Agenda item

To receive any questions relating to items on the agenda from members of the public and replies thereto.

 

Barry Warren

The minutes of the Standards meeting did not become available to the public until some 5 weeks after the meeting and they have only appeared as a supplement to the Council Agenda. They were still not on the website under the Standards Committee at the time of preparing these questions for submission.

 

Question 1:

What is the reason for this extended delay please?

 

Response from the Director of HR, Legal and Governance (Monitoring Officer): Although we try to publish the draft minutes to the website quickly as possible, due to other work commitments this was the earliest it was able to be published.

 

 

On page 7 of the draft Standards minutes as published with the Supplementary Agenda at minute 29 Councillor A Glover is shown as being elected as the Vice Chairman when she was already the Chairman.

 

Question 2:

This appears to be an error. When and how will it be corrected?

 

Response from the Director of HR, Legal and Governance (Monitoring Officer): The published draft minutes to the Standards committee at minute 29 had been corrected and those minutes would be agreed at the next Standards Committee meeting in June.

 

Question 3:

The questions I asked are shown in the minutes but I can find no public record of the answers I was given.  Why is this please?

 

Response from the Director of HR, Legal and Governance (Monitoring Officer): The public questions and answers document had been published alongside the draft minutes of the Committee.

 

Question 4:

Is it because I had asked who had recommended committee make a decision which was considered illegal - the Leader told me, in the written response, that this was considered to be irrelevant?

 

Response from the Director of HR, Legal and Governance (Monitoring Officer): It was stated as irrelevant as proposed changes were put forward.

 

 

My other questions related to Scrutiny Committee Meeting of the 18th March 2024. There is no audio published for this meeting yet the minutes have been approved at the meeting held on the 15th April 2024.  There is no audio link as yet to that meeting either, nor are there minutes.

 

Question 5:

Why has the audio link for the Scrutiny meeting of 18th of March still not been made available please?

 

Response from the Director of HR, Legal and Governance (Monitoring Officer): With the new Audio Visual system installed the recording had to be converted to a suitable format in order to publish via sound cloud to become available online.  The IT department were currently working through the outstanding recordings, but were currently short staffed.

 

 

Continued from Barry Warren:

Although minutes are not verbatim they should surely be factually correct.  The minutes show that the Cabinet Member for Planning and Economic Regeneration advised that the Council were looking to have 2 Planning Enforcement Officers. If the audio recording were publicly available one could hear that when the Chair raised the point that the Council would have 2 Enforcement Officers the Cabinet Member said “There will be three Enforcement Officers”. The Chair of Scrutiny responded, “Great. So we can firmly put it on the record – three enforcement officers. Thank you, Scrutiny Committee. The current Conservative MP for Bridgwater can shut up too. Well done, Steve. Thank you very much.” But the words of the Chair “Three Enforcement Officers” have not been “Firmly put on Record”.

 

Question 6:

If not verbatim - how is it proposed to properly record the true facts in the public minutes?

 

Response from the Director of HR, Legal and Governance (Monitoring Officer): Minutes of meetings were to record the main issues discussed and resolutions made by the Council. The audio recordings were available to provide the full meeting as the minutes were not verbatim.

 

Supplementary question:

Why do the Scrutiny Committee minute’s state 2 enforcement officers and not the 3 as per the recording?

 

Nick Quinn

If any Cabinet or Committee meeting cannot be attended ‘live’, it is currently very difficult, afterwards, to find out what happened. The Council has spent tens of thousands of pounds on a new audio/visual system for Council meetings, but there is a depressing lack of publication of the Audio Recordings of these meetings (and the minutes are quite often delayed as well).

 

Question 1:

Since the 5th March 2024 only five meetings have had Audio Recordings published; when will the Audio Recordings of all the other meetings be published?

 

Response from the Director of HR, Legal and Governance (Monitoring Officer): With the new Audio Visual system installed the recording had to be converted to a suitable format in order to publish via sound cloud to become available online.  The IT department were currently working through the outstanding recordings, but were currently short staffed.

