Babergh and Mid Suffolk District Councils
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Issue - meetings

Meeting: 19/01/2021 - Babergh Council (Item 38)

38 BC/20/17 ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM THE CHAIRMAN AND LEADER pdf icon PDF 17 KB

In addition to any announcements made at the meeting, please see Paper BC/20/17 attached, detailing events attended by the Chairman and Vice-Chairman.

 

Minutes:

38.1            The Chair referred to Paper BC/20/17, which was for noting.

 

38.2            She invited the Leader, Councillor Ward to make his announcement.

 

38.3            Councillor Ward made the following announcement:

 

This second COVID-19 wave was much worse than the first last Spring, Suffolk has been badly hit like all regions. Fortunately, all districts in the county, including Ipswich, were at last showing a steady and significant decrease over the past few days. The latest data from the Suffolk Corona watch site showed that in Babergh the infection rate is now 411.8 per 100,000. In total, there had been 3,137 confirmed cases and sadly 132 deaths since the pandemic began, although this latter number was the latest data from the ONS and was only up to 1st January. The Council must continue with the public awareness and messaging campaign and follow the lockdown rules. However, the vaccination programme was underway and accelerating which was good news.

 

The new Closed Business Lockdown Payment grants were now available, and payments had started for this and the tier 4 grants to qualifying businesses. The grant situation had become quite complex as there were several that continue to be available. Full details have been published on the Council’s website, including a comprehensive infographic describing them all.

Before the debate for the petition that the Council had received from Hadleigh regarding short-term parking charges, he just wanted to address another petition that was received from Thomas Morelli in Sudbury. The constitution governed the rules to validate a petition to avoid fraud and unfortunately this petition, as submitted, contravened those rules. He knew that this had disappointed many people, including some Members, but the rejection of this petition on these grounds was consistent with the rejection of previous petitions for the same reason. If these rules were ignored, others would demand the same leeway and the petition scheme would collapse. However, this was a difficult and sensitive matter and it had been considered carefully how a reasonable way might be found in line with the constitution whilst also recognising the efforts that Mr. Morelli had gone to in capturing a section of public feeling on these issues. The Council did therefore invite him to speak today on the Hadleigh parking petition, but he declined.

In respect of the Belle Vue land and house sale, Mr. Morelli’s petition’s request to delay consideration was consistent with the Council’s timeline as the matter would be considered by Cabinet on 11th March 2021.

He would also like to explain some more about what was happening with the Sudbury Access Point. Firstly, the future of this had already been decided as an officer-delegated decision was made on 1st December and the details of this had been published on the Council’s website. Councillor Parker explained the situation very clearly in his email to all Members on 18th December 2020. The current Service Level Agreement with Sudbury Town Council was due to expire at the end of March 2021. The Town  ...  view the full minutes text for item 38