Agenda and minutes

To agree the minutes of the previous meeting.

Action points from the meeting dated 2^nd February

The minutes from the meeting of 2^nd February were agreed by the members present to be signed by the Chairman at the next available opportunity.

JDoe confirmed that he had sent information to Cllr McDowell.

To receive any apologies for absence.

Apologies were received from Cllr McDowell (Cllr England substitute) & Cllr Barrett (Cllr Peter as a substitute)

To receive any declarations of interest.

Jan Rook – Climate Report

Portfolio Holder decision call in - Littering and PSPO enforcement private contractor pilot scheme

Portfolio Holder decision call in - Littering and PSPO enforcement private contractor Pilot Scheme

Cllr Birnie invited Cllr Freeman and Cllr Allen to speak for 5 minutes each regarding the matter which they had called in.

Cllr Freeman wished to raise a number of concerns and to justify why he felt strongly that this action needs to be called in to the scrutiny committee and why it was too momentous to be a unilateral portfolio holder decision.

Firstly, the goals and objectives of the decision were unclear and contentious and the Council should be clear what the objectives were. If the objectives were to reduce the instances of antisocial behaviour then it first needed to consider the body of evidence that shows that privatising enforcement leads to an increase in antisocial behaviour as well as an escalation in the seriousness of the offending. Using a private contractor incentivises anti-social behaviour. If any were genuinely observed, the contractor’s initial reaction would be to issue a fine. Contrast this with a policeman or a council employee whose initial action is going to be to discourage the behaviour from happening or from recurring. If a contractor observes possible anti-social behaviour he is more likely to treat it as an infringement and to issue a fine rather than be sure an actual infringement has occurred. Finally, even if the contractor is successful in reducing one type of anti-social behaviour, he is likely to increase occurrences of other types of anti-social behaviour in order to safeguard the levels of fines that can be issued. This would almost definitely have an effect of front loading the contract. Even if his concerns were incorrect and the initiative was successful, the contractor would issue more fines at the beginning of the contract causing a reduction in offending. This means the contractor would then be operating at a loss. Would the Council then be trapped into paying for the shortfall in the fines that were being issued? These points need to be addressed by very clear target levels and periods of review. At what point can it be stated that the problem has reduced such that an external contractor was no longer required? Despite many examples of how problems grow rather than reduce when incentivised, the Council needed targets so what the contractors were challenged to achieve was clear and if the Council were doing this purely to generate additional revenue from residents then it needed to be honest and upfront about that.

His second concern was that of reasonableness. It is unreasonable to predict that antisocial behaviour would reduce by imposing fines. Advice from police is consistent that engagement is better than enforcement. Evidence obtained from Bedford indicated that enforcement officers were universally despised and this reflected on the Council. Using a warden service that engaged residents and discouraging anti-social behaviour would be more effective and much more reasonable. An employed warden service would be seen as accountable whereas a plastic police force would not. The more street-savvy  ...  view the full minutes text for item 20.

FJump presented the report, noting that this report presented the position for the council as forecast at the end of December. The Committee would see the report forecasted an overall pressure for the council of 3.2 million, but this had been superseded by the Covid update report that had gone to Cabinet earlier in the current month and the figure reported there was around 2.4 million. So in terms of the overall position of the council the 2.4 million was the pressure that the Members should bear in mind. The nature and the value of the pressures that were identified for this particular scrutiny committee area still apply so the information provided was still very much applicable and the position was being driven largely by pressure in waste services against employee transportation costs and a shortfall against income targets on the capital side. For schemes relating to this scrutiny committee’s area an outturn was forecast that was broadly on budget for the end of the financial year, with a relatively small overspend.

Cllr Silwal referred to page 24 point 4.2 and maintenance costs. He asked if the total should be 280k. He asked how long the maintenance costs would take for the vehicles.

FJump said he was correct that the total should be 280k. Also the offset underspend was not included in the narrative so where there was a total of 280k pressure another 30k underspend could be expected. She referred to the vehicle maintenance costs and explained that the Council was incurring maintenance costs as they phase out the aging fleet. This had been happening over a fair period, but those costs should reduce as they move to full implementation of the new vehicles. She could not give a time scale but would ask the service to provide an absolute timescale.

Action Point:  FJump to provide the committee with timetables for maintenance costs.

Cllr Birnie referred to core funding 3.6 covering additional funding which was mainly government grants and asked how the finance department treated this kind of income. He assumed that it went into the general budget and was not apportioned between the different departments as some offsetting of overspends in our area would otherwise be seen.

FJump confirmed that this was correct.  The aim was to present the full picture of the pressures within the service, but additional funding was presented separately and not offset.

