Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Monday 1 December 2025, 2:00pm

Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Monday, 1st December 2025 at 2:00pm

Agenda

Slides

Transcript

Map

Resources

Twitter

Forums

Speakers

Feedback

Votes

Speaking:

Start of webcast

Share this agenda point

Councillor Gina Blomefield
Julia Gibson, Officer
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Tony Slater
Councillor Nick Bridges
Councillor Michael Vann
Councillor Clare Turner
Councillor Angus Jenkinson
Councillor Gina Blomefield

3 Declarations of Interest

Share this agenda point

4 Minutes

Share this agenda point

Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Angus Jenkinson
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Gina Blomefield

5 Matters Arising from Minutes of the Previous Meeting

Share this agenda point

Actions from OS 17 Nov DS updates

David Stanley, Deputy CEO
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor David Cunningham
David Stanley, Deputy CEO
Councillor Gina Blomefield

6 Chair's Announcements

Share this agenda point

David Stanley, Deputy CEO
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor David Cunningham
David Stanley, Deputy CEO
Councillor Gina Blomefield

9 Report back on recommendations

Share this agenda point

Issues Arising from Overview and Scrutiny and or Audit and Governance

10 Local Government Reorganisation - Reporting and Scrutiny arrangements

Share this agenda point

Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor David Cunningham
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Michael Vann
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Angus Jenkinson
Councillor Gina Blomefield

11 Public Toilet Update

Share this agenda point

Cabinet Member
Public Speaker
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor David Cunningham
Officer
Cabinet Member
Councillor Gina Blomefield
David Stanley, Deputy CEO
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Clare Turner
Cabinet Member
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Tony Slater
Cabinet Member
Officer
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Angus Jenkinson
Cabinet Member
Councillor Angus Jenkinson
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Nick Bridges
Cabinet Member
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Cabinet Member
David Stanley, Deputy CEO
Cabinet Member
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Cabinet Member
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Cabinet Member
Councillor Gina Blomefield
David Stanley, Deputy CEO
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Angus Jenkinson
Councillor Paul Hodgkinson
Councillor Gina Blomefield

12 Community Safety Partnership Update

Share this agenda point

Councillor Paul Hodgkinson
Officer
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Michael Vann
Councillor Paul Hodgkinson
Officer
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor David Cunningham
Councillor Paul Hodgkinson
Officer
Councillor David Cunningham
Councillor David Cunningham
Councillor Paul Hodgkinson
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Clare Turner
Officer
Councillor Paul Hodgkinson
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Angus Jenkinson
Councillor Paul Hodgkinson
Officer
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Nick Bridges
Councillor Paul Hodgkinson
Officer
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Paul Hodgkinson
Officer
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Officer
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Paul Hodgkinson
Officer
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Angus Jenkinson
Councillor Gina Blomefield

13 Long term empty homes/second homes strategy update

Share this agenda point

Officer
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor David Cunningham
Officer
Councillor David Cunningham
Officer
Councillor David Cunningham
Officer
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Clare Turner
Officer
Councillor Clare Turner
Officer
Councillor Gina Blomefield
David Stanley, Deputy CEO
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Tony Slater
Officer
Officer
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Michael Vann
Officer
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Nick Bridges
Officer
David Stanley, Deputy CEO
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Angus Jenkinson
Officer
Councillor Angus Jenkinson
Officer
Councillor Angus Jenkinson
David Stanley, Deputy CEO
Councillor Angus Jenkinson
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Michael Vann
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Officer
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Councillor Gina Blomefield
Webcast Finished

Select an agenda point

Scroll with video

Disclaimer: This transcript was automatically generated, so it may contain errors. Please view the webcast to confirm whether the content is accurate.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:00:21

warm welcome to everyone present, including any members of the public, I can't see any

at the moment, whether in person or also, of course, watching online.

I also want to acknowledge and welcome the cabinet members and officers

who will be giving their reports.

We do have some who will be doing this online, so this is a hybrid meeting

with some people appearing online.

And also for the help from the officers present to support overview

and scrutiny committee in its functions.

The usual housekeeping, the far exit is behind you,

The toilets are drawn to the left.

Please put on silent any mobile device you may have with you.

If anyone wishes to fill in the proceedings, this is permitted, provided it does not disrupt

proceedings.

Do we have any apologies?

We have apologies from Councillor John Waring and Lisa Spivey.

Julia Gibson, Officer - 0:01:17

Thank you.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:01:21

Do we have any substitutes?

and we have no substitutes. Thank you. Before we go into the main body of the meeting now,

could every member of the committee introduce themselves, starting with Tony.

Councillor Tony Slater - 0:01:38

Councillor Nick Bridges - 0:01:41

Tony Slater, Councillor for Grumbold Ashford. Nick Bridges for Watermore, Syr ancestor.

Michael Van Fairfoot North.

Councillor Michael Vann - 0:01:47

David Cunningham, Fosridge.

Claire Turner, Blockley Ward.

Councillor Clare Turner - 0:01:54

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:01:56

Angus Jenkinson, Moreton East and Toddenham.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:02:04

And I'm Gina Blinfield, Camden and Vale. Thank you.

3 Declarations of Interest

Do we have any declarations of interest of any matters on the agenda?

No declarations of interest.

4 Minutes

Then we will go to the minutes of the two previous meetings.

I am just going to ask you to look at the meeting which is on the 5th of November 1st.

Does anybody have any observations or changes they would like to make to that one?

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:02:38

So could we take a vote on that? The other one has had rather more changes. The one on

the 5th of November I saw before in the draught and there were many changes on it actually.

The one on the 17th of November actually was printed and before I had actually seen it

and I made some changes subsequently which is why you have got another copy of those

minutes in front of you.

So could we first vote just on the one on the 5th of November

for those people who were present?

Could I have a proposer and seconder?

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:03:14

Turner proposed and Michael Van seconded.

To go forward then to the 17th of November, were there?

I'm short of hands.

Oh, sorry.

Hands, please.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:03:27

Thank you.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:03:42

Actually, that's good that we've done them separately because there will be different

things in the vote for both.

And apologies for forgetting, going to the vote.

So on the 17th November, I'm going to apologise for Paul Hodgson, since it was published,

his name was misspelt throughout.

But

these things are easy and of course once the computer thinks it's a good spelling it will start putting it in everywhere.

So it has to be unlearned.

We all know auto correction. It can be helpful. It can also be something of a nightmare.

Does anybody have any other points? I added some points in about freedom leisure because I didn't think it was quite detailed enough particularly

important on the water about their jacuzzi and I think that some of Laura

Hall -Wilson's comments about the cleanliness and things weren't quite

clear enough. But does anybody have any other further points to add?

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:04:41

Thank you chair. It's just really a matter of formatting for clarity. On page

page 17 of the original version, page 7 of the new one.

We have a line in questions and discussion.

The following points were noted.

And I think it would just be helpful if the points that were

being noted were bulleted or numbered for reference,

and then we're clear when we're ceasing to have the following

points that are being noted.

It's only a formatting issue for the future.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:05:14

Thank you.

I'm sure we can sort that out, democratic services.

So could I have a proposer and seconder for those people who were present?

A proposer, Councillor Jenkins, seconded by Councillor van, and could we go to the vote, please?

Lovely. Thank you very much.

5 Matters Arising from Minutes of the Previous Meeting

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:05:41

The matters arising from the previous meeting.

We have had, again, helpful notes on some of the matters arising.

The, I understand that David Stanley is going to give us updates

on the position to read council tax on second homes and will also give details

on how CDC spends surplus money from parking revenues in due course.

And we still await Matt Britain's information on how the number

of houses were determined for Regulation 18 consultation.

I don't know whether David Sander, you're going to be sharing that later

or would you like to share it now?

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:06:28

Just in terms of spend against the, with the parking surplus,

I have that detail available that I can circulate to members of this committee via email.

In terms of the second homes numbers, we are just working through the final tax base figures

for the forthcoming financial year. We did hit a little bit of a problem where Civica

had been slow issuing a patch to the system to enable us to pull out second homes data

with a degree of accuracy. So we were heavily reliant on old data, but we are just working

through that with Mandy Fathers in terms of finalising that tax -based figure. So that

will be this week because we do need to provide that tax -based figure to our precepting partners.

So I can circulate that to members of the committee by the end of the week.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:07:17

Thank you for that. I've got Councillor Cunningham's got her. I would like to make a comment.

Councillor David Cunningham - 0:07:23

Could I ask, this is self -identified second home, is it?

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:07:30

These are the second homes as recorded on the council's council tax revenue system.

So it will be through information provided by the owner of the second home.

It won't necessarily have identified potential second homes where the individuals haven't

identified that and that is one of the issues with the way in which the legislation was

passed in that particular Act, that there was no provision for homeowners to provide

that information on a mandatory basis. But it was something that one of our local MPs

was campaigning for at the time, so we've raised that back with the MP to ensure that

gets considered.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:08:19

Thank you for that additional information, very helpful. I haven't got many chairs announcements,

6 Chair's Announcements

but the one thing I've just been notified that there is going to be an additional item

on the agenda in January, and that's about the procurement of extra waste trucks for

Yubico. And I think David Stanley again can usefully give us a bit more information. We

really don't have a lot yet, but it will be coming through in January. Thank you.

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:08:45

Thank you, Chair. So for a reminder, there is a quite a significant amount included in

the capital programme for next year, partly funded through potential borrowing. So it's

wholly appropriate that overview and scrutiny see that report that will be going to cabinet

in January to provide scrutiny of the decision making process that will be put in place around

the replacement of waste and recycling vehicles and given the financial impact that we'll

have on the council's finances for the foreseeable financial years this council

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:09:21

remains it's yeah absolutely appropriate that comes forward thank you

Councillor David Cunningham - 0:09:25

Councillor Cunningham do we have any detail yet as to how much borrowing will

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:09:31

be taken thanks the capital programme as approved indicated a level of

prudential borrowing based on information to hand a good year ago we

awaiting the local government finance settlement that is due on the 17th of

December once I have that information we'll be able to feed the revenue

financing into the council's budget and understand whether or not there is an

opportunity to reduce the future need to borrow but certainly the perspective I'm

approach in this from is to minimise, if not remove, the need to borrow.

