(a)

the Plymouth Plan was a strategic planning framework document for the city which had a far wider approach than the Local Development Framework and brought together all of the Council’s plans and strategies in one place;

(b)

the Plan was being published in two parts –

·         Part one – set out an overarching strategy for future change and growth in the City;

·         Part two – would set out detailed policies for different areas of Plymouth and would be published for consultation in autumn 2015;

(c)

consultation on the document had now closed and the responses were being considered; the intention being to take Part one of the Plan to City Council in July or September 2015;

(d)

a locally based company was working on development of an interactive web application for the Plan which would make it easy for people to use the document and find relevant information.

(e)

promoting community cohesion was a top level performance measure which included resolving not just social inclusion but housing and anti-social behaviour etc.  The Council worked closely with the Police in this regard.  In addition, various action plans were in place around making Plymouth a welcoming City, addressing equality and diversity issues and eradicating racism;

(f)

officers did monitor comments on the Herald website and any offensive remarks were reported and usually removed fairly quickly if the person who posted the remark was unwilling to rephrase it;

(g)

an engagement framework for working with citizens and communities was being worked up and members had had the opportunity to attend a number of development workshops in this regard (minute 38 refers);

(h)

within the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS), the Octopus project had done some work in mapping areas of the City to ascertain how many community groups were out there (if any) and what they represented.  If members felt that there were areas that weren’t adequately represented they should contact the Octopus project who would be happy to hear from them;

(i)

one of the issues faced by the City was that particular wards comprising larger, older-style houses which presented prime conversion opportunities for houses of multiple occupation were then saturated with these types of dwellings.  This then left the problem of how to rebalance those communities;

(j)

a plan for the private rented housing sector was to be launched next week.  Officers working in consultation with letting agencies across the City, landlord association, Plymouth University and the VCS had come up with a set of aims to bring about better homes, improved standards, attracting new investment, providing better protection for tenants and dealing with unscrupulous landlords;

(k)

another delivery plan in the pipeline was looking at ways to tackle the problem of empty homes in the City, particularly those of a long term nature;

(l)

re-conversion of long-term empty shops back to living accommodation was something that could be considered, subject to meeting necessary planning requirements;

(m)

with regard to the identification of potential housing development sites, it was confirmed that this level of detail was not covered in the first part of the Plan;

(n)

by the end of 2014, three community assets were successfully registered on the councils asset list using community right to bid powers, with one of those assets being successfully taken over by the community.