Agenda and minutes

Please note that this meeting may be filmed or recorded by the Council for live or subsequent broadcast via the Council’s internet site or by anyone attending the meeting using any communication method. Although we ask members of the public recording, filming or reporting on the meeting not to include the public seating areas, members of the public attending the meeting should be aware that we cannot guarantee that they will not be filmed or recorded by others attending the meeting. Members of the public participating in the meeting (e.g. making deputations, asking questions, making oral protests) should be aware that they are likely to be filmed, recorded or reported on. 

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The chair of the meeting has the discretion to terminate or suspend filming or recording, if in his or her opinion continuation of the filming, recording or reporting would disrupt or prejudice the proceedings, infringe the rights of any individual or may lead to the breach of a legal obligation by the Council.

The Chair referred Members present to agenda Item 1 as shown on the agenda in respect of filming at this meeting, and Members noted the information contained therein’.

Apologies for Absence were received from Cllr Emery and Cllr Hymas.

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 as noted below).   

There were no items of Urgent Business.

The Panel was advised that the fly tipping update, listed as Item 10 on the published agenda, was marked to follow. This would now be a verbal update.

None.

To consider any requests received in accordance with Part 4, Section B, Paragraph 29 of the Council’s Constitution.

None.

To approve the minutes of the previous meeting.

RESOLVED

That the minutes of the meeting on 15^th December 2022 were agreed as a correct record.

Verbal Update.

Mark Stevens, Assistant Director for Direct Services tabled a presentation to the Panel on Leisure Centre Service Provision Issues at Tottenham Green and Park Road. The presentation is set out in the tabled papers pack at pages 1-10.  The following arose in discussion of this agenda item:

1. The Panel sought assurances around whether there were any monetary address or other resources going into providing additional transport to help service users access other facilities. Officers advised that there was nothing in place to that effect. Officers set out that they still couldn’t say definitively where the water was coming from and so they didn’t know who to claim against. The Panel was advised that there was no provision within the Fusion contract for Fusion to provide transport services.
2. The Chair queried why Fusion did not have contingency plans in place for similar eventualities. Officers advised that Fusion were contracted to provide Leisure facilities at Park Road and Tottenham Green and that they were not contracted to provide services out of borough or to provide transport to alternative facilities.
3. The Chair commented that the confidence levels within the community, that Fusion would do what they said they would, were very low at this point.
4. In response to a question around contract monitoring, officers advised that they had stepped up the level of contract monitoring and that the Assistant Director was directly involved with monitoring Park Road. Officers advised that whilst sites had been closed, staff were being used to bring both facilities up to scratch in terms of their look and overall condition.
5. In response to a question around engaging with stakeholders, officers advised that the Lido User group had been in place for some time and that their concerns were about a perceived lack of proper engagement from Fusion. This engagement had picked up in response to the work being done by the Council.
6. In relation to staffing issues, officers acknowledged that there were insufficient staffing resources to cover both sites and then when both pools opened this would likely become an issue. Officers advised that they would be pushing Fusion to resolve their resourcing issues to ensure that both sites were staffed properly.
7. The Panel enquired about the impact of leisure facilities bring closed on health providers, given their use of such facilities for social prescribing schemes. Officers agreed to come back with a written response to this question. (Action: Mark Stevens).
8. The Panel queried whether officers were looking to make use of the £63m fund announced by the government during the budget for swimming pools. In response officers advised that part of this was in relation to energy costs, which did not impact Fusion particularly as they had a fixed price energy contract in place until November. Officers advised that they would be looking into whether they could claim for funding for energy costs after November, as well as maintenance costs, going forwards.
9. The Panel enquired whether officers had been in conversation with colleagues in Enfield who had experienced  ...  view the full minutes text for item 201.

*Clerk’s note The Chair agreed to vary the agenda. Item 8, Cabinet Member Questions with the Cabinet Member for Tackling Inequality and Residents Services would be taken at the end of the agenda, following agenda items 9, 10, 11 & 12. The minutes reflect the order in which the items were considered during the meeting, rather than the order they were listed on the published agenda.

** Clerk’s note – The Chair agreed to take all of the questions from agenda items 9, 10, 11 & 12 at the end of the meeting as part of the Cabinet Member Questions item.

The Panel received a Waste, Recycling and Street Cleansing Performance update. The report was introduced by Beth Waltzer as set out in the agenda pack at pages 11 to 28.

RESOLVED

That the Waste, Recycling and Street Cleansing Performance update was noted.

The Panel received a report which provided an update on Highways planned and reactive maintenance services. The report was introduced by Mark Stevens, AD for Direct Services as set out in the agenda pack at pages 29 - 34.

The Panel noted that the Highways and Street Lighting Investment Plan was scheduled to come to Cabinet in April. This would set out the investment plans for the coming year in greater detail. Officers welcomed the additional investment in highways infrastructure in recent years. Current performance levels were that 53% of footways were in need of repair and 37% of carriage ways were in need of repair. The additional investment into highways infrastructure would help to improve the condition of the borough’s carriageways and footways in the coming year.  

