Agenda and minutes

Housing and Community Services Scrutiny Panel - Wednesday 22 February 2023 1.30 pm

Venue: Warspite Room, Council House

Contact: Helen Rickman  Email: democraticsupport@plymouth.gov.uk

Media

Items
No. Item

54.

Declarations of Interest

Councillors will be asked to make any declarations of interest in respect of items on the agenda.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The following declarations of interest were made by Members in accordance with the code of conduct:

 

Member

Subject

Reason

Interest

Councillor Briars-Delve

Minute number 63 ‘Our Commitment to Equality and Diversity’.

Employed by Four Greens Community Trust.

Personal

Councillor Harrison

Minute number 63 ‘Our Commitment to Equality and Diversity’.

Employed by Four Greens Community Trust.

Personal

Councillor Partridge

Minute number 63 ‘Our Commitment to Equality and Diversity’.

Is a Non-Executive Director of the Four Greens Community Trust.

Personal.

 

55.

Minutes pdf icon PDF 217 KB

To confirm the minutes of the meeting held on 7 November 2022 (Select Review), 18 November 2022, 30 November 2022 and 14 December 2022.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Committee agreed the minutes of 7 November 2022, 18 November 2022, 30 November 2022 and 14 December 2022 as an accurate record of the meeting.

56.

Chair's Urgent Business

To receive reports on business which in the opinion of the Chair, should be brought forward for urgent consideration.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

There were no items of Chair’s urgent business.

57.

Appeal Against Petition Response pdf icon PDF 157 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Emma Jackman (Head of Legal Services) and Councillor Stoneman (Cabinet Member for Climate Change and Governance) presented the Appeal Against Petition Response to Members and highlighted the following key points:

 

(a)   the report contained in the agenda was in relation to an appeal submitted following a petition that was debated at Council on 30 January 2023 in relation to the Armada Way Trees. The Committee was asked to consider the appeal and determine whether the response from Full Council was appropriate, or not; the petition submitted had over 5000 signatures and therefore under the guidance, the officers were required to forward it on to Full Council for debate;

 

(b)  the appeal was appended at the report; the rules required it to go to the next available committee which was this meeting (22 February 2023 scrutiny). The petition guidance was appended at page 63 onwards – paragraph 2 outlined what a petition must include – paragraph 3 detailed the acceptance of the petition and its validity – paragraph 4 listed possible responses to a petition – paragraph 6  required that where a petition had over 5000 signatures there was an automatic referral to Full Council for debate;

 

(c)   on receipt the petition was checked for signatures and numbers in order to determine where it should be dealt with – this was undertaken by an officer plotting the postcodes and determining if they were in a reasonable area in terms of Plymouth city (such as commuting areas). It was submitted to Full Council with further information which was included as part of the email, however that was not included in the text on the online petition. When the petition was referred to, it was what was included, what people were reading and signing in support of – as such, the word document that accompanied the petition was not included in the papers because it didn’t form part of the petition that people were asked to sign in support of. However, at Full Council, the petitioner had 5 minutes to present the case to Members and make any additional representations;

 

(d)  Members were advised that STRAW Plymouth (Save the TRees of Armada Way) had sent an email to the Committee; the Head of Legal Services highlighted the following in response to points raised in the email:

 

i.              on 14 February 2023, STRAW Plymouth were informed by email by the Head of Legal Services at 18.34pm that the appeal against the petition response was on the agenda for the 22 February 2023 Performance, Finance and Customer Focus Overview and Scrutiny Committee – a hyperlink to the agenda was also provided. They were aware in good time that the report attached as part of the agenda was to be submitted and were aware of the nature of the report;

 

ii.             as the petition had 5000 signatures it meant that it was an automatic referral to Full Council – officers could not make any other decision other than to refer the petition to Full Council for  ...  view the full minutes text for item 57.

58.

Policy Brief pdf icon PDF 149 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Kevin McKenzie (Policy and Intelligence Advisor) was in attendance for the Policy Brief.

 

In response to questions raised it was reported that –

 

(a)

further detail upon the developing 3-year Plymouth Prevent Action Plan would be discussed later in the meeting;

 

(b)

photo identification would be a requirement to enable people to vote in upcoming elections; this was something that the Audit and Governance Committee had created a working group to consider.

 

The Committee agreed:

 

1.

that the Audit and Governance Committee Sub Group dealing with the Election Cycle/ voter identification would be referred to in the Councillor Bulletin to enable Councillor input;

 

2.

to note the policy brief.

 

59.

Finance Monitoring Report - Month 9 pdf icon PDF 675 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Councillor Shayer (Deputy Leader & Cabinet Member for Finance and Economy) briefly introduced the Finance Monitoring Report Month 9 and advised Members that pressure was continuing to be applied to the Council’s budget and that progress was being made; it was believed that the Council would achieve a balanced budget by the end of the financial year.

 

Members did not have any questions.

 

The Committee agreed to note the Finance Monitoring Report Month 9.

 

 

 

60.

Corporate Plan Performance Report (to follow) pdf icon PDF 158 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Ross Jago (Head of Governance, Performance and Risk) and Councillor Shayer (Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance and Economy) were in attendance for the Corporate Plan Performance Report.

 

The Chair briefly informed Members that the report was submitted to the Committee late via a supplement pack as it had only recently received senior management sign off. It was also highlighted that Members were having first sight of the report, as it hadn’t yet been discussed by Cabinet.

 

In response to questions raised it was reported that –

 

(a)

in terms of the drop in percentage of recycling and composting rates between Q2 at 37% and Q3 at 31%, it was acknowledged that the change to the recycling and garden waste collection scheme could have had a minor impact on the drop in figures. It was also highlighted that the numbers of residents now working at home was potentially having an impact upon the figures as some resident’s didn’t properly separate their recycling therefore contributing to mixed waste;

 

(b)

it was recognised by the Cabinet Member that the Council needed to do further work in order to achieve the 65% recycling target by 2034;

 

(c)

in terms of the continued increase of full time equivalent (FTE) days lost due to staff sicknesses in a rolling 12 months period, it was acknowledged that the Council needed to be more granular in its understanding of the reasons why the levels of staff sickness were continuing to rise;

 

(d)

in relation to the downward trend from a green to red rating in the percentage of city residents who thought the local area was a place where people from different backgrounds get on well together, this had dropped from 55% to 42%; it was suggested this was due to covid however it was hoped that the community builders programme would be instrumental in bringing out some greater community cohesion, especially amongst the ethnic minorities in the city.

 

Under this item the Chair referred to the drop in percentages from 34% to 27% in terms of how the local community got involved in local decisions, as well as the increase from 38% to 42% for those that didn’t know how to get involved in local decision making. It was expressed that it was important that the Council was seen to be democratically accountable and welcoming of public engagement – this was also a requirement of the Council’s Constitution. A suggestion was made to the Chair and Vice Chair of the Audit and Governance Committee (who were both present at the scrutiny meeting as sitting Members or substitute Members) that when their review of the Council’s Constitution was undertaken, that necessary steps were taken to specifically reduce the decline in public engagement with the Council, and to ensure that local democracy was prioritised.

 

The Committee agreed to note the Corporate Plan Performance Report.

 

61.

Strategic Risk Update pdf icon PDF 168 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Ross Jago (Head of Governance, Risk and Performance) and Councillor Shayer (Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance and Economy) were in attendance for the Strategic Risk Update.

 

In response to questions raised it was reported that –

 

(a)

in terms of risk 11 ‘The Council having insufficient workforce capacity and resilience to deliver the required range of services to meet statutory obligations and administration priorities’, pay levels were not specifically excluded from the list of reasons as to why the Council was experiencing issues with recruitment and retention of staff;

 

(b)

the Council considered all methods of encouraging apprenticeships and employed apprentices across the whole range of the workforce; this was a recent scrutiny recommendation and was also key to the Council’s People Strategy;

 

(c)

in terms of risk 18 ‘Risk of financial impact of delivering proposed changes to Waste Services as set out in the Government's Draft Environment Bill’ and the possible necessity to have separate food waste collections, it was confirmed that the Council was aware of the legislation however it hadn’t yet been informed sufficiently to provide enough detail as to next steps to be taken.

 

Under this item Councillor Lowry advised Members as to his perception of the role and responsibility of both the Performance, Finance and Customer Focus Overview and Scrutiny Committee and the Audit and Governance Committee in terms of the risk register. It was highlighted that the Audit and Governance Committee had overall responsibility for the strategic risk register but were sharing that risk register with scrutiny in order to see items on the risk register that were relevant to the scrutiny committee and which therefore might wish to be added to the work programme. The Audit and Governance Committee would simply point out that this risk was increasing, maintaining its level or decreasing and would ask others to do a piece of work on that subject matter.  The Chair responded that it was important that both committees worked together on important issues.