9 Report back on recommendations

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:10:09

Thank you for that. The report back on recommendations to cabinet. I thank you for the clear response

to Ernest's recommendations on how CDC will be engaging with town and parish councils

and residents regarding the Cotswold local plan regulation 18. I attended the meeting

which was held at the RAU on the 10th November and also the public exhibition

at Mickleton on the 28th November and will be encouraging all residents to

engage with the process. We will be discussing in the next item the decision

at O &S on the 17th of December to review quarterly the ongoing process of LGR and

explore the possibility of also working across the county councils to do this.

So I don't think there's anything to add to that. So now we go to the local

10 Local Government Reorganisation - Reporting and Scrutiny arrangements

government reorganisation reporting and scrutiny arrangements. Now as I said that

some of us are joining remotely and I think Jane Portman is there. I've got a

very very small icon but we can just about see you there. So Jane would you

like to bring us up to date on your thoughts and approach to this? Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Bloomfield, and good afternoon, members. Yes, this is an item that

you requested to be brought forward to this meeting from your last meeting, which was

to consider how you might best scrutinise the progress being made on local government

reorganisation plans. This would be very useful and helpful to include in your work programme

going forward. My suggestion would be that I could bring a quarterly report, but I'm

happy to take other suggestions if you'd like something at a different frequency, but quarterly

would strike me as about right. As you know, we've made submissions now. Our deadline was

last Friday for our proposals for local government reorganisation across Gloucestershire. Those

proposals have now been submitted. And so the next piece of work that we're embarking

on is to plan the next phase of work which will run from now until decision day, the

time when the government makes the decision on which proposal to implement. We expect

that decision to come around June or July next summer. So we've basically got the next

six months to plan. Regardless of the decision, there's plenty of work to do. So we could

usefully bring you reports during that period of time of progress that we're making on the

plans and to share with you plans as they're emerging. And then following decision day,

so June or July next year, we could then move into the next phase of work, which you could

scrutinise, which would be the actual implementation of the government's decision and the progress

that we're making against our plan. So that would be the work that we could provide for

you but I'm very happy if you want to make any alternative suggestions or ways

that you'd like to get involved in the programme and scrutinise the progress that

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:13:51

we're making. Thank you chair. Oh well thank you Jane for that. The one thing I

would you know like I think quarterly sounds right whether you'd actually had

any conversations with the other councils and whether we have and I don't

think it's going to be a very big sort of full -time committee but actually

having a bit of communication with the other councils involved so that we're

actually can work together.

And I think you've got some experience of this,

so you'll be able to facilitate the best way to do it.

I mean, everybody's got busy lives.

They don't want to spend too much time not doing something

useful, but if there's something which can be really usefully

gained from it, I would like to propose that we do this.

If on the basis of the quarterly reporting,

and I think it's probably quite good that it's broken down into

quarterly, because otherwise it might be all too much at every

six months. When would you be thinking that would be a good time to start the first of

those quarterly meetings?

So in response to your second question, Chair, I'm in your hands. I can start whenever it

fits in with your work programme. The first report I could provide for you is an update

of where we've got to so you can scrutinise the plan that we're putting in place. I really

don't mind when you want to start, it's entirely up to yourselves. And with regard to working

with other councils, yes, that makes a lot of sense. The experience I've had is that

joint scrutiny committees are usually set up at the point at which a shadow authority

comes into being, but that does not preclude doing some joint scrutiny work in advance

of that. I will take it away as something to discuss with other councils about how they

might see that and if there might be any way in which we could do some joint scrutiny work

in advance of the shadow authority. So you need to leave that one with me and I'll get

back to your chair on that.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:15:55

Well, thank you. Just on that, I just wondered, particularly it would be how many people you

would think would be the right number from each council to be part of that joint committee.

I don't think you want too many, but you obviously don't want too few. I've got Councillor Cunningham

and also Councillor Jenkinson who both... Oh, and Councillor Van. Actually, so it goes

Councillor Cunningham was first, Councillor Van and then Councillor Jenkinson, who will

have queries for you on this. Thank you.

Councillor David Cunningham - 0:16:24

Thank you Madam Chair. Actually the question that I originally asked this for was to get

some kind of regular update on the financial impact of what was being done. So I know we

were talking about work streams and we were talking about how it would work and blah blah

it was specifically the money that was the reason I raised it. So can we be assured that

there will be relative numbers in any updated report about how much is being spent and where

it's coming from. Thank you. Yes absolutely Councillor Cunningham. We would absolutely

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:17:07

include a financial update in each of the reports that come forward to you. Thank you.

Councillor Michael Vann - 0:17:13

Councillor Byrne please. Mine's more in the nature of a comment. Before we, the 28th of

November disappears without trace. I think it's a crucial staging point and

because a very great deal of work has been carried out so far and I'm pleased to

recognise that, particularly the senior officers involved. Thanks.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:17:37

Thank you. Councillor Jenkins.

Thank you, sir.

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:17:43

Councillor van Vliet makes a very good point. I support that too. It's a small matter, but

in the report that I submitted, which we won't be discussing, from the economic scrutiny

discussion last Friday, there was quite a point being made about collaboration across

the whole, across all seven authorities and how they were learning to work together. And

the process of doing that was seen as supportive of the end result. So I think there could

be an argument for saying that finding a delicate way into collaboration at this level would

be quite useful for the future.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:18:19

Thank you.

Does anybody else have any comments they want to make?

I was just going to say, Jane, that I'll have a word with Democratic Services and see, looking

at the time scale of the quarterly things, see how they fit in with the existing work

plan and so that we don't get one meeting overloaded and, you know, so keep it balanced.

So we'll have a look at that in the future.

But thank you very much for joining us today and giving us that update.

Thank you.

All right.

The next item is the public toilet update.

Can I welcome Paul Hodgkinson, a cabinet officer for the Health, Culture and Visitor Experience,

to introduce this item.

11 Public Toilet Update

and he'll be supported by Maria Wheatley of CDC's...

Oh, I've got the wrong thing.

Anyway, yes.

Why put that?

Paul, would you like to introduce him?

Cabinet Member - 0:19:15

Thank you very much.

I'm about to see you all again in short succession.

So I wanted, I think you had asked for an update

on where we were with our public toilets.

So you have a report in front of you, but I thought what I would do is just give you a bit of a summary overview first.

I think the last time you were given a summary was by my predecessor in this role, Tristan Wilkinson, back in May, I think it was, or just before that.

So overall, just to remind that this council provides 11 public toilets across the district.

They're open every day apart from Christmas Day.

And in 2023, obviously you established a public conveniences review group, which I think Tony

chaired.

You obviously reviewed all the sites and you came back with a number of recommendations.

So back in May, Tristan Wilkinson updated you on that.

There was still, of those 11 recommendations that you'd made, there were five that were

still outstanding at that point.

But I'm pleased to say that pretty much, in fact, all of them have been dealt with

bar one, which I'll explain in a minute.

So if I can just run through as an overview.

If you remember that there were four free sites, four free public toilets in the district.

That was Tethbury, Chipping Camden, Lechlade and North Leach.

And what we want, what you had recommended and we wanted to do was to introduce charging

across those four sites.

So the good news is that three of those four sites were

Resolved in August this year when charging mechanisms went in that was temporary chipping Camden and actually

the remaining one North leach the town council

When we when we proposed to them that we were going to charge actually just wanted to bring

The whole process to a halt at that stage and so we had discussions with them and I'm pleased to say that at their meeting

last, sorry not last month, October because we're now in December, in October they voted to have the

toilets transferred to them to be owned by them and run by them from the 1st of April 2026. So

actually I think that's a really good move actually because they decided that rather than us charging

they would like to take it on themselves and they obviously they will decide about charging if they

in due course. But that's, so I think that's a real really good result actually.

Couple of, just running through a summary of some of the other recommendations.

Replacing the paddle gates of Borton on the water, as you know Borton on the water

public toilets are exceptionally well used, particularly this year when the

numbers were well up. And I'm pleased to say again that replacement paddle gates

have now gone in. They were in a poor state before, but both sets of

puddle gates have now been replaced.

Signs explaining charging

was another outstanding recommendation.

That is complete.

So there are signs now all of the locations

explaining that the service is discretionary

rather than statutory, hence why we're charging.

The one recommendation which we haven't put forward

and I remember having a conversation with Tony,

David thinking he shared the working group

which he hadn't really been on it, and I think Gina as well.

The recommendation was for the council to encourage partners

in towns and parishes in terms of local businesses

to make their toilets available for public use

and to register those toilets on public toilet apps.

We, I mean, having spoken to, you know, Maria,

I'm sure you can add to this in a minute,

but we did actually think about this

and it was actually really about the effectiveness

and the practicality of being able to do that

and actually persuade businesses that they should actually encourage people into their toilets,

even if they weren't necessarily using their own business.

So we felt at the end of that, that it wasn't practical to do it.

And that's why I had that sort of email discussion with some of you.

So I hope that kind of explains that.

Just one other thing to say, I think that, you know, obviously as a result of the incredibly successful summer

in terms of tourism for the Cotswolds,

It did put a lot of pressure on all of our services and there were a small number of complaints about cleaning us in the toilets

I think that in particularly in stone the world and there was one complaint at Tepary as well

But I think in the case of stoke was definitely to do with the vastly increased numbers coming through

So what we are looking at is

Maria again can you want to in a minute is we're going to increase we're looking to increase the number of cleans

going forward in Stowe on the Wold and at Borton too, simply because they're the

ones that really have had a lot of tourism. We also have had deep cleans at

Stowe and we're having another one as well because if you

remember at one of the council meetings one of the Stowe town councils famously

came along and even put together a limerick or poem bemoaning the state of

the toilet. So we have listened to that and we have responded to that and I think

that is it from me I don't know Maria if you want to add to anything hello yeah I

Public Speaker - 0:24:51

just wanted to add that we work quite closely now with the contractors in

response to the increased footfall to make sure that we are meeting the

service level expected. Obviously we kind of missed that the footfall had

massively increased and that we needed to make some changes to the to the

cleaning regimes. So we are in the process of taking that forward now with

the contractors.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:25:26

Councillor David Cunningham - 0:25:30

Councillor Cunningham please. Thank you Madam Chair. I do remember when we did the review

that we were going through a negotiation on the costs involved. I know we've reduced the

number of places that we have but I do remember that the costs were going up, they were being

driven up really by just general inflation were going up. Have we

renegotiated that and are we still within the sort of numbers you were

before? That was my first question and the second question was one of the other

things I remembered from the working group was that we were going to try to

encourage the town and parish councils to take some of the toilets on themselves

and I don't think that was particularly successful either so is that also being

Officer - 0:26:21

dropped. Thank you. Yeah so the we when we reduced we were intending to reduce the

cost and we work with the with the incumbent contractor to identify any any

savings that could be made and that was at the same point as we were re -tendering

the contract. So we reduced the amount of cleans as we had the same number of

across the board when some of the units were less had less usage so we made it

bespoke to each site to make sure that we were we were doing that but

unfortunately that did was not reflected in the in the cost of the contract when

Cabinet Member - 0:27:05

it was finalised. For your second point obviously as I say we've come to an

agreement with Northleach which is which is good we had quite a lot of discussions

with them so they will take the top their toilets on from the 1st of April

or no one else has said they wanted to do so.

