Agenda item

Cabinet Agreed

1. To approve the public launch of the Hemel Place Strategy

2. To delegate authority to the Strategic Director (Place) to agree details of the Hemel Champions’ Programme including the launch Date

3. To delegated authority to the Strategic Director (Place) to agree the approach and timing of community and investor engagement following consultation with the Hemel Place Board

Decision

1. To approves the public launch of the Hemel Place Strategy

2. Delegated authority to the Strategic Director (Place) to agree details of the Hemel Champions’ Programme including the launch Date

3. Delegated authority to the Strategic Director (Place) to agree the approach and timing of community and investor engagement following consultation with the Hemel Place Board

Corporate Objectives

Statutory Officer Comments:

Monitoring Officer:

There are no legal implications arising from this report.

S151 Officer:

The Hemel Place Programme has an approved budget to fund these proposals.

Advice

Cllr Anderson introduced the report, He said that members would be aware that they set up the Hemel Place Strategy as a major exercise to review opportunities for Hemel as a place, working with their partners across the board to look at opportunities post pandemic and planning constraints with the future in mind. It did not have a lot to add to the report apart from thank the officers for the amount of work and effort that had been put I to the marketing, and commonplace the consultants that they had commissioned to do that for them.

S Whelan wanted to take Cabinet through the three recommendations on the public launch of the place strategy and the details around the Hemel champions and around the investor engagement consultation with the Hemel Place Board.

In terms of the report itself, it sets the clear direction of travel for Hemel Hempstead. It sets out 10 key themes in para 3.1, the delivery will be really important theme around the Hemel Place Strategy and this would be an action plan which would have the oversight of the Hemel Place Board as well as governance within Dacorum Borough Council. She said the critical thing around the Hemel Place Strategy work would be around flexibility, to adapt the strategy as they were going through.

S Whelan referred to appendix a and advised she had left the members a mini story book and business card so they could see the visuals in reals life and that was what appendix a would take them through. They have visuals with the green background, visuals with a blue background and visuals with a purple background, which were more designed for the investor market. They had tested these at UK Reef with positive results. Her thoughts were that the green background visuals would be the overriding visuals that they could take going forward and that clicks in with the theme of Life is Greener.

They were looking at early July for the launch of the Hemel Place work, that would include an open invitation to become a Hemel champion and to attend Hemel Champion type sessions where people would be able to hear a strategic update from Dacorum Borough Council and for Dacorum to hear updates from the community, partners, from all their sectors as well as horizon scanning together. This will really build on the work they have done in the old town for example and being able to understand the priorities from all different sectors of the community and to be able to work together to improve places.

The key aspect around the Hemel Champions will be to educate colleagues as well as teachers of schools.

As second call to action would include engagement with the communities to be able to think about them and be able to ask qualitative questions, such as how they feel about Hemel, their levels of aspiration, what could support them further, what’s the best thing about Hemel and what could ass more value.

S Whelan concluded that the three recommendations of the report was to be able to seek approval to launch the strategy and then to take forward that consultation with the Hemel Champions, she was happy to take questions.

Cllr Tindall asked if the process was that, the report would go to the scrutiny committee before Cabinet or would it go straight to Cabinet.

SWhelan said that it would most likely go to Overview & Scrutiny, as the report would have a greater level of detail. When items seeks permission to launch a strategy they would expect when looking at a consultation to analyse that and have that time with scrutiny before it goes to Cabinet,

Recommendation agreed