Issue - meetings

Report of the Chief Executive

(please note the Mayor intends to take item 14 after Member questions due to public interest in this matter)   

The Mayor explained that the Leader would introduce the report and there would then be the opportunity for members to ask questions. In response to a question from a member, the Head of Legal Services confirmed that members had the right to ask the Chief Executive any questions as the author of the report.

In his introduction, the Leader referred to the long and useful debate that had taken place at Council on 24 September.  Council had agreed the seven resolutions previously agreed by representatives of all three councils at the JCS joint member steering group and in addition had agreed three other resolutions which highlighted issues for Cheltenham.  At the time he had been satisfied that these three resolutions clarified but did not contradict the seven. He agreed that there had been some confusion since the joint member steering group had met. Going away from that meeting, he had not envisaged that these seven resolutions couldn’t be added to and he apologised for any confusion with regard to Tewkesbury and Gloucester City if they had not gone away with this same understanding.

He reported that he had had a useful meeting last week with the three leaders of the councils to understand their respective positions and as a result they had all reaffirmed their commitment to making the JCS work. In addition they had all signed up to the important piece of work regarding economic growth. His aim would be to follow this with an early meeting of the Chief Executives, the Leaders and the officers leading the JCS process across the three councils.

He felt that it was important that certain issues such as household size were referred to the Council’s JCS and Planning Liaison Overview and Scrutiny Working Group to examine the facts and opinions and give their views. 

In conclusion, he emphasised that the most important thing was for the JCS to continue working across the three councils and the report before members set out how the JCS would be progressed to the Preferred Options stage.  

The Mayor invited questions on the report which are set out below together with the responses:

• Could the Chief Executive give his assurance that the additional piece of work set out in recommendation 4 could be completed in the timescales set out for the JCS which were already extremely tight? Would the newly formed working group be sufficiently qualified to deal with the complex situation they were being asked to investigate?

§         The Chief Executive responded that the officers’ view was that yes they could be achieved in the timescales but they would need the willingness on the part of members to support the process. He suggested that there should be an early review of the terms of reference, the membership and the mode of operation of the working group to ensure the matter could be progressed as quickly as possible.

• It appeared from the Planning Inspector’s website that many councils had submitted JCS documents for periods of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 14