 

The Committee agreed

 

1.

to recommend to the Audit and Governance Committee that they pay particular attention to risk 11 ‘The Council having insufficient workforce capacity and resilience to deliver the required range of services to meet statutory obligations and administration priorities’, specifically the pay conditions of staff and staff retention when next discussing the strategic risk register;

 

2.

to include Plan for Homes to their work programme, with specific consideration of risk 19 ‘Risk of failing to deliver the range of housing to meet Plymouth’s need’;

 

3.

to recommend to the Growth and Infrastructure Overview and Scrutiny Committee that they add to their work programme risk 18 ‘Risk of financial impact of delivering proposed changes to Waste Services as set out in the Government's Draft Environment Bill’ from the Strategic Risk Register, specifically the potential impact this legislation would have on food waste disposal;

4.

to recommend to the Growth and Infrastructure Overview and Scrutiny Committee that they add to their work programme risk 21 ‘Viability of commercial  ...  view the full minutes text for item 61.

62.

Cyber Security - to follow pdf icon PDF 248 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

John Finch (Information Governance Manager), Peter Honeywell (Transformation Architecture Manager) and Councillor Shayer (Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance and Economy) presented the Cyber Security report to Members and highlighted the following key points:

 

(a)

the threat from cyber-attacks was rising within the public sector with several councils having suffered major attacks in the last three years which has resulted in some cases in the total loss of IT services. There was a major focus within central government and the Local Government Association to ensure that local authorities reduced their exposure to cyber-attacks and have the appropriate business continuity processes in place to reduce the impact;

 

(b)

the report set out the different scenarios that the Council may face with each scenario assessed for the impact on the Council; the report then covered the action the Council had taken to reduce the impact of the attack; it was considered that there were significant parallels  to what was carried out in the commercial world.

 

In response to questions raised it was reported that –

 

(c)

enterprise grade applications were used by the Council in its cyber security covering monitoring, detection and protection activity; there were many layers of those defences including active detecting software looking at activity in and out of the Council’s estate, trying to identify threats and attacks before they penetrated the device or the services targeted;

 

(d)

the Council was increasingly moving its software to the Cloud; it was considered that this gave additional cyber security and also offered an opportunity to buy in a different way without the capital investment associated with on premise type solutions;

 

(e)

an un-editable backup software was adopted by the Council; this meant that physical devices that were used were complex to override therefore creating a way of avoiding some of the threat that ransomware presented to the Council;

 

(f)

the Council was still using CareFirst for Adults Services and some of Children's Services data. Some of the functionality in Children's data hadn't yet migrated across to the Eclipse programme so that programme would continue for the rest of this year. With regards some of the ransomware attacks that they have received, it was difficult to say what data they had extracted, if any, but there were processes in place to assess the impact, assess what data has been extracted, and then officers would work with children services to minimise the impact on the client. One of the most crucial things about the Council’s data breach management process was the impact that information could have on a client - this impact would be minimised where possible. Moving data records to Eclipse reduced the risk considerably, as it was a cloud hosted service;

 

(g)

the Information Governance Manager was a member of a regional forum on cybersecurity which had most local authorities in the southwest from Gloucestershire, Dorset, to Cornwall. This forum linked in with a national meeting which was convened on a monthly basis with the National Cybersecurity Centre and various  ...  view the full minutes text for item 62.

Change to the Order of the Agenda

The Committee agreed to change the order of items to be discussed on the agenda in order to facilitate better meeting management.

Additional documents:

63.

Tracking Decisions pdf icon PDF 357 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Chair introduced the tracking decisions item and advised Members that the majority of actions from previous meetings had been completed. It was acknowledged that the completion of actions had improved throughout the year which was positive; officers were thanked for their work in providing responses.

 

It was highlighted by the Chair that he had not yet written to all staff thanking those that had completed the staff survey; this was an action from a previous meeting however the response provided by the Service Director indicated that this was not required as the Chief Executive had already thanked staff herself.

 

The Chair advised Members that, with the support of the Committee, he would still like to thank staff from a Member perspective in order to demonstrate that their opinions were important, that they had been listened to, and to encourage them to undertake the survey again in the future.

 

Members noted the update and the tracking decisions document.

64.

Our Commitment to Equality and Diversity pdf icon PDF 154 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Councillor Smith (Cabinet Member for Homes and Communities), Laura Hill (Policy and Intelligence Advisor) and Kim Brown (Service Director for HR and Organisational Development) presented the ‘Out Commitment to Equality and Diversity’ report to Members and highlighted the following key points:

 

(a)

the Council was committed to meeting its public sector equality duty, and was working hard to promote equality, celebrate diversity and support community cohesion. There was also a commitment to treating customers and employees with respect and dignity and understand the barriers that different communities in the city face. The ambition was to create a city where an outstanding quality of life was enjoyed by everyone;

 

(b)

the commitment to equality and diversity paper demonstrated the progress that the Council had made in meeting its public sector equality duty, and set out how the Council had been promoting equality during the past year. Some of the work delivered included involving members through a cross party equalities Working Group. The Group was scheduled to meet four times a year to deliver the city survey and using the insights to inform the development of the community builders programme, which provided additional engagement capacity in some of our most deprived wards, working in partnership with local organisations to improve the accessibility of events, supporting employee networks, supporting employees to effectively consider equality and diversity during procurement activities, and decision making;

(c)

a new equality and diversity action plan for 2023/24 was developed in consultation with the Corporate Equality Group and the Equalities Working Group; the action plan aimed to build upon the good work from previous action plans and the completion of actions allowed the Council continue its journey toward excellence on the equality framework for local government.

