Questions
In accordance with Procedure Rule 11, opportunity is provided for Members of the Council to ask the Chairman, the appropriate Cabinet Member or the Chairman of a Committee any question about a matter which the Council, the Cabinet or the Committee has powers, duties or responsibilities. Questions must be sent in writing to the Monitoring Officer at least 3 clear working days before the meeting.
At Council meetings, there will be a maximum question time period of 30 minutes. Questions will be selected by the Mayor, using the criteria agreed by Council.Any questions which are accepted, but which cannot be dealt with during the allotted period will be answered in writing. Questions must be brief, clear and focussed.
Minutes:
The Following questions had been submitted in accordance with Procedure Rule 11:-
Question 1 from Cllr B Murphy to the Cabinet Member for Environmental Services
Refuse Collection on 30 November 2011
Whilst we are grateful to our employees who ensured the delivery of services on 30th November and, at the same time, we acknowledge and respect the right of those who took industrial action on a matter of legitimate concern, why did the Council not have a contingency plan to avoid inconvenience and anxiety to taxpayers by ensuring the continuation of vital public health services to them, in particular the collection of putrescent refuse material in the Tytherington and Bollinbrook and other places in Cheshire East?
Response
The industrial action affected a significant number of households across the Borough and that meant it was impossible to catch up on the missed collections without disrupting many other residents within the Borough whose collections were scheduled for the subsequent days. In transforming our waste collection services over the past few months we have moved to a completely new system and the collection rounds have been designed to optimise collection efficiency, based on a fortnightly collection. To introduce additional collections over and above the fortnightly cycle would increase operational costs and this is an area that the Council has tried very hard to reduce.
To provide additional collections to catch up, the added work would need to be done either after the normal working day or at weekends. This work would then be classed as overtime and this is paid at a higher rate than normal working time. This means that there would be additional revenue pressure on Council budgets to provide additional collections and any savings in salary costs resulting from the day of industrial action would be more than offset by the cost of paying overtime.
Furthermore, there would have been practical barriers to managing and disposing of the waste if it were collected during the week after a normal day’s work or at weekends eg the opening times of the landfill sites and garden waste deposition sites.
Although we were unable to catch up on the normal waste collection services, if we were made aware of any residents who had specific needs, e.g people who were extremely ill and had no way of disposing of extra waste themselves – and were in severe difficulty, we did our very best to assist them.
The plan for this week is collect all waste materials placed out for collection on 14 December 2011 as this coincides with the fortnightly collection schedule for those properties affected by the industrial action. A memo has been issued to all front line staff to this effect.
Supplementary Question
Cllr Murphy asked, in view of the likelihood of further industrial action, whether this matter could be referred to the Staffing Committee for further discussion.
Question 2 from Cllr D Brickhill to the Cabinet Member for Procurement and Shared Services
Places Payroll
Please account for the massive 66% ... view the full minutes text for item 81