Issue - meetings

To consider exempt information pertaining to agenda item 13 above.

Following the exclusion of the press and public from the meeting, the Board discussed the exempt parts of the report.

Colin Marr referred to Appendix B of the report and commented that although the recommendations from the Local Partnership/ Gateway Review were to be welcomed, and were clearly important in advancing the regeneration programme, it was regrettable that of the 22 individuals who had been interviewed as part of the Review, 21 of them were either councillors or paid members of the APP team. The concern was that stakeholders and representatives of the wider community had been under-represented and this was unfortunate.

In response, Duncan Wilson explained that as part of the review, ‘stakeholders’ were not defined as they would usually be – in this instance, stakeholders were those who had a financial risk.  There was no lack of willingness to consult with local stakeholders, but perhaps this should have been made clearer in the purpose of the review and definitions of terms could have been included.

Mark Hopson added that the review had looked at a number of key documents and had captured key messages from groups of local stakeholders.

NOTED the discussion in relation to the restricted appendices of agenda item 13.