Agenda item

Report from the Assistant Chief Executive.

 

Recommendations:

 

That Cabinet:

 

1. Recommend to Council that the Council Plan 2025-30 be approved.
   
   
2. Agree the Year Ahead Delivery Plan for 2025-26.

 

3. Note that future progress reports will be presented to Cabinet in January and July 2026.

 

The Chair invited the Leader of the Council, Councillor Read to introduce the new Council Plan and Year Ahead Deliver Plan, supported by the Chief Executive, Sharon Kemp OBE and the Assistant Chief Executive, Jo Brown.

 

The Leader introduced the presentation and made the following points:

·       The Council Plan was a strategic document that set out the vision, priorities, and objectives for the next five years.

·       The Year Ahead Delivery Plan sat underneath the Council Plan and detailed all the key activities for the next year.

·       The Council Plan was structured to ensure a "golden thread" from the council's vision down to individual staff objectives.

·       The Council would carry forward any objectives not delivered in the previous Year Ahead Delivery Plan.

·       Consultation was conducted between September and November 2024, and included online surveys, focus groups, and public engagements at various locations such as Clifton Park, Dinnington, Maltby, Aston, and Rawmarsh.

·       The consultation resulted in 2,000 interactions.

·       Some positive aspects reported in the consultation included access to green spaces, the physical environment, so close to amenities and easy of travel between places, and the community spirit.

·       Some areas for improvement highlighted in the consultation were community safety, tackling antisocial behaviour, cleaner streets, road improvements, and town centre regeneration.

·       The new plan focused on outcomes rather than just outputs.

·       There were five main themes to the new Council Plan which were:

o   Thriving, safe and clean places.

o   An economy that works for everyone.

o   Children and young people achieving.

o   Residents living well.

o   One council that listens and learns.

 

The Chief Executive continued the presentation and made the following points:

 

Thriving, Safe, and Clean Places:

·       This theme focused on vibrant communities, better public spaces, town centre revitalization, and community safety.

·       This built on the work already undertaken though the Thriving Neighbourhood Strategy, ward plans and the investment throughout the borough.

·       Some of the key actions would be the launch of the Street Safe team, redevelopment of Rother Valley and Thrybergh Country Parks, and investment in community facilities.

 

Economy that Works for Everyone:

·       This theme focused on support for local businesses, enhancing skills, and connecting people to opportunities.

·       This focused on having a comprehensive package of support and advice that enabled businesses to start, develop and grow along with building on the Council’s award-winning Social Value Policy and activity.

·       Some of the key actions would be support for 20 businesses to improve shop units in the town centre, economic inactivity trailblazer to help those who were economically inactive to re-enter the workforce, and new tram train stop at Magna, working with partners.

 

The Assistant Chief Executive continued the presentation and made the following points:

 

Children and Young People Achieving:

·       This theme focused on the following three priorities:

o   Fun activities.

o   Enabling children to thrive.

o   Keeping them safe from harm.

·       The key actions for this theme were the investment in Clifton Park water splash facility, the legacy program from Children's Capital of Culture, and improving access to youth activities.

 

Residents Living Well:

·       The Council had made significant strides in enabling residents to lead happier, healthier and more independent lives.

·       The theme focused on:

o   Better physical and mental wellbeing.

o   Independent living.

o   Affordable homes.

·       The actions for this were the launch of a specialized support service for people who had attempted suicide, the completion of Castle View Day Centre, and the continuation of the Council Homes delivery program.

 

One Council that Listens and Learns:

·       This theme would build on the success to date, in terms of being a Council that listened and learned and worked with communities in a strength-based approach recognising it could not do everything itself.

·       The theme focused on improving customer experience, working with community partnerships, workforce development, and addressing climate change.

·       The actions being undertaken were reducing customer wait times, new consultation software, modern recruitment methods, and the installation of solar panels on town centre properties.

 

The Chair invited members of the Overview and Scrutiny Management Board (OSMB) to raise questions and queries on the points raised earlier.

 

Councillor Blackham raised concerns about the consultation process and felt it was skewed towards the town centre, suggesting the more is done to engage with the outlying wards of the borough. The Leader acknowledged there was always a challenge for the Council in terms of engaging residents on corporate consultations. It was understandable that more responses came from the central urban areas, as that was where the bulk of the population for the borough lived. It was noted that more of an effort was made to engage with areas of the borough where engagement with the Council had been lower, but it was acknowledged that more could be done. The Leader felt it had been a reasonable sample of opinions from across the borough and had included engagement with partners and stakeholders.

 

Councillor Brent questioned the absence of children's services as a priority and emphasized the need to make children's services a priority in voters' minds. The Leader noted that when consulting with people in broad terms their priorities were the ones that affected most people, however when in the world of social care, there were a relatively small number of people who were affected, albeit in a profound way. The Leader felt that people should be informed about the way the Council needed to spend its funding, but the Council should be informed by the consultation results, not bound by them. The Council Plan had chosen to have a priority for children who were less advantaged.

 

Councillor McKiernan sought further information regarding the new business start up initiative. The Strategic Director for Regeneration and Environment explained the Council’s business support team provided business advice to people interested in setting up new businesses. In the last couple of years that team had supported around sixty new business set up each year with a target of 70 for this year. It was clarified that no direct financial support was provided to those businesses. The Leader clarified that the Council did offer some business productivity grants to existing businesses who meet the criteria.

 

Councillor Yasseen welcomed the continued investment in housing, roads and road safety, free school meals. It would be beneficial to understand what the proposals looked like from a ward perspective.

 

Councillor Yasseen emphasized the need for a robust policy on children's attainment and addressing child poverty and suggested focusing on free school meals and pupil premiums. The Leader indicated that the Plan measured GCSE results because it was the key national indicator or success through the first sixteen years of a child’s life. The roles of Council’s in education had been rolled back substantially over the course of the last 20 years so the Council’s ability to intervene, even in terms of school approvement, was greatly reduced. The Council was dependent on schools / academies purchasing services to address some of those challenges, although the Council had strong engagement with schools. The Leader confirmed that work was being undertaken to develop an appropriate strategy to address this area.

 

The Vice-Chair felt the consultation had been focused heavily on the town centre and it would have been good to capture more rural villages as part of it. The Vice-Chair went on to highlighted issues raised within the consultation regarding antisocial behaviour and cleaner streets. The Vice-Chair suggested moving from a perception-based approach to a prevention mindset. The Leader felt there was a particular challenge around perceptions within the town centre and the likelihood of them coming to harm in that place. The proposal around street safety was to provide a degree of assuredness, which helped to tackle some elements of antisocial behaviour along with people’s perceptions. Where problems were a reality, the Council would want to see those addressed along with helping their perceptions so that they could go about their daily lives, freely and confidently. The Leader confirmed that more investment had been made to provide additional street cleaning, and more grass cutting.

 

The Vice-Chair said that he understood that some residents were indicating that some bins had been left unemptied for long periods of time. To address this query the Chair asked the Strategic Director of Regeneration and Environment to provide a schedule of when bins were emptied in each ward of the authority, including details of how many times those bins have been missed and why they've been missed. Members of OSMB could then discuss if this should be considered as part of it’s work programme for 2025-2026. The Leader noted that members had a responsibility to raise repeated issues in their locations through their neighbourhood and ward-based teams.

 

The Vice-Chair felt an issue raised as part of the consultation was the roads and pavements and queried if micro asphalt would used to resurface pavements? The Strategic Director for Regeneration and Environment explained the individual treatment would depend on the situation at the time but might include that treatment or could include other treatments.

 

Councillor McKiernan inquired about the climate change actions in the plan, noting that there were only four actions within the Year Ahead Delivery Plan. The Leader indicated the Council had a Climate Change Action Plan that was reviewed annually.

 

Councillor Tinsley noted the introduction of route optimisation software for bin collections and suggested setting more ambitious targets for green flag status parks. The Leader noted a piece of work being undertaken which considered the way the Council looked after its green spaces, which may include aspect of improving the quality of them.

 

The Vice-Chair raised concerns the Uley reservoir had been left behind with improvements being made elsewhere. Concerns were also raised regarding road safety, and it was his understanding that no action could be taken until there was a death. The Leader explained that a decision had been taken as a result of the funding available that capital works at Thrybergh and Rother Valley County Parks would be prioritised. The Leader clarified that the legal requirement in terms of road safety related to fatalities, but this did not mean that nothing could be done until someone was hurt. Additional funding had been made available for the local road safety neighbourhood schemes. This wasn’t an infinite amount of cash so there was a limit on works that could be undertaken in a particular area, but work was undertaken locally by ward members in each ward which went towards address some of those road safety concerns. The Chief Executive explained that colleagues in the road safety team were very passionate and cared deeply that residents and everyone who used the borough could do so safety but that they enacted their job in line with national legislation.

 

Councillor Yasseen queried some of the data provided within the equality analysis and suggested that it should be clarified. The links within the plan to the South Yorkshire Mayoralty were noted and queried how councillors could engage with that in terms of governance, transparency and accountability. The Chair explained that the South Yorkshire Mayoral authority had a scrutiny body, of which he and the Vice-Chair were members of and could scrutinise the Mayor, his activities and policies. He noted that members of the public could ask questions at those meetings. The Leader noted that members could influence the way the Council did business in the normal ways. The Chair noted that consideration would be given as to how members on the Mayoral Scrutiny group could report back to this Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Management Board.

 

Resolved: That the Overview and Scrutiny Management Board supported the recommendations that Cabinet:

1.    Recommend to Council that the Council Plan 2025-30 be approved.

2.    Agree the Year Ahead Delivery Plan for 2025-26.

3.    Note that future progress reports will be presented to Cabinet in January and July 2026.

 

Further actions that arose from discussions were that:

·       OSMB requested a schedule of when bins were emptied in each ward of the authority, including details of how many times those bins have been missed and why they've been missed.

• OSMB requested that consideration be given to widening the consultation process for future significant projects:
  • A suggestion to consider utilising members in their ward capacity to support consultations.
  • Another suggestion to consider was the collection of consultees postcodes to give an indication of which area of the borough they were from.