Agenda item

To receive any questions and or statements relating to any items of the Council powers/ duties or which otherwise affects the District and items on the agenda from members of the public.

Paul Elstone

Question 1:

At the last full Council meeting, I asked how many Mid Devon District Council (MDDC) officers have been dismissed for gross misconduct over the last four years. The answer given was 19. I found that number shocking. I asked the other Devon District Councils the exact same question, their answers.

East Devon- three (3)

Teignbridge- one (1)

Torridge- Four (4)

West Devon and South Ham's (combined)- eight (8)

North Devon- one (1)

A two year period 21 to 23, the latest data is being obtained.

The combined total of the six other Devon districts is less than the number of firings by this Council. This suggests that either this Council has an extremely poor recruitment process, or it has draconian employee management culture.

Recent events would suggest the latter. A committee which it would not be appropriate to elaborate on in this forum or at this moment in time.

The benchmarking data proves this Council is very much out of step with the other districts and given the far reaching consequences, especially for those families affected. Members should be asking the real reasons why.

Will the Council leader implement a comprehensive external review into the extremely high number of employee dismissals at this Council?

The Chair explained that as question 1 had not been provided in writing in the required time frame in advance of the meeting that a written response would be provided in 10 working days.

Question 2:

The Cabinet Member for Housing, Assets and Property Services in answer to a previous question said there was, and I quote “a mis-mapped utility” this at the ZED PODS Beech Road development. A mismapped utility used to justify the extremely long delay in completing the development build out.

Can the Cabinet Member be very precise. What was the mis-mapped utility? was it water or something else and if a pipe what was the line size?

Response from the Cabinet Member for Housing, Assets and Property Services:

South West Water (SWW)

Question 3:

Will the Cabinet Member provide a drawing showing the exact routing and location of this mis-mapped utility, a drawing that surely must be available to allow re-routing to take place?

Response from the Cabinet Member for Housing, Assets and Property Services:

As an unmapped utility it was not shown on a map. South West Water (SWW) had now resolved this with a diverted supply and would update their mapping in due course.

Question 4:

If I read this Councils Statement of Accounts for year ending 31st March 2025 correctly. Section 50 Cash Flow shows impairment amounts have increased by over £13 million.

Can your Cabinet Member for Governance, Finance and Risk please provide a precise breakdown as to what the £13 million impairment value relates to and how much, if anything, of the impairment amount is related to 3 Rivers?

Response from the Chair of the Council:

£12.9m related to the Council’s housing stock where the District Valuer had assigned a reduced level of value across a broad cross section of the stock and in addition all of the new properties built by the Housing Revenue Accounts (HRA) had to be valued at Existing Use for Social Housing. No impairment figures directly related to 3 Rivers as they ceased trading before the 2024/25 financial year. For everyone’s information, these accounts had now been formally reviewed and signed off by the Council’s external auditors who had issued an unqualified opinion at a recent meeting of the Audit Committee.

Supplementary question:

The Cabinet Member for Housing in her response to me has not provided details on the line size as requested. Is it 3 or 4 inches?

Additionally, the Cabinet Member for Housing in her response has not said that she will provide a drawing showing the exact details of the mis-mapped utility. A drawing which must be available to this Council.

The Chair explained that as question 1 nor the supplementary question had not been provided in writing in the required time frame in advance of the meeting that a written response would be provided in 10 working days.

Barry Warren

I ask that before the minutes of the 29 of October 2025 are approved that an amendment be made to minute 42 to accurately reflect what I said as the written draft minutes and the written record of my questions have been altered to substitute words which I did not say. The audio of the meeting records my true words.

I have tried to resolve this issue on the 17 November with the senior member of Democratic Services with an email which stated:

“I have read the draft minutes of the Full Council meeting of the 29^th of October 2025 and noted that there is a significant difference between the draft minutes and what I actually said.

The published draft minutes say that I said: “Subsequent Freedom of Information (FOI) requests had resulted in the release of all the relevant invoices and named the officer who issued the orders and authorised the payments – the Head of Housing and Health.” 

However, what I actually said was: “Subsequent Freedom of Information (FOI) requests has resulted in the release of all the relevant invoices and named the officer who issued the orders and authorised the payments- ‘Head of Housing and Health’-

The title of the post has been substituted for the name I stated - which therefore means that, in this respect, the draft minutes are inaccurate.

I know you sometimes replace names with post titles but, in this case, I was justified in naming the senior officer as the use of his name is in the public domain as evidenced in the response I received from Mid Devon District Council (MDDC) Information Management on the 26 of September 2025.  A copy of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Review response explaining this is attached for information with the relevant portion highlighted for ease of reference.

Hopefully you will feel able to amend the draft minutes to show the officer’s name rather than his post title at this stage to avoid my having to publicly ask for the correction of an inaccuracy when the minutes are presented for approval.

Councillors names used were correctly recorded and I ask that the words ‘Head of Housing and Health’ be recorded instead of the title inserted incorrectly – Head of Housing and Health.  The post will remain but a different individual may hold that post in future so the correct words used are relevant.

Response from the Leader of the Council:

The draft minutes were not inaccurate. The officer you named personally, was the Head of Housing and Health, thus it had been recorded that way in the minutes. Individual officers were not named as part of council proceedings; they appear by way of job title reference as and when required. This was because authority and delegations were made to job titles, not named individuals. So, for example, when you see recommendations or decisions from council, the decision will never refer to a named officer, always a job title. Aside from pure convention, it is an important point of governance to record which Council officer did something or was delegated to do something, so that it did not appear only as a forename/surname. Because ‘Joe Bloggs’ if referred to in the minutes, could be anyone of significance or indeed no one of relevance, when clearly what matters was the role and function being referred to. In this instance it was the Head of Housing and Health, and as such it had been accurately recorded.

Also, within the Constitution under ‘Recording of Questions and Statements by the Public’ it stated: The minutes shall contain a condensed written record of questions and/or statements made by the public which accurately conveys the context. The minutes were not verbatim.