Minutes:
The Leader stated that
(a) since the last Council meeting, the Council
had been implementing the decisions taken as part of setting the budget in
February. Following the reduction in the civic budget, the new Democratic
Services structure was now in place and the new Mayoral calendar was being
developed for the coming year. Discussions were ongoing with the Citizens’
Advice Bureau regarding their future delivery model and the Council had
confirmed the final year of funding to Bottesford Youth Club. The Council had
also commenced its wider review of community grants. It was disappointing that
the Melton Learning Hub had withdrawn from running the café at the Country Park
but he was pleased that they had moved
quickly to enable Melton Space to take over the running of the facility in the
short term and the Council would be commissioning a full procurement process in
the coming months to identify a long term partner. The Council’s aim was to
both maximise the availability of the facility to the community whilst
minimising ongoing costs to the Council. The Council had also secured the
ongoing provision of public toilets at the Country Park during this transition
period and the second set of toilets opened on Wilton Road a few weeks ago;
(b) the end of March represented another important
moment for Melton as two significant bids were submitted to government. The
County Council submitted the Housing Infrastructure Fund bid for the southern
section of the road and Melton continued to work with County colleagues to find
a suitable method for managing the funding risks associated with the scheme.
The Council also submitted its bid to the Future High Street Fund seeking to
access some of the £675m Government had allocated to transforming town centres
across the country. Over 300 bids had been received by Government, highlighting
what a competitive process this would be, but the Council had submitted a
strong bid and was hopeful of a positive outcome;
(c) with growth such a key priority, the Council
continued to focus on ensuring the Planning Service provided the best possible
support to sustainable development. Following a review of the service, the
Corporate Committee recently approved additional resources to help manage the
implementation plan and over the summer a new structure and long term
resourcing plan would be developed to make this possible. He referred to of a new set of procedure
rules for the Planning Committee, developed through the review and with Members
of that Committee which were being proposed for adoption later in the meeting.
This too would ensure a far smarter and disciplined approach to conducting
planning business and would provide the first visible signal of our intentions
to change and improve in this area;
(d) later in the meeting the Council would also
consider the final set of constitutional documents for adoption. Since its decision to move to new governance
arrangements taken last November there had been a tremendous amount of work
undertaken to re-write and streamline the constitution. The Council approved
the first set of documents in February and later in the meeting the Council
would need to ratify the final set of documents which would complete the
Constitution for the new Council in May.
He paid particular tribute to Adele Wylie for the considerable amount of
work she had done to develop these documents, as well as Members within the
Governance Development Group, Governance Committee and Planning Committee, all
of whom had helped shape and develop the documents before the Council. The Constitution would always need to be a
living document and he was sure further updates and refinements would be
necessary over the coming months but he was also very confident that the new
procedures would better support the Council’s aims to become more commercial
and agile, as well as to ensure there was clearer accountability and transparency
for decision-making in the future. He hoped all Members would join him in
supporting the proposals later in the meeting;
(e) he paid tribute to and thanked the Members who were not standing for election in May and spoke briefly about the roles held by each of the 8 Councillors who were standing down as listed in the Mayor’s announcements at Minute CO90 above.