Agenda item

Councillor Myers will update the meeting on

• Planning Briefing
• Parish Sweeper
• The Community Empowerment Fund
• Fix My Street
• Conference to mark the 20^th Anniversary of Parish Liaison

Councillor Paul Myers, Cabinet Member for Economic and Community Regeneration, updated the meeting.

Planning Briefing

Lisa Bartlett, Divisional Director – Development, and Mark Reynolds, Group Manager – Development Management, gave a presentation on “planning applications: discussions with the Planning case officer”. A copy of their PowerPoint slides is attached as Appendix 2 to these minutes.

Geoff Davis, Clerk to South Stoke Parish Council, asked what the criteria were for deciding whether a planning application was referred to the Development Management Committee. Councillor Sally Davis, Chair of the Development Management Committee, explained that if a ward councillor requested that an application went to the Committee, she reviewed the application with advice from officers and made a decision. Very often it was policy that was the determining factor in whether it went to Committee or not, but assured the meeting that she did read all the comments from the ward councillor and the parishes. She pointed out that she was also a parish councillor, so did understand the point of view of the parishes.

Geoff Davis said he had recently received an email notification about a planning application and had emailed a comment about it. He had received an immediate reply informing him that his email had been quarantined. Despite following the instructions in the email about actions he should take, he had received no further reply. He then received a notification about another application, and this time used the email reply facility to submit his comment, and it was received by Planning without any problem. He suggested that IT and Planning needed to liaise to facilitate the smooth operation of the electronic communications that parishes were being encouraged to use. Councillor Myers said that this issue would be followed up. If parishes had particular problems with communications they should get in touch with him. Andrew Pate, Strategic Director of Resources, said the Council had to take cybersecurity very seriously and did have spam filters in place. It was necessary for the Council to be increasingly vigilant. Perhaps a way forward would be the sending of automatic email receipts to let people know that their email had been received and was awaiting attention.

Parish Sweeper Scheme

Councillor Myers reminded delegates that there had been a discussion about this at the last Parish Liaison Meeting and in a session held after the meeting. A working group of parish representatives, representing parishes using the scheme and those not, would meet on 5 March to discuss what would happen to the scheme after 2019/20. Councillor Gerrish said that the budget approved in June had allocated funding for 2018/19 and an indicative figure for 2019/20. The 2019/20 budget would not be approved until Feb 2019, so any final decision about the scheme would not be taken till then. Councillor Myers pointed out that the meeting of 5 March would take place before the end of this financial year. There should be ample time for discussion and comments to be submitted before any final decision was taken.

Delegates said that parishes could no longer afford the number of hours of parish sweeper work they had originally planned, because hourly rates of pay had increased by as much as 100%. This had a severe impact on the parish sweepers, who were generally on the minimum wage, and on the parishes. For some parishes the money received under the Parish Sweeper Scheme represented 50% of their entire budget, so deciding to continue the same number of hours had a huge impact on them. Councillor Myers acknowledged this and said that he was also concerned that there were only 14 parishes in the scheme and there was no budget to allow others to join. It was time to put the scheme on a fair and proper footing, one way or another. He did not want decisions about the scheme to be taken unilaterally by the Council, but wanted them to be the outcome of discussions between the Council and the parishes. Councillor Gerrish said that the LGA had offered an increase of 15.65% over the next two years for Council staff at the bottom of the payscale, and that negotiations were ongoing with unions about whether they would accept this offer. It should be remembered that it was Council Tax payers would be paying these increases, and if there was a settlement above the LGA offer, there was no budget for the excess, so inevitably more jobs would have to go.

A delegate expressed concern about the amount of litter, including items like beds, being dumped throughout the district. Councillor Bob Goodman, Cabinet Member for Development and Neighbourhoods, responded that he was monitoring the situation very closely.

A delegate said that he had driven around his parish with Councillor Tim Warren, who had been amazed by the number of miles of footpaths in the parish. Parish sweepers were not only cleaning, but also ensuring that the footpaths were not obstructed with brambles.

Community Empowerment Fund

Councillor Myers said that over 54 projects had been funded. £83, 704.50 had been allocated. It is anticipated that this will bring in over £300, 000 of funding. He believed that many of these projects would not have gone ahead without the Fund. It had encouraged people to do things, and there had been a total of 4,500 volunteer hours. £44,000 had been allocated to 13 projects. He thought there had been a really good range of initiatives and projects. 39 towns and parishes had applied for funds. 12 towns and parishes did not apply. £6,195.50 was unallocated.

Fix My Street

The go-live date, originally scheduled for 7^th March, had been delayed, to allow for further consultations with users and to review the experience of other councils. Parish Clerks had been invited to take part in a user group. There would be a meeting on 8^th March in Keynsham where volunteers would be able to sit down with IT people to test the functionality of the system in detail before it goes live. Getting the system right before the launch should save time in the long run. In reply to a delegate, he said that it is commercial software, which is being marketed to Councils and which is linked to a website on which members of the public can log problems, such as broken paving stones, and can integrate with council IT systems. Further information can be found at: https://www.fixmystreet.com/pro/

Conference to mark the 20^th Anniversary of Parish Liaison

Councillor Myers said that a number of options were being considered for a conference in the autumn. Parishes would be consulted in due course.

The Chair thanked Councillor Myers for his update.