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Items
No.
Item
204.
Election of Chairman
Minutes:
CouncillorCampbell proposed and Councillor Parsons seconded that Councillor Paul Moore be the Chairman for the
meeting.
CouncillorRusiecki
proposed and Councillor Lynda Piper
seconded that Councillor Lynda Piper be
the chairman for the meeting.
When put to the vote, the Panel agreed that Councillor Moore be the Chairman for the
meeting.
CouncillorMoore in the chair.
The Chairman requested for nominations for the vacant Vice
Chairman post.
CouncillorHuxley proposed, Councillor Parsons seconded and Members agreed that
Councillor Campbell be the Vice
Chairman for the remaining part the municipal year
(2019/20).
205.
Apologies for Absence
Minutes:
The following members are no longer on the Panel due to
their appointment to cabinet roles:
CouncillorAlbon;
CouncillorEveritt,
substituted by Councillor Huxley;
Councillor Whitehead, substituted by CouncillorFarrance.
To receive any declarations of
interest. Members are advised to consider the advice contained
within the Declaration of Interest advice attached to this Agenda.
If a Member declares an interest, they should complete theDeclaration of Interest
Form
To approve the Minutes of the extraordinary
Overview and Scrutiny Panel meeting held on 01 October 2019, copy
attached.
Minutes:
Councillor Campbell proposed, Councillor
Tomlinson seconded and Members agreed the minutes as a correct
record of the extraordinary meeting that was held on 01 October
2019.
To approve the Minutes of the
Overview and Scrutiny Panel meeting held on 22 October 2019, copy
attached.
Minutes:
Councillor Campbell proposed, Councillor
Coleman-Cooke seconded and Members agreed the minutes as a correct
record of the previous meeting that was held on 22 October
2019.
Gavin Waite,
Director of Operational Services introduced the item for discussion
and advised Members that officers were going to provide the
technical information relating to the review leading up to the
recommendations made by the review group. Mr Waite then requested
Eden Geddes, the former Community Safety Manager (now with the
Multi-Agency Task Force) to introduce the legal framework for
addressing the issue under review.
Mr Geddes made the
following comments:
Section 124 of the Housing Planning Act placed a
duty on local councils to assess housing needs of all the residents
in its area, including housing needs for the traveller
community;
The assessment would include determining the space
for the caravans to be placed;
The Equality Act 2010 also provided rights to all
individuals including the right to equal treatment;
Nomadic lifestyle is lawful and recognized by
legislation to be such;
On the other hand trespassing is unlawful and a
civil crime;
Prior to issuing out a Section 77 eviction notice,
the council had to identify welfare concerns of the affected
individuals;
Other issues that included anti-social behaviour,
impact on local settled communities and landowners were taken into
consideration when issuing S77 notices for unauthorised
encampments;
Decisions to evict had to be balanced, necessary,
legal and proportionate;
Preventive injunctions could be used. However the
council had to fulfill all requirements
in order to employ that legal tool. TDC did not currently fulfil
such legal requirements.
Contributing to the
discussion, Penny Button, Head of Safer Neighbourhoods made the
following comments:
There had been a marked increase in unauthorised
encampments in the district and these were largely dominated by two
families;
Historically the encampments were on KCC land but
there had been some change in such activities taking place on
council and private land;
The Panel set up the review group to study and
report back on their findings and recommendations;
Currently council was collecting waste left behind
by the unauthorized encampments as part of the regular waste
collection for the area;
On an occasion when a specific collection was made
for one of the encampments, it cost council approximately
£500;
It was being proposed in the current draft Local
Plan to set aside five pitches that could be used for establishing
authorised encampments for travellers;
There were three distinct types of encampment sites
that a council could provide. The review group concentrated on
temporary tolerated sites;
In informing the review group recommendations, an
options matrix was used which highlighted the advantages and
disadvantages for each site;
The travellers’ representatives were invited
to the group’s meetings. Unfortunately they did not
attend;
Three sites that included Potten Street Car Park, Tivoli Brook and Ramsgate
Hover Port were identified as the proposed temporary tolerated
sites that could be recommended to cabinet for
consideration.
