To receive such announcements as may be made by the Leader of the Council.
Minutes:
The Leader of the Council congratulated the Mayor and Deputy Mayor upon their election and appointment to office and thanked those who had worked to deliver the event and those who had taken part. She also thanked Councillor Olivia Hunter, as outgoing Mayor.
The Leader went on to highlight a number of issues of key importance to her as Leader of the Council.
In summary, the Leader:-
1. Referred to previous comments that she had made in respect of the importance of staff and that they were the Council’s greatest asset. Equally she believed that Members should have the opportunity to build on the work in respect of ICT and Member training, to ensure that Cheshire East was a Member led organisation.
2. Noted that the General Election would take place in just three weeks’ time and thanked all those who had been entrusted to deliver this enormous operation within an extremely short period of time.
3. Stated that many important decisions would need to be made over the coming year, not least the Council’s discussions with Government regarding devolution and investment and growth in the Borough. There would be many others and she looked forward with great enthusiasm to working with Members to deliver what this leading Borough needed, demanded and deserved.
4. Reported that 2016/17 has been the most successful year in Cheshire East’s history, in terms of both awards and accreditation. In the past year, the Cheshire East family had secured 11 national award wins and had been on the shortlist for more than 20 other national awards.
5. With regard to engagement, underlined her commitment to continue with ward visits and also with the “an Audience With” events and front-line visits, to hear from staff and to gain real experience of their day to day roles.
6. Noted that the Crewe Lifestyle Centre had recently celebrated its first birthday, having attracted over 750,000 user visits since 1st April 2016, to its services including libraries, leisure, adult social care and family services. The Centre had been shortlisted for a number of regional and national awards for its design build and continued to host visits by a number of local authorities from across the country to share the learning around co-located services.
7. Stated that her attention continued to focus on protecting the public purse and that the strength of the Council was built upon its rigor and challenge to ensure that high quality services and value for money was delivered. During the previous financial year, a number of teams had had great success in protecting the public purse. A couple of examples included achievement of a 98.3% collection rate for council tax and the overpayments team had also collected over £2.5m in overpaid housing benefit and recovery of these monies went directly into frontline services for the benefit of residents.
8. Referred to the Council’s highways achievements, including the starting of the street lighting LED programme on residential roads, which would upgrade over 8,500 street lights with LEDs. The first phase had been completed in March 2017 and the second phase was due to start in the current month. This programme would deliver over a 30% energy saving for the authority over the next three years, celebrating the success at the Highway Electrical Association (HEA) awards, where Katie Henshall had picked up the Manager of the Year award and James Maris had been shortlisted as Supervisor of the Year.
9. Reported that it was anticipated that the Council’s Local Plan would be adopted in two months time and would go through the Council decision making process and that she appreciated all that had been done to keep it on track.
10. Was pleased to highlight that in the People’s Directorate, the Adult Safeguarding Peer Review had been conducted and had confirmed safe and effective practice in Cheshire East. The full report would now go through Scrutiny and Cabinet.
11. Reported that two Joint Adult and Children’s Services Events had taken place to celebrate World Social Work Day in March 2017, in recognition of the work done every day by the committed Social Care staff across Children’s and Adult Services in Cheshire East. She appreciated the commitment made by Members to conduct the frontline visits to ensure that the social work practice moved forward in the manner required, whilst staying akin to the evidence base of the last Ofsted inspection and she equally knew how the representatives on the Adoption and Fostering Panels and Scrutiny kept an eagle eye on it. Following the resounding success of these joint events, a further event was being planned for 2018, with national key note speakers.
12. Referred to improved partnership working with local hospitals with regard to patients being discharged from hospital in a timely manner and the information provided to the Department of Health in respect of this. She stated that that she was beginning to see “green shoots” and that the Council was improving in this regard and she looked forward to the day when she could to sign a return that evidenced this. She also referred to a recent initiative to include a social worker joining the frailty team in the A&E departments, to support older people when returning home from A&E. She welcomed the fact that the Council was now saying that it wished to be there when there wasn’t a family member available and she would keep Members appraised in respect of this.
13. Referred to the dementia protocol, which had been recently launched to keep people with dementia safe and sound, in the event they went missing.
