Agenda item

The Portfolio Holder for Climate, Access and Engagement, Cllr Freer-Jones, provided the annual presentation to the Committee and provided updates to Priorities 1, 4 and 6.

 

During the discussion the following points were noted:

 

·         In the last 9 months the time spent on community projects had been affected due to the Covid 19 response as staff had been deployed to work supporting local businesses and the community where assistance was needed most.

·         An update of the portfolio had last been sent to members at the end of October 2020 and there would be monthly updates provided to members going forward from 2021.

·         There had been over 12,780 registered online accounts since June 2020 over half of which were created by people at home with 2,000 linked to the Council Tax page. 

·         All the forms that are used online by members of the public would be replaced during phase 2 of the implementation of the IEG4 system. Services would be working with customer services to identify and add forms to the platforms ahead of the system going live.

·         The focus on complex people activities ie. anti-social behaviour and case management and the supporting people work had been put on hold due to the housing management restructure and this would resume when the new team was in place, work was underway to recruit new posts following approval from Council on 25 November 2020. Customer services were at the forefront of demand and work was underway to track and record the demands and how the demands were being dealt with.

·         There would be a big focus ensuring that demands that were received by customer services were passed to the most effective service area possible as some complaints/demands could be covered by more than one service area.

·         The new phone software tracked all calls to customer services, advised the customer their position in the queue and offered a call back facility. Customer services had a screen in their area which showed the number of calls waiting, the number of calls that had been answered and the length of time each call was waiting before being answered.

·         Customer services had received 67,079 contacts from the public from all channels (face to face, telephone and emails) in the last 11 months with the top demands being council tax, repairs, housing options and waste. Since March 2020 there had been 4,300 demands in relation to Covid-19.

·         Cllr Freer-Jones would provide Members with a report showing the breakdown of calls to customer services for the last 11 months.

·         Members would be updated when further information was available regarding the possibility of a joint bid with other Councils for the funding for carbon neutral retro-fitting to our housing stock.

·         Environmental Health Officers were out in the communities checking that establishments were following the current Covid-19 guidelines and were there in an advisory capacity not just prosecuting at the first offence.

·         The current Audio Visual  equipment in the council chambers needed to be updated to allow hybrid meetings to be held and broadcasting of meetings. This would enable a wider community to be more involved in being able to follow meetings as they were held.

·         Members would be consulted regarding any changes to the way in which meetings were convened and broadcast.

·         An email had been sent prior to the meeting providing the information of the Lottery regarding the number of players and how many tickets had been sold.

·         There was a £1,000 marketing budget unspent of which £385 was for the Lotteries Council and £692 was the Gambling Committee fee. The amount so far which had been raised for good causes was £10,857.

·         The full list of the charities were sent out prior to the meeting but could be recirculated if any Member desired.

·         The Lottery was one of the projects that had been paused due to the redeployment of staff.

·         Members enquired as to why the Lottery had not been better advertised following Scrutiny’s recommendations that for the Lottery to be viable there would need to be the sale of approximately 448 tickets there had been an in year increase of 55 tickets sold currenlty. There had been a suggestion of flyers being included  with the distribution of the council tax invoices to reach every household.  Cllr Freer-Jones advised that she was not aware of the suggestion of flyers going in with the council tax invoices and would further investigate this and report back to Members. Cllr Freer-Jones would ask the Portfolio Holder for Corporate Finances and Resources, Cllr de Burle, to provide further information to Members on the £30k staff support costs for the lottery and how this would be reallocated to other services.

·         There would be a full report on the Lottery in June 2021 for Scrutiny to provide comments on. Should Scrutiny recommend to Cabinet the closure of the Lottery there would be reputational damage and some charities would not survive without the funding they get from it. 

·         The next round of the Community Grants would be looked at in January 2021 for those causes who had put forward an application for the Lottery. The Community Grant had a pot of £40k plus the £5k from the Lottery.

·         The Disabled Facilities Grants (DFG) to date had a spend of £140k with approximately £84k committed so the current year end was £224k. The DFG came from Government.

·         In response to a question regarding if there were any service areas within Cllr Freer-Jones’ portfolio expected to have a budget overspend of £5k or more, Cllr Freer-Jones advised that within her portfolio it would be more of an income shortfall as the services included development control, building control, licensing and land charges and there was also an additional charge on the IEG4 project. She would provide extra information on this should Members require this.

·         In response to a question asking what the plans were moving forward to hold Parish Council liaison meetings, Cllr Freer-Jones advised that this would be incorporated alongside the Melton Deal as the Parish Councils were one of the Council’s stakeholders. Plans that were put in place to attend all the Parish Council meetings during 2020 did not occur due to Covid-19, but moving forward, there would be a work plan to include bi-annual Parish Council meetings starting in 2021.

·         In response to a question if an update could be provided on the forthcoming court actions for recovery of debt, Cllr Freer-Jones advised that this did not come under her portfolio but would speak with Cllr de Burle and ask him to provide an update to Members.

·         In response to a question if there had been any progress for the design of accessibility for disabled people in the town centre, Cllr Freer-Jones advised that following discussions with Cllr Cumbers, Cllr Lumley would be working on this project and they would be setting up a meeting soon for discussions on taking this forward. Cllr Freer-Jones wished to look into accessibility for the wider community to include not only those with a physical disability but for those who are partially sighted.

·         In response to a question regarding how the Council would encourage people to move to electric vehicles in 9 years’ time and how would the Council promote this, Cllr Freer-Jones advised that this was something that the Climate Emergency Group would be including in their workplan. Members could feed into the Climate Emergency Group with any information that they had to share.

·         In response to a question regarding the lack of cycle paths to and within the town centre, Cllr Freer-Jones advised that this was a highways authority function and not something that the Council had responsibility for. The Climate Emergency Group would have this on their workplan and would look into what the Council was doing in-house to promote cleaner travel amongst staff before taking recommendations out to the community.

·         In response to a question around how the Council was engaging with residents not on the internet, Cllr Freer-Jones advised that the Council was still invested in making sure the telephone contact and face to face contact continue. There would be an increase in capacity for outreach and devolving services back into the community by using the community centres and Parkside was being investigated. The Melton Deal would work alongside this to recognise any service gaps and to understand the most effective way to get feedback from the community  and stakeholders

 

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Councillor Holmes left the meeting at this point and did not return

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·         Cllr Freer-Jones advised Members that there was positive publicity on the Council’s website regarding fly tipping, providing information to the public about what information to request when paying a company to remove waste. The Monitoring Officer advised that the Enforcement Officers would only take a case to court for fly-tipping if it was in the public interest and that officers were extremely proactive in tracking down offenders.

 

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Councillor Evans left the meeting at this point and did not return

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