Issue - meetings

A period of 20 minutes is allocated for questions to be put to Cabinet Members by members of the Council. Notice of questions need not be given in advance of the meeting. Questions must relate to the powers, duties or responsibilities of the Cabinet. Questions put to Cabinet Members must relate to their portfolio responsibilities.

The Leader will determine how Cabinet question time should be allocated where there are a number of Members wishing to ask questions. Where a question relates to a matter which appears on the agenda, the Leader may allow the question to be asked at the beginning of consideration of that item.

Councillor S Corcoran asked the Leader if she could give a very brief update on the matters that had been referred to the Police.  The Leader asked the Chief Executive to respond, as she was the single point of contact with the Police.  The Chief Executive responded that a procurement matter had been referred by the Police to the Crown Prosecution Service and that the other matters referred by the Council to the Police included the air quality matter, the Berkeley Academy matter and four land matters which were currently ‘live’ matters and that she was unable to comment further on these as investigations were still ongoing.

Councillor D Flude thanks Orbitas for the open day at Crewe Cemetery, which she had found very interesting. 

Councillor D Flude raised concerns about Crewe South Ward and asked that action be taken to deal with these as the ward had the largest number of HMOs in the Borough; had seen an increase in street crime; had brothels and prostitution in the area; was the location of six houses for dealing with people with alcohol problems; had four private children’s homes in inappropriate locations; methadone was being taken on the street outside the chemist, and there were issues with speeding and inappropriate parking of vehicles. The Ward was the gateway to Crewe and in its present state was not a good gateway.  In response Cabinet Members stated that licensing of HMOs had been introduced with heavy fines for landlords who did not abide by these; made reference to the work of the Clean Team in Crewe and that a monitoring group had been established to look at fly tipping, which include Crewe Town Council and other agencies and would report back to Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee. Councillor Flude was invited to attend a meeting of the monitoring group; the Substance Misuse Services had been recommissioned and the methadone issue would be raised with health colleagues; and that the matters raised would be referred to the Safer Cheshire East Partnership.

Councillor S Hogben asked about the email retention policy and if this would have an impact on any of the police investigations.  In response the Chief Executive stated that work had been done to ensure that the policy would not compromise police investigations and disciplinary matters and that officers had storage systems available to retain key information outside the email system.