Agenda item

To include:

·  Parish Sweeper Scheme

·  Community Asset Transfer (requested by Midsomer Norton TC)

·  Fix my Street (requested by Dunkerton and Tunley PC)

·  General Data Protection Regulation (requested by Dunkerton and Tunley PC)

·  calculation of the tax base for council tax/precept setting (requested by Keynsham TC)

·  Parish Charter

Councillor Myers updated the meeting.

Parish Sweeper Scheme

The costs of the scheme had to be reduced by £80k by 2019-20. The scheme has been discussed several times at the Parish Liaison Meeting, and a working group of parishes met with the Council on 5^th March and 27^th April to consider:

• the potential impact on parish precepts;

• the baseline service which the Council will provide to all parishes;

• how to make the best use of digital approaches (e.g. Fix My Street) and partnership opportunities.

There is now a defined service level for all parishes. The working group suggested that parishes that wished to continue with the scheme should be allowed to do so, but analysis showed that smaller parishes wishing to do so would have to take steps that could result in a 44% increase in parish precepts in a single year, which is not acceptable. The following proposal, supported by the working group, will offer a transitional arrangement for those already in the scheme who wish to continue it after the subsidy ends by funding their own Parish Sweeper.  In order to do so parishes would need to substantially increase their precept. The proposal is:

• Parishes facing a precept rise of 30% or more next year would have Council funding reduced over 3 years (or 2 if they prefer).

• Parishes facing a precept rise of between 10 and 30% next year would have Council funding reduced over 2 years.

• Parishes facing a precept rise of up to 10% next year would have no phased reduction.

This proposal will be considered by the Cabinet Member for Finance and Efficiency within the next few months. 

People attending the working group meetings had asked about the situation in Bath, which is not parished. Areas in Bath with high footfall (such as local shopping centres) do receive more regular attention. The Bath Improvement District works in partnership with the Council to augment cleansing in the city centre with their own equipment and rangers.

A delegate asked whether parishes which had already increased precepts this year by a large amount in anticipation of increased costs relating to the scheme would be able to benefit from the transition arrangement.  Councillor Myers said he could not answer this at the moment, but he would consult and report back.

Community Asset Transfer (Midsomer Norton Town Council)

Midsomer Norton’s representatives to ALCA had suggested that the transfer of the Town Hall to the Town Council is taking too long and seems very difficult. Councillor Myers said that his position on B&NES and the Town Council made him feel well-qualified to address their concerns. He agreed it had taken a long time – he had begun discussing it as a Town Councillor in 2006. The Quirk report on community management and ownership of assets was published in 2007. At that time the Council did not have a transfer policy and the original offer was for the Town Council to buy the Town Hall as a single building for £500,000, which was totally impossible. Under the succeeding Council administration there was still no transfer policy, just a list of 11 buildings which were candidates for transfer. Each one was very different and there were no ground rules, so every case involved a great deal of work. The Council had learnt lessons from Beacon Hall and other transfers, and had realised that there should be explicit rules and procedures for the process, and that the types of body to which community assets can be transferred should be defined. In general it does not seem right to transfer major capital assets to community groups governed only by their own constitutions. Towns and parishes have a statutory basis. There are issues of probity relating to the disposal of public assets, and public assets should only be transferred when there is evidence of a quantifiable benefit to the community. He believed that a firm basis for a policy was now emerging. Perhaps there might be an agenda item at a future Parish Liaison Meeting before the policy is finalised.

Fix My Street

An update had been requested by Tunley PC.

Councillor Myers gave a presentation. A copy of his PowerPoint slides is attached as Appendix 2 to these minutes. He explained that Fix My Street had begun as a campaigning website and had proved so successful that its creators had produced a software program for Councils to allow residents could log issues.

A bespoke version had been developed for B&NES, which can be accessed at: https://fix.bathnes.gov.uk/

Residents will eventually be able to use it to report directly to the relevant service such issues as litter, potholes, street lamps not working, obstruction on roads, flooding and blocked drains, faulty street furniture and grit bins and problems at bus shelters. Town and parish clerks can access the system to see all the problems reported in their parish. Issues previously reported via Council Connect will be included. It should not only help residents, but also improve partnership working between parishes and the Council. It should eliminate much duplication and confusion and help resolve uncertainty about the ownership of assets. Issues can still be reported via Council Connect, but people using smartphones to report issues to Fix My Street can include photographs.

He said that Fix My Street was being given a “soft launch”, because there was a concern that there might be a tsunami of issues being reported, which might overload the system. He asked delegates to exercise restraint in reporting issues for the time being, and thanked those who had participated in testing for their invaluable feedback. In response to a comment from a delegate, he said that if an issue was reported about a Council asset and it was not remediable, that would be a clear statement to that effect on Fix My Street; this was better than reports about problems just disappearing into a black hole.

