(a)

minute (26), as she was a duty holder of Cattewater;

(b)

minute (28), she was a marine social scientist (working with OCT);

(c)

minute (29) her husband was employed by the Plymouth College of Art.

(a)

the Visitor Plan 2030 would enable Plymouth’s residents to benefit from the visitor economy, supporting quality job retention and creation; whilst also enabling Plymothians to take full advantage of the City’s rich history, heritage and unique environment, by promoting opportunities for education, health and wellbeing and pride;

(b)

the Visitor Plan 2030 was formally adopted in March 2020 (just one week prior to the first Covid lockdown); since the start of the pandemic things had changed significantly with the tourism, leisure and hospitality sector being one of the hardest hit nationally and internationally; together with the UK’s departure from the EU this had led to a significant economic shock and longer term challenges as the economy started to recover;

(c)

2020 data showed the significant impact of Covid19 with a loss of 54% of visits down to 2,436,000 and 56% of visitor spend down to £148,436,000; up to 2019, the growth of tourism and the visitor economy had been a great success story for the City with over 25% growth since 2010; from just under four million visitors to 5.2 million in 2019, spending over £327m annually and supporting nearly 8,000 jobs, over 7% of the City’s employment;

(d)

it was too early to calculate how well the sector had recovered through the early part of 2021 however, early data showed that although the first half of the year was still well below 2019 levels

(-£89,206,509 from January to May), it recovered in the latter part of the year (+£12,290,061 from June to September 2021); this was very positive and it was anticipated that by year-end there would have been a significant recovery towards 2019 pre-Covid visitor numbers and spend in the City;

(e)

this would not have been possible without significant support from the Council’s grants team giving out Government Covid19 grant funding to businesses and the cross city partnership working between Destination Plymouth and the two Business Improvement Districts (City Centre Company and Waterfront Partnership) to support, promote and help businesses to recover.

(f)

sought clarification -

?

on what considerations had been given to the environmental impact of growing the visitor numbers, the treatment of the City’s facilities (as evidence during the lock down on the Barbican) and whether there would be sufficient accommodation to meet these needs;

?

as to the risk of the future funding of Destination Plymouth in order to deliver the Visitor Plan for 2030 and the unusual ask of a Scrutiny Committee to support the lobbying of local MPs;

?

on the level of businesses that had been lost due to the pandemic and an indication of the level of recovery;

?

as to whether there were any proposals to formally constitute the Great South West Tourism Partnership;

?

whether the structural sectoral  ...  view the full minutes text for item 26.

(a)

the Plymouth Sound National Marine Park (NMP) originally declared as the first in the UK in 2019, had secured the first significant investment through a successful bid to the National Heritage Lottery Fund’s  Heritage Horizon Awards; the development of the wider NMP was also being progressed through other secured funding and the recruitment of an Interim Chief Executive Officer;

(b)

provided an update on the development stage of the NMP Horizons project and the plans up until the submission of the delivery stage bid in June 2023, as well as the progress and plans for the wider NMP development.

(c)

sought clarification on the following key points -

?

as to whether there would be early engagement with Councillors relating to the outline Activity Plan; this would enable Councillors to link issues together as well as having a democratic input (as had previously been achieved with Green Minds);

?

as to whether the engagement process for the NMP would provide a real opportunity to include engagement on the wider environmental agendas (such as climate change, ocean recovery) which covered both the green and blue areas of the City;

?

on how visitors would recognise that they were in part of the National Marine Park;

?

as to whether other organisations across the City, such as the Tamar Estuaries Consultative Forum were being engaged with on this project;

?

with regard to the community strand of the outline Activity Plan (P4), whether further explanation could be given relating to the different (HR) roles allocated to this stream and what the community stream would look like (ie benefits and developments);

?

as to how the NMP would link to the Freeport;

?

with regard to the governance arrangements for the NMP, whether this could be staffed with individuals that were able to make material contributions to this project, such as subject matter experts, and people working in business; there were concerns that individuals would be appointed to the Board, who were not engaged;  it was important to have a real public/private sector partnership, in order to bring communities and businesses together;

?

with regard to the outline Activity Plan, in particular the ‘heritage will be in better condition’ section, whether this related to the built heritage, natural heritage or cultural heritage, or all three of these areas, or whether this had already been defined;

(d)

raised -

?

that it was important for the success of the project’s mission, to make the whole City feel its identity as Britain’s Ocean City, and that Councillors were fully engaged with this project, as they would be able to assist in getting this message out in their communities;

?

the importance of evaluation in the process and qualitative measures being put in place, such has how wellbeing  ...  view the full minutes text for item 28.

(a)

the Culture Plan had been adopted by the City Council in March 2021 and published in May 2021; the Plan was the culmination of extensive consultation with stakeholders and part of a robust process to co-design the 10 year strategy for Culture;

(b)

the co-design process was conducted between April 2020 – January 2021 with the support of external facilitators, Arts Development Company Dorset and included -

?

40 one to one interviews with stakeholders;

?

three facilitated workshops;

?

three consultation workshops;

?

five focus groups (conducted with the support of partner organisations Barbican Theatre Plymouth, Funky llama Steering Group, Beyond Face, students from Plymouth Marjon University and the Freelance Task Force); 

(c)

to support the development of the Culture Plan, Plymouth Culture had recommissioned the Audience Agency to collate and analyse data relating to cultural audiences, Plymouth residents and the cultural sector; this was designed to better understand the economic and social impact of the sector across the City and begin the process to use data to drive decision making within the sector; this work that formed the basis of the report.