14. Reported that the Council had a “good” adoption service and in July this year would join one of the first regional adoption agencies, now named Adoption Counts, after yet another successful year, with 26 children being adopted.
15. Referred to Project Crewe, which was a unique innovation project, in partnership with a national charity, which was successfully delivering intensive support to children in need and their families, to prevent their needs escalating.
16. Announced that, following the submission of an Expression of Interest for a Free School in Crewe, the Council was the only 1 of 20 councils nationally to be invited to submit a full application for a new school. The application would be to develop a 40 place special school for children with Social, Emotional, or Mental Health needs on the former site of Lodgefield Primary School. This would support ongoing work to create more places in the borough for children with Special Education Needs or Disabilities.
17. With regard to school admissions, reported that the Council had been successful in offering 98% of children a place in one of their preference primary or secondary schools, to start in September 2017.
18. Announced that two Substance Misuse Connected Communities events had been held in April, to highlight the importance of people being supported to recover from addiction in the community.
19. Reported that the Trading Standards Team had facilitated Scambusting training to raise awareness about how scams were carried out. This was an important issue as anyone could be scammed, but vulnerable people were particularly targeted. The impact of being scammed wasn’t only financial loss, but also affected the way people were left feeling.
The Leader handed over to the Deputy Leader, Cllr David Brown, at this stage, to complete the announcements.
The Deputy Leader:-
20. Addressed Council regarding digital technology, noting that this was changing all aspects of people’s lives, whether healthcare, transport, manufacturing, entertainment, or connections with family and friends. Digital had changed the way that business was done and how services were provided. Customers expected to be able to access services, products and information 24/7. As a ‘resident first’ Council, Cheshire East wanted to provide its residents and businesses with a better, more coherent experience when using Council services online. One that met the raised expectations set by the many other digital services and tools that they used every day. The Council had introduced the reporting of faults on line, with an undertaking to respond with in 5 days. Blue Badge was the first service to go through the Programme and its new digital solution had gone live in early May 2017. Over the next 12 months, the Programme would accelerate the pace and scale of transformation across many more services, such as Waste and Recycling, Council Tax, Registrations, Highways and Environmental Health. The Council would also soon be launching a new digital resource called “Live Well Cheshire East”, which would offer information and advice on staying healthy, living independently, care and support for adults and children, local offer for special educational needs and disability, as well as community activities.
21. Referred to a number of current highway initiatives and what was to be spent on the highways infrastructure in the future.
22. Reported that it had been a magnificent privilege for him to start the Tour of Britain when Cheshire East successfully hosted Stage 3 of the Race in Congleton and he thanked the staff involved in putting it together, at very short notice. The event had generated an estimated £5.45 million of value to the local economy. The number of spectators (300,000 in a day), was the highest number for the whole of the tour and on a par with the turnout for the final stage in London, which he considered to be a fantastic achievement. He also referred to the amount of yellow bikes across the borough. The International audience had been 1.23 million people, which had done a great amount for the local economy. He had now been given the task of exploring the potential of other strategic events to generate benefits for the local towns and economy, communities and for place marketing. As part of that work, consideration would be given to the opportunity for the Tour of Britain in 2018, as well as other events that could help to showcase the Quality of Place that Cheshire East had to offer. The Council would look to work with partners and local businesses to regenerate local communities.
23. Referred to the work which had has started on the £16.5m Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Global Headquarters at Jodrell Bank. The SKA project was a collaborative project between 10 countries, who had established an international treaty organisation to develop the world’s largest radio telescope. It was the largest science project of the 21st Century and was of similar scientific relevance to CERN in Switzerland. The bid to make Jodrell Bank the global headquarters of the SKA had been backed by the Council. The 45,000 sq ft facility would house 135 of the world’s best radio-astronomy scientists from more than 13 countries and would attract business and academic visitors from across the globe. The Deputy Leader thanked the Council and Skills & Growth Company for taking this forward.
The Leader of the Council:-
24. Thanked all Councillors for the work that they had delivered in the past year and in particular, Cabinet members. The Leader asked officers to circulate the details of the new Portfolio Holder responsibilities around the Chamber. The Leader noted that the changes made may necessitate some consequential changes to the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committees and that she would work with chairmen to make sure that these were brought back to Council in a timely way.