Agenda and draft minutes

Welcome and introduction from the Chair of the Council, Cllr Sarah Moore

The Vice-Chair of Council welcomed everyone to the meeting.

Apologies for absence had been received from:

Parish and Town Councils:

Helen Jenkins (Clerk) – Paulton Parish Council

Robert Lane (Councillor) – High Littleton Parish Council

Katie Mason (Clerk) – Midsomer Norton Town Council

Robin Moss (Clerk) – Farrington Gurney Parish Council

Susan Smith (Clerk) – Compton Dando Parish Council

Lottie Smith-Collins (Clerk) – Saltford Parish Council

Melissa Whiting (Councillor) – High Littleton Parish Council

B&NES:

Cllr Alison Born

Cllr Anna Box

Cllr Kevin Guy

Cllr Manda Rigby

Cllr Dine Romero

Cllr Sarah Moore

Cllr Sarah Warren

Cllr David Wood

Will Godfrey – Chief Executive

To include emergency planning event; parish information pack; West of England Combined Authority (WECA) engagement; upcoming budget engagement.

Mandy Bishop, Chief Operating Officer gave an update as follows:

Parish Information Pack

1.  The Parish information pack was presented at the last Parish Liaison meeting.  As a result of the meeting the pack had been updated to include further queries that parishes raised. 

2.  This has now been sent to all parish councils as an attachment to the notes of the previous meeting. 

3.  A further query was raised about Planning notifications not being received when a decision is made.  This is being followed up and will be added to the information pack.

4.  The pack would be reviewed on a regular basis.

Update on Emergency Planning Event

5.  A successful emergency planning event was held on the 28th October.  A number of Parish/Town Councils attended the session and there was a presentation from Chew Valley Flood Wardens regarding their work and how they engaged with the Council and other emergency services. 

Budget Consultation

6.  Parish/Town Councils were advised that this would be happening at the end of November/beginning of December.

WECA and BANES roles and responsibilities:

7.  Parish/Town Councils had asked for clarity about a number of issues around transport, including the role and responsibilities of WECA and B&NES. 

8.  In January 2020 B&NES transferred some responsibilities to WECA in relation to transport.  B&NES retained highways functions. 

9.  Further details would be sent out to Parish/Town Councils after the meeting. 

Overview of improvements to Fix My Street following feedback from Parishes. 

Demonstration of Fix My Street including a question and answer session.

Lucy Cafferky and Jonathan Cordier gave a presentation on recent improvements made to “Fix my Street”, the B&NES reporting tool for highway and environment issues following feedback from users including Parish/Town Council representatives.

·  The webpages had been developed to explain how the Council dealt with reported incidents.

·  Users could now be signposted elsewhere where appropriate. 

·  The layout followed gov.uk standards to give the website a clear look and feel.

·  Emergency notices were included which could head off reports.  Scheduled issues such as road closures were also included.

·  Inspectors updated as they responded to reports, and this would trigger a response to the public.  A lot of time had been spent with Inspectors to improve this function.

·  The underlying information pages had been changed.

·  Improvements had been made to the maps and the Curo map layers had been updated.  This helped users identify if their query was the responsibility of the Council or Curo.

·  Users were able to drop a pin on an exact location also use “what3words”.

·  An additional option had been included of using a mobile phone number as well as email address.

·  The mobile phone app had been updated and allowed the user to choose a radius or a ward.

·  An internal users’ group had been set up led by the internal systems team and including service representatives who use Fix my Street.  There was the potential for Parish/Town Councils to link up with this group and details would be confirmed in due course.

In response to questions raised by Parish/Town Council representatives, it was confirmed:

1.  The data clean up resulted in a half of reports (1500) being removed. 

2.  There was an overview by senior leaders of the reports raised.

3.  If the land in question was not owned by the Council, the service support teams were getting better at signposting users, although this did depend on identifying who owned the land.  There had been issues around Somerdale and who was responsible for maintenance such as blocked gullies.

4.  In relation to identifying geographical boundaries around wards, the team was looking into developing this to identify parish areas. 

5.  The address of the website would be included with the notes of the meeting - https://fix.bathnes.gov.uk/about/web-app

An opportunity for Parish and Town Council representatives to meet Council Officers and discuss queries or concerns.

A ‘World Café’ style session was held to give Parish/Town Councils the opportunity to meet officers.  The topics chosen were issues that ALCA and Parish representatives requested.

Group 1 – Nature Plans, Parks/Bee Bold Pollinator Project, and Rural UKSPF Funding

Officers – Karen Renshaw, Stuart Gardener, Paul Pearce, Alex Rowbotham and Jackie Clayton (BANES Council)

Nature Action Plans - Karen Renshaw advised that the Council was committed to supporting Parish and Town Councils to deliver Nature Action Plans as part of the Ecological Emergency Action Plan.

She asked representatives to contact her if their Parish/Town Council was interested. 

Questions and Comments

What does a plan include? The plan would identify areas that Parish and Town Councils would want to improve or projects they wanted to develop to support wildlife.  When a funding opportunity became available, schemes would already be identified within the plan.

Farmborough Parish Council and Peasedown Parish Council would be interested. 

Rural England Prosperity Fund - Jackie Clayton/Alex Rowbotham reported that West of England Combined Authority (WECA) funding would soon be available to support community projects in rural areas such as the retrofitting of village halls or electric vehicle charging on community sites.  They asked representatives to consider whether there were any projects in their area which could benefit from the funding and confirmed that this would only be available to rural areas.

Questions and Comments:

Does the funding have to be used for infrastructure?  Yes, it is a capital grant.  It would require planning permission to be in place (if required) and a delivery partner.

Could the funding be used to repair steps/handrails in a local nature reserve?  No, it can’t be used for maintenance.  It could be used for green infrastructure and an EV charging bid could be part of it.  There were other funding opportunities such as the WECA Green Recovery Fund.

Who would a delivery partner be?  This is whoever can deliver project the project.  This could be a commercial partner, a Trust or a Parish/Town council.

What are the timescales?  There would be a six-week window to apply for the funding between January and February 2024 and the money would need to be spent by end of March 2025.

What value bid would be considered? The maximum bid value was £40,000 and minimum bid value was £10,000. B&NES was anticipating that the fund would support approximately 10 projects across the area with an average value of £20k-25k.

Had any projects been identified yet? No.  Groups were being asked to identify potential projects as it would be useful to have a project pipeline for when funding became available. 

Bee Bold Scheme Pollinator Project – Paul Pearce outlined what the Council’s Parks Team had been doing to address the ecological emergency such as changing planting and reducing the number of times per year that grass areas (not used for ball games/picnics) were mowed.  He confirmed that funding from WECA had been used to communicate the ecological benefits of longer grass, including signage, and that  ...  view the full minutes text for item 11.

The Vice-Chair thanked everyone for attending.

Date of meeting in early 2024 to be confirmed.

Wednesday 28 February 2024 at 6.30pm (This date was subsequently changed to Wednesday 20 March 2024 at 6.30pm to facilitate the attendance of police colleagues for a discussion on community safety)

Wednesday 19 June 2024 at 6.30pm

Wednesday 18 September 2024 at 6.30pm