Issue - meetings

The committee to review their current workplan and decide how they are going to populate their future workplan

The chair referred members to the discussion paper and the latest scrutiny workplan.

Members agreed that it would be helpful if the forward plan was circulated with the agendas for this meeting.

Councillor Hay made a proposal for a scrutiny task group regarding pub closures. He reminded members that in March 2012 he had brought a motion to Council to look at the ways the authority may be able to protect "community pubs" from closing and being redeveloped for some other use, mainly housing.  The motion had been passed and included the action to investigate ways in which the authority might be able to adopt policies and procedures in both licensing and planning which may help preserve these community assets.  He suggested a task group could be set up to look at what the authority could do by reviewing its policies and procedures. They should be able to take evidence from licensing and planning, Cabinet members and officers and it should also gather information from outside bodies such as CAMRA and look at government and parliamentary debate on the issue.  The task group should be no more than 10 members and should be able to report back early in 2014.  The outcome would be a improved set of policies and procedures to help preserve the "community pub".

Members supported this as a topic but suggested that lifestyle changes could be the cause. However they felt it was worth investigating why landlords were finding it difficult financially and if community pubs were closed whether this left any gaps in the community. They asked Councillor Hay to work with the Democratic Services Manager to produce a one-page strategy for the review.

Councillor Britter was keen to set up a task group to look at the use of 106 monies and the transparency of the process.

Councillor Driver suggested a scrutiny task group should be set up to look at Planning Enforcement and she was concerned that officer support had been cut down to a minimum. There were some links between this and 106 agreements.  Councillor Hay supported this proposal and cited his previous example of enforcement relating to paving over driveways and gave another example of the installation of satellite dishes where the council needed to tackle the installers rather than individual households. Councillor Wheeler highlighted the problem with some businesses giving householders incorrect advice regarding when they need planning permission.

Resolved that Councillors Britter and Hay would work with the Democratic Services Manager to produce one-page strategies for these suggested task groups which could then be brought back to this committee for agreement and initiation.