Agenda and minutes

Councillor Murch

Councillors Murch and Britter had given their apologies.  Councillor Reid attended as a substitute for Councillor Britter.

Councillor Hay declared a non-pecuniary interest in agenda item 10 (Review of the Council’s Performance at end of 2014-15) as a Trustee of the Cheltenham Trust.

Councillor Ryder declared a non-pecuniary interest in agenda item 12 (Updates from scrutiny task groups) as a Trustee of Third Sector Services.

27 April 2015

The minutes of the last meeting had been circulated with the agenda.

Upon a vote it was unanimously

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting held on the 27 April 2015 be agreed and signed as an accurate record.

None had been received.

No matters had been referred to the committee.

Health Community and Care O&S Committee / Economic Development Scrutiny Committee – written update from Councillor Clucas attached

Police and Crime Panel - verbal update from Councillor McCloskey

Councillor Clucas had provided a written update on the Health Community and Care Committee and Economic Development Scrutiny Committee.  This was taken as read and members were asked to contact Councillor Clucas directly with any queries.

Councillor McCloskey advised the committee that the Police and Crime Panel had not met since the last meeting of this committee, as a result of the elections.  The panel and its new members would meet on the 10 July for a briefing and then formally on the 16 July.  She used this opportunity to raise the issue of membership of this panel, which legislation dictated should be politically balanced, but with annual elections across the county this resulted in regularly revised membership and a loss of knowledge and expertise as a result, which she felt, was to the detriment of the panel itself.  She advised the committee that she would be attending the Police and Crime Panel conference in Nottingham on 3 July. 

An update from the Cabinet on key issues for Cabinet Members which may be of interest to Overview and Scrutiny and may inform the O&S workplan

The Leader introduced the briefing which concentrated on the matter of devolution.  The letter from Leadership Gloucestershire would be drafted imminently and would outline interest in areas of further devolution for the county and would include possible changes to the governance structures.  Mark Hawthorne, the Leader of Gloucestershire County Council had confirmed that he would be happy to talk through a ‘wish list’ and whilst the government seemed keen on directly elected mayors, with the suggestion that they could replace the Police and Crime Commissioner role, there was no support for this in Gloucestershire.  Members needed to decide what they wanted for Cheltenham and an option could be for a task group to consider this further.  He also felt that, assuming cross party agreement could be reached, a motion to the July meeting of Council would be a useful way of progressing the debate.

The Chairman reminded members that a seminar on devolution had been arranged for 2:30pm the following day and that members were also welcome to attend the 5:00pm seminar in Tewkesbury if this was more convenient.  The seminar would be facilitated by Phil Swan who had done a lot of work on devolution at the County Council and he was sure that members would find these sessions useful. 

There were no questions or comments from members of the committee.

Julie Sergant (30 minutes maximum)

The Chairman introduced the item which he had himself added to the work plan.  He welcomed the representatives from the Sandford Lido and explained that they would make a short presentation.  In accordance with the council’s witness charter, questions had been submitted and in turn, responses had been circulated in advance of the meeting. These were taken as read and are attached at Appendix 1.

Keith Norris and Julie Sargent from the Sandford Lido, talked through a presentation (Appendix 2).

Keith Norris and Julie Sargent from the Sandford Lido gave the following responses to member questions:

·         The Lido attempted to open negotiations about the lease when they were applying for Heritage Lottery funding but the council had wanted to renegotiate terms and at the time the focus had needed to be on the Heritage Lottery bid.  Now was the time for them to reopen negotiations as they felt that with only 5 years remaining on the current lease, this would hinder their ability to apply for funding. 

·         A balance needed to be achieved between commercial gain and health & safety.  The main pool could accommodate 456 people and the small pool 40 but there could be 3000-4000 people on site on any given day and they had to mindful of risk.  Research was ongoing into ways of monitoring use at any one time.  Consideration had been given to a coloured wristband system but this would very difficult to manage.  When demand rose on ‘heat wave’ days, the Lido would slow entry but this often resulted in long queues which posed health and safety issues in itself.   

