Minutes:
(1) Councillor Donaldson asked if the Cabinet Member could tell her what plans the Council had made for Rotherham to celebrate St. George’s Day?
Councillor Smith reported that the Big Screen in All Saints' Square would display the St. George’s Flag with "Happy St. George's Day" message explaining he was the Patron Saint for England on 23rd April, 2009.
Rotherham Visitor Centre would also display the St. George's Flag in their window.
Advice and guidance was currently being provided to Rotherham and District Scouts Group about their St. George's Day parade on Sunday, 26th April, 2009.
(2) Councillor Donaldson asked had the Council already made a decision to sell or close neighbourhood centres for Cliff Hill/Redwood Drive, Maltby and/or The Lings, Bramley?
Councillor Akhtar explained that no decision had been made of this nature at all. The review of Neighbourhood Centres attached to sheltered housing was ongoing and a full programme of Member Consultation would be rolled out during March and April, 2009.
(3) Councillor Donaldson asked how often was litter picking undertaken in any one area of Rotherham and how much funding was allocated to this service?
Councillor R. S. Russell confirmed that litter picking work was scheduled with the aim of targeting resources to achieve acceptable standards of cleanliness based on an area’s potential for litter generation. This meant that high litter generation areas such as shopping parades, outside schools, high density social housing estates and so on were cleansed at a higher frequency than for example low density residential areas and rural roads.
A variety of cleansing frequencies were used to achieve the desired standards. For litter picking, the scheduled frequencies varied from daily cleansing through to once every nine weeks. In addition, mechanical sweeping of the road gutters is undertaken at frequencies varying from weekly on some principal roads through to four times per annum on estate roads.
Many estate and rural road locations did not regularly generate litter and consequently were not scheduled for routine litter clearance. Litter on these was generally dealt with by the road gutter sweeping, but where standards were unsatisfactory then a one off cleansing was arranged.
The total funding allocated to Litter Picking (including emptying of litter and dog waste bins) was £1,447,000, this excluded the cost of other Street Cleansing activities such as mechanical sweeping of road gutters, graffiti and fly tipping removal, gum removal, provision of litter and dog waste bins.
(4) Councillor Donaldson asked how much had the Council spent on Consultants in the last five years?
The Deputy Leader reported that the Council engaged Consultants only when there was a need to buy in specialist knowledge and advice, or when there was insufficient capacity in a service to meet demands at a particular time. They often played a very valuable enabling role which allowed the Council to progress its business. In addition, they were also used to provide expert training and development for employees and Members.
Quantifying spend on Consultants was not easily achieved, because spend was recorded more by the nature of work undertaken than by who did it. However, Councillor Donaldson was informed that a full financial analysis was currently being carried out by officers of the Council.
The Council’s arrangements for using Consultants was something which Elected Members were very focused on and was part of an ongoing Scrutiny Review, with a final report to be considered by the Performance and Scrutiny Overview Committee on 13th March, 2009.
(5) Councillor Donaldson asked had the Council ever considered approaching small families in large Council houses to assist in the reduction of the waiting list for larger families?
Councillor Akhtar reported that the new Allocation Policy now gave priority to households who wished to downsize to a smaller home. Suitable households identified through the Housing Register Review, i.e. those potentially under occupying their Council home, were asked if they wished to be given a Priority to Move. An Allocation Policy Summary booklet had also been posted to all households on the Housing Register which explained the Priority categories and provided basic information on to apply to move home. In December, 2008 an article together with a “Helpline” to promote “moves for smaller families” was published on the Council’s Employees wage/salary slips. In addition, all Members received a briefing note from the Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods summarising the new Allocation Policy.
(6) Councillor Fenoughty asked how much revenue did the Council generate annually from Rother ValleyCountry Park?
Councillor Smith explained that the Council generates approximately £611,000 (2008/09 target) income per year from Rother ValleyCountry Park. When taken from expenditure this left a net revenue cost to the Council of approximately £407,000 per annum.
(7) Councillor Hughes asked could it be confirmed that as part of the developments with Oak Holdings at Rother ValleyCountry Park the Council was intending to transfer the Country Park to Oak Holdings free of charge as part of this development?
Councillor Smith reported that the overall scheme of the future management of the Rother Valley and Pit House West sites was for it to be managed as a single entity. As part of the proposed arrangements the Council would indeed ask Oak Holdings to manage RotherValleyCountryPark. This would be based on a gradually decreasing financial input from the Council over five years. After five years the cost to the Council for the operation of RotherValley CountryPark would be zero and all costs would be met by Oak Holdings. At current prices this was a net (costs minus income) saving of approximately £407,000 per annum. This represented good value for money for the Council.
(8) Councillor Hughes stated at the last Rother Valley South Area Assembly meeting a Council officer gave a brief presentation on the status of asylum seekers here in Rotherham. He told the Assembly that the Council has placed 73 Council house properties at the disposal of immigration services for housing asylum seekers. A little further into his presentation he stated that currently Rotherham was dealing with over 800 people being housed whilst their applications were being considered. Councillor Hughes was sure the Council was not placing ten people into one house, so could the Cabinet Member explain the number and type of accommodations above the 73 Council stock that was being provided for these people and what the costs of these additional housing requirements were?
