Agenda item

To receive reports from Cabinet Members on their portfolios.

Members are reminded that they may ask questions of the Cabinet Member on their reports and portfolio areas but should note that it is not a debate.

No member may ask more than one question plus a supplementary question, unless the time taken by members’ questions does not exceed 30 minutes in total, in which case, second questions will be taken in the order that they are received (Constitution, Chapter 2, part 2, section 12.2)

Cabinet members (listed alphabetically)

Cllr A Fitch-Tillett – Coast

Cllr W Fredericks – Housing & Benefits

Cllr V Gay – Leisure, Culture & Wellbeing

Cllr R Kershaw – Sustainable Growth

Cllr N Lloyd – Environment

Cllr E Seward – Finance, Assets & Legal

Cllr L Shires – Organisational Resources

Cllr J Toye – Planning & Enforcement

The Chairman asked Cabinet members if they wished to provide a verbal update to their written reports.

Cllr A Fitch-Tillett updated members regarding the crack in the car park at Trimingham, which had been caused by storm Corrie. An initial estimate for repair was £15k.

Cllr G Hayman commented that there was no written report for the Leader. He sought confirmation that questions could be put to the Leader during this session. The Chairman confirmed that this was the case.

Cllr V Gay informed members that one of her portfolio holder reports was missing. An updated version had been sent to all members before the meeting.

Cllr G Hayman asked why no member of the existing Cabinet had put themselves forward for the position of Leader. He questioned the reason for this. He added that people should have the opportunity to set out ‘their stall’ as to why they wanted to be Leader. He then asked if the new Leader, Cllr Adam, if he would take the opportunity to apologise publicly for the procurement process for the capability review which had taken place under the former Leader. The Chief Executive replied that the matter was yet to be reported on by the External Auditor to the Council’s Governance, Risk & Audit Committee and any questions relating to this issue could be raised at the meeting of that committee. Cllr Adams said that there had been an election within the Liberal Democrat Group for the nomination for the role of Leader and that any member could put themselves forward if they wished. He said that the current Cabinet was comprised of experienced members and they were well placed to deal with the significant challenges that the Council would be dealing with in the coming months. He concluded by saying that he did not believe that he had anything to apologise for.

Cllr C Cushing congratulated Cllr Adams on his election to the role of Leader. He said he hoped to have a constructive working relationship. He said that Cllr Adams had inherited a Cabinet that had failed to produce any significant amount of income or cost savings for the Council and he asked how he intended to address this.

Cllr Adams replied said that he would focus on maintaining dialogue with local businesses. He said that he would be spending time on the ground across the District. He acknowledged that there was lots to do as the Council emerged into the recovery from the pandemic.

Cllr T FitzPatrick referred to Cllr Fredericks report and the section on homelessness and rough sleeping. He said that it referred to December 2022 and requested that it was changed to 2021. He then asked about the 3 rough sleepers that were refusing assistance. He sought information on the underlying reasons for this and what was being done to try and address them.  Cllr Fredericks (Portfolio Holder for Housing) was not at the meeting and Cllr Adams responded on her behalf. He said that a member of staff was fully engaged with the people concerned and that there was a range of reasons, including mental health issues. He assured Cllr FitzPatrick that there was regular contact with them. Cllr FitzPatrick replied that he would still like the details of the underlying problems and what was being done to address them.

Cllr E Vardy asked Cllr L Shires, Portfolio Holder for Organisational Resources, about call handling figures. He referred to the average call waiting time of 1 minute, 33 seconds and that this was within the Administration’s target of 2 minutes, 30 seconds. He asked for the longest wait time recorded and details of how many calls were abandoned due to delays in answering and whether these were a key performance indicator (KPI). He said that any failure to take abandoned calls into account would skew the statistics and it was important that they were included in future updates to Full Council. Cllr Shires referred Cllr Vardy to the Council’s performance management database, InPhase. She said that all members had full access to the information on this system and she would ensure that the information requested would be made available shortly. Regarding abandonment times, she said there were ongoing discussions around the level of detail to include but this work was almost complete and ready to share. She thanked Cllr Vardy for drawing attention to the improved call answering times and said that because of this, the Customer Services team had taken on housing benefit calls too. Cllr Vardy repeated his request that figures on abandoned calls were included in Cllr Shires portfolio report to Council.

Cllr E Spagnola said that she wished to put a question to Cllr Fredericks about the number of people on the housing waiting list. She referred to the current figure of 2627 with less than 10% being housed. She asked when this was likely to improve. Cllr E Seward replied on Cllr Fredericks behalf. He said that the figures were very worrying and many years ago social housing had been much more available. He said that in terms of private developers providing affordable housing as part of larger market housing schemes, they were limited on viability grounds as to what they could do. Ultimately there needed to be more public investment and this needed changes to the national financial framework and changes to legislation so that housing associations could build public housing again. He said this was desperately needed in North Norfolk where house prices far outstripped average earnings. The best way to level up was to ensure that people had security of housing.

Cllr N Pearce asked Cllr N Lloyd, Portfolio Holder for Environment, about the tree planting scheme. He said that the figures suggested that 65k trees still needed to be planted to meet the target of 110,000 and he asked how this would be achieved. Cllr Lloyd replied that things had moved on in recent weeks and as of 8^th February, 30,921 trees had been planted this season. This meant that by the end of March 2022, 60,900 trees would have been planted. He felt that the target was still achievable and the Council was already engaging with a lot of interested parties ahead of the next planting season. Cllr Lloyd added that hedgerows played an important part in sustaining biodiversity and several miles had been planted in Trunch.

Cllr G Mancini-Boyle referred to Cllr Lloyd’s portfolio holder report and the section on reminder emails being issued to over 2000 households where there was no record of payment for garden bins. He asked how this had happened, why it had taken so ling and how much officer time had been spent on this. Cllr Lloyd said that he had inherited this from the previous administration. The records needed ‘sanitising’ and over 4000 people had been contacted now, generating considerable revenue for the Council. He said that no additional staffing had been taken on for this work.

Cllr A Brown referred to page 74 and Cllr J Toye’s report. He said that he wanted to commend officers for the introduction of the web-based interactive reporting for enforcement matters. He asked whether the number of live cases (currently 305) was reducing and whether there was a strategy in place to reduce them further. Cllr Toye replied that they had already reduced further to 220. He added that the Enforcement Plan would be published soon but was confident that the strategy was working.