Ms Lorraine Lucas
and Ms Sonya Smyth spoke under the public speaking procedure
rules.
The following
Members spoke under Council Procedure Rule 20.1:
Councillor
Whitehead, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Housing and Safer
Neighbourhoods introduced the item for debate and thanked the
Housing team staff for the thought and care they put into producing
the proposed housing strategy. The strategy was evidence of the
council’s commitment to local residents.
Mr Porter, Head of
Service for Housing and Planning made additional introductory
comments as follows:
The purpose of the strategy was clear in the
document. There was a need to get input from partner organisations
as they had a key role to play in providing appropriate housing for
Thanet;
The proposed strategy included the content on the
statutory homelessness strategy in order to provide a cohesive
housing policy for the district;
The Local Plan set out the housing numbers required
and it was currently a great challenge to work towards meeting
those targets. Currently the council was at a third of the required
housing supply;
The district was faced with viability challenges to
do with new build property and these challenges contributed to
homelessness;
Households on low income were increasingly living in
low quality housing;
Private rented housing had doubled to 26% of the
local housing market over the past 15 years;
Older population had also increased over the years
and the council had to provide appropriate housing for
them;
The proposed strategy was still in draft stage and
would be amended as it went through the decision making process up
to the point it was adopted by Full Council in February/March
2020.
Councillor Stuart
Piper and Councillor Bailey spoke under Council Procedure
201.
Members responded by
making comments and asking questions as detailed below:
They were satisfied with the holistic approach to
providing housing in the district;
There was little detail about protecting green
wedges and the environment;
There were significant differences between
allowances paid in Thanet as compared to the national average.
There was a need to address this anomaly to bring the level of
allowances in line with actual costs for housing rent
costs;
Would the council consider supplying prefabricated
housing in Thanet as these would be quick to put up;
This was an ambitious plan. There were problems
regarding monitoring the private sector housing provision. How was
the council going to monitor the quality of housing in the private
sector?
Did residents living in private rented housing know
how to access council services if they needed help with poor
conditions on their privately rented accommodation?
When providing housing to young people,
consideration should be given to those young people who may not be
on the housing list but may face housing need after falling out
with their parents. These young people usually found it difficult
to get housing assistance from the council.
Mr Porter responded
as follows:
Issues regarding the environmental impact and land
use would be covered in the Local Plan; Housing development would
on the other hand require building consent and the issue would be
how housing structures could be designed to maximise thermal
efficiency and reduce ...
view the full minutes text for item 210.
Ms Deborah Upton,
Chief Executive Officer of East Kent Housing introduced the report
for discussion. Ms Upton made the following comments:
The majority of indicators reflected improvement for
the period under review;
With regards to universal credit and rent arrears:
EKH had started working with the Job Centre once every five weeks
in Margate and Ramsgate, as a pilot project to assist individuals
who were in the Job Centre system. This had resulted in thirteen
residents being assisted to sent up repayment plans for their rent
arrears;
For the last six months EKH has worked with three
hundred residents to help them with financial support including
helping Thanet residents claim £65k of back paid
benefits.;
With regards to the capital programme: Historically
the capital programme had been under performing.
A new consultant was currently working on Royal
Crescent to develop a programme that would see a full spend of the
capital programme. Royal Crescent was the main contributor to the
underspend;
A new gas contract had started and the work was
progressing on well as the contractor was on target. They were
being monitored closely.
Councillor Stuart
Piper spoke under Council Procedure 20.1.
Members thereafter
made comments and asked questions as detailed below:
Ms Upton had a mammoth task under difficult
circumstances;
There was a need to understand the problems that led
to the council making the decision to bring back in house the
management of its housing stock, particularly the health and safety
concerns;
There was a meeting between the four partner
councils and the regulator in recent weeks. What was the outcome of
that meeting?
Were the properties that were still not compliant to
the health and safety regulations being used?
How were insurance issues relating to these
properties being managed?
Considering that residents were living in those
properties, did this situation not open council to
litigation?
