Meeting documents

To consider the attached report.

Contact Officer:  Gareth Bird (01296) 585228

The Committee received a report on the services provided by the Community Spaces Team. The services provided by the team include the following:

•           Procure, manage, monitor, and administer contracts covering; horticulture and street cleaning operations, public conveniences cleaning, public health funerals, and parks improvements

•           Identify and deliver improvement projects in parks and open spaces

•           Secure external funding to enable the delivery of improvement projects

•           Provide safe and good quality play provision

•           Develop partnerships with suppliers, community groups, and statutory bodies

•           Manage and monitor developer S106 leisure contributions

•           Develop and maintain sports pitches and related facilities including booking service

•           Investigate instances of fly tipping and enforce fly tipping laws in liaison with the Waste Partnership for Bucks

•           Investigate reports of abandoned vehicles and arrange for disposal

•           Manage and deliver the public health funerals service

•           Fulfil customer enquiries including service requests, compliments, complaints, and comments.

The services provided had been done during a time of staffing structure change due to the Heritage Team Leader post becoming vacant. 12 months ago, the Green Spaces Team had been realigned across the organisation which had led some redundancies. The management of trees on AVDC land and the strategic management of AVDC parks had transferred to the Community Spaces Team. Work related to commenting on planning applications and S106 negotiations for leisure infrastructure had also transferred to the CST, with no additional posts created to cover this work.

The team had achieved a seven year contract saving of £1.4m through procuring a single contract to provide a horticulture and street cleaning service in the district as opposed to the two previous separate contracts for these services. Similarly, a dog waste service had been incorporated into the work done by horticulture and street cleaning contract rather than having a separate contract. Other achievements include:

•           Positive outcome from an internal audit regarding our management of the Street Cleansing and Horticulture Contract, including monitoring of work and financial controls.

•           Working differently to reduce staff number from 13 to 7 employees. This had meant some functions such as the Vale Park warden service had stopped, although with minimal impact given the site had a presence through PCSOs and Aqua Vale Leisure Centre, combined with changes to make the site safer.

•           Horticulture services provided to Buckinghamshire Fire Brigade via our Street Cleaning and Horticulture Contract; providing another public body with savings compared to their previous arrangements.

•           Green Flag awards for Vale and Bedgrove Parks had been secured.

•           The subsidy of pitch provision for football had been reduced by closely monitoring demand to ensure each pitch was fully utilised.

•           The outcome of a RoSPA access and play value audit confirmed all sites had a minimum play rating of good.

•           Management plans for closed churchyard that AVDC were responsible for had been produced with excellent stakeholder involvement and had been published on the website. Linked to this, a programme for memorial testing was now in place.

•           External funding secured from; WREN for Bridge Street play area, SITA Trust for Cottesloe Green ball court, Sport England for an artificial cricket wicket at Alfred Rose Park.

•           Support the establishment and continuation of parkrun at Riverside Walk, Aylesbury and Heartlands, Buckingham.

•           No loss of town/parish sport/leisure S106 funds, due to funds being spent within the agreed deadline.

Members sought further information and were informed that:-

(i)            gully pots on highways were a County Council responsibility, while AVDC was responsible for road sweeping and leaves in gutters.

(ii)           the council had a statutory responsibility for Public Health Funerals when  relatives could not be found to pay for the cost of the person’s funeral. Wherever possible, the council would endeavour to recover the cost from the person’s estate.

RESOLVED –

The contents of the report and the services provided be noted.