Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from the Head of Business Improvement, Central Services and Partnerships, Councillor Chloe Mancey and Councillor Simon Tagg.

There were no declarations of interest received.

To receive the minutes of the previous meeting of this Committee held on Wednesday 25 June 2014.

RESOLVED:- That the minutes of the previous meeting held on Wednesday 25 June 2014 were agreed as a correct record

The Portfolio Holders for Environment and Recycling and Safer Communities will be in attendance to answer any questions raised by Members

Two Portfolio Holders were in attendance, Councillor Mrs Ann Beech – Environment and Recycling and Councillor Tony Kearon – Safer Communities to provide a verbal update on their priorities and work objectives.

Portfolio Holder for Safer Communities, Tony Kearon advised that since the last time he attended Cleaner, Greener and Safer Communities Committee funding had been secured for the community safety work.  Funding had also been received from the Police, Crime and Commissioner (PCC).  There had been ongoing discussions with the PCC on his ambitions around Staffordshire and Newcastle Borough.  The funding received was double that received from the home office funding.

The PCC had guaranteed funding for the next three years and have developed a lot of intervention work which helped to reduce anti-social behaviour in the long term.  In the two years Newcastle was the only place anti-social behaviour had been reduced.  There had been an increase of anti-social behaviour reported pushing to a 90% satisfaction of the offence being reported.

There was a good working relationship with the Police.  Any anti-social behaviour was reported to Aspire Housing, Newcastle Borough Council or the Police.

The Chair opened the meeting for any questions from Members.

Q1       The PCSOs around Kidsgrove have been changed into a response team, was it correct in terms of an extra 24 hour Officer?

            Also the Senior Partnership Officer’s team had been providing an excellent service in connection with the Minors Estate, Kidsgrove.

A1       Through discussions at county level there was concern that if there was a reduction in policing the situation would be looked at.

A Member commented that Chief Inspector Riley’s integration into the community had found her to be very responsive and praised the Senior Partnership Officer’s team in providing a very good service.

The Portfolio Holder for Environment and Recycling broke the Operational Service down into Sections:-

Streetscene

It had been a busy summer with the hot weather.  The section covered litter, collecting fees for bowling and tennis clubs.  The grass cutting would now cease and focus would be on the winter work, including shrub pruning and leaf clearance.

The Portfolio Holder had carried out visits with the LEQ team to see how targets were met for standards and maintenance, recently achieving Gold and gained eleven green flags, making the Borough the best in Staffordshire and passed on her praise to the Head of Operations and his team.

Litter education had been carried out, involving working the schools i.e. litter picking and public awareness campaigns had been carried out over the summer.

Grounds Maintenance continue to support the Friends Groups within the Borough.  The Park Attendants provide assistance with the Friends Groups as well as maintaining the parks.

Allotments – currently meetings are ongoing with Silverdale Parish Council.  On the 19 September 2014 saw the handover of Park Road allotment.  The Association run the allotment for their own Committee and was working well  Discussions were now taking place with The Acre allotment.  Notices had been served on the plotholders and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

A presentation will be carried out by the Senior Partnership Officer to provide an overview of the changes introduced by the Anti Social Behaviour, Crime and Disorder Act 2014

A presentation on the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 was carried out by the Senior Partnerships Officer.  This would replace the current toolkit for dealing with anti-social behaviour and placed new duties on Local Authorities and Police to deal with conduct that had caused, or was likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to any person.

On the 20^th October 2014 Newcastle-under-Lyme would adopt the ‘Community Trigger’ threshold of three complaints from one complainant (or somebody on their behalf) to a statutory agency within a six month period regarding three separate ASB incidents.

The Borough Council, County Council, Staffordshire Police, Health or RSLs may all be approached by a victim or persistent ASB to instigate the trigger.

Every Monday morning the partnership hub meets to provide assistance/ solutions to vulnerable residents, with recommendations being relayed back to the victim.

The appeal process for victims of persistent ASB who were not satisfied with the trigger review would be determined within the partner organisation with which the review was requested.  For example if received by the Borough Council then the appeal would progress to the Head of Business Improvement, Central Services and Partnerships.

A Member felt assured that the final stage would progress from outside the Partnership hub to the Head of Service.

The Member was further reassured it was senior officers who were present at the hub.

It was asked if there were a review progressing on a licensed premise and the licence was revoked and taken to appeal could the community take control of the order?

The Senior Partnerships Officer advised if the community report the complaint, for example noise from the licensed premise, they could carry out a closure order.

A Member asked how were the Police, Crime and Commissioner approaching the public regarding the document they were producing.

The County ASB and Finish Group met every six weeks and the document had been issued to all authorities and would be distributed to the wider public.

It was asked if an incident recurred after three years would the process start again.  Presently this was being looked into with partners, with a decision being submitted to the Chief Inspector and signed off by the Chief Executive.

A Member advised that it would only be sensible to ask why there was not a problem and the reason why there was not a problem was due to the prohibition being in place and should remain.

RECOMMENDED:-

That Committee receive the report and Members take note of the changes being proposed in Newcastle by the Borough Council and its partners.

The Head of Planning reported that the main role was the determination of planning applications.  A report was submitted to Cleaner, Greener and Safer Communities Scrutiny Committee on the 24 March 2014.

There were two parts of planning permission; development and material change of use.  The material change of use covered hot food takeaways.  Government had seen the need to create a Use Class Order called Use Class A5.  It followed that no planning permission was required to change from one type of hot food takeaway to another. To change a shop to a house was permitted development but there had been no liberalisation.  There had been a change on advice of use of planning conditions.

The Borough Council does have supplementary guidance, which categorised areas and dates from 1996.

The Chair advised that there was a need to look at the accumulative impact and as a Planning Department to be able to refuse applications for hot food takeaways. The Head of Planning reported there had been not been any appeals since March 2014.  There had been a reduction in hot food takeway planning applications. 

Stoke on City Council were preparing a supplementary document and was due to be adopted.  The Planning Policy team was working with the Joint Local Plan.  Out of the Local Plan in the long term there would be a need to prepare a supplementary document but presently the priority was preparing the Joint Local Plan and due to be launched for public consultation.

The Chair reported that there were a vast number of hot food takeaways along with A34 and that the Highway Authority were not investigating matters thoroughly.

It was advised that Members could write to the Community Secretary with their concerns.

RESOLVED:-           That Members receive the verbal update presented by the Head of Planning.

To provide an overview of the Recommendations made by Scrutiny at the last meeting held on 25 June 2014

RESOLVED:-           Members agreed to the Recommendations from the meeting held on the 25 June 2014.

To discuss and update the work plan to reflect current scrutiny topics

The Committee considered the Work Plan.  It was agreed the following items would added:-

Pollution from exhaust emissions due to delay in traffic light sequence.  An Officer from Staffordshire County Council, Highways Department, to be invited to an additional meeting to be held on xx December 2014.

Any member of the public wishing to submit a question must serve two clear days’ notice, in writing, of any such question to the Borough Council.

No questions had been received from the public.

There was no other business.

Wednesday 4 March 2015, 7.00pm in Committee Room 1

To be arranged