Issue - meetings

The Democratic Services Manager will announce any submissions received. The Council will be invited to decide what action it wishes to take, if any, on the matters raised in these submissions. As the questions received and the answers given will be circulated in written form there is no requirement for them to be read out at the meeting. The questions and answers will be published with the draft minutes.

The Chair made reference to the Q&A document which had been circulated at the meeting and is attached to the online minutes.

Statements to the meeting were made by the following members of the public;

Joe Scofield presented a petition of over 600 names – “Address the Crisis of Student Housing in Bath”.  In his statement, Joe called for measures to address the problems caused by over 24,000 students needing housing in Bath.  The full copy of Joe’s statement has been placed on the Council’s Minute book and is available online.  Councillor Bob Goodman asked Joe if he was aware of the recent positive reduction in HMO concentration to 10%, to which Joe responded that he was aware but that he didn’t feel the 10% cap was adequate and called for further measures such as ring fencing areas for family housing around schools. Councillor Will Sandry asked Joe if he thought there was more the Council and the University could do to help the situation, to which Joe responded that a message needed to be sent to the University that they couldn’t continue to use green belt land allocated for housing for extra teaching blocks to accommodate more students.  Councillor Colin Blackburn asked Joe if he thought the restriction should be placed across the whole B&NES area to which Joe responded that he certainly did think so, and that every community should have the same level of protection. The Chair thanked Joe for his statement and petition which would be referred to the Cabinet Member.

Tony Mitchell made a statement on behalf of Transition Keynsham.  Tony referred to the questions he had submitted concerning the impact of budget cuts on the provision of Council services and asked if the Council had been robust enough in putting its case to Government.  A full copy of Tony’s statement is available on the Council’s Minute book and attached to the online minutes.  In response to a question from Councillor Joe Rayment about whether Tony was asking the Council to be firmer in making their case to Government about the impact of austerity, Tony confirmed that he was.  Councillor Sarah Bevan asked about the impact of budget cuts on the work that Transition Keynsham carried out, to which Tony responded that they wouldn’t have access to the same level of equipment.  The Chair thanked Tony for his statement which would be referred to the Cabinet Member.

Jackie Albrow made a statement calling on the Council to complete the application for a Fields in Trust ‘Deed of Dedication’ for Moorland Park.  Councillor Shaun Stephenson McGall asked if it would now be useful to have a meeting with all the relevant parties to progress this, as the process was started in September 2017, to which Jackie replied that the Council had been supportive but something further was needed to move this along and a meeting would be an excellent idea. The full text of Jackie’s statement is available on the Council’s Minute book and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 35