Minutes:
69.1 Councillor McCraw introduced his report and highlighted the key issues within it as follows: -
· The front page of the report provided a summary of the recommendations that were relevant to Item 10 Strategic Property and Land Investment Fund report.
· Details of the meeting held on 20th September 2018 where the Committee reviewed the West Suffolk Community Safety Partnership (WSCSP). A wide range of witnesses attended the meeting that were crucial to the process. The Committee focused on the four identified priorities that WSCSP had been concentrating on in the past. Councillor McCraw drew attention to two in particular:- County lines and violence against women and girls or VORG, which did include men and boys. The Committee were extremely concerned about these matters and the statistics were particularly shocking even though they represented a small number of people. The key messages that the witnesses supplied were contained in the repot along with the conclusions of the Committee. The Committee felt very strongly that they should be looking for a positive and proactive outcome and have requested that officers prepare a tool kit for use by Members for the various signs and signals that they can use within their communities, including phone numbers, places of refuge, and who to contact in a given set of circumstances. The Chair of Scrutiny hoped that the toolkit would be available in the near future.
· The second item that was reviewed at this meeting was the void project, this continued to be maintained at its current level, but further improvements were being sought, and this was duly noted.
· The meeting held on 22nd October 2018 reviewed the Strategic Property and Land Investment Fund. The Chairman of the Committee presented the history of the process it had gone through in the course of the last two months. The Committee had focussed on three principle areas in the report - the purpose and need of such a fund, the financial impacts, the costs of borrowing and the mitigation costs in terms of the MRP. Following the review Overview and Scrutiny Committee had made the recommendations to Council that were listed on the front of the report.
· Finally, the Committee reviewed matters on staff turnover and welfare
specifically relating to the Planning Department.
69.2 The Chairman invited questions from members.
69.3 Councillor Beer asked if it was known how many sick days Babergh staff lose per year and how does this compare with other councils?
69.4 In response Councillor McCraw told Council that the Committee was focusing on figures that had originally been supplied to the Mid Suffolk Committee, but since those figures were being prepared, the Committee had agreed that the information should be shared with Babergh as well. The focus of the figures in the information bulletin was specifically on the Planning Department and Housing Tenancy Services. The figures were also compared with those against two combined and unspecified rural district councils that were in a similar position to Babergh and Mid Suffolk. From the figures available the Council was well within line to those in a similar situation with some signs of improvement per employee, particularly in Housing Tenancy Services where they have in fact dropped. The sickness days lost per employee in Planning were more or less static, but the Council was losing fewer days per full time equivalent.
69.5 Councillor Grandon queried whether the tool kit would be made available for Town and Parish Councils?
69.6 In response the Chair of Scrutiny informed Council that he was very keen for this information to be available across the Board.
69.7 Councillor Burrows asked if there was any provision for men seeking refuge from domestic abuse in the County and if not how far away was the nearest provision?
69.8 in response the Chair of Scrutiny told Council that he was of the understanding that these were available in adjacent Counties.
69.9 Councillor Maybury added that it was a very sad fact that the majority of domestic violence was towards women and girls and that notwithstanding that, there were sometimes issues with violence towards males as well. If there was a refuge males and females could not be placed together. Because there has always been a majority of incidences against females then we have more facilities for females. There are one or two facilities for males but because of the nature of this I am not going to divulge where they are, you all have to be well aware that if someone goes into a refuge it is a refuge.
69.10 The Chairman thanked Councillor McCraw for his report.
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