Cabinet - Thursday 8 January 2026, 6:00pm - Cotswold District Council Webcasting

Cabinet
Thursday, 8th January 2026 at 6:00pm 

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  1. Councillor Mike Evemy
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  1. 03. Approval of Minutes (Meetings 20/11)
    Status: In progress
  2. Councillor Mike Evemy
  3. 03. Approval of Minutes (Meetings 20/11)
    Status: Ended
  4. 03. Approval of Minutes (Meetings 26/11)
    Status: In progress
  5. Councillor Mike Evemy
  6. 03. Approval of Minutes (Meetings 26/11)
    Status: Ended
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  1. Councillor Andrea Pellegram
  2. Councillor Mike Evemy
  3. Officer
  4. Councillor Mike Evemy
  5. Councillor Mike McKeown
  6. Councillor Juliet Layton
  7. Councillor Mike Evemy
  8. Councillor Patrick Coleman
  9. Councillor Mike Evemy
  10. Councillor Tony Dale
  11. Councillor Juliet Layton
  12. Officer
  13. Councillor Mike Evemy
  14. Councillor Gina Blomefield
  15. Councillor Mike Evemy
  16. Councillor Michael Vann
  17. Councillor Mike Evemy
  18. Officer
  19. Councillor Mike Evemy
  20. Officer
  21. Councillor Mike Evemy
  22. Councillor Andrea Pellegram
  23. Councillor Mike Evemy
  24. 18. Fleet Replacement Programme, approve recs 1-3
    Status: In progress
  25. 18. Fleet Replacement Programme, approve recs 1-3
    Status: Ended
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  1. Officer
  2. Councillor Mike Evemy
  3. Councillor Tony Dale
  4. Councillor Mike Evemy
  5. 09. Carers Leave/Dogs at Work Policies, Approve recs 1-2
    Status: In progress
  6. 09. Carers Leave/Dogs at Work Policies, Approve recs 1-2
    Status: Ended
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  1. Officer
  2. Councillor Mike Evemy
  3. Councillor Tony Dale
  4. Councillor Mike Evemy
  5. Councillor Patrick Coleman
  6. Officer
  7. Councillor Mike Evemy
  8. 10. EDIE Policy and Procedure Update 2025, Approve recs 1-3
    Status: In progress
  9. Councillor Mike Evemy
  10. 10. EDIE Policy and Procedure Update 2025, Approve recs 1-3
    Status: Ended
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  1. Officer
  2. Councillor Mike Evemy
  3. Councillor Mike Evemy
  4. 11. Corporate Enforcement Policy, Approve recs 1-2
    Status: In progress
  5. 11. Corporate Enforcement Policy, Approve recs 1-2
    Status: Ended
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  1. Councillor Patrick Coleman
  2. Councillor Mike Evemy
  3. Officer
  4. Councillor Mike Evemy
  5. Officer
  6. Councillor Mike Evemy
  7. 12. Enforcement Agent Commissioning, Approve recs 1-2
    Status: In progress
  8. 12. Enforcement Agent Commissioning, Approve recs 1-2
    Status: Ended
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  1. Councillor Patrick Coleman
  2. Councillor Mike Evemy
  3. Councillor Tony Dale
  4. Councillor Mike Evemy
  5. 13. Fees and Charges 2026/27, approve recs 1-4
    Status: In progress
  6. Councillor Mike Evemy
  7. 13. Fees and Charges 2026/27, approve recs 1-4
    Status: Ended
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  1. Officer
  2. Councillor Mike Evemy
  3. Councillor Andrea Pellegram
  4. Councillor Mike Evemy
  5. Councillor Andrea Pellegram
  6. Councillor Mike Evemy
  7. Councillor Tristan Wilkinson
  8. Councillor Mike Evemy
  9. David Stanley, Deputy CEO
  10. Councillor Mike Evemy
  11. Councillor Mike McKeown
  12. Councillor Mike Evemy
  13. Councillor Mike Evemy
  14. Councillor Juliet Layton
  15. Councillor Mike Evemy
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  1. Councillor Patrick Coleman
  2. Councillor Mike Evemy
  3. David Stanley, Deputy CEO
  4. Councillor Mike Evemy
  5. 15. Financial Performance Report 2025/26, approve recs 1-4
    Status: In progress
  6. 15. Financial Performance Report 2025/26, approve recs 1-4
    Status: Ended
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  1. David Stanley, Deputy CEO
  2. Councillor Mike Evemy
  3. Councillor Tony Dale
  4. Councillor Mike Evemy
  5. Councillor Tony Dale
  6. Councillor Mike Evemy
  7. Councillor Mike McKeown
  8. Councillor Mike Evemy
  9. Councillor Andrea Pellegram
  10. Councillor Mike Evemy
  11. Councillor Mike Evemy
  12. Councillor Juliet Layton
  13. Councillor Mike Evemy
  14. Councillor Mike Evemy
  15. Councillor Mike Evemy
  16. Councillor Tony Dale
  17. Councillor Mike Evemy
  18. 16. CDC Strategic Risk Register Q2, approve recs 1-2
    Status: In progress
  19. 16. CDC Strategic Risk Register Q2, approve recs 1-2
    Status: Ended
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  1. Councillor Juliet Layton
  2. Councillor Mike Evemy
  3. Councillor Mike Evemy
  4. Councillor Mike McKeown
  5. Councillor Mike Evemy
  6. Councillor Juliet Layton
  7. Councillor Mike Evemy
  8. Councillor Andrea Pellegram
  9. Councillor Mike Evemy
  10. Councillor Tristan Wilkinson
  11. Councillor Mike Evemy
  12. 17. Community Infrastructure Levy, approve recs 1-2
    Status: In progress
  13. 17. Community Infrastructure Levy, approve recs 1-2
    Status: Ended
  14. Webcast Finished

Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:00:07
Good evening, everybody. Welcome to this meeting of the Cotswold District Council cabinet.
I want to wish Happy New Year to everybody here present and anybody who's watching this
in January, at least online. Obviously, we've got some bad weather already starting in the
consequence
We have some of our officers joining us online
Therefore they don't have to travel back late
through that and I'm also going to
move the
Waste fleet report which is a gender item
18
back to
After Jen make it 8i 8a so we'll do that one there. I'm so conscious that
Councillor Blumfeld needs to get back home through the snow.
So, and I specifically wanted to take part in that one.
So, but I'm conscious of, we need to obviously do
due diligence to all the items, but I'm also conscious
that people may have to travel.
So we will hope to conclude the meeting in good time
so that people can get home before the worst of the weather.
So I'll move on, apologies.

1 Apologies

I think we have apologies from Councillor Blumner.
and that's it I think.
Declarations of interest.

2 Declarations of Interest

Does anyone have any interest declaration they wish to make?
Any members?
No.
Okay.

3 Minutes

So we'll then move on to minutes, which is agenda item 3.
Got two sets of minutes, so I guess we have to vote on those separately.
The first were agenda item page 9 is the minutes from the 20th of November.
does anyone have any corrections on the minutes from the 20th of November? If not, then I'll
move those from the chair. We have a seconder, Patrick Coleman. Thank you. So can we move
to the vote then please on those minutes?
That's virtual.
Yeah, so you weren't there.
I'm not there.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:02:36
One question mark. Juliette's abstained. Tony, were you abstaining on that?
I'm abstaining.
That should be on the yellow, is abstain. We're not seeing that on the screen.
We should have two yellow.
Juliette's abstained as well so it's just not showing up on the on the screen
somehow. That's because she's not done it.
Okay yes, you thought you'd done it right okay so it's five in favour and two abstentions.
So that's carried.
So let's move on to meeting of the 26th of November.
Does anyone have any comments or corrections to those?
That's our LGR meeting.
No, okay, so I'll move those from the chair.
Do we have a seconder for those?
Who was there?
Patrick again, yeah, okay.
So we'll now take the vote on that.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:03:54
Okay, thank you. We have four votes in favour and three abstentions. So that's carried.

4 Leader's Announcements

Thank you very much. So the next item is leaders announcements. I've just got a couple of things.
One is to wish a very warm welcome back to the cabinet to Councillor Tony Dale. Tony,
It's great to have you back with us.
Brilliant.
So glad to see you.
So thank you for coming back.
And the second fact is a thank you as well.
And it's a thank you to nearly 2000 people
who took part in our local plan consultation,
which ended on the 2nd of January.
We will be doing something in the media
to give a bit more information on that to say,
but just wanted to thank everybody
who took part in that consultation.
and also to thank all our officers that worked so hard
to make the consultation, the communications,
and the events, and everything else surrounding it
to engage, and it's really, when we look at it,
has really engaged our residents in a way
which we haven't seen before in terms of in the district.
So thank you to everyone who's took part
and everyone who's worked on that.
Obviously, we'll be taking that forward now
as we go through the next stages with the plan.
So I'll then move on to public questions.

5 Public Questions

Looking at the back of the room,
I don't see any members of the public.
So there are no public questions to take this evening.
Member questions, we don't have

6 Member Questions

any member questions submitted.
And then we go to item seven,

7 Schedule of Decisions taken by the Leader of the Council and/or Individual Cabinet Members

decisions taken by the leader
of individual cabinet members.
So on page 25 you can see decisions taken by Councillor Layton and then also
yeah it's just one decision from Councillor Layton so that's fine and then

8 Issue(s) Arising from Overview and Scrutiny and/or Audit and Governance

on agenda item 8 which is on page 27 you can see the matters arising from the
audit and governance committee and their meeting on the 4th of December when
they talk about the strategic risk register reports and I'll talk about that
a bit more when I introduce it because we're going to be considering that this
evening. So that's just to note obviously that we're in accordance
we're putting the register on the agenda for our future work plan. Okay so and
obviously there was a meeting the audit OBE and scrutiny committee on Monday
where they pre scrutinised some of the items we're going to be considering now
and I'm gonna give the opportunity for the chair and we have one of the other
members of the committee to say anything when we get to the items that we're
going to consider which the first of which is next which is the waste fleet
report that we've on page 373 so just before I sort of introduce this and hand

