Agenda, decisions and minutes

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the District Executive meetings held on 10^th February and 17^th February 2022.

The minutes of the previous meeting held on 10 Februaryand the special meeting held on 17 February 2022 were approved as correct records and would be signed by the Chairman.

Apologies for absence were received from Councillors Sarah Dyke and Henry Hobhouse.

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 at the meeting.

There were no members of the public present.

The Chairman expressed her concerned and anxiety regarding the current situation in the Ukraine but said she was heartened to hear of local peoples response, particularly from the local polish community to take aid to the Ukrainian people.

The Portfolio Holder for Area West advised that with the completion of the Chard Leisure Centre, the focus was now on the town centre improvements which included paving and the public realm. The town centre improvements had attracted £1m in funding from Historic England and the Shop Front Design Guide was a key component of the improvements. The guide offered advice to achieving improvements to shop fronts in the town centre.

In response to a question the Acting Director for Place and Recovery advised that the guide would become a Supplementary Planning Document and would be relevant to all planning situations from applications to enforcement.

The Chairman of the Scrutiny Committee advised that they had asked what could be done to replicate the scheme in other towns and they had been advised that any town entering into a Neighbourhood Plan could address design within their plan, including more specific policy on shopfronts if they chose to.  He said they were broadly accepting of the guide and had asked questions regarding incentives to encourage people to make the improvements set out in the design guide.

At the conclusion of the debate, the recommendations were proposed and seconded and agreed by Members.

The Chairman thanked the officers involved for their work in compiling the guide.

The Portfolio Holder advised that the cross-party workshops held with officers and an external facilitator had been extremely useful and had been one of the best he had participated in and a healthy debate had taken place on a number of issues and a great deal had been achieved.  He noted that SSDC was now 6 out of 21 authorities in terms of speed and 90% of applications had been determined within time over the last 24 months.  .

In response to questions from Members, the Lead Specialist for Built Environment and the Director for Service Delivery advised:-

·         Every planning application impacted by phosphates had a specific review by Natural England which was a resource issue. Until the Council had a standard position then all of the variables were being checked on applications which was doubling the workload in some cases and until SSDC had credit releases Natural England would have to audit the appraisal.

·         There had been around a 22% increase in householder applications and approximately 300 held up due to phosphates. 

·         It was hoped to provide a solution to the phosphate issue with En Trade.

·         Point 9 of the report included agreed extensions of time.

·         Part of the improvement package was to prioritise planning enforcement and good progress had been made as the number of cases had reduced from 500 to 360.

·         21 days was the standard deadline for consultation responses but officers would accept comments up to when their report was written.

·         The service had relied on using Locality Officers to conduct site visits but recently they were employing more geographically local officers to conduct their own site visits.

·         Planning enforcement action was now being prioritised and there were 16 active cases being progressed to court action.

The Portfolio Holder noted that the Lead Specialist for Built Environment had provided an excellent update at Area South Committee the previous day and some issues relating to the phosphates issue were beyond the Council’s control.

The Director for Service Delivery and the Portfolio Holder for Area South thanked both officers and Members who had taken part in the Planning Reimagined workshops.

The Chairman of the Scrutiny Committee said that planning was an emotive issue which was time-bound.  The Scrutiny Committee had felt the cross-party group to review the service was very good.  They had raised questions regarding extensions of time to applications, undertaking site-visits during Covid, and did SSDC have a landscape officer?  They also felt it would have been useful to have a paper on the phosphate issue presented at the same time.  Mention was also made to improve communication with town & parish councils and officers providing planning enforcement action.

At the conclusion of the debate, the Portfolio thanked officers for the work they had achieved and asked that the report be noted.

The Portfolio Holder for Economic Development noted this was a 6 month update report and provided the following highlights:-

·         In excess of 95% of commercial rents on investment properties had been collected during the pandemic.

·         The prudential code had changed in December 2021 which prevented further commercial investments.

·         A total of £93.93m had been invested in commercial property of which £42m had been invested in battery and energy storage.

·         The property prices at the Marlborough development had reduced by approximately 10% which was the expected profit margin so it was not expected to deliver a profit now.

·         The Taunton battery storage unit was fully operational and energy producing and was expected to produce a gross profit of £3m for the current year but not all of that would come back to SSDC.

·         Fareham phase 1 & 2 battery storage units were ahead of schedule and on budget so doing well.

He thanked the Commercial Property, Land and Development Manager and the Property Investment Project Manager for their work in managing the investment portfolio.

During discussion is was noted that:

·         The comparison between the business case when SSDC first entered battery storage and the outcomes now and that they had proven to be a good investment.

·         There had been delays between the loans for the first battery storage project and starting the business which had meant the first project had been the most difficult.  Comparison on what we expected when we went in.

·         The Internal Audit plan included a review of the business plan for the battery storage projects.

·         The original battery storage project was producing stronger income than originally expected.

·         Although the investment programme was coming to an end, active management of the investments was fundamental by in-house specialists.

·         The investment programme had been started to produce an income to fund services. 

The Chairman of the Scrutiny Committee said they had discussed the report in full and most of their questions had already been answered during the debate, however, they had noted some inconsistencies with the risk matrix charts at end of each report.

At the conclusion of the debate, Members were content to note the recommendations of the report. 

The Portfolio Holder for Economic Development noted that the changes to the Commercial Strategy were made in response to the Local Government Review (LGR) and the proposed changes were tracked in red in the report. They were technical changes which reflected the change to the prudential code which prevented further commercial investments.  The portfolio would be maintained until the new Somerset Council took them over. He also clarified that the second recommendation sought to dissolve two of the Council’s subsidiary companies.

The Chairman of the Scrutiny Committee said they did not have many questions on the report other than some projects had performed better than others.

The Portfolio Holder for Finance and Legal Services noted that by closing the two companies started for private venture the risk was reduced and it was important the changes were made from a finance perspective.

At the conclusion of the debate the recommendations were proposed and seconded for confirmation by Council and the Chief Executive.

The following addition to the Forward Plan was requested:-

·         Phosphates update – June 2022

Members noted that the next scheduled meeting of the District Executive (informal) would take place on Thursday 7^th April 2022 as a virtual meeting via Zoom commencing at 9.30 a.m.

The Chief Executive provided members with a brief verbal update on the progress of Local Government Reorganisation in Somerset.