I guess with the advent of local government reorganisation

coming up relatively soon,

that might be an opportunity for some town and parishes

to think about that again.

We don't know what's gonna happen,

but it could be a way with a very large unitary authority

somewhere in say Gloucester,

who may not be so interested

in some of these discretionary services.

It could be a way to maintain them

if town and parishes took them on.

However, I appreciate that is a big ask for some town parishes.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:27:48

I think David Stanley wanted to come in here and then I will come to the rest of you.

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:27:56

Thank you, Chair. Just on that point in terms of conversations with parish and town councils,

at the recent parish and town council forums where we have spent time with a number of parish and town councils,

the leader made the offer to Parish and Town Councils to come and have a conversation.

So rather than being, here's some toilets we'd like you to take off our hands,

and it being the council instigating that conversation, it's very much been in light of LGR,

in light of the fact that the council will only really exist until 31st March 2028. We would

encourage Parish and Town Councils or a consortium of Parish and Town Councils to come and have a

conversation with us about such things such as

toilets, but rather than it being a

Council led process it's got to come from the Parish and Town Councils themselves.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:28:50

Thank you, appreciate that extra clarification. Well Councillor Turner, please.

Councillor Clare Turner - 0:28:55

Thank you, and thank you for the written report and also the verbal update which is helpful.

I've also got a sort of finance question.

The update notes that the fees will be reviewed annually as part of the budget setting process.

I just wondered if you can clarify whether the usage data from the previous 12 months will be used to try and fix a price that covers the cost of running these toilets, these services, or is there some other approach?

Cabinet Member - 0:29:25

I think as a cabinet, I haven't actually fully agreed sort of costs and charges for the next

year and I'm conscious of the fact that our finance cabinet member is sitting and observing,

so he will be looking at this.

But I mean, I think, you know, I know that you as a committee have proposed or suggested

70p rather than 40p.

At the moment, the costs are not covered, as you know.

And so therefore, yes, we will absolutely look at the usage, which has gone up this

year, but if we're going to also increase the cleaning in some places, as I've said,

so stow and bought them, you're still left with a deficit, aren't you?

So it is a, it's always a dilemma and there's always that, that point about the cost of

living and being concerned about people's cost of living.

So it's trying to find a bit of a balance between the two, but I'm absolutely sure that

Patrick, knowing him as I do, will be very logical about this and will look at all the

data and the stats before suggesting something to the rest of the cabinet.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:30:26

Thank you. I have Councillor Slater.

Councillor Tony Slater - 0:30:31

Thank you, Chair. It's a very similar question to Councillor Turner, actually. So now we're

getting data from all the units, is there any thought to have any form of dynamic pricing

or even dynamic cleaning. Perhaps the season also you have the high usage sites in Borton

and so they can have more cleans in the summer and then ease off through the winter. So we've

got the data so presumably we can now come up with a strategy for that sort of thing.

Cabinet Member - 0:30:59

Certainly in terms of cleaning that's why we've actually thought about the increased cleaning

and I think you know again Maria you can comment in a second please whether we would do that

seasonally. We haven't really sort of firm that up yet,

but it could well be the case because obviously that's when the majority of the

usage is. Um, in terms of pricing, we haven't talked about,

we haven't talked about a dynamic pricing,

i .e charging more in the summer compared to the winter. I mean, it,

it's an interesting one for sure,

but I wouldn't want to commit to anything because simply because we'd have to

have that discussion, but it's certainly an interesting idea.

Officer - 0:31:42

I think we're going to be working with a contractor going forward and looking at how we can meet

the demand at the key points and which may result in a request to increase number of

cleans during the during the high season.

Councillor Jenkinson.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:32:05

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:32:06

Thank you, Chair. I'd like to make two related points by way of a question as to whether

you consider them worthwhile. There's been various points about the financial side, the

costs, and of course those are appropriate to ask. But I'm asking about the value of

these as a service, and I think that's really critical. And in order for us to be able to

get some evaluation about the value to us.

Are we delivering value in relation to these services,

especially when we're out of pocket and it's not statutory?

It seems to me that some kind of appropriate checkup on that

would be appropriate.

And the second point then is we know

that this will migrate away from us, not so far away.

So as a suggestion, but you must find your own way,

If, for example, the various parishes that the parish council,

town council was asked, how valuable is this?

Can we get your estimation of how valuable this is to you?

And at the same time make the point that if it is valuable,

they might need to be planning to take it over,

but we just really want to know.

And in that process, when thinking about the costs,

what we charge, we don't want to leave parishes necessarily out of pocket. So we might actually

want to have a strategy of aligning costs, what we charge, to the real costs of doing

it so that parishes will not be out of pocket and there will be a smooth takeover. I'm just

thinking long term. Can we really value, can we understand are we delivering value and

can we use that question to support a longer term strategy?

Cabinet Member - 0:33:59

I think this is one of those things is really quite difficult to put a put a definite sort of measure on the value of it because clearly if I think of the North Leach example so North Leach town Council decided to do a survey of their town.

Asking them about the value of the service, whether they wanted it to remain, whether they wanted charging, whether they wanted us to keep it, the town council, etc.

And it was overwhelmingly, yes, we want to keep it. However, you could argue, couldn't you, that if you asked any member of the public about any service and said, do you want to keep it?

Most people would say yes to most things because they don't want to lose anything.

So it's really, really tricky. And I think you're right, though, that, you know, going forward,

that at the moment, this service, it does not wash its face. Excuse the pun. Pardon the pun.

It doesn't wash his face financially. So therefore, you either have to grip it and say,

well, we're going to push the charges right up to cover it. Or you keep subsidising it. And

Councils then if they took them over would have to keep subsidising it. These are choices

aren't they? So I think it's all part of that local government reorganisation conversation

which has just been talked about that in that final year probably between the shadow authority

taking office and this council finishing is those are the kind of conversations to have

with town and parish and say do you really value this service? If so you might have to

it on and therefore there is a financial implication of that.

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:35:42

That's exactly the logic that I had in mind that you get them to agree that it's valuable

and therefore that they start planning.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:35:50

I've got Councillor Bridges down next, thank you.

Councillor Nick Bridges - 0:35:57

I used to look out at my mother who was in a wheelchair and we have a radar key going

stuff, which is great. If those toilets aren't open, then it means that any trip out would

mean it would be much shorter. It probably would make me think twice about going out

with them. Is there any way in which the radar toilets, the cost of those could be picked

up by a health budget? Because it strikes me that it's about mental health, being able

to get out of your house, even if only for half an hour or an hour. And if you take away

that ability, then you're effectively making somebody housebound. So I appreciate that

the general budget doesn't have anything specific, but is there another budget that we can raid?

Cabinet Member - 0:36:51

Well, there's, I mean, first of all, I appreciate what you're saying. I do understand the point

about, particularly if you're disabled and therefore the lack of ability to get home

quickly if you like in those circumstances. There is no obvious budget to rate. There

wouldn't be an obvious budget to rate in this council. Whether there's an NHS related budget

which relates to this, I'm not sure to be honest with you, but looking at our health

and wellbeing officers who are here or one of them, it might be worth just exploring

that to see if any other councils operate in that way for disabled people. It's an interesting

point.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:37:34

Thank you for that. I have just had two questions. I see that the current contract ends in October

2028. So what arrangements have been made to be transferred once a new unitary comes

into place. I presume you have been given this thought or the plans of that. And also

at the last meeting I sort of discovered that the fees from car parking, it's allowed them

to be used to support public convenience. Is any of the money which has gone towards

the public convenience, does it come from the car parking charges? Thank you.

Cabinet Member - 0:38:13

Just that second point, I do not know, so I'm going to refer to our guru David Stanley

on that one. I don't know if you want to take that one first, David.

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:38:23

Thank you. In terms of the information I'll provide to all members, so the surplus on

the car park account which is published on the council's website, that can be put towards

a number of different services and public conveniences, one of those. In the breakdown

I've got it tells you the amount of the cost of the public conveniences service last year.

And off the top of my head, there was about 100 ,000 pounds of additional cost to that

surplus across the broad spectrum of services wasn't picking up.

So we can demonstrate that the surplus generated on car parks is more than fully utilised on

those services that we are allowed to subsidise from that particular income stream.

Cabinet Member - 0:39:09

Just in terms of your first part of that question about local government reorganisation, you know, all of these services have to have a plan at some point.

The trouble is at the moment we don't know, A, what the unitary council is going to look like and we don't know if the government is going to stick to their timetable.

So we're left, like everybody in local government, we're left in Gloucestershire, we're left with a set of question marks and dilemmas at the moment.

and this would be one of those things that would either be just transferred wholesale to the new council or the new council may say

Actually, we don't want to take those things. They're going to have to be devolved down or shut or whatever

So at this moment in time, no work has been done on that but clearly it will have to be done in due course

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:39:54

Thank you for that, I mean obviously that the contractor you have you've contracted to a certain period

period, could say if it's removed earlier that they want compensation for that. I'm

not saying that's going to be the case, but that's always fair enough in circumstances

like this. And I imagine you are going to have to, it's impossible to have a strategy

until we know more, but one's got to consider that that has got a potential.

Cabinet Member - 0:40:21

I agree with you, and all these things have got potential, haven't they? I mean, it could

well be that it is literally transferred wholesale to the new council and the contract is then

re -established with that same provider, with the same toilets and the unitary council is

controlling them. It could actually be like that.

Well, thank you. We've got the leader of Mike Evermy here who would like to add something

to this discussion. Thank you.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:40:46

Cabinet Member - 0:41:08

I'm cabinet member, of course, for today.

