Issue - meetings

Cabinet Member Briefing

Meeting: 19/01/2011 - Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee-dissolved (Item 6)

Cabinet Member Briefing

Cabinet Member Sustainability

Cabinet Member Built Environment

Minutes:

The Cabinet Member Sustainability advised that having recently undertaken carbon monitoring he was pleased to report that the reductions within Council buildings were on target. 

 

On the waste side, there were various scheme changes including, garden, food and alternate weekly collections.  Things were going well and were on target for each of the timescales set.

 

It was difficult for him to talk about parks and gardens without going into too much budget detail, which was scheduled later on the agenda.  What he would say was that he envisaged having to make major cuts (public toilets, cutting of verges, etc).

 

Following the last Council meeting and debate of the Imperial Gardens petition, a stakeholder meeting had been held.  A full report was scheduled for discussion at the next meeting of the Environment Committee and would cover directions of travel.

 

The following responses were given by the Cabinet Member Sustainability to questions from members of the committee;

 

  • The brown bin (garden waste) option was available borough wide and Officers were currently looking at alternative options for residents that couldn’t take advantage of the conventional garden waste scheme.
  • The old garden waste scheme would cease at the end of January.  It had been hoped that 16,000 residents would have signed up to the new garden waste scheme and to date there were 3,000 plus, though orders were mounting.

 

Cabinet Member Built Environment invited questions from members and with input from Andrew Powers, Accountant, offered the following responses;

 

  • The snow had impacted car parking income by between £20k and £40k.
  • He was happy to raise on-street parking concerns with the County Council and stressed the aim was to create a joint strategy between the Borough and County Councils in an effort to avoid issues that had been encountered in the past.
  • The closure of some toilets would leave redundant buildings which could continue to fall victim to vandalism and graffiti.  Boarding them up would not be a long term solution but this was an asset management issue which would need to be resolved in the future.
  • A New Homes Working Group had been established and he apologised, formal feedback should have been provided to the committee.  The Councils response to the government consultation included brown field over green field and incentives for bringing back void properties.  He found the process useful and thanked the Assistant Director – Built Environment and Members for their involvement, within what was a very short timeframe.

 

The Chair thanked both Cabinet Members for their attendance and updates.