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
Minutes:
There were declarations of interest made at the
meeting.
To approve the Minutes of the
Overview and Scrutiny Panel meeting held on 30 August 2022, copy
attached.
Minutes:
Councillor Paul Moore proposed, Councillor
Fellows seconded and the Members agreed that the minutes of the
Overview and Scrutiny Panel meeting held on 30 August 2022 were a
correct record.
408.
Cabinet Member Presentation by the Deputy Leader - Levelling Up Funds and Regeneration Projects in Thanet
Minutes:
Councillor Pugh, Deputy Leader and Cabinet
Member for Economic Development made a presentation and made the
following points:
The council was awarded £51
million for the Levelling Up Funds projects to be implemented in
the district;
Thanet District Council (TDC) was
one of a few councils in Kent who received these funds;
Officers should be commended for the
efforts they put into these successful bids;
An officer to support with the
administrative processes for the project implementation was
recruited;
The reporting protocol and
governance arrangements were different for each project;
For example the Margate Town Deal
has a Board that monitors the implementation of the town deal
projects;
On the other hand, Levelling up Fund
have Scrutiny Panels for Margate and Ramsgate;
TDC’s Cabinet Member sits on
the Board and the two Panel;
An Interim Director was recruited to
deliver the town deal projects through the Creative Land
Trust;
The Winter Gardens business case was
had also been approved;
Each of these project had its own
performance indicators to report on and measure progress
against;
The Town Deal Board was no longer
meeting monthly as before because projects had been approved and
now the main task was implementation and monitoring.
Members of the Panel asked questions and made
comments as follows:
In this current business
environment, were the business plans still appropriate in term in
relation to budgets?
It was pleasing to note that there
will be additional staff to the Regeneration team. Engagement with
the public was an important aspect of project implementation. One
of the public representatives has not been attending meetings and
this needed looking into;
How effective were the
People’s Panels? Was it doing the job it was set up to
do?
The public were asking when they
would be able to see the evidence of the funding results on the
ground;
Had the Creative Land Trust
identified buildings in Margate to be used under the Town Deal
projects?
The Trust could consider buildings
in Arlington Square;
Has Dreamland started
operating?
Was the council likely to get an
investor for the RoRo refurbishment?
The Regeneration team had done a
commendable job by submitting a number of successful bids. Could
the business cases information be shared with Members?
If the public could be given
information regarding the project implementation timetable that
would help;
Could the council assist community
groups to apply for such funding?
With regards to the Band Stage, was
the funding given directly to the community group? Who was
responsible for overseeing the spending and accounting for the
funds? Who was responsible for monitoring project
implementation?
Was there any scope for the public
to see how the funds were accounted for?
Was there any progress regarding
security ferry services for cargo for the Ramsgate Port and were
there any destination ports identified?
Were there any alternatives used for
the Port together with match funding that had been identified to
date?
Michelle Jackson, Resident Involvement Manager
introduced the report and made the following points:
The service had managed a full
compliance regarding lifts, fire assessments and gas;
There were 140 outstanding actions
and there were 134 overdue actions down from 200 in Q4;
The more fire risk assessments that
were done by the Service the more actions that the service needed
to carry out;
The Service was not pleased with the
performance of the domestic electrical safety and officers were
keeping up the pressure on MEARS to improve the performance in this
area;
A contractor would be brought in in
Q2 to work on the domestic electrical safety area;
MEARS would get more sub contractors
to drive up performance;
Council officers would continue to
hold regular meetings with MEARS management;
Some work was also needed to improve
the VOIDS performance as there were some backlogs;
It was pleasing to note that the
Incomes Team now had a full complement of officers that would drive
up performance for the team;
The team was now able to reach out
to residents much faster;
Tenant and Leaseholder Services
managers were meeting regularly to consider cases where residents
were struggling with payments.
Councillor Jill Bayford, Cabinet Member for
Housing also added that there were huge successes since the service
was brought back in-house. Cllr Bayford also said that there were
challenges being faced by the service. And thanked officers for the
detailed report.
Members asked questions and made comments as
follows:
The number of void properties in
Thanet was not as many as one would find in other districts. This
was testimony to the good work being done by the Housing team;
The figures for Gas Call and lack of
customer satisfaction were reported as being 20%. What was causing
this dissatisfaction?
What was the team doing about this
level of dissatisfaction? Could officers drill down in order to
understand the reasons behind this?
There were less complaint s now
which was evidence of the good work being put in by the
Service;
It was also good to note that the
team had also reported on the areas that were not performing to
expectation;
Members thanked officers for the
hard work.
Ms Jackson said that the team was working on
getting more feedback from residents which would create a better
understanding of why there were levels of dissatisfaction in the
reported areas.