Yeah, so I just wanted to add, obviously, we've lost Jane off the screen now, and I'm

sure, obviously, she was the most experienced person to talk about this, but certainly from

my conversations with her.

I've learned a new word, novate, which is a word I've not really heard before.

So my understanding from that is that when this council ceases to exist, its contracts

and its obligations will novate across to the new council, whatever that is.

So the contract for the toilets, if that ends in November 2028, the new council will pick

that up from the 1st of April, assuming it happens on that date.

And then it will be up to them to decide what they want to do with a contract going beyond

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:41:54

that hope that's helpful no that is enormously helpful and that actually

affects all contracts so it's a very good thing that I'm reassuring to know

that that's the process I think David Stanley was come and then I think

Councillor Jenkinson also wants to add something thank you chair not on that

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:42:08

point but on the point raised by a council of bridges on our council

website does say a radar key is needed for free access to the facilities for

disabled toilets you can buy a radar key from and it gives the address so I think

the web address I would surmise that it is free for use for disabled facilities

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:42:36

if you have that radar key it is not a charge for facility. Thank you for that

did Councillor Jenkins did you want something to add? Yes. I finished this

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:42:41

particular item I just found out in advance that the officer who prepared

this report had been with the CDC for 37 years.

I hope she won't mind me saying that.

And as such, I think we should say thank you very much.

And at the same time, I would take the opportunity

to thank the cabinet member who's been looking

after this and it will come to an end.

Councillor Paul Hodgkinson - 0:43:06

But I just thank Maria as well.

I was going to, but 37 years.

I wasn't actually realising those.

Wow. Congratulations.

What an achievement.

Thank you.

I was this high.

Thank you Maria and the team.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:43:25

Thank you both for that.

I think that O &S notes the actions and progress since May 2025 and this report.

I don't feel there's any further recommendations we should make at this point.

Thank you. I think you're back again.

I have to say Paul Hodgkinson has been very busy in the last O &S meeting.

He's got two items on this one.

So I'm looking forward to January.

12 Community Safety Partnership Update

I'm sure you might be again.

So Paul Hodgkinson will be introducing the updates on the Community Safety Partnership

and supported by Joseph Walker, head of the Economic Development Communities.

So please, Paul, fire off.

Councillor Paul Hodgkinson - 0:44:11

Yep, thank you very much. This is very different, very different topic really. So as part of

my cabinet portfolio, I'd share a quarterly Cops World Community Safety Partnership meeting.

So as I say, that meets every quarter. And what we do in those meetings is discuss issues

around community safety, as the name suggests, with our colleagues in the fire service, the

police, charities, youth organisations, children's social care, amongst others. So quite a lot

of us come together every quarter. We have an agenda which I'm sure Joseph will add to

in terms of detail in a second. But what we do is we focus on those things that we believe

are key to talk about in terms of how we keep the community safe in the Cotswold district.

and you've got some of them listed there

in the executive summary.

Recently we've talked about how we support victims

of domestic abuse.

I don't know whether you saw,

but at the cabinet last month it was,

I launched here or ratified the Gloucestershire -Wyatt strategy

on domestic abuse, which I'd also launched

at Gloucestershire County Council in July

for the whole county.

So, and you'll be interested and staggered to hear that 20 percent

of all crimes in Gloucestershire are domestic abuse related.

So it is a huge proportion of crime, which is, you know,

really, really changed in the last few years.

We also think about antisocial behaviour.

So we've discussed, in particular, that tends to

revolve around siren sester and some of the issues that we've

had in siren sester, although we're pleased to say that some

of those have dissipated rather. Any crimes of local can be rural crimes. It

could be the kind of things that farmers are seeing, for instance with

hare -coursing, with thefts, we talk about that. And this year our key objective has

been creating safe roads for all. So we've been working with the police in

the Cotswolds and they have been publicising far more, Community Speed

Watch in particular, and a lot of, I know a lot of villages and a lot of parishes

do that. And we also talk about how we support children and young people in the Cotswold

District too. So it kind of gives you a flavour of what we talk about. There is a particular

need for this committee to meet safety partnership, I should say every quarter. It's enshrined

in law, which is why we do that. I'm going to stop at that point, I think, and hand over

to Joseph just to add, but that's kind of a bit of an overview first.

Thank you, Councillor Hodgkinson.

Officer - 0:46:54

I will try not to expound at length, but I think it would be useful just to sort of start

with a bit of commentary in terms of the backdrop to community safety in Cotswold.

You know, the district is incredibly fortunate to have a pretty low crime rate, but I would

caveat that with this sense that crime rates are a statistic, and people have said all

kinds of things about statistics in the past.

I won't repeat those quotes, but I would note that when crimes

are reported, that means that they can be actioned.

So low crime rate doesn't necessarily mean low crime.

When we look at the different stats, there's a lot of sort of

detail and opportunity and concerns to see behind them.

But to sort of go through the sort of piece of different

different criminal behaviour that we cover there.

Cotswold has the lowest rate pretty much across everything

within Gloucestershire, and Gloucestershire, again,

is not a high crime area of the country.

We're very fortunate to see low overall crime.

As Councillor Hodgkinson says, there are rates of domestic

abuse and violence that still exist in this area, even though,

you know, the perception might be a little bit different.

Where it gets very challenging when you look at statistics is

we, with such a low base, we see a high degree of sort of up and

down on the rates because one or two events in the Cotswolds can

significantly change the sort of year -on -year rate.

So any mention of those things has to be very carefully

caveated.

But, yeah, in terms of the partnership, I think, as

Councillor Hartjesdon said, it has a backdrop in statute.

We have statutory partners in the same sense as a statutory duty upon ourselves.

So the fire service, the police service and various other partners within the statutory and voluntary sector.

We're very fortunate to have the Acting Inspector of the Neighbourhood Policing in Cotswold,

Philippa Moore, join us on a very regular basis.

And we had the Superintendent join us at our last meeting as well.

So very well attended and supported by the police.

I'm going to stop there as well I think and happy to take any questions.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:49:18

Councillor Michael Vann - 0:49:23

In 414 page, page 41, there's reference to the door and really wanted to be able to confirm

from the Fairford perspective, that it makes a difference, a real difference.

So charitable youth work has its place and it is operating and it's very worthwhile.

Councillor Paul Hodgkinson - 0:50:01

Yes, I mean if I start first I'm sure Joseph will want to add something to it.

Yes, we always have, I think every meeting we have a representative

from the door and they do some fantastic work. They really, really

do. Their work with young people is incredible really and they're always

incredibly engaging so I would absolutely back that up. Likewise and to

Officer - 0:50:24

use it as a suppose as an example of why the Community

Safety Partnership exists in the sense

that the sort of hard edge of crime prevention and response

to crime is something that clearly people see

as a police responsibility.

But ultimately, we avoid that if we have good partnership

working to try and work with people to engage them,

to encourage them to behave appropriately.

You know, we have a tradition of policing by consent in the UK,

and I think the Community Safety Partnership is a very powerful

tool in helping sustain that by getting sort of youth providers

around the table to work with those young people to be able

to talk to police colleagues and see where their concerns lie

and see what kind of preparatory work can be done to sidestep,

to divert young people from activity that might otherwise

be considered criminal or antisocial.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:51:24

Councillor David Cunningham - 0:51:28

Thank you. Yes, Councillor CUNNING. Thank you Madam Chair. A couple of things.

Reading through the report, it seemed as though some of the support that you'd had in the

past wasn't going to be continued. The partnership was losing certain, or no, let's say the people

that support you were losing funding, which is a great shame, clearly.

And is there any way that the partnership will be able to make that up in different

ways, approach it in different ways with the partners?

And the second thing which I read in here, which I think really is quite key for the

Cotswolds, is this perception of crime.

In exactly what you're saying about the fact that our numbers, our stats can be affected

by very small changes in the number of crimes reported.

A crime reported in the rural areas tends to start the conversation around an epidemic

of whatever it was, whether it was sheep wrangling or whatever it was.

But it does tend to do that.

And I do think that it might not be our responsibility,

but being able to,

while still keeping people vigilant around crime,

give some sort of an overview of statistics

that remind people that actually we do live in,

fortunately, in a very law -abiding area.

So one was a question and one really was just a statement

and I think it's quite important.

Councillor Paul Hodgkinson - 0:53:00

I'll let Joseph talk about funding, but you're right.

We have, there hasn't been a specific amount of funding available this year, but I'll let

Joseph expand on that in a second.

If I can just deal with the second point, I absolutely agree with you that perception

is everything in a way.

The Cotswold crime stats are very low compared to most other places, particularly cities.

Yet because as you know you know also representing a set of villages you know

a small set of people let's say a couple of hundred people and two or three

people are affected it gets round doesn't it so it if it's a burglary if

it's hair coursing sheep worrying etc all these things will get around and

people will then believe that there's something much bigger at play now there

are things you know there is our organised crime at play in terms of some

of the crimes that we see against farmers,

hare coursing, et cetera, and some of the violence

against farmers is shocking.

But thankfully, it is still very low level compared

to most other parts of the country.

So I think the point you make about stats is a good one,

is in fact we don't, at those partnership meetings,

we don't have as a set agenda item the current set of stats.

We talk about it, so it could be worth actually having that

and then publicising it a bit more actually.

I don't mind answering that first.

Officer - 0:54:23

Just to follow on on that, I mean, as Councillor Hodgson said,

perception is really key and trying to balance the sort of negativity

against the good things that are happening is a real interesting challenge

for us across a sort of wide range of work.

We can certainly look to do a bit on that and I would say through the partnership

and other work, we do to a degree already in the sense that, for example,

police colleagues have attended community events that we've been involved in so that you have that sort of

That existing relationship between police staff in the district and residents rather than just being seen racing around in stripy cars

Actually, it's important that they have that opportunity to engage and have those conversations those reassuring conversations

And so, you know that they do attend a number of community events

that the wider public attend and obviously we have the police area panels where they

meet with parish councils and try and sort of work through those local voices as well

to send that positive messaging.

In terms of the funding, I think we've certainly seen a bit of reduction at our level and I

think that reflects some of the national funding challenges for policing.

So certainly talking to the police and crime commissioner and the deputy, you know, they're

trying to strike the balance with their budget between

funding that can be put into frontline and funding that can

be put into prevention, the same as when we work with NHS

colleagues and so forth as well, trying to hit that sweet spot

between responding to very evidence need and responding to

how do you prevent that need is incredibly difficult.

This year, you know, there were a couple of national funding

streams that ran out this year.

So Safer Streets is something that was used in the past

to invest locally, that funding stream has ended.

So we haven't had the, we've had the benefit of that this year

in terms of the spend taking place at the start of the year.

We don't have it moving forward.

And there is still funding out there.

It tends to be focused where there's a real hotspot.

So ASB hotspot funding, as the name suggests, is directed

to those areas that have the highest incidence.

So we're fortunate in the sense that we don't hit the trigger.

And I think that we have the sort of corollary misfortune

of that then doesn't give us the funding to deliver

an initiative.

But I think it's always going to be watched this space

in the sense that there are new initiatives coming forward

from the home office as and when that may well send some funding

our way in the future.

I think our role has to try and be responsive to that

opportunity if and when it arises.

Councillor David Cunningham - 0:57:07

Councillor David Cunningham - 0:57:08

Very quickly, just to mention there about the police and the parish councils, I go to

about 50 or 60 parish council meetings a year.

I'm just so lucky.

And I would say, yeah, seriously, I have 11 villages.

And I would say in the last four and a half years, I've seen the police attend two, maybe two.

Now I know that we don't want to drag them off the front line, that's absolutely not the idea,

but a PCSO coming into each parish meeting once a year, I think would go down the storm.

It's just a suggestion.

Councillor Paul Hodgkinson - 0:57:48

Yeah, I mean, and like you, I attend multiple parish meetings

and the police turn up to a very small number, I would say.

The point I was going to make is sort of linked to that in a way

is I think the role of the PCSO is really key.

And I'm being candid about this.

I think what we see of PCSOs is very variable.

So I've seen some PCSOs in the consoles who have been

absolutely amazing.

I mean, constantly in villages, constantly at meetings,

doing stuff and then others have been quite invisible if I'm really honest so

it is very variable and I think where you have a really good PCS so it can

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:58:32

Councillor Clare Turner - 0:58:34

make a real difference. Thank you. Councillor Turner please. Thank you. If I

may, I would just like to make a couple of comments and then I have got a

question which is sort of around the resource issues as well. First of

all I think we need to be careful that we when we're talking about perception

of crime we don't inadvertently diminish the impact of crime on our residents.

If it happens to you it is still very unpleasant.

We need to remember that when we are having those conversations.

Secondly to David's point about parish councils, I don't know if everybody knows that the police

and crime commissioners office host an online, it used to be quarterly but I think it is

now six monthly meeting for town and parish councils so you can have a representative

attend and you have access to the various staff members who will give you an opportunity

to chat about local issues and so on. So that's a really useful way to access that support

and information. But I don't disagree. We don't see them in person very much anymore

because of their resources. You've kind of, Joseph, to a large extent, answered some of

our questions about the resource and the fact that we're losing things in various ways,

But I wondered if you could clarify,

you mentioned on page 39 of the report 3 .7 that you're working

towards to address the resource within the team.

And I wondered if that's a creation of a new role or whether

you're just looking at distributing work differently so

that you've got someone who's got capacity.

So there's that point.

And then in terms of where things like Safer Streets funding

has disappeared and also sort of not qualifying for the hotspot and the shield projects that

are mentioned in the report. Have you, does the partnership get presented with sort of

an evaluation exercise and the justifications and reasons and explanations behind that?

And if that's not and it's just given as read, I wonder if we might, as a committee, ask

our representative which I think is Councillor Brassington on the police and crime panel

just to dig into that a bit and just see what those justifications for us. I don't disagree,

I'm sure that Gloucester and other areas are in greater need but I think if we're having

things taken from us it would be nice to understand this is the evaluation piece that was done

and this is working better here or there or not and so that we can be reassured that our

residents aren't missing out when they should be getting more support.

Thank you for those questions.

Officer - 1:01:07

In terms of the issue around capacity within the team, because it will have to go through

a consultative process, I don't really want to share any information on that at this point,

beyond saying we're looking to get capacity into the team to deal with it.

And apologies for that, and I will come back with further information when I can.

In terms of evaluation and data to underpin the funding decisions, I suppose some of that

comes from the fact that a lot of these funding streams are annual, so they come into the

OPCC on an annual basis without necessarily a huge amount of advance notice and have to

be delivered according to the sort of home office rationale.

So we're very much in the hands of the data that pertains to the specific funding.

So the easiest one to talk about again will be the ASB hotspot funding because understandably it looks at ASB records and it looks at them within quite a finite geographical area because it is supposed to be very targeted.

So the neighbourhood team in Coxhalds did put in a case for two areas within Sire and Sester.

Neither of them were hit the trigger versus as you say areas in some of our more urban parts of the county.

But it is underpinned by data.

That being said, more than happy to have a conversation with Councillor Breslin to make sure we do stay on top of that piece and make sure we are sort of fighting the corner.

Part of the challenge is if we fall under the threshold for everything, then we get

nothing if we're not careful.

And I don't think that that's sort of fair or sustainable necessarily.

Thank you, Joseph.

Councillor Paul Hodgkinson - 1:02:56

Just to add to that, you're absolutely right to raise this point.

It's the relative crime levels and the relative risks to the individuals.

And so therefore, it's never to minimise the things that happen in the Cotswolds.

It's just that and now I've got a much bigger appreciation of what's going on in say Gloucester for instance

compared to here now, I'm on you know in a County Council role is

It is quite stark the difference the levels of deprivation the levels of crime etc

Are quite stuck and we're very fortunate to live in a district which has this lower level of crime

That doesn't in any way, though, minimise the impacts of crime, because if you're a

subject of domestic abuse in this district, you are a subject of domestic abuse.

It doesn't matter whether you live here or Gloucester or wherever.

So the impact on the individual isn't different, it's just the levels of it, I think.

Councillor Jenkins, please.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:03:54

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 1:03:56

Thank you, Chair.

I have two questions for you.

Sometimes asking a simple or stupid or basic question turns

out to be a waste of time, but sometimes it's useful.

So this simple straightforward basic question is you talk

about convening power of CDC.

Obviously quite a lot of what's being described here, police,

highways and so forth, isn't part of our territory.

So could you just clarify what exactly is our convening

power, what exactly is our statutory responsibility, what are we required to do and what do we

do beyond that? And the question I'm really asking about is in relation to priorities

because there's so many good things that are happening here, it's clear and valued.

And the second question, much more specific, is that there was a recent meeting with the

We reported a number of problems, one of which is a lot of organised crime against farm machinery

and so forth.

It's a well -known issue across the country, and we do have a lot of farmers and a lot

of farms in our district.

And a related one is large volume of fly tipping, so large quantities of things, which apparently

the farmer has to pay for having removed, which seems grossly unfair.

It strikes me that a more organised approach to this,

which is a really key issue in our district, might be required.

Is there anything you'd like to comment on that?

Councillor Paul Hodgkinson - 1:05:41

Just comment on the final point there.

In terms of farmers and fly tipping, et cetera.

Yeah, it's becoming a bigger problem.

I've just seen an example of that near me, where a large dumping

of cannabis actually was on farmland and that means legally by the national law

that that farmer has to dispose of that which is going to be considerable

considerable cost. If it was on the road obviously it would be CDC that would

would clear that away. So I think that does need to be looked at

nationally. Joseph in just in terms of our legal responsibility do you want to

Just clarify.

Yeah, more than happy to.

Officer - 1:06:27

Can I just comment on that last point as well?

Just to note that we do multi -agency work on that.

So CDC has worked with the police to do, for example,

roadside stops so they can pull people over.

You can cheque for road licencing.

You can cheque for the legality of the vehicle,

but also checking on load and working out if there's a risk

that things will be flighted.

So Kevin Lee, who I'm sure has been mentioned here before

in terms of his work campaigning on fly tipping is involved in that,

as well as other colleagues in environmental health.

And yeah, in terms of that convening power then in our role,

so yes, in legislation we have this expectation that we convene

the Community Safety Partnership.

That role falls upon the District Council, I believe,

because of the sort of breadth of service delivery

that has some relevance to community safety.

So, for example, our housing function is fundamentally important for someone fleeing domestic abuse.

Finding alternative housing is clearly a sort of necessity.

So we already have that involvement in that area of work and others as well that puts us kind of around that table with other partners,

which is where that kind of role starts to come together.

I think the other thing, as I said before, part of the role of community safety is about getting ahead of the criminal aspect.

It's about how do we prevent.

So a lot of the work that the district councils and partners do in terms of building community cohesion, in terms of working with

voluntary sector organisations, with youth providers and so forth, to build that kind of community strength that makes it harder for

criminal or antisocial behaviour to take place.

I think that's where the purpose and design of the Community Safety Partnership sits.

Thank you. Councillor Bridges.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:08:22

Councillor Nick Bridges - 1:08:26

I'm going to comment about page 41.

As noted in section 4 .4, the Council has delivered a number of strengthening community events through the year.

And it goes on to talk about

events in St. Michael's and also the Phoenix Festival.

It's good they're doing these things but they all seem very sort of one -off and I

think if you're going to try to make a difference to to young people these need

to be you to provide things which are available every week or even every day

and I know we don't have a cheap cinema in most of our places. We don't have

board games clubs. We could perhaps put up more walls with goal posts painted on

them. Hard to vandalise. But things that are you know cheap and easy and

sustainable. Instead of praising ourselves with little one -offs, let's do

lots of smaller things that actually make a bigger difference. The second

thing I was going to say is well if police aren't coming along to community

group meetings or to you know our parish meetings they could always cheque in via

zoom or via the internet just put a computer in the room and talk to the

people in the room via their phones.

Because I do agree that if they do come along to a meeting,

they're probably only useful at that meeting

for five minutes, and yet they're invited

for a full hour or two, unless they're put

as number one on the item, which isn't always a courtesy

which chairs do, they just seem to think

that the police are there for their convenience.

So what I'm really saying is, yeah,

there are ways of getting around this,

And I hope people will explore that in their localities.

Councillor Paul Hodgkinson - 1:10:15

I'm sure Joseph and I will handle this between us.

So just the first point, I think the key challenge for us

is resourcing more.

So although I absolutely agree with you that it would be lovely

to do a lot more events, it's actually the resourcing of those

which is such a challenge.