18 Fleet Replacement Programme

over to Councillor Pellegran to present the report I wanted sort of to put on on
record my what's the right word I've had several conversations subsequent to the
meeting on Monday with various people, including the Chief Executive. And she
has also spoken with a portfolio holder and she will be writing to all members
of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee by the end of the week just to
essentially respond to the meeting and how the papers and
that other things were presented.
So she will be writing to the members of the committee
because I think it recognised it wasn't quite
as we would have liked it to be at the meeting on Monday.
But I'm now gonna hand over to Councillor Pellegram
to introduce the report.
Thank you, Chair.
Councillor Andrea Pellegram - 0:08:10
This is the long awaited set of recommendations
on the vehicle fleet replacement programme
for our waste fleet.
As many of you know, our waste fleet is ageing.
Many of the vehicles are in constant need of repair.
This has an effect on service delivery, and it's quite a consideration for us.
In coming to these recommendations, officers and counsellors have put in a lot of effort
and thought into how we are going to balance a number of key priorities.
Obviously, the cost side, it's indicated that the cost will be in the region of 6 million pounds,
which is obviously a significant capital outlay for this council.
But also, our council is green to the core,
and our corporate objectives are very much about trying to reduce our carbon footprint.
and the waste vehicle fleet is responsible for over 40 %
of our entire carbon footprint
for the district council's operations.
And on that, there has long been an aspiration
that we have many electric vehicles to reduce that impact.
And this is something that we have looked at
very, very closely.
However, I think the most important thing is service delivery and our ratepayers pay
regularly and they have no choice but to pay for the waste services that they receive and
it's our responsibility to make sure that that waste service is as good as it can possibly
be.
And with these ageing vehicles, I'm afraid sometimes we have let our residents down.
So it's so, so important to the Council that we actually provide this service in the best way we can,
and that means that we have to replace the vehicles.
But in balancing these three things, we also have the background of local government reorganisation.
And unfortunately, right now our provider is Yubico, and they offer different services
for every one of the constituent Gloucestershire authorities.
And to date, there has not been very good cross -border working.
And this has an impact on decisions around our ability to charge electric vehicles
because at present, we only have one realistic place
where we can charge electric vehicles which is in South Cerny.
And obviously, the district is long and narrow and it means that using electric vehicles
to the north is problematic because of the range.
And we currently don't consider
that the electric vehicles available to us
are able to drive that far,
with certainty that they will be able
to return to the depot in time.
So the difficult decision was made
that we would only have one electric vehicle
and the rest would be remain running on diesel.
However, that's contrary to the green to the core objective. So as an amelioration,
we're also looking to introduce hydro treated vegetable oil, HVO, which has to
be bought in bulk. This is a drop in fuel that's a one for one replacement for
diesel. So as long as we have HVO, which costs a little bit more than diesel in
the current market, we will be able to at least offset some of the carbon impact of
the diesel vehicles. So this is, in my opinion, a very well considered report which offers
the best solution for our residents who need to receive an excellent service, our commitments
to the environment, and our ability to save costs. Now, the meeting that our chair just
referred to, Counsellor Evme, was the Overview and Scrutiny Committee. And they had a very
robust debate about this report, which I took very seriously. So I just wanted to highlight
for you some of the issues that were raised. First of all, as I said, this is a 6 million
pound outlay. And it was mentioned a few times that the Overview and Scrutiny Committee wanted
assurances that we were not going to borrow money.
I have subsequently written to officers and asked for that to be specifically addressed
in the February budget discussions.
The next issue of great concern to the overview and scrutiny committee was the type of HVO
because if it's hydro treated vegetable oil then it has a very low carbon impact
and it's carbon beneficial.
If, however, it's from a crop or if it's from palm oil, then it has a negative environmental
impact.
So I have been assured by officers that there is a procurement process in place will ensure
that we only buy the climate positive HVO.
So I consider that that overcomes the objection I'm going to say raised by the overview and
scrutiny committee.
They also were disappointed that we could not purchase more electric vehicles.
I'm confident that only buying one at the present time is the correct response.
We are going into local government reorganisation and at that time we can review the vehicle fleet
and how the vehicle fleet might be able to recharge batteries across the new unitary authority area,
whatever that might be.
These vehicles that we're purchasing now will have a seven -year life,
and that will probably mean that these vehicles will come to the end of their life
at just about the time that the new unitary is able to make decisions about further electric vehicle charging options.
So, it's difficult. It's expensive, and it's urgent.
I have every confidence that this report,
with its recommendations,
which are to approve the vehicle fleet replacement,
to approve steps towards decarbonization,
which is the introduction of the EV vehicle
and the hydrogenated vegetable oil fuel supplement,
and a reprofiled capital expenditure,
because we're actually moving money
from different financial years into the next financial year to pay for this.
I'm absolutely confident that this is the right recommendation
and I commend it to the cabinet.
Thank you.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:15:09
Thank you very much Andrea and it was slightly remiss of me to say when I forget
when I introduced this to say that we do have an additional item that's been published,
that's been tabled for us which we were aware of as a cabinet but we didn't share
with the O &S Committee, which in hindsight we should have done,
that's on the website now.
I think Nicky is in it, so that's, which goes into some
of the background about how we came to the decisions around
which of the options to go with that are in front of us.
I'm going to go, I've seen a few members to say something.
I'm going to go to Peter, who's done all the work on this,
to say if she's got anything to add to Andrea's very thorough
introduction and then I'm going to go to members and then I'll come to Gina and
Michael if they want to say something as well before we sort of wrap the debate
Officer - 0:16:04
up at Peter. Thank you, I was very thorough so nothing further to add. Thank you very much.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:16:08
Thank you. Mike and then Juliet. I just wanted to say a few words in support of
Councillor Mike McKeown - 0:16:15
the replacement programme and in particular the decision to move to the
fleet to HVO, particularly my role as the cabinet lead for climate change.
Before I do, I wanted to thank Peter and Andrea for, I know, a lot of work they put into bringing
this forward and putting up to me, who pushed quite hard and quite vocally at times on the
carbon decarbonisation part of this.
As we heard, the waste fleet services are the single largest part of the carbon footprint
of this council and indeed pretty much any council in the district or borough council.
It's pretty true for all of them.
So if we're serious and we are about our commitments made
on our climate emergency, then to carbon reduction
and tackling the waste fleet is not optional.
It's absolutely essential.
Without this step, we just simply will not make
the commitments.
That's why this is so important.
So the move for HVO is therefore a really critical
intervention, tactical as it might be.
It delivers that substantial reduction in
carbon emissions across the vehicles we already operate
as well as the new fleet that we'll be running.
It's pragmatic, deliverable, and makes some difference now
rather than just in the future, which we need to do
as climate change is hitting us now, not just in the future.
I also wanted to acknowledge that that frustration
that many of us share about the EVs,
ideally we would have wanted to move to EVs properly and fast,
faster than we were able to do.
The reality is the geography of the Cotswolds
just makes that pretty much impossible. Very sadly we're a very long thin district with
exceptionally long collection routes which makes that transition hard which would basically
be impossible right now on today's technology compared to say urban authorities that are
making that transition. And I think that's actually one of the things we voted for last
time was the single unitary authority and that will be something that will help us in
future as it will be able to redesign the routing to be a much more sensible
and efficient thing that will allow our transition to electric vehicles which is
of course where we want to be. So so much as it pains me this decision is the
right one. HVO gives us that reduction that we need while we get to more
comprehensive and strategic transition to EV. So I'm supporting it. It is the
single largest carbon decision, carbon reduction decision this council's ever
made in terms of percentage, so that HVO element is vital.
So I did want to make clear from my vote what the,
as the Cabinet member for climate change,
I'm giving clear direction that for offices and Cabinet,
that moving the waste fleet to HVO is mandatory,
and that the sourcing of HVO must be robustly
and continually audited.
It's essential that fuels used, genuinely derived from waste
soils, as you said, and residuals, and not from energy crops and deforestations.
I know our climate team as well as the waste team will be doing that because we need to
avoid the damage to the environment and the failure to deliver carbon savings if we don't.
So if there are any issues in sourcing HVO or implementing HVO, I'd expect that to be
brought back to Cabana.
I do not see that as a delegated matter.
this is vital to our carbon, our actions on it.
So I want that to be really clear to my vote that I'm
expecting that to come back if we've got any issues
with implementing it.
It's not a delegated matter and we're there for that
and we need that assurance as we, if we can't do that,
we won't meet our climate goals.
And that's why I see that as so important and why I was
such a pain in the butt on that stuff and quite banging
the table on what we do as it exists.
so important. Thank you.
Thank you, Mark. Juliet?
Councillor Juliet Layton - 0:20:09
Thank you. Well, Mike might have answered my question,
because I'm very concerned about HVOs.
I mean, the fact that we're not using Parnell, thank God,
I mean, that would just be disastrous and a terrible
thing to be doing.
So you reassured me on that, Andrew, when you were talking
about what you're doing.
But are we sure the HVOs are actually coming from recycled
used oils because if we're growing crops to do that and this is an
argument with anaerobic digesters that are saying oh you know we have break
crops and they're all shifting this product around in diesel lorries usually
and that worries me a lot. It was like your last paragraph I think
when you were talking that said we were definitely using recycled oil. So old
McDonald's or whatever. I'm very, very happy with that. So thank you.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:21:08
I think Andrea did say that, but you've emphasised a point. And that was the point that was made
by Councillor Jenkinson very clearly in the ONS committee on Monday. I've seen Patrick
and Tony and then I will come to the ONS committee members.
Councillor Patrick Coleman - 0:21:24
Yes, just to add, I think, to the picture, I trust everybody to share my appreciation
of the work of the staff of UBICO dealing with the Christmas overloading, the heavy
demand on them over Christmas immediately followed by very severe weather, first frost
and now heavy rain. It's still a rewarding job provided we look after staff. The introduction
some years ago of the in -vehicle in cab technology I think was very helpful and
I think it's appropriate that we also place on record our appreciation for the
round the year week in week out commitment of these teams thank you
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:22:06
Councillor Tony Dale - 0:22:10
thank you Patrick Tony yeah really any perhaps to to support and back up what
what Councillor Mike Keiran has said, which is that HVO's are probably the right answer
from a green perspective in us having voted to be green to the core. But I absolutely
agree with Juliet's point, which is that those HVO's, we must make sure we audit UBICO to
ensure that they are coming from the right sources. I had issues with biomass some years
ago being basically palletised in Canada and then shipped in containers around the world
in order to be a so -called carbon neutral fuel in the
United Kingdom.
That's absolutely barmy.
And we must be clear, the issues with HVO's at the moment are not
ones of its cost or its use, it's its distribution.
So very much on Yubico and staff to make sure that the right
fuels are in the right place for us to be green to the core
to operate this fleet.
The other good news is that we may only have one EV,
and I really understand why and the reasons why for that.
But Andrea, at least it's one.
It's a step in the right direction.
And the good news is if you look at the automotive press,
you will see that battery technology is starting to adopt
Moore's law.
And so our batteries are going to get twice as powerful almost
every year as they get half the size.
So we have a future potentially where all those vehicles in seven
years' time could become fully electric.
And I think that would be great for all of us.
Thank you, Tony. Juliet just wanted to come back.
Councillor Juliet Layton - 0:23:43
Sorry. It says here that you can use a diesel vehicle and it can work, it can run on HVO.
I'm thinking of the tanks in South Cerny at the depot. Are they, what's the process? Do
they have to be cleaned out or stripped out or is that going to be an added cost that
we've not thought of yet.
So, yeah, just on that point, so the tank, we need a tank,
Officer - 0:24:10
that's the first thing, so we need to get a tank into the
depot because what we can't do is buy HVO
at the petrol stations.
So we need a tank because it's a drop in fuel, because it can be
used in a vehicle with no modifications, it means it can
be in that tank with no modifications too.
What becomes more complicated is if, for example, there were
any issues with the supply, because we're absolutely clear,
It has to be from used cooking oil or other byproducts.
If there were any issues with supply
and we reverted back to diesel,
so we can still mix that material in the tank.
We just have to be very careful with reporting
to make sure that we're reporting in the right way.
But it becomes a matter of we know what we bought,
therefore we know what we've used.
We just have to be careful in terms of that reporting.
Thank you.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:24:56
Gonna go to members.
We've got Gina Bloomfield and Michael Van,
if you'd like to say anything.
So your committee spent a lot of time,
and obviously you've heard the response from Andrea
to some of the points that were raised by the committee.
So over to you, Gina, if you want to go first.
Well, right.
Good evening, everybody.
Yes, it certainly provoked a lot of debate,
a lot of healthy debate.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:25:21
And actually what was interesting, it was cross party.
There is the representatives of the Conservatives, the Green,
and Lib Dems also had concerns. Since that meeting, Andrea has been in touch with us,
we've had a lot of information, I think we're feeling much more reassured and I gather that
our CEO, Jane Portman, is also going to be circulating information on this. I think there
were several problems, slightly being alluded to, the papers were not complete when the
agenda was originally issued, so there wasn't enough information or none at that point.
And then, in fact, the feeling was that when the report came out, it was very, very good,
but particularly good for people who knew all the background, but not for people who
hadn't been aware of that. And so it was too concise, really, for people who really wanted
to know a lot more. So that was where the concerns were.
So, unsurprisingly, Councillor Cunningham was very worried about the potential that
we might have to borrow. I think you've discussed that this evening, trying to avoid borrowing
it all. In addition to that, it was, and I know Andrea in her one of her answers was
going to look at whether, at what point should it be needed, should the financial schedule
will go a bit adrift, whether we can cancel.
There's a long lead time, as we all understand,
which is why there's an urgency to order these vehicles now.
And there are stages along that lead time.
But when you actually have to put in deposits or pay
extra money or the final amount, David Stanley
did give us some information on that.
But whether there is actually, say,
once you've done your orders and got yourself
on the list for ordering whichever vehicle it is, whether you can then sort of say three
months in, oops, I don't think we're going to need it. That was one of the questions
and Andrea was going to look into that for us.
Councillor Turner unsurprisingly had her, you know, dreams of all being electric and
I know that lots of other people here would like that too. So she was having, we looked
at overview of the scrutiny over a year ago and she'd hoped that that would have been
part of the thing. So when she saw it, there was this appointment. I think we all understand
it's to do with the geography of the region, where our charging point is, and it doesn't
appear to be a realistic option to go for more electric vehicles. They are by their
very nature heavy. And of course in the colder weather like we've got now, going up and
down the hills, it does, I have an electric car,
I know what toll it takes on the battery in the winter.
Finally, Councillor Jenson, again,
with his interest in agriculture
and everything to do with farming,
is very concerned that, and you have covered this off,
but rapeseed oil or any other,
grown, whatever it is, I know,
well, palm oil not grown in this country,
But there are corn oils and other oils.
In America, they use a lot of these things to make into fuel.
So he just feels that farmland should
principally be used for growing food and not for growing fuel.
And it's not good for the environment,
not good for the carbon footprint.
So the final things I wanted to sort of say
was we wanted, looking forward to getting that more
information on the HVO.
And maybe what you've got the piece of paper, which I haven't seen there, which is going
to come around, I'm not sure.
And basically that we just felt there was insufficient info on the technical side.
And I did note there was, I know Michael Cohen would very much like it all to be stated going
to the hydrotreated vegetable oil, but I do see in 4 .13 and 4 .14 that you have left it
to be flexible should the costs, and it is possible that those oils can, the difference
in price between them and diesel, and we have to be realistic about that. And I understand
And also now Peter Johnson's mentioned that they can be mixed or whatever.
So it's not a – we're going to have to find the best way of coping with it.
But diesel oil might get a lot more expensive.
I mean, nobody knows, but I would suspect with more people being more interested in
the hydro treated vegetable oil that there will be more demand, which tends to increase
the price.
But thank you.
And I thank everybody who's been involved and for listening.
and we didn't manage to support the recommendation at the O &S,
but that's not to say that we were against it.
We just wanted more information, so we appreciate that.
So thank you, and I don't know whether you, Michael,
wanted to add some more?
Thank you very much, Gina.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:30:39
Yeah, I was going to give Michael now the opportunity
to say anything that he would like to add.
Councillor Michael Vann - 0:30:46
I'm delighted to say that the ground has been covered
in the last few minutes, and so we've got nothing to add.
Thanks a lot, Gina, for what you said.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:30:54
Thank you.
Thank you, Michael.
I'm just going to say a few words myself, so I want to
formally second the recommendations that are in
front of us.
I think picking up, I'm just trying to sort of pick up on
the points that people have made, and I was also at the
and as a committee and my view is, you know, as a former portfolio holder, I recognise
I've been talking about this for, I was when I was a portfolio holder and I haven't been
a portfolio holder for nearly well over a year.
And it's been a lot of work that has happened, you know, obviously we've been doing over
that time to get to this point.
But ultimately, I think, you know, we have a collection
and recycling of waste is the biggest single service
that we provide as a council.
And one of our aspirations in our new corporate plan
that we adopted back in September was to leave, you know,
a good legacy for the future.
And, you know, one of those things, and absolutely,
I think is to leave a robust, workable, efficient waste service
for the new council to inherit,
because what we don't want to leave them is a problem
to have to try to deal with if we've got old vehicles
that essentially can't do the job.
And what we know is that that then costs us more money.
It's less reliable.
So picking up on your point, Patrick, about the staff,
them having to operate the unreliable vehicles
as they keep breaking down.
You know, that's what we don't want.
So, you know, the opportunity to do this, to make sure that our vehicles are fit for
purpose and the job that they need to do.
And obviously, as Mike has particularly focused on that they, we reduce our carbon footprint
from those vehicles.
I think picking up on the point that you made, I think we've got something in there about
in 4 -13 and 4 -14.
I do think we need to consider how we're going to do that in terms of if
And they'll see I'm sure that Peter you'll been David you'll be looking at that
and to come back to if not necessarily a full cabinet discussion certainly a discussion that involves myself and
Mike and Andrea and probably Patrick is financial
In terms of how we're going to manage and monitor the use of HBO and the costs and how we're going to do that going forward
But I think, you know, absolutely it's a big decision
and as I said at the start, I think probably pre -scrutiny
is generally working really well.
I really enjoy that.
But I think there are times when we didn't clearly give enough
information to the ONS committee on Monday because they don't
just get the cabinet report.
But obviously there's been a lot of other stuff that we've done
before we got to the cabinet report which they didn't have.
So I think we will learn and Jane will pick up on that
and as the Chief Executive, how we can support
and improve the ONS process and help,
so we don't get a situation where the committee
doesn't feel it has enough information
in which to make any concrete observations.
It made, obviously, observations,
but to feel that it was able to endorse
what we were proposing to do.
So I think there was one question that I forgot to,
that I think Peter's got to answer that you asked, Gina,
And then we'll sort of finish it off there if we can.
So, Peter, yeah, over to you.
Thank you very much.
Yes, the question was specifically around the timeline
Officer - 0:34:31
and the point we're committed to financial spend.
So, following on where we have the approval to continue,
then the next stage will be a procurement process.
Any procurement process isn't making the commitment
to spend that money, essentially.
And so you come out at the end of the procurement process
knowing the money that you need to spend.
and we have the ability then to review whether that falls within our affordability envelope
before we then award and at the point of award we then are committed.
So that would be far ahead of the delivery of the vehicles but we do have that opportunity
to review.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:35:06
Just following up on that then Peter, is that a few months down the line by the time we
get to, we've gone out to the tender and we've got the tenders back and we've evaluated them,
the point of making the order might be sort of April, May, June time.
Officer - 0:35:18
Exactly that. By going through that procurement process, as much as the leave time is long,
we're engaging with suppliers, we're getting it recognised that we've got those replacement
vehicles in our pipeline and therefore considered in the order box of the companies.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:35:34
Thank you very much. I'm just going to give the opportunity of a last word to Andrea before
we go to the vote. If you've got anything else you'd like to say in response to all
of the other things that have been said.
Nothing to add, Chair, except I think this is the right recommendation. Thank you.
Councillor Andrea Pellegram - 0:35:49
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:35:51
I will just say thank you to you for all of the work that you've done over the last eight months, I think, in the role of seven, eight months,
and this being the single biggest decision in your portfolio area, and thank you, and obviously again to the officers you've been working with.
So we'll then move to the vote.
The recommendations are on page 373.
Approve the replacement of vehicles
in line with the updated capital replacement programme
up to a total of 31 vehicles.
Prove steps towards the decarbonization of waste services
through the purchase of one electric curbside salt vehicle
and a shift to use hydro treated vegetable oil
as a replacement for diesel.
And three include the reprofiled capital expenditure
of 26 -27 in the capital programme that will be considered by Cabinet Council next month.
If you can vote then, please. Thank you. That's seven votes in favour, unanimously. And those
of you who want to go and get home before the snow drifts you in, thank you very much
for your attendance at the meeting. All right. Now we'll now move on back to in the agenda,

9 Carers Leave Policy and Procedure and Dogs at Work Policy

Back to Agenda Item 9. So we've got two policies here that we
and we've got Carmel here the HR business partner to answer any tricky
questions on these but I'll just introduce them. So the carers leave
policy we've got has there's been a legislation change and there's statutory
right of employees to carers leave and therefore we need to incorporate that
into our policy and really we're committed obviously to doing what we can
to help ensure the health and well -being of our employees who have caring
responsibilities and yeah there's carers are allowed to take up to a week in any
12 -month rolling period to care for somebody they're carrying
responsibilities for and they can take that as you know a whole week as a block
or individual days or half days. Caring's receiving isn't paid but obviously it's
This gives them that opportunity that flexibility
And the second policies a new policy understand about dogs at work
Increasingly people are asking questions about dogs and whether they can bring their dogs and obviously we have people who have
Assistance dogs, so
What the policy does?
is
Basically set out if you have a dog when you're able to bring it and essentially
what the policy says is if you have an assistance dog, yes, you can bring it and
obviously we need to manage that in terms of the needs of the dog and the
other employees in terms of how that how the dog is looked after while it's on
the premises and obviously we need to make sure that people do have assistance
dogs can can bring them safely and comfortably to work. So the two policies
are there. I'm going to go to Carmel now if she's got anything to add. I think
anything I've missed out and then we'll open it up for questions. Thank you. I think
Officer - 0:39:26
you covered it beautifully so well done. They are obviously policies that have
come forward because of legislative changes especially with the carers leave
policy and procedure because we have the Carers Act come in in 2023 and the
regulations in 2024. We obviously have that available to look after staff
well -being and you know people are aware of it you know that they have
entitlement to statutory leave so you know it's there to support them and
Regarding the dogs at work, we did do some further investigation for Watermore Point.
We are aware in the agreement that people who use our premises, but through Watermore Point,
do occasionally bring dogs into the building.
We don't have statistical information on the volume of dogs coming through.
I think the odd dog is spotted, as it were.
but there haven't been any issues at all and only well -behaved dogs are allowed.
So as I say with regard to Cotswolds specifically, I wish to be compliant with the Equality Act
and the assistance dogs are the only dogs that we would permit within the office environment.
I don't currently have any staff that I'm aware of who need to, you know, bring a
dog into work, but obviously it's there in case that need arises. Thank you.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:41:13
Thank you, Carmel. Do we have any questions for Carmel? No. Tony, I think you
were going to second this one for us. Don't need to say very much if you don't want to.
Councillor Tony Dale - 0:41:28
Leader, I'm very happy to second it. I mean essentially both these policies are
reflecting legislative change and I think they've just been written with the
appropriate levels of efficiency to meet that requirement and embed the policy
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:41:45
within the council so thank you for doing that Carmen. Thank you Tony. So I don't see any other
hands. We'll go to the vote now please.
That's a unanimous vote in favour of that policy, so thank you very much.

10 Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Equity Policy and Procedure Update 2025

We're now moving on to agenda item 10, the equality, diversity, inclusion and equity
policy.
Unfortunately, Claire Bloomer couldn't be with us this evening, so I'm going to introduce
this policy on her behalf and she has sent me a little brief so that I can
give you almost what she would have what she would have said. It's a substantial
and important piece of work as it underpins how we operate as a council
both in her we serve our communities and how we support our staff. The report sets
out the background to review and the need to update the policy following
recent legislative changes including the Supreme Court ruling. It's important that
our policies are not only values -led but also legally robust and clear and how
they are applied and this update achieves that. The revised policy
strengthens our approach to fairness, dignity and respect and provides a clear
framework for managers and staff. It's practical, usable, gives clarity on roles
and responsibilities which is particularly important in a large and
complex organisation like a council.
We welcome inclusion of care experience recognised as
protected characteristic.
This reflects a growing understanding of the barriers
and stigma that some care experience people face and it's
right that we acknowledge this within our policies
and practises.
Claire would have liked if she'd been here to say something
specifically about menopause, obviously something that she has
been campaigning and championing and doing a lot of work on because it is
still sometimes too often treated as a taboo subject in workplaces. She writes
that she's been very vocal about that locally and that's because she sees the
impact that it has on confidence, on attendance, on performance and on
well -being. And she's pleased that we as a council continue to take that
seriously, build a culture where people can be open and supported rather than
struggling in silence.
That matters not just for the people affected,
but for the organisation as a whole.
So ultimately, if we wanted to live well for our residents,
we have to look after our staff.
We have to have a workplace where people feel supported,
understood, and treated fairly.
That's essential to help us retain good people,
enable them to do their best work.
So I and she would like to place on record our thanks
to the officers who worked on this, in particular Carmel and
Angela, and a wider team.
It is a detailed, complex piece of work, and I know it represents
many hours of careful drafting, consultation and review, and the
effort is appreciated.
So the recommendations before you are to approve the updated
policy and procedure, to endorse the recognition of care
experience and to delegate authority to the chief executive to make minor necessary amendments
in future where these don't change the strategic intent.
So that's my introduction.
I'm going to go to Carmel now.
Have you got anything very thorough, brief that Claire gave to me?
Have you got anything that you'd like to add?
Officer - 0:45:31
Just to say that we are waiting for a code of practise to go before Parliament and be
you know, further information to come through. So obviously we will review the
policy accordingly when that takes place but we haven't got a timeline yet.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:45:52
Thank you very much and just to add something from my own perspective, yeah
clearly the Supreme Court made a decision and you know that's now the law
of the land so we as a responsible body have to abide by that but I just wanted
to put on record that we also are an organisation that wants to support trans people, whether
they're employees of us or whether they're residents.
And we understand that that decision may cause some concern, but we want to reassure anybody
who's in that situation that we as a council are an inclusive organisation.
And if you find that you're not feeling that that's the case, then you should be raising
that appropriately with the appropriate people but we really want to be a very
welcoming inclusive organisation for all people in our communities. I'm gonna go
to Tony I think you're gonna second this for us. Yeah I'm very happy to second it
Councillor Tony Dale - 0:46:52
put simply Mike I think that everyone who walks the planet should be treated
equally so if this is how the law currently reflects that I'm glad we have
in favour of it. I hope other cabinet members will be as well.
Thank you. Anyone else? Yeah, Patrick.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:47:11
Thank you, thank you, Chair. Very pleased to see this policy.
Councillor Patrick Coleman - 0:47:13
I've recently experienced one of my close family members going through some gender transition,
and I feel very proud of her.
I wanted to ask a couple of things.
In paragraph 7 .5, the last phrase says,
due to the provision of a new draught code,
the interim has now been removed.
I think, is that the interim update released
on the 25th of April by the EHRC?
And that's now, am I right in thinking,
is this probably that it's now been removed?
Yeah, that's correct.
Yeah, we have, the legal department have had input
into the illegal implications within the report.
And that has been removed.
But we will, as I say, when the code is fully implemented,
we will review our policies accordingly.
Just, Chair, one other brief question,
which is we're going to treat care experienced people
as if care experienced were a protected characteristic.
I don't think we've actually defined care experienced here.
and I was a little vague in my mind as to whether it was people
who experienced receiving care or people who experienced in
giving care, carers in fact, or whether it included both.
Is a definition available soon?
I'll provide a fuller definition,
Officer - 0:48:40
but it's basically people who have been through the care
system and there are other authorities within the UK that
have, you know, taken this forward as a protected
characteristic and we would wish to do the same.
There was a strong appetite to do that here,
but if you would like a fuller definition,
we'd be happy to provide that for you.
If I can add to that, Carmel, to Patrick.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:49:05
So the, I think it was the chief executive,
I think, of myself met with Ben Evans,
who's the cabinet member for Children's Services at Gloucestershire County Council
back in I think sort of November, or in the autumn of last year and this was one of
the asks that he made of us. So which you know many young people coming out of the
care system either having been through it for a large number of years and
leaving as care leavers or as having spent time in the care system as adopted
young people and or under special guardianship do suffer significant
challenges when they get into adulthood particularly. So he was keen that all
counties all councils in Gloucestershire already has adopted this I think
Cheltenham, Dukesbury I think so that all councils across the county would adopt
that and treat care experienced young people and essentially one of the
that Chief Executive took away was to look at what we can do
within our HR policies to make sure
that those young people have the opportunities that,
in a similar way that we have done for care leavers.
So care leavers are people who obviously come
out of the care system at 18, but it's recognised
that even those people who have spent time
in the care system often have challenges
when they become adults.
So that's why.
But if there is any further clarification, then I'm sure
Carmel will also be, you know, will be clear about that.
Okay, shall we, anyone else, shall we move to the vote then
on that, please?
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:51:13
That's seven votes in favour and none against, so thank you very much for that.
Moving now on to the agenda item 11, the enforcement policy, page 883.

11 Corporate Enforcement Policy

So we've got, thank you very much, Carmel.
So we've got Emma here, head of counter fraud and enforcement.
So to answer any questions, but essentially in my introduction, I think you've updated
the policy.
We've got helpful track changes so we can see the things that have been changed in red.
Obviously enforcement is something that we as a local authority have powers to do things
and we need to regulate how we do them and what things we do and when we do them.
So I'm just going to hand over to Emma to say a few words,
probably a bit more than I just said that gives a bit more flesh
on the bones of this report.
Thank you.
Officer - 0:52:17
I think you covered it really.
It's an updated policy.
It did come to Cabinet in 2019 -20, I think.
That's when I last did it for the partnership.
But the new text is read.
The stuff that will be removed has been struck through.
The significant changes are more in the service areas, but the main thing to note from the
policy is it's an umbrella policy, it's overarching, it's our council prosecution policy and the
detailed enforcement policies that each of the service areas will have will sit underneath
it so it doesn't take away from those and those will be much more detailed in terms
of the specifics for those different departments.
So this is just a guidance document in terms of considerations when prosecuting that the
council has to take and obviously highlighting for members
of the public, all the different areas
that we can enforce in.
So, yeah.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:53:13
Thank you chair.
I'd like to second this motion report, sorry.
I do welcome this report.
I see that there are many changes regarding
our enforcement policies, and I'm happy to see
that we first seek to negotiate.
and then also use the public interest test
because I think the public interest test
in particular really helps us decide whether something is
worth pursuing or not.
Coming from a background in planning but now also picking
up the licencing portfolio,
I think that's just the right way to do it.
So, yes, I want to commend this report again and I hope
that my colleagues actually vote for it.
Thank you very much.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:54:00
Thank you Andrea. I think that last point you know often we're in
situations as board members where people believe that we should enforce on every
single tiny infringement and you know then you have to the what's the public
interest and can we not have a conversation about it before we start to
use a try to use a big stick because you know we as a local authority as a public
body have a stick we need to be careful about when we use it and if we can get
people to do things with by agreement then that's obviously a better outcome
than having to having to go through a more of an enforce a more legalistic
route. Have anyone else got anything else to say before we note then I'll move the
seconded the recommendations on page 84. Approving adopting the corporate
enforcement policy attached the report and delegating authority to the Chief
executive to pre future minor amendments to the policy in consultation with the
leader of the council head of service count for an enforcement unit relevant
heads of service and the head of legal services vote open okay that's
unanimous thank you everybody right let's move on to the next item now which

12 Enforcement Agent Commissioning

is more about enforcement enforcement agent commissioning we've got I'm gonna
hand over to page 117, Councillor Coleman. And so we've got Mandy Fathers at the
back I guess here for this one as well. So over to you Patrick to introduce this
Councillor Patrick Coleman - 0:55:40
one. Thank you chair. Abribly short report, very clear and with a very important
principle which is that we will be tendering in partnership with five other councils, including
of course West Oxfordshire as well as four other of the six Gloucestershire district
and city councils. As far as I know, we've never had a case appear on one of those daytime
television programmes that I assure you I don't watch in which enforcement is
carried out with cameras filming and I don't expect to see that happen again
I'm very grateful to our officers for carrying out the commissioning and
tendering and I also grateful to the people of the Cotswolds for being an
incredibly law -abiding lot when it comes to this sort of thing on average with a
fly tippers here and there that form the exception to the rule. Thank you very
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:56:49
much Mandy. Got anything you'd like to add to what Councillor Coleman has said?
Officer - 0:56:57
Only really just to say that West Oxfordshire is in the pool for the
procurement side of things but the contracts will be made individually for
each local authority so come local government reorganisation they are
split aside so there's no issues there. Thank you.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:57:17
If I correctly, I mean just before you disappear Emma, just because I question
was relating to following up on what Patrick has said. My reading of
this is with this is sort of financial debts we're talking about people who
not paid their council tax or they've had a service and not paid for it or
their business rates whereas the report we were talking about just now was about
people have done things that might be contrary to some sort of regulation. So
just to clarify that's right. So here we're talking about getting people
who get money out of people who don't pay rather than the sort of more the
other sorts of enforcement which would come under Emma and her team.
Officer - 0:58:01
Essentially this is debt collection. Yeah. Thank you very much for that. You can go
Councillor Mike Evemy - 0:58:06
out here. Thank you. I hope we get home before the snow sets in. It's coming your
way. So if we can, I'm happy to second that and so we'll now go to the vote.
Okay that's a unanimous vote. Thank you very much. Shall we now move on to the

13 Fees and Charges 2026/27

agenda item 13 fees and charges. So I'm going to hand over to Councillor Coleman to introduce
Councillor Patrick Coleman - 0:58:50
this one. Thank you, Chair. A lot of detail in this report. The financial implications
of paragraph 7 .1. This is estimated to generate an additional £309 ,000 a year in income from
sales fees and charges and 129 ,000 of that comes from car parking charges and
that in turn excludes the revenue generated from the proposed tourist levy
from Morgesbury Road car park stolen the world which is earmarked for dealing
with the impact of tourism on the town. Just staying with car parking briefly we
We have here I think the introduction of the new start of day, two hours free, up to two
hours free, 8am to 10am in Borton on the water.
I think this is something that I hope will be appreciated not just by the residents of
Borton but also from those in the villages surrounding the village of Borton, many of
which look to Borton as their main commercial centre.
With regard to the rest of the figures, I'm convinced that they would stand up to any
challenge on the grounds of fairness or reasonableness and equally take full regard to the issues
of affordability.
So I'm very happy to move the four recommendations listed on page 129.
and does it include approving the delegation of future decisions regarding
the setting of special area of conservation fees to head of planning
services in consultation with deputy leader and cabinet member for housing
and planning. Councillor Layton and the rest of it comes in on the 1st of April
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:00:43
this year. Thank you Patrick. I think Tony is going to second and you're going to
We're going to make a couple of tweets to the parking fees.
So you're going to explain those to us, aren't you, Tony?
Thank you, Lida. Yes.
Councillor Tony Dale - 1:00:59
Put very simply, Stowe, Morgansbury Road car park will now fall into line with the operation of the Rissington Road style car park.
So there will be a tourist levy, which is great news for people in Stowe.
so it will help the residents of Stowe cope with the pressures of tourism.
I'm not going to say over tourism, but tourism is becoming a burden upon Cotswold District Council
as much as it is on the residents of our district.
So I hope that change will enable the residents to take more charge, control, ownership
of their ability to make the tourism experience better quality for visitors
and also for their own communities.
In particular, I just want to highlight,
although it's specific in saying
Morgansbury Road will have the tourist levy,
only a very small portion,
less than half users of that car park,
use it for less than two hours.
So in effect, although the table says
how it might change for half an hour, an hour,
those will cease to exist in practical terms.
So I think, David, if you are addressing, adjusting the report,
just take out the half an hour, an hour change so that it will
be like Ritz -Cannarola, it will effectively be a minimum
two -hour stay.
And then the second thing is the report actually mentions things
like season tickets.
I've long been a fan of season tickets.
Many people in the business community across the Cotswolds
will know that I promoted season tickets not just for
but across the Cotswolds, but in particular at the White Way.
We have a great season ticket opportunity.
It's barely 550 quid or thereabouts to park for free all year in the White Way Road car park.
And I do, do wish that businesses, particularly retail businesses, in Cirencester,
would encourage their staff to use the White Way Road season ticket.
It's such good value.
It's now less than half of the cost of a season ticket at Abbey Grounds.
So very important that and just to note again David on the report that there is
no season ticket for Rizzington Road that is solely a tourist car park. So
that's broadly it I think that's that's only specific car parking issues on
fees and charges other members of cabinet may want to comment on other
fees and charges but I think importantly I do want members of the public and
businesses to understand this is that I think we've worked really hard fiscally
to try and maintain the changes in these big fees and charges like car parking to
the sort of cost of living rise. I really understand, we all do, how hard it is for
families struggling with maybe the similar salaries and they're not going
up as much as they would like. So hopefully we've kept parking fees at
least roughly in line with the consumer price index. Thank you Tony for that.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:04:06
yeah just to pick up on that point and this is part of the discussion that we
had when Paul was doing your job last month when he we went through the
parking strategy was yeah we and we were to be talking about this so in terms of
keeping that first hour the same so you know we recognise there's still a
pressure financially so in this report we've kept the one hour and a half hour
prices the same as they were last year at around £1 and £2. So that's something we've
been able to do within the overall envelope as you describe of keeping within the inflation
increase. I think just to add clearly there's whole loads of fees and charges in here and
what we have done, the chair of overview and scrutiny has left now but the other member,
Council van is still here from that committee and members will recall when they had a working group looking at toilets some while ago
They recommended that we might want to put the price up to 70 pence now. We haven't done that
but what we've done is we've also introduced charging across the board now with the exception of North leech where
we're
Anticipating a transfer to the town council to run those toilets
But we're now charging at all of our toilets at 40 pence
but we think, you know, we recognise there's still a subsidy in there and we
want to move that up to 50 pence because we're obviously mindful as well that, you
know, we need to make the services self -sufficient as we can in advance of
unitary status, whatever that might bring. So, because in many places you will have
seen, you know, places like Somerset where essentially the council went unitary and
toilets were you know either had closed or handed over to the town council so we
want to provide a service it's very hard to make it a pay for itself but I think
we felt and we have felt that you know an extra 10p was a reasonable ask to
make to people to use those facilities the only other thing I would note is
that there are some significant changes on on planning but there's been a lot of
work done, Juliette might want to say, in terms of looking at the cost recovery of
planning fees where we've got very ability to vary those so some of them
have gone up quite a bit but that's based on evidence and work that's gone
into the costs involved in providing those services so I'm comfortable with
those and as you said Patrick and Tony I think you know it's we have to fees and
is one of the areas that we're able to control as a council.
And we've, it's one of the things
that if councils don't do this properly,
they get themselves into difficulty.
If they don't look at them every year
and make adjustments to them,
and then they find themselves in financial difficulty
and they have to do massive increases in fees and charges.
So we're not in that position.
We're looking at them every year
and we're making reasonable changes
to make sure that we are able to continue
to support the services that we provide as a council and that we're recovering
costs for the services that we're providing where we were able to do that.
Has anyone else got anything else to say before I move to the vote on this?
Patrick, no, nothing else. Okay let's move to the vote then.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:07:52
That's unanimous when I remember to press the green button.
And just to note that we've, from what Tony has said,
we've changed the car parking arrangements
with those two changes, which I'm sure have been picked
up by the officers.
Right, we'll now move on to Agenda Item 14.

14 Council Priority and Service Performance Report 2025-2026 Q2.

We've got Allison and I can see Gemma at the back there as well.
So thank you for bearing with us.
So I'll just do a very brief introduction.
So this was also considered by the overview and scrutiny
committee at their meeting on Monday evening where Allison
and I presented and answered questions as best we could on the full range of
council services and I think what you can see in the report here is that you
know we've had this is for quarter two so it's covering the July to September
period which does seem a little while ago now but we couldn't get it onto
December agenda so that's why we're dealing with it today but there have
been some really strong progress in some of our key areas,
particularly in terms of how the council tax that we're
collecting and in terms of the timelines for the planning
applications, how long we're taking to determine those.
So some really good progress there.
It's interesting to note we're quite well done
on residual household waste.
We had quite a few questions about waste at the overview
of the scrutiny committee.
There was a lot of talking about bins.
And obviously the good news here was that the missed bins
figure was well down.
And we have the discussion about,
and it was mentioned earlier, about the difference,
well I think Andrea you're going to talk about that,
aren't you, sorry.
About service failures and missed bins.
That was one of the things that we were talking about.
How do we differentiate between those?
And Paul's not here now, but, you know,
the gym memberships are nearly getting off of 4 ,800
against the target 4 ,300.
So, success at your first meeting, Tony, in that regard.
And the visits to the leisure centre is really positively up.
There are a few areas highlighted in here
where we're not quite at the target,
and particularly on non -domestic rates.
I don't know whether, or Mandy's gone now,
but whether David might be able to give us a view
on where we are.
I wonder whether that might be the change to the profile
and more businesses choosing to pay monthly
rather than over 10 instalments.
And yeah, then there were the ones where we're below target.
We've sort of known particularly about,
we talked about that one, I think at the last time
we reviewed this about the council tax changes but clearly there's a there's a
legacy there and there's been improvement in the second quarter well
within the target but there's a legacy that's a cumulative figure so there's
quite a bit of information in the report about that yeah unfortunately had a few
more appeals than we would have liked on planning I think you know I know Juliet
might want to make any comment about that but I think my understanding is
that most of those are based on officer recommendations
or delegated decisions.
So they're not the committee overriding the officers.
They're actually the officers' judgement.
And we are in now in a situation
where we don't have a five -year land supply,
so that becomes harder to judge potentially.
And we haven't been able to deliver as many affordable homes
or see as many as we'd like.
And that's something that we are obviously
continually wanting to focus on. And there's a couple of other things around
land charges searches but things of about the challenge they had in
September. And the one that was picked up by Andrea might want to comment on this
by O &S about the percentage of household waste recycled. So because it was so
sunny and the grass didn't grow people weren't putting so much in their green bin
and that's put this number down. So one of the things we've asked is can we separate
that out so we've got a clear review. I've probably talked too long so like I
said to Alison is there anything that you feel I haven't mentioned probably
give I've gone through every single thing almost although they're happy just
Officer - 1:12:33
to ask the questions. No just wanted to reiterate that is a very positive report
and that was it but yeah everything was covered by yourself. Thanks very much
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:12:40
to open it up to cabinet members and it was Andrea.
First of all, I'm happy to second it.
Councillor Andrea Pellegram - 1:12:46
Thank you.
It was very positive.
You have actually said what I was going to say
which I've already, following ONS,
asked to have the recycling figures just broken down
to separate green waste out so that we can actually see
how much of the black waste is actually being generated
and how much recycling is being generated.
and also for the service performance to be split between missed bins and service failures
so we can track that more carefully.
But other than that, thank you very much because I know it's hard
to put all that together.
Thank you.
Thanks, Andrea.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:13:22
I don't think we're going to have a vote.
It's a note so you don't need to second.
You got something else?
Forgot. I'm sorry.
Councillor Andrea Pellegram - 1:13:27
I did want to say one more thing.
I apologise.
On the priorities, I did have something to say.
I also wrote to officers about this.
I've been writing a lot of emails.
It's on page 166 and it's to improve and digitise engagement
with customers of the Waste and Environment Service.
And I see that it's green and on target.
I have to say in the last few days with Christmas delays, with frost and now with rain,
I've received many, many, many emails from unhappy people
who haven't had their bins collected and I know it's an anomaly but I have been discussing
with officers for a number of months bringing in some sort of app or something
so that we could have two -way communication and I know that Councillor Evamee
when he was a portfolio holder raised this concern and Councillor Wilkinson also raised this concern
and I don't feel that enough progress is being made on this app and the response here is
that we will be relying on things like Waste Wizard and the Collection Day Checker.
I would like to see something far more interactive than that if possible.
So I did suggest to officers some possible ways that we can actually revive our pursuit
of a better app for that so that we can improve communication on these matters.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:14:57
Andrea, I was interested, yeah, just on that.
I mean, when I was a portfolio holder, we were looking at,
and we did the change that saved half a million pounds
and changed 60 % of people's collection days.
We were looking at how we could improve
what we put on the websites politically.
It wasn't an app at that point.
We were thinking, how do we surface more information
on the website so people can go there and find out.
But not disagreeing with you that there might be other ways
we could do push stuff as well as putting stuff
on the website to improve this.
And yeah, it's something that we really,
from a customer service point of view
Also would have benefits of suit people are not writing emails not ringing up
So Tristan you might want to put your hand up so you might want to be say something on that a point or something else
Councillor Tristan Wilkinson - 1:15:44
Thank you two points just to follow up on what Andrea said I think the
During my time we looked
Is there something really simple that we could do and we came up with?
something along the lines of texting the ward member so that they could just get onto the
village WhatsApp or whatever the group that we generally all are on and just say the bins
aren't going to be collected today, don't put them out, they're going to come tomorrow
instead for this reason. So I think, and that would be great, there's some really simple
things we could do and I think that Andrea you're absolutely right, we need to just make
this a priority, just get it done, even if it's a work around using text, I think that
it would just save a lot of incoming calls
that are unnecessary.
The point I would like to make is I'm really pleased
to see the inclusion of the planning and enforcement cases,
data that we asked for last time.
I think I know that I get quite a lot of questions
when I go to my parish councils about enforcement
on various planning matters.
I think having the data that enables us as ward members
to go back to our various constituencies and give them the reality of the backlog, which
is currently at 648. You know, it's a large number and it's a large number for lots of
very, very complex reasons. So I'd just like to thank the officers for including this.
I think it's having the data enables us to track progress and hopefully mitigate where
It's slide 28 on page 208 for anybody struggling to find it.
So I think this is really good.
I think, you know, tracking this data over time and anybody
who's been in business who understands if you don't have
the data, it's really hard to manage any sort of progress
or redundancy that might creep in.
So thank you for doing that.
Thank you, Tristan.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:17:40
I'm going to go to Deputy Chief Executive and then come back
to Mike on the business rate question that I raised.
Thank you, Chair.
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 1:17:48
Just on the business rates, I think
it's worth noting the commentary that's
provided in the service performance report
that, although the target has fallen short,
there has been an improvement over collection
against the previous year.
But also, recovery work is up to date.
So that provides some assurance.
In terms of understanding the business rates position,
the leader is correct in understanding
that the majority of our ratepayers that are part of multinationals will have moved to
a 12 -monthly instalment payment plan. There are challenges also with the way in which
the valuation office agencies deals with applications. I won't get the wording right, but effectively
to join or unjoin ratings for sites such as multi -office occupation sites. It takes a
to work that through.
During that process, there may be dialogue between the rate
payer to effectively agree a slower payment process.
Also, part of that is understanding the business
rates base.
So we may have a similar business rates base in terms of
cash, but there's a big difference between a small
number of large rate payers in your business rate pace and
a large number of small rate payers.
They present very different collection challenges.
So whilst the performance data shows us in the bottom core
tile, I would want to explore that more in terms of the number
of hereditary determinants and the proportion of those
hereditary determinants that are up to date.
So we have quite a number of small business rate payers
that only just fall over the small business rate relief level.
But that's something that we can work on on the performance
report and give that contextual data that might help explain
any shortfall against the target.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:19:41
Thank you, David, and I probably it's remiss of me because I think I did look at this,
but it might have been some point over Christmas and I've sort of somewhat forgotten whether it was in some sort of hazy Christmas period.
But yeah, you're right and obviously, I'm sorry, Patrick has those conversations together with you now that I used to have about this subject.
I'll now go to Mike.
Thanks very much.
Councillor Mike McKeown - 1:20:05
So, I guess my other hat on is the Cabinet member for digital services.
Two things.
One, I'd agree with both my colleagues, I think, that the waste service stuff seems
like an obvious quick win.
I'd like to capture an action for the minutes that John Charlton is followed up with, and
I'll talk to him directly, who's the CTO, to contact the Cabinet.
that the portfolio needs to investigate properly
what could be done simply and quickly.
There are off the shelf applications
that do exactly what we've just described.
So if they could be integrated in fairly simple ways,
that would seem to be a quick win with that.
I'm gonna spend lots of money building something bespoke.
You know, we see that already
in Gloucestershire County Council uses Fix My Street,
for example, which is a nice, simple proactive service.
So linking into those things makes a lot of sense.
On the other thing, I was just pleased on the report
to note that we've got our first public facing AI service,
I think gonna be piloted in planning.
So next to the planning was Juliet.
Oh, she's there.
Juliet right in front of me, I was looking around.
So I think that's a good first start.
I know we're starting to use it a little bit internally,
but having one of the great AI conferences
I went to just at the end of last year, I've sort of focused a lot on, you know, doing
services that actually help customers, in our case, our customers, our residents and
our businesses, at least as much as internal efficiency.
So I think AI offers a great opportunity to deliver, you know, better, faster, more responsive
services, clearer information, more people, more opportunities for people to actually
interact with us at the time that suits them rather than us.
So that's going to help us.
You know, in this particular case, it would be interesting
to see how we can help our businesses and residents
navigate, you know, the complex planning system quickly
and more easily.
I think I use it quite a lot already myself for planning
stuff as a ward counsellor, and the AI is pretty good on planning.
You know, informal planning advice, I think there's a lot
of potential.
I'm experimenting with it around our retrofit service.
So I'm glad to see we're doing that.
We'll be doing more.
As we do move those pilots into larger scale adoption,
I also want to be clear that this needs to be underpinned
by strong government.
So one of the things we'll be bringing forward shortly will
be a responsible AI policy and an AI strategy to council
to ensure that, you know, AI is deployed transparently,
ethically, securely, of course, and always in support rather
than replaces human decision making.
So I think it's a great opportunity, but we need to get it right and we certainly will.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:22:55
Thank you very much, Mike. Before you said that, I'm sure I've seen it on the forward plan. So
I think in the next month or two, we're going to see that. We've got Helen on screen who wants to
come in. Juliet, do you want to wait for her? Go to Helen first and then I'll come to you.
Go to Helen first now. Hopefully the technology works.
Just a quick comment to give a little bit of reassurance on the discussions around the waste
and other things. So John Chilton is heavily involved in our transformation programme. Jen
and I actually met with him this week to walk through where we're at and how we can sort of
tap into the work that's already underway in ICT. So everything we're doing is hand in hand with him
because virtually everything in that programme relates in some way or form to digital and AI.
And Peter and myself specifically have a meeting on the 29th this month to talk about the waste
issue and how we might go forward and if that is not an app what can we do through existing
processing systems or other systems to ensure that we have that improved contact with our customers.
So, you know, it is happening and I'm happy to report back after the meeting at the end of the month.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:23:57
Thank you. Thank you. Helen, Juliet.
Councillor Juliet Layton - 1:24:02
I'm not sure I've got much more to add, really. I mean, we're talking about AI and how that's, you know,
potentially going to help with the planning and the procedures, etc.
I have to say, because we always do, that each one is on its own merits and it's a complicated
system, which is equally the same for enforcement that we talked about.
If you look at the chart of what was closed, there's an awful lot of duplication, there's
a lot of stuff that actually, you know, there was no breach.
But everything that comes in has to be looked at and it's very long and that's a long process
and we have to engage legal with it with a lot of things.
It's not easy to get those numbers down,
but we are getting them down.
And it's a tough call, really.
But, I mean, maybe AI could be helping with that sort of
filtering out, but I think that we've got to be very cautious
that things don't get closed and then reopened again.
So there are some difficulties.
is.
Great, thank you.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:25:10
I'm conscious, yeah, of the time as well.
So we're just going to note that, and thank you to the team
who compiled all those really great stats for us.
And yeah, it's really positive.
I'm the ONS committee just to report having sat through those.
He's very positive about the formats and the information that
we get, subject to some of the stuff on waste that we talked
about.

15 Financial Performance Report 2025-26 Quarter 2

Brilliant. So we'll now move on to item 15, which is the Financial Performance
Report for Q2. And then I'm going to go page 219, going to go to Councillor Coleman.
Thank you very much, Chair. I think I've been scrutiny and moderately content with
Councillor Patrick Coleman - 1:25:54
this report when it went to them. The recommendations are for to review and
note the position in the reports, approve some additional transfers to earmarked reserves.
That's always a comfortable phrase, much better than withdrawing money from reserves. And
they're set out in Paragraph 412. Endorsing the principles of 100 % of any year -end planning
fee income that's over and above the budgeted level of planning fee income to go into the
The founding appeals earmarked reserve, which is described in paragraph 423.
And then a reallocation of the United Kingdom prosperity fund capital budget with slightly
different sharing out of the money, reduced total reduction of 38 ,000.
I probably ought to encourage you, Chair, to give a couple of minutes to our Chief Finance
officer on this particular paper rather than let me waffle on too much longer.
But I would just say that so far there are still quite a few uncertainties, quite a few
known unknowns and I think rising to the top of that is business rates.
Not just because it's an incredibly complicated system which is being reset and rebalanced
but also because the government is doing some of its last minute U -turns.
We hope they're doing a big u -turn on pubs and hospitality venues who've been apparently very hard hit by the proposed new business rate system.
But what I would stress is that even if that does happen, I don't believe it will materially change the general direction of what we're doing here
with making suitable prudent reserves against future planning appeals, of course, and for building capacity.
And I'll stop there. Thank you, Chair.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:27:50
David, a Chief Finance Officer, Deputy Chief Executive, sorry, two hats.
Anything you'd like to add to what Councillor Coleman has said?
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 1:27:59
I'll be as brief as possible. Essentially, table ES2 on page 223 of the report is the place to look.
As I said, over in scrutiny, red in this report is good, which is no good if you've got a
black and white copy.
But hopefully there are brackets around the red numbers, so that indicates a positive
variation.
Pick on a few in the top half of that table.
Car park fees, planning fees, vacancy management approach, including the way in which prudent
provision was made for the phase two of the public transition and then the bottom half
of the report, treasury management income, all positive variations.
And you'll pick up from the second half of the report and also within the decision that
we are taking the opportunity to reduce the financial pressures in future years through
the prudent transfer of some of those variations to EMR reserves to help cover the cost of
expenditure in future years or to mitigate the risk of perceived expenditure.
For example, taking the car park fees additional income, transferring that to an earmarked
reserve to enable the improvements in the car park ticket machines to be funded from
revenue costs as would be entirely appropriate.
Planning fees, we've had £400 ,000 more as the forecast of what we're getting against
budget, but given the position that we've got around more speculative applications and
the position around the five -year housing land supply, there is already evidence coming
through that there will be at least one or two appeals or judicial reviews of those refusals.
It will be proven to set quite a significant amount aside as those processes are quite
time -consuming and very expensive to deal with.
Finally, on the vacancy management approach, that's resulted in around about 710 ,000 being
recommended to be transferred to the capacity building reserve.
The purpose of that reserve was set out in the quarter one report and then was also reiterated
in the MTFS update and draught budget strategy report that cabinet considered in October.
That's a result of reviewing in light of LGR and in light of, I suppose, the position the
council is in, whether or not some of the vacant posts that have been put into the budget
was still required. That's resulted in quite a significant transfer that will
allow the council to respond positively to what will no doubt be a challenging
period in the lead up to local government reorganisation around about
midnight on 31st March 2028. But don't have anything further to say so happy to
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:30:55
take questions as well for Councillor Coleman. Thank you David and just to note I think
we've got a slight probably to do with the report being slightly updated the
numbers numbering in the recommendations slightly going out of sync so I think
recommendation two it should be paragraph 4 .13 and recommendation three
should be paragraph 4 .24. Anyone else got anything before I say a few words on
this that they would like to say. No, conscious of the hour as well. Yeah,
well I would like to thank Patrick and David and I'm going to second the
recommendations that Patrick moved earlier. It's great to see a table that
David showed us on page 223 with lots of lots of red, as in red is positive in
terms of excess income or lower expenditure than we were expecting we
budgeted for. So that's great to see and I don't think you know that's down to
poor budgeting. I think that's down to some of the things clearly to do with
service demand like bulky waste, licencing and some other stuff things
you know, the lettings at Trinity Road here ahead of, we talked about that in
light of the dogs policy earlier but Watermore Point working with us, filling
up our offices here, as well as one or two other things that we've obviously
had in our favour and I think the work really done by the senior management
team on vacancies and working together with with Publica, looking at Frank there
at the back in terms of looking at our costs and making sure that you know
where we can we make savings because you know the financial position of the
council is obviously one that we must make sure is robust up until the end of
the council and indeed in handing over to the new authority that will succeed
us so you know thank you I think if I'd been presenting this one I don't really
Didn't get to present many as good as this, so well done to Patrick, but obviously to the ultimately to
all the officers that have got us to such a good performance, so and all the efforts that have
got us there. So with that I'm then going to move to the vote on the recommendations
with a slight tweet to the numbers of the paragraphs.
Any other questions?
Lovely.
That's seven votes in favour.
That's carried.
Thank you very much.
We'll now move on to Agenda Item 16, page 255.

16 CDC Strategic Risk Register Q2.

So this, if you remember earlier when we had a recommendation
from Audit and Governance Committee, it was to, for the
risk register and in fact it's something that I know I've been talking about for
a while since I went on a risk management course I think just over a
year ago and certainly is best practise that the cabinet as we are the key
decision makers in the council is cited on the risks and has an opportunity to
input on the risks and that's done at a relative frequency so it's not something
that's sort of done once a year and forgotten about until next year and so
the way that we're going to approach this now is that we're looking at it and
also the Audit and Governance Committee are both ourselves are looking at
it. I think that's obviously a good move forward and obviously it then defines in
the report what the different risks levels are and we're determined as a
as a safe delivery of options that have a medium degree of risk and potential
reward and tight corporate control over change. Obviously that's something for us
to if we wanted to to consider changing I'm not proposing we do that tonight and
certainly where we are as a council I think that reflects the decision -making
process that we've taken and also we've got the strategic risk register at the
I think as we were looking at this earlier, we seem to be lacking in colour on this report.
We see that everything seems to be amber, despite the fact when we looked at it, the
matrix suggested that if something was 15, it should be red, and if something was eight
or less or fewer, it should be green.
That doesn't appear to have translated into the annex here.
So I don't know if David you might want to pick that point up
But if you've got anything to add before I open it up to office cabinet members
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 1:36:15
Thank you chair and just to reassure members around the frequency of the review
We have this planned in to the corporate leadership team
Which is myself the chief executive the monitoring officer and the director for communities in place to review every second month
That then is taken to the extended management team,
which includes the heads of service.
So that should give you assurance from the officer
level that we are reviewing both the strategic risk
register and focusing on the service risks on a very
regular basis, and that will form part of a suite of
financial service and risk performance reports that
you'll get all at the same time going forward.
In terms of the lack of different colours on the appendix,
I can only apologise that the conditional formatting that's
applied to the number may have gone a bit wayward,
because it should do that automatically,
but we'll adjust that for the next time.
But, yes, if it is scoring according to the risk matrix
slightly higher than 12, it would get a different colour.
Thank you, David. Tony.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:37:23
Councillor Tony Dale - 1:37:29
Thank you, leader. Yes, obviously the absence of colouring pens has gone astray on this report.
I was pointing out before we met that it's the first time I've ever seen a strategic
risk register where everything was amber. I look forward to the next review, David,
particularly, particularly because I would strongly encourage the Executive, yourself,
Jane and Angela, to really give this a little bit of time and thought, please. To give you
a for example when you are thinking about it, please can you go beyond the administrative
element of the risk that you've identified it, that you know there's a risk, that you've
it noted that you know what you're going to do about it, actually operationally consider
what the impact would be reputationally on Cotswold District Council should the risk
come to become an issue. And I'm going to pick a particular example that I would like
the three of you to consider. We still run three very popular leisure centres. We run
them through an external contractor. I've only just come into this new cabinet role
position and I've not seen any particular report backs on health and safety within the
environment of a leisure centre and it seems to me that is of absolutely critical importance.
So I would love to know, ideally even between now and your next quarterly review, whether
this rating of 15, which is not actually amber, it should be red, reflects what the reality
is in the position in each of our leisure centres. I want to know if we are meeting
the requirements of the health and safety executive and that we are meeting them in
the way we would wish to if we have a cautious risk appetite. Thank you.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:39:33
Thank you Tony and I think it's probably an omission because since you were joined us
we've now got Helen is also one of our directors as well as Angela, David and Jane. Mike.
Councillor Tony Dale - 1:39:47
I will very quickly add Helen just in case she's watching from on the high. I'll look
forward to meeting with you, Helen.
You can see her there.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:39:56
I'll now go to Mike and then Andrea.
Councillor Mike McKeown - 1:40:03
So I was just going to comment on the cybersecurity one,
which is I think one of the higher risk.
Not that it's high because we, you know, identified that we
have a new problem, but rather the reality of the world,
which is that it's becoming an increasingly bad area.
It's mostly all, particularly for our size organisation,
it's mostly organised crime, and that's growing.
Maybe bigger governments will be our friend over in Russia
that organised, you know, more state organised.
But I suspect the Russians aren't going after the Cotswolds,
but organised crime possibly based in Russia certainly is.
So I think it's, you know, important for the leadership
to be, and actually all the counsellors, doing, you know,
making sure has John got the resources necessary to keep up
with this escalating battle and a battle that's probably
changing away from being a technological thing only,
i .e. people breaking into systems to be more and more
of a people manipulation thing aided by technology.
Only, I think it was last year, Arup was hacked.
I think they lost $25 million because an AI faked CFO
convinced a finance person that he was in a meeting
with the CFO. I'm sure we would have a day that AI fake, but the point you know
that's one example but those threats are increasing and getting much cheaper to
to do so I think we just need to be conscious of that but also have you know
in that risk register that one we really do need to keep on top of. I'm glad to
see it's going to go in quarterly and just make sure we do give John the
resources and everybody the training to watch out for this stuff because as I
It's not just technology, it's we all need to be aware of what,
who we're really talking to and who we're not.
Thank you, Mike.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:41:54
Yeah, human beings, we're fallible, aren't we?
And yeah, it's easier to fool a human being
than a computer often.
So I know that's obviously something that's also
on the minds very much of the Audit and Governance Committee.
And I think there might be some training coming up on that
for Audit and Governance Committee members
which might be available more broadly as well.
Obviously, that's all confidential,
obviously to protect the council.
Andrea.
Thank you, Chair.
Councillor Andrea Pellegram - 1:42:23
I just wanted to talk to the risk identified regarding staff
burnout.
It's relating to LGR, but I think certain teams are
under a lot of pressure right now, particularly in planning.
And I just want to emphasise that, you know, we're nothing
without our officers. We're nothing. And as we get closer and closer to LGR, I think it's
going to be, it's going to be quite tempting, I think, for some people to start looking
elsewhere just because they don't know what's going to happen. And we are competing, you
know, with a lot of professions against the private sector. So I'm just really happy that
we're keeping an eye on this and I think we need to continue to keep an eye on this because
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:43:13
without our staff we have nothing. Thanks. Thank you Andrea. I was gonna offer the
opportunity for the Chief Executive who has formally started as our Chief
Executive on the 1st of January so it's remiss of me not to mention that earlier
in the meeting so to invite her to make any observation on the comment just made
by Councillor Pellegran, particularly in mind with your LGR experience Jane and you know
what we are about to go through in the next two and a bit years.
Thank you so much. I just wanted to comment more broadly about the three reports that
Cabinet are considering this evening. So you've had the financial performance report, you've
had the service performance report and now you're looking at the risk register. I think
It's my understanding that this is the first time you've had these three reports together on an agenda.
And my ambition is to do some further improvements for you so that you can consider risk, cost and performance together on a quarterly basis.
and so the next quarter when you receive this suite of three reports we'll
hopefully be drawing some threads together so that you can consider the
three things across the board. But overall I would just encourage you to
consider this particular report, this risk report, as a number of people have
commented that this is our strategic risk register. It may not cover everything that
everybody wants it to cover, but it's how we consider as our corporate leadership team
as the most strategic risks at this point in time. We very much hope it will shift and
change because that's the nature of risk and we'll be reporting that to you every quarter
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:45:29
over the next period of time. Thank you. Thank you Jane and whilst you haven't
directly I'm sure you've taken on board the comments that Councillor Pellegram
made around. Indeed indeed thank you yes. Thank you and yet you're right I think
we work to make sure we got the other two reports hopefully to the same
committees which hasn't all the meetings which hasn't always happened but we yeah
obviously totally get that and then obviously this is the first time that
we've had this one so it's really good to hear that we're going to try and draw
the themes across the three reports together at future cabinet meetings.
Anyone got anything else on the risk register Juliet? Yeah just to further
Councillor Juliet Layton - 1:46:06
about staff really in terms of local plan I mean we are getting the local
plan through in a really short space of time and one one of the things I
identified a couple of months ago was the flu risk. It could take out a whole
team quite easily and it would be monumentally damaging for us to get
through with a really help with a bad health risk in our within the staff. So I
was saying please can we make sure that the council is offering and maybe paying
for flu jabs for people in in a timely manner. I don't know whether that I
talk to Helen about that.
But, yeah, I mean, there is the risk of burnout,
but hopefully everybody's had a good Christmas and a gap
and a break.
And they do take their breaks.
I do know that, you know, that I'm very aware of how much work
they're doing, so I'm in touch with all the people in that,
you know, for the local plan and for all the planning
team as well.
But I think there are, you know, we've got to think about the
health risks that we could be avoiding, you know,
by simple measures like flu jabs and stuff. Thank you.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:47:25
Juliet, I don't see anyone else.
I think we're going to, Tony, you were going to say?
Mike, I think Helen wants to comment on that.
Sorry.
Helen.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:47:35
Thank you. Just very quickly to respond to Juliet.
So I have taken forward your request.
I've had a conversation with Carmel.
Obviously, anybody who's in the MediCAS scheme already has the ability to claim back their flu jab,
but I am working with her for those that aren't in the scheme,
and she's going to get the information of those who aren't,
so we can get an idea of the scale of it
and see what we can do.
But thank you for your support.
Thank you, Helen.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:47:55
Now I'm going to Tony. I think he was going to second.
Yeah, very happy to second, Leela.
Councillor Tony Dale - 1:48:03
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:48:06
I don't think I'm going to say anything else.
So just to bring back to the recommendations,
review the strategic risk register
and the mitigation measures. I think we've done that.
and to endorse the proposal of the strategic risk register to be included
in the work programme for the committee, as in this case for the cabinet, with a
quarterly review frequency. So I'll move that. Open the voting.
Everyone's managed to vote. Julia eventually set seven votes in favour and
against. Thank you very much. We now get to the last item now on the agenda as

17 Community Infrastructure Levy - CIL Bid Recommendations

we've dealt with the one that was after it which is the agenda item 17 community
infrastructure levy funding recommendations and I'm gonna hand over
to this one to Juliet and we've got Helen and Kim on the screen as well to
Councillor Juliet Layton - 1:49:13
support. Juliet. My good hand to get the microphone on. We've all been given an
extra set of papers here which I will read through at the end about the
recommendation. It's just to change the recommendations but we've got here in
front of us the what the SIL bids have been approved by the panel and that's
parking at Cotswold National Cycle Network, Farmers School 3G pitch, football
pitch and the Reesdale Hall phase 2 for the Reesdale Hall Trust. The council
advertises opportunities to bid for community infrastructure levy strategic
funds annually. This one's a little bit later, it's come to us a little bit
later in the year because we've done a lot of consultation and have given
advice to the bidders that were not successful and you'll see what those
those are in the in the papers and on page 279 I think we've got all the
submitted bids all the scoring's all the comments about why they've not been
successful or being successful.
So there's very details about how the panel look
at all the bids.
One of the questions that noted, I think it's question two
or three, this question is outdated but remains in our
matrix and needs to be answered.
In answer to that, in recognition of that,
we're actually looking to review how we look at how the
SIL bids are looked at next.
We'll be looking at that in the next couple of months.
And we'll be coming to Cabinet with recommendations on how
the SIL bids will go.
So, I know it looks very odd when you're putting in your
SIL bid and saying, this is outdated, the question,
but we've got to do it.
I don't think that would have made any difference to the
recommendations from the panel, however.
But we will be looking at how we are doing that,
and cabinet will be involved and engaged.
We, where am I going now with this, I'm sorry.
The bidders that aren't successful can come back
just because they're not successful this time.
They can come back again in May,
which was when we do the next round of the CIL bids.
I know there's been some,
A lot of you have had emails from various areas saying,
why hasn't our bid gone through, and can you take it through,
and, you know, arguing a little bit amongst each other.
I thought we were going to have some public speakers,
but the weather has stopped that,
which would have been quite good to engage in those.
So I'm a little bit disappointed in that, in a way.
But I think everything else is quite easy to see and read
and understand on this.
We've got a slight difference in the recommendations, which is in your new sheet, and that the Cabinet
resolves to agree the allocated funding for the following bids as set out in Table 4,
which I've already read out, the cycle parking with the National Cycle Network, the Farmers'
School 3G pitch, and the Riesdale Hall.
The second part of the recommendation is to delegate authority to the Assistant Director
of Planning Services in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Housing and Planning
to progress the funding bids subject to the Assistant Director of Planning Services, Legal
Services and the Finance Service undertaking the required due diligence to ensure a formal
agreement is in place prior to the release of funding in accordance with the Phil funding
guidance notes.
So just because the recommendations have been passed,
would they have got to still go through the due diligence
to make sure that the money is going to the right place
and the bid can be delivered?
I think I can either hand over to Helen now.
Oh no, Kim's on there as well.
So we have Kim that can say further to that if you'd like to, Kim.
Yeah, hi. Thank you, Juliette.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:53:38
Ellen or Kim, would you like to add anything to what Juliet has said?
I can see Kim's taken a mic, I saw a letter come in. There's nothing that I'd like to
add at this point but obviously we're both happy to answer any questions that the cabinet may have.
Kim, anything you wanted to add? I'll just add a little bit to what
Councillor Layton has already said, which is the due diligence involves a legal agreement with
clawback clauses as well. So it's significant due diligence. So already the panel has considered
whether the bids are legal, responsible, accountable and strategic, but there is an additional layer
as well of due diligence that comes after this, including a legal agreement that we require the
bidders to sign up to, to hold them to account for the funding once it's transferred.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:54:30
Councillor Mike McKeown - 1:54:37
Thank you Kim. Mike. So I had a comment and a question, a related question. So my comment
was I was obviously delighted as the Kemble wall councillor to see the the SIL bid or
two bids in fact related for the Kemble to Syrinsester cycle path from GCC and Sustrans.
So that's good, that will certainly help a great deal of more sustainable transport from
to the obviously our big major railway hub down here which is a good thing to
see. My question is with a little background is I was recently in Kemble
station with meeting West Midlands railways with Ros Savage RMP with the
good news is that they're planning to put in more trains basically double
number of trains going to Kemble so there'll be direct links by the end of
roughly to Birmingham from Kemble as well as obviously we have London now so
that will create more more usage and on the other hand of course our local plan
that Juliette and Helen are working so well on is will mean a lot more housing
particularly in the South Cotswolds and some big new areas of you know dense
homes in some of the other locations so my question was how within the sort of
local plan and how do we who and how do we work to make sure that we get
additional cycle paths planned in that would not just link Kemble to siren
sester but also some of the to allow some of these big new developments I'm
thinking you've got Preston all sorts of places that are going to be this new
village in Driffield that will be quite huge and in time could take advantage of
those that sort of cycle path route to Kemble station as well as the siren
system, how do we go about doing that?
Before I, if you come off, before I, Mike, sorry,
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:56:28
before I invite whoever wants to answer that,
Juliet or Helen, or both, just probably just to
caveat slightly what you said in terms of those
things are all, I see, consultation and, you
know, there may or may not be any big development in
those places that you've mentioned, but yeah,
absolutely, I think the point you made is if
there are going to be, we want to make sure we've got really good cycle
infrastructure, particularly that links to the railway station and links to
Syrinsester where the facilities are, you know, the links are at their best.
So, I don't know who wants to answer that, Juliet or Helen or both.
I'll give it a crack and Helen can come in with the bits I miss out.
Councillor Juliet Layton - 1:57:11
I mean, we've got to think infrastructure first and we've got to look at the
structure of whatever those developments, wherever they might be. Part of our
corporate plan is to be green to the core, which involves cycling and walking
and connectivity between places. So that will come into that. And it's not just
about, you know, bypasses motorways or, sorry it's a bit big saying a motorway
isn't it, but you know what I mean. So that would come into that and into the planning
and into what we can get the developer, and the developer will be the ones paying for those.
And it's also in our policies that we did in the last year's Reg 18
about what we expect developers to do to keep us green to the court. I shall hand over to Helen now
to add. Thank you. Yeah, just to add to just a couple of points. So obviously, we're in
the process of sifting through a number of sites that have come through for our call
for sites. When we get to a more defined list, they'll go forward for further assessment.
One of those things is transport modelling and assessment. We have to produce an infrastructure
delivery plan, which we'll publish with the Regulation 19 plan when we have that final
set of sites that will identify the kind of transport infrastructure along with every
other infrastructure, the growth and development needs when we
know where it's going to go. We also have a sustainable transport
officer who is looking very closely at all these things and
inputting into the plan. Sustainable travel is really
key. So we are looking to join up this developments link
existing areas with areas of growth. So those needs where
they're defined, and we will be doing some high level master
planning on those sites when they come forward as well, will
be set out to a degree in the plan and there'll be policies
about what we expect, particularly in the larger sites,
that will be set out in a bit more detail,
but the delivery will come through
the planning application process
when each site comes forward.
I captured everything Kim,
was there anything from a still in the section 106 points
you'd like to add?
Yeah, I'll just add one thing.
So they will come through the individual planning
applications through section 106 agreements,
but also we'll get funding
from those future planning applications,
as well as the previous funding we've had from community infrastructure levy that we retain an
amount of, which can also go towards items on the new emerging infrastructure delivery plan. And
some of the things we'll be looking at around still governance in the coming year will relate to
what pots of sill we put aside for different kinds of infrastructure and we'll be
Councillor Mike Evemy - 2:00:03
Thank you all. I've got Andrea and then I'm going to bring Kristen in to second and finish off the discussion. Andrea.
Councillor Andrea Pellegram - 2:00:14
Thank you, Chair. SIL is probably the biggest gift we'll ever receive for delivering infrastructure,
so it's so important that we are dealing with it really well and I'm very happy to see that the,
I'm gonna say the planning team are going
to put forward improvements to still governance and procedures.
I said this in our informal cabinet but I'll say it again.
It's really important for members to be able to feed
into this process because so far, as I understand,
this is an officer -led process.
Obviously, all of the counsellors will want to have all
of the money put in their ward and obviously we can't do that.
However, I think it's really important that the members have some,
some are able to advocate for different proposals.
I also am sad and I understand the reasons why it's not a complaint
that the infrastructure delivery plan isn't available yet
so that we can actually assess the amount of infrastructure coming forward
that won't be paid for through Section 106 or other sources.
So the SIL money is just so, so important for our future.
I'm glad to hear that officers are thinking about putting things in separate pots for different things because for instance
Community infrastructure I know is always a very low consideration the quality of open space provision is always a very low consideration
Community halls is always a very low
You know low on the priority list yet. These are the things that actually make living in a place nice
So I'm happy that this is going to be a more transparent process
and I really hope that members get an opportunity to contribute to the decision -making. Thanks.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 2:02:02
Thank you Andrea. I invite Councillor Wilkinson to second, noting that one of the proposals is
not in his ward, it's in the adjoining ward represented by his colleague at the back of
room the the Fairford proposal for the the pitch at Fairford but over to you
Tristan. If I stand on my tippy toes I can probably see it so close enough. I
Councillor Tristan Wilkinson - 2:02:28
think what Councillor Pellegram said is absolutely right that in the current
environment there are very very few opportunities for us to spend
significant amounts of money that actually make a difference and so when
we do we should be very thoughtful and deliberate and considered in where that
money goes and I'm really pleased to see the range and the variety here.
Cycle paths are really important not just for their green credentials but any
infrastructure like that unlocks investment opportunities along its route
and either ends it enables people to do things that they couldn't do before not
only in terms of commuting but in terms of new business opportunities there's a
debated. The biggest pressure group from that are from small businesses that see the opportunity
to do things like rent bikes to people and stuff like that. So I think these things are really,
really important. So I'm absolutely delighted to second this and really welcome, you know,
more debate on how money can be spent to unlock future investment in our area.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 2:03:36
Thank you very much. I think everyone has had the opportunity to have their say. So we're going to
to the vote now please as the recommendations as read out I mean as
amended by Juliet as read out lovely that's unanimous and that's the end of
the meeting so six minutes past eight just over the two hours but hopefully
people can get to where they need to get to safely thanks very much everybody and
yeah for all your contributions this evening thanks

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