Agenda and minutes

To elect a Vice-Chair of the Scrutiny Committee

The Chair of the Committee invited nominations for the election of a Vice-Chair for the municipal year 2025/26.

RESOLVED that Cllr G Westcott be elected Vice-Chair of the Scrutiny Committee for the municipal year 2025/2026.

(Proposed by Cllr L Knight and Seconded by Cllr R Roberts).

To discuss and confirm the start times of meetings of the Scrutiny Committee for the remainder of the Municipal Year

The Committee AGREED* to meet at 5.00pm for the remainder of the 2025/26 municipal year.

(Proposed by Cllr L Knight and seconded by Cllr E Buczkowski)

Note: *Cllr R Roberts voted against.

To receive any apologies for absence and notices of appointment of substitute Members (if any).

Apologies were received from Cllr A Cuddy who joined the meeting on-line.

The Chair brought forward Item 7 Chair’s Announcements.

To receive any announcements that the Chair of the Scrutiny Committee may wish to make.

The Chair thanked her Colleagues for voting her into the position of Chair and mentioned:

• The Liberal Democrats had appointed one of their own to the position of Scrutiny Committee Chair because they believed that this arrangement had worked for the past 2 years and so it should continue.
• The Scrutiny Committee were there to service the needs of the widest Mid Devon community. What would be important was to find consensus in decision making.
• The core of the Committee’s work should be to dig down into the roots of issues that came before them – to ask the most searching of questions that they could – in order to establish what the truth was.
• There were some hefty and important agenda items through the next 10 months – not least of which was decentralisation and local government reorganisation. Tasks that now resided with the County Council would need to be appropriately shared between the Unitary Authorities that were to be created – whilst still ensuring that the existing District Council carried out their duties to the best of their abilities.
• Parish and Town Councils would have a huge part to play, in any new models, so the Council needed to work even more closely with them, and to more fully understand their key concerns and issues.
• Utility companies and their failure to meet the demands of new developments, in servicing what was needed, and in future proofing, would need the Committee’s Scrutiny. Serious concerns over infrastructure, needed to come well in advance of development, may well need the attention of the Scrutiny Committee, plus roads, schools etc. actually being built, rather than being on approved plans and then not being delivered. 
• How did the Council move towards Net Zero by their target date of 2030 most effectively?
• New Planning Laws were now in place, with building challenges that were pretty daunting, and very worrying for us in a rural county that also needed farm land from which to feed our country’s inhabitants. Developers were sitting on tracts of land that they owned, not building on it. The District was challenged, in physical geographical terms, by exactly where it was going to be possible to build new homes in mid Devon. The District had so much beautiful and important landscape that cried out to be cared for, not built upon. By contrast it also had a huge demand for more social housing, in particular, but the Committee must never lose sight of what their residents most wanted, which was safe, economical to run, homes of their own, where they felt safe and secure and part of a community.
• Those residents from the District who chose to come and join Scrutiny Committee meetings, to prod at decisions the Committee were in the process of making, were welcome. They, should be accepted as ‘critical friends’ to the Council – taking the time, as they did, to read documents, talk to fellow residents, and to have the courage to come here and express  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

To record any interests on agenda matters.

No declarations were declared under this item.

To receive any questions from members of the public and replies thereto.

Note:   A maximum of 30 minutes is allowed for this item.

N Quinn         Regarding Agenda Item 9: The FOI Annual Report for 2024-25.

Paragraph 3.2 of this report, describes the partially upheld Decision Notice by saying: “information was considered subject to legal professional privilege, but two of the five individual names redacted would have had a reasonable expectation of their name being placed in the public domain”.

I think that this sentence could be considered as “Economical with the Truth”.

It says the some redactions were allowed and the release of two names was ordered - but that is not all...

It does not say that the Council was also ordered to release additional, wrongly redacted, information - or that 78 pages of information was released, on the advice of the Commissioner, prior to the Decision Notice being issued. 

I have it on good authority that the request for a report was made in May 2024, but the Council said “it was all exempt”. When asked to review, the Council maintained that nothing would be released.

A complaint was sent to the Information Commissioner, who contacted the Council about how the request had been handled.

The Council then released:

a 14 page report (with some redactions);

a 38 page Appendix (with minor redactions);

a 24 page Appendix (with very minor redactions);

and a 2 page Appendix (with no redactions at all).

Then in February 2025, after a total of nine months, the Decision Notice was issued.

Question 1: Does the Committee consider that this sentence, in the report, accurately reflects that 99% of the requested information was released?

Question 2: Does the Committee consider that this report informs Members of the problems that the public can have in obtaining information from this Council?

Question 3: Does the Committee consider it acceptable that a requester has to call in the Information Commissioner and wait nine months, in order to get 99% of the information requested?

The Chair thanked Mr Quinn for his questions and stated that he would receive a response within ten working days.

Barry Warren Regarding agenda items 8 and 9.

Firstly Madam Chair may I please compliment the Head of Digital Transformation & Customer Engagement for the positive intentions set out in the report and I hope that they are progressed and achieved and will therefore make the whole system so much more available and transparent to members and the public.

Question 1.  Is the time schedule set out in paragraph 3.1 in agenda item 8 report still considered to be achievable?

Moving to item 9, I must declare an interest in the cases set out at paragraphs 3.3 and 3.5 and the questions I now raise would benefit from an answer but I would hope that in researching the answer the officer could assure members that lessons could be learned to prevent a repeat of the issue in the future.

