Agenda and draft minutes

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Apologies were received from Cllr Alexander, Cllr Bloch, Cllr Stanton and Cllr Bull.

A member with a disclosable pecuniary interest or a prejudicial interest in a matter who attends a meeting of the authority at which the matter is considered:

(i) must disclose the interest at the start of the meeting or when the interest becomes apparent, and

(ii) may not participate in any discussion or vote on the matter and must withdraw from the meeting room.

A member who discloses at a meeting a disclosable pecuniary interest which is not registered in the Members’ Register of Interests or the subject of a pending notification must notify the Monitoring Officer of the interest within 28 days of the disclosure.

Disclosable pecuniary interests, personal interests and prejudicial interest are defined at Paragraphs 5-7 and Appendix A of the Members’ Code of Conduct.

None.

To consider any requests receive in accordance with Part 4, Section B, paragraph 29 of the Council’s constitution.

None.

The Chair will consider the admission of any late items of urgent business.  Late items will be considered under the agenda item where they appear.  New items will be dealt with at the end of the agenda.

None.

To note and agree the minutes of the 26^th September 2013.

The minutes of the previous meeting (28^th September 2013) were agreed by the panel.

Sandra Hoisz (Programme Manager, Communities and Young People) to present an overview of work undertaken in Haringey.

The panel agreed to invite a number of community groups to attend to present some of the work that is being undertaken in Haringey.  The focus of this work was to:

·        Help raise the profile of local environmental community groups in the borough;

·        Help to build links with members and council services;

·        Identify current work challenges and make recommendations on how these may be overcome;

·        Identify opportunities to extend work and improve outcomes in the borough.

Groundwork is a charity that has been delivering environmental regeneration projects for 30 years.  The group has a long history of working in Haringey (8 years) and has worked with the Council, Homes for Haringey and voluntary sector groups. A key approach of groundwork is to work with and empower local residents.  The group offers:

·        Consultation, design and implementation expertise;

·        Professional input into local environmental projects (landscape architecture, project management);

·        Community engagement and capacity building skills;

·        Employment skills and training.

Groundwork London helps people and organisations make changes in order to create better neighbourhoods, to build skills and job prospects and to live and work in a greener way. A six year funding agreement is in place with the council which Groundwork use to attract further funding into the Borough.  The panel noted that an additional £565k of external funding has been secured towards projects in Haringey over the past 2 years.

A key area of work for Groundwork is to produce Master Plans for Parks development and produces 3 per year. A typical landscape project on a park or open space will involve an extensive period of consultation and with work being coordinated by a local stakeholder group. Once a design has been agreed, Groundwork will work to secure the required funding, typically through charitable trusts, the Big Lottery and landfill funding awards. Once secured, the project will be delivered in partnership with the council.  Past development projects included:

·        Fairland’s Park (£270k); LBH, Big Lottery, LMT and Veolia

·        Stationers Park (£160k) – LBH, Biffa, Big Lottery LTWGS

·        Ducketts Common (£250k);

Groundwork also support the development of Community Action Plans which help to guide local people’s efforts to look after green spaces.  This plan is developed in partnership with LBH, residents and local groups and sets out tasks and responsibilities for implementation.  Local groups are trained to help build capacity.

A time-bank is also supported by Groundwork in which the skills and experience of local people (e.g. cooking, baking, woodcraft) are exchanged for other services.  This service operates out of Winkfield Road, has 200 members and exchanged over 5,000 volunteer hours. 

The panel noted that a community gardening scheme is in operation, which seeks to bring back in to use small areas of land which are neglected or abandoned.  There is a good partnership with Homes for Haringey, which has helped to identify local green spaces on housing estates and facilitated community engagement and involvement.  In Ferry Lane, there were 30 local residents involved in community gardening. Other outcomes from this work include:

·        Skill  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

To note the end of year performance report (deferred from last agenda).

This report was deferred from the last agenda and was noted by the panel.

Briefing on:

·        Waste Management Group and EHSP

·        Contamination Policy

·        Community Environmental Champions

·        Enforcement reporting App

·        HGV automated number plate recognition – business case.

TO FOLLOW

At the previous meeting, an update was requested on a number of issues relating to services within Frontline.

Out Haringey App

Officers gave a short presentation on the Our Haringey APP, a reporting tool for smart phones for street based issues (e.g. potholes, fly tipping, rubbish and pavement repairs). The system uses GPS to pinpoint the location of reported item, allows details to be recorded (including a photo) and can be used with iPhone and Android operating systems (via free download).  The APP can be used by local residents, community groups as well as front line and all other council staff.

Reports generated through the APP go the contact centre at Veolia and directed to the appropriate Haringey service (e.g. NATs or Highways). Residents (or other reporter) will receive an email update when report is received and a confirmation when the job is closed.

The panel noted that whilst this APP did allow pictures to be sent to support the report, it was not encouraged to use this facility to report ‘in-situ’ contraventions such as fly tipping.   Aside from the personal risk of reporting such instances, it was not clear if such material could be used as evidence to support any prosecutions.