Councillor Myers said that the system diagnostics would enable people making an excessive number of complaints to be identified. Responding to concern from delegates about the current lack of publicity for Fix My Street, he referred to his previous comment about a “soft launch”, and promised that the level of publicity would be increased as confidence grew in the capacity of the system.

Martin Shields, Corporate Director, said that Fix My Street had already gone live for highways issues. Those accessing the website did not have to log a report, but could just view reports already logged, which sometimes included photographs of the problem and information from the service on the state of play on dealing with it, which might include comments from a Highway Engineer after a site visit.

General Data Protection Regulation

This issue had been raised by Dunkerton and Tunley PC, who had asked whether there would be numerous requests coming from B&NES about the publication of parish details on the Council’s website. Cllr Myers replied that:

·  The Council’s staff use a variety of e-mail lists for meetings, newsletters etc., so parishes may have received communications from different departments.

·  The legislation came into force on 25^th May, so the number of communications from the Council in relation to it should decrease.

·  There is guidance on GDPR available on the Information Commissioner’s Office website, the link to which is: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/.

·  If parishes have concerns about their own contact information published on the B&NES website, this can be amended. Email: connecting communities@bathnes.gov.uk if you would like to see any changes. Further information about Connecting Communities can be viewed on the Council’s website at: http://www.bathnes.gov.uk/services/neighbourhoods-and-community-safety/localism-and-community-planning.

·  NALC have provided a general toolkit for parishes on GDPR. Speak to Rosemary Naish, Chair of ALCA B&NES, or Deborah White, Secretary, for more information.

Calculation of Tax Base for Council Tax/Precept Setting (Keynsham Town Council)

Keynsham TC had asked the following question:

How is the tax base calculated for council tax/precept setting? Housing numbers have increased significantly in Keynsham, but the figures do not seem to correspond.

Corporate Finance, B&NES, had provided the following response, which was circulated to delegates.

The Local Authorities (Calculation of Tax Base) Regulations 2012 specify formulate for calculating the council tax base. The tax base calculation is determined annually by identifying the number of properties liable to be levied and the banding in which the properties are placed and then by applying relevant exemptions, discounts (e.g. Single Occupier discounts), including the local council tax support scheme and banding reductions.

The information is compiled for each parish using information on dwellings registered on the Council Tax system and the authority’s tax base is built up from these bands. The resultant figures are then adjusted to allow a provision for growth in respect of the larger parishes and any anticipated losses on collection. The information must be agreed and notified to preceptors between 1st December and 31^st January in the financial year preceding that to which the tax base applies.

The provision for growth is based on estimates using Planning information of anticipated new build delivery for the coming year. This figure needs to take into consideration that council tax will only become chargeable as properties become occupied and is risk adjusted to allow for any potential delays, council tax exemptions and discounts that might apply to the new dwellings.

In respect of Keynsham’s tax base for 2018/19 the following table provides a summary of the calculation, showing that 99.50 Band D equivalents were added for the full year:

The tax base for 2019/20 will reflect the actual number of additions in 2018/19 plus an estimate of new builds for 2019/20.

Parish Charter Update

The revised Parish Charter has now been agreed by Cabinet and was endorsed by Cabinet at its May AGM.

• The Council has committed to staff training to improve their understanding and encourage more effective partnership working with parishes and other partners.

• The Council has also committed to reviewing the Charter throughout the coming year to monitor its effectiveness.

• The Charter is a framework document and will only ‘live’ through the relationship between the Council and the parishes.

• Parish Liaison meetings have a key role to play in building this relationship.

Next steps

• We have in place a small working group to oversee the revision of the Charter and monitor its effectiveness.

• To bring together the Charter and our Parish Liaison discussions we would like to extend the role of this group to set the agendas for Parish Liaison.

• We like the parishes to be re-elected on this group. Up to six representatives from various-sized parishes. The appointments will be for one year.

• Currently the agendas are set by a discussion with the Chair of ALCA. We would propose that the Chair of ALCA is also a representative.

• The appointments could be considered at the ALCA AGM when they consider the Parish Charter.

• The following parish representatives to the monitoring group had been elected at the last ALCA meeting: Dawn Drury, Clive Fricker, Cheryl Scott, Martin Robinson and Rosemary Naish.

• Feedback from parishes on the working of the new Charter was welcome.

• He thanked the members of the Parish Charter working group for their hard work.

Bath Tourism Plus

Councillor Myers noted that a new Chair had been appointed to Bath Tourism Plus. Councillor Myers said that one of his own objectives was to promote tourism in North East Somerset. Talks with Visit Somerset relating to this objective were well advanced, and he hoped to be able to make an announcement fairly soon.

The Chair thanked Councillor Myers for the update.