Cllr Stevens referred to paragraph 3.4 which noted that additional funding was expected under the Government’s income guarantee scheme and asked when this funding could be expected or whether it had already arrived.

FJump responded that it had already started to arrive in instalments but not the full amount as yet, which would come at the end of the financial year.

Cllr Timmis referred to page 24 item 4.3 which talked about contractors having raised costs during Covid and asked whether they would go down post Covid.

FJump said that her expectation would be that they would but she would like to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 21.

JDoe summarised some of the items in the report. He referred to paragraphs 3 to 7 of the report, noting that planning fees income had picked up quite considerably over the remainder of the year and was almost breaking even and there had been a substantial rise in the number of planning applications. However, income targets for land charges had always been a challenge, but there was a sustained level of property searches coming in as the property market remained buoyant. This would need to be monitored closely to see whether the strong performance of the market continued, particularly since the stamp duty holiday had been extended in the recent budget.  

Turning to Development Management performance from paragraph 8 onwards, performance in turning around planning applications was generally high, the main exception in the quarterly outturn being the appeals. These were running at only a 50% success rate for the 12 cases in this quarter. The department monitors appeals quite closely and the latest appeals update that went to the Development Management Committee was included in the report. The department was also sending out details of the appeal decisions with Members News so members could be appraised early of appeal outcomes. There was a common thread in the 6 appeals around the size of new buildings and extensions and these may have been cases where the inspector had taken a different view to the Council as it could be a subjective opinion. However those particular trends would continue to be monitored to see whether it was just peculiar to this quarter or whether was something which needed to be addressed through the way appeals were handled.

Finally, he addressed enforcement, where the turnaround time to get out to site was down and was likely to remain down for some time because of the different lockdowns which had  restricted the ability of officers to get to site in a timely way. Coupled with a rising level in the enforcement caseload, a backlog had built up. The department had put in processes to tackle this on a geographical basis and he wanted to reassure Members that top priority cases would be prioritised in a review that was just about to start on reducing the backlog.

Cllr Timmis referred to page 30, PE02 and the site visits and the inability to complete them and commented that it would have been helpful for a visit to have taken place. Also in LC04 on page 30, the report mentioned the effect of stamp duty in 2021, but this holiday only lasts until Sept 2021. Thirdly it mentioned on page 31 a rise in the number of planning applications and Cllr Timmis wondered if this could be related to the decrease in the number of houses being proposed for the new local plan.

JDoe Responded to the first point on indicator PE02, commenting that these visits were purely for planning enforcement as opposed to planning applications. They were very different. The enforcement mentioned does require an  ...  view the full minutes text for item 22.

EWalker went through the report and shared the key points. There had been a reduction in the KPI for high at risk food premises and the quarter 3 result is at 61% and the year to date at 40%. The main reasons for this were that the Officers had been diverted to Covid-19 enforcement work, the food standards agency had suspended the food inspection programme during the first lockdown and their inability to visit certain premises which had been closed during the most recent lockdown. Another reason was the precautionary reduction in visits to higher risk settings such as care homes. However, 95% of fly tips were visited by an enforcement officer within 3 working days, which continued to be a priority. The environmental health team had been very busy with the Covid-19 outbreak plan in quarter 3 setting up test and trace for complex contact tracing, which had gone live in December and 3 staff had been recruited to this service, which is funded by the HCC contained fund. Supermarkets had also been targeted with Covid compliance checks.

Cllr Birnie asked EWalker to clarify “the HCC contained fund”.

EWalker explained that this was a fund held by the County Council or the Local Resilience Forum aimed at the containment of Covid -19. The team had made a successful bid for that fund which also covered the Covid compliance officers.

EWalker continued that visits had been made to high risk premises, including distribution centres, which had experienced more than one case of Covid within the workforce. This had been followed up with visits to hairdressers and barbers for Covid compliance. Joint visits had also been carried out with the police, a working group on self-isolation checks on people who should be isolating had been set up and beer mats had been provided to the licencing team to remind patrons of social distancing rules in pubs. In addition, mask compliance checks at supermarket had been carried out where 97% of 1000 people checked had been compliant and complaints by members of the public had also been followed up

The Environmental Health team had successfully prosecuted Hemel Food Centre in the Marlowes for Health and Safety offences relating to a breach of a prohibition notice. This resulted in a £30,000 fine plus £4,000 costs awarded to the Council.

The Corporate Health and Safety team had continued to support departments in drafting and redrafting Covid-19 risk assessments in line with the changing guidelines and the 400 pieces of recent legislation that had been issued regarding Covid-19.

