Issue - meetings

To receive a verbal report from the Leader, Councillor Claire Kober, setting out the Council’s priorities for the municipal year.

The Chair welcomed the Leader of the Council, Councillor Claire Kober, and Deputy Chief Executive, Zina Etheridge who outlined the most pertinent priorities for the year ahead from the Council’s Corporate Plan 2015-18, which can be found using the link below:

Haringey Corporate Plan 2015-18

REPORTED that, in addition to further budget cuts,

a.         the Council’s regeneration aspirations were as important as ever as challenges with housing supply and sufficiency continued and there were more than 3,000 households in temporary accommodation in Haringey.  The Council had successfully won a Housing Zone bid for £40m in Tottenham Hale and was preparing a further bid for Housing Zone funding in Northumberland Park and other areas in Wood Green;

b.         the Post 16 and the skills agenda were concerning as cuts to adult learning budgets would mean a shorter supply of courses;

c.         Birkbeck College would be providing higher education courses in Haringey from September.  There were ongoing discussions with the new National College for Digital Skills about locating in the Borough and plans for a commission of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subject experts to work with schools to encourage take up of these subjects;

d.         the early intervention and prevention agenda continued to be a focus and looked after children numbers were lower than had been in recent years;

e.         a key area in environment was flytipping in parts of the Borough and the Council was working towards understanding the issues behind flytipping and taking action.  In response to questioning, the Council was thinking of ways to demonstrate how tax payers bear  the cost of flytipping, and, CCTV footage had enabled some enforcement;

f.          adults services and the health and social care integration agenda was a large piece of work for the current year with new public health responsibilities including implementation of the universal healthy child programme.

NOTED, in response, to questions and comments from the Committee in the following areas, that:

g.         the Council used various licensing schemes to improve the quality of the private rented sector, learning from other councils, and court action against private landlords where necessary. Building new council stock would take time as a result of funding cuts but in relation to new private builds, planning officers and the planning committee pushed for quality from developers.

The Council held its arms length organisations, such as Homes for Haringey, to account on performance.  Examples were with repairs, which had seen significant improvements and Veolia, who had been served with financial penalties for not meeting contractual requirements.  The Council was working on building staff resources to manage contracts as well as commissioning;

h.         City and Islington College was the main destination for students who moved out of borough for Post 16 provision. This was not understood to be for reasons of lack of provision or quality although reasons could include: the perceived reputation of Haringey institutions, difference of landscape, ability to exercise choice and whether or not young people received the right pathway advice.  Work  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8