RESOLVED

Noted.

Verbal Update.

Mark Stevens, Assistant Director for Direct Services tabled a presentation to the Panel which provided an update on the Parking Management IT System (PMIS). The presentation is set out in the tabled papers pack at pages 11-30.

RESOLVED

That the presentation was noted.

To follow

The Panel received a verbal update on fly-tipping from Brian Ellick,  Head of ASB and Enforcement. The following summary is given of the key points:

·         The Enforcement team was restructured in April 2022, to provide a dedicated waste enforcement team to tackle waste and fly-tipping, separate from the work done to tackle ASB, noise nuisance and licensing enforcement.

·         The key approaches used by the team include; education, communications and intervention.

·         The Team work closely with a number of partners such as the Private Sector Landlords team, Environmental Health, Police, Veolia and Parks.

·         The Team have issued around 1400 Fixed Penalty Notices since April, most of which were for flytipping. Most of the complaints the team received were around household waste that was disposed of irresponsibly. 

·         The Team had served 50 informal notices on Landlords, which required landlords to ensure their tenants knew how to dispose of their waste properly.

·         An CCTV upgrade was underway, which would involve replacing all on-street CCTV cameras including 40 relocatable cameras that could be used to support fly-tipping enforcement work.

·         The Council’s website had a dedicated ‘wall of shame’ page that showed footage of fly-tipping offenders and highlighted the work done by the team to tackle fly-tipping.

·         171 black boxes had been installed to date for the disposal of waste by tenants living above shops on timed collection streets. It was noted that Tottenham High Road was the next area to have black boxes installed and that rollout was expected to be completed by May.

·         Work was also being done to tackle businesses disguising waste on timed collection roads as domestic waste.

·         Officers were working with the courts to try and get a date to prosecute in bulk, those who had not paid their FPNs. The courts were still experiencing a big backlog from Covid and it was hoped that this could be done on a monthly basis.

Officers agreed to bring a more detailed written report on the fly-tipping strategy to the following meeting of the Panel. (Action: Brian Ellick).

RESOLVED

That the update was noted

To answer questions on the aspects of the Cabinet Member’s portfolio that fall under the Panel’s remit:

Highways:

· Parking and parking transformation

· Street scene improvement and the public realm

Waste:

· Waste management and enforcement

· Fly-tipping

· Recycling

The Cabinet Member for Tackling Inequality and Resident Services undertook a verbal Q&A. The following arose as part of the discussion of this item:

a.    In response to comments around complaints with the PMIS and the communications around the new system, The Cabinet Member emphasised the scale of the contacts involved, with nearly one million permits issued and 171k households. In this context 200 complaints was a very small fraction of user interactions.

b.    The Panel queried about the feedback that had been received as part of the waste survey. In response the Cabinet Member advised that 9000 responses were received, which surprised everyone. This was twice as many as the previous record. It would take some time to go through all of the responses and this was part of wider programme of engagement about what to do when the waste contract came up for renewal in 2025. The Cabinet Member welcomed the fact that residents had been involved at the start of the process. The Panel queried whether the Council would be contacting those 9000 respondents to let them know what it would be doing next. The Cabinet Member commented that this was something she would look to undertake.

3. The Panel sought clarification about the split between in-borough fly tipping and that done by those from out of the borough. In response, the Cabinet Member set out that 82% of fly tipping in Haringey was misplaced household waste and so the focus of work to tackle dumping/fly tipping should be directed here.
4. The Panel queried the link between bulky waste charges and fly tipping.   The panel was advised that the Council introduced bulky waste charges in 2015 and the Cabinet Member commented that she didn’t think this had a significant effect on fly-tipping, particularly as Enfield had free bulky waste collections and had similar levels of fly tipping as Haringey.
5. The Panel commented on parking permit misuse on match days and what could be done to prevent this. In response, the Cabinet Member advised that under the old system of scratch cards, people could buy 1000 at a time and this clearly led to misuse. With the introduction of virtual permits, this had made a difference as you could only buy nine at once and you could only activate two of those at any one time. Match day permit misuse was a long term problem that was improving with the introduction of virtual permits.
6. In response to a question, the Cabinet Member acknowledged that user testing was a big issue and that one factor that come up was around who was using paper permits and that a lot of the people that were using them were receiving care at home. A report to Cabinet was forthcoming on carers’ permits.
7. The Panel noted concerns with delays to the scheduled cleansing of gullies for particular streets and people not knowing when to move their cars. In response, the Cabinet Member advised that the Council put out a parking suspension seven  ...  view the full minutes text for item 206.

Noted

To consider any items admitted at item 3 above.

N/A

TBC

Dates for the 2023/24 municipal year are to be agreed at Annual Council on 15^th May.