Agenda item

A response from the Cabinet Member to the report of the Rapid Scrutiny group, which was endorsed by Committee on 19 May 2022.

Please note that this paper will be published as an agenda supplement.

The Chairman introduced a report within the Agenda Supplement, which presented the response of the Cabinet Member for Housing, Strategic Assets, Asset Transfer to the final report of the Service Devolution Asset Transfer Policy Rapid Scrutiny Exercise.

The Chairman noted that on 19th May 2022, the Management Committee endorsed the final report of the Task Group and referred the Rapid Scrutiny Exercise’s recommendations to the relevant Cabinet member for response at this meeting. The Management Committee also asked for a response to the additional issues raised during the Committee debate.

The following comments were received by the Cllr Ian Blair-Pilling as the Cabinet Member in attendance on behalf of Cllr Phil Alford, with it stated that the Cabinet said that they had accepted most of the points made and had modified others. The new Policy is set to come to Cabinet in September, which will then embody all of the suggestions and changes made. Cllr Hopkinson stated that the Rapid Scrutiny Group would meet to review the new Policy in advance of Cabinet approval.

The following comments were received from Cllr Ruth Hopkinson, Lead Member for the Rapid Scrutiny Group:

·       Regarding Recommendation 2, the Task Group believed that there was a lack of commitment involving allocating resources to support implementation of the policy.

The following comments were received by Members of the Committee:         

·       A Member of the Committee was concerned that the relevant Cabinet Member was not in attendance following a positive piece of scrutiny and this demonstrated a lack of respect of the function

·       Regarding the amendments to the recommendations, some Committee Members stated that rather than being amended it should have been worded as “rejected”.

·       The Cabinet Member stated that there is a view that Cabinet do not want reserves to be used for on-going spend when the programme has not been defined, though this does not preclude Cabinet for using reserves for one-off spending activity.

·       It was suggested that in the long-term the policy could potentially save Wiltshire Council money through investing and putting the onus onto Towns and Parishes, should they wish to take over services previously covered by Wiltshire Council. It was however also suggested that once Parish Councils take responsibility, they then could raise their precepts.

·       It was suggested that with inflation and increasing costs, the policy could potentially become a missed opportunity for Wiltshire Council.

·       The Cabinet Member assured Committee Members that the Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee and backbench members in generally are taken very seriously by the Cabinet. It was stated that Cllr Alford is motivated about asset transfer, however there is an awareness from Cabinet that the demand is immediately too great for the bandwidth available no matter what the resources. It is therefore the role of the policy to strike a balance.

·       It was clarified by the Section 151 Officer that following the Town and Parish Council conference all those which had provided a level of interest had been logged with responses provided to recognise that the work was on the Cabinet Forward Work Plan.

The following comments were received by Officers:

·       Speaking as Governance Lead, Perry Holmes outlined the options available to Committee in regard to their response. Noting that it could potentially be useful to have a third category style of response from Cabinet, titled “amended” which would indicate that the executive had been influenced by the provided proposals but had not yet fully accepted it and that the proposal could be changed.

·       Democracy and Complaints Manager, Henry Powell, stated that previously responses had been produced in the format presented in order to allow for statistics to be gathered. It could therefore be useful in the future to abandon defining responses, or to change the definitions in place.

At the conclusion of discussion, it was,

A motion was moved by Cllr Jon Hubbard to update the 1^st recommendation to state “To note with disappointment the executive response to the Final Report of the Service Devolution Asset Transfer Policy Rapid Scrutiny Exercise. This was accepted as a friendly amendment by The Chairman.

A second motion was moved by Cllr Jon Hubbard to update the ^2nd recommendation to state that “To note that in most cases those executive responses labelled amended were considered by the Committee to be rejected”, which was seconded by Cllr Ruth Hopkinson. A friendly amendment was suggested by The Chairman to state “To note that those recommendations relating to resourcing the policy the executive responses labelled “amended” were considered by the Committee to have been rejected”, which was not accepted by Cllr Jon Hubbard. When taken to the vote, the initial motion fell and was therefore not carried.

At the conclusion of discussion, it was,

Resolved:

1.     To note with disappointment the executive response to the Final Report of the Asset Transfer Policy Rapid Scrutiny Exercise.

2.     To ask the Asset Transfer Policy Rapid Scrutiny Group to review and comment on the new Asset Transfer Policy prior to its consideration by Cabinet on 6^th September 2022.

3.     To note the Committee’s ongoing concerns regarding sufficient resources being made available to progress Asset Transfers, and to ask the Cabinet to respond to these concerns when it receives the proposed new Asset Transfer Policy on 6^th September 2022.