Minutes:
(1) Councillor Hughes referred to his attendance at Woodsetts Parish Council last month and the concerns that the road improvements that were discussed at a meeting with the Strategic Director and Cabinet Member were not now going to be implemented and asked could the Cabinet Member confirm that the improvements would be implemented and what the timescales were?
Councillor Smith reported that a scheme to improve road safety at the junction of Dinnington Road and Worksop Road was included in the 2010/11 Highways Capital Programme, which was reported to the Cabinet Member for Economic Development, Planning and Transportation on 29th March, 2010. It was the intention to implement the scheme during the current financial year, although given the need to carry out a consultation exercise first, it was likely to be early 2011 before the scheme was constructed. It was intended to start the consultation exercise in the next few weeks.
Streetpride were currently undertaking the repair of the damage caused to the road network by the recent freeze/thaw. In the eleven weeks from mid-January to the end of March, 2010 the Council repaired almost 9,400 potholes reported through the Streetpride Golden Number – 01709 336003. Councillor Hughes was encouraged to call the number if he had concerns relating to the roads and footways where he lived.
In addition to the ongoing pothole repairs Streetpride had been undertaking much larger patch repairs borough wide. Therefore, the Council planed out and resurfaced in excess of fifty roads at a cost of almost £750,000 since mid-January, 2010.
The second phase of repairs was programmed to begin in June and repairs to Gildingwells Road, Woodsetts from the crossroads to the junction with Lewis Way were included in this work.
(2) Councillor Gilding asked what connections had this Council had with an organisation called “Common Purpose” over the last ten years and what had been the cost of these dealings?
Councillor Wyatt explained that the Common Purpose was an independent not for profit organisation that ran leadership development courses which mixed people from the private, public and not for profit sectors. The Council had paid for a small number of its managers to attend these development courses, but not for a couple of years. The total number of managers that had attended was seven and was broken down into the following years:-
2003 - one employee
2005 - three employees
2006 - one employee
2007 - one employee
2008 - one employee
(3) Councillor Fenoughty asked why did Councillor S. Wright appear in a local newspaper on 13th April, 2010 regarding the Home Access grants. This was clear promotion of a candidate and broke the Council's own pre-election publicity rules?
Councillor S. Wright reported that this was an old press release which was issued ahead of the Purdah period last month and was submitted on the 22nd March, 2010. The statement must have remained with the Rotherham Advertiser/Record for some time before being published so the ‘responsibility’ for publication during Purdah lay with the newspaper rather than the Council.
(4) Councillor Cutts asked for an explanation of the growing public concern that the Freedom of Information requests were being run upto the statutory limit of twenty days and asked had it become a practising policy?
Councillor Wyatt explained there was no deliberate attempt to delay the response to a Freedom of Information request and that it was Council policy to respond to all requests as soon as possible. Some requests were complex in nature or cut across several departments and as a result it took time to collate the information. The aim was to respond to all requests within the statutory time limit.
(5) Councillor Hughes asked could the Cabinet Member please tell him why no time slots were allotted for disabled people only sessions at the new DC Leisure facilities?
Councillor St. John reported that, in line with the Council’s current approach to equality of opportunity, all four leisure facilities were accessible to people with disabilities and aimed to ensure that all customers enjoyed their experience as fully as possible.
The sites were fully Disability Discrimination Act compliant and had achieved IFI (Independent Fitness Initiative) accreditation, which enabled disabled customers to access the fitness suite during all opening hours. All the facilities had dedicated disabled car parking spaces, disabled changing areas, toilets and lifts. The programme was designed to be inclusive so that disabled customers could access swimming at all public sessions and to this end pools had hoists and wet wheelchairs were also available. The facilities were used by a variety of disabled users and a number of disability groups hired the facilities for activities during the week.
(6) Councillor Gilding asked at a time when officers were working to capacity, how were they going to find the time to provide internal audit management for Doncaster Council?
Councillor Wyatt explained that Councillor Gilding was right to point out that staff were working very hard already. It was recognised that Internal Audit performance had been strengthened in recent years and it was good news that the investment in driving this improvement could now be channelled elsewhere.
This opportunity to provide internal audit management in Doncaster allowed the Council to reduce costs and, therefore, benefit Council Tax payers in Rotherham. The proposal initially only affected one member of Rotherham's staff, but would generate income over a three year period.
This would also allow Rotherham to share good practice with Doncaster to the benefit of both Rotherham and Doncaster audit services, at a time when it was prudent for public services to explore ways of reducing costs by sharing services.
(7) Councillor Cutts referred to the last Council meeting where he was again promised a copy of the Director of Health and Wellbeing’s report on the ‘Laundry’ appraisal to the Cabinet Member on 26th October, 2009. This request had now been ongoing since last year.
Councillor Doyle apologised to Councillor Cutts for the delay in responding, but trusted that the information sent to him yesterday answered his question.
(8) Councillor Gilding asked about the justification of spending Council Taxpayers` money on putting forward the political policies of the controlling Labour Party in “Rotherham News”?
Councillor Hussain rejected this statement.
He reported that Rotherham News was not a Council-run publication. It was the monthly community newspaper of the Local Strategic Partnership to which all Local Strategic Partnership organisations contributed editorial and photographic content.
Local Strategic Partnership organisations, including the Council, continued to work with local and regional newspapers, tv and radio and to respond to their questions and challenges as a valuable part of the democratic process and to demonstrate accountability to local people.
There were strict guidelines governing how local authorities undertook their own publicity and provided public information through The Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity, which stated:-
“Local authorities are accountable to their electorate. Local accountability requires local understanding. This will be promoted by local authorities explaining their objectives and policies to their electors and ratepayers. In recent years authorities have increasingly used publicity to keep the public informed and to encourage greater participation. Local authorities also need to tell the public about the services which they provide. Good, effective publicity, aimed at improved public awareness of a Council's activities, is to be welcomed.”
The Council was required and pleased to comply with the Code, the underlying objective of which was to ensure the proper use of public funds for publicity, for example, not in support of any political party.
The Code did state, however, that it may be appropriate to “give publicity to the views or activities of individual members when they are representing the Council as a whole”, e.g. when a member opened a new scheme or launched a Council policy.
The Local Strategic Partnership, including the Council, reiterated its commitment to Rotherham News, but acknowledged that changes were required to the way in which the publication was currently funded when the contract was put out to tender later this year to meet the current gap between production costs and advertising revenue.
This would result in an increased financial contribution from some Local Strategic Partnership partners to reflect better their use of the publication.
(9) Councillor Cutts asked were there any statutory or standard requirements for the time to answer correspondence from a Member of the Council and would the Leader recommend correspondence through a Freedom of Information request to hasten a reply.
Councillor Stone was not aware of any statutory or standard requirements to answer correspondence from Members, although enquiries would obviously try to be answered as soon as possible. The Customer Service Standards applied to external customers only. Members were entitled to make Freedom of Information requests and would receive a reply within the statutory timescale of twenty working days (Day One being the first working day after receipt of the request). However, if Members made a Freedom of Information request, they would receive the same information a member of the public would receive. If a Member believed they needed to know additional information, in their capacity as a Member, making a Freedom of Information request would not provide information which was considered to be exempt from public disclosure.
(10) Councillor Cutts asked when Members of the Council have been put on notice of an intended major change to governance to the Authority and control of this Council, i.e. Strong Leader, why were the changes not in italics, to avoid reading old/new documents and why not arrange a seminar on the changes/effects beforehand?
Councillor Stone reported that the aim of this report was to reduce the amount of paper and confirmed that the report stated that the changes of significance were contained in Article 7. These reflected the move to the “Strong” Leader and Cabinet form of executive. However, the principles behind the changes had been set out in previous reports to Council in July, October and December of last year, so were not new to the Council.
There were other changes to the Constitution of an updating or tidying up nature. For example, these took account of revised terms of reference of committees and other bodies, as previously approved by the Council. There were also minor amendments to reflect legislative changes and alterations to job titles or to addresses. Whilst these were not changes of substance, they were quite numerous and for ease of reading it was felt preferable to append to the report a “clean” copy of the document that included all of the amendments.
Questions 11 and 12 remained unanswered after the thirty minute guillotine and the answers would be provided for all Members in writing.