Issue - meetings

To receive announcements and business brought forward by the Mayor, Leader, and Members of the Cabinet or the Chief Executive.

4.1       By the Mayor:

4.2       By the Chief Executive:

4.3       By the Group Leaders:  Any apologies for absence

4.4       Council Leader and Members of the Cabinet:

 Councillor Williams             Corporate and Contracted Services

4.1       By the Mayor:

Welcome to the new Chief Executive of Dacorum Borough Council, Claire Hamilton.

4.2       By the Chief Executive:

The Chief Executive thanked the Mayor for the introduction and welcome and said she looked forward to meeting everyone in person as soon as she was able to.

4.3       By the Group Leaders:

Councillor Williams gave apologies on behalf of Councillor Arslan. 

4.4       Council Leader and Members of the Cabinet:

(Full details are in the minutes under Announcements of the Leader and Cabinet).

4.1       By the Mayor:

Welcome to the new Chief Executive of Dacorum Borough Council, Claire Hamilton.

4.2       By the Chief Executive:

The Chief Executive thanked the Mayor for the introduction and welcome and said she looked forward to meeting everyone in person as soon as she was able to.

4.3       By the Group Leaders:

Councillor Williams gave apologies on behalf of Councillor Arslan. 

4.4       Council Leader and Members of the Cabinet:

Councillor Williams, Leader of the Council

The Leader said he had no updates to report but was happy to take questions.

Questions:

Councillor Hollinghurst said at the last meeting he asked if DBC had received a questionnaire from the Centre for Public Scrutiny on the climate emergency and Councillor Williams had agreed he was going to circulate the completed questionnaire to all members. He asked if this had been done as he didn’t recall seeing a response from Councillor Williams.

The Leader apologised as he had chased this up but hadn’t responded to Councillor Hollinghurst. He advised that the questionnaire wasn’t sent to DBC; he believed given the nature of the questionnaire which focuses on transport, social and care matters that it was sent to the upper tier authorities so DBC weren’t sent a copy or invited to complete it.

Councillor Hollinghurst was grateful for that answer. However he suggested that we could complete the questionnaire anyway to show the direction of travel of our evolved thinking on the matter.

The Leader said he was sure that could be arranged.

Councillor Tindall noted from the forward plan that it was the intention of Cabinet to receive a report on equality and diversity and ask for confirmation that anti-Semitism and the adoption of the IHRA definition will be included in the report.

The Leader confirmed he was the portfolio holder responsible for that report and he had already discussed it with officers to be certain that the item is included in our equality and diversity strategy.

Councillor Anderson, Portfolio Holder for Environmental Services

The Portfolio Holder firstly paid tribute to the staff that have managed to keep our refuse collection service going despite the ongoing covid-19 crisis. The Health and Safety Executive and Covid authorities have checked our activities ensuring that we are keeping to national rules that have been set. It means we’ve had a large increase in costs and therefore will go over budget this year, but the bottom line is that the council can be very proud of actually managing to keep all our refuse services and other services based at Cupid Green going and he was very grateful to everyone involved for that.

He highlighted the revised arrangements for refuse collections over the Christmas period. This information can be found on the website. If individuals do not have access to the internet they can phone the council to request a printed refuse calendar. We are trying to encourage people to use online services rather than have printed copies where possible. It’s important to bear  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4