Was there a timetable for reaching full
compliance?
Responding to Member
questions and comments, Ms Upton and Mr Porter said the
following:
The regulator had been involved since the council
made a self referral once the health and safety issues were first
discovered;
A significant amount of work had been carried out by
both the council and EKH to correct the situation;
the regulator was looking for assurances and
detailed proposals for attaining full assurance;
A specialist company was contracted to review the
current situation and propose the way forward;
The regulator had asked the partner council to get
into a voluntary undertaking of how they were going to arrive at
full compliance;
TDC had insurance cover for its
buildings;
Mitigation arrangements were in place to minimize
the risk relating to non compliance. These measures included
increased site visits;
For the affected buildings, there were additional
preventative measures such as inspections, overnight security,
extra testing and extra bin collections;
TDC was exposed to risk and hence the need to
achieve full compliance;
There was a project plan in place with a timetable
for completing the compliance tasks;
Ms Hannah Thorpe,
Head of Communications introduced the report made the following
comments:
Quarter 2 performance was being reported soon after
the Panel had received the Quarter 1 report. Therefore there would
be limited updates to share with Members;
The council was in a transitional period with
regards to the monitoring of its performance;
This was because of the new corporate priorities
that were adopted in October this year. However these priorities
would be used to set new performance indicators and measures as
from 1 April 2020;
Fifteen targets out of the twenty four were at or
exceeding target. Five were amber and five were below
target;
Clean and Welcoming
Environment
Three targets were green, one was amber and two were
red. The areas of focus were as per the previous quarter, which
were litter and waste collection;
The waste collection team was experiencing access
problems for larger vehicles as a result of broadband and utility
works in some streets. The Council continued to exceed targets on
clearance of detritus and litter picking;
Officers were looking to improve the reporting of
waste collection stats to reflect the performance more accurately,
particularly missed bins (to reflect bins not collected because
they had not been put out by residents or were not collected
due to contamination);
Supporting
Neighbourhoods
Five indicators were exceeding target and one was
within 5%. Thirty nine empty homes had been brought back to use in
the period under review;
The number of homeless cases prevented had increased
to 179 in this quarter. The target was 76. The number of days taken
to make homeless decisions and the number of days in hotel
accommodation was at the lowest ever;
There was also a drop in the use of temporary
accommodation placement;
The Housing Team was continuing to take robust
action against landlords to improve living conditions in order to
improve on the amber for this dwellings indicator, which was just
outside the target of seventy one.
Promoting Inward
Investment
Performance was exceeding target on all three
measures.
Statistical
Information
There were nine measures being reported on, four of
those were green, three were amber and three were red;
Complaints response rate continued to improve in
this quarter and the performance was well exceeding the target.
This was due to targeted management intervention;
Sickness days had improved this year compared to
years’ previous performance. However these days had increased
slightly this quarter. This was being monitored closely by
management;
FOI performance was improving, although it was still
below target. Council was currently working with the Information
Commissioner to improve performance. An internal review had been
conducted to better understand the performance. Additional
resources had been assigned to the team;
Housing benefit and council tax benefit remained
ahead of target;
Reporting of business rates and council tax
collection had been improved to include expected collection rate at
the end of each quarter.
Councillor Campbell
proposed, Councillor Rusiecki seconded
and Members agreed to note the report.
Speaking under
council procedure 20.1, Councillor Stuart Piper requested that the
Panel scrutinise why the Standards Committee meetings were being
cancelled at short notice and why the General Purposes Committee
(GPC) was not meeting to transact outstanding business
matters.
The Vice Chairman of
the Panel suggested that the General Purposes Committee membership
could call for a GPC meeting to consider any matters that fall
under their remit.
Mr Hughes advised
that four members of the General Purposes Committee could write to
Democratic Services requesting for a meeting to be arranged and
specify the business to be transacted at that proposed
meeting.
Councillor Campbell
proposed, Councillor Lynda Piper seconded and Members agreed the
membership of the General Purposes Committee used the council
procedures for requesting a committee meeting.