 

Question 2:

The minutes contain a condensed written record of the meeting, which should accurately convey the significant content of the meeting. How can the accuracy of the minutes be confirmed unless the Audio Recording of that meeting has been published?

 

Response from the Director of HR, Legal and Governance (Monitoring Officer): We currently have a delay in uploading the recordings to the website, we can ensure this will be resolved shortly.

 

Question 3:

I am sure that every Member is heartily sick of the Public raising the subject of 3 Rivers, but please will every Member of this Council take the time to read the “Grant Thornton Interim Auditor’s Annual Report for 2022/23”, that was presented to the Audit Committee on 26 March 2024?

 

Response from the Director of HR, Legal and Governance (Monitoring Officer): The Chairman acknowledged Mr Quinn’s reference to the report received by the Audit Committee and thanked him for highlighting it.

 

Paul Elstone:

Question 1:

At the Audit Committee Meeting of the 26^th March, I asked the following question.

 

Why were the full reasons behind 3 Rivers paying nearly twice as much above the land market valuation and for the “pig in the poke” Bampton site not investigated?

 

I received the following written response from the Cabinet Member for Finance

 

“The purchase of the land was a commercial undertaking in the commercial market. The council were not involved in the transaction”.

“We would welcome and ask you to reflect on how you are choosing to describe this development as it would seem a deliberate attempt to belittle this project and potentially do reputational damage which may undermine future sales revenue”.

Both these statements warrant a response.

 

Firstly, that during the time of the Bampton land purchase discussions, the Councils S151 Officer was a Director of 3 Rivers, despite an audit report months previously saying he should stand down, That  the Councils Chief Executive  was the sole functioning Council shareholder representative of 3 Rivers.

 

Secondly,it is not a deliberate attempt to belittle this project. It is a further attempt to reveal why I and others consider there has been a Dereliction of Duty by those involved.

 

To be clear, I can tell Full Council that Cabinet sent an email, in May 2020, to the Chief Executive stating that they were

 

Quote - “Unanimous that the Bampton Site should not be purchased. As we have said before, anyone looking at this site would come to the conclusion that it is a pig in a poke “. Unquote

 

The current Council Leader plus others in the room were party to this email and can confirm its content.

 

Given this clear instruction from Cabinet, why did these Council Officers allow the Bampton Site planning application and development preparations to continue unconstrained and at significant cost then allow the site to be purchased at well in excess of its land value?

 

Question 2:

Why was this important evidence not presented to the 3 Rivers Working Group as part of their investigation?

 

Question 3:

Given the gravity of the situation and with further and I believe damming evidence available and evidence in which the Council Leader was in some way involved, will he now agree to implement a full investigation into the Bampton site land purchase?

 

Tim Bridger:

The question relates to public question time. The Leader is adamant that the Council was the most open and transparent on record.  Yet if the public questions that had been asked over the last six to seven months about 3 Rivers that had been answered, there would have not been the need for the 3 Rivers report by the Scrutiny Committee. Every time a direct question had been asked from members of the public about 3 Rivers the responses had been evasive, non-existent or absolutely nonsense. The amount of public money that had been wasted on the project and well informed, qualified people that had asked direct questions and had not received the answers they should. 

 

The Grant Thornton audit had been the closest the Council would get in audit terms to a massive slap in terms of how the project had been handled by the Council and the clear up from the project. We as a Council are going to be saddled with the cost in perpetuity virtually as there will be no way of making the money back.

 

I would like to counter the claim of the Leader of open and transparency because if they were they would start by legitimately openly answering publics question and not seeking to hide behind evasive answers.

 

Question 2:

Rubbish collections in regards to the 321 project, this had been a disaster in communal areas due to the amount of black sacks that have been left. Statistic illiterate reasons that had been put around to justify, including claims that somehow collection rates had improved and there had not been a long enough time frame. The Council could be thinking about after investing the money in the policy under the previous administration, this administration could commit to the return of two weekly collections, if habits had changed this would not impact the overall recycling rates and reduce the overflow on rubbish sacks in communal areas.