Report on County Council Matters to North Nibley Parish Council

9^th January 2012

John Cordwell

Since this meeting clashes with Kingswood Parish Council (and Alkington!) I will go to Kingswood first and, depending on how late it is, may come on to North Nibley.

The report below is updated from that provided for your cancelled December meeting.

Electoral Boundary Review of Gloucestershire County Council:

At November’s full County Council meeting the Leader of the council, Mark Hawthorne, was asked to explain the statement in the Boundary Commission’s report that “the Conservative Group ...noted a reduction in the workload of a county councillor”. His response was that this was not the case and this had been written by the Commission. It appears he was unaware of the submission by the group he leads which contains this assertion and drew the Commission to the view that ten fewer councillors were needed.

Both houses of parliament are yet to agree to the change.

Wotton Youth Centre

A paper to the County Council’s November meeting said that cabinet member responsible for this area was continuing negotiations on the funding arrangements for youth provision in Wotton. I pointed out that he had not yet responded to June’s letter of 24^th September on Wotton’s funding needs and that it took two parties to negotiate. I raised the issue again with the cabinet member in December and e-mailed the officers last week. Still no reply!

Library Closures

The outcome of the judicial review was a partial success for the opponents of the proposed closure of ten libraries in Gloucestershire. The judge said the decision of the County Council was unlawful because the council failed to comply fully with the public sector equality duties. The judicial review will have cost the County Council the best part of £1M.

Mark Hawthorne has said that his administration would look again but was confident it would come to the same conclusion as before! This was regarded by some as contempt of the judgement. He also remarked that “the county never had any plans to close libraries”.

An e-mailed statement from the Chief Executive issued 20 minutes after the County Council meeting started, and thus not available to members at that meeting, said that to comply with the judgement the council would do its best to provide library services that replicate the service levels that existed last February, returning opening hours to the ones that existed then, or to any higher opening hours subsequently agreed. Returning to the previous opening hours is involving re-recruiting staff who had previously left the council’s employment.

On 20^th January the Cabinet is due to confirm details of the draft library plans, taking into account a user needs assessment and the public sector equality duty, working with the Equality and Human Rights Commission. If these draft plans are agreed, public consultation will start soon afterwards.

2012/13 Budget

Consultation on the budget is now under way and ends on 18^th January. The survey was included in the Gazette and can be found on line at www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/budget2012 The consultation is based on a budget of £389.94M, a decrease in cash terms of £6.2M. It requires the council to make further savings of £29.5M

The Administration is proposing to freeze council tax and thus receive a one-off Government grant of £6.15 M. The snag is that in 2013/14 it will have to replace both this amount and the inflation pressures of a further year. It is likely that some councils will not accept the grant.

The budget will be finalised at the County Council meeting on 22^nd February.

Residual Waste Project

The December cabinet meeting decided to award the residual waste contract to the Urbaser- Balfour Beatty consortium, specifically set up for bidding for this project. A motion at the County Council meeting in November calling for a pause in the project to build a massive waste incinerator at Javelin Park and for a comparison between different residual waste technologies to be demonstrated, scrutinised and debated in public was lost. Both bidders were intending to also to include some commercial and industrial waste, making the plant’s capacity even bigger.

Members of my group have called in the decision. I have had to keep some distance from this as I will be a member of the county’s planning committee that will receive the planning application in the future.

A proposal for a similar incinerator in Norfolk has stalled following a letter from Environment Secretary of State, Caroline Spelman, which states that she does not accept Norfolk’s view that there is a broad consensus for its waste management strategy because of opposition which she has heard about over the project. She is giving the county extra time to show there is a consensus. A bid for a judicial review of the project has failed.

Interestingly the preferred bidder for waste disposal in Essex is also the Urbaser-Balfour Beatty consortium, but there they are proposing a mechanical and biological treatment.

Civil Parking Enforcement

The annual report for 2010/11 has been submitted to the DfT. It contains information supplied and written by the district councils. At the recent meeting of the council’s Environment Overview & Scrutiny Committee officers were critical of the time it took for the district councils to supply the information, saying they needed repeated prodding and “Stroud did not come up with the goods”. Indeed the report was submitted with some Stroud figures on income and expenditure missing. A comment in the text said that information from Stroud had been excluded from a graph of penalty charge notices (PCNs) issued because “many of the figures showed wide variations and maybe (sic) anomalous due to major changes in their parking department”. Officers were also critical that on-street and off-street parking were dealt with by separate directorates at Stroud. I raised the issue of the missing figures at the parish and town council meeting with the SDC on 6^th December. David Hagg said he did not regard responding to government requests as a priority, but would take the matter up with the officer concerned –so far I have had no response.

The report can be found at: http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=94143

I was concerned that the county scrutiny committee only saw it after it had been submitted to the DfT.

John Cordwell