Agenda item - Written questions from members of the public.

67.1    The Mayor reported that 3 written questions had been received from members of the public and invited Mr Tilley to come forward and address the council.

67.2    Mr Tilley asked the following question;

“The Council was busy last year with many successful projects including The Living Wage, Council Equal Pay and Allowances, Improvements at Seven Dials, 20Mph Scheme, Lewes Road Safer Bus and Cycle Lanes, Energy and Water Meters, Lowering of Pollution Levels, Roll out of Communal Recyclng to up the levels, what do you think were the highlights from last year and what are the Council going to do this year?”

67.3    Councillor J. Kitcat replied:

“We have a lot planned ahead, as you know it’s a difficult time for Councils but in spite of that we’ve got big ambitions to invest in the future of this City for example in the seafront we want to keep up the progress on air quality and road safety because we know that we inherited a very poor record on that.

Keep up the progress on school improvement after our record GCSE results, keep the up the school expansion, keep moving to a more digital way of working in the Council, reducing our carbon footprint, getting out of King’s House, signing a City Deal and protecting the most vulnerable in our City with our proposals for a social care referendum.

Finally of course I could go on forever but it is the case that three quarters of our manifesto commitments are either done or on course to be committed, I think it’s a pretty good way of doing things, pretty old fashioned perhaps; we stood for election on the basis of promises and now we are delivering.”

67.5      By way of further information Councillor J. Kitcat added:

“One of our achievements that we are proud of is going to a far more open way of working in this Council and as you’ll know we published our draft budget months in advance, previous administration did it days in advance so the whole city’s had a chance to have a look at the challenges we face.

We’ve also adopted the open Government Licence so by default, everything this Council produces rightfully belongs to the people and they can use it. Personally I would liek to go even further and have a default openness for every meeting but it would require the agreement of all Councillors in this Chamber. I personally think everyone has a right to film, photograph, video and record these meetings; they’re public, they’re webcast anyway and this is the one thing I agree with Eric Pickles on.”

67.6      The Mayor thanked Mr Tilley for his questions and invited Mr Melson to come forward and address the council; which was read by the Acting Democratic Services on Mr Melson’s behalf:

“Does this Council operate and support a policy of Consultation with Residents on matters that affect them, of ensuring that the Consultation process gives Residents full information on the matter being Consulted, is inclusive, open and transparent and that the outcomes of Consultations are reported accurately to Members and the Public?”

67.7      Councillor Randall replied:

“The answer to your question is yes and I can give you three current examples of what we’re doing. The consultation on the regeneration of the Manor Place Estate with both residents and Councillors, the comprehensive consultation with sheltered housing residents is part of the long overdue comprehensive sheltered housing review, the interim report will go to the sheltered housing action group for its comments before review is finalised and I’ve also asked the Older People’s Council to give their view on it.

The last one I would quote is the tenant’s scrutiny which we set up when we came in to power, the first two reports are now completed and will shortly come to housing committee. They cover housing customer services and standard letters and they will inform future policies of this Council.

I might also add that for the first time, we’ve actually identified how much this Council spends on participation and the figure is just over £500,000 a year.”

67.8      Mr Melson asked the following supplementary question:

“Housing Committee Members on the 15^th January 2014 were given false and misleading statements by an officer that consultation on service changes have been held with residents and the high rise action group were happy with the service changes and said, “we’ve had a good run for our money” and despite the emails, the Chair of Housing perpetuated that statement in the Argus on the 18^th January 2014.

Will any action be taken in regard to the officer responsible for the misleading statements to the housing committee? And will the Chair of Housing issue a public apology to the high rise action group and support the high rise action groups’ request to the chief executive for an independent audit investigation of the conduct of the housing management?”

67.9      Councillor Randall replied:

“The officer in question disputes that the statements were false and misleading and another officer backs up her account of the meeting and I have a written statement which I’m happy to share with Councillors if’ they’d like to see it and with you John (Mr Melson) but I don’t think it’s fair to vilify an officer or discuss an officer’s behaviour in this place.

The statement was not made by the chair Andy Tuck but by another tenant and that the exact words were, “high rise tenants have been lucky for a long time in the way charges have been spread across all tenants.” The statement, as I said, was not made by the Chair, Andy Tuck. In these circumstances no action will be taken against the officer and there will be no independent audit however the Interim Head of Housing is looking at the organisation of housing management with a fresh pair of eyes and will make her own recommendations for change which Councillors and residents will be asked to comment on and approve.

I’m going to the next high rise action group meeting while we discuss the service charges with residents and invite them to work with us to produce a new service compact for the high rise blocks which will include a new lift failure compensation package and the production of an annual financial service charge report showing what money has been collected and how it is being spent.

I share the view of Andy Tuck that if tenants pay an extra charge they’re entitled to a better service than they’ve had for many years from this Council.”

67.10   The Mayor thanked Mr Melson for his questions and noted that in relation to the next question Mr Coomber had not able to attend and put his question, but this would be included in the minutes for Members’ information as set out below.

“Can I ask the council to provide an explanation of the current Service Levels and Key Performance Indicators that CityClean provide and if they include  the following:

·               The number of incidents of vehicle unavailability, breaking out those where no fault was found

·               The number of missed collections, including a breakdown where the collection had been marked as complete

·               The time taken to recover a missed collection i.e. days taken after scheduled pickup to collect refuse

These are just a few examples, no business of Citycleans size can run without good management information that is reliable and validated.”

67.11   Response from Councillor West:

“Thank you for your question regarding refuse and recycling collections which I presume is in response to the recent disruption to the service. I am aware you have received a response from the Executive Director, Environment, Development & Housing (Geoff Raw) and my response confirms the information he has already provided. 

The disruption is the result of the biggest change the service has ever undergone following changes to staff allowances.  The council needed to implement a fair and transparent way of paying staff allowances and this resulted in revised working patterns for the refuse, recycling and street cleansing staff.

As part of this work new refuse and recycling rounds had to be implemented across the city from the 7^th October affecting some 200,000 collections per week.

It was always expected that the rounds would have to be tweaked once they had been rolled out and for the refuse service this took place in December with positive effect.  The changes to the recycling rounds are being finalised now and this should result in the performance of this service also improving.

There was additional disruption over Christmas because the catch up arrangementson Saturdays were voluntary – as with the previous catch up arrangements, contractually staff were not required to work.  It was always anticipated that the shortfall could be back filled using agency staff.  In the event fewer staff than expected chose to come in and the service was unable to carry out all collections as scheduled.

In response to this we are looking at service provision over future bank holidays.

27 crews work on a daily basis across refuse and recycling employing close to 80 staff.  If a whole day is missed then it takes time to catch this up as it is simply not possible to provide double the amount of resource to catch up in a day.

We experienced a very high volume of calls and other communications during the service disruption.  Unfortunately people were not always able to get through to our contact centre and log their missed collection.

Where streets or days were missed and this was already known individual missed collections were not recorded in order to avoid delays in responding to other calls.  I therefore do not have all the figures you have requested. 

The service logged 5559 calls regarding missed collections for the period July 2013 – January 2014 but as I have said this is not an accurate reflection of the number of missed collections.

I agree with you that any business or service needs reliable performance data in order to manage and improve performance and I can tell you that a new customer management system has been introduced in to the Environment contact centre and this is being rolled out more widely across the council.  The system is already proving to be successful and once fully implemented by the start of the next financial year it will provide a comprehensive performance reporting mechanism.”