Agenda item

Report No: OAS/WS/20/002

The Committee received Report No: OAS/WS/20/002, which updated Members on the current status of its rolling work programme of items for scrutiny during 2019-2020 (Appendix 1).

The Chair reminded members that an Extraordinary Committee meeting had been arranged for Thursday 23 January 2020 at 6pm, for the Committee to consider the report from the Parking Review Group.

Councillor Diane Hind informed members that she felt there was a lack of scrutiny of the Cabinet Members in general by the Committee.  She explained that under the previous Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee a Cabinet Member was invited to each meeting to give an update on their portfolio, which she felt had worked well and would like to see this introduced again. 

In response the Chair and Vice-Chair explained that Cabinet Members were being invited to attend meetings when there were specific, important issues to be considered.  For instance, the Leader attended in June 2019 to presented the Annual Report and gave an update on his portfolio; the Cabinet Member for Housing attended in September 2019 and presented the West Suffolk Homelessness Reduction and Rough Sleeping Strategy and at the same meeting responded to wider housing questions which had been submitted in advance of the meeting for the Cabinet Member to provide written responses.  The Cabinet Member for Housing would also be in attendance again on 12 March 2020 when Havebury Housing Partnership would be in attendance.  The Cabinet Member for Leisure, Culture and Community Hubs was in attendance this evening who had presented the report on the Management of Events in West Suffolk and answered questions comprehensively.  The Chair and Vice-Chair felt this new approach had worked extremely well and acknowledged Councillor Hind’s comments.

In response to a question raised at its meeting held in November 2019 relating to the proposed Newmarket Cinema, the Democratic Services Officer (Scrutiny) confirmed a written response had been circulated by email to the Committee on 5 December 2019.  The Monitoring Officer provided a further update stating that a press release was issued on the 19 December 2019 explaining extra time was needed due to national changes to how authorities fund major projects had meant further work was being carried out by the Council on the financial impact and options for a cinema for Newmarket.

Members then raised concerns regarding how authorities funded major projects and, as a result of the recent interest rate increase by the Public Loans Works Board, what the impact might be on the Council’s Asset Management Plan.  However, the Committee acknowledged that financial scrutiny of this fell to the Performance and Audit Scrutiny Committee and the Financial Resilience Sub-Committee.

Councillor Lisa Ingwall-King suggested the Committee receives an update and reviews the decision made by the previous Council on the anti-idling campaign and explores if anti-idling zones could be introduced at sensitive locations in the district alongside the campaign.  The Committee agreed for this to be included as a future work programme item, following the completion of the work programme suggestion form.

The Committee noted the update and that Councillor Lisa Ingwall-King would complete a work programme suggestion form to help inform officers on the scope of the update on the anti-idling campaign.