Agenda item

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 days in advance but that delays could occur due to the age of some of the drainage infrastructure in London. If people didn’t move their cars, then this could also cause delays to the schedule and the team would have to move on to the next location. In response to this, the Council was putting out extensive communications to residents about when to move cars and was also removing vehicles if necessary.
8. Problems were raised with jobs being incorrectly closed through the Love Clean Streets app. In response, the Cabinet Member gave an example of a broken streetlight and the that if it was a power failure then the job would have to be passed to UK Power Network, who had a 28day turnaround. The Council had done all it could and had passed the job on to the relevant organisation, so the job would be shown as being closed. The Cabinet Member acknowledged that the Council needed to work with Love Clean Streets so that users got a notification telling them the job had been inspected and passed on to the relevant third party. 
9. The Panel noted that the Council did not have access to the Corporation of London’s hazardous waste scheme. In response, the Cabinet Member acknowledged that there was a gap and that the Council had previously decided to exclude itself from this contract as it thought this would be covered by the NLWA. The Council was in discussion with NLWA to see what could be done and the Council would be looking to engage with the City of London when the contract was up for renewal.
10. In response to a question, the Panel was assured that there were close working links between the enforcement team and the private sector landlord team but that there were different problems across different parts of the borough. The Council had secured some funding to recruit an HMO enforcement officer and this would be linked into the selective licensing scheme.
11. The Panel questioned whether there were any plans to bring in additional diesel surcharges for parking and/or cheaper parking for EVs. In response, the Cabinet Member advised that they were doing a review of whether to have a flat or variable parking rate. The Cabinet Member cautioned that they needed to give consideration about whether the timing for such a change was right, given that a lot of businesses were struggling.
12. The Panel enquired whether any thought had been given to amending parking tariffs in the borough to encourage people to support local businesses. In response, it was noted that a boundary review was underway, which would examine whether the Council needed to have 13 different parking bands.

RESOLVED

Noted.