Agenda item

To consider the progress made against the Community Services Improvement Plan. 

86.1          The report of the Head of Community Services, circulated at Pages No. 26-28, provided an update on the progress made in relation to the Community Services Improvement Plan.  Members were asked to consider the update and to agree that no further reports to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee were required.

86.2          The Head of Community Services advised that a review of Community Services had been undertaken in 2018 covering all services except waste.  At its meeting in July 2018, the Executive Committee had agreed an improvement plan focusing on Environmental Health, Housing, Community Safety and Licensing, attached at Appendix 1 to the report.  The Environmental Health service covered a range of activities including food hygiene, air quality, health and safety, noise and pollution.  One of the improvements was to undertake a trial of a new way of working by moving the staff into geographical teams where Officers would be responsible for all aspects of the Environmental Health service within their geographical area.  This had been trialled for a period of six months but feedback from Officers was that they lacked the in-depth knowledge of other disciplines outside of their specialist areas, as such, the team had moved back to the previous method of working within their specialisms.  It was noted that there had been no permanent Environmental Health Manager in post at the time of the review and the subsequent Manager had left after 18 months, just prior to the COVID pandemic, so it had taken some time to fill vacancies within the team; however, he was pleased to confirm that all vacant posts had now been recruited to, including the Environmental Health Manager role, so the service was able to progress.  In terms of housing, the Homelessness Reduction Act 2018 required the Council’s Housing department to undertake a more preventative approach to those threatened with homelessness.  It was fortunate that the Housing team already worked in a preventative way and new Officers had been employed in order to comply with the duties under the Act so the team was now working well. 

86.3          The Head of Community Services advised that one of his first tasks when he had joined the authority was to re-establish the Community Safety Partnership (CSP) which had been suspended at the time.  This had been done and an action plan was in the process of being finalised when the pandemic had hit.  The only outstanding action in the Community Services Improvement Plan was around delivering a meaningful Community Safety Plan and he provided assurance that would be in place by April 2023.  He went on to explain that the Council had previously had no resources to tackle anti-social behaviour and community safety requests but he was pleased to report there were now two Officers who dealt with antisocial behaviour, supported by a Community Safety Coordinator, and the reviews of community safety within the borough over the last few years demonstrated that the team was working well.  In terms of Licensing, it was noted that the actions within the Community Services Improvement Plan had been superseded by the Licensing Service Review which Members would be familiar with. 

86.4          A Member indicated that he had sat on the previous CSP which was essentially a talking shop for various issues which were raised and dealt with by the relevant people around the table; however, a lot of Members had started to feel disengaged and he hoped that would be addressed through the new Partnership.  The Head of Community Services recognised these concerns and advised that the Lead Member for Community would sit on the CSP and he would ensure that regular updates were provided to the wider Membership.  Furthermore, it was intended that the Community Safety Plan would be brought to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on an annual basis so there would be an opportunity to scrutinise the activities of the CSP going forward.

86.5          A Member drew attention to Page No. 29 of the action plan and sought clarification with regard to EH-6 which stated that commenting on planning applications had been brought back in-house and he asked if comments were made in a timely fashion.  The Head of Community Services confirmed that this had previously been outsourced to Worcester Regulatory Services but this created problems as those commenting were not familiar with Tewkesbury Borough; things had improved since bringing this back in-house.  Another Member asked who the customer was in this scenario and was informed that Environmental Health was a statutory consultee for planning so there was a requirement to consult with the department on certain aspects of a planning application depending on the concern - e.g. contaminated land, air quality, noise and the action required would vary accordingly.  The Member asked if site visits were undertaken and was advised that it was complex but the onus was generally on developers to provide Environmental Health with relevant reports.

86.6          With regard to EH7, the Member noted that a suite of KPIs were reported to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee as part of the performance tracker and asked whether there had been any changes and if there was now continuous improvement.  The Head of Community Services advised that certain areas were improving, for instance, food hygiene inspections, but he would need to refer to the performance tracker for specific details and report back following the meeting.  The Member expressed the view that it would have been helpful to have more information within the report before Members.  In terms of H2, which was an action about working better with the private rental sector to deliver a sustainable supply of temporary and emergency accommodation, he asked whether that accommodation had actually been delivered.  In response, the Head of Community Services indicated that there would never be enough of these types of accommodation, particularly at certain times of the year such as Cheltenham Race Week or times of adverse weather when there was a shortage of hotel accommodation.  Officers were doing their best across the county and a lot of work had been done with private sector landlords prior to the pandemic in terms of offering incentives to accept people on low income; however, there was very little take-up as private landlords were able to find their own tenants easily. 

86.7          A Member supported the recommendation that no further reports be provided to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and he noted that the Housing and Homelessness Strategy Action Plan was due to be considered at the next meeting of the Committee but he asked whether the Council still worked with P3 Housing as he could not find any reference to this on the website.  The Head of Community Services confirmed that references would be to Street Link which was delivered by P3 Housing.  The Member indicated that he was particularly concerned about the lack of rural social housing and was interested to know how the Council’s relationship with Bromford, in particular, worked given that the Council’s housing stock had been transferred a long time ago. 

86.8          A Member asked for clarification as to what had happened to the Environmental Health team and whether this would be reviewed again and was advised that Environmental Health had evolved over the years – 40 years ago it was commonplace for Officers to work in a particular patch on all of the various disciplines but within the last 20 years this had changed as Officers began to focus on specialisms.  The Head of Community Services explained that Tewkesbury Borough Council had a very small team of specialist Officers so it would be difficult to expect them to become experts in all areas and that was not the way the profession was trained anymore.  Nevertheless, it had worked in other places and the idea was that it could work in Tewkesbury Borough so it had been trialled but was not logical for a small team which could not maintain the expertise required.  The team had spoken to him and explained the reasons why it was not working and he had been in complete agreement to revert back. 

86.9          A Member indicated that he would have liked to have known what had actually been done with regard to each action rather than just a tick in a box on the action plan to say it had been implemented and he would like Officers to take this on board for future reports.  The Head of Community Services noted the comment and it was

RESOLVED           That the update on progress of the Community Services Improvement Plan be NOTED and it be AGREED that no further reports be brought to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee.