Meeting documents

By the Chairman of the Council.

By the Leader/Cabinet Members.

Chairman of the Council:

 

Aylesbury Town Council Events

 

The Chairman advised Members of a number of events being promoted by the Aylesbury Town Mayor.

 

Chairman’s Quiz Night

 

The Chairman reminded Members that her Charity quiz night would take place in the Oculus on 20 March, 2020.

 

Civic Service

 

Members were also reminded that the Chairman’s Civic Service would take place on 8 March, 2020 at St. Mary’s Church, Haddenham.

 

Christmas Singalong

 

The Chairman thanked all those Members and officers who had taken part in the singalong just before Christmas.

 

Holocaust Commemoration

 

The Chairman also thanked those Members and officers who had been able to attend the ceremony to commemorate victims of the holocaust and all other forms of genocide that had occurred since the second world war.

 

Cabinet Member for Strategic Planning and Infrastructure:

 

Vale of Aylesbury Local Plan (VALP)

 

It was reported that work on the VALP continued to progress.  The Inspector had concluded that the Plan was capable of being made sound.  At the end of December, 2019 a six week consultation on the main modifications recommended by the Inspector (to make the Plan sound) had been concluded successfully.

 

Approximately 850 individual representations had been received.  However despite officers’ best efforts to encourage the representations to be made on-line, a significantly large proportion of them were submitted either by e-mail or letter, thus increasing the time for these to be processed.

 

The Inspector had asked the Council to give a response to the issues raised in the representations.  Accordingly officers had continued to engage with several external consultants, including Bucks County Council to ensure that appropriate responses were given.  This stage could only be completed when all the responses had been received from the external consultants.  The Forward Plans team were almost in a position to submit AVDC’s response to the Inspector and it was anticipated that this would be sent by the first week in March.

 

The Council would then have to await the Inspector’s response before further progress to the next stage could take place.  It was hoped that the Inspector would accept the Council’s response, but there was a possibility that he might ask for further information or decide to hold further hearings.

 

Accordingly, it was considered that the VALP would not be found to be sound before the new Buckinghamshire Council came into being.  It was understood that the new authority would continue to prioritise the final stages leading to adoption.

 

However it was indicated that some of the VALP policies already had some weight in planning terms, and the proposed allocations were counted in the five year housing supply.

 

The arrangements previously notified to Members for adopting the Plan would not now go ahead.

 

The Cabinet Member expressed her thanks to the Forward Plans Team for their continued hard work and persistence in ensuring that the Plan continued to move forward towards formal adoption.

 

Cabinet Member for Finance and Resources:

 

Aylesbury Vale Broadband (AVB)

 

Members were reminded that AVB had been set up in June,2015.  A loan facility of £1.5m had been made available from the Council to support the roll out of superfast broadband.  The Council had incurred costs on the creation and pilot phase of around £200,000.  The loan had come from a £1.536m reserve which the Council had created for improving broadband provision, funded from New Homes Bonus (NHB) monies made available by Central Government.  The money from the sale of AVB to Gigaclear, net of residual costs, would be returned to the NHB broadband pot.  Therefore the sale of AVB did not impact upon the Council’s revenue account.

 

As part of the sale of AVB in December, 2017, a non-disclosure agreement had been signed in relation to the sale price.  This was in perpetuity and if disclosure occurred, damages would be sought from the Council, or its successor for up to twelve years.

 

The Council’s accounts were subject to public scrutiny and although the purchase price paid by Gigaclear could not be revealed, the final cost to the Council of this venture could be.  This could not happen categorically until after AVB’s affairs had finally been wound up.  However the current estimate, including the creation and pilot phase was £371,000.

 

All outstanding warranties concerning the sale of AVB had now expired and the balance of the sale price had been paid to AVB.

 

Before AVB could repay its loan to the Council, it had to resolve one outstanding claim of £14,000 for damages dating back to 2016.  This matter was currently with AVB’s insurers.  It was anticipated that this matter would be settled before 31 March thereupon enabling AVB to be formally wound up.

 

Cabinet Member for Planning and Enforcement:

 

Improvements to the Planning Service

 

Members were aware that the planning service had been under significant scrutiny over the last 18 months due to a combination reasons, including a shortage of experienced planners, very high workloads and a very complex policy position whilst the adoption of VALP was awaited. All of these challenges had meant that performance, whilst still above Government targets, had fallen below the level expected by Members and Officers of the Council. 

 

Accordingly, the approach had been to change the emphasis of management from technical delivery to customer service and at the same time introduce an element of rigour into planning process improvements.

 

It was reported that in order to ensure proper governance and to give clear oversight to the improvement process, a planning improvement board co-chaired by the Cabinet Member for Planning and Enforcement and a Director had been established. The board contained senior officers, technical staff, project management staff and HR support.  Very importantly, the board also contained an external challenge in the form of an ex-chief planner who now worked for the Planning Advisory Service to give an independent oversight of the improvement process.

 

The Board had four distinct aims:-

 

(1)  To improve performance against Government Statistics.

 

(2)  To reduce complaints and handle them more effectively.

 

(3)  To reduce and eventually clear the backlog.

 

(4)  To reduce average number of days to process applications. 

 

The board had also used a combination of process simplification, targeted additional resources, better management information and a revised complaints process to address each of the objectives in turn.

 

The Cabinet Member reported the following improvements to the planning service:-

 

Application Type	Government Target	August 2019	November 2019
Major Applications	70%	78%	86%
Minor Applications	70%	55%	82%
Other  Applications	70%	84%	90%
Minor/Other Combined	70%	78%	88%

 

Complaints/Negative Comments	August 2019.	November 2019
Outstanding	60	10

 

Preparations were now well under way to hand the planning service to the new unitary authority and the service was now very much fit for purpose from the point of view of Government reporting and also the provision of an effective service for the public and means of  generating authority income. 

 

It had to be appreciated that there would always be complicated applications that would take longer to determine than the Council would ideally wish but work would continue on these on a case by case basis.  This impressive improvement in the  planning service had come about through the sustained and significant efforts of the Council’s planning officers and Members concurred with the Cabinet Member that it would be appropriate to convey the Council’s thanks to them of this authority for a job well done.   

Cabinet Member for Communities:

 

Rough Sleeper Initiative

 

Members were informed that AVDC had successfully secured funding for the third year from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to continue the delivery of its rough sleeper initiative, which had started in 2018.

 

Cross County, the total sum of £576,500 had been received.  Of this sum, AVDC had been awarded £267,000 and £309,500 had been made available to the other District councils in the County.  AVDC would use this funding to increase its work in the area of rough sleeping by increasing support and drug and alcohol workers.

 

The Cabinet member for Communities reported that the housing team had worked tirelessly over the last two years to identify gaps in services to direct the project, but also develop some really strong partnerships within Council services and external partners, including the Vale of Aylesbury Housing Trust (VAHT, Oasis, Aylesbury Homeless Action and mental health services.  Thus far, the team had managed to accommodate in excess of 90 clients who were either at high risk of rough sleeping or who were already homeless.  Effectively, 90 lives had been improved and positively affected by the work of the Council’s team.

 

The new Buckinghamshire Council was well equipped to tackle the problem collectively, with some areas of funding covering services across the County, such as outreach and emergency bed contracts.  Conversations were already taking place between all the teams and Public Health and some services had been commissioned to address a number of the outstanding areas of concern.  In Aylesbury, this included the need for high needs supported accommodation, and a County-wide Housing First Type model for those clients with the most complex needs.

 

Members welcomed this funding and asked that their thanks be conveyed to the team for all the work they had done.