Question 2.  In the case at 3.3 the original request was for two documents and the response made no reference  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

To consider whether to approve the minutes as a correct record of the meeting held on Monday14 April 2025.

The minutes of the last meeting held on Monday 14 April 2025 were approved as a correct record and SIGNED by the Chair.

To receive the Dashboard

The Committee received and NOTED the Freedom of Information (FOI) Dashboard*

for 2024/25 Quarter 4.

The Head of Digital Transformation and Customer Engagement presented the Freedom of Information Dashboard for 2024/25 Quarter 4.

The following was highlighted:

·         The Information Commissioner had closed two cases in the quarter, one was not upheld and the other was partially upheld and the relevant disclosures made.

Discussion took place regarding:

·         The format for the disclosure logs to provide responses had now been agreed, it was currently in testing and would be available by the end of June 2025.

·         An alert would be sent using social media, general communications and the Council’s website, letting members of the public know that the format of the disclosure logs had been amended.

·         The work to update the publication scheme to allow the public to more easily locate information already publicly available was work in progress but should be available in late September 2025.

Note: * Dashboard previously circulated.

To receive a report relating to the future Freedom of Information reporting and to agree the information to be reported on a dashboard.

The Committee received and NOTED the Freedom of Information Annual Report* for 2024-25.

Discussion took place regarding:

·         The 22 Freedom of Information (FOI) requests that had been received and not responded to were all for Devon County Council (DCC) and were passed on to DCC.

·         There was a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for the Council which stated the Council had to respond to requests within 20 days.

·         The Lessons Learned Log was not available to Councillors or members of the public.

·         The link on the Council website to FOI logs, referred to the number of clear working days (final column) that it took the Council to respond to the request. If a figure was marked zero it meant that the Council had responded the same day.

·         The distinction between Environmental Information Requests (EIR) and FOI Requests and whether it was possible to separate the two types of request on the dashboard.

·         A request to Benchmark FOI and EIR requests against other comparable Councils in Devon.

·         FOI and EIR were two legislative frameworks with different origins that aimed to serve a similar purpose. FOI being of UK origin and EIR being of European Union origin. FOI covered the vast majority of information that was held and processed by the Council. EIR was designed to cover information that fell into environmental elements. In general terms; information that related to land, water, flora, fauna, air or air quality. The definition was quite broad and could cover information that was vicariously linked. For example the financial details of a business that affected the environment could if requested fall under EIR or FOI.

Note: * Report previously circulated.

To receive a report that had been to the Homes Policy Development Group.

The Committee had before it a report * from the Head of Housing & Health providing it with the strategic and policy context supporting the delivery of modular (modern methods of construction, MMC) social housing in Mid Devon.

The following was highlighted within the report:

·         The report had been considered at Homes Policy Development Group on 3 June 2025.

·         The report provided strategic and policy context supporting the delivery of modular, modern methods of construction, (MMC), Social Housing in mid Devon. It provided further information in respect of value for money relative benchmarking with traditional and other types of schemes. It also set out the wider context in terms of the benefits of the programme with regard to regeneration, zero carbon, added or social value and sustainment of the Council’s tenancies.

·         Benchmarking was very difficult for construction projects; no two schemes were the same.

·         This fair benchmarking exercise included external information supported by independent and authoritative sources such as Homes England, Other information came from publicly available sources, for example planning documents.

·         Typically the Council’s Zed Pod schemes were around 6 units in size, vying for brown field sites. Therefore, the wider schemes that had been used to benchmark had been selected to be as similar as possible in that context with regard to scale and the type of location.

·         When it came to external grant requirements, external grant funding requirements with Homes England and the wider Ministry of Housing were very robust and independent.

·         Section 5 of the report (Benchmarking) was a summary of one of the annexes which set out the data in more detail. The report tried to be as transparent as possible, and showed gross costs for the schemes as well as net costs after introductions for grants that had been awarded, for example, under the full homes programme. It was the cost to the Council that mattered, so the net cost was the most valid benchmark.

·         The reduced cost to the Council  was achieved by bringing forward the types of schemes the Council did, at the specification they were producing in relation to the Zed Pod modular schemes or similar, that way the Council were able to draw down that extra grant funding to bring down the net cost to the Council.

·         Table 1 within the report showed how the schemes benchmarked in relative terms; almost all of the schemes were either in the top five or top seven of those two comparators.

·         With regard to the Kingsland scheme in Bristol, whichever figure that was used in terms of metres squared for development, that scheme still fell within the bottom end of value for money in the table.

Consideration was given to:

·         Homes England did not release the benchmarking data they used. The qualitative feedback from Homes England had been that the schemes this Council put forward were at the higher end of the value for money assessment.

·         Some of the funding that the Council were very successful in securing was tailored towards specifically problematic sites,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 11.

To review the existing Work Plan and consider items for the committee’s future consideration, taking account of:

a)    Any items within the Forward Plan for discussion at the next meeting;

b)    Suggestions of other work for the Committee in 2025/26.

The Committee had before it and NOTED the *Forward Plan and the *Scrutiny Committee Work Programme.

Members were requested to put any items for the Scrutiny Committee Work Plan on a Scrutiny Committee work proposal form and submit it to the Clerk.

Suggestions made for the Work Plan were:

·         Rural Transport for Colleges and Places of Education.

·         Local Government Reorganisation (to confirm this was a standing item – confirmed on the next July meeting).

·         Cullompton and Wellington Train stations.

Note: the *Forward Plan and the *Scrutiny Committee Work Programme were previously circulated.