Agenda item

Hannah Thorpe, Head of Communications and Digital introduced the item for debate and highlighted the following points:

• Council was in a period of transition regarding the corporate priorities as there was a new corporate statement for 2019-2023 to be proposed for adoption at the 10 October Full Council meeting;
• In the meantime 2016-19 Corporate Priorities were used to measure performance for Q1 2019/20;
• In the main there were some positive performances;
• A high profile education programme had been carried out in summer. However there was still a need to increase public awareness regarding litter as more litter was being dropped in public spaces;
• A vehicle replacement programme was coming soon which would help improve waste collection;
• Council ,was keen to work with other coastal areas to exchange experiences on how to manage a clean environment;
• TDC staff had been involved in a litter picking campaign on 20 September. It was hoped that this campaign would be made a regular event moving forward;
• Decision time scales for homelessness had been improved and the number of applications had reduced as a result;
• Tackling ASBO was moving in the right direction;
• Targeted work had improved the handling of complaints;
• Staff sickness levels had gone down;
• FOIs were below target. However a new Head of Legal and Interim Head of Governance were now in post, which would improve the staffing levels for the department;

Members made comments and asked questions as follows:

• There was great work being done by the Homelessness Team;
• Planning stats were also very good;
• There were some concerns with litter picking in places where works were being carried out by Southern Water or Virgin Mobile in some streets and litter was not being picked;
• Staff sickness was still too high. What was the cause of the sickness was it stress related and was it long term?
• Was there a need to change the culture within the organisation in order to reduce sickness levels?
• Some of the missed waste collection was due to wrongly parked vehicles in some streets. There was a need to provide more clarity on the problems that were encountered by staff during waste collection;
• Some of the public bins were overflowing. There should be a faster route for councillor reporting on such issues;
• There was a need for more education on disposing of dog waste;
• Huge bins that had been set up in some parks had greatly improved the park environment;
• Signage on bins could be improved and beaches should be cleaned early in the mornings;
• Messages to take litter or waste home should be put across more politely;
• Could council consider introducing smaller but more frequently paced public bins?
• There were a high number of homeless women. Could the council consider setting up homeless units for women alone?
• Could a message be passed on to Malcolm, a member of the street cleaning team for a good job he is doing in Ramsgate.

Responding to Members comments Ms Thorpe and Bob Porter, Head of Housing and Planning said the following:

• Some of the questions relating to services would be fed back to appropriate services;
• Operational issues relating to some of the challenges faced during waste collection could be shared with the Panel at future meetings;
• The issue regarding public parking had been published to assist with creating access to waste collection routes;
• The RISE Team was working very hard to identify who the genuine homeless individuals were. The number of rough sleepers was still high;
• Comments regarding “take your litter home” message would be fed back to KCC who were responsible for that public awareness campaign;
• Education campaigns had been conducted at schools, but due to resource limitations, the programme could not cover all areas;
• Officers were considering women only units for the homeless women. One of the projects that were completed last year gave priority to women.

There being no further comments Members noted the report.