Councillor Akhtar explained that the Council was one of four accommodation providers operating in Rotherham on behalf of the Home Office. Each accommodation provider had a contract with the Home Office. Three of the accommodation providers solely used houses rented from private sector landlords. The Council’s Asylum Team used a mixture of public sector accommodation (the 73 Council houses referred to) and private sector accommodation. The current number of properties that were rented from the private sector was 56. These properties were a mixture of 1 bed, 2 bed and 3 bed properties.
All the costs of providing the accommodation for asylum seekers were met by the Home Office contract and were commercially confidential. There was no support for these costs from the Council Tax.
(9) Councillor Thirlwall asked what was the Rotherham Council house waiting list in 1997 and what was it at present?
Councillor Akhtar explained that the numbers of households on the Housing Register were only available for the last eight years. In 2001/2002 the number of households on the waiting list was 21,636 and as of March, 2009, the numbers were 17,659.
(10) Councillor Thirlwall asked could the Leader tell him why positions of special responsibility on the Council and on Outside Bodies were allocated to Councillors based on favouritism and patronage and not on ability?
The Leader pointed out that as Councillor Thirlwall was aware, appointments to positions of special responsibility on the Council were made collectively by the Council itself. Appointments to Outside Bodies were usually made by the appropriate Cabinet Members in respect of issues contained within their portfolios.
(11) Councillor Turner referred to the new multimillion pound Walk-In Health Centre which seemed to be now open He had had complaints from two clients who experienced confusion and, in effect, no service from this new abode and for his own part was referred to the Centre only to be referred back to his G.P. Practice.
Councillor Turner asked would the Cabinet Member for Adult Services seek clarification of its function from the Primary Care Trust and publish it in the appropriate newspaper?
Councillor Kirk reported that according to information received from Rotherham Community Health Trust, the new Rotherham Community Health Centre now provided the range of services that were previously available at Doncaster Gate; podiatry, physiotherapy and the Walk In Centre which was open at weekends and Bank Holidays for the treatment of urgent health matters. Anyone who was treated for an urgent health matter and who had an ongoing health concern, or who was seen by any of the staff for treatment of an ongoing condition would, for the purposes of continuity of care, be referred back to their GP who would wish to continue their treatment of the condition or illness.
When the new service opened earlier this year, there was extensive publicity in the local press and other outlets.
It was intended that later in the year, a new G.P. practice would be opened in the building and the Walk In Centre would have more extensive opening hours. This increase in service would be publicised accordingly.
Individual concerns or complaints would be looked into by the Rotherham Community Health Trust if reported directly to them.
(12) Councillor Cutts explained that with the aid of mother nature, the collapse of a “Listed Building” was engineered, for after repeated warnings to the Council and Members of subsidence, the condition of the sub-soil on site, the final act was to expose on a Friday afternoon the clay foundations which dried out and collapsed the building the following Monday.
At the time of the collapse the Council stated that the Listed Chapel in Greasbrough would be rebuilt “as was”.
To facilitate this statement all the stone was paletted and removed from site to a secure and secret storage.
In reality the undertaking had not been fulfilled and the stone has not been re-used on the new modern building, therefore:-
Where was the stone now?
Could the stone now be inspected?
If sold what date?
Why did the Council not use its responsibilities and powers to reinstate the “ListedBuilding” as it promised to undertake?
Councillor Smith reported that the building referred to was the former Congregational Schoolroom built in 1866 of deeply coursed, horizontally tooled sandstone under a Welsh slate roof. The building was a former Chapel and schoolroom used in its final years as a warehouse. The building was listed in 1969 as a Grade 2 listed building.
In 2004 Listed Building Consent was granted for the conversion of the then vacant factory to a dwelling. Unfortunately, the building was then undermined during the building of the adjacent new houses. This led to a partial collapse of the chapel as a result of which it was condemned as unsafe and subsequently demolished. This led to a protracted legal battle between the respective parties during which the stone from the demolished building was placed in storage with the storage fees being paid by the insurance company. At this stage it was the owner’s intention to attempt to rebuild the Schoolroom to its former design. Sadly, events conspired to prevent this i.e.:-
1. The storage costs for the stone became so excessive as to become more expensive than the value of the stone. It was thought that this led to the insurance company forcing the sale of the stone, but this would need to be researched further.
2. The owner’s personal circumstances changed (divorce) forcing him to put the plot up for sale.
The new owner did not want to rebuild the former Congregational Schoolroom and, therefore, agreement was reached to build a pair of cottages in line with both the adjacent new build cottages (that had caused the problem in the first place) and the character of the Greasbrough Conservation Area. This was the subject of planning permission, RB2007/1458, that was granted conditionally by Planning Board on 24th September, 2007. The approval was for an amended design, the original submission being considered out of proportion and detrimental to the character of the Conservation Area.
The Council had not made any commitment to rebuild the Listed Building. That was a previous commitment of the owner of the property, but for the reasons outlined, this would not be happening.
Questions 13, 14 and 15 from Councillor Cutts were to be responded to in writing.