Agenda item

Report of the Leader

The Leader introduced the report which presents an overview of the refreshed Corporate Plan for 2025-28, a reassessment of its priorities following the reintegration of housing services to reflect local needs and national development. At the same time, a two-year review of the plan shows where progress has been made and where the council needs to do more, as well as ensuring it stays ahead of the curve in a fast-changing world. 

She outlined the five key priorities:

-       Securing Our Future

-       Quality Homes, Safe and Strong Communities

-       Reducing Carbon, Achieving Net Zero, Creating Biodiversity

-       Reducing Inequalities, Supporting Better Outcomes

-       Taking Care of Your Money

She said the performance report for 2024-25 shows some real wins, with progress on affordable housing, cyber infrastructure and digital services, but also highlights challenges, for example around homelessness prevention and recruitment in planning enforcement.  

In conclusion, she reminded Members that the refreshed plan is about building on what is working, fixing what is not, and staying focussed on what matters most to Cheltenham residents.

Questions

In response to a Member’s questions, the Leader said she believed that the years referred to in the plan – Year 1, Year 2 etc. – relate to the financial year rather than the calendar year. 

Debate

Members welcomed the report, the refreshed plan, and the opportunity to pause and reflect on progress, thanking officers and Cabinet Members for their hard work in driving it forward.  They made the following points:

-       under Key Priority 4, it would be good to amend the heading to ‘continue to build relationships with local, regional, national and international visitor economy stakeholders’ in view of the Liberal Democrats and the town being outward-looking and international.  Thanks to Richard Gibson for his excellent work in the international arena, and to Andrew Lansley and Ian George of Cheltenham Festivals for their great efforts working with partner towns and raising Cheltenham’s international profile; 

-       the Corporate Plan should be used to showcase the council’s ongoing commitment to the UK’s efforts towards the United National Sustainable Development Goals, such as Key Priority 2’s working directly to achieve Goal 11, regarding sustainable cities and communities. The Member will be happy to look at this with officers and Cabinet colleagues;  

-       the shift to more vague, overarching key priorities is welcomed, but when delving deeper, there is space for more concrete targets and actions.  For example, one of the actions under Key Priority 1 is ‘clear social value targets with a main contractor by the end of Year 1’, but there is no indication of what the council would like those targets to be; and a target under Key Priority 3 is to construct the innovation centre by the end of Year 2 as a low carbon building, but with no metric defining a low-carbon building, it isn’t clear precisely what we exactly want to achieve.  The report sets out many great initiatives but doesn’t take them far enough;

-       the plan is full of good stuff, but while Key Priority 2 clearly shows how hard everyone has worked on the reintegration of housing services and the progress made, the end-of-year performance table shows the number of homeless preventions and relief with a red flag, as a result of rising and increasingly unaffordable rents in the private sector.  While stating that the council will set a benchmark for reasonable rents that private landlords will hopefully aspire to, there doesn’t appear to be anything in the plan about interventions to encourage this, and just setting a good example on its own may not be enough.  It would be good to see more proactive engagements with the private rental sector to prevent unreasonable rents, which would hopefully have a knock-on effect on homelessness.

In response to this opinion, several Members commented as follows:

-       the first priority of the Corporate Plan is to secure our future, and as part of that major housing development such as at Golden Valley and Elms Park are being brought forward.  The law of supply and demand dictates that with more houses available, property and rental costs will fall;

-       the Corporate Plan is a strategic overview of the council’s priorities, not a deep dive into the detail of each priority, many of which are already being looked at as part of the Cabinet’s workplan;

-       homelessness is complicated and not just due to high rent – mental health, dependencies, breakdown of families and other issues all contribute to the problem and are out of the council’s control. 

The Member replied that, while not an expert on housing, research has shown what other councils are doing, such as limiting Airbnbs, which are problematic in Cheltenham and have been shown in studies to drive up private rentals.  She suggested that CBC could maybe monitor Airbnbs or keep a register of all private landlords to ensure they are paying the right amount of council tax.  

The Cabinet Member for Housing and Customer Services thanked the Member for raising this important subject, and said that a report would be going to the Cabinet Housing meeting in September to look at the private rental sector, consider what the council can do to assist through proper agreements, and to give advice where needed.  She invited the Member to attend that meeting and ask questions, to ensure an open, decent and honest debate.  Regarding Airbnb, she said this is an international problem, and the government needs to take a firm line to prevent it from pushing up rents and removing housing for the people who need it.

Members made the following additional points:

-       if any Member has a suggestion or idea for tackling homelessness, they should share it direct with Cabinet colleagues and officers.  Airbnbs and the housing shortage are national government issues, but CBC is always trying to find ways to alleviate the problem locally and is proud of its actions; 

-       homelessness and the housing shortage is a very real and insidious problem and a wide issue, synonymous with national government.

The Leader said Members had covered all the points she would have made, and confirmed that the Corporate Plan is more of an outline – it needs to be short, concise and engaging to encourage people to read it thoroughly, with further detail available for anyone who is interested. 

She was happy to incorporate the word ‘international’ in KP4, and the Deputy Mayor confirmed that this is acceptable.

With that small amendment, Members voted on the recommendations and

RESOLVED THAT: 

1.    the corporate planreview andend ofyear performancereport is noted;

2.    the refreshed CorporatePlan 2025to 2028 is endorsed.