We have a skeleton staff, really, in these areas,

as Joseph will know, you know, and therefore we can only do

so much with that staff that we can afford to have.

So that's why you see bigger high -profile events rather than

lots of smaller ones, because it is much more

difficult to resource.

That's the honest answer.

I think if you're looking for smaller things and more

regular, we would have to get other people involved in that,

Whether it's back to the same thing town councils charities. They're already doing quite a lot anyway, so

It's resource, which is the challenge really do you want to add to that?

Officer - 1:11:15

I think I would certainly endorse that I mean that there is

Lots of good ongoing stuff going on so councillor van mentioned the door for example earlier

Which is that ongoing intervention and there are others going on elsewhere

I would note not everything that has a bearing on community safety is ever labelled as such because you know so much of what happens is

Is just good community development good community building and that creates that sort of human capacity human capital that stops

Criminal and social behaviour taking place, so it's it's quite a broad

Partnership of agencies with very different purposes and ambitions that that sit behind some of that preventative work

And as we get closer to the sort of coal face,

we're then more reliant on more limited,

more specific funding.

I can comment in terms of your second point.

Yes, I think certainly we meet with the police over Zoom

or teams, as the case may be, relatively regularly.

So that facility is open to them.

And I think if they are invited and requested to engage in that manner through parishes,

I suspect that there is opportunity there.

Some of it perhaps comes down to where the requests are being made and, you know,

is that ask being made of the police by parishes.

But I'm happy to sort of relay that point onto our contacts.

And certainly as, you know, alluding to some conversation earlier in this meeting

around local government reorganisation,

I think we certainly want to sort of strengthen

that relationship between the community and local police.

Thank you.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:13:04

I've got two sort of slightly joined questions,

and then another one which is probably slightly out of sight

that we measure things to do with traffic and traffic

safety.

The first one, you've just been mentioning, actually,

community involvement.

I'm very pleased to see that Camden is now

now tripping Camden, is now restarting its youth club,

which I think will be a very valuable resource and help.

And sort of based on that, I just wondered,

the two questions really, how far does the Cotswold Youth

Network extend over the district,

which is referred to in these papers here?

And also, can you give us an idea of the size and of the

reach of the area for Operation Solace?

Now that a police officer is going to be covering it,

rather than PCSO. So how far does each police officer, what is the sort of remit around the

Councillor Paul Hodgkinson - 1:13:59

district? Thank you. In terms of the Cotswold Youth Network, that is actually covered by my

colleague Claire Bloomer, but I did have it very briefly as part of this portfolio two years ago,

I think it was. From what I remember, the spread of that youth network was all over the district.

It was all over the district and it's are you familiar with world jungle? I don't know if you've heard of them

Yeah, so they they tended to lead a lot of those

activities from the youth network and they

facilitated a lot of things all over the district actually, I mean might be worth you speaking to that if you

Specifically were thinking particularly about Chippecan and that area in terms of solace. I don't have the answer that you've got that

Officer - 1:14:45

I can certainly venture an answer to the second one.

So Operation Solace historically is a joint project between our environmental health officers working on ASB, working with the police.

Up until this year, the police contribution, the police staffing of that was via PCSOs who had a sort of dedicated role working on that within each district.

Due to changes within policing, and again, that's the

aforementioned sort of budget challenges that we all face,

they've had to retract that level of PCSO support and

instead of introduce the single point of contact role, which is

a police officer rather than a PCSO within each district.

So that pilot has been running for three months so far.

It's fair to say we haven't had that much business in the COTS

was to really understand how that will work moving forward

because, you know, again, we have a relatively low count

on some of these activities.

So unless it's a sort of poor month,

sometimes it can be quiet.

So what that single point of contact does is it ensures

there's professional liaison between environmental health

and police officers so that joint work can take place

on ASB. So that allows us to use some of our powers that aren't available to the police

and vice versa to try and find a sort of very bespoke solution to whatever the ASB issue

is at the time. But it is very much a live conversation because what affects us in this

affects all the districts, city and borough councils in Gloucestershire. So we've got

ongoing meetings. I've got one I think next Monday and talking about how that moves forward.

So hopefully that puts you in the current picture.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:16:40

I think so.

I understand from that that we have one police officer for the Cotswold district.

Officer - 1:16:48

As the single point of contact, yes.

Thank you.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:16:52

The other thing, obviously it's always that thing that residents get confused and think that we can fix the potholes and actually it's the County Council of Gloss Highways.

But on that is that the, I was interested to find out how it's progressing.

I mean, everybody will be concerned within the communities whether the 20 mile an hour speed limit will be coming in.

That's a sort of road safety issue.

And the other one in the North Colsills, we have an awful lot of, as you say, something about the rural fast roads.

I rather hope that people aren't going to use them as fast roads, but I dare say it does happen.

But we're certainly getting a lot of accidents which don't, thankfully, result in fatalities.

But as a result of that, there is no trigger to actually improve the road safety.

And there's quite a few serious junctions where they have repeated small but pretty

unpleasant accidents, and even on the sort of main roads.

So they're both issues really, I know not completely with us, but within this community

safety partnership, how can they be addressed?

Councillor Paul Hodgkinson - 1:17:59

So yeah, we do talk about these things.

As I said, it has rural sort of sorry road safety has been a key goal for us this year.

Just to answer a few points.

I mean, I can I can give you some information based on my GCC role really in terms of the rollout of 20 mile per hour speed limit.

So if you remember all town and parish councils were asked for expressions of interest.

So that was September, I think October.

There were a lot, although it wasn't, you know, blanket.

There were certainly in my county division,

it was quite different.

Some were very in favour and some not.

But those are being sifted.

And I think the idea is for those to be grouped into areas

and the same kind of issue, if it's 20 or maybe it's others,

is to group them together

into what's called traffic regulation orders.

I'm sure you're familiar with that. What is a long and legal process is to try and

speed that up a bit. So that is happening and I know in the budget that the GCC

cabinet is looking at on Wednesday there's extra money being put in to do

that. Rural accidents you're absolutely right. It's the a rural arrows which have

the worst accident rate in the whole country. As you rightly say it isn't all

fatalities, thankfully, but there are a lot of accidents and sadly there have

been fatalities this year as well. There is this thing called the Road Safety

Partnership, which is a partnership between the Office of the Police and

Crime Commissioner and GCC and they meet regularly, again it's not my cabinet

portfolio, but they meet regularly to look at what's called hot spots across

the county and although that that's an awful term, hot spots are those places

which have the most accident, the highest accident records, the highest fatalities, the highest incident.

And each year there's a table drawn up of those and the most interventions then goes to the,

go to those places which are the hot spots and there are always some in the hot spots, always.

You know, not surprisingly from our side. I'm not sure if I can say any more about the road safety

Officer - 1:20:14

partnership, Joseph. And just to note that this year there's been a needs

assessment done on road safety by public health to focus more on the

kind of different dynamics of different road safety incidents so looking at sort

of profiling the victims and the people who've been driving those

vehicles as well to really try and understand the behaviour that might be

might be driving it or the circumstances why someone's found themselves as a

pedestrian in a particular area for example. Because ultimately it's about

trying to move to being fully intelligence -led, you know, the more you can target

campaigns on the higher risk users hopefully the sort of better response

you get because that campaign sort of speaks to someone more

effectively than sort of trying to blanket message. And always that there's

focus on the key risk factors around speed, drinking drugs, seatbelts, mobile phones.

That drives a lot of the accident rate.

No, well, thank you for that.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:21:20

I think the problem is with some of them, slightly more minor but still rather unpleasant

scrapes and whatever, is they don't get recorded on the thing.

So you don't get the full picture because there is no way of doing it.

And I think that is the concern.

people locally will always know the danger areas. Obviously, visitors or other people

coming into the area don't, and they get, and that is an issue. But I would really love to have a way

of better recording the more minor incidents where possible. Does anybody else have anything else they

wish to add to this particular debate and indeed any particular recommendation, or should we just

be thanking Paul and Joseph for their reports, for letting us interrogate them, and thank

them very much. Thank you.

Can we take a question?

No.

We're going to make sure. What can we have which Paul can come and cover for? Thank you.

So, is there anything else? No? Thank you. We'll move to the... Oh, no. Councillor Jenkins.

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 1:22:27

Thank you. You made some suggestions. You'd look at one or two points and we look forward to hearing about that in due course.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:22:40

Before we go into this last item, you will realise that in your papers you've got some pink pages.

If anybody wants to bring up anything which is involved on those pink papers, please can

13 Long term empty homes/second homes strategy update

we do it at the end of the discussion because we can't have any, well there's no members

of the public here, but we certainly will have to cease the recording for any discussion

on that.

So very happy to talk about anything else, but nothing to include.

I've got the knife.

He's got the knife.

Good, good.

On that actually, there has been an issue with the papers going out,

and I think we've now solved it with Democratic services.

Very generously they're giving nice big envelopes to put not just

over the inscrusion, but all agendas and other papers going

out from the mailroom.

Unfortunately, the post office is scrupulous now,

the Royal Mail, if it's too big, it's regarded as a parcel,

and therefore they won't let it go through at first class,

and they even delayed the delivery of a second class.

So apologies for any of you who haven't had their papers

in time.

That is the reason it is now being addressed,

and it shouldn't be a problem going forward.

But I do know, I've only got my papers for this on Friday.

I didn't get any pink papers at all.

Wasn't it in, I don't know, it should be part of your papers.

Anyway, moving on, so this item, Julie Layton has reappeared. She was here earlier. She

is on time appeared. She will introduce this item and is a cabinet member for housing and

planning and she is going to be supported by Mandy Fathers, business manager for the

environmental welfare and revenues. So, Julius, if you're ready to fire off.

I've been here all the time, Gina, listening to the whole of ONS. Thank you.

So, yes, we are looking here at the Empty Homes Strategy, which is one of your

papers that you've got, which I hope you've all read. I'm not going to go

through the whole of the pages of either of these papers. But I was just sort of looking and we're

all very keen on how we deal with empty homes. And I think you will see with both the strategy and

with the report, the executive report, actually, it's very difficult to deal with empty homes.

I was interested in the numbers because I tried AI and said, how many empty homes are there in

England and they gave me the 2021 census,

which said there were 1 .5 million. And I thought, well,

that's a handy number with the government wanting that figure for the housing in

its term. However,

I don't believe it's 1 .5 million of long term empty homes.

