Agenda and draft minutes

To receive apologies for absence.

Apologies were tabled for Councillors Lina Savickiene, Andy Izard and Patsie Marson.

To receive declarations of interests in respect of any item on the agenda.

None tabled.

To sign and confirm the  minutes of the previous meeting.

With the agreement of the committee the Chairman signed the minutes of the previous meeting.

To answer any written questions received from members of the public no later than 5 p.m. two clear working days prior to the meeting – for this meeting the deadline is 5 p.m. on Thursday 5^th December 2024

None tabled.

A report by the Assistant Director - Corporate

The Chairman Councillor Claire Rylott presented the report confirming she had been the Chairman of the group, and the Portfolio Holder Councillor Anne Dorrian was also in attendance to support the report.

The report would be presented to each Councils’ relevant sovereign scrutiny committee. The scrutiny work undertaken was required under the Partnership’s Memorandum of Agreement and was currently an annual commitment.  The approved business case had demonstrated a number of opportunities for the South and E Lincolnshire Council's partnership.
Before the meeting's commenced, the group had conducted a short questionnaire among all councillors and members of the corporate management team to canvas their views. Key themes identified from the questionnaire were too review the delivery of the recommendations from the 2023 partnership annual scrutiny; to consider how the partnership was responding to shared and common challenges and opportunities at a local, corporate and sub-regional level; to review the progress being made to achieve the combined financial opportunity of p to £42m identified in the partnership business case; how the partnership was securing service delivery improvements and resilience across the partnership and how the partnership was creating additional capacity and increased resilience to do more for the communities.

The group had met five times, interviewed 11 witnesses, including leaders, senior staff and staff forum members, using questions based mainly on the key lines of inquiry. Nine recommendations were agreed
e discussed the key themes that came from the survey, along with key issues including ICT recruitment and retention, the group had realised nine recommendations.

1. Ensure service reviews are completed as per the agreed Alignment and Delivery Plan to ensure correct capacity and increase savings.

2.    To ensure the Partnership Risk Register is reviewed and updated regularly by SLT so existing and emerging risks continue to be monitored and can be managed/mitigated effectively.

3.    Through the Alignment and Delivery Plan planning process, ensure forward planning for upcoming known and potential changes.

4.    Review the MOA for the Partnership to ensure it remains relevant and builds in flexibility to allow the Partnership to develop (for example to improve the way the annual partnership scrutiny works).

5.    Ensure Officers and Members are kept informed on key issues, for example Devolution and LGR.

6.    Use the ‘weight’ of the S&ELCP to help lobby on common issues that affect the sub-region, for example the work of the SIG with regard to internal drainage boards.

7.    The S151 officer should actively consider how projects coming forward contribute to the savings required in the MTFS for each sovereign council in order to deliver financial resilience.

8.    As part of the work being done on aligning constitutions, streamline the partnership scrutiny process to make it more effective.

9.    Monitor staff turnover (including reasons for leaving) via the Workforce Development Board, review trends in recruitment to ensure we are not out of kilter with national trends and work to remedy any negative findings.

The Chairman advised that she felt that recommendation 4 needed to be reviewed urgently  ...  view the full minutes text for item 77.

A presentation by the Assistant Director – Neighbourhoods

The Portfolio Holder Councillor Callum Butler introduced the report, with the Assistant Director for Neighbourhoods updating members with a presentation.

The Portfolio Holder advised members that Central Government were mandating that all local authorities undertake the collection of food waste separately from general waste from April 2026 under the Environment Act of 2020.  The move would have a huge impact on the Council’s waste collection service from the vehicles used to the how the waster would be collected.  The cost would be offset by Government funding initially, but the Council was still waiting further clarification, and officers had felt it best to provide a presentation on the proposal at the current time, as to what it would mean for residents and the Council.

The Assistant Director for Neighbourhoods advised that the Environment Act had introduced ‘simpler recycling’ which covered a provision of consistent collections of recycled material by all Councils in the country. Boston was consistent with that via the provision of the Blue Bin used for recycling.  However, the other stream introduced would be a weekly food waste collection to all households.