It was confirmed to the panel however that if there were suspicions of illegal or unauthorised dumping, details could be checked within NAT to ensure that there was an appropriate license to support this (trade waste), and if necessary, appropriate enforcement action taken.

Waste Contract Management Group

A briefing prepared for the panel was discussed.   It was noted that this group was no longer functioning as it was perceived that this duplicated the contract management function of the Partnership Board.

The panel indicated that the current arrangement did not allow for sufficient member involvement for a service which was of particular importance within the community and is a significant contributor to local casework. The panel agreed that it would be useful if data could come to the EHSP as this may help bring further accountability and inform further scrutiny work.

Contamination Policy

The Panel noted that where contamination was present in recycling, this could potentially contaminate the whole truck, which may mean that the entire load being rejected and incorporated in to residual waste.  A contamination policy was developed in April 2013 to minimise such occurrences.  The panel heard that NAT deployed a three step approach to tackling contamination with offending residents; this was a balance between education and enforcement. 

Prior to April 2013, contamination reports totalled (on average) 500-600 per week or 0.7% collections.  Despite an initial increase after the introduction of the policy (where possibly more cases were being reported), contamination reports had reduced to back to original levels (500 reports per week).

Analysis undertaken by Veolia over the period late July to 13^th October 2013 indicated that there were 9,200 contamination reports that involved 7,450 individual properties.  The overwhelming majority (83%) of these reports related to the first contamination incident (12% of reports were  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9.

To note and agree the scoping report for community engagement with planning service.

The panel agreed that community engagement with planning would be a project in the work programme for 2013-14.  The panel discussed and agreed the proposed project scoping report.   The overarching aim of this work was to:

          ‘To assess whether residents and communities have appropriate opportunities to engage meaningfully in local planning processes through community engagement and involvement strategies within the planning service (with particular reference to the Statement of Community Involvement).’

To receive evidence on the community engagement and involvement processes used by Haringey Planning Service.

Report  / Presentation

Evidence from Planning Officers

The panel noted that the Planning Service was committed to involving and consulting with local people in all planning processes and decisions and that the views of local people were important in shaping the future of the borough.  Effective community involvement and consultation is fundamental to this process to ensure that decisions are reasoned, transparent and accountable to the community.

The panel heard that the planning service undertakes consultations for two types of planning processes:

·        planning applications; and

·        planning policy documents.

Statement of Community Involvement

It was noted that consultations on both planning applications and planning policy documents are subject to statutory requirements.  In addition, the principles and methods of local planning consultations are statutorily required to be set out in a local Statement of Community Involvement (SCI).  The panel noted that the SCI is generally a framework document as too much detail may stifle creativity and could be subject a Planning Service to legal challenge if not complied with. 

The panel noted that Haringey’s SCI was first adopted in May 2007 and was reviewed in February 2011 in response to changes in planning law.  The planning service aims to exceed any minimum requirements detailed in the SCI, though this will depend on the type of consultation, the targeted consultees and resources available. 

The panel noted that the SCI needs to be updated to reflect the introduction of Localism Act, National Planning Policy Framework and Neighbourhood Planning. The review will also incorporate an assessment of new engagement tools available to the Council.  The panel noted that its work, which would involve consulting local groups on the SCI, would also contribute to the review process.

Planning Consultations

The Planning Service consults in the formulation of local planning policies; these would include major planning documents at the Core Strategy, as well as more specific policies for particular planning issues.  Minimum requirements for consultations are set out by government, and the SCI provides additional methods and approaches to help ensure community involvement is effective and reaches local stakeholders.

Different methods and requirements for consultation are required depending on the status of the planning document, for example, whether it is a Development Plan Document (DPD) or a Supplementary Planning Document (SPD):

·        A DPD brings forward statutory local policy which requires at least two stages of community consultation and an independent examination.

·        An SPD provides further guidance for policies in DPDs and as such requires only one stage of community consultation and is not subject to an examination.

The panel noted that a variety of local stakeholders were involved at various stages of the plan making process and include:

·        Statutory consultees (e.g. Mayor of London, neighbouring boroughs, fire, police, utilities, health, transport);

·        Representative bodies

·        Community groups

·        Business groups, planning agents and consultants

·        Local residents and individuals.

The planning service maintains a database of local stakeholders and currently this has almost 1,500 entries.  The database is updated every three years and this last occurred in 2012.  In some cases the Planning Policy  ...  view the full minutes text for item 11.

To receive and update on the strategic enforcement work of the panel:

§  Enforcement survey;

§  Evidence gathering sessions;

§  Future work.

The panel noted that evidence gathering session commenced on 7^th November.

To note and agree forward work programme for the Environment and Housing Scrutiny Panel.

Noted.

None.

2^nd December 2013 -18.30 (Budget Scrutiny)

28^th January 2014 -18.30

24^th February 2014 -18.30

Next panel meeting was 2^nd December for budget scrutiny.