Agenda and minutes

Venue: Chappell Room. View directions

Contact: Helen Elizabeth Lee  Elections and Members' Services Officer

Items
No. Item

86.

Apologies for Absence and Substitutions.

87.

To approve, as a correct record, the minutes of the meeting held on 20 July 2015 pdf icon PDF 81 KB

Minutes:

RESOLVED:

 

That the minutes of the above meeting, having been circulated, after amendment to include Councillor John Truscott as present, be approved as a correct record.

 

88.

Declaration of Interests.

Minutes:

None.

89.

Quarter 1 Performance pdf icon PDF 82 KB

Minutes:

The Council Solicitor and Monitoring Officer Helen Barrington provided an overview of Quarter 1 2015/2016 performance which was presented to Cabinet on 24th September.

 

·         The data in this report refers to the first quarter of the financial year only and is expected that performance targets identified for the year will be met

 

·         In the main performance at the end of quarter 1 is positive but largely below target. 10 of the 29 performance indicators that are appropriate for quarterly monitoring are on target and of the remainder, two are at amber status and 15 are red

 

·         Targets have yet to be set for two indicators relating to crime within the South Nottinghamshire Community Safety Partnership

 

·         Quarter 1 targets are often behind, particular areas which are below target are:

 

o   Number of visits to leisure centres

o   Preventing Homelessness – average time to process applications

o   Preventing Homelessness – provision of support and advice

o   Percentage of fly tipping incidents removed within 2 working days. There has been an unusually high number of fly tipping incidents reported, the majority of which relate to the dumping of builders rubble.  Prosecutions of both offenders and householders are undertaken if there is sufficient evidence. Officers report incidents and elected members are encouraged to report any occurrences they see.

 

·         Currently, all 63 actions are either on target or completed.

 

RESOLVED:

 

            To note the Quarter 1 performance information.

 

 

 

90.

Scrutiny Work Programme 2015/2016 pdf icon PDF 102 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Scrutiny Reviews 2014/2015

Transport Links to, and within Gedling Borough

 

The Members Services Officer informed Members about the responses and comments received from the Portfolio Holder, Notts. County Council, Nottingham City Transport and Trent Barton.  Members of the Committee, and the three members of the Youth Council who had been part of the working group, were invited to comment on the responses.

 

Recommendation 7 included a response from the Commercial Manager, Nottingham City Transport regarding working on marketing campaigns for young people.  Members of the Youth Council indicated that they would like to take up this offer.  They also asked for some clarification regarding the response from Notts. County Council to Recommendation 5 regarding the age limit for statutory concessionary fares.

 

The Chair thanked the three members of the Youth Council for attending the meeting and their valuable input into the working group.

 

 

2015/2016 Work Programme

 

1.     Scrutiny at committee

 

·         Programme of Portfolio Holding holding to account

 

Members were informed that Councillor David Ellis, Portfolio Holder for Public Protection, would be attending the next meeting of the committee to discuss and respond to questions on the responsibilities within his Portfolio.  Members were invited to identify areas of performance they would like to consider at the next meeting.

 

After discussion areas agreed for examination:

 

·         Radicalisation

·         Safeguarding of vulnerable adults

·         Emergency planning in relation to the provision of grit bins

·         Progress of the animal welfare policy

 

Members were reminded of the importance of submitting questions in advance of the meeting. None executive members will also be asked to suggest questions for the Portfolio Holder.

 

·         Bonington Theatre

 

After considering  the written report and discussion it was decided that a working group would be set up to look at  this report and additional reports to determine if this is an issue that they would like to examine further in further detail.

 

Councillor Gregory will chair this group and Councillor S Barnes, M Paling and B Andrews will be involved in this review.

 

·         Recording of Meetings

 

The Members’ Service Officer gave a verbal update on the progress of the recommendation to introduce a system of audio recording and webcasting which went to Cabinet on the 24th September.  Cabinet has agreed to adopt the recommendation for Council and Planning Committee meetings.  The success of this will be reviewed after 6 months when consideration will be given to extending it to other committees including Cabinet.

 

·         Information Requested

 

Members were informed that information regarding the Planning Improvement Plan and report would be going to the Planning Committee on 14th October. An update will be available at the next Overview Committee meeting in December.

 

2.            Scrutiny in working groups

 

·         Smoking and Obesity working group

 

The Committee were informed that the first meeting of the working group had taken place and that the review would be divided into two separate sections with obesity the initial focus. Representatives from Public Health attended the meeting and presented data regarding the prevalence and growing problem of excessive weight and the work  ...  view the full minutes text for item 90.

91.

Scrutiny of Crime and Disorder pdf icon PDF 86 KB

Minutes:

David Ellis, Portfolio Holder, David Wakelin, Corporate Director, Andy Callingham, Service Manager Public Protection and David Jayne, Community Safety and Safeguarding Manager attended the meeting to inform members about the work of the Crime and Disorder Partnership and provide essential background information about how the partnership works, and what it does, to enable them to determine issues for examination at the December meeting.

Local authorities and the police to work in partnership with other agencies to develop and implement a strategy for tackling crime and disorder in their area, working to reduce crime and antisocial behaviour and fear of crime.  Members were informed that the South Notts. Crime and Disorder partnership is made up of Broxtowe, Gedling and Rushcliffe and membership includes the three local authorities the Police, the fire and rescue authority, the clinical commissioning group. Ruth Hyde CEX Broxtowe is chair of the strategic group, and David Wakelin chair of the executive group which has responsibility for managing performance.   The Partnership has three strategic themes:

 

·         Early intervention

·         Prevention of offending

·         And increasing public confidence

 

 Allied to this are programme groups for:

·         Targeted support and Youth Justice Partnership

·         Substance misuse

·         Reducing re-offending

·         Hate crime

·         Domestic violence,

 

Reducing crime and anti-social behaviour is not just the Police and local authority working together but a whole range of organisations including community partners. Members learnt about locality working and how a whole range of partners including the local authority, housing providers, youth services, children’s centres and schools work together in a number of ways.  Information and data analysis enable focused interventions in high crime and antisocial behaviour areas which can include targeting offenders, improving physical environments, installing CCTV and supporting victims. Netherfield is a Partnership Plus which attracts extra resources to combat high crime and anti-social behaviour levels.

Gedling ASB/Vulnerable Persons Panel is chaired by the Community Safety and Safeguarding Manager. Referrals are taken from a wide range of agencies for vulnerability, including hate crime and repeat victimisation and there is a multiagency response for victims and families.  These groups work with victims and look at what makes people vulnerable, one of the key partners in this is the Mental Health from the County Council.

The ASB and Policing Act allow 6 powers to be used:

·         Injunctions to prevent annoyance and nuisance– none have been served as has not been necessary

·         Criminal behaviour orders – 3 served by the Police

·         Dispersal Powers – 4 undertaken by the Police

·         Community Protection Notices – 25 notices, possibly noise nuisance that has escalated

·         Public Space Orders – none served

·         Closure Orders – none served

 

There is also a community trigger where 3 cases of ASB in the last 6 months can result in the case being reviewed to see if they meet the threshold for action.  None of these have been issued.

Performance in Gedling on the whole is good and crime figures are falling.  Gedling performed better than the Community Safety Partnership average for all the main crime groups over the last 3 month  ...  view the full minutes text for item 91.

92.

Police Community Support Officer Reductions pdf icon PDF 81 KB

Minutes:

The Chair welcomed Paddy Tipping, Police and Crime Commissioner and Chief Superintendent Mark Holland and invited Mr Tipping to give an overview of the reduction in the number of Police Community Support Officers.

 

A report which informed the Police and Crime Panel about a petition primarily organised by Unison regarding the proposed reductions was circulated. 

 

Paddy Tipping then presented an overview of the scale and explained the need to make the reductions.  Even with the reduction of 70 Nottinghamshire is still well above the national average for numbers of PCSOs and all parts of the County will have access to a neighbourhood policing team which will include PCSOs. The decision to reduce the number of has been driven entirely by the tough financial climate, Nottinghamshire Police has had to make savings of £45 million pounds over the last three years, last year £11 million was saved and there may be a need to save even more after the comprehensive spending reviewin November. It is envisaged that between 2010 and 2020 Nottinghamshire Police will have lost 50% of its Government Grant. Funding for the police is made up of 70% government grant and 30% council tax.  As a consequence of these reductions a review and reconfiguration of services has been required.  Approximately 80% of the Police budget is spent on officers and staff and it has been necessary to look at all staffing to identify where reductions can be made.  Nottinghamshire is currently not recruiting officers and as officers leave and retire this could lead to a reduction of up to 110 posts next year.  Other staff reductions at senior level, including assistant Chief Constables and Chief Superintendents, the closure of front counters and changes in back office services have also been made.

 

The need to make budget reductions has underlined the necessity to concentrate resources in areas of high crime.  Areas that have low crime rates will have a reduced number of PCSO’s; areas of high crime will get more. Deployment of officers is the responsibility of the Chief Constable. 

 

Maximising efficiencies includes:

·         a focus on mental health.  From February this year no children with a mental health issue have been taken into custardy this has be rolled out to include adults from the first of October.  This is supported by partnership work with other agencies to achieve this for example a community psychiatric nurse accompanying police officers to incidents.

·         retraining of backroom staff to identify priority telephone calls and those which are relevant for the police action. Not all crime incidents need a visit and it is important to establish early during reporting if a visit is required.

·         response officers spending less time in custardy suites – prison handler roles now undertake this role.

·         allocating where there is demand, some neighbourhood teams may cover larger areas where crime levels are low

·         generally local beat meetings will be maintained however they may be less frequent in rural areas

·         sharing of back office functions and looking at joint procurement with  ...  view the full minutes text for item 92.

93.

Any other item which the Chair considers urgent.

Minutes:

None.