(d)

sought clarification on the following key points -

?

on the methodology that had been used regarding the Culture Plan data report and the social impact report (ie which organisations had been liaised with);

?

on how the Audience Agency worked, how the data was collated, the origin of the data and how representative it was (in respect of the audience segmentation);

?

whether there was an opportunity to reflect on the data already available and the measures that could be undertaken to improve it in the future;

?

whether there was a further opportunity for Scrutiny to provide a steer regarding the design of the research work to be conducted prior to the British Art Show;

?

with regard to the priority work programme, in particular ‘aligning the cultural engagement activity with the National Marine Park Horizon programme for an effective community engagement strategy’, it would be helpful to have a joined up strategy; (ie the aim should be that residents in more deprived neighbourhoods would be more engaged in the cultural sector and green and blue areas of the City)’;

?

whether all schools had been reached with regard to The Box’s Schools’ Programme and if data was available relating to whether the visits to The Box were first time visits or repeat visits;

?

on what would be the City’s next big cultural offer (other than The Box) which would result in increased visitor numbers and therefore spend;

?

on what measures the City could take, in order to increase  ...  view the full minutes text for item 29.

(a)

the report introduced the Climate Emergency Action Plan for 2022 and the planned specific actions to address climate change issues during 2022; the Climate Emergency Action Plan sets out the strategic direction for the City Council and its partners in relation to climate change for Plymouth; it was a demonstration of the City Council’s commitment to lead the City towards net zero carbon by 2030;

(b)

the Climate Emergency Action Plan 2022 was a dynamic, living document that was prepared annually; the Plan maintained the five key areas for action established by the first plan to ensure that it was fit for purpose as actions were ramped up through the three strategic phases of the journey to zero carbon emissions by 2030;

(c)

initially, the response to the climate emergency required quick and decisive action to reverse the on-going increases in carbon emissions; this period of activity was identified as the ‘emergency response phase’; there were two further stages in the Council’s journey towards net carbon net zero carbon;

(d)

the ‘transitional phase’ would focus on the delivery of more substantial carbon reduction projects, a reshaping of policy and a realignment of resources to meet the 2030 net zero carbon challenge; the final phase, known as the ‘acceleration phase’, would drive a significant shift towards net zero carbon living, working and travelling, ramping up still further decarbonisation actions and initiatives;

(e)

the Climate Emergency Action Plan 2022 was intended to be the last of the current ‘emergency phase’; it outlined over 114 realistic, achievable and deliverable actions the City Council was committed to delivering during 2022, in order to make tangible progress in this period of urgent response; detailed case studies provided by partners in Plymouth Net Zero Partnership have been included in this third Climate Emergency Action plan to illustrate the growing momentum behind climate emergency work across Plymouth.

(f)

sought clarification on the following key points -

?

as to the rationale, why the plan was still in the emergency response phase when the timetable indicated that in 2022, it would be moving into the transitional phase and whether there were any implications arising from this;

?

as to how the Council was incentivising businesses, to support the Action Plan (as it was recognised that the climate was everyone’s responsibility not just the City Council’s);

?

whether the waste structure could be changed to enable the use of glass bottles rather than plastic ones (as in Europe, a small refund was made on glass bottles once they had been returned);

?

how residents could engage with the BRIC Project to help mitigate flooding in the Lipson Vale and St Levan areas, and how the community groups would work;

?

on the support that the Council was providing to small businesses in the City, that were not part of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 30.

(a)

the City Council agreed the first Corporate Carbon Reduction Plan in December 2019; this marked a key milestone towards achieving a net zero carbon City by 2030; this plan was the subject to detailed review by this Committee at its meeting on 21 October 2020;

(b)

the plan was a dynamic, living document that would be reviewed and updated yearly and would evolve during the three phases of the Climate Change Action Plan Strategic Approach; the commitment was to produce annually a new action plan for each of the 11 years of the Climate Emergency period (2019-2030);

(c)

the Corporate Carbon Reduction Plan 2022 maintained the five key areas for action, established by the previous plans to ensure that it was fit for purpose as actions were ramped up through the three strategic phases of the journey to zero carbon emissions by 2030;

(d)

the 2022 Corporate Carbon Reduction Plan contained 35 actions; most of the actions planned for delivery were financed from the prioritisation of existing capital and revenue budgets; other actions included in the plan were financed from either already secured external funding or subject to specific funding bids;

(e)

a few of the actions could only be delivered through the Climate Emergency Investment Fund which was yet to be funded and established; some of the proposed actions would deliver measurable carbon reductions from the specific activities planned and these would be monitored going forward; others, whilst not directly measurable, would still contribute to reducing overall corporate carbon reduction impacts of the City Council estate and the delivery of its services and functions.

(f)

the governance section of the Plan, the need to ensure a consultation exercise was undertaken with the taxi trade (relating to having a ULEV fleet by 2030) and to also explore achievable and deliverable ways to transition to this fleet;

(g)

the lobbying on planning section, was there more that the Council could be doing (as additional powers were always required);

(h)

the schools section of the plan, was there a way that the School Education Programme could be made available to non-maintained schools in the City, and whether Catered was being included in the plan (in order to reduce carbon emissions through its menus).

(1)

support and endorse the Corporate Carbon Reduction Action Plan 2022, noting that the Climate Emergency Investment Fund had yet to be funded or established.

(1)

the Visitor Plan 2030 (on a six monthly basis);

(2)

the National Marine Park Activity Plan for the Horizons Project.