·         They did not know enough about the Cheltenham Trust to know whether there could be any synergy with the Lido but did stress that leisure centres such as Leisure@ used dry activities to fund the pools, whereas the Lido used parking.  The Lido already worked hard at advertising and outreach work. 

·         There was a lot of natural shading on site as a result of the landscaping and people were more aware of the dangers of sun exposure.  Induction training covered ways for staff to communicate concerns to patrons and the Lido had extended opening hours from 9.30am on a Tuesday and Thursday to allow families with small children to avoid the hottest times of the day. 

Julie Sargent and Keith Norris thanked the committee for giving them the opportunity to showcase their achievements and aspirations for the future. 

Members of the committee expressed their support for what one of them described as a heritage asset and hoped that negotiations could be opened up again. 

No decisions were required.

Martin Surl (60 minutes maximum)

The Chairman introduced the item which he had himself added to the work plan.  He welcomed Martin Surl, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Gloucestershire and explained that in accordance with the council’s witness charter, questions had been submitted in advance of the meeting.  Martin Surl had not submitted written responses, instead preferring to provide verbal responses (see table below).

Richard Gibson, Strategy and Engagement Manager – review performance and comment as necessary

The meeting reconvened at 20:05.

The Strategy and Engagement Manager introduced the performance report for the end of the financial year 2014-15, which would be tabled at Cabinet on the 14 July 2015.  He explained that the covering report summarised how the council had performed in regard to milestones and measures set out in the 2014-15 action plan.  84 milestones had been identified in the 2014-15 action plan and of these 67 (80%) were complete.  Some of the milestones were not achieved within the financial year but had robust plans in place in order that the milestones would be achieved within the first quarter of 2015-16, some were not achieved and others were closed as the project was no longer required.  There was 1 which was not updated; this related to the car parking strategy and the committee were advised that the Director responsible for this particular milestone, the Director Environment and Regulatory Services, had advised that this was due to the complexity of the issue and had committed to circulating a briefing to O&S members explaining the current position.  The 2014-15 action plan identified 59 key indicators which were used to track progress; of which the council was directly accountable for 42 and 7 of which were community-based indicators, where no targets had been set.  Of the 42 CBC indicators, 11 targets had been missed. 

The Strategy and Engagement Manager gave the following responses to member questions;

·         Leisure@ used a significant amount of energy and had recently undertaken a number of energy saving initiatives, but there was no incentive for the Trust to reduce emissions other than the need for them to deliver within budget.  They bought their electricity through the council as the council was able to purchase electricity at a better rate than the Trust could directly but this arrangement was mutually beneficial as the council only qualified for the better rate because of the amount of electricity that Leisure@ used. 

·         The target relating to the number of planning applications refused was used as a means of measuring the quality of the pre-application advice.  Ultimately the lower the number the better in that sense but he took on board the suggestion that a percentage of the raw figure would be more meaningful.

A member accepted that the car parking strategy was a complicated issue but felt that the perception of the public could be that the council did not have any form of  strategy.  As such, he suggested that not only should the committee receive a briefing on the current situation, but also, that all members receive regular updates. 

The committee also agreed that an update on the drug dealing milestone would be added to the work plan for a future meeting. 

No decision was required.     

Cabinet Member Corporate Services will give a verbal update on the draft strategy

The Chairman introduced this item by explaining that there had been discussion about withdrawing the item from the agenda as a result of no covering report having been produced.  The Cabinet Member Corporate Services had explained that GOSS hoped that all partners (Cheltenham, Cotswold, Forest of Dean and West Oxfordshire) consider the strategy at their July Cabinet meetings and as such, the Chairman had agreed that the Cabinet Member could instead provide a verbal update in support of the draft strategy. 

The Cabinet Member Corporate Services introduced the draft Procurement and Contract Management Strategy which covered all four GOSS partner authorities, as well as CBH and Ubico and would replace the existing CBC Corporate Procurement Strategy.

