Agenda item

The Annual Work Programme has been reviewed and a draft schedule has been prepared, with suggested topics as well as standard, cyclical items.

Members are invited to review the proposed work programme and suggest topics for inclusion for the forthcoming year, taking into consideration the guiding principles (Appendix A) and the changes agreed by the Committee in July 2024 (Appendix B).

The Chairman invited the Assistant Director for Legal & Democratic Services to provide an update on the work programme.

Cllr Holliday asked about the scheduling of scrutiny of the Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) process and whether this could be brought forward to the June meeting. The Chief Executive replied that June was too premature to consider this. Feedback from MHCLG had just been received, at a meeting with Norfolk partners. A lot of preparatory work was needed and a procurement for a strategic partner to assist in this was underway, as well as several themed workstreams focussed on service delivery and reform. These would commence in early June.

He said that he would write to all members advising how this would move forward in the coming weeks and it was unlikely that there would be anything substantive to share at the June meeting of the committee, given that the majority of the work would not commence until early in the month. He went onto say that he was intending to hold a briefing for town and parish councils towards the end of June and then a workshop briefing in July for members, ahead of a formal special meeting of Full Council in September (date tbc) which would be a co-ordinated meeting across the partnered Norfolk councils to agree the final submission to central government.

The Chairman thanked the Chief Executive for the update. He acknowledged that there was a lot of work to be done and it was accepted that a consensual approach would be preferable. The planning and delivery of this was a considerable amount of work in a short period of time. He added that it would be helpful if the Committee could understand the timescales and how the work would be achieved over the next 4 months. The Chief Executive acknowledged this and said that the timescales were set by central government. He assured members that work was progressing at pace, in line with the criteria set out by Government.

Cllr S Penfold suggested that the NWHAZ update should come to June instead of July and that it would be difficult to accommodate scrutiny of LGR prior to September. Cllr Housden agreed. The Chief Executive confirmed that a final submission for LGR would go to Full Council in mid-September and an all-member briefing would be held in July.  It was not possible or beneficial to bring a report to Overview & Scrutiny before then, for the reasons given earlier and a workshop for all members may be a better approach.

It should be noted that work was also progressing towards the creation of a new Mayoral Combined Authority, which would be taking up officer time too in the coming months.

Cllr Housden asked if there were elements of the LGR process that could be extracted and then considered by the Committee. The Chief Executive replied that further discussions would be needed before he was able to respond on this.

Cllr Fredericks suggested that the workshop briefing took place first and any key issues arising from this could then come to the committee. The Chairman agreed that there were potentially issues of duplication but added that it was important that the committee understood the overarching structure of the process and how it would progress over the coming months. Consideration could then be given as to how the committee could add value to the process. The Chief Executive replied that he was intending to share a ‘road map’ of the process with all members soon but added that it may be helpful to bring the workshop earlier and then any issues arising from this could be considered at the July meeting of the committee.

Cllr Holliday said that she was concerned that a workshop may not generate the feedback that was necessary to highlight key areas or themes for the committee to then focus on. She added that it was important that the committee added value and agreed that it was probably best to start with the workshop and see what came out of that.

The Chief Executive said that it may not be possible to bring the North Walsham HAZ update forward as the Economic Growth Team was under considerable pressure at the moment. He said he would clarify the situation and report back.

Cllr Holliday suggested that Anglian Water could be requested to come to the June meeting as the schedule was currently very light.

Cllr C Cushing commented on the new start time for the meeting and asked if it would be possible to revert to the 9.30am start. Cllr Heinrich agreed and said that a later start time for the Development Committee had not been beneficial and the meeting had over-run into the afternoon.

The Monitoring Officer said that any change to the meeting times and dates would need to go to Full Council. This was unanimously agreed.

Cllr Cushing said that this was Cllr Dixon’s last meeting as Chairman of the committee and he invited members to join him in thanking him for his hard work and commitment. It was a challenging committee to chair and Cllr Dixon had done an excellent job. Cllr Dixon thanked members and said that it had worked well because members and officers had worked well together and he wished the committee well for the future. Cllr Penfold reiterated Cllr Cushing’s comments and thanked Cllr Dixon for his support and encouragement and said it had been a pleasure to be Vice-Chairman during his tenure.