Agenda, decisions and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillors Cathy Bakewell, Mike Beech, John Field, Anna Groskop, Sarah Lindsay, Sam McAllister, Graham Middleton, Graham Oakes, Tiffany Osborne, Jo Roundell Greene, Sylvia Seal, Gina Seaton, William Wallace, Nick Weeks and Colin Winder.

To approve and sign the minutes of the previous meeting held on Thursday, 19^th July 2018.

The minutes of the Council meeting held on 19^th July 2018, copies of which had been previously circulated, were approved as correct records of the meetings and signed by the Chairman.

In accordance with the Council's current Code of Conduct (as amended 26 February 2015), which includes all the provisions relating to Disclosable Pecuniary Interests (DPI), personal and prejudicial interests, Members are asked to declare any DPI and also any personal interests (and whether or not such personal interests are also "prejudicial") in relation to any matter on the Agenda for this meeting.

Members are reminded that they need to declare the fact that they are also a member of a County, Town or Parish Council as a Personal Interest.  Where you are also a member of Somerset County Council and/or a Town or Parish Council within South Somerset you must declare a prejudicial interest in any business on the agenda where there is a financial benefit or gain or advantage to Somerset County Council and/or a Town or Parish Council which would be at the cost or to the financial disadvantage of South Somerset District Council. 

There were no declarations of interest made by Members.

The Chairman of Hinton St George Parish Council spoke regarding a retrospective planning application in the parish which they had expected to be referred to the Area West Committee for determination.  He outlined the history of the site and expressed their disappointment that the application had been approved by the Chairman and officer’s delegated powers.  He said he would be writing to the planning office to ask for clarification on the enforcement of the planning conditions.

The Leader of Council said she would look into the matter and provide a written response.

The Chairman advised that the Local Government Boundary Commission for England had advised that they would be laying the Draft Order for reorganising the SSDC Ward Boundaries before Parliament on 15^th October.  The Order would be laid for 40 days and so would complete its passage through Parliament late November / early December 2018.

The list of Chairman’s engagements were noted.

Stephen Lodge, Executive Director of Growth and Development at Yarlington Housing Group provided a presentation on the recent work of the Group.  He advised that:-

•       Yarlington employed 368 people and 82% of them lived in South Somerset

•       Yarlington generated a direct GVA of £24.5m in 2017/18

•       They managed 9,182 properties in South Somerset

•       116 new homes were currently in contract

•       Their planned maintenance works for South Somerset in 2018/19 was £13.7m, with a budgeted development cost of £7.2m

•       75% of their customers had digital access

•       Their Inspire to Achieve programme had assisted 642 resident to gain employment and 77 had accessed work experience or training.

•       Their NextGen 5 year strategy was to provide new homes, a new services and to serve their customers efficiently, effectively and economically.

•       They were also building houses for sale to make a profit for the organisation.

•       £500,000 was provided each year for community solutions

•       They were looking at introducing WIFI in their sheltered schemes and were also looking at how the schemes would be funded in the future as the County Council funding changed. 

•       Sometimes because of huge void costs and poor energy performance it was better to sell an individual house than pay the cost to bring it up to standard.

In response to questions from Members, Mr Lodge confirmed:-

·         Of the proposed 1,500 new homes to be built, 1,000 would be built within Somerset and 500 outside the county.

·         They were consulting with their residents on the proposed changes to Assisted Living.

·         There was no policy to remove their rural properties, however, there were challenges when a property was not viable. 

·         They had sold 17 houses during 2018 and although the ambition to generate an income through house sales, they recognised it must not dilute the purpose of the business. 

·         Yarlington worked with Community Land Trusts to provide houses in rural areas. 

·         Yarlington had made a bid in partnership with other organisations for Government funding towards house building. 

·         They now had community partners to assist their vulnerable tenants who could not access their services digitally.

At the conclusion of the debate the Chairman thanked Mr Lodge for attending and providing an interesting and informative presentation.

NOTED

The Portfolio Holder for Finance and Legal Services introduced the report and advised that it had been considered by the Audit Committee at their meeting in June 2018.

In response to a question, the Lead Specialist for Finance confirmed that the overall responsibility for treasury management lay with Full Council.

There was no debate and Members were content to note the Treasury Management Activity for the 2017/18 financial year, the position of the individual prudential indicators and the outlook for the investment performance in 2018/19.

(Voting: Resolution 1: 27 in favour, 15 against, 0 abstentions) (recorded vote taken)

(Resolution 2: unanimous in favour)

The Leader of Council introduced the report and advised the changes to the Council’s Constitution were necessary.

