Agenda and minutes

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the previous meeting held on 1 September 2020 and Special Scrutiny Committee meeting held on 8 September 2020. The draft minutes can be viewed at: http://modgov.southsomerset.gov.uk/ieListMeetings.aspx?CId=141&Year=0

The minutes of the meetings held on 1 September 2020 and 8 September 2020 were approved as correct records and would be signed by the Chairman.

Apologies for absence were received from Councillors Charlie Hull, Sue Osborne, Crispin Raikes and Rob Stickland.

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.

There were no declarations of interest.

There were no members of public present at the meeting.

This is an opportunity for Members to question the progress on issues arising from previous meetings.  However, this does not allow for the re-opening of a debate on any item not forming part of this agenda.

There were no issues raised from previous meetings.

There were no announcements from the Chairman.

There were no verbal updates on reports considered by District Executive at the September meetings.

Members considered the reports within the District Executive agenda for 1 October 2020 and raised comments as detailed below. Responses to most questions and comments were provided at Scrutiny Committee by the relevant officers – except those marked by an asterisk.

 Corporate Performance Report: 1^st Quarter (Agenda Item 6)

·         Members acknowledged the current strange and difficult times due to the Coronavirus pandemic, and recognised the good work going on.

·         Page 11, PCS 11 -14, members congratulated the planning team on performance targets.

·         Some members suggested a measure for reporting performance on tree works applications would be useful.

·         *Page 11, PCS 14, members noted the figures and that the Q1 figure was well below the 10% threshold. Members queried if there was still a need to two-star major applications with referral to Regulation Committee where an Area Committee was minded to go against an officer recommendation of approval.

·         *Page 14, EN5, it was acknowledged the figure was for countywide, Members queried if the wording of the measure and description was still correct as it was understood that South Somerset residual waste no longer went to landfill but went to Avonmouth Resource Recovery Centre.

Update Report on the Impact of Covid-19 on the Council (Agenda Item 7)

·         Page 19, para 19, some members queried if there had been much take up for pavement licences.

·         Page 18, para 12, members asked if match funding would be required for the bid regarding a new house of multiple occupation and when the outcome of the bid would be known?

·         The report makes several references to the word ‘numbers’ but no figures or statistics are provided. e.g para 5. In future reports it would be useful to have actual figures as well as percentages stated.

·         *Page 25, planning (bottom of list) – members noted the figures and queried what was being done to rebalance the time of planning staff? Why were backlogs increasing? Does enforcement have enough resources?

·         Members noted in the report there were some acronyms that needed expanding or a glossary provided.

Planning Appeal Performance (Agenda Item 8)

·         *Members queried if any analysis had been done for the appeals such as large or small developments; residential or other; full, householder or listed building etc; what sort of appeals are being lost and costs awarded etc.

·         *Members acknowledged that the data / spreadsheet containing information on the appeals would be circulated to members following the meeting. Without the data, members commented it was difficult to understand the report.

·         Members were concerned that the way the report was written seemed to infer that they were being put on ‘the naughty step’.

·         Para 16 – regarding possible costs being met by an area committee – some members sought clarification about whether this was something new.

·         Para 17 – some members noted the changes in risks outlined in the risk matrix and queried what had brought about the change to risks

·         *Several members noted that we were being told to be consistent with our decision making, however  ...  view the full minutes text for item 180.

The Specialist (Scrutiny & Member Development) provided an update on the Council Tax Support Task and Finish Group. She noted that public consultation had commenced for a proposed banding scheme.

She also informed members that some Task and Finish work for the Environment Strategy was likely to commence soon, and that the Productivity Analysis group work was likely to reconvene in mid to late October.

There were no updates on matters of interest.

During a short discussion some members suggested a discussion about superfast broadband would be of interest. The Chairman noted he would discuss with the Chairmen and the Specialist (Scrutiny and Member Development) regarding what was required about broadband information for the Committee.

Members noted that the next meeting of the Scrutiny Committee was scheduled for Tuesday 3 November 2020 and was likely to be held as a virtual meeting using Zoom.