Question one submitted by Mr Paul Gulley was answered by Councillor Kate Taylor (Cabinet Member for Health and Adult Social Care)

Question: The Council currently tweets the COVID-19 infection rate data for the Authority and comparators. Can the Authority now include the number of vaccinations (1st and 2nd dose) and as percentage of residents that have been administered in the area to see how we are fairing?

Answer: Plymouth City Council’s approach to Covid19 data has been to make information available rapidly to keep the public updated on the situation in the city. Many people follow our twitter and Facebook feeds, which provide the latest data on cases in the city as soon as we receive it ourselves. When it comes to providing data, you can make decisions to share data if you are the owner of the data and are responsible for it. If you are not responsible for the data, then you need permission from the person who holds it. For COVID19 data on cases, people in hospital etc, Plymouth City Council is not the data owner but it has been agreed nationally to share the data. It is updated daily on the Government’s covid19 data webpage.

The vaccination programme is overseen by NHS England, and currently they have decided to publish a more limited data set to the public; this is available on the government’s coronavirus data webpage. NHS England also share data directly on their webpage at the geography of ‘Integrated care systems’ or ‘Sustainability and Transformation Partnership’; for Plymouth, this means that data is not available for the city, but is available for the Devon-wide geography only. As it is not broken down by local authority, we have not included it within the local authority figures as it could create confusion. We all want to see the progress made against this very important task, and as soon as we are able to publish Plymouth figures, we will do so.

Question two submitted by Mr Danny Bamping was answered by Councillor Mark Lowry (Cabinet Member for Finance).

Question: Currently the road behind the Life Centre and in between Home Park – has been unmaintained, un-adopted and un-named since 2009 and is a mess.

As this connects Outland Road in 2 places, surrounds Milehouse car park and is on a bus route with 2 bus stops. What plans do PCC have to resurface, readopt and give this road a name? As home park is on it as will Jack Leslie’s statue be.

Answer: Currently there are no agreements in place that would include adoption of this land as Highway Maintained at Public Expense (HMPE). The road in question is an important well-used road, which is reactively maintained as required. There are no current plans to develop it further.

Question three submitted by Mr James Knight was answered by Councillor Kate Taylor (Cabinet Member for Health and Adult Social Care).

Question: It’s widely understood that vaccine hubs are calling up persons at short notice to vaccinate them rather than let the vaccine waste at the end of the day.

What efforts has PCC made to promote that teachers etc could be included on this list to safeguard their schools?

Answer: The approach to vaccinations is set out nationally by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) The JCVI advises that the first priorities for the COVID-19 vaccination programme should be the prevention of mortality and the maintenance of the health and social care systems. As the risk of mortality from COVID-19 increases with age, prioritisation is primarily based on age. This initial prioritisation has identified nine key groups and taken together these groups represent around 99% of preventable mortality from COVID-19. However PCC believes we could take an important step towards reopening our schools safely by getting teachers and school staff vaccinated as soon as possible. It is right that the most vulnerable are being vaccinated first and as a nation, we are on track to achieve this by mid-February. With extra capacity and new vaccines on the way, we believe that the half-term window could feasibly be used as an opportunity to immunise our teachers and school staff and this could be done with very minor disruption to the existing vaccination rollout timetable. This is not about de-prioritising existing groups. We believe the government should have the ambition to do both.

Question four submitted by Ms Samantha Turner was answered by Councillor Sue Dann (Cabinet Member for Environment and Streetscene.

Question: With fly tipping (especially where houses are) causing slip hazards and sometimes the toxic human waste that is found, it can cause illness, what will be your short and long term fix of this be?

Answer: Plymouth is not blighted by fly-tipping - between April and the end of November 2020 there have been 5,025 incidents recorded, compared to 7,546 over the same period in 2019/20 (a33.4% decrease) - but there are pockets in residential areas that have more regular problems that Plymouth City Council target with enforcement. Fly-tipping is an illegal activity, punishable by a fixed penalty of £400 and a contribution to the clear-up operation, as the Council will look to recover costs and, depending on the type of waste, it could run in the £1000s. The council has a good record of catching and punishing offenders who are committing environmental crimes and there has been a steady increase over the last year. We are grateful to those residents who report incidents and provide us with evidence to increase the number of FPNs issued in 19/20 to over 300, compared with just under 200 in 18/19. As well as targeting so-called fly-tipping hotspots with our enforcement teams, the council is also investing in 12 rapidly deployable CCTV cameras to assist with catching offenders and these will operate in parallel to an improved information campaign to make people more aware that fly tipping is a crime. Finally, Street Services cleansing teams have a good record of clearing up incidents of waste that has been fly tipped and have a dedicated team on standby to respond to any reports received at:

https://www.plymouth.gov.uk/streetcareandcleaning/reportflytipping

Most waste will be picked up with 10 days – often much quicker, but hazardous waste (needles etc.) will be collected within 24 hours.