Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Monday 31 March 2025, 4:00pm - Cotswold District Council Webcasting
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Agenda item :
Start of webcast
Slide 1
Agenda item :
1 Apologies
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
Agenda item :
2 Substitute Members
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Julia Gibson, Officer
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
Agenda item :
3 Declarations of Interest
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Michael Vann
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Councillor Patrick Coleman
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Councillor Jon Wareing
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Councillor Dilys Neill
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Councillor Len Wilkins
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Tony Slater
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Councillor Clare Turner
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
Agenda item :
4 Minutes
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Agenda item :
5 Matters Arising from Minutes of the Previous Meeting
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Dilys Neill
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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David Stanley, Deputy CEO
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Patrick Coleman
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
Agenda item :
6 Chair's Announcements
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7 Public Questions
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Public Speaker
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Officer
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Public Speaker
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Public Speaker
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Public Speaker
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Public Speaker
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
Agenda item :
8 Member Questions
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
Agenda item :
9 Report back on recommendations
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Angela Claridge
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Patrick Coleman
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Dilys Neill
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Angela Claridge
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Tony Slater
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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David Stanley, Deputy CEO
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
Agenda item :
10 Work Plan and Forward Plan
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Patrick Coleman
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Dilys Neill
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Patrick Coleman
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Dilys Neill
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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David Stanley, Deputy CEO
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Michael Vann
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Public Speaker
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Patrick Coleman
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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David Stanley, Deputy CEO
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Public Speaker
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
Agenda item :
11 British Farming Motion
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Patrick Coleman
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Officer
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Officer
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Len Wilkins
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Officer
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Clare Turner
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Officer
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Michael Vann
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Officer
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Dilys Neill
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Jon Wareing
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Jon Wareing
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Tony Slater
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Michael Vann
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Officer
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Clare Turner
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Mike Evemy
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David Stanley, Deputy CEO
Agenda item :
12 Financial Performance Report 2024-25 Quarter Three
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Jon Wareing
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David Stanley, Deputy CEO
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Councillor Jon Wareing
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Tony Slater
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Councillor Mike Evemy
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David Stanley, Deputy CEO
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Tony Slater
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David Stanley, Deputy CEO
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Dilys Neill
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David Stanley, Deputy CEO
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Councillor Dilys Neill
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David Stanley, Deputy CEO
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Councillor Dilys Neill
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Patrick Coleman
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Councillor Mike Evemy
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Mike Evemy
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David Stanley, Deputy CEO
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Dilys Neill
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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David Stanley, Deputy CEO
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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David Stanley, Deputy CEO
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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David Stanley, Deputy CEO
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
Agenda item :
12 Financial Performance Report 2024-25 Quarter Three
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
Agenda item :
13 Updates from Gloucestershire County Council Scrutiny Committees
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Councillor Dilys Neill
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Patrick Coleman
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Councillor Dilys Neill
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Dilys Neill
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Patrick Coleman
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Councillor Angus Jenkinson
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Councillor Gina Blomefield
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Webcast Finished
Disclaimer: This transcript was automatically generated, so it may contain errors. Please view the webcast to confirm whether the content is accurate.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:00:00
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:00:03
popped out again. I'll just let her time to come back. We are already live. So the meetingbegins. All our members will be here shortly. First of all, a warm welcome to everyone present,
including any members of the public, whether in person or watching online. As always, I
also want to acknowledge and welcome the cabinet members and officers who will be giving their
reports to all the members of the committee and also the officers present to support the
overview and scrutiny committee in its functions.
I want to give particular thanks to Claire Locke, who has supported me since I was elected
Chair of O &S and has always given excellent guidance, assistance and made sure that reports
were delivered on time.
Thank you very much to Claire and I'm sure everybody would like to thank her for the
more support she's given over these last few years and wish her well. She's not going,
let's hope, so she's still with Publica and will still be part of the council going forward.
So thank you very much. I also wish to acknowledge the support from Gary Selwyn, who has been
my vice chair. He recently resigned as district councillor, so can no longer fulfil this role.
He was an experienced and thoughtful Councillor who always made valuable contributions to
O &S as well in his wider role as Councillor.
Thank you Gary and I wish you well in your retirement.
And I'm sure we'd all, second and third or whatever, support that.
Before we go any further, I'll go through the usual housekeeping.
Fire exits are marked.
The toilet facilities are to the left of the lobby
outside this room.
Please put, turn off or put on silent any mobile device.
There was a little bit of activity on that
in the full council, so please make sure that they are off
or silent.
This meeting will be live streamed and will also be
available to view later on CDC's website.
If anyone wishes to film the proceedings, this is permitted
provided it does not disrupt proceedings. So that was my first bit. We now move on
1 Apologies
Julia Gibson, Officer - 0:02:25
to apologies. And we've received apologies from Councillor Cunningham and2 Substitute Members
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:02:32
Councillor Spivey. Thank you for that and do we have substitutes for them? Yes weJulia Gibson, Officer - 0:02:36
do. We have Councillor Wilkins substituting for Councillor Cunninghamand Councillor Coleman substituting for Councillor Spivey.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:02:45
Thank you both for stepping in. I'm sure you'll enjoy this meeting so very good to see youhere today. Do we have any declarations of interest?
3 Declarations of Interest
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:02:59
Before we go into the main body of the meeting, please can each member introduce themselvesstarting with Michael Van.
Councillor Michael Vann - 0:03:09
Michael Van, Fairford North.Councillor Patrick Coleman - 0:03:15
Patrick Coleman. Stratton is our ancestor.John Waringborough, Village.
Councillor Jon Wareing - 0:03:23
Councillor Dilys Neill - 0:03:26
Dyliss Neil, Store in the World.And Wilkins, Borton Vale.
Councillor Len Wilkins - 0:03:31
Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:03:36
Angus Jenkinson, Moreton East and Todman.Councillor Tony Slater - 0:03:40
Tony Slater, Grumbold Ash with ATHENING.Claire Turner, Blockley Ward.
Councillor Clare Turner - 0:03:44
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:03:49
Thank you for that. Now we've got the minutes of the previous meeting.4 Minutes
I was not present so I have not made any amendments, changes or other things.
Has anybody else got something that they can't?
Councillor Clare Turner - 0:04:05
Just a very minor point that on the attendee list,Councillor Selwyn appears twice.
So although his contribution I'm sure is worthy of that.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:04:17
Were there any other comments? No.Right, could I have somebody who would like to propose,
Councillor Neill, and to second, Councillor Waring.
Could we now vote on that, please?
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:04:38
Please note I'm abstaining because I wasn't present.Everybody else was there.
Abstaining Councillor Slater as well.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:04:52
Following on from that, matters arising. Are there any matters arising from this meeting5 Matters Arising from Minutes of the Previous Meeting
or any previous ones that should be covered? So it's not just the last meeting but anything
else that somebody feels is slipped by the wayside.
I
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:05:12
Can't so Neal there were just three outstanding itemsCouncillor Dilys Neill - 0:05:16
From the actions on page 14 we canCouncillor Gina Blomefield - 0:05:27
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:05:29
Sorry concert drinks you have something why I look up page 14, so if you go ahead I will look up page 40Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:05:38
This might have been brought as an amendment, but it wasn't, partly because of the speed.But on page seven, there's questions that were raised on the report regarding the transition.
And I believe that there was a question asked regarding the extent to which it could be
said that the transition during phase one was largely a matter of resolving HR -related
matters, all of the administrative matters to do with that, and that therefore the more
significant adjustments that were being made, which was the key purpose of the whole exercise,
would follow later on.
And I don't actually see that being limited in that particular way, and so my follow -on
at this point is just to clarify that that was indeed our understanding of the situation
that was approved at the time.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:06:41
Right, thank you, Councillor Jenkins. As anybody from Democratic Services, I wasn't presentat the meeting and I want to know whether anything has been taken on or furthered as
a result of those comments at the last O &S. I've also looked up Councillor Neill's things
and I know that Councillor Fan wants to mention in the future work plan about the local plan
and has got some feedback from the PAS meeting which was last week. So does anybody else
on those matters which really were matters arising, has there been any follow up and
can I get anything back from anybody in democratic services or even our deputy?
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:07:28
If I can, Chair, I did circulate today an email that contained a single side of A4 attachmentthat sets out the total cost of the public transition split between phase one, phase
two and the one -off costs in response to the questions that are aired at the meeting on
the 3rd of March.
That information is contained within the Q3 Financial Performance Report, which is on this agenda, but it does require members to read various paragraphs and add the numbers together.
So for clarity, a response has been provided to that particular point of the outstanding actions that summarises that quite succinctly.
And Councillor Coleman.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:08:14
I put my hand up because I wasn't absolutely certain but I think Mr.Councillor Patrick Coleman - 0:08:19
Stanley did make it clear that his statement and the document that we can find on our email answers the first of the three outstanding points on page 14.That is to say that the total enduring impact of transitioning services from public to the council, that's financial impact, is as far as we can tell because there are many positive non -financial impacts.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:08:50
Thank you for that and thank you, David Sander.I actually haven't had a chance to catch up.
I've obviously either been here or seen people, so I haven't, I don't know what time you send
it, but I haven't seen that one yet, but I will certainly read it on my, when I get home.
And Councillor Neill, to your matter, which was about the local plan and also to the SIRMS
the master plan which were not completely linked but not.
Councillor van does want to bring this up later in the meeting so it's certainly not
forgotten and it is one of those most important things, our local plan, it's absolutely crucial.
So thank you for that. Does anybody have anything else they want to add?
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:09:36
Thank you. Now we move to my announcements. Suggested timings for each topic were not6 Chair's Announcements
included in this agenda, but I will try to remember to announce them when we move between
agenda items. This meeting has a light agenda, so I'm not forecasting any issues, and it
may give us more time to look at the HOSC and the GESSC reports. I'm also aware that
Councillor Waring has to leave at six and I hope that most of the business will have
been done by then. So going on from that, the intention is to make sure that these timings
are put on the agenda in future, so hopefully that will be done. Can I always remind you
to be succinct in your questions and likewise can cabinet members and officers be succinct
in your replies.
One of the important items we'll be looking at in this meeting
is the British farming motion proposed by Julia Judd
at the last full council meeting.
The intention, as you know, is to set up a task and finish group
to look into this with a report being prepared
for the July meeting.
This does not give a lot of time, bearing in mind Easter
and all the bank holidays between now and then.
We will go on to discuss that further.
So now could we go on to public questions? Are there any public questions? I don't believe there are
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:11:05
Delighted7 Public Questions
Public Speaker - 0:11:15
Thank youI live on a farm on the edge of Syrinsester.
I'm also the newly elected Secretary of the South Cotswolds Labour Party.
So, like yourselves, I'm very passionate about highlighting how government policies impact our Cotswolds residents for better or for worse.
And I hope that that is the goal of the proposed British Farming Motion.
But it seems to me that the Labour government may take the
proposed all -party working groups' findings a bit more
seriously when there is a Labour representative
on the working group.
So first question.
Given that the committee has stated that the working group
will be cross -party and all political groups will be
invited to nominate one or two members,
does the committee believe that they would benefit from a Labour
representative on the working group?
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:12:21
Thank you. Thank you for this. Partly we're meant to be in the pre -electionkind of thing, so we have to be careful about mentioning on a political basis.
But when it's actually, it says it's non -political, that is within district
councillors existing. It is not for, it does not, would not involve, that is not
to say we're not going to be inviting other people who are not district
Councillors. So of course we would like to think but actually to be on it you've
actually got to be as I understand it a District Councillor so that's not
possible and you may one day be a District Councillor here which would be
great but am I correct in thinking that's right can I just have
confirmation? Yes a reference to political groups is political groups
Officer - 0:13:06
onthe council it's not political parties that exist in the district it's about
the council and that's how we apportion seats on committees as well as working groups.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:13:21
Public Speaker - 0:13:29
Not my second question, just to clarify so I understand.Does the committee believe they would benefit from a Labour representative on the working
group, yes or no?
Regardless of whether that's possible.
Thank you.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:13:42
Sorry, that's one of the things you're getting to learn, how to turn these things on andoff because when you speak and press that, the camera comes to you and it's also recorded.
So yes, what we're doing is terms of reference now.
That is going to be to probably appoint five councillors to it.
They will then go off and form the task and finish group with the assistance of Paul James,
who is our officer, who is the economic and business lead in the Consul District Council,
and they will then come up with the way they're going to approach it.
So it's not for me, even though I chair overview and scrutiny, is to actually impose on them
how they want to go about it.
But I'm sure they'd be pleased to hear from you.
And we are obviously, and there's something like this, we are having a wide net of opinions
and things.
But as you probably think, it's not a, it probably is a political thing but not entirely political.
It is about, we're looking to find out the impact on farmers in the Cotswolds on this inheritance.
So is that satisfying?
Public Speaker - 0:14:49
Yes, so I'll take that as a yes, probably would benefit but logistically can't be done.And it's not your, as interested to say for that.
You would not be actually on the formal committee,
that's for sure.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:15:00
It would be, but then you may be asked to come give reportsand things to be included in it.
But that I leave to them to decide who and what they're
going to be involved in.
Obviously people like the NFU, the Royal Agricultural University
and people like that are definitely on the list.
So there are many people.
So thank you.
Thank you for coming today.
Public Speaker - 0:15:24
So my second question then, and to help give extra context to the question, so I used tobe an auditor and I've seen many occasions where reporting data is deliberately misinterpreted
in order to fit the narrative that the authors would like to tell.
Secondly, the government should have nothing to fear from the truth, facts and data, so
if the evidence from the proposed working group shows that Cotswold will become worse
off in the long term as a result of the inheritance tax reforms, then I will gladly help draw
attention to this. However, the working group as it's been proposed today is and
based on the what's in the terms of reference is not tasked with finding the
truth. So page 9 of the public document pack makes it pretty clear that the
purpose of the proposed working group is to consider the local impacts of a
inheritance tax and then give the council suggestions on how to campaign
against the relevant IHT reforms.
It does not say whether they should or should not.
It specifically says that they want to have suggestions
on how to campaign against.
So it's a bit like how the post office leadership approached
things when they saw that some of their branches
have a shortfall of cash.
Rather than investigating whether the system was broken
and then taking action to fix it,
they started with a preconceived view about the postmasters,
tasked their teams to find some data that proved
their leadership was right and then they prevented the release of data that might contradict
them.
I'm not wishing to over interrupt but we are meant to be and really have got to be non -political
at this particular time because of the May elections and so I feel that you've made your
point.
I'm not going to say the idea of actually behind the emotion in the day is that we're
to create a letter which is going to be sent to Rachel Reeves to express whatever comes
as the outcome. The motion was proposed by a Councillor here, but it does not mean that
the whole motion was not fully approved as it stands in writing at this point.
So my question, moving on to the end of it, is will you adjust the terms of reference
to focus on establishing the truth, the facts and the data,
instead of having the preconceived goal
of establishing the campaigning against,
which is currently says, he wants to do.
Sorry.
Thank you.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:17:54
I think that this is something which the working group haveactually got to tidy up and make a focus on exactly what they're
going to be doing at their first meeting.
and that's when April will be tied up.
If you want to share your views, which is fair enough,
and absolutely if you put it through to democratic services,
they will pass them on to the working group and they will be
added to their first meeting to be considered.
Thank you.
Public Speaker - 0:18:24
I think it's important that it's a fair analysis and not a biasanalysis from the start.
Thanks for your time, everybody, and see you next time.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:18:44
Thank you for that. And it's good to see that people are looking to see what we're doingand are taking an interest. So actually I always would welcome more members of the public
coming to express their views, if that's what they felt. We are open to hearing you all,
so please don't, you know, this is a meeting where you can come as a member of the public
and ask your questions and we value those, so thank you.
Have we got any members questions?
8 Member Questions
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:19:14
No, we really don't have any members questions.Fantastic.
Right. The next thing was the report back on recommendations.
9 Report back on recommendations
I've just got to say, on page 16 there's a response regarding
keeping town and parish councils up to date with the changes coming in local government,
with district councils being disbanded in favour of unitary councils.
I would just like to add that I think it would also be good to invite town and parish councils
to express their views and how they see their roles developing and how their avenues of
communication with whoever is going to be the
Councillor. I think there's a lot of concern and I think they would like to
be not just told how it's going to be but they would like to be asked how they
would like to have it. There are different models for how Town and Parish
Councils are involved. Oh and I've got our monitoring officer Angela Clarich coming in.
Angela Claridge - 0:20:23
Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to say which members may have heard the leader just slightlytouch on at this month's full council, that there is to be a town and parish summit held
on the 4th of June, which will be in Syrins Hester. It is aimed at all town and parish
colleagues across the district and is very much to focus on and update them on local
government reorganisation in terms of what has happened elsewhere, learning opportunities
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:20:50
the future. And thank you, yes, I had noticed that and I had seen it. Obviously there area lot of town and parish counsellors who find making time to come to something like that
on a weekday in Sarrand and Sesto quite challenging and so I think the Monghly must, because it's
so important, it is really vital that that rung of local government is felt, heard and
engaged. It's a process we've got two or three years so I think that we ought to
be doing a bit more satellite operations too just so they can come and maybe talk
between each other you see that that's the thing it's not just talking at them
these town and parish councils they can learn and say well how do you feel and I
think we will to be looking at that so thank you that's my obviously my opinion
and I strongly feel that I have Councillor Coleman and Councillor Neill
who both like to speak.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Councillor Patrick Coleman - 0:21:42
I'm beginning to wish quite ferventlythat I was a regular member of this committee.
I can't believe it.
There's technically a vacancy at the moment.
With the retirement of Councillor Selwyn.
No, serious point here.
It's only human to say not invented here.
And I could go on for minutes about examples.
But we do have the benefit not only
of having a constituency that crosses the county boundary
into that faraway county called Wiltshire,
but also a unitary council that's been in existence
since 2009, very similar in many ways in its rurality
and small settlements and parish and town councils
to Gloucestershire.
And we could do far worse than approach whatever organization
represents the parish and town councils of Wiltshire,
and perhaps in addition one in terms of larger and smaller town
and parish councils, and say, if you can remember back to 2009,
because time has passed, what are the issues that we should be aware of and what would
your recommendations, if any, be? Even though it wasn't invented here.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:22:50
I know that Angela Charadon was coming. I just did a steal coming first and then you,Angela. Thank you.
Councillor Dilys Neill - 0:22:56
Yes, thank you very much. I had a Stowtown Council meeting last night, not last night,last week, which I raised this issue and reported back on the discussions we
talked about devolution at the district council meeting and what we knew and the
response from the county and the various district and borough councils that they've
put forward. I did say, which is something that we discussed at the
district council meeting, that our full council meeting, that there should be
input from town and parish councils and the Stowtown Council were very keen to
put forward some input, but it's always difficult
if the meeting is in Cirencester.
So if we're gonna have an explanatory meeting,
can we have one in the north as well?
And one of the things that they,
I absolutely agree with you.
It's very important that town and parish councils
are involved because it may be that under the devolved,
under the unitary authorities that a lot more,
that the larger councils in particular,
the larger town council in particular,
are gonna have more work to do.
They might have a bigger budget to control.
They may be taking decisions which we take
as a district council now.
People will be putting themselves forward for elections
in two years time.
They need to know what's going to be expected of them.
And one of the things that needs to be discussed
is if town council laws are expected to do more,
will there be any financial allowances made for them,
for example.
But people who've been chugging along,
doing a certain amount of work with the town council,
they suddenly find themselves with a lot more work to do.
And so that's something that needs to be made very clear,
I feel.
Yeah, thanks.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:24:42
Well, I think you've made some extraordinarily good pointsthere, and that's exactly how I feel.
So I think it is that they need to be able to not just be,
they need to share their own views and opinions,
and they do have them.
And also learn from each other.
I think it's a very good idea also to experience some people in Wiltshire because that's a
sort of trying to test it.
So now, Andrew Claridge, please.
Thank you, Chair.
Angela Claridge - 0:25:04
So just picking up briefly, if I may, some of the points that have just been raised.In terms of Wiltshire, so the event that I just mentioned that we're holding on the 4th
of June, we have got a senior member of staff coming from Chippenham town council.
Chippenham obviously is based in Wiltshire and is one of the town councils that, if you
took opportunities from the local government reorganisation in 2009 in Wiltshire.
So that's a good learning opportunity for everybody.
I appreciate he's not an officer, not a town or parish counsellor.
I think what I'm hearing is that it would be helpful if we gave all members a briefing note
on what we know so far that you could use then for when you do attend your town or parish meetings.
You know it's very much a moveable feast at the moment, but there are more unknowns than there are knowns.
But if that would help members, we could arrange something for your town and parish meetings
when you attend and give your district councilor updates.
And then in terms of a session in the North Cotswolds, I think we just have to look at
it.
We are planning at the moment basing it on Simon's sister.
We're hoping that our technology links will work as well because we've been asked specifically
if we'll have an external speaker who can only come if it's an online connection.
So I think we might be able to possibly record something or do something elsewhere or options
But you know, I've heard that you'd like it elsewhere in the in the district as well. Thank you
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:26:33
Yes, no, thank you, I mean I know it's been mentioned oftenTriptom
And the things but it is quite a large place. It's more in line with someone like Sarah says it's nowhere else of that size in
in the Cotswolds.
And what we really, my greater concern
is for the smaller parishes and things.
And they are going to be dependent,
whichever color of politician they elect,
that that person actually gets around and covers the thing.
I mean, I know that there'll be slightly more, in a way,
for the county councilors, but still, you know,
in these very rural patches, somebody taking on that role
could be going out to a meeting almost every night because there are so many parishes to
be covered. So there is a concern that they lose that connection and they don't get the
thing. So thank you. But all that we can do, and I think we must keep, but let's get the
May elections done first and then I think we'll be in a better position.
Councillor Slater.
Councillor Tony Slater - 0:27:35
Thank you, Chair. We're seeing the costs later on of our littlerealignment in resources for one small council.
In the first instance, should we be pushing back to the
government as we are with the National Insurance League to
say, is this a priority, is this the right time to do it?
It's going to cost a fortune and who's going to pay.
So should we ask those questions of the government first?
You have the things.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:28:05
I haven't read the new thing which has only come out now,So I can't actually answer it myself.
I don't know whether David Stanley wants to make any
further observations on that.
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:28:17
Certainly in terms of the cost of any local governmentreorganization or devolution work,
that is something that is being asked of government in terms of
whether or not that is something they would pick up.
It's probably worth noting that they haven't yet provided any
funding to any area that's been reorganized,
but the question will still be asked by all those going
through LGR currently.
Thank you.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:28:43
We don't normally get such a big thing on the report backon recommendations, but that actually,
I think it means that people are reading them
and it's actually checking through and following up,
which I fully support.
So thank you everybody for taking care to do that.
I think we've finished that item.
Can I now move forward to the work plan and forward plan?
10 Work Plan and Forward Plan
I've two suggestions for additional topics to be looked at by ONS.
One of them is to invite Bronford, as was suggested on the 3rd of March. And I would
like them to come to ONS to bring us up to date with their strategies and plans for looking
after their customers, that's what they call their tenants, and maintaining their properties,
as well as expanding their estate by applying to take on more of the affordable and social
housing element in the new housing which we know is coming along the tracks.
Democratic services have suggested that this could be fitted into the May agenda which
is quite light and it might be a good occasion to ask Bromford to attend.
Before I go on to the next one, I just wanted to know the committee's views and thoughts.
Bromford is the largest affordable social housing provider in the district with about
75, 80 % of that. We haven't heard from them for a long time. How does everybody feel about
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:30:14
that? We will take that as yes, please, could the democratic services invite them. We arewanting the big picture of where they are going and the opportunity to ask them some
questions. Councillor Coleman.
Councillor Patrick Coleman - 0:30:29
Not today in any way, Chair, but there's, I think, important, if we can, to avoid thepossibility or probability that it will be a corporate presentation about how wonderful
organisation they are. Therefore, if you're able to use your role in signing the invitation
to also help make it clear that this is not a, hail fellow, well met and well done, let's
have a cup of tea. This is serious long -term repeated problems, not everywhere, but in
more than one town and village and affecting many significant numbers of tenants. And therefore,
this is not just a welcome. It is hoping to get down to some honest discussion of the
real challenges they face.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:31:20
Thank you. And I think if they could forego the PowerPoint presentation, I would agreewith that. Because actually, it would be good to actually, I mean, we really want more the
opportunity to discuss things with them than them to actually tell us a whole lot of, from
their point of view. I mean, obviously you need to have enough background to make a first
thing but that would be helpful. Councillor Neill. I mean maybe it would be good if
Councillor Dilys Neill - 0:31:47
beforehand we could notify them the sort of things we wanted them to talk aboutor to ask about so that they you know could come up with whatever information
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:31:59
statistics and such data. I think that's an excellent idea I don't know ifdemocratic services be happy to for us to send in our thoughts which you will
put together and share with whoever coming from. I would hope that we might
get more than one Bromford representative because I think it would be good.
So if we could go to Councillor Jenkins.
Thank you, Chair.
Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:32:20
Just, we normally get some paperwork to read in advance and there's no reason why if theywant a PowerPoint to give us a PowerPoint or some other form of presentation about important
background that they think we need to understand, they can send that in advance.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:32:35
Yeah, all I'm going to say is we have all been to a few.Yubico are particularly good at it.
And Yubico, I think you're absolutely amazing in many ways.
But sometimes it can get in the way
or take up the time, which actually needs to be.
So we could put a time limit, perhaps, on that side of it.
Because I think it is clear.
Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:32:55
I meant they could send it so they don't need to present it.Because anything that, if we need
to understand fundamentals about their business
that they think we need to read beforehand,
and send it in advance, we'll read it, then they won't need to tell us about it.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:33:13
Sorry, I was sort of, I don't know why I hadn't listened properly.We'll see what we can do on that.
Well, let's see, the invitation hasn't hit their desk yet, so we'll see what happens,
but I think May would be a good time to do this.
My second idea for the work plan is I'd like to have the committee's response to another thought regarding the topic.
And that's the impact of the government's tax changes on employment in the district.
I know several businesses which have stopped recruiting new employees and others where they've made employees redundant due to restructuring their businesses to reduce their tax burdens.
And that includes business rates, national insurance,
minimum wage, plus the new employment legislation.
How can we at CDC best help the economic vitality
of the district faced with these challenges?
I have spoken to Paul James.
He's going to be a busy boy because he's going
to be doing the IHD on the impact on the farming too.
But he is keen.
He's got all the, I mean this is what he does.
something interesting.
And I think it would be very interesting to find out
sometime into the autumn, so I'm not saying now,
now exactly what is happening.
So many jobs in the Cotswolds rely on the hospitality
and retail industries, both which
are vulnerable to these things because they have
a lot of part -time workers, not often always that well paid.
And, you know, one really, we need to know the impact and see what we can do to help.
So if you're happy with that, anybody want to...
Councillor Coleman.
Yes, Chair.
Councillor Patrick Coleman - 0:35:04
Although I'm aware that I haven't seen any employment and unemployment statistics for our district or county for some years.But I do remember, not that many years ago, that effectively for every person looking for work, there were two jobs.
And this had the impact of finding work from people who were, when we were in the European Union,
wanted to come and work here and some of them to stay for a long time.
We see no end to the growth in hospitality, cafes, restaurants, and indeed, we don't see any hotels closing yet.
So it may be that our employment position is not yet in a bad position, or it may be that it is,
but we haven't, as far as I know, received any recent data.
I think we used to get positive data in the days of Lyndon Stohr's leader
because he wanted to remind us what a wonderful council it was.
And of course we can't take a great deal of credit ourselves as a council
for the employment or unemployment position,
but I do totally agree with you.
We need to be updated on the potential impact of tax changes and indeed of Brexit.
Thank you. And Councillor Neill.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:36:11
Councillor Dilys Neill - 0:36:13
Yes, just one anecdote.I have just opened up my computer and got an email from the chair of Stowtown Council
who's just been notified of a business that is closing in stow and one of the reasons they've cited is the business rates and
He's found that
Businesses are struggling. Of course. That's just anecdotal. So as Councillor Coleman said it would be useful to have more
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:36:39
Well, first of all, I get a council JenkinsI don't know if they may have some of the things, but let's ask Councillor Jenkinson
who was on the list.
Well, just a small point, the same thing is happening in Warton,
Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:36:50
businesses are closingdown, but they tend to be moving to Stowe.
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:37:03
Just in terms of business rates, the council is the billing authority, so it provides thosebills to businesses, but we implement pretty much
central government policy on those business rate
bills, particularly for the leisure, retail, and
hospitality relief, which in the current financial
year, because we're still in 24, 25, was worth 75
percent of the bills that relief was given.
For the forthcoming financial year, that
reduces to 40 percent, and it may be that that has
contributed to some of those pressures on
businesses in that particular sector.
Well, thank you.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:37:41
Anyway, so I'm hoping that that is going to be put forward intothe work plan going forward.
And I think it would be a very useful piece of work for
everybody in the council to actually understand businesses
and the economic strength across the district.
It has been an area which hasn't really had unemployment as
Councillor Coleman in the past.
But, you know, things change.
and I think it's good to have an updated understanding of the situation.
And now, Michael Van, Councillor Van, mentioned something to me earlier,
and he would like to talk about the local plan and there was the past report,
he was at the meeting on Thursday, and he feels that, well, he will tell us everything.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Councillor Michael Vann - 0:38:32
In the papers that we have on fines references to the local plan, page 12, 3rd of March,providing members with the date of the planning advisory service, the PAS feedback session,
which took place on the 27th of March.
So it's that feedback session which I want to have a word or two about, please.
Those involved on behalf of the PAS reported on the meetings that they had.
They said the good things and they said the things that needed some attention.
And as a particular priority, focused on local plan.
more than one of the members of the peer group reporting on that.
If you go to pages 33 and 34, page 34 reminds us that the cabinet is looking at the local plans.
On page 34, here we are, 4th September, District Local Plan Regulation 19 consultation, 4th September.
Just on the preceding page, one of the councillors present, Mark Harris, commented that although the PAS people were talking in a very complimentary way about how much had been done on the Syrinsester master plan,
that his experience as a Syrinsester councillor was that there was a lot of work to be done.
In fact, on the 5th of June, the cabinet is having a look at that.
It's the San Francisco town centre framework master plan.
That's the background.
I think it's fair to say that the pair group were critical of the position here in Cotswold District Council on getting ourselves a new local plan.
and they focused very, very much on just how important it was for us.
And how if we do not have a local plan, the developers will be wanting to take us to the cleaners.
That's my words, not theirs, but theirs was pretty graphic.
And I think this is something that ONS should be reviewing the framework and how we're going to execute.
Two people on the PAS said that we should be looking at a target for a year, which is already running, starting last Thursday.
And having given you the dates of when a couple of relevant matters are being considered by a cabinet,
it does seem that major work is needed.
That's certainly a bit.
Well, thank you.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:42:07
Councillor Jenkins.Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:42:12
Chair, I was going to bring up the same proposal as Councillor van Has.So afterwards, after we've discussed the specific one,
I have a related one to offer.
But I do think that this is pretty critical.
I thought that a number of the things that they said
were teaching us to granny to suck eggs.
We knew all about it.
In fact, we talked about it all the time.
We are extremely concerned about it.
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be addressing it.
We should be addressing it.
Well, thank you, both of you.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:42:39
Now, I'm actually going to ask whether I seeWe have the deputy leader here or David Sander.
Anybody would like the democratic services.
This time frame for this local plan,
it has appeared to be slipping a bit.
It keeps coming up but moving back.
It is crucial for this district.
We all understand.
We all know this.
And I'm sure the deputy leader does himself.
But is there any update on how it's progressing
and where we've seen it going?
I think it would be very valuable. Thank you.
Public Speaker - 0:43:25
Thank you, Chair. Thank you for Councillor van and Councillor Jenkinson for your points.I was at the presentation as well last week. Just to clarify, I'm not the portfolio holder for forward planning.
that's the leader of the council and I haven't had the opportunity to meet with
him and discuss this matter since that was presented. I think we all need to
reflect on that you know the officers obviously will do and I think I asked a
question for those of you were there about this specifically around the
importance of local plans and yeah I think where we are I'm not familiar
exactly where we are with the local plans, it's not my portfolio, but clearly
what I would say on behalf of the administration is that we need to take,
see what the PAS report tells us, we haven't got the report yet, we've had the
feedback, but you know it's very clearly in that saying that we need to update
our local plan and we need to reflect on that, find out where we are in terms of
where our offices are and then come back
and essentially make a decision about what we are doing
with our local plan because clearly that's been thrown
into doubt because of the NPBF changes
and housing targets before Christmas.
I can't give you any more at this point
because it was last Thursday.
And yeah, I'm not the portfolio holder responsible.
Well, thank you for that and thank you for your,
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:44:57
frankly, about the position. It was only last week, I'm not surprised, we're only on Mondaytoday. But I do think that could we give some feedback from O &S about our concern on this,
it is absolutely crucial. And whether, looking at things, whether we're going to have to
add in extra resources to enable those people working on the local plan to deliver it. And
it is so crucial that of all the things we might be investing or spending money on or
whatever. It is the number one thing we're delivering for this district at the moment
and I would really like to see it prioritised. Thank you.
Councillor Coleman.
Councillor Patrick Coleman - 0:45:39
Vice -Chair of the Planning Committee does not give me any particular insight into theprogress of the draft local plan nor indeed the revision to the current local plan which
I think is still going ahead. But when I have spoken to the portfolio holder, which is Juliet
is it not? No, no. Juliet had something to do with it for a while anyway and she did
tell me that the target dates that we needed to hit could still be hit. She understood
it. I won't be any more precise than that. I don't believe at any point they've been
short of resources but I do know from having lived through the adoption of the last, well
the current local plan seven years after it should have begun, that there are delays that
We have no control over when you finally get to inspectors' status.
The inspector has to be found.
They have to be free.
They have to hold their examination.
They often adjourn.
They come back.
They'll publish their draft.
We have to respond to it.
We may need to amend it.
I don't know.
I remember all those bits going on.
They're not going to take us to seven years late or even three years late,
if at all, because we're not going to be late at all,
because the color one doesn't run out until 2031.
But it's much trickier than it was and it's got to be more expensive because it's harder to find twice as many houses a year.
And things like building higher things and tighter things we will have to look at.
I think you've made very good points.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:47:06
But in my life I just think it's the people who push and press most get the things done and get themselves up, up, up the thing.So if you just sit there and wait and you think, oh,
I haven't had a reply yet for a week.
So I think it is something that, bearing in mind
all those different levels and all the things, approvals
that have to be done, that we have just got to keep
pushing on the button.
I think David Stanley wanting to come in now, thank you.
Yes, thank you, Chair.
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 0:47:35
Just in terms of an officer perspective,I was in the same room as a number of you
were in terms of the feedback session from planning advisory
service.
We're probably looking at a three -week period between that feedback session and the council receiving the report.
And I would probably advise members to wait until we've got the detail of that report and then factoring that into the work plan for both cabinet and this committee.
In terms of an update that was provided by Adrian Harding at the Planning Advisory Service feedback,
the council has been successful in obtaining additional funding from the government to support the delivery of the local plan.
So around about 230 ,000 I think from the top of my head on one aspect of that.
A further 70 ,000 in terms of the Greenbelt review and prior to that we have been successful
in receiving about 50 ,000 of grant funding to support digitisation and digital work within
the planning service.
So in terms of overall resources, this council as part of the budget that was approved and
the MTFS back in February that did indicate further 250 ,000 was being
allocated into the council priority EMR reserve for the delivery of the local
plan but given changes to the national planning policy framework those increase
in housing delivery numbers and some of the advice that was coming from the
planning advisory service in terms of the local plan it would be not
unreasonable to take stock of the current trajectory and understand how
that resource can be utilised to deliver the right outcomes for the district.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:49:14
Well, thank you for that and I'm so pleased to hear that you are pressing for the grantfunding for anything extra that we can have because that really makes a difference and
you know, again, one can be, I'm not saying a sleep in the wheel, but it's very good that
you are very much on the ball for getting financial help where we're entitled to it.
What Wal One is going to say is we just know that we're in the Cotswolds and we have a lot of developers out there just
You know that they're salivating at the prospect of being able to develop more here
So our local plan is key to this. So thank you very much. Um Councillor Jenkinson
Yes, chair. I agree with you and
Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:49:53
We have one already in Moreton already coming forward and applyingI just wanted to clarify what you were understanding as the proposal from us.
You made a comment about what we might do.
I'm always very concerned about asking officers in the planning area to do anything, because
my observation is that in the past they have very much been overworked or understaffed
maybe for the amount of work that needs to be done, and there's historic reasons for
that, but it has been the case, and I've been told that a number of times by planners.
The Wharton Working Group was due to start by the end of April or early April or beginning
of May at the latest, a year ago, so that it hasn't started yet is some kind of indicator
of things having gone on without – and there was a delay of three months of officer time
in just transcribing all of the reports, all the comments
that were made back from Morton from people,
you know, that wasn't planned.
So we do have an issue, and I'm concerned
about asking officers to do things.
But the other side of it is,
unless we really understand what the issues are,
we can't make sure that we allocate resources
to address what is needed.
So what I really see this as a very positive aim to try
and understand what is it that CDC needs to do in order
to be successful and how can we help officers to achieve that.
That's what I have in mind.
And I think we should schedule that.
If they can see a way in which they could have
such a conversation with us, that would be useful.
Oh, thank you for your comments.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:51:40
And I literally see where you're coming from on this.It's that, yes, what, how could O &S usefully contribute to this
and by diagnosing what are the maybe shortfalls in resources, time, the process, whatever
it is, and how we might better assist them.
I'm not sure that we in O and S itself can actually, we can have people coming to talk
to us, but we can't actually allocate those resources.
It's not our remit.
So I'm not sure whether we can actually, apart from sort of saying that we fully support
the full algorithm Adrian Harding in the work they're doing.
But, you know, just is there anything that we can further help them with to,
well, I'm not saying speed up the process, but make sure that the process is not delayed any further
or, you know, it goes along at the speed that is required is probably the way it could.
Yes, yes, you could. Yes, thank you.
I was going to make an offer.
Public Speaker - 0:52:43
It seems to me that where we are is, as David has pointed out,is we will have the PAS report in three weeks' time.
It will then be appropriate for us as the administration
to respond to that report.
I'll commit that we will publish it,
and we'll publish our response to their report.
And that would be an appropriate point for, I think,
you to scrutinize the administration's response
to the PAS report.
Because your job, in my understanding,
is to scrutinize and question what we're doing.
And it feels like we need the opportunity,
as David said, to do something in response to the PAS report
for you to be able to scrutinize.
So I think you know obviously
We will do that. We're in the pre -election period so that's obviously going to then be take us into the new council period
When we are able to obviously
Respond to the past report and that will be on it. I'm assuming looking over at offices over there
It's cabinet probably response decision
They'll probably come in in a minute and say whether I'm right in that and then you'll be able to scrutinize us on that and question
the portfolio holder, whoever that is at that point.
I think that's a very helpful suggestion and thank you very much.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:53:52
And I think with Councillor Jenkins, he'd be content with that.I think it would be very, very good and be a good opportunity for us to look at it.
So thank everybody for your contributions on that.
And thank you, my government, for being here. It was very convenient. I appreciate that.
Councillor Jenkins.
Thank you, Chair. I said that I had a related suggestion. We're still on the work plan.
Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 0:54:16
I got involved in a casework project in Moreton in Marsh as a result of which there is anofficer team working on compliance in that area. It's an old problem and I was notified
on a number of occasions that it's a problem that has repeated itself across the district.
I have already started working on the neighbouring estate on the same kind of issue. Under those
circumstances I'm very pleased to say that at the moment officers are engaging on this
issue and dealing with it and in the process there's a discovery about the kinds of systems
and processes that are needed to address this issue in the future.
My thought, therefore, is that it would be appropriate for us a bit later this year,
in a few months' time, to ask the compliance team for a report on the ongoing situation
– how they see the ongoing situation of insuring.