 

In response to questions raised it was reported that –

 

(e)

the majority of Members had completed the Equality and Diversity training; this was provided by the LGA therefore Members were required to notify their completion of the course to the Council so that it could be accurately recorded; Figures of those having completed the course would be provided to Members;

 

(f)

a session on equality and diversity was already worked into the new Councillor Induction Programme and this would continue to be scheduled in the future to promote the importance of equality and diversity;

 

(g)

the training on equality and diversity run by the LGA was considered basic and more of an introductory level, there was an ambition to create an enhanced training programme for Members that moved beyond the introduction of topics and demonstrated how Councillors behave and engage in the community;

 

(h)

a written response would be provided as to if there was an industrial diseases register maintained by the Council for local residents where those with disabilities were registered;

 

(i)

when a customer accessed Council services, data was collected in order to provide appropriate support in an inclusive manner;

 

(j)

a written response would be provided to Members as to if the public sector equality duty extended  ...  view the full minutes text for item 64.

65.

Safer Plymouth Update pdf icon PDF 680 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Councillor Patel (Cabinet Member for Customer Services, Leisure and Sport), Matt Garrett (Service Director for Community Connections), Matt Longman (Community Safety Partnership Chair), Siobhan Logue (Technical Lead Community Safety) and Tracey Naismith (Operational Manager Community Connections) presented the Safer Plymouth Update and highlighted the following:

 

(a)

the report produced evidenced the great work around the area of hate crime being delivered in partnership across the city and overseen by the community safety partnership;

(b)

following the management of risk in law enforcement workshops in September, Safer Plymouth highlighted within the Strategic Crime Assessment, the need to continue to understand the impact of hate crime within the city. There had been a drive to report a crime when they happen, increase community cohesion, and empower individuals to know that hate crime was completely unacceptable. This was pushed by the Safer Community steam group within Safer Plymouth where multiple agencies met bi-monthly to discuss various operational community safety issues, including hate crime;

(c)

Safer Plymouth was a trauma informed Community Safety Partnership and had at its core, the welfare of residents in mind working towards preventing adverse childhood experiences. Devon and Cornwall Police had a diverse communities team who worked at building trust, community cohesion and working on breaking down barriers to reporting. This team worked closely with the Council and Safer Plymouth in order to provide a joined up response to hate crime reinforcing its unacceptability within the city;

(d)

understanding the impact of a crime on people was paramount to identifying ways to prevent it. Positive work was going on in the city and initiatives such as safer delivery schemes, various activities in Hate Crime Awareness Week, and greater third party reporting network, contributed to tackling the area of hate crime making all communities feel safer;

(e)

education was a key area of focus when tackling hate crime; the unacceptability  of hate crime was key to preventing it for future generations. The police have been working with a number of schools to provide this input. However, this was an area looking to have further work.

 

In response to questions raised it was reported that –

 

(f)

the reporting of transgender hate crimes in any area of the UK was very low; reporting was very slowly increasing in Plymouth over a number of years which was considered positive. It was suggested that this demonstrated that people were gradually more likely to engage, and that there was a growing confidence to report or just a wider response to the city to have an open conversation around transgender issues. Councillors were encouraged to signpost people affected by hate crimes to the Police;

 

(g)

the Diverse Community Team spent time working in schools in the city delivering a programme of work; it was considered that the more work that could be done in schools, the better. Police Cadets and the Mini Police was also a way of engaging with young people on wider issues and delivering the message;

 

(h)

it was considered that there  ...  view the full minutes text for item 65.

66.

Work Programme pdf icon PDF 168 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Committee discussed the work programme and agreed:

 

1.

that controlled parking zones would be removed from the work programme;

 

2.

the Equality and Diversity Select Committee Review to be removed;

 

3.

the Homelessness/ Community Empowerment Select Committee Review is to be removed from the work programme.

 

Under this item the Committee thanked the Chair and Vice Chair for their stewardship of the Committee for 2022/23 and also thanked officers for their support.