The Monitoring Officer advised that following the loss of the Director for Support Services, his delegated responsibilities had been reallocated between herself, the Chief Executive and the Director for Strategy and Support Services, and therefore it was necessary to reflect the changed delegations in the Council’s Constitution.  The report also included delegations previously approved by the District Executive. 

In response to questions from Members, the Monitoring Officer confirmed:-

·         The Council’s Commercial Strategy: 2017-2021 was confirmed by Full Council in August 2017

·         Section 4, Point 4.18 (3) referred to the Chairman of the relevant Regeneration Programme Board

·         The relevant Portfolio Holder would be involved in the investment acquisition process

·         She had delegated power to amend post names as required in the Constitution

·         Reference to the Income Asset Group and Disposals Asset Group would be added to Section 4, Point 4.18 (1) and (2)

The Lead Specialist - Finance confirmed that the Council had no external borrowing at the current time and they would take advice from Arlingclose, the Council’s Treasury management advisers before any such borrowing was made.  Funds were being kept in reserve.

At the conclusion of the debate a named vote on recommendation 1 was requested by more than 10 Members present.   This was taken and the voting was recorded as: 27 in favour, 15 against, 0 abstentions.  Members were unanimous in their support for recommendation 2.

(Voting: Question 1 – 27 in favour, 15 against, 0 abstentions)

(Question 2 - unanimous in  ...  view the full minutes text for item 42.

Members were content to note the proposed new members of the Audit, Regulation, Standards and Scrutiny Committees.

Members were content to confirm the proposed member as the SSDC representative on the Parrett Internal Drainage Board.

The report of Executive Decisions was noted.

Councillor Derek Yeomans, Chairman of the Audit Committee, presented the report of the Committee. 

The report of the Audit Committee was noted.

Councillor Sue Steele, Chairman of the Scrutiny Committee, presented the report of the Committee. 

The Portfolio Holder for Finance and Legal Services thanked the Scrutiny Committee members for their comments on the recent budget monitoring report. 

The report of the Scrutiny Committee was noted.

There were no Motions submitted by Members. 

There were no Motions submitted by Members. 

There were no questions submitted under Procedure Rule 10.

Councillor Nick Colbert submitted the following questions under Procedure Rule 10:

"How much has been paid out in redundancy payments since the beginning of Transformation?"

Councillor Peter Seib, as Portfolio Holder for Finance and Legal Services provided the following response:

“The transformation process will deliver modern, customer focussed and eventually better services, but was essentially a spend-to-save investment contributing to closing the £6m a year funding gap in the Financial Strategy Report. 

The Transformation budget of £7,448,577 agreed with Members support contributes an annual ongoing saving of £2.5m every year – entirely from reducing staff costs.

The service areas affected – our core services and support services - will see their headcount reduce by about 22%.

Although Managers worked hard to minimise the number of people made redundant by holding some vacancies unfilled and by using temporary contract staff where posts had to be filled, it was always going to be necessary to make some people redundant to reduce our staff costs.

By far the majority of staff that have been made redundant have left on voluntary redundancy and there is no additional costs to voluntary redundancy. 

Within the Transformation Budget, the budget provision for redundancy and pension strain costs is £4,044,700 and this was agreed without dissent in April 2017 and set out in the update report in July 2018. 

At the end of August 2018 we had paid £1,621,730 in redundancy payments since the Transformation Programme commenced.   This represents 40% of the budget.  We are not yet at the end of Transformation and this cost will be added to as set out in the updated business case agreed by this Full Council in April 2017. 

All the costs of Transformation including redundancy costs, will continue to be fully reported to Members through the quarterly Transformation Progress Reports to Scrutiny and District Executive.  We will of course report the benefits in the same way”

Members are asked to note that the next scheduled meeting of the Full Council is a reserve date of 18^th October 2018. 

Unless there is any urgent business to progress on this date, the next scheduled meeting of the Full Council will take place on Thursday, 15^th November 2018 in the Council Chamber, Council Offices, Brympton Way, Yeovil commencing at 7.30 p.m.

Members noted that the next scheduled meeting of the Full Council was a reserve date of 18^th October 2018. 

Unless there was any urgent business to progress on this date, the next scheduled meeting of the Full Council would take place on Thursday, 15^th November 2018 in the Council Chamber, Council Offices, Brympton Way, Yeovil commencing at 7.30 p.m.