GOSS considered it necessary to develop a common approach to achieve effective procurement across all partners and this included a shared procurement strategy.  Two pieces of legislation (the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 which were laid in Parliament on 5 February 2015 and came into force on 26 February 2015 and the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012) had also raised a number of amendments.   He felt that the Social Value Act was particularly interesting as it placed a duty on local authorities, at the ‘pre-procurement’ phase of procuring services, to consider how and what was being procured might improve the economic, social and environmental well-being in the community.  Another interesting addition, and particularly relevant to O&S given that they had raised something on the issue when he had last updated the committee in October 2014, was the reference to small to medium enterprises (SMEs) and the addition of an aim for the strategy to stimulate the local economy and support local businesses and communities.  He acknowledged that the committee had not been given very much time to consider the strategy and that there was only a short period of time before it was scheduled for consideration at Cabinet, but reiterated that the delay had been due to the new legislation. 

The Cabinet Member Corporate Services gave the following responses to member questions;

·         The council did not have a preferred supplier list, however Cheltenham had developed a call-off contract; a list was developed for a specific tender with a list of list of preferred contractors.  The Cabinet Member would look at whether any other districts in the county used a preferred supplier list. 

·         Internal Audit would monitor performance and achievements and report back to the Audit Committee.  The suggestion was that the O&S Committee could review whether culture was changing and how those using the strategy felt it was working.  It was suggested that 12 months would be suitable time to undertake this review.

 A member echoed comments he had made in the past, that the culture of the organisation needed to change so that contracts were not of such a scale that smaller, local businesses couldn’t bid, though he admitted that a larger number of small contracts would require more in the way of managing. 

 - To include an interim report from the scrutiny task group Shopmobility

The Democracy Officer introduced the scrutiny task group summary which had been circulated with the agenda.

Cheltenham Spa Railway Station STG: recommendations had been agreed and the draft report was being finalised.  This would be done by email and was on target for completion for the September meeting of the committee.

Cycling and Walking STG: the group were scheduled to meet for the last time on Monday 6 July and work on the draft report was progressing well. 

Broadband: Councillors Britter, Babbage and Whyborn had volunteered for a possible task group.  Gloucester City had been contacted to ask whether any members were interested in undertaking joint scrutiny of the issue, but no response had been received as yet.  The main objective of the group would be to establish where and what the issues were in relation to slow broadband, though the terms of reference could not be finalised until Gloucester City had made a decision about whether they wanted to participate.  

Pub Closures: no action had been taken on this issue, indicating that it was not a priority for the committee and as such it would be removed from the summary.

Shopmobility: Councillor Payne referred members to the report which was circulated prior to the meeting.  He explained that Shopmobility had been served notice to quit its existing premises in the Beechwood Arcade by June 2015.  This had since been extended to November, but given the urgency, the Chief Executive, in consultation with the Chair and Vice-Chair of the O&S Committee, had set up a task group.  The task group had met twice and established that the service, which was wholly funded by the council and did not make a profit, was used by 350 people who either paid an annual membership fee of £28 or £7.50 one-off payment (which automatically reverted to an annual membership if used 4 times or more in a 12 month period).  Each use of a mobility scooter cost the council £21.  Asked where the service would be ideally located, those that ran the service had said, the ground floor of the Regent Arcade.  The Regent Arcade, along with two other locations; Henrietta Car Park and the Horse and Groom site at 30 St George’s Place were considered by the task group as possible future locations for the service and were prioritised in that order.  The group concluded that the Shopmobility service should continue and that the priority of the coming three months should be finding a suitable location to relocate to, with minimum disruption.  Beyond that, a more detailed review of the current service would be required, to include a full financial analysis of both the cost of the service and the fees charged.  It was possible that this could then form part of a commissioning exercise and/or partnership arrangement. 

In response to member questions, Councillor Payne explained that many of the possible partners for this service, including Third Sector Services, wanted to first know, where the service would be sited before  ...  view the full minutes text for item 12.

Members reviewed the work plan, which set out what was scheduled for consideration by the committee at its next meeting.  This included the LGA Peer Review, where members would have to consider progress against the action plan and whether there was any value in the Review Team returning to carry out any follow-up.  The committee felt that all members should be invited to take part in the 2020 vision item, where consideration would be given to the business case.  The Lead members would meet to finalise the agenda in due course.

21 September 2015

The next meeting was scheduled for Monday 21 September 2015.