Agenda and minutes

RESOLVED: That the minutes of the meeting held on 5^th January 2012 be approved as a correct record

There were no members of the Committee present who wished to declare an interest.

Mr Bob Anderson, a member of the Brethren Christian Fellowship, attended to add comments to a statement he gave at the Sustainable Communities Scrutiny Committee meeting on 5 January 2012. He stated that he agreed that it should be obligatory for faith groups to comply with planning regulations. He was not asking for faith groups to have exceptions in the local plan or when submitting planning applications but asked that community groups should have specific provision in the Local Plan. He asked again that paragraph 126 of the Draft National Planning Policy Framework be included in Cheshire East Council’s Local Plan.

Head of Development Caroline Simpson was present at the meeting and informed Mr Anderson that there were three elements to the Local Plan. The Core Strategy, Site Allocation Policies and Infrastructure Plans; all of which had consultation periods which provided members of the public formal opportunities to have an input into the Local Plan over the next two years.

To receive a briefing on Section 106 Agreements and Funds from the Section 106 Officer.

The Committee received a report on the current position of Section 106 agreements (S106) from the dedicated Section 106 Officer. The report updated Members on the balances of S106 and the work being undertaken to ensure service areas spent the outstanding balances where appropriate.

The Council currently held a total of £4,900,989.90 in the S106 account, £3,277,582.25 of the total figure was identified as non-time limited funds and £1,623,407.64 was identified as funds time limited for expenditure.

The report showed expenditure of S106 funds since 2009, examples of expenditure and delivery of benefits to the community, and the future programme to expend S106 monies.

Some of the S106 monies were close to their time limited deadline and the S106 Officer was working with service managers to ensure that they spend the money that was allocated to them before the time expired. The report stated that S106 would be replaced on the adoption of the new Local Plan (2014) by a Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL). However it was contended that this was not accurate and that CIL would become an addition to S106 agreements which would remain the main mechanism for securing funds from developments for communities.

The Committee asked questions and the following points arose:

·         S106 monies were used to mitigate the effect of developments on a community. Negative impacts were identified at the planning stage of developments. Each S106 defined the community affected and where the monies could be spent by the Council.          

·         Each S106 specified how accrued interest was dealt with; in many cases interest was applied to the sum of the S106. The Council did not have a financial benefit in holding S106 money as long as possible to accrue interest.      

·         The £250,000 returned by the Council to a developer as shown in paragraph 7.1 of the report was returned because “The Greenways” did not come to fruition and the S106 agreement specifically stated that money would be returned to the Council if the development didn’t take place.

·         Councillors worked hard to secure S106 monies for their community and wanted to ensure that there is a plan for spending S106 monies.

·        Some of the S106 required match funding by the Council. These cases needed to be clearly identified to ensure that the Council had the funding to match the S106 agreements before being agreed.

·        Appendix 1 showed some agreements that consisted of very small amounts of money. S106 agreements required a lot of legal input which could be expensive and in some cases more costly than the S106 was worth. It was suggested that it would be prudent to allow these amounts to expire and default to avoid the legal costs that out stripe the benefits of the S106 money.         

·        It would be useful for Ward Councillors to maintain knowledge of S106 that affect their ward by arranging Appendix 1 to link S106 monies to the respective ward. It was also considered important that Councillors were informed about S106 agreements that preceded their election to the Council.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 150.

To receive a report giving an update on the CCTV service

The Head of Community Services presented a CCTV service update to the Committee. The purpose was to update Members on the progress made with the CCTV Control Room capital works and provide details on the future operation.

In April 2011 three legacy CCTV systems were moved be to housed together in a single place at Macclesfield Town Hall however the three systems continued to operate separately. Since April 2011 the CCTV service had been working on developing a single system for the whole of Cheshire East, the completion of which was expected in March 2012.

There were several benefits to the new system including 24 hour a day, every day of the year, monitoring of cameras across the borough and bringing the Council’s out of hours services into the Council’s services rather than contracting out to a supplier. Other developments included an Evidence Locker which was an electronic system that could be used to provide evidential footage directly to Police on request securely via the internet which removed the need to deliver tapes by hand. This allowed CCTV to provide more timely support to the Police.

The management of the Council’s Urban Traffic Control cameras had also been brought into the network which allowed any of 300 cameras to be used to support Highways department in traffic management. The control of cameras was going to be transferred town by town from the old systems to the new Control Room over a period of weeks and there would be a formal launch of the new CCTV Control Room with media coverage in May or June.

Once the Control Room was set up there would be an audit of the entire camera network to determine whether the camera locations were fit for purpose.

Members of the Committee asked questions and the following points arose:

·         The Police had been aware of the changes to the CCTV Control Room and were consulted on changes early on in the process.

·         The audit of 300 cameras would take 3-6 months. Each camera’s location needed to be justified by statistics but the possible impact of removing cameras from an area also needed to be considered.

·         All CCTV operators were on the same pay grade. There was a team leader role but that person was working alongside the other staff and there hadn’t been a need to employ a shift supervisor as CCTV staff worked together as a team.         

·         Evidence Locker allowed Police to download evidence at their police station and evidence gathering was continuous while data was downloading.       

·         Computer software could be used to connect cameras so that if one camera picked up an incident, then all other cameras in the area would also move to pick up the incident and follow the movement of an incident to ensure continuous monitoring and evidence gathering.

·         When audit of cameras was conducted Members of the Council would want to be kept informed of the justification for moving cameras to help them communicate with their residents about their concerns about  ...  view the full minutes text for item 151.

To consider how the Sustainable Communities Scrutiny Committee can contribute to the Ageing Well in Cheshire East Programme

Bernadette Bailey, the Integrated Commissioning Manager for Central and Eastern Cheshire Primary Care Trust and for Cheshire East Council attended the meeting to present the Ageing Well Programme Brochure to inform the Committee about how it could contribute to the programme.

The Ageing Well Programme had been launched in January 2012. Cheshire East had the fastest growing ageing population in the UK at the time and the financial climate meant that budgets for services were reducing. The Ageing Well Programme’s purpose was to try to make Cheshire East a better place to grow old. The work streams of the programme were about what was important to people. An Ageing Well Programme Board was created to feed into the Health and Wellbeing Board. The Programme was designed to be an over arching programme that would connect and build on the good work that was being undertaken by health services, community groups and third sector organisations.

The programme was not a specific plan of what would be done; it was a guide on what kind of direction policies and services should take. The outcomes of the programme were not measureable and it was more about seeing the benefits for the ageing population in years to come.

The Chairman stated that the Committee would do their part to help with Ageing Well through the Community Safety work stream. The Committee wanted to know more about specific actions being taken to learn more about how they could contribute. The Committee wanted further information on specific action being taken to engage those who are isolated and not connected to existing groups already. The Committee had several other questions about the programme which they wished to be answered at the next meeting.

RESOLVED:

(a)  That the report be noted

(b)  That the Integrated Commissioning Manager be requested to provide answers to the questions posed by the Committee to its next meeting.

(c)  That the Integrated Commissioning Manager be requested to return to the Committee in four months with a specific action plan on how the programme would be used to improve people’s wellbeing for the next twelve months.

To give consideration to the Work Programme

RESOLVED- That this item be deferred until the meeting held on 1 March 2012

To give consideration to the Forward Plan

RESOLVED – That this item be deferred until the meeting held on 1 March 2012