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on 27 July 2019, a letter had been written to the City’s MPs, following a resolution made by the City Council regarding the scrapping of the free TV licences for people aged over 75; the letter sought to reaffirm the MPs commitment to provide free TV licences; one response had been received from Mr Luke Pollard, MP in which he reaffirmed his commitment to providing free TV licences;  responses were awaited from Mr Gary Streeter, MP and Mr Johnny Mercer, MP; a letter had also been written to the Government on this matter;

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as part of the High Streets Heritage Action Zones scheme, the Council would be able to apply, along with 69 other towns/cities, for a share of the £95m fund which would be used to revive historic high streets; thanks were extended to the officers involved in this scheme;                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

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it had been a great weekend in the City with many events being held which included the Respect Festival which was celebrating its 21st birthday, the seafood festival, the Plymouth Sound National Marine Park launch and the Star Awards which celebrated the achievements of Plymouth City Council employees;

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work was due to commence on site for Phase II of Oceansgate; a ground breaking ceremony would be held within the next couple of weeks; even though the construction work had yet to commence, 84% of the units had already been let.

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the first group of social workers had completed the National Assessment and Accreditation (NAAS) Verification of Practice Skills; this had earned them formal accreditation from the Department for Education as either Approved Child and Family Practitioner, or an Approved Child and Family Practice Supervisor.

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on Thursday, 12 September 2019 Exercise Short Sermon had taken place; the exercise was undertaken on a three yearly basis and involved multi agencies working together; the exercise was designed to test the emergency response at Devonport Naval Base and the Council’s Offsite Emergency Plan;  the exercise was overseen by regulators who had deemed that it had been completed successfully;

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the Council’s Public Protection Service had been successful in prosecuting an individual who had been selling a waste collection service; the individual had been burning, fly tipping and passing waste on to others to dispose of illegally; he had received a Criminal Behaviour Order which prohibited him from working with waste for five years; officers involved in this prosecution were thanked for their work;

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in a case brought by the Trading Standards service, an individual who had been caught with a huge amount of illegal tobacco had been ordered to pay £55,000 (he was also ordered to pay the prosecution costs of £17,500) under the Proceeds of Crime; he was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years and ordered to undertake 200 hours’ unpaid work; officers involved with this prosecution were thanked for their work.

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the Government’s school funding announcement for 2020/21 had not included additional funding for maintained nursery schools which provided a vital service for children with special educational needs and disability, as well as those disadvantaged children; this was of concern and over the next few months there would be a robust campaign to secure additional funding, as these services would be under real threat, if no new funding was available.

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there was just 12 months to go until 16 September 2020 which would mark the 400^th anniversary of the historic Mayflower voyage; there would be over 100 Plymouth Mayflower events or activities which included Mayflower Week 2020 (Field Gun Festival, Mayflower ceremony, Royal Marines Rehabilitation Triathlon, Mayflower Muster), Illuminate 2019 and 2020 (light based festival), the opening of the Box in spring 2020, This Land (a production by Theatre Royal Plymouth and the Wampanoag) and ‘Settlement’ (a large scale installation of public art);

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the Mayflower 400 Community Sparks fund enabled funding for local community projects; Councillors were encouraged to use their community grant fund to also support community projects;

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Mayflower sports week would run in conjunction with Plymouth Argyle, Albion and the Raiders.

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Pledge 65 – ‘the Council will review the progress made in implementing the recommendations of the Plymouth Fairness Commission’.

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Pledge 43 – ‘Plymouth needs more engineers, mathematicians and scientists’; the city had world-class STEM employers; the City Council would look to work with the Plymouth Manufacturers Group and Women in STEM, to increase the number of young people taking STEM subjects at school, college and university; the Council would work with the major manufacturers and large business to provide school children an insight into how factories, manufacturing, digital and creative industries, STEM roles and other major Plymouth employers worked; the Council also supported people to improve their STEM skills throughout their career.

(1)

to endorse the risk management approach to a ‘No Deal’ Brexit;

(2)

the mitigation priorities set out in the Organisational and City risk management logs at Appendices 1 and 2 of this report;

(3)

to note the contents of the Government’s Worse Case Planning Assumptions as of 2 August 2019 paper;

(4)

to thank the Brexit, Infrastructure and Legislative Change Overview and Scrutiny Committee for its contribution to date and asked that its members maintain a close watching brief on mitigation plans to minimise risk to the Council and the City.

(a)

the role of the Scrutiny Management Board was to ensure that the Scrutiny Committees were working well; the Board was still in its infancy but was progressing well;

(b)

the Brexit, Infrastructure and Legislative Change Overview and Scrutiny Committee proposed to hold a select committee review looking at buses as part of The Bus Service Act 2017 which would include bus services provided within the City, subsidised bus routes, real time information, audio/visual aids on buses (for visual/hearing impaired passengers), low emission buses, Dial a Ride, concessionary fares and how the informal partnership with bus companies would work;

(c)

the Performance, Finance and Customer Focus Overview and Scrutiny Committee would be holding two select committees on the electoral process and gypsy and travellers;

(d)

the Education and Children’s Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee was looking to hold two select committees on bullying and attendance and fairer funding for schools;

(e)

the Health and Adult Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee would be holding the following select committees -

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food justice;

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mental health;

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dental services;

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end of life care;

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community/urgent care review;

(f)

budget scrutiny would be held over two days on 21/22 January 2020.

(g)

scrutiny should be more flexible in order to be able to scrutinise ‘hot topics’ and to be able to discuss issues rather than receiving reports;

(h)

there had been a lack of scrutiny recommendations being presented to Cabinet;

(i)

the importance of pre-decision scrutiny and its role in developing policies;

(j)

with the reinstatement of the Management Board, items such as Child Poverty could be affectively scrutinised.