To receive a report from the Leader of the Council on the business of the cabinet and on matters that the leader considers should be drawn to the council’s attention. The leader shall have 10 minutes to make his announcements.
The opposition group will have an opportunity to reply to the leader’s remarks. The opposition group leader shall have 5 minutes to respond after which the Leader of the Council will have a right of reply. Any right of reply will be for a maximum duration of 5 minutes.
Minutes:
The Leader of the Council, Councillor David Monk, stated that he would start with a bit of an end of term report, looking at performance which was monitored quarterly, and which was then scrutinised by the Corporate Management Team, the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and the Cabinet before being ratified by the Council.
He stated that they were doing well and there were only a few areas (11 out of 200) which needed improvement and remedial action had been taken to improve them.
Benefit claims were the main issue, due to new processes being implemented, although he stated that it should be noted that the accuracy of the assessment continued to exceed target and he fully expected that the target would be met in May.
He stated that there had been significant success in areas of collection, be it financial or waste, and at the same time, the Council continued to pay creditors in a timely manner. All other Customer Service functions were performing extremely well and staff morale was high. He stated that the Council should be proud of its achievements, and for him, it was a typical end of term report: not at all bad, but needs to concentrate a little more.
Looking to the next administrative year, there were several exciting schemes coming forward that would help the council fulfil the top priority Corporate objective of providing homes and jobs. The Otterpool Park and Princes Parade schemes would be submitted for planning permission, and the council would look to start building at the Biggins Wood site as well as having the Military Road building completed.
He stated that he was often asked where the jobs would come from. For a start there would be at least thirty years of construction jobs and then there was the construction supply chain jobs. It did not stop there, the Home Builders Federation had calculated, and the Leader had difficulty in believing this, that for each home built there were 4.3 jobs created. Even if this was an exaggeration, and it was halved, it was still a tremendous number of jobs. Considering the number of people that were in the public and service sectors that were proportionate to the population then add inward jobs, the figures started to make sense.
He finished by stating how annoying PURDAH was, especially as it had caused the public consultation on Otterpool Park to be postponed, but it would continue at pace come June.
He stated that he looked forward to working with everyone in the next Council year.
Councillor Meyers, Interim Leader of the UKIP group, asked for his best wishes to be sent to Councillor Mrs Holben. He stated that he recognised the areas in which the Council had done well, and the areas where there was room for improvement, such as Benefits.
He added that he looked forward to the debate around developments such as Otterpool Park, and approved of the creation of jobs, as promoting employment was in everyone’s interest. He stated that the UKIP party would work alongside the Conservatives to support this.
He stated that he also found PURDAH frustrating, and looked forward to June.
The Leader then responded to comments raised, and added that although there were areas for improvement, performance had been superb overall.
Proposed by Councillor Monk,
Seconded by Councillor Mrs Hollingsbee; and
RESOLVED:
That the announcements be received and noted.
(Voting: 23 for, 0 against, 1 abstention).