I think we've probably got the correct numbers in our papers.

I just felt it was slightly amusing, slightly ironic.

Perhaps amusing is not the right term.

In October, I had a meeting with the team

about how we can reintroduce empty homes

back into the district's housing stock.

So sort of ahead of this paper,

and we'd had some reports about things happening

in Stowe actually at the time. I think Dyliss had reported an empty home that was causing some grief

and we have lots of constraints that stop us doing things. We might be finding the owners,

there are multiple owners, all this is in the report, but there are blight and I think we all

agree that empty homes are a blight on our street scene.

They're a problem in terms of they can be squatted in,

they look derelict,

there are problems in neighbouring properties,

there are problems in neighbouring properties

who might wish to sell because they can undervalue,

that the house values can go down.

And kids can get in them because you were just talking about

what entertainments and youth groups and so on and so forth that were available for kids.

And a lot of kids actually just sort of break into these homes because they know they're

empty and they can ruin them. And we've had some really great successes in getting things

back but you need a lot of money and a developer. So we have had some good successes. Where

am I going with? We've got some empty properties that are unseen. So they're not boarded up.

People don't know about them. And these come under, as Dylis, again, I shall use Dylis

because she's very keen on this, retirement homes. So there are properties that aren't

sold in retirement homes, but they're still counted as empty properties. Whether they're

brand new and unsold, or the difficulties that on reselling when somebody moves out

of them for whatever reason, reselling is a difficulty. But that they also add to our

numbers and that's a problem that we have to deal with. Mandy can talk to you more about

the sensible technical things about this. I confess that I'm full of drugs and a broken

arm. So it can be a bit off the wall at the moment. There are things that we can do. We can do empty

dwelling management orders. Local authorities can take on refurbishments on long -term empty

properties and then recoup the money by renting the property out. And then when they recoup all

the money, that can go back into the ownership of, or back into the hands of the owner.

their exemptions in the council for tax or for bringing properties back into use

and their tax premiums on empty properties to try and discourage empty

people having empty properties. We could do enforced sales, we could do

compulsory purchases, but all these measures are really costly and lengthy

and involve very many teams and departments within the council and these

are all shown actually on the strategy. It shows you who gets involved in everything

on that. We had in last month, I believe it was March 24, National Empty Homes Week, and

that identified, so it was an advertising kind of programme, and that identified 70 empty

properties. And I think with the council and the measures that we can offer and the assistance

we can offer, we got 49 of those back into use by January 25. And we have an empty homes

coordinator who works with homeowners who are struggling to bring their properties back into

use, who don't quite know what grants might be available or what they can use or how they can

do that. But this strategy we need to have done, I think it's statutory, we have a strategy,

which is why I'm here with this. And I think that's all I need to say about this actually

at the moment. But questions, please. Unless Mandy has got lots of information for you

too. She probably has.

Officer - 1:30:59

Thank you Councillor Layton I'll wait for questions. Right Councillor Cunningham

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:31:05

thank you and Councillor Turner and after Councillor Cathery. Thank you Madam Chair.

Councillor David Cunningham - 1:31:12

Mandy how do we do this is this again one of those things where properties

are self -identified or do we just have a whole list of every address there is in

district match that up to who pays council tax on that property and then

anyone doesn't then gets put down as an empty home for whatever reason. Okay so

Officer - 1:31:34

they're usually self declared because if somebody vacates the property and it's

empty then they can get a discount for six months and then following that we

continue with monitoring with our empty homes coordinator and she just monitors

the property as to whether it comes back into use or if it doesn't, works with that person

to see what's happening with it and what can be done. And then if not, we just keep monitoring,

keep offering our assistance, adding the premiums as and when they come in.

Councillor David Cunningham - 1:32:12

This is really quite interesting. There's a property in one of the villages that sits

It's in my ward and it's quite an old property and the roof is crumbling.

It's been empty for quite some time and parts of the balustrade are coming off at the top

and falling into the street.

There's a primary school opposite and the kids walk by that way and bits are falling

off.

Now there is a team, I think they're from West Ox, I think.

There's a guy I've been talking to and he has contacted the heirs, I think, of the estate,

who, of the person that lived there.

But they're not engaging, really.

And it becomes very frustrating because, but it's interesting to read here that we can

make repairs and then drop a bill on them for it.

Because I think even if we didn't actually do that, sending someone a letter to say,

This is a danger to the public. It's building race guys that I talked to

building safety, sorry

To say we're going to fix your roof

We use really expensive tradesmen to do that and then you're going to get the bill

How likely is it that we would do that sort of thing? That's a very specific case, but in general

Officer - 1:33:24

So things like that we have done works in default

Especially with the property and still on the wall that somebody alluded to earlier

It was Councillor Layton, yeah.

But if a property is in that much disrepair and the roof is falling in, really we need to look at taking that property out of the council tax list initially, so there's no council tax charged on that.

And the valuation office agency would be the organisation that we'd go to for that.

But if building control by the sound of it already working with that then they will continue using their legislation

But definitely there are certain properties if they come to us or

Environmental protection then we would look at serving improvement notices

And if they don't then we would look at doing the works in default, but again. It's very very costly

Especially if it was a roof. I mean you're talking

Councillor David Cunningham - 1:34:27

thousands. I suppose my point on this is that where there are properties and I

understand that they're not a large percentage of it because the reality is

that a lot of the numbers we've got in here are in retirement complexes where

they build 60 they sell 10 there's 50 there they will sell them I suppose

eventually or rent them or whatever.

And given the demographic, where we're going with the demographic in this county, I think

we'll definitely get most of them taken up.

So that's one thing.

But this is a case of where there are buildings.

And I know of one that sits in the countryside, not far from my own village, that has been

empty for probably more than five years and is well known locally as a drug den.

And I think the police raid it periodically when they get the chance.

But that's the sort of thing, because I've always believed, wrongly it seems, that we're

very limited in how much we can do about taking a property back or boarding it up or putting

a fence around it or something to make it safe.

I mean, it's interesting that although we have that and you say such enforcement can be extremely complex and lengthy

Are we prepared to bite that bullet? Are we prepared to go down that route?

Officer - 1:35:49

Well, that wouldn't be sort of the decision I would make if it's anything like that that's going to be costly then

The first person we will go to is David is the chief finance officer to discuss the case with him

If it's something that's going to cost the council a lot of money, then obviously that

would mean us bringing a report back to cabinet and probably full council to get approval

to do anything like that.

But it's certainly not something that we wouldn't do if there was a need, but it's whether or

not the council would want to pay that kind of money for something that we may not necessarily

get back we might have to put a charging order or something on the property and

then of course the council wouldn't get that money back until that property is

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:36:47

Councillor Clare Turner - 1:36:49

sold. Yes, Councillor Turner. Thank you. I just wanted to talk a little bit about

the retirement homes as well and particularly this issue in Stowe which

I am sure Councillor Neill would raise if she was here. In the context of having 1 ,444

households on the waiting list for social housing, what are the barriers to some alternative

use for those retirement homes? What is stopping us in the short -term, for example, using that

accommodation for non -retirement purposes. Can we be creative in any way? Is there anything

the council could do, all residents could do to apply pressure in that area to see some

change and some improvement in the number of empty properties there?

Officer - 1:37:44

Well, firstly, I'm sure that there are some planning conditions on a lot of those retirement

properties but for the properties in question that I believe you're talking

about I do believe that there has been some representation made to the owners

of that property to see whether or not it could be used for other means and I

don't think that they're willing to allow those properties to be left to

anybody else than those that are over 55 years.

Councillor Clare Turner - 1:38:22

To follow up with hopefully something more positive for us,

if councils are aware of particular properties,

what route should we take to make sure that

your team is aware of them and they are going through

this sort of process of contact?

Officer - 1:38:41

So if there are properties that need to be referred to us you can either send

them through to revenues at Cotswold or you can always email me directly

and I'll be willing to take that forward with our empty property coordinator.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:39:04

David Sandley would like to come in at this point. Thank you chair.

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 1:39:07

Probably more of an observation, but when you look at Annex A around the enforcement

powers, I suppose we're looking at this purely from the council tax position, given the empty

homes premium that can be applied.

But when you look at what's in Annex A around the enforcement powers, there's a number of

different parts of the council that could get involved.

So you've got dangerous or dilapidated building structures, requires section 77 or 78 of the

building act.

There's reference to the housing act 2004 with reference to a property causing a nuisance

in the community further on.

There's the empty dwelling and management order under the housing act 2004.

So I don't think there's going to be a one -size -fits -all once a council has identified a particular

problem property that emailing the revenues team is going to result in action.

But I think there's a follow -up, I suppose, for the council to consider, I suppose, the

member sentiment and liaising closely with the portfolio holder to understand what those

options are for those properties.

Because some of these will be outside of the scope of what the council could do, particularly

when you think around a compulsory purchase order.

That is the last resort is guaranteed

to incur significant cost,

is guaranteed to take considerable amounts of time

and is guaranteed to not be certain in terms of the outcome

because when it goes through the CPO route,

there is no certainty that the council

will get the outcome it's seeking

because the judgement might be you haven't got a case,

Therefore, you're not going to be granted the CPO.

But understanding, I suppose, the nature of what type of action could be taken, what cost

would that have to the council, what benefit would that have to those communities affected,

the use of the Empty Homes Premium is something that can be used and is used by a number of

authorities and I can ping the link to a very useful House of Commons library note entitled

why am I paying an empty homes premium on my council tax, which indicates there's over

119 ,000 properties across England and Wales that are, across England, sorry, that are

being charged the empty homes premium. And there are around 290 local authorities that

are taking advantage of that premium. So it's not just a cots -hold issue, but it's multifaceted,

I think. And I think from what I'm hearing here, there's probably a need for us to consider

what that response could be involving more than just Mandy's team more than

the building control team because there won't be a single answer to each of

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:42:01

these cases. Thank you for that additional information very helpful. I've got

Councillor Tony Slater - 1:42:07

Councillor Slater's got a question. Thank you it follows on from that discussion

actually so I'm aware of a property that's been empty in our village for

probably 25 years.

So are we able to see the database that you've got

registered as empty properties?

And this sort of leads on to the second property issue as

well, which we've nudged the door a couple of times over

the last few years.

