Agenda item

The Leader invited Members to share items of interest since the last meeting.

The Cabinet Member for Safety and Communities said that:

-       the youth café has been successfully launched at Smokey Joe’s in Bennington Street, with the first session attended by about 20 young people; it will continue to open weekly until April;

-       she was thrilled to attend the Cheltenham Educational Partnership with Lives of Colour and all 10 senior schools in Cheltenham.  The focus was on race equity, and it was good to listen to some incredibly insightful ideas;

-       the No Child Left Behind awards took place recently, with 250 guests, celebrating all the amazing work carried out in the community, and featuring great performances from Belmont School Choir and the Everyman Youth Theatre.  Thanks to all the organisations who work so hard for NCLB all year round;

-       there has been a great response to the air quality consultation, with comments from hundreds of people.  Thanks to everyone – the consultation feedback will provide the basis for the new air quality strategy later in the year;

-       the recent acts of remembrance to mark Holocaust Memorial Day were thought-provoking and sombre, and a reminder of how important it is to love and respect each other.

The Cabinet Member for Waste, Recycling, Parks, Gardens and Green Open Space reported that:

-       two good recycling initiatives are about to start:  kerbside collection of tetrapacks across the whole borough will start in April, and kerbside collection of flexi-plastics will be rolled out ward by ward around the town, with uptake monitored and the process managed.  Households will be notified, and provided with a roll of bags;

-       following the closure of the bring bank site at Sainsbury’s, the council is struggling to find alternative sites in that part of town; unfortunately there is not much opportunity, not least because of the inconsiderate way in which many people treat them.  It would be helpful to encourage residents to use them properly, but in the meantime, the search goes on for new sites;

-       the household recycling centre is the county council’s responsibility, and we await with interest an options report about providing new facilities and hope for good news from.  The county will have to provide the funding; it has a budget of £3.5m allocated for household recycling;

-       Ubico crews continue to work on gulleys and in parks to clear them of leaves;

-       the greenspace team continues to work with volunteers, including the new Roamers group, planting a hedge at St Peter’s last week and working at Springfield Park tomorrow;

-       the council is continuing to address the long waiting list for allotments, by investing in sites at Midwinters and Hayden Lane, increasing the number of plots available, and improving security;

-       a new SUDs scheme at Elmfield will be launched on Thursday – a great scheme involving the local community in St Pauls, to make the recreation area more usable all year round, having drained off excess water.

The Cabinet Member for Housing and Customer Services said colleagues will know about her involvement in ensuring that tenants and residents – particularly women - are safe, and it is always a great pleasure to share with other areas what we do in Cheltenham to support women and girls.  She will bring a report to the next meeting of Cabinet  to showcase this work.

The Cabinet Member for Climate Emergency shared the following:

-       he has been elected to chair the Climate Leadership Gloucestershire group for the next 12 months.  This is an administrative role, not a strategic one;

-       the group has set up bi-monthly meetings of Cabinet Members and officers to discuss to how to carry out action plans and ways to work with other districts to accelerate reduction in carbon emissions. The action plans will be reviewed with the new Climate and Decarbonisation Manager as soon as he is established;

-       we have accepted funding for the next stage of the heat network project, to produce more detailed designs, the next stage before the actual project is launched;

-       he attended a lovely event at Leckhampton High School, where six schools took part in a Dragons Den-style challenge, pitching got funding for environmental schemes at their own schools.  All six schools were awarded money;

-       through Climate Leadership Gloucestershire fund, our climate team has secured money to develop a software package to help small to medium-sized enterprises to decarbonise; these are currently given no clear direction and this will help them put in a pathway which can be shared with procurement partners if successful;

-       another heat pump demonstration in Lidl car park has been organised, to continue engagement with residents as well as businesses.

The Cabinet Member for Finance and Assets was pleased to report that planning permission has been granted for 70 new homes on the former Monkscroft School site – affordable homes of mixed sizes and tenures, based on existing shortages on the waiting list.  The development also includes new greenspace including a green promenade, growing area and recreation space, which will provide essential wildlife habitats.

The Leader shared that the second stage of the local government review consultation has gone live, and asked Members to encourage residents to respond – we need their feedback to know what they want to see happen next.