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 Council wanted the Council to pay a significantly increased amount for them to continue to run the service. A new agreement could not be reached because the Council simply could not pay an increased sum for a diminishing service. Therefore, a decision had to be made regarding future intentions. The Council could not allow the current agreement to expire without making provision for its replacement as the consequence of doing so would be that no access point of any sort would exist from 1st April 2021. But most importantly, this now gave the Council the opportunity to provide a different service that focused more on the Council’s customer strategy.
Details of a replacement access point, with a continuing face-to-face service, in a new location were being finalised and Members would be informed of the details in the very near future.
Finally, he wanted to take the opportunity to say that debate and even demonstrations were legitimate ways to protest and express opposition to policies. What was not legitimate or acceptable were attacks on his or any other Member’s homes. Neither was relentless personal online abuse, nor the recent public comments about shooting Babergh Councillors made by two Hadleigh Town Councillors last week, although he accepted that they were made in jest. These things were counterproductive.
The increasing coarseness of political debate, fuelled by intolerable levels of online abuse that politicians at all levels receive, should worry all. It, inevitably, encouraged some to believe that violence was an acceptable form of protest.
38.2 Councillor Ayres asked the Leader if consideration of the number of users from the past two years of the current Access Point in Sudbury had been included in the decision and if clarification of a better service could be provided.
38.3 The Leader responded that an outline of the service would be provided in due course.
38.4 Councillor Cresswell questioned that as the advice centre in Sudbury was already set-up, how much it would cost to set up the centre on another site. He also asked how many hours officers were expected to work in the new setting.
38.5 Councillor Owen questioned if an assessment for the new service had been provided to ensure they meet the requirements for the most vulnerable of users of the centre, as the people using the centre were the ones most in need of the one-to-one service provided.
Councillor Ward pointed out that it was an access point and not an advice centre and the responses would be provided outside the meeting.
Supporting documents: