Agenda item

To receive a report from the Leader of the Council in accordance with Council Procedure Rule 2.4.

During his report the Leader covered the following areas:

·  The UKIP administration was to be different from the previous Conservative and Labour administrations that the Leader felt had left the Council with a number of negative legacies to overcome. Some of these legacy issues included:

o  The Pleasurama site in Ramsgate

o  The Dreamland site in Margate

o  The Local Plan, drafting of which began in 2011 but was not yet complete. 

·  Balancing the budget in an environment of growing demand, austerity cuts and rising costs was difficult.  An asset disposal review was underway to establish what could be sold to fund the capital programme.

Councillor Bayford as Leader of the Conservative Party responded with the following points:

·  Some of the Leaders comments regarding negative legacy issues were hypocritical as the Leader was a member of the Conservative cabinet when the Council was Conservative led.

·  The UKIP administration was elected on the promise to reopen Manston Airport; however the Leader appeared to be defaulting on that promise.

·  The Conservative group believed that there could be a working airport at Manston.

The Leader replied to Councillor Bayford’s comments with the following point:

·  UKIP’s election pledge was to start the CPO of Manston airport within seven days.  The CPO process was initiated on the first night that the UKIP administration took office, however River Oak, despite having had four chances, had repeatedly been unable to prove that they had the required funds to act as an indemnity partner.

Councillor Matterface as leader of the Labour Party made the following points:

·  It was good to hear that the receipts from the Pleasurama Site would be spent on projects in Ramsgate.

·  The CPO of Dreamland started under the Conservative administration when the Leader was a Conservative cabinet member, and it was the UKIP leadership who agreed the contract with the current lease holders on the site, who then went into administration.

·  The Overview and Scrutiny Panel were still waiting to review the Dreamland project despite Members making a request in accordance with the constitution.

·  It was hoped that the local plan would soon be finalised as there was concern that the housing allocation would continue to rise until this time.

·  All tenants potentially impacted by the asset disposal process should be informed.

·  Could the Kingdom enforcement contract come back in-house, and what was the cost of the contract to the Council?

·  The open top bus service had run during the summer holidays and had received 15,000 fare paying customers.  Next year it was expected that the bus would go from Margate Station to the paddling pool at the far end of Ramsgate.

The Leader replied to Councillor Matterface’s comments with the following point:

·  There were around 600 assets in total under consideration for disposal.  In order to ensure adequate consultation, the Leader intended to consider around 20 assets at a time.

In the absence of Councillor Ashbee, Councillor Elenor advised that he had no further comments to add on behalf of the Democratic Independent Group:

Councillor Grove as leader of the Independent Group advised that he had no further comments to add.