Question from Councillor Martin Smith
“We’re delighted that this Conservative Government has invested £210,426 of ‘Welcome Back Fund’ into Gedling to improve our high streets and public spaces. Could the Finance Portfolio Holder update us on where this funding has been spent?”
Question from Councillor Greensmith
“Can the Environment Portfolio Holder confirm plans for road sweeping during autumn to prevent flooding?”
Question from Councillor Adams
“What progress has the Council made to reduce its £200,000+ annual spend on B&B temporary accommodation?”
Question from Councillor Sam Smith
“This Council has spent £70,500 over the last three months on agency staff for our environment departments. This is in addition to £45,000 approved between April and June. Yet bin collections are still being missed. What is being done to recruit more internal staff, reduce the agency costs to the taxpayers of Gedling and improve bin collection services?”
Minutes:
Question from Councillor Martin Smith
“We’re delighted that this Conservative Government has invested £210,426 of ‘Welcome Back Fund’ into Gedling to improve our high streets and public spaces. Could the Finance Portfolio Holder update us on where this funding has been spent?”
Response from Councillor Michael Payne
“May I thank Councillor Smith for his question.
Just as a bit of background information, Gedling Borough Council was initially allocated £105,213 as part of the Reopening High Street Safely Fund in July 2020.
Despite claims from the opposition that the money has been provided by this Government, in reality this funding was sourced from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and is subject to European rules on eligibility, spend, and procurement processes.
As part of this process, the Government required a Grant Action Plan submitting and agreeing before any spend could be claimed for reimbursement, therefore any expenditure we did make during that year was committed at risk of not being eligible for reclaim.
This process took some time with the Grant Action Plan being submitted in July 2020 and the contract being finally signed by government officials in April 2021, some 9 months later. The end date for this project was 30th June 2021, giving us 10 weeks to spend it all, which was impossible. This has affected ALL local authorities and not just Gedling.
These design flaws in the initial scheme were recognised by the Government when they announced the new Welcome Back Fund this year. This Fund was set up in response to some of the criticisms of the Reopening High Street Safely Fund, and the inability by local authorities to spend it due to the inherent risks designed into the scheme. It is less prescriptive and gives a greater degree of flexibility over spend.
The new Welcome Back Fund allows for any underspends from the previous Reopening High Street Safely Fund to be added into this new scheme, which allocated a further £105,213 to Gedling Borough Council.
Turning to the question about what we are spending the grant on, I (Jenny) reported this to the Cabinet meeting held on 5th August this year. This report set out what the council has done since June 2020 and what it proposes to do up to 31st March 2022.
To summarise, these actions are:
- The Communications team are about to launch a ‘Rediscover’ campaign that aims to drive footfall in the town centres and get more people shopping locally across the borough. The campaign will highlight businesses across the region using the council’s social media channels.
- A new website dedicated to supporting local businesses and promoting Christmas events will be launched this month.
- Roll out a “quality scheme” for businesses to be accredited for being Covid secure.
- Continue employing a Retail Business Advisor, who has already made a significant impact working with our retail businesses in the borough, providing tailored support and building relationships.
- Use of footfall counters to provide an analysis of shoppers for each town centre area.
- Looking to develop a town centre app.
- Supporting and promoting a safe public environment through temporary public realm works, including appropriate Covid signage, new benches, planters etc.
- Delivery of bespoke activities within the town centres, for events such as the Xmas market etc.”
Question from Councillor Greensmith
“Can the Environment Portfolio Holder confirm plans for road sweeping during autumn to prevent flooding?”
Response from Councillor Payne
“Throughout the year, the council operates on an 8 weekly sweeping round cycle.
From the start of November, this is suspended in order to target areas of the borough that have a large number of mature trees.
We do this in order to clean up the leaf fall to prevent it blocking up the underground highways drainage system, which is a responsibility of the County Council.
If however an underground highways drainage system does become blocked, then the County have to send out one of their Gully vacuum machines to remove the accumulation of leaves.
Should a report of a blockage come through to councillors or officers, then it is helpful if we can request the resident to notify the County Council direct. Alternatively, our officers can do this on their behalf but it may take longer to resolve the problem.”
In response to a supplementary question about the scheduling of road sweepers, Councillor Payne described the process for raising service issues. He then reiterated the decision made to reallocate resources away from areas less prone to fallen leaves in order to address problem areas.
Question from Councillor Adams
“What progress has the Council made to reduce its £200,000+ annual spend on B&B temporary accommodation?”
Response from Councillor Henry Wheeler
“The Council at its budget meeting of 4th March 2021 agreed a budget of £1.154m for the purchase of up to 8 properties for use as temporary accommodation.
Since that time, officers have been reviewing the housing market regularly to ensure we identify newly advertised properties and undertake a viewing of the premises as soon as possible.
This work has been ongoing throughout this financial year and numerous properties have been inspected for their suitability. There is a high demand for properties in the borough from first time buyers and investors, and due to the lack of available homes on the market, there has been an increase in house prices.
Despite this, the authority has had 3 individual bids accepted and these are currently undergoing the relevant conveyancing process. The properties are:
- two 2-bedroom houses located in the Arnold area;
- one 3-bedroom property in Carlton.
The 3 properties are ideally located centrally in the Borough and have access to public transport, services and schools. The team continues to work closely with our local estate agents, and will continue to view properties each week with the aim of securing further suitable temporary accommodation for our residents.
The team has also been working in partnership with the County Council with the aim of leasing 3 school caretaker properties located within the borough. These are all 3-bedroom properties that are currently unoccupied and empty.
The proposal is to lease them over a 2-year period, and use them as an alternative to expensive Bed and Breakfast accommodation. The Department for Education has approved the proposal and they are with the respective council legal teams to agree the terms of the lease.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Housing Needs team utilised temporary accommodation managed by Rushcliffe Borough Council. This was an alternative for families to avoid emergency Bed and Breakfast accommodation, but during the pandemic this option was stopped.
However, from 1st November 2021, they are again accepting referrals and we are actively working with families currently placed in Bed and Breakfast accommodation to relocate them.
As a result of all of these measures, the council’s expenditure on bed and breakfast temporary accommodation should notably decrease over the coming months.”
In response to a supplementary question on the types of housing being purchased by the council, Councillor Wheeler explained that the market did not have sufficient properties for the Council to consider bidding on.
Question from Councillor Sam Smith
“This Council has spent £70,500 over the last three months on agency staff for our environment departments. This is in addition to £45,000 approved between April and June. Yet bin collections are still being missed. What is being done to recruit more internal staff, reduce the agency costs to the taxpayers of Gedling and improve bin collection services?”
Response from Councillor Michael Payne
“Agency staff are hired to cover for Annual Leave, Sickness Leave and Training, and to carry out Seasonal Grounds Maintenance work between April and October each year. They are also used as supply labour if the Waste service requires extra bin deliveries or bin collections.
They are hired on a daily basis as and when required, and are workers who live locally, supplied by our Agency contract provider.
During the Covid-19 epidemic, our Waste, Street Cleansing, Parks and Cemeteries staff have been working tirelessly to keep our council frontline services going.
Last year was a particularly difficult time requiring long periods of isolation if a member of staff and/or a family member caught Covid. It fell on the rest of the team to maintain the service, and our staff often gave up holiday entitlement to ensure the service was delivered.
As a result, staff working in these areas collected up a good deal of annual leave that has to be taken in this financial year, and this requires backfilling with agency labour.
To add a further layer of difficulty this year, the national situation with shortages in HGV drivers has resulted in 3 of our drivers leaving the council, all requiring additional cover to maintain our waste collection rounds.
Moving forward, I have asked officers to review the remaining leave entitlement for our frontline staff, and to estimate any further impacts on the budget in quarters 3 and 4. This will be presented in the quarterly budget monitoring report.
Yes I would agree that some bin collections are missed, but this is mainly due to blocked streets caused by badly parked cars. A refuse truck is a wide vehicle and sometimes we simply cannot get down a street. However if this happens, the waste crews do repeatedly return to try to collect the waste again.
We employ several methods to ensure that we can collect the waste:
- such as deploying a narrow vehicle,
- we request the County Council to place double yellow parking lines on street corners,
- we send flyers to residents houses asking them to be considerate when parking on bin collection days; and
- we used leaflets, our contacts magazine, and social media to promote the recycling and good parking message.
Satisfaction with our waste collection service is high amongst our residents, but we are not complacent and always strive to collect every bin first time.”
In response to a supplementary question on steps being taken to address the Environment Department’s overspend, Councillor Payne explained that reducing the expenditure on the Environment Budget will directly affect council services and the overspend is a result of ensuring the delivery of these services in difficult times.