In Q3 the operations team had issued 16 fixed penalty notices for fly tipping and 3 FPN’s for duty of care offences and one littering FPN and 6 vehicles were seized and removed. The enforcement team had a significant backlog with 6 cases pending prosecution but delayed in the courts due to Covid.

She was pleased to report that Russel Ham a Team Leader had been awarded a staff award and that Colin Lee-Dade, Pest Control Officer,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 23.

MGaynor noted that the report covered the national and international context including the government’s 10 point plan. There was information on the survey Learning from Lockdown that had been done, and on progress with their work within the community. The addendum proposed a move away from a very outdated ISO 14001 environmental management tool to a process delivering far more by work on challenging the climate emergency.

Cllr Birnie considered the report to be exhaustive. However he found it difficult to follow the thread. Whoever wrote the report kept jumping backwards and forwards between different strands of the argument.

Cllr Silwal referred to item 5.3 and the Green Community Grant scheme where applications could be made for up to £2,000 out of a total pot of £10,000 and asked whether, if there were more demand , that would be added to the total pot.

MGaynor said that the proposal was to double the pot to £20,000 this year from within the existing budget, which will allow more schemes to start off. The scheme had encouraged a huge amount of interest from lots of groups and played a crucial part in getting the community to take ownership and a lot of people were desperately committed to these issues. He had the authority to double the budget for this year, which did mean a reduction in other monies available on other issues like corporate research, but if more money were needed, the team would ask for it.

Cllr Silwal said double is fine, but demand may go up

MGaynor hoped that it would.

Cllr Birnie asked if this concerned the Green Home Grant vouchers

Cllr Silwal advised that it did not.

MGaynor explained that this initiative encouraged community groups to bid against criteria that had been established to carry out works which would have a lasting effect and probably stimulate more action from these groups.

Cllr Stevens welcomed the report updating efforts  to counter the climate emergency, but he needed some clarification on, for example,  the current Climate Action Network on page 65 referencing a number of working groups, one of which was a Sustainable Transport group (item 6).

MGaynor clarified that there was a proposal to work towards establishing the Community Action Network within the community, which had nothing to do with the Council’s own work. These were Council Officer subgroups working on specific themes, so the Climate Action Networks were not yet developed but were part of the plans in terms of community action. Subgroups were the particular strands aiming to ensuring we reach zero carbon by 2030.

Cllr Stevens said that in Berkhamstead there were also a number of subgroups looking at the same topic areas. He suggested that something should be done about liaison to avoid duplication and encourage cross fertilization.

MGaynor said the aim of the network was to get all of those groups communicating with each other. The Council’s focus within its subgroups was to deliver the pledge that had been made specifically that the Councils  ...  view the full minutes text for item 24.

Cllr Birnie said that the report was fairly comprehensive and asked if anyone had any additions or corrections to that programme. He added that he had heard from one of the Liberal Democrat councillors about plastics, but this item was already included in the work programme.

Cllr Silwal advised that this was Cllr Hobson

Cllr Hobson complained that she had raised this several times. She had originally raised it in response to residents writing to her about their concerns over where their plastic goes. At the time when they received training for their role as committee members, one of the sessions included the right that they have to hold an enquiry to which they can invite people. They cannot compel attendance like a select committee of central government, but they can invite people in and quiz them about where the plastic goes on behalf of residents. She had written to the Chairman and to Member Support and had brought this up on 2 or 3 occasions. But this was dismissed at the last committee saying it was already on the agenda, whereas the only thing that is on the work programme is an update from the officer who is in charge of plastics. So just because she was frankly fed up with asking for this, could they get the committee to agree that they do not believe that they should be using their powers to hold an inquiry into where plastic goes in the next couple of years? So, in the lifetime of this council, this committee does not want to pursue on behalf of their residents a proper inquiry into where their plastic goes. She felt it would be a missed opportunity. She thought it would show that this committee had teeth. They had asked a lot of questions, they had played some great games this evening as they often did but, as she said, she felt this was a missed opportunity to show what political scrutiny can do for the residents. So her request to the Chairman was to ask the committee just to confirm that they have no interest in pursuing this in the next couple of years, then she could draw a line under it and stop asking.

Cllr Anderson said that this report had already been written and he felt that people were getting steamed up over something that was already in progress. He explained that the first annual report on waste analysis had stated where waste went, in particular what was sent overseas and this report went to the Herts Waste Panel earlier this year. Had there been any environment item on the agenda tonight it would have been presented. He thought that they have all been grouped together for a further meeting and had the agenda not been full it would have been dealt with tonight, so he did not think there was any need for people to get worked up about it.

Cllr Hobson objected that a report from the Officer on  ...  view the full minutes text for item 25.