If we're able to see which properties are recorded as

second properties, not in a sort of big brother sort of

But if people are playing the system, it'll be nice to make sure we're getting the right revenue from those those properties

Also we've got

Where there's a private estate with several properties on it

Can they do what they want with their properties or does this fall into the the same?

bucket that we can discuss with you

I'll try and remember all those.

Officer - 1:43:14

So your last one, if they're on private estate, if they have a council tax assessment, which

they do, then it would be the same.

They would be treated exactly the same as any other.

And I am aware that we are doing some work on those already.

Officer - 1:43:39

I think I need to speak with our data protection officer there.

It's not data that we, it's not open data.

So there would need to be a good reason.

If you had properties in your wards that you were concerned about, then by all accounts,

as I said, you can email those and we can have a look at them.

But to open up the database no, sorry

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:44:08

You know I think that some of these properties we have got the pink papers

There are some properties on that, but that's not to be discussed as in open session

I can show them to you if you're somebody who didn't get your papers you got your papers

Okay, all right. Thank you. We have

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:44:26

Yes, I

I checked this morning with Fairford Town Council as to what they knew about empty properties

and whether they were involved in any way in notifying CDC.

Councillor Michael Vann - 1:44:48

And the answer was no.

I think it could be considered a general mailing to parish and town councils that if councils

are, believe they're aware of or would need to set up the parameters for how long it had

been empty, that they should contact you personally or a generic email address at CDC.

Officer - 1:45:29

That's definitely something we can consider and I'll discuss that with our comms teams.

Councillor Bridges.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:45:38

Councillor Nick Bridges - 1:45:43

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this premium that comes back, I think it's 100 %

and it becomes 200%, et cetera, that just goes into general funds, doesn't it?

Is there any way in which we could just have that extra premium, have that go into designated

Officer - 1:46:06

funds so it creates more social housing. If I may I will pass that question on to

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 1:46:13

David Stanley. Thank you chair. So in terms of how the council budgets for

empty homes and second -homes premiums it's part of the overall tax base which

which the council taxes worked out against.

There was the administration of the council put forward

and is funding from the second homes premium,

130 ,000 pounds worth of support

to encourage more affordable housing.

That report went to council in March, 2024,

a good year before the legislation was in place.

What I would say is that I suppose

that there is a separate decision

on the way in which the income is collected and how that income is spent.

So any proposal that is coming from members around spending general council

tax in a particular way be that raised through the second house premium of the

empty house premium would need to come through the budget setting process in

the normal manner. As your CFO given the pressures on the council's revenue

budget I would probably be cautioning of you on taking elements of the council

tax out and using it for specific purposes as council tax is one of the

only ways the council has got of being able to raise revenue and pay for the

services that it gets given the pressures on local government finance

more generally.

Thank you. We've now got Councillor Jenkins.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:47:43

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 1:47:46

Thank you again, Chair. So I've got two questions. One is the way that the properties are analysed

from the point of view of developing strategy.

Now, it's clear that the number of years that they've been open,

or just the period that it's been left empty, is an important factor.

But it may not be the most useful from the point of view of designing

what should be done about it.

On a certain page, which I don't have in front of me anymore, you list some causes for properties remaining empty, and there's a list of about eight, I think, of those.

That looks like quite an interesting way of analysing how and why properties are empty, and therefore what might need to be done.

What I'm wondering is if it wouldn't be a good idea from the point of view of future strategic planning and reporting to us that this information was rearranged and where necessary further information was obtained to clarify these are properties they may be, it may be that they've been empty two years but something is being done about them, it is not an issue.

This is one that's six months, but it is an issue for the following reasons.

I'm not going to try and invent the design and structure of it on the hoof,

but I am going to suggest that it would be useful to think about how this information,

the properties could be analysed into categories in a way that would really help us to understand the issues

and would help the council to develop strategies for dealing with different sorts of properties and what we might do.

So that's my first question.

The second is building on what's already been brought, I think, by Councillor Slater.

Why is it that we can't, for example, report properties that are empty, or as locations?

We might not be reporting that it's owned by such and such a person and so on, but there

are always people looking around for properties where there's an opportunity to do development.

I have one that took place in my own ward that had been empty for 20 years.

somebody saw it, took an opportunity, developers turned it into something interesting.

Could we not actually publish a set of properties that have been empty for some period or have

some other conditions that belong to it as a public register so that people who were

interested in, they could choose to make an approach to the owners themselves with a view

to making an offer that cannot be refused,

that could be worthwhile and deal with the issue.

I'm just trying to think what we could do in the open marketplace

to facilitate the open marketplace to deal with these things.

Thank you.

Officer - 1:51:11

So for your first question, we do analyse the data,

so it wouldn't be hard for us

to bring back another report showing the breakdown

of those properties and what's being done,

what can't be done, so that's not a problem.

In respect of your second question, we can't publicise

any of that data because it's personal data.

I appreciate addresses, properties that are out there,

but the people that own those is personal data and we cannot give

that information out.

I did say we don't have to list the name of the person

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 1:51:51

who owns it.

We just have to say there's a property there of a certain type.

It's empty.

Officer - 1:52:00

We can't advertise the fact that a property is empty because that then itself could cause crime

if the property is empty.

Yeah, exactly.

Thank you.

Centre for Action.

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 1:52:15

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 1:52:17

If I may, Chair.

Just I would be looking at this in terms of what powers the council is collecting the data that it holds on properties

That will be under provisions around

Administering a council tax on behalf of itself and other precepting bodies

I do not believe the council has the powers to collect that data to act in effect as a middle person

advertising of potential opportunities to property developers. I think that's down to,

I'm fairly sure, respectable property developers would have a network of contacts identifying

particular sites that would be available for development. I don't think that's this authority's

role. I don't think we've got the powers to do that, but I'm saying that from a fairly

low level knowledge point of view. But that's where I think we're looking at this. We're

collecting data on the council tax assessment and liability, which would include the status

the property has in terms of the calculation for the tax base as to whether it's largely

empty and unfurnished, which then gives rise to its position on the empty homes premium,

and using that premium as a lever to try and bring the property back into use, not to necessarily

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 1:53:45

pass that information on to the open market. Thank you for that clarification.

I'll take any further points offline.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:53:51

Councillor Michael Vann - 1:53:58

Thank you. Oop, Councillor van. Can I ask a question on Annex A? That's the pink.

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:54:09

We would have to vote to go into private sector.

We can do that in a minute, but what we would like to do is do all the ones which are non

and then if you would like to do that, we will then vote and then we will stop the camera

recording.

I just had a question which I know is not quite the same thing.

There is a property I am aware of.

This is where you have an empty business property.

It was a hotel. I just been empty for about six years now if not more.

I don't know what those people who own it are planning to do.

I don't even know who the owners are.

But what is it about those sort of houses, places, I'm going to say,

on a high street which have got the same, I mean, and look terrible as a result

and what can we do about them? I know I'm not giving anything particular away.

Officer - 1:54:59

So this strategy is for domestic properties only. On the business rate side of things,

that there are things we can do but that wouldn't be for this matter here.

I realise I was going to be on the brief but of course what does happen in quite a lot of

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:55:19

these cases is that these properties do get turned into residential properties so it sort

of sits between it. It's just we all think empty properties of whatever sort

are actually you know that they're not desirable anywhere in the district so

empty business premises cause as much problems as empty properties.

Right, Gina.

Oh no, sorry, sorry, yes, Juliet.

Yes, that would have to be a planning application for a change of use if somebody

wanted to go from a hotel or a pub to residential, that would go through the

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:56:00

planning system. I'm sort of aware of that. We live in hope that it might come

one day, that's when we look for it. So if everybody asks the questions that they

would like to do in the open session here, we will take a vote to go into

private session because Councillor Fan's got something to ask which is on that. I

I'm sure they can keep you going, but we will be ceasing the recording.

I'm not sure how that works.

Okay, so is everybody happy that we have a vote that we go into private session to talk about the things on the pink papers?

Please provide any feedback/comments relating to the live webcast here. Any feedback submitted will be received to the Democratic Services team.

Required field

Name

Comments

Need an accessible hCaptcha?
Check available options.
Sign up to hCaptcha or Log in to hChaptcha.

By clicking Send feedback, you agree that Cotswold District Council and Public-i can use the information above to review your feedback and contact you about it. See our Privacy Policy for more details.

Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Monday 1 December 2025, 2:00pm - Cotswold District Council Webcasting

Overview and Scrutiny CommitteeMonday, 1st December 2025 at 2:00pm

Agenda

Slides

Transcript

Map

Resources

Twitter

Forums

Speakers

Feedback

Votes

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:00:21

Julia Gibson, Officer - 0:01:17

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:01:21

Councillor Tony Slater - 0:01:38

Councillor Nick Bridges - 0:01:41

Councillor Michael Vann - 0:01:47

Councillor Clare Turner - 0:01:54

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:01:56

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:02:04

3 Declarations of Interest

4 Minutes

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:02:38

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:03:14

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:03:27

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:03:42

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:04:41

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:05:14

5 Matters Arising from Minutes of the Previous Meeting

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:05:41

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:06:28

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:07:17

Councillor David Cunningham - 0:07:23

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:07:30

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:08:19

6 Chair's Announcements

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:08:45

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:09:21

Councillor David Cunningham - 0:09:25

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:09:31

9 Report back on recommendations

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:10:09

10 Local Government Reorganisation - Reporting and Scrutiny arrangements

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:13:51

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:15:55

Councillor David Cunningham - 0:16:24

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:17:07

Councillor Michael Vann - 0:17:13

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:17:37

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:17:43

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:18:19

11 Public Toilet Update

Cabinet Member - 0:19:15

Public Speaker - 0:24:51

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:25:26

Councillor David Cunningham - 0:25:30

Officer - 0:26:21

Cabinet Member - 0:27:05

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:27:48

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:27:56

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:28:50

Councillor Clare Turner - 0:28:55

Cabinet Member - 0:29:25

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:30:26

Councillor Tony Slater - 0:30:31

Cabinet Member - 0:30:59

Officer - 0:31:42

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:32:05

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:32:06

Cabinet Member - 0:33:59

Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:35:42

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:35:50

Councillor Nick Bridges - 0:35:57

Cabinet Member - 0:36:51

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:37:34

Cabinet Member - 0:38:13

David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:38:23

Cabinet Member - 0:39:09

Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:39:54

Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Monday, 1st December 2025 at 2:00pm