Extended Producer Responsibility was about packaging waste, so extended producer responsibility was changing the way that local authorities were being funded in the way that they collect and disposed of packaging and that's packaging, whether it's in the residual waste stream. So, any packaging waste that is in litter bins that the authority collects from.
The way that EPI would work would be that the local authorities would be paid be given a payment for the provision of efficient and effective services.
The producers of packaging would pay a would be obligated to pay a fee.
Simple recycling had been implemented for a number of reasons.  It would reduce confusion and make recycling easier because there is a requirement for producers to label all their packaging with whether it can or cannot be recycled and it would improve recycling rates. It would also enable the councilto produce a higher quality recycler and to some degree produce a higher quality of service.  It would also help to tackle the environment impacts of food and plastic waste, and also there was a real push to help grow the UK recycling industry.
In terms of the government's timeline, the arrangements for food waste were set out after significant consultation and the results of the consultation which had been published along with the secondary legislation.
The council had received capital funding of £728,646  to enable them to purchase vehicles and caddies in order to deliver food waste collections and further funding would follow, but local authorities are due to receive what's called transitional funding for food waste collections.
The council had to recycle all waste streams including those of businesses. so, businesses will have to recycle to. The transitional funding would meet the costs of communications engagement, everything you need to do to get ready for the implementation.   The Council would be procuring around 33,000 street caddies to be presented  ...  view the full minutes text for item 78.

A report by the Group Manager – Insights and Transformation

The Portfolio Holder Councillor Anne Dorrian presented the report supported by the Insights and Transformation Manager.

Members were advised that the planning extension measure had been dropped as it was not useful and new measures had been added.

There were also some off log measures, which were still under development, waiting for the government to decide what they want to measure and what they don't.
Responding to comments from the last meeting, improvements had been made to the formatting of the report.  The target and trend measures had been split to make the difference clearer and they have also been sorted by priority.
Additional commentary had been added for the HR measures to provide more context for absence in turnover, and they've also been changed                 to quarterly measures rather than year to date so that the trend would be easier to track over time.
Staff turnover has changed to show voluntary turnover and  the staff turnover figure itself had been amended to show voluntary turnover. The traditional figure, including fixed term contracts, for example, was still included in the commentary.
The majority of the measures were on target.
However, there were three red measures, and the commentary provided the context for those red measures. The occupancy of industrial units being the first which was only just shy of 86% against a target of 100% and that represented at that time 4 units which were vacant at the end of quarter one, but they were being actively marketed.
The Dsa's the data subject access requests only 60% were responded to within time scale against a target of 100%. However, that was because of an extensive volume of requesting in quarter one, which are extensive pieces of work to undertake, and which is being actively managed by our Data Protection Officer.  The last one was housing benefit, new claims, which on the figure for speed of processing at the end of the month was 30 days against a target of 25.
However, for June itself, it was down to 22 days.

Committee commenting and questioning followed which included:

The Portfolio Holder advised that the Council only owned one shop and that was currently let.  Referencing concerns in respect of the Data Subject Access statistics, they further advised that they had every confidence in the Data Protection Officer and stressed that each request was extremely time consuming in collating the information required from across the Council, which is every single document and email with the subject referenced on it. 
It is a very small team who facilitate the service.  The Insights and Transformation Manager further confirmed that if there was a delay in responding, a letter would be sent explaining why there was a delay The Portfolio Holder further advised following questioning, that the decline in properties improved through intervention was a measure that Cabinet too were not happy about and wanted to see it improved. It had been linked to empty properties not used for a long time and the Portfolio  ...  view the full minutes text for item 79.

(For Members to note/discuss the Committee’s current work programme)

Prior to addressing the item, the Assistant Director for Regulatory (the Lead Officer for the committee) requested through the Chairman to comment on an item from the previous report.

Members were advised that they had looked back at the fly tipping stats for the current year from April through to November, an eight-month period, and on six of the eight months, fly tipping had been lower when compared to the same months previously.  As such, a significant impact was being seen on the Councils approach to fly tipping. That was starting to be evident in the figures. In respect of the contract performance, the Council had rightly clamped down and sought to engage with the contractor to deliver their performance, and a raft of new KPI’s had been introduced through a contract variation in October 20234.

Referencing the work programme members were advised that the Market Delivery Plan and Policy Review was confirmed for the 11 April meeting.    The Destination Lincolnshire Management Plan was anticipated for the 11February meeting. The Partnership Task and Finish Group reviewing the Partnership Crime and Enforcement Contract had been convened and its final report would come through to committee on the 29 April 2025.

Following discussions of items sought by members it was agreed as follows:

That a Task and Finish Group be convened to look at the town centre, specifically to look at potential residence occupation over the retail units, but with other areas too for consideration. 

Members who volunteered to sit on the group being Cllrs Gilbert, scoop, Pryke, Welberry and Drayton.  The clerk confirmed the offer would be made to all other scrutiny members who may wish to join the group.

That a Member Briefing be scheduled in respect of the PE21 project with an update in respect of costs and works to date and moving forward.