To receive Chairman’s Announcements.
Minutes:
The Chairman made the following announcements:
Police
Inspector Sparrow had sent his apologies as he was unavailable due to the major incident in Salisbury. His written update was noted later in the agenda but the Chairman highlightes the main points.
The Roll of the Area Board
One of the priorities that came out of the peer review, was to consider enlarging the roll of the area board. At the Cabinet meeting yesterday, this was discussed, and because of the Salisbury incident recently and that mopping up large numbers of staff, it was announced that this matter would be on hold at present.
We could take this opportunity to give the matter some thought of our own, how could the role of area boards be enlarged, what do people think about the idea of devolving other areas of the council’s budget to area boards?
The question was then asked whether people would like to participate in a discussion to explore ideas with the view of putting some proposals together.
Questions and comments:
Chris Hall, Downton - I was involved with Area Boards from the start, but I now feel that part of the Area Boards primary function no longer happens. We were promised the Area Boards would make the council more democratically accountable. We were told that we would have a Cabinet member at all meetings to talk about their area of work. It would have been an ideal opportunity for the Highways cabinet member to come tonight for the highways improvements schedule item, so that they could be challenged.
You seem to have less powers than Parish Councils.
Answer: A Cabinet member or portfolio holder would always attend if invited to do so for a specific topic relating to them.
We have had Tracey Carter as our Associate Director, Deputy Leader Cllr Thomson and even the Leader Cllr Jane Scott in attendance when we invited them.
I see the role of the Area Board to try and bring about improvements in our communities, we see our roll to facilitate our parish councils and working groups in moving projects forward. Some of the initiatives we have started have really paid great dividends.
Our other role is to raise the issues highlighted in our JSA events and encourage actions to tackle those issues.
We depend heavily on working with and through parish councils to bring about improvements for our residents.
Cllr Clewer – As a Cabinet Member, we have had discussion recently, where there were conflicting views on whether there should be a portfolio holder in attendance at Boards occasionally. We have said that if people want a portfolio member there then let us know.
Some of the Boards did not want Cabinet Members in attendance. We should see them in attendance occasionally, but they should be invited for a reason.
With regard to devolving Planning to the Area Boards, Planning needs to be followed through a specific process that could not be dealt with by the Area Board. 1% of the budget is devolved to Area Boards. There is a desire to do more. The Area Board is a part of Wiltshire Council, and it works best when we get your views so we can feed back.
The Community Engagement Manager, Tom Bray added that in terms of the Cabinet member attendance, the Board would like to hear from people when they have an issue with something so that it could work together to resolve issues. If there were no issues then there would be no point in bringing these people down to address matters when none have been raised. The Board works to improve shared resources and working together to find support.
The Chairman summarised that the Board’s general philosophy was to try to produce practical projects that could produce real results at a community level. He had tried strenuously to prevent the Board from becoming a talking shop or simply a mouthpiece for Wiltshire Council and had resisted having certain offers of presentations coming to us when he felt that they did not have a specific relevance to our communities.
He invited people to write to him with any suggestions on what they felt the Board should be doing and how it could do that. Perhaps this could lead to a workshop to discuss those ideas.