not know either way. In addition to that free text so that they could give full detailed answers in relation to every single question, that’s why it is going to take some time to properly analyse it. I don’t know when we last held a staff survey, there certainly hasn’t been one since I have been here. I think it is a positive step forward and the intention is that we learn from that in order to make sure that we continue to improve how we operate. I don’t know where the stats come from in terms of customer access points and 50% looking for new jobs. I don’t recognise that in any way shape or form, if it is true I am more than more than happy to talk to those staff but as I say I don’t recognise that in any way, shape or form. Not least because as you will be aware for example the customer access staff in Sudbury are not our employees.
Question 10: Councillor McCraw to Councillor Patrick
CMU5, in paragraphs 3.6 to 3.10 the paper refers to the business rates revaluation grant. I don’t know if any other Members have had dealings with the VOA during the business rates revaluation in the course of last year, a very complicated process and one of the areas that was primarily hit, this is a necessary preamble by the way Mr Chairman, there will be a question. One of the primary areas hit was in the hospitality industry, I have one particular business within my ward which saw its base business rate quadrupled although with the application of a multiplier of 0.5% or around that, it only came up to just more than doubling it. I note that this paper refers to the money available nationally, the paper suggests in 3.8 that it has proven difficult to allocate all the grant. I would suggest and I would like to ask if this can be addressed, that one of the reasons it might have been difficult to allocate all the grant was that I don’t think Members were made aware of the possibilities of this relief available to the businesses within their wards and I would like to ask Cllr Patrick if that information, and the process by which we would claim it for any businesses severely affected, could be made known to Members.
Response from Councillor Patrick, Cabinet Member for Finance:
I can assure you as one of the Members representing this Council on the Shared Revenues Partnership a considerable amount of time and effort was put in to making sure that this money provided by the government was actually dispersed and in the end approximately 170 businesses benefitted from the money we managed to actually disperse, the biggest amounts refunded were about £17K, there were an awful lot in the range of £1K to £3K but in some cases down to as little as £10 or £3 but we did manage to expend the money which we were intending to do. But I have to say when the matter was first tackled we found that we had too much left over so we have been bending over backwards to make sure that the money was properly dispersed and so companies, businesses that were not originally first in line to receive have been able to do so.
Supplementary Question
Can I ask Cllr Patrick how ward Members were involved in this process on the basis of our local knowledge?
Response:
I don’t think that comes into it Councillor.
Question 12 Councillor Ferguson to the Chief Executive
It is page 34 of the document pack sent to Members. This page really to me is just full of alarm and warning bells, it is all about people, it says planning enforcement we have lost two senior officers but we can’t recruit, Heritage services also lost two members of staff and can’t recruit. There are IT failures with the new IDOX, the food & safety people are struggling with lack of touchdown points in Mid Suffolk. it says the neighbourhood plans officer hasn’t been recruited because we couldn’t get one of those and I believe that our planning teams are already light. So huge alarm bells to me and my question is whether it is to the Cabinet Member or the Chief Executive, I don’t mind who answers it. I am looking for what light we have at the end of this tunnel, it would seem to me that all of these problems have come on us since we decided and moved down here rather than staying up in Hadleigh, so my question is what light do we have at the end of the tunnel that we are going to get over these huge manpower difficulties in recruiting people that we seem to have at the moment?
Response from the Chief Executive:
In terms of recruitment issues the challenges are very specific to planning and they are not new, they have got nothing to do with moving to Endeavour House. If you go back over a period of time for a long period we have struggled in terms of planning, that is not just an issue for Babergh or Mid Suffolk, it is an issue nationally. There is shortage of planners and so what you will see is a twofold element happening whereby planners are both moving between local authorities, which is not to be unexpected particularly as local authorities increase their pay to try and attract the limited resource but what you will also see is planners leaching, moving into the private sector as well so we are attempting to do lots of things in that regard we have been more successful in recent times. As you identified, this report is a backwards look and was published as of March. We have been more successful in recruiting planners more recently but for the longer term Suffolk is working together as part of a graduate scheme to grow our own, so clearly that is a positive move that will take time as you would expect and clearly it is not just about recruitment it is about retention as well and so there is also other work underway across the board not just in relation to planning but for the whole organisation looking at how we can provide better reward and recognition scheme so it is not all about pay it is about the wider offer and opportunity that we provide to staff so that people not only want to come and work here in the first place but they also want to stay with us having made that decision. So there is light at the end of the tunnel but as you would expect at any point in time with the variety of services that we deliver and the variety of professions that we cover there will be some pinch points and at the moment planning in particular is one of those.
Supporting documents: