Agenda item - Chair's Communication

51.1 The Chair gave the following communication:

As the Labour Group’s nominee to take the vacant position as Chair of the People Overview & Scrutiny Committee, I’d like to thank my predecessor, Cllr Jackie O’Quinn for her work over the last couple of years as the first Chair of the People Overview & Scrutiny Committee.

Today we have a report on changes to temporary accommodation, giving us the opportunity to feed into the consultation on these changes. It is very important that scrutiny takes part in this as, if approved by Cabinet, these changes will have a big impact on temporary accommodation and council housing in the city.

I understand that Cllr Gill Williams is due to join us for this item straight from work and so I’m going to change the order of the items listed on the agenda so that this will be our final item this evening.

The committee’s current Task & Finish Group on antisocial behaviour in social housing will shortly be coming to an end. It was due to report to this committee but following Cllr O’Quinn’s resignation from the Labour group, and therefore from the Task & Finish Group, members of the group felt it necessary to have an extension to enable them to come up with an excellent set of recommendations rather than rush to put something together. I agree that this is the best way forward. They will now report to the next scheduled meeting of the committee in July. In the meantime, we can be thinking about the subject of the next Task and Finish Group and therefore we will now have a discussion on potential ideas that members may have.

We are joined today by new members of the Youth Council one of whom will be joining this committee. They are Ilona, who is here in person, and Clemmie and George who are joining us online. Welcome to all three of you, I look forward to working with you.