That large estate developments do fully comply with their obligations, that all of the different
adoptions take place, that the proper transition towards management by residents and what other
matters to do with that are fully addressed as opposed to the well -known national scandal
of developers doing things and then taking advantage of the residents. So I think this
is a national issue and it's a local one as well that could be addressed in a few months'
time.
I think you've raised some very good issues.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:56:07
And of course compliance enforcement and all this is a difficult issue,and especially when you have, whether it's large land
and large developers, whatever involved.
I think what I'd appreciate, and having had a little bit of advice on this,
that if you could flesh out sort of where you see it would be useful
and send that through to me and Democratic Services,
and then we can put together, because it's quite difficult,
sort of on the hoof to get it. So if we could do that and look at it later in the year.
So thank you very much for that suggestion.
Let's keep turning my head. I think I'm not. Right, we now move, and let's hope I've got
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:56:45
everything, to the British farming motion. First of all, I hope we're all in agreement11 British Farming Motion
that you're happy that the O &S Task and Finish Group should be
set up, as suggested at the full council meeting by our leader,
Joe Harris.
Paul James, the business and economic officer for CDC,
has agreed to work with the Task and Finish Group,
and I thank him very much for his offer of assistance in this.
He admits he doesn't know as much about farming nor about
taxes, but he certainly knows about business and economic
situation in the area. I've also asked David Cunningham, who couldn't be present today
because he's on holiday, if he would be prepared to chair this task of Finnish Group. And he
has agreed and again gives his apologies for not being here today. I'm hopeful that you'd
all agree that he'd make a good chair of this group and I would like to have your support
on this. He's got a very good handle on financial understanding, which is what is key to the
this motion that's behind it is the inheritance tax.
That's a tax, that's a financial implication,
change on farming.
It's not about whether what crops you grow or the sheep
or the landscape or the ecology as such.
It is the straightforward impact.
So is everybody content that he should be?
No objections to him?
OK, fine.
So he'll be checked.
The... No, the... Oh, sorry.
I thought... I thought you were voting.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 0:58:31
Oh, Councillor Coleman first. Oh, Councillor Jenkins first.I'm not sure which hand came up first.
Um, Coleman.
Chair, I do apologise because I am trying to move us on.
Councillor Patrick Coleman - 0:58:41
Where I think we have a difficulty with this working with groups,I'm sure we can overcome it, but we need to be aware of it.
Virtually every member of the Council...
I'm not too certain about Councillor Turner because I've looked it up, and nor about
Councillor Inge because she's independent, but the rest of us belong to political parties
who have set their face against these inheritance tax proposals.
This means that there's a risk that overview and scrutiny might not do enough scrutiny
of that opposition and might not look at the inheritance tax changes in their full light
to end in their possible impacts.
For instance, that given that the result of the inheritance
tax relief given back in, I think, the 1980s,
and has been in place ever since for farmers,
may well have been the cause of the quadrupling
in the capital value of land, which I have read about.
I'm conscious that Council Jenkins knows approximately
50 times as much Jenkins and 50 times as much about society.
But I think it's the sort of protocol and proper approach to scrutiny.
It looks a bit dubious to say, well, the answer is to oppose the inheritance tax.
Now we'll find some reasons and some impact in the COTS world.
Whereas really we should be sense checking the resolution of council.
And I think it allows it to do us.
I think the terms of reference can be drawn to allow us to sense check whether, in fact,
that all or only some, maybe even none, of our fears about
the impact of the inheritance tax are solidly based.
Well, thank you.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:00:23
Before I bring in more counselors, I've got Claire Lockeand Andrew Brown who both want to make sort of whatever I think
or protocol sort of suggestions.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Officer - 1:00:35
Yes, I think particularly in light of the comments that weheard from the member of the public that attended the
committee earlier this evening, it's appropriate that those terms of reference are reviewed
by the group at their first meeting. That would normally be the case anyway. That group
would then agree those terms of reference. So I think we will go away and we will do
a little bit of redrafting to those terms of reference and then that group would confirm
those at their first meeting.
Thank you. And Andrew Brown too, please.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:01:04
Thank you, Chair. I'd just like to point out that the terms of reference state the purposesas being to engage with interested parties to understand the local impacts of inheritance
Officer - 1:01:10
tax changes. The wording about oppose or against or whatever the word is is taken from thewording of the motion that went to full council. That's not the wording of the purpose of the
group, if you see what I mean. That's from the motion.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:01:29
Yes, thank you. It is meant to be, we want to be, well I always like to have an attitudeof being constructive rather than negative. But it is to look at the impact of whatever
it's going to be. So thank you. Now I've got Councillor Jinkson. Yes.
Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 1:01:48
Thank you, Chair. Chair, with all due deference to your wisdom, experience and so on and yourknowledge of various individuals, I think you are putting the cart before the horse
in the sense that, or perhaps that's the wrong metaphor, you are prejudging what the nature
of this issue is all about. You indicated that you thought that he would be a very good
chair because he has a good understanding of financial matters and that that's what
this is all about. And I take the view that that is not a prejudged situation. I think
that this is a widespread issue to do with the nature of this particular industry, its
effect, social effect, the effect of what is involved in it, what are the effects of
this industry and what would this particular motion do, government motion, if they pass
that bill, what are the likely effects on it. So I think we need to not prejudge. I
was assuming that we would be giving, we wouldn't be making a decision today about what, of
consideration to in that case, the most we would be doing is considering what sort of
things we might need to look at with a view to, given the short time frame, we need to
start inviting people quite rapidly. And if we need people who are this kind, that kind,
and the other kind, and I've got a list of various things that might be relevant, that
we should think about that. So that being the case, I think we shouldn't pre -judge what
is actually involved in it.
I also think that although we obviously are concerned
about the effect on CDC, that's what I mean by local,
I think it's entirely, it's useless to put in a proposal
to the government which says try and do something different
for CDC please, do whatever you like for the rest of the country.
We have to be minded that whatever we put forward
as a proposal, so my view is that we can come
up with a much more nuanced and interesting proposal
to give back to the government and we shouldn't prejudge what that is.
Now whether that makes any difference to whether Councillor Cunningham is the right person to chair the meeting,
I'm open to that conversation. But for the moment, I would, if the reason why we're appointing him is because
you think that the financial matter is the most critical matter, then I think it would be much better that he's on the floor,
a member of the committee contributing when it turns up because it may not be quite as
dominant as you think.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:04:29
Well I'm not sure what you're saying but the motion when it was passed and when it wasdiscussed in full council the focus is on the inheritance tax change and that is yes
but there are many other things going on in the farming world of which you are particularly
well informed. And actually sometimes that it's a I still hold that he would
be a very good chair of this and your the the Lib Dem group is also allowed to
appoint two people. I'm also hopeful that cancer Turner who has got her own
expertise in these sort of areas more to the environment in ecology but the the
difference that these things to, you know, most farmers don't earn a lot of money.
It's a pretty hard life. Not always, I mean I know there may be some very
rich ones, but for the ordinary normal farmer, it's their life,
their livelihood. They also look after this countryside, this landscape in which
we live, and it's largely due to them how wonderful and glorious it is. But they
also produce something else which is incredibly important, which is food. And that's also
essential to our local lives and wellbeing. So on that measure I still think that we've
got the right sort of thing. I don't know who's going to be, and we're not going to
discuss here tonight because it is the task of Finnish group to decide who they want.
It's not even for me or anybody else in the committee. It is for that, whoever is formulated
didn't put into this group.
And I think also that I understand
from the conservative side that the conservative leader, Tom
Stowe, has suggested that Jeremy Thayer, who's actually not
on the overview in scrutiny, should be on it because he's
obviously a farmer.
So he's got on the ground experience, as it were.
But that is for each political grouping
to allocate who they want to have serving on the task of Finish Group.
I don't know if any decisions have been made in your group.
Chair, thank you.
Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 1:06:50
To be clear, I'm not speaking against Councillor Cunningham.What I'm saying is, and I believe that what you just responded continues with that theme,
the danger is that we appear to have made a decision about this before we start.
We've already heard about the concern about that.
In the discussion in Council, I for one said it's a much more nuanced and complex issue
than the motion that that was put forward on the day.
It was agreed in that meeting that this motion is not the motion that we are discussing.
This was something put forward. It was discussed in Council and what we agreed is therefore
it's a provocation to a process to decide. This is a major event.
We do see it as very relevant to our district.
What do we want to respond to the government about it in terms of how it is?
And I do not want to go into the various aspects today as to what that might be.
But I do see a wide variety.
And as long as Councillor CUNNINGHAM goes in with that and doesn't start with the proposition that this is a financial only matter,
then that's all I'm asking, that we don't prejudge what's involved in this decision process before we start it.
Right, well thank you.
Our Councillor...
...competition here.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:08:14
Claire, do you want to go before Councillor...Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:08:17
Councillor Wilkins, could you just add a little word in first?Okay, thank you.
Chair, the motion was specifically about Cotswold Farms.
Councillor Len Wilkins - 1:08:26
It is about IHT reforms, but the fact is we're looking at where the money will come for thefarmers to pay the extra IHT.
So this isn't just limited to IHT, it goes across the board, but it's specifically how
are Cotswolds farmers going to pay their IHT.
So we haven't got the resources to go UK wide.
We're a small council.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:08:57
Yes, thank you for that. But I just think it's about sending a picture to the Chancellorof Exchequer from one part of the country and hopefully that she would note it as such.
I've got two Clares. Do you go first?
Thank you. I think we don't need the committee to go into the detail
Officer - 1:09:18
today of exactly thescope of the discussion that the committee will have and around
any prejudgments and so forth.
I think the terms of reference can cover that.
The first meeting of the committee can agree collectively
exactly what that scope is and the fact that there needs to be
the open view to the approach taken in reviewing
this information.
The decision for this committee today is purely do you want to
form a task and finish group.
So it's quite narrow having sort of accepted that the motions
come forward.
Do you want to form this task and finish group to engage with
various interested parties?
And if you have some ideas on who they should be, then please,
we have got quite a list, but let us have that list because we
can certainly add to it.
And then we can make sure that the group can come together
to do that.
And as has been described, there is a mechanism in place for how
people are appointed onto that committee.
Thank you very much for that clarification.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:10:21
And yes, there has been obviously quite a lot of response from lots of people who have been sending in things.So, you know, it's something which people feel quite passionately about on all sides.
I mean, not that there is a...
Councillor Turner.
Thank you. Actually, a couple of my points have been covered now.
Councillor Clare Turner - 1:10:39
So I just wanted to really hone in on the issue that was raised by the member of thepublic comes from the background element of what's in the terms of reference, not what
the group is going to do.
So I think that's really important that we do recognise that.
So that was the first thing.
I just wanted to clarify as well as agreeing that we're going to proceed, do we have to
select the chair today?
I think that was...
Officer - 1:11:08
By May, Chair, the reason we're asking the committee to select a chair today is because this is going to need to be quite a focused piece of work that we're going to need to get on with if we're going to meet the timetable that was discussed at full council about reporting back in July.So appointing a chair today will enable us to start refining the terms of reference and looking at scheduling some actual meetings.
So yes, otherwise the next meeting is not until I think it's 6th of May from the top of my head, which is five weeks from now.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:11:46
Fortunately, the list of invitees include Royal AgriculturalCouncillor Michael Vann - 1:11:53
University.There are other agricultural universities, I know, but REU is very possibly simply the
best.
And I would be optimistic that we'll be able to get a pretty rigorous third party view
from people who have relevant expertise in advising,
supplying information to the committee.
I do have an interest.
My father did the short course there.
Well, thank you for that.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:12:39
I mean, I'm not trying to presuppose how the committee is going to,or the task -efficient group are going to play things,
but the idea was to have a meeting in this council chamber
of all sorts of RAU, NFU, other, I mean, as you know,
I'm sure Angus has got lots of suggestions to be here,
but it has got to be well orchestrated,
because otherwise people are talking over themselves.
There's too much repeat on the same thing.
It needs to be well thought through, well done.
And I think it could be a very valuable experience for anybody
who's invited to be part of it.
We don't, as you know, have a huge amount of resources or
expertise within the offices on agriculture and that side
of the thing.
We don't have that.
It doesn't even really fit totally with the ecology and
environment that touches on it.
So, you know, we have got to work within our resources to get
something cogent and good to censor this letter,
the Chancellor's Chequers in July.
So that's what I think is the aim and objective of this.
But let's see how they get on.
I would still prefer, for all the reasons Andrew Brown said,
that we ought to get the chairmanship sorted out.
And normally that is done in advance,
from my experience with these things.
And then the committee is formed around it.
And I do think David Cunningham would be good for many reasons, but I think he would be.
Councillor Jenkins.
So, thank you, Chair.
Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 1:14:23
I'm just trying to understand what is being proposed by Andrew Brown and yourself herewith respect to the Chair.
It's this.
In the ordinary course of our processes in which you chair very ably,
you don't begin with being the expert on something or other
and therefore determining what it is that will be discussed.
You look sensibly across the range of things that are happening
and bring forward things out of what is going on in the activity of CDC.
In this particular situation, what we are being asked to do is to make a decision about what sort of investigation is required
in order to answer this question so that CDC can send a sensible proposal through to the government
that they would take some note of and shows respect for the various aspects of the question.
So the issue at this point seems to me that if a particular person is chosen to chair the meeting,
the process also includes some way in which the members of that proposed committee can put forward proposals
that are not going to be predetermined by the chair alone as to what it is that we're going to discuss and not discuss,
then I'm comfortable. But if it is going to be decided by the chair alone, then there
has to be some process of bringing things to the chair's attention and some way in which
his decision -making is assessed.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:16:12
I do understand. I don't know if you've been on a task finish group. It is normally verycollaborative counsellors later will say that everybody does, you know, have a, and in fact
sometimes people like yourself or of the kind of people who have got particular expertise,
they are particularly valuable too because they can focus on whatever it may be rather
than having to do the whole picture. So it can work to your advantage. I am going to
drop this for now, if everyone is saying, we have got to have, I don't know who is going
to be because I haven't been informed who the Lib Dems are proposing to put on to this
committee, so therefore I don't know the formulation of it. I know what the Conservatives want
because that's what we've settled on that. And I'd also be very happy to have Councillor
Turner to...
To be clear, I mean it could be Councillor Cunningham, I don't mind if you propose someone
Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 1:17:07
else, but I have no objections to Councillor Cunningham as an individual chair in the meeting.I'm just saying that can we do it in such a way that Adrian gets the information he
needs about what we think might need to be discussed and what input we might need from,
I don't know, who might have competence in this field. And that's all I'm saying. Because
time is short we don't want to be saying well we're not able to address this
particular issue because it's too late now.
I've got Andrew Brown's got some points of air. I've got Councillor Neill, Councillor
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:17:44
Waring and Councillor Slater all want to make views. Was Andrew was that thethe point you wanted to make was about the sort of the process and... Yes please
Chair so I'd like to draw your draw the committee's attention to the
Officer - 1:17:58
recommendations that are in the report so what we're asking you to do today isto agree the terms of reference for the farming motion.
I think we can caveat that wording to say,
the draft terms of reference to be reviewed
at the first meeting of the working group.
Appoint a member of the overview and scrutiny committee
to chair the farming motion working group.
So we've had one proposal from the chair.
If the committee's happy with that, that can go through.
If there are different proposals,
then it could go to a vote.
And then agree that nominations will be sought
from political groups for the remaining seats on the working group and delegate authority
to me to appoint those members so we can potentially get the group formed quite quickly and get
on with, I think it's important to schedule some meetings as soon as we can because if
we're seeking representations from lots of external bodies we're going to want to give
them lots of notice to maximise attendance basically and allow time for reporting back
in July. Yes, thank you, because not only is you having them to a meeting but then
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:19:05
you've got to consolidate and put together the information that they'veshared and that always takes time. I have got Councillor Neill please. Yes, I think
as far as the chairmanship I would be perfectly happy for Councillor Cunningham
Councillor Dilys Neill - 1:19:19
to do it. I think it's, I wouldn't be happy if, I would be very happy forCouncillor Fair to be on the committee but I would be slightly dubious about
chairing it because he's coming at it from one particular point of view. My
opinion is that Councillor Cunningham doesn't come from an agricultural
background and he's much more likely to be to approach the chairing chairmanship
in a neutral manner. He's not the one who's going to decide on the agenda and
yeah so I think that's all I wanted to say.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:19:56
Yes, that's basically, I think that he's not embedded, so he can have a more, whateverit is, eagle -eye view on it or something of that sort, whatever. I think there's some
expression that you're meant to say that you're up there looking down, because you're not
personally embedded in the subject yourself.
Councillor Waring.
With regard to the topic of the chair, I think all the people who are likely to be on the
Councillor Jon Wareing - 1:20:18
Task and finish group are going to have particular expertise is that they can contribute so whichever one it is actuallyIt's just are they going to be an effective chair would it help to suggest that in the purpose?
That it would read to engage with interested parties to develop a systems perspective of the local impacts of inherited tax because the point that
Councillor Jenkerson is making is that it needs to be considered in the round and if that is in the terms of reference
it guides whoever is the chair and members of the task of finish group as to the real nature of the task.
Yes, I think what we were saying earlier, I think that's my
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:20:56
understanding is that the actual wording of this is going to be the first task of the task of finish to clarify.It does say that recommendations agree the terms of reference for the
Councillor Jon Wareing - 1:21:08
farming and emotional working group.So I'm just offering that set of words as an amendment.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:21:18
What Andrew Brown just said, which I personally agree with the terms of the draft reference,we've added the word draft in, so now that it's got room for manoeuvre.
And I think it's a good idea because I think there's things which need tidying up there.
So thank you for that, absolutely. Councillor Slater.
I've obviously got a lot of experience with public toilets,
Councillor Tony Slater - 1:21:43
So, but just to say, I think we're voting on whether to set up a task in finishing group.We can elect a chairman without any other proposals.
Can we just get on with that, please?
Councillor Jackson, is this your last comment?
Thank you.
I just want to check.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:22:02
There's a reference to pages 41 and 42 where there's some text.Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 1:22:07
My reading of that is that this is something that was taken from the original motion.We are not approving this now. This is background to the fact that we are setting up this ONS.
We are not supporting it, we are not approving it, we are not forming judgements, we are not debating about whether it should say something different or what it does say.
It's just the background to the fact that this is happening.
and it's only the small amount at the beginning that we're actually supporting.
Yes, let's set one up and have a look at it given this background.
Thank you, Councillor. It is exactly that.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:22:45
So, no, don't worry.So, yeah, the rest of it.
So, is everybody happy to go forward?
I think it's very good that we've discussed it.
It's, you know, always valuable
and luckily today we're not quite suppressed for time, so that's a good thing.
I've got Councillor van I'd be happy to propose mr. Cunningham as chair of the
Councillor Michael Vann - 1:23:08
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:23:14
committee right well yes yes I am I think he's got it's um do we need toabsolutely resolve this now or can this hold over or what do you think Andrew if
If he could at least agree to chair, that would be helpful.
Officer - 1:23:31
I thought it would be.I know he is willing.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:23:35
I don't know who of the rest of you here will be actually on thetask and finish group, but could I say whether you have support
for Councillor Cunningham to chair this?
Right.
Thank you very much.
That's great.
That's carried.
So, now, on these recommendations, do you want me to read them out or do we want to
just take them? The overview and scrutiny committee resolves to agree the terms of the
draft reference for the farming motion, working group attached as Annex A. A point...
We just said that that is not the motion, it is not what we are proposing, it is not
what we are supporting.
It's the supplement that was published on Friday.
Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 1:24:35
Do I have this?Okay, so perhaps you hadn't had sight of that.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:25:10
Right, so the appointed member of the vote view and scrutiny committee to chair the farmingmotion working group.
We've had a vote and that was that David Cunningham goes
forward to chair the group.
I agree that nominations will be sought from political groups for
the remaining seats on the farming motion working group.
I'm suggesting, and I hope that there is agreement,
I'm looking at Andrew, that five people that we have,
two Conservatives, two Liberal Democrats and a Green.
Would that, I'm sorry, unless Andrew would like to do it,
I would be very happy to see.
and you're also on overview and scrutiny.
So it is actually in a...
Shall I comment on that?
Yeah.
Yeah, just to confirm, I have discussed it with Andrew
and I would be happy to sit on the working group.
Councillor Clare Turner - 1:25:58
Lovely, thank you very much indeed.That's terrific.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:26:03
And then finally, to delegate authorityto the head of Democratic and Electoral Services
to appoint the membership of the working group
based on the nominations made by the political groups.
So, are we happy with this? Do we have to vote on it? Yes.
So, could I have a proposer and a secretary?
Councillor Neill proposes, Councillor Slater seconds.
Could I have a vote, please?
Well, thank you everybody for that.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:26:33
Now we go on to the meeting matter of the financial performance report 2024, 2025, quarterthree.
Are we saying farewell?
Not quite.
Good.
Quarter three.
Mike Eboni is the portfolio holder for finance and David Sanley will be jointly presenting
this. So I note that the executive key decision read the revised CAPTA program which I was
sent it. There was insufficient official notification including additional expenditure of 0 .238
million on disabled facilities following the allocation of additional funds by GCC. So
that was more good news so that thank you for getting this extra funding in.
So please, far away.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:27:57
Thank you again. So I won't say very much, David might say a little bit and thenreally for members to hear members questions and observations so I think
the main headline as I'm sure members have read is that the tracking for this
year's budget is improved since Q2 but we're still short of our budgeted
surplus but we're now 81 ,000 short and we're budgeting for a surplus
forecasting, the right word, a surplus for this year, $435 ,000, which the Cabinet will
be asked on Thursday to put in our financial resilience reserve.
I won't repeat everything I said at Council, but I'm sure members will be aware of the
financial, the anticipated reductions in government support that we're going to get from next
year.
And so having a healthy financial resilience reserve is a key plank, I guess, of being
able to manage that in the short term.
It's not a fix, but it's key that we do increase the amounts that we have in our revenue reserves
to help us see us through that.
And then the last point there, and you referenced it, Chair, in your introduction, is around
the capital program and the cabinet's going to be asked on Thursday to approve a revised capital program of just over seven and a half million pounds.
And the 238 ,000 additional expenditure, including the 238 ,000 additional expenditure on disabled facility grants.
Clearly, that's good news because that's more people
getting support to adapt their house to be able to
stay living in their own property and where they live
rather than having to go somewhere else.
So, yeah, that's good.
And it's obviously what we've seen is a significant
increase in the demands on that as obviously the
population demographics change.
But also as actually the resourcing has improved from
Gloucestershire County Council. It's not very often you can say that in a local
authorities perspective, a local authority context but there has been
various and very effective work done by the officers concerned at GCC which has
brought more people forward for this support which has put financial pressure
therefore on the councils to be able to provide the adaptations that they have
then specified that those people need to be able to stay living in their
properties. I will stop there and pass over to the Deputy Chief Executive if he has anything
he wants to add before we open up for questions and discussion.
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 1:30:49
Thank you, Chair. Just no significant comments from me. I think there's quite a good summaryin section two of the report which will touch upon the main reason for the change in the
Q2 update that came through in the January committee cycle to where we're projecting
it to Q3.
There is a little bit more detail then in section 4 of the report on each of those variations.
The overall service variations run to a change of about £91 ,000 against the Q2 position.
Most of that, the rest of that change has been below the line, so the non -service areas,
particularly around the Treasury management position, which has continued to improve,
given that interest rates have held up for longer than was anticipated when the budget was set.
In terms of where we think that will end the year, we're probably still on the prudent side on our Treasury management income,
so there is some upside risk that there may be a more improved
position which will take the out -term forecast back towards
the budgeted position.
I'm not expecting significant change to the revenue
variations, particularly around income shortfalls or agency
staff spend between Q3 and Q4.
We forecast those to the end of the financial year.
And given the timing of this report on what is the final day
of the financial year.
There is little mitigation that can be put in place
to improve that position in the few hours that remain
of the financial year.
What I would draw your attention to is paragraph
2 .4 and 2 .5 in the report.
It is reiterated in the conclusions, which highlights
that timing of the report and the lack of, I suppose,
ability to influence those mitigation actions.
But what we will be doing through the first sort of
quarter of the financial year as we prepare the Q1
report to come through Cabinet and overview and
scrutiny in September is to work more closely with the
Business Intelligence Unit to align the service and
financial performance reports.
What I've included in paragraph 2 .5 is lifted
from the financial management code which is reminding you as members that having early
sight of those financial performance issues does allow you as both members and cabinet
as the administration to take action around those emerging risks and make sure the council
is able to remain financially sustainable over that financial year.
But it's just that there is a risk and you would have seen that with the service performance
report coming through in the March committee cycle, the financial performance report coming
through in this particular cycle, that you could have differences between the two and just aligning
that to make sure that we're reporting the whole picture holistically. So particularly if I use
planning as an example, planning's financial performance may not be quite where we want to
do this financial year, their service performance may be indicating that they're on top of
applications as they're coming through. So making sure that you're getting that information at the same time in a consistent manner.
I'm happy to take questions on the report.
12 Financial Performance Report 2024-25 Quarter Three
Thank you. Did Councillor Ebony want to add anything at this point?
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:34:27
No. Well, thank you very much.I've got Councillor Waring going first. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.
On page 18,
Councillor Jon Wareing - 1:34:36
4 .15, public conveniences. I'minterested to understand
And the meaning of reduced footfall and what the evidence for it, where the evidence comes
from.
Thank you.
So we get regular footfall data from the devices that are installed on
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 1:34:56
each of the public conveniencesthat indicates the number of visits there have been.
And with changes that have been made in terms of the provision of public conveniences in
some of our localities. That's where the reduced footfall has come from. There has
also been, as this paragraph sets out, a change in the contract that is provided
for the cleaning of those facilities and whilst there has been a reduction in the
income shortfall, it is still short of the income target of around about
£100 ,000 per annum and there is an overall subsidy still being
provided to that service so what this report is recommending is that further a
series of further recommendations are made and considered in terms of how that
overall subsidy can be addressed but we do get quite good quality information on
a regular basis on a monthly basis in terms of the overall performance of each
of those facilities in terms of footfall. I made just a quick supplementary then
Councillor Jon Wareing - 1:36:00
So this isn't actually a footfall in the localities, this is a visit to the conveniences.Thank you.
Well, I'm waiting.
Oh, Councillor Slater, I'm hoping that there's going to be lots more
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:36:14
inquisition going on,so please come up with your questions.
But Councillor Slater first.
Okay, I've got several questions through, so you might want to make a note.
Councillor Tony Slater - 1:36:25
Shall I do them all at the...On page 9, on the elections, there was a Chesterton by -election.
Was there any charge back to the parish slash town for that?
I think we should have allowed a provision in our parish budgets on those occasions for
a contested election.
On the green waste bins, there appears to be a profit of £100 ,000.
Will that be banked or will that go in the pot for next year?
Because I understand it's a cost neutral service.
And I couldn't resist it, but on the public section obviously.
I've read the summary that David sent out, which is very useful.
And my understanding is that for this financial year it's cost us 1 .495 million.
But of that there's about 726 ,000 pounds, which is an extra annual impact.
So, just to clarify that, and I believe this is just external costs, so anything relating to officer time, which I would imagine has been significant over the project,
internal HR resources and internal legals, et cetera, are not included in this figure.
And could I possibly ask that the response to that is minuted because that makes the true cost of the project much higher than the 1 .495 million.
Just a couple of observations. I think the original amount put in the pot was for £50 ,000 when this was kicked off.
We talked about it first in ONS.
So that's 30 times less than the cost.
It might be financial years that I've gone across.
And I think then it was increased to 150 ,000, which was some 10 times less of provision.
But that's really just observations.
But it's the officer time which isn't quantified and I'd really like to know.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor Slater, for your questions.
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:39:04
The Chesterton by -election was only for the District Council, not for the Town Council.So there were no costs for the Syrinsester Town Council. I believe they co -opted somebody to the role there was an election called.
The garden waste, David can answer in terms of the figure. I haven't seen that 100 ,000 figure that you've given, but I'm sure we'll come back to that.
It's budgeted to be on a revenue neutral basis.
So we have to set a charge before we know how many people are going to provide the service.
And in some years it more than pays for it.
In other years it doesn't.
So it's a swings and roundabouts thing.
So there isn't a pot of money sat there for garden waste that gets put in or out.
It's in the overall round for the cost of the service.
Then moving on to your points around public.
I'm sure David will come and answer the detail points and I think he's going to correct you on some of those
But I think in essence
You've got to be clear
I think and it's really important that we are clear that we differentiate between one -off costs and ongoing revenue costs
And we don't add them together because they're different things. So there's a cost of change
Which inevitably in any in any change that you do there's a cost to that
And I think the provision that you were talking about,
which David will come on and outline the numbers
and how they may have changed, is the one -off costs.
But clearly there's an ongoing revenue cost
when we are paying a more generous pension contribution
than we were paying previously.
And clearly David has worked with colleagues
at other councils and together with the chief executive
to look at the staffing, the transfer of those staff and the ongoing costs of those.
And I think, you know, what I would add is the saving was taken seven or eight years ago when Publica was created.
And now we're actually remunerating people in a way in which they're now remunerated at other councils.
I'm mindful that not all members of staff have come back from Publica and some remain working for them
But I think we've seen the benefits particularly in those services that have come back to the council in our ability to recruit and retain staff
Having said that clearly you know we will continue
For some time having staff that work directly for us and others that are employed by Publica
And personally you know what so we have a debate about a council. I believe that
the reasons behind the change is right and what we've done.
Whilst it may cost the council taxpayers of this area
a little bit more, I think it will be proven
to have been the right decision in terms of investing
in our staff that have come back to the council.
But I hand over to David to answer the particular details
about the numbers that you were quoting.
So in terms of the garden waste service,
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 1:42:10
Table 5 on page 21 I think is where the 100 ,000 is coming from.So if we go back to when the council set the budget which would be in February 2024, that was ahead of the rezoning change.
So when the fee for the garden waste service and the estimate of the total HUBICO contract sum was set, that was before the impact rezoning.
And what we did with the rezoning reduction in cost is we held that away from the service cost.
So it was a below the line savings target of $375 ,000, which has been achieved in full for that, in part for that year, with a full year effect of half a million rolling forward from this coming financial year.
In addition to that 100 ,000 reduction in cost, and that was largely because the rezoning has taken a round and a crew out of the cost of garden waste.
That wasn't something that we had that perfect information for at the time.
The estimates were done late in 2023, early 2024 for setting the budget.
On page 8 of the report, there is a further variation on green waste, which is that first
bullet point under paragraph 2 .8, which indicates that the income from garden waste fees is
45 ,000 ahead of our estimated position.
That's largely because subscriber numbers have held up much more strongly than we anticipated.
In fact, there's been an increase in subscriber numbers during the course of the financial
year, whereas what we've budgeted for going forward is it is prudent to assume that as
you increase that cost that there would be a drop -off in the number of subscribers.
That's not something that we've seen in the current financial year.
In terms of the additional note that was circulated earlier today on the public transition cost,
There's a couple of points I would make.
This shows the ongoing enduring impact in a full financial year.
So for phase one, and I'll use that as an example,
the full year enduring impact net of savings within the
public contract is $481 ,000.
The part year impact this financial year was assumed to
182 ,000, recognizing that phase one completed on the first November, so you've only got
five months of that provision that's required. Where we end up at the end of the financial
year will largely depend on the overall staffing mix, because we transferred budget to cover
every single post that came across in phase one. Some of those posts were vacant. Some
of those posts have been occupied by agency staff, particularly in planning. So
the actual cost in 24 -25 won't be 481 and it won't be 182 and that's what we
report back in the quarter 4 report but it is what is set aside in the budget
for 25 -26 as a prudent amount and again that will vary. For phase 2 we have
assumed a cost of 300 ,000 in the MTFS in the detailed transition plan report that this committee considered and was approved by council in March.
That estimate had reduced to 245 ,000 and again that is a full year impact. There will be a part year impact next year.
In terms of the one -off costs, those have evolved over the course of the last 12, 18 months.
So when I go back to the amounts that were set aside to cover the one -off cost transition, the first number that was reported to members was 200 ,000.
That was the amount that was set aside in the EMR reserve.
That was increased to 500 ,000, recognizing that through the course of doing the due diligence,
What I didn't want is for the council to feel that it couldn't go to those external support agencies like Trowes and Hamlins for legal advice, getting expert HR advice and any other support that would be needed.
So a considerable amount was set aside, recognizing the priority of completing both phase one and phase two of the public review.
That 500 ,000 hasn't been spent in full. The current position is reported at the bottom of Section B.
We're estimating that by the end of this financial year we would have only incurred 182 ,000 of one -off costs supporting the program against that 500 ,000 provision.
On top of that, as part of phase one, the council set aside in the financial resilience reserve
£300 ,000 to cover the one -off costs associated with redundancy and pension strain
for those posts that have become redundant as part of phase one.
That is currently projected to be £200 ,000 as part of the phase one cost.
A similar amount has been earmarked to be set aside for the cost of phase two.
And we are just about to move into that consultation period for phase two.
So it is difficult, if not impossible, to provide an update on that until the consultation has completed.
So what this supplementary email and the attachment is intended to show is the full year cost.
I will continue to report through the regular quarterly financial reports the actual costs
incurred, but we're making prudent provision within the MTFS to absorb that.
And in terms of your point around this only reflects those external costs, that is correct.
We have included within the transition program costs any costs we've incurred where we've
gone external for either legal or HR support.
but we have where backfill arrangements have been required, for example in HR and in Finance,
included that cost of backfill arrangements.
So where individual roles have been seconded into the transition team,
it is the backfill costs that have been charged and recognised,
but officer time that has been spent more generally supporting that programme
has not been captured and has not been included in those costs.
Just one follow up.
Sorry to hog him.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:48:50
Councillor Tony Slater - 1:48:52
Just on section .8 .1, I must commend you on that sentence.To a significant extent these risks have materialised to a lesser or greater extent.
That's a great sentence.
Worthy of yes, Prime Minister. More seriously, I remember seeing that the
program was one of the biggest single risks for the council. Is that now,
because of that sentence, not the case?
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 1:49:28
So in terms of the included within the draft MTFS report that was considered bythis committee and cabinet in November, there was reference to phase two being the single biggest risk to balancing the budget.
The February 2025 MTFS and budget report that this committee considered as well as cabinet and council
set out in the risk and uncertainty section what the three key risks were to the council's financial sustainability.
It did not include that particular phrase, but did
reference the position there is around the external funding,
local government reorganization.
The background to that particular phrase that I used
in that report was to identify that the MTFS had already
considered the risk around future funding in terms of
those reductions that we were anticipating, and the MTFS had
anticipated for a number of years coming through in 2026 -27. It was mindful that
with phase 1 and phase 2 in particular there was a degree of flexibility in the
way the council approached that and at the time it was considered to be the
single biggest risk. What wasn't considered at the time because foresight
wasn't one of my gifts was local government reorganization and
evolution and I think it is that alongside future local government
finance reform that will pose a more significant risk to the financial
sustainability of the council. Thank you I noticed Patrick Coleman but
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:51:10
actually I've got councillor Neal, councillor Coleman and then councillorJenkinson. Thank you. Oh yes I'm sorry I'm having a senior moment so you'll have to
Councillor Dilys Neill - 1:51:20
I was puzzling over the tables and I realised I couldn't remember what OB and LAB.Neither did I.
original budget and latest adjusted budget.
Oh right, is that it?
On the mic.
Indeed, you're not the first member to point out that OB and LAB
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 1:51:42
probably do not mean an awful lot.It is original budget and latest approved budget.
it should be clear to members what those terminologies are. Sorry I need
Councillor Dilys Neill - 1:51:54
constantly reminding and when it says UBICO contract costs CS what's that?David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 1:52:02
CS refers to contract sum so it's the agreed amount that we have signed off topay UBICO for the provision of the services under the contract. Thank you
remember I shall try and remember those things for the next time you produce a
Councillor Dilys Neill - 1:52:12
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:52:18
report thanks well thanks that um Councillor Coleman please yes reallyCouncillor Patrick Coleman - 1:52:22
full of interest this report but I'm just going to ask if it could bepossible to produce a very simple table year by year showing the year the
financial year starting in April the number of garden waste licenses and the
price that we charge for them going back as far as you like but at least six
years. Every time I worry that the garden waste license has risen too much, indeed I
dropped out of the system myself, I find at the end of the year that we've sold even more.
And this appears to counter the normal rules of supply and demand and the price mechanism,
whatever it's called, you can see I never studied economics. And so to put my, a small
part of my small mind at rest, it would be helpful to see if we could have a table ideally
going back to seven years so that it covers a little bit of the previous administration.
I'm sure the Deputy Chief Executive is nodding so that means yes we
Councillor Mike Evemy - 1:53:21
can provide that table and asthe portfolio holder for finance and for 18 months or so the portfolio hold for waste and recycling
I can tell you that it's something that I've looked at for the last six years and had those
very discussions and you know I do have half my degree was in economics but it was an awful long
time ago and yet the demand does appear rather inelastic for those of you who are economists.
We put the price up and we still get the same demand. I think what that tells us is that
the service is valued and that despite the fact that we are charging it and I put it
back we are charging it so that it doesn't fall the cost doesn't fall on the general
relevant council taxpayers so that the money that we get in from the garden
waste licenses pays for the service. It's still quite clearly people choose to
have it you know at the price that we charge it at because it's still a value
to them and so therefore I mean I think the the point that we have to do is you
know we don't know whether we might at some point hit a cliff edge and people
wouldn't necessarily, and we have to be prudent and assume that, you know, as we've done,
whilst I think David said in answer to the earlier question pointed out, we had 45 ,000
pounds more revenue than we anticipated this year. At 69 pounds a time, just off the top
of my head, I can work out that's about 700 more, 600, 700 more licenses than we thought
we were going to sell. Given that we sell and we sell over, you know, work out the numbers,
it's about 22 ,000 from memory.
So, yeah, there is obviously when you set a price,
you don't, and it's a people choose whether to pay it
or not, you use the intelligence that you've got
and your understanding of, I think you look
at the alternative that people had would to,
obviously to compost it and we encourage people
to home compost and you may well do that Patrick.
So they don't need the service or alternatively driving
to a waste and recycling center, which obviously has negative impacts on their cost of their
fuel and clearly obviously the time involved.
So it's clearly still a valuable service to people, but we have to budget and make some
assumptions and sometimes we see that there's still a demand there despite the fact we've
increased the price.
But I just use this point to say we look at the overall cost and set the price based on
where we think the subscribers will land up so that we can make it cost revenue neutral.
Thank you.
Councillor Jenkinson.
Thank you, Chair.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 1:56:06
Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 1:56:12
As you have studied economics, you will know that there is an issue of monopoly situations.And we will need to make sure that we are doing things in a way that can be, is fair,
and we can present that information to people so that they understand that it's fair, what we are doing.
As I was going through all of these different figures, and thank you once again for presenting them,
there are, there's lots of details about this cost, that cost, and the other cost.
and then this strange thing for a person who's been used to reading business accounts of
red and black being reversed in this situation. So I was interested in the philosophy behind
this difference. And as best as I can understand it, it seems to be that businesses have an
accounting goal to determine what is the profit that has been achieved, and therefore they
have a number system based on that.
But in the government circles, when we receive money as taxes,
it appears that what we in effect do
is create an obligation on ourselves
to perform services for the public.
It is the reverse of the ordinary situation.
So having created this obligation,
we now have to do something good with it.
And if I've understood, if that does in fact refer
to the philosophy behind it, then there ought to be a connection between the way we present
what our actual accounts say, what our costs are, and the quality and performance of what
we serve.
And what I feel is that as I go through this, I find it difficult to really get clarity
about we spent this amount of money and we delivered this amount of value benefit.
And this is how we're working on doing that in order to do it even better.
And that isn't clearly joined up.
And in a sense, that's really important because it crosses across multiple boundaries.
As a case in point illustrating that, we had the conversation earlier on about the transition with Publica.
And I think it's really important that we get clarity that there was a cost for the
project management exercise of performing the transition.
There's a separate cost which once people join, there are various, there are going to
be ongoing higher costs as a result of that, which we all knew in advance.
And we knew that there were reasons for doing that.
for example, the point that was made earlier about the absence of staff in the planning
area and the difficulty of recruiting people. So we knew that we were doing that and we
were incurring a cost for that benefit and it's probably too early to know whether that's
working out well, but already we see we've got more staff than we used to have. So the
point I'm trying to get at is it seems to me it would be very helpful and I'm not sure
that you can answer straight away.
But I would like to encourage you both to consider
the question, how can we provide a more integrated information
system so that we really understand
this is the situation where we're spending our money,
these are the benefits, and that we can project and explain
those benefits to ourselves and the world more effectively,
and see where we need to do something about it.
Because as far as I can see, we've probably done quite a good job under the circumstances of doing the transition,
but in the process of the way the accounts present, it doesn't aim to do that.
How do we demonstrate this purpose of connection?
We've taken in this money and now we're going to do something good with it.
Does that make any sense?
Can I go first? Thank you.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 2:00:09
Yeah, it does make sense Angus. I think it's what David was sayingCouncillor Mike Evemy - 2:00:11
earlier that we needto join up the performance reporting with the financial reporting. So what you as a
committee should see and what us as the cabinet and the accountable cabinet members should
see is this is what the service delivered and how it performed and this is how much
you know we spent on it. So essentially are we getting value for money from that service?
If we choose to make a policy decision to increase spending on a service,
are we seeing, you know, will we see consequential improvements or delivering new things?
Or if we, consequentially, if we reduce costs, can we maintain the level of service and therefore deliver it at more value?
So I think it's about how do we join the two things up, is what you're saying.
And I think that was what David said.
he was aiming to get us to, not this municipal year,
because it's nearly over, but in the not too distant future.
David, do you want to follow up on that?
Yes, just in terms of aligning service and financial
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 2:01:16
performance, it's understanding if you're,as a council, approving a budget for a particular service,
how do you know that the outcomes you're getting
at service represent value for money?
And linking up the service performance data and the
financial data will help you understand that and help us as
officers direct those resources to where those priorities are.
As an aside, in training I used to give as another authority,
this report highlights and focuses on variations.
So if you're underspending or overspending or collecting more
income than you budgeted for less income,
you're in the report.
Those budgets where you set a budget say 500 ,000 pounds and a budget holder spends 500 ,000 pounds
gets no mention in that report. How do you know as members that that service is providing value
for money? So one of the things I used to say to those budget holders is just because you've achieved
a nil variation we will be asking you about what you've done because you might have delivered
absolutely nothing in terms of value for that five hundred thousand pounds that
needs to form part of the overall performance reporting. Thank you.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 2:02:35
Councillor Neill. Yes sorry, I was looking at some a couple of pages whereCouncillor Dilys Neill - 2:02:37
there's been an under spend. So an under spend isn't necessary, although it soundsfinancially good, that needs to be balanced against the performance is what
you're saying. So there was an under spend on housing I noticed and
environment, that might be terrific or it might not.
No, perhaps no comment on that.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 2:03:04
I just had, has everybody else had a, who feels they wanted to say something?I was just going to say that we've got an election, May election coming up.
We did spend a lot on these tablets last election we had.
I don't know whether we're planning to buy any more of those or any other items
for the May elections, but they were an extra charge.
I'll do my questions together and then you won't have to make it easier, doesn't it?
And I was just curious about the Trinity Road offices.
How much of these service charges, which are on page 9, are for the old existing
or the existing tenants which have been there for some time?
And how much for the newer water ones, more and more ones?
and how that that, exactly what that was referred to.
And then I think I had probably another question here
which was, well we know about the commercial property,
we have rental short, income shortfall,
I know where that must be.
The final one was the last item on that, page six,
other service variations.
It's quite a lot of money, but I don't really know
what other service variations covers.
Thank you.
David is going to answer that.
Thank you.
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 2:04:23
So in terms of elections, the additional cost of tablets is to ensure that there is a wayin which we can trial the use of tablets and roll that out.
So that's been done over the last couple of elections and will be included in the costs
associated with the counter council election and the
district by -elections going forward.
So it's a limited trial in terms of not every polling
station has a tablet.
The benefits to that is ensuring that there is a
safe and secure election that can be run.
That's a decision that Rob, as Chief Executive, but in
his capacity as returning officer, has been
undertaking.
and clearly that is something that as a returning officer he makes that recommendation to the
council in that capacity.
In terms of Trinity Road offices that all relates to pre -existing tenants.
It does not include any provision that we would make for Watermore Point.
We're at the early stages of the relationship with Watermore Point and whilst the number
of tenants has been increasing significantly in the last dashboard I saw last week, we
We haven't made a financial projection on that, given where we are in the financial year,
but certainly we have made in the budget that was approved by Council in February,
provision within the 25 -26 budget for a share of cost reduction and income from those new tenants
that Baltimore Point would be picking up.
And in terms of the final question, which I have since forgotten...
Other sources.
Is as described, it is everything else that isn't mentioned.
So what we tend to do with our variants reporting is report those significant or material variations,
which ordinarily is deemed to be sort of plus or minus 20 ,000, or where there are netting off variations.
You could have an overall net variation across a budget of zero, but you've got 100 ,000 pounds overspend on salaries and 100 ,000 pounds of extra income.
So anything that falls outside of that falls into the other services.
We do have a spreadsheet that runs to about 3 ,500 lines that we could make available,
but I think that might be taxing members' ability to get into that level of detail,
but it is available.
If anyone's got a question saying, can you briefly summarise, then we could provide that
summary.
But it will be almost everything from a few tens of pounds on a particular line item,
maybe to a few thousand pounds on another line item.
So it will be the wide, so is in effect a balancing figure.
So we take the overall variation,
report the significant ones, and then this other service covers
everything else.
Well, thank you for that.
I'm still not going to bang on about the tablets,
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 2:07:14
but I thought that after the first trial and thatinvestor agenda, they were going to be evaluated before we
necessarily bought more.
And I just wondered whether we were,
And in fact, I know the last election we bought more ballot
boxes as well and other things to help.
But they do, as I understand it, in some places I think they
were successful, in other places less so, maybe because of mobile
phone signals or maybe one thing or another, technology sort of
not quite up with it.
But that was really the thing.
It was quite a big extra spend.
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 2:07:51
So in terms of the tablets, we are paying for a service from Civica, so we don't buythe tablets.
They provide the tablets with software on that integrates with the express election
system.
That's then rolled out to a number of polling stations, I believe off the top of my head
is around about half the polling stations.
We are mindful that in some parts of the district the ability to either obtain a Wi -Fi signal
from the location of the polling station or indeed any form of a mobile phone data signal
is almost impossible.
And there is, I know, in some of the anecdotal evidence that's been provided by the election
service that some were so keen on the tablets they weren't going to be a polling station
presiding officer.
If they didn't have a tablet, some were the other way around.
What this is in tri... I suppose where the trial is trying to get the council is into a position where we can in time roll that out to all polling stations and then achieve a cost reduction in the way we undertake the election including the end part of the action which is where most of the interest will come in terms of verifying the ballots that were cast and providing that reconciliation and getting to the end result in terms of what we're doing.
what those votes were cast and what the numbers are.
So as part of that, what we didn't feel as an authority was,
we didn't want to roll that out en masse
to every single polling station.
We wanted to do that where we felt comfortable
and the polling station presiding officer felt comfortable.
But I do accept it is a significant additional cost
that has been a business case that has been presented
by the election services manager to the returning officer
to agree that, and that might be something
that we bring back in time to assess the way in which the use of tablets has contributed
to the overall running of the elections.
I don't know. Obviously it was dimwitted before. For some reason I hadn't realised that we
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 2:09:54
were renting or hiring them. So this would be a recurring cost at every election.It would be a recurring cost where you do that and there is a pattern
David Stanley, Deputy CEO - 2:10:06
of elections that I think when we were looking at this that we were going to have that may not now come to pass given that we got the County Council elections this year and it's unlikely that we would have district elections in 2027.So this may be, depending on the way in which local government
reorganization works, one of the final use of tablets or any
other form of the way the elections run,
would depend on the timetable for LGR,
because clearly there will be an election to a shadow body of
some description.
There may or may not be a general election at some
point before 2029.
Well, thank you, Azela, for your comprehensive answers.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 2:10:47
And I'm pleased you've resolved that because I hadn't actually,now I fully understand it a bit more.
Was there anything else that anybody else wants to think?
We've now done two hours, but we have only got two,
the reports from the two GCC committees.
Do you want to have a comfort break now before we go into
that, or are you happy for Councillor Neill and Councillor
Jenkinson to do their reports?
Well, what do you think? What is the feeling? Thank you very much.
Does everybody want a five minute break? Okay, are you happy? Okay, five minute break. Thank you.
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12 Financial Performance Report 2024-25 Quarter Three
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 2:17:56
And lost track of time. So thank you all for coming back. We've got the last bit of themeeting where Councillor Neill and Councillor Jenkinson give their reports on the meetings
13 Updates from Gloucestershire County Council Scrutiny Committees
they've been to at Gloucester County Council.
They have shared those contents of them with us already.
But actually, I would like them both to talk about anything
in them that they feel they want to emphasize or expand on.
So I think it was Councillor Neill's first on the list.
So are you happy to go first?
Yes, first time.
Thank you.
So a constant theme running through all the items discussed
Councillor Dilys Neill - 2:18:43
in the HOSC was the need to focus more on preventingillness, staying well, and delivering more care in the
community rather than on a secondary care setting.
And I think since I was in primary care and then I was in
secondary care, so I've worked in both modalities,
and I think there's been an increasing focus on secondary
care because of all the advances in medical technology.
Since I trained as a medical student,
there's so many more things treatable,
there are so many more, you know, treatment modalities,
so many more imaging modalities that an awful lot of thought has
gone into secondary care, and a lot of people perhaps are not
aware of what they can do within the community.
Primary care and the general practices, of course,
but other things like going to the pharmacy to ask for advice.
So in the winter, the trust and the integrated care board
always produce a winter plan.
And part of the winter plan this year was to publicize the
treatment options that were available to patients.
It's always difficult having been a GP myself.
You know, people ring you up because they're anxious.
And you know, you're there as a medical professional
to direct people.
But there's a lot of publicity being put out to
signpost people to where they can get advice.
It doesn't always have to be the GP.
It certainly doesn't always have to be the ambulance
or the hospitals.
So there's been publicity put out saying,
these are the things that you can get help
from your pharmacist for.
Or these are the things that you can treat yourself at home,
rather than whizzing off to see some medical specialist
if you're not feeling so good.
So I don't know how successful that has been.
I don't know whether any of you have seen publicity
around that.
But let's hope so.
One of the other things that they've done is to have these
events, community well -being and fun days.
So they have been pretty successful over in the,
well, the three days that they had two in
Sire and Sister and one in Stowe attracted nearly
2 ,000 people in total to have advice about healthy
lifestyles, diet, exercise, all that sort of weight
reduction, all that sort of stuff, get the blood
pressures checked, get advice about vaccinations,
et cetera, et cetera.
So there's all this focus on staying well and keeping
yourself well, what you can do to keep yourself well,
and on prevention.
So that's all a common theme that's running through
everything that we talk about at the HASC.
So this winter there was an absolutely massive spike of
people admitted to the hospitals with flu,
I think about two and a half times the normal level
of people admitted with flu, still COVID,
respiratory syncytial virus,
that's a problem for older people,
but also for babies and young children.
There was a 40, I think 40 % increase
in the number of small children that were admitted
with RSV and NOVID virus.
So there was a critical incident declared
in the trust in January,
which concentrates everybody's thoughts wonderfully.
It allows people to draw in more stuff, et cetera, et cetera.
They then try to speed up the process of releasing
beds, et cetera, et cetera.
So unfortunately, that only lasted a few days.
The idea of virtual wards is very interesting.
This is something that's carried forward from the pandemic.
And the patients can be supplied with the technology
they need to monitor themselves at home.
Clearly, this can only be done if the patient has somebody
there who can help them with it.
So I don't know if you remember, but during the COVID,
there were pulse oximeters so that people
could measure the blood oxygen saturations.
and people can be supplied with thermometers,
blood pressure monitors, all sorts of things.
And then somebody rings in every day or zooms in every day
or meets them virtually every day to see how
they're getting on.
And this can be used either to prevent people being
admitted to hospital in the first place,
or people can be discharged, say,
after surgery when they might have had to stay in for a week.
Now they can go home after a couple of days with that
sort of follow -up.
Interestingly, that's something that's run from the trust,
the Gloucestershire Hospital Foundation Trust,
rather than by primary care.
I asked about that at the moment.
The primary care teams are not involved in doing that,
but there is a possibility that they would be in the future.
So I always listen carefully to what you ask at the ONS here,
and I take it forward.
So, Councillor Cummy asked me last time what the timely handover process for patients from
the ambulance service involved, because as we discussed, as I keep banging on about whenever
we have a report from the ambulance service, one of the things that is a major problem
in improving ambulance service response times is the fact that there are so many ambulances
waiting outside the hospitals for so long.
So in January, I think the average handover time was
about 65 minutes.
I think that was at Gloucester, which is the worst time
in the county.
But that was reduced to 35 minutes in February.
So I did ask about the timely handover process,
and the answer I got was distinctly wooly.
But there is lots of things going on to try and make it
easier to get patients out of the ambulance into the
emergency department and then either back home again or into a bed.
So some of the things clearly are better throughput of beds,
getting patients home when they don't need to be in hospital.
And there's still a number of patients with what they call no
criteria to stay in hospitals, and they're just waiting for
appropriate care in the community.
So there are lots of things going on to try and improve that.
One of them is improved use of the electronic patient record.
That improves communication between the medical teams
and the teams who are trying to get people discharged home.
All that use of digital technology
is helping to reduce the number of people who are what
we used to call bed blockers.
When there's empty beds, it's easy to get people out
of the emergency department.
There are other things.
the way that the patients are actually handled in the
emergency department.
So there's a new acute assessment unit in the
acute medical unit, which has speeded up the way in
which people can be seen and assessed.
One other thing that's really very important, too,
is that the improvement in communication between the
emergency services.
So the paramedics can now ring either a GP,
There's a GP team that the paramedics can contact
for advice, or they can ring directly through to a
consultant team in the hospital who can advise them.
And they may say, do this, and then the patient doesn't
need to be transported to hospital.
And you can imagine that that's going to save an
enormous amount of time.
So there's all those, as far as I can work out, those
are all the sort of interventions that are
improving the timely handover process.
So what excites me as a former doctor is new technologies.
And if you want me to give you any advice about what image
guided intervention surgery is, or what a new radiotherapy
linear accelerator looks like, I can tell you that afterwards.
The hyper acute stroke unit, these are things that it's good
to know that all these new advances are coming forward
in Gloucestershire and not just in tertiary centres,
but they're coming forward at our district
general hospitals.
So the hyper acute stroke unit gets
people who've had a cardiovascular accident in
and gets them imaged really quickly.
And then if they've got a clot, they
can use clot -busting technologies
to improve the blood supply to the brain quickly,
which gives people a much better prognosis for survival.
And then in the stroke unit, there's also early rehabilitation
going on to make the outcome for people who had stroke,
for example, much better.
So the other thing that, so I took that photo from
Councillor Cunningham last time.
Councillor Jenkinson discussed, said that it would be useful
So if we had a review of our community hospitals,
we have an excellent community hospital in Morton,
the North Cotswold Hospital.
And we've also obviously got Sire and Sister
Hospital within the district.
So I particularly asked that that would
be included on the work plan.
And there was a general feeling that a review
of the community hospitals would be a good thing for us
to consider.
So that's all I want to tell you, I think.
But just in this last 24 hours, I've just had a notification
that the spring round of COVID vaccines is about
to be rolled out.
So that's for people over 75 and people with preexisting
health conditions.
If you're not quite 75 yet.
I've got asthma.
I've got asthma.
Yeah.
I'm sure you can get hold of one if you try hard enough.
That's it.
Thanks.
Well, thank you for that.
All I was going to say is that I've actually found this thing of making appointments with
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 2:29:18
the NHS app absolutely fantastic and easy and straightforward and that is a very userfriendly interface and I think it's very good.
I think Councillor Coleman had maybe queuing up for his COVID vaccination.
Yes, it's not what I stuck my hand up about that of course.
I did have to spend a bit of time with a neighbour a little older than
Councillor Patrick Coleman - 2:29:40
myself who had to be admittedas an emergency to Gloucestershire Hospital late on a Friday evening.
I was very impressed by it all.
He's very brainy and widowed and also had a child die.
So he's a tough chap with two cats.
So there we are.
The main thing is it's hard of hearing.
And if you are hard of hearing and the person talking to you has a mask over their face,
they need to shout louder or take the mask down briefly.
And I found myself saying to member of staff, after member of staff, he's very deaf, if
you don't mind.
And then I thought, what can we do about this?
It was only a temporary thing.
And generally, I thought the whole thing was very good apart from the food that's brought
to the patients who didn't like that.
More importantly, in a way, more positively, this is full of positive stuff, I wish I could do this more often,
it seemed the first time to me that I was encouraged to go and have our flu and COVID vaccinations together,
including a Saturday and a Sunday, where the GP was there on a Saturday and a Sunday,
and of course when you get a GP doing the injections, it's really quick.
And I think they were turning over three a minute at one point.
But it gave us such encouragement, which is just as well,
because we then all suffered from these horribly long -lasting
chest infections, did we not?
It seemed like everybody had one for a while in January,
which is why winter seemed so long.
Dr. Anne Poulton -McKellen I think one of the good things
that has come out of the pandemic is a much more
efficient way of rolling out vaccinations.
Councillor Dilys Neill - 2:31:16
I'm sure when we all go for our COVID vaccination,there's a queue.
You think, oh, my goodness, there's a queue.
and then you find yourself, whoom, and you're done.
But I think there's an understanding
that in order to reduce waiting lists for investigations,
for example, you can't have an MRI scanner sitting idle.
You can't just be using it 9 till 5.
On Monday to Friday, it's got to be used in the evenings
and at weekends.
And other investigations and treatments and endoscopy,
colonoscopy, there have been huge backlogs of those.
And I think there's an understanding that the NHS has
to be much more 24 -7 than it has been in the past.
Well, thank you for that.
I shouldn't be glitching over the other tales from,
but my hairdresser is French.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 2:32:03
And she's saying that in Paris now,in order to make use of those various scanning things,
they bring in people from the provinces,
even through the night, to have their scans because they're
working it 24 -7 to get it.
Because you can't provide that sort of high tech
throughout the thing.
So the people have, and because they want to make use of the
time, sometimes those patients are certainly coming probably
at rather antisocial hours.
Just to say, I think one of the huge problems is recruitment
of staff.
Councillor Dilys Neill - 2:32:36
So, you know, radiographers are very precious, and if anyonewants a secondary occupation, that would be a jolly good one
to go into, because there's always a shortage
of radiographers.
Thank you for that. It is lovely to have on this occasion time to go into your reports
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 2:32:54
further. So now I turn to Councillor Jenkinson who I hope will do the same. Thank you.Thank you, Chair. I'm afraid I think my report will be much less interesting than the wonderful
Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 2:33:08
one we've just been hearing, which could have gone on I think for a long time. The firstitem on the report that I gave you is not me just batting away about myself. You will
note that on the second page there's a list of things that are emerging economic sectors
that need to be developed. It turns out that farming has emerged as an important part of
our economy in Gloucestershire. But specifically what's happened is it references agri -tech
and Agri -Technique. Well, your Councillor here asked a question about the farms, which
we were discussing earlier on, Chair, the question of the county farms, and I asked
about that. And I was therefore, they took the step of putting me in touch with the officers
who were running the county farms, and I had a meeting with the officer in charge. It was
a very interesting meeting and I learned a great deal about the situation. I'm sure
there was much more to learn and I've summarised some of the key points that I found out during
it. There are far more farms than I thought there were, although they are mostly small.
There are a lot of farm units that I did not know about and I suspect none of you will
know about. I did not know that one of those farm units, for example, is the polo field
in Moreton -in -Marche. It's a farm unit, but I'm not sure that it's actually being used
as a farm. So more investigation will be required to understand that. But they are scattered
around – there are quite a number scattered around the Cotswold district amongst – across
the rest of the county. The county is planning to reduce the number of the amount of land
that they have. They are trying to release, create capital, financing for their other
services. They are being squeezed is the message from the farming team. So there is a strategic
plan to reduce the amount of land that they have and therefore there will be more tenant
farmers coming out looking for new farms to work on.
In terms of forthcoming issues, I gave some of the things that they'll be looking at,
environment and climate change.
To look at the relationship, we discussed the need to be able to link items of insight
arising from the economic dashboard to items of strategy or policy in the plan.
And so the plan will be to unite those further and to develop that digital infrastructure,
which I think everybody knows is a problem in the rural areas of the county.
There's a new local growth plan, or a new generation of local growth plan being worked on.
and two groups that they find that they don't have relevant information today.
There is a general problem that the information that comes through isn't that granular, as
we've said before, and it tends to arrive late.
Well, you can see that the trade situation internationally has changed massively in just
the last three months.
And so all over the world, businesses are adjusting to the present situation, including,
you know, the agriculture which we were talking about in some areas.
But there's a lot of change taking place, and it's very difficult to plan things when
you're several years behind in terms of your information.
It's also particularly difficult when one of the underrepresented groups for your research
is the private sector.
Clearly it's important that they do address that.
I've given you the list of things that they are looking at.
You may have some interesting questions about that, but it makes sense to me.
There are all areas that are important.
There are various work streams that exist at the moment
that will be added into the way that we, what we look at.
And there was a focus on local growth hubs,
which is something we've looked at a couple of years ago.
They're a really useful, important contribution
to helping businesses.
because there is only one per district, and of course ours is down in the south, so it
doesn't help the north of the Cotswold district.
I'm really quite amazed by how far you go.
If you go all the way to the south of Cotswold district, all the way to the north, it is
a very long way from north to south, and how you manage that is an issue.
And there's nothing, by the way, for farmers since we've been talking about those.
Performance outcomes that are being adopted and focus on that,
so they're looking at what should they be looking at and
how do we measure things in performance.
I was interested in the report on the top 100 businesses.
Again, it's data that's out of date, so it's 2024 awards and
it relates to 2023 results.
But Cirencester comes number one, or at least a business in Cirencester comes number one.
Our strategic companies don't actually show up in this lot.
Our strategic companies tend to be there for different reasons
than whether they are the biggest business.
And of course, the biggest business may not be the biggest employer in the district.
I thought for your reference you might like to know that UBICO appears at £50 million
2023 data in the process, the list I have given you. I am afraid I don't have a great
deal to offer you that is very toothsome this particular occasion.
Thank you.
I guess Councillor Jenkinson, thank you for that.
Does anybody have any questions?
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 2:39:32
I mean, obviously we've got these elections, so the composition of the council going forwardwill probably be somewhat different.
But does anybody have, yes, Councillor Coleman.
Well I'm just looking for Councillor Jenkinson's view.
It may not be something that's been touched on.
Councillor Patrick Coleman - 2:39:51
I do remember in my previous county of Wiltshire, within each of the districts, there was anidentifiable town that was less prosperous than the others.
And across the four districts, as the unit approached, a similar judgment might have
been taken.
It's sometimes perceived by those of us in five of the Gloucestershire six districts
that if there is a district which requires help and support, it's the Forest of Dean.
But do we have data that you've come across that allows us to
make that kind of judgment?
This also gives me an opportunity to say that I found
out I come up with the same idea as an independent council in
Forest of Dean with regard to local company organization,
which isn't this item, but is relevant to economic
development, which is, unless you may have seen this,
a suggestion that considering its isolated position on one
side of the river Wye and it not apparently greatly
desired as a partner by anybody in England that they have themselves they
organize themselves or a friend of joining Wales and can I say that great
minds can think alike I thought of that because Monmouth was once England is now
Wales and he's now prosperous part of Wales.
Frosstudien doesn't look prosperous in Gloucestershire particularly but it
certainly looks prosperous compared with Wales and finally what they probably
don't know in the Frosstudien is that the council tax was set up it was set up with
one band lower in Wales than in England. So it almost certainly would give them lower
Council tax if they were over.
Now this may be totally impossible,
but on the other hand, if Greenland can be threatened,
surely we can do something for the Forest of Dean
that's less threatening.
Thank you.
There was a serious question.
Just about noticed it, yes.
Thank you.
Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 2:41:41
I can't give you chapter and verse, certainly,off the top of my head on the answer.
But the following might be interesting to you.
Of all of the districts, the Forest of Dean
has the following characteristic.
It has the largest number of people
who exit every morning to work to one of the other districts
or somewhere else and who return every evening
and are very happy to be living in the Forest of Dean
and working somewhere else.
So the economics of that particular district
are very much affected by that.
I'm not sure if, David, I'm not sure if you
can add anything more on that particular front.
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 2:42:29
I don't know at this point because I've had the meeting with the officer.Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 2:43:06
I will be writing back to them and saying thank you very much.If I can put this delicately, I have to ask the question of the member and democratic
services at GESSC in such a way as not to imply that I've received any information from
the officers that would be inappropriate.
But they do have concerns about their farming community in the farms and how it would be
managed.
There are obviously opportunities to sell the farmland for development, and actually
the price of land will generally be going up if we're trying to build lots more houses.
the Labour government will probably have the effect of increasing it and there will be
a call for more land available. So in the past the county has sold land in Moreton in
Marsh and no doubt it will be selling land in the future for that purpose. But I don't
know but I am planning to write and ask for some consideration about this matter.
I don't know that I am probably the best informed but I am aware that
Councillor Gina Blomefield - 2:44:31
they can't just, it isto do with the type of tenancy and things.
It's generally these things are sold
when somebody is decided to retire from farming.
And depending on the tenancies, sometimes a son
can take it over.
That's a very older tenancies, much older tenancies.
But the more modern ones don't allow for this.
So hopefully they're not actually just kicking
a working farmer off their land.
Tenancies can be for just five years or something like that,
even on county across the country.
Councillor Angus Jenkinson - 2:45:02
Well, thank you, and they would certainly be vulnerable for this.Councillor Gina Blomefield - 2:45:11
If everybody is, we're slightly in a winner,we've got a caution now more should you wish to expand further.
But otherwise, I just want to say good evening
and thank you to everybody for being here
and look forward to seeing you at the next meeting.
Thank you.
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