Agenda item - Oral questions from Councillors

61.1         The Mayor noted that notification of 7 oral questions had been received and that 30minutes were set aside for the duration of the item.  She then invited Councillor G. Theobald to put his question to the Leader of the Council.

(a)             Council Budget

61.2         Councillor G. Theobald asked, “Will Councillor Morgan tell me what sort of responses he expects to receive to his city innovation challenge for new budget ideas with £1000 on offer to each of the five best suggestions?”

61.3         Councillor Morgan replied, “I hope to have a great many and very good suggestions from the imaginative people of Brighton and Hove.”

61.4         Councillor G. Theobald asked the following supplementary question, “I understand that it’s not until January the 4^th that Councillor Morgan will be taking these suggestions according until the Argus. I want to thank him for that response and I wonder if he could tell me whether this competition can be back dated to May 2015 because if he cares to look again at our local election manifesto our ‘Common Sense Council for Brighton and Hove’ he will find many innovative ideas some of which have already been taken up by his administration but there are some others which he may find of great help?”

61.5         Councillor Morgan replied, “I think it was a competition for ideas and proposals back in May and sadly Councillor Theobald and his team were runners up.”

(b)             Mazda Fountain

61.6         Councillor Littman asked, “In the 32 weeks since this administration was elected on how many days has the Mazda Fountain been operating?”

61.7         Councillor Mitchell replied, “I don’t have the information to hand as to the number of days that the Mazda fountain has been operating but I can supply that in a written answer to Councillor Littman.”

61.8         Councillor Littman asked the following supplementary question, “Including maintenance, repairs, officer’s time, running cost etc. how much does this cost the council?”

61.9         Councillor Mitchell replied, “The fountain is maintained by property and design the operational costs average out at £7000p/a.”

(c)             Member / Officer Roles and Responsibilities

61.10      Councillor Bell asked, “Does the Leader believe it is appropriate for the Chief Executive to write to a committee and for the directors of Brighton and Hove City Council to endorse on committee paperwork an item on which they are trying to apply pressure on elected Members to make a decision. Surely as officers of this city who are paid employees by the residents of this city through the council tax they should be there to support the administration and not to be a lobbying group which is what they appear to have become?

61.11      Councillor Morgan replied, “If Cllr. Bell is willing to share details then I’d be happy to look into it for him.”

61.12      Councillor Bell asked the following supplementary question, “I’m very happy with that but as I’ve asked a question in full Council I would hope that once I do submit this Councillor Morgan that it will actually be explained publicly as well.”

61.13      Councillor Morgan replied, “If suitable I’ll bring it to the next council meeting.”

(d)             Innovative Thinking

61.14      Councillor Simson asked, “Before I ask my question I would like to clarify that it is not to do with the competition currently running or the steps taken to manage budget reductions. I recently read that over half of councils anticipate that between a 10^th-5^th of their income will be derived from entrepreneurial sources in four years. So what I would like to know is what your Administration is doing if anything to look at new ways to generate additional income and I stress income. We’re not talking about additional revenue from parking or anything else like that. It’s not about increasing revenue but my question is about newly generated income something new, additional and innovative.”

61.15      Councillor Morgan replied, “Yes, our Administration is engaging actively in many different ways of bringing in income. One of those is the depot at City Clean where we’re investing in a new workshop which will bring in income from fleets of vehicles that’ll be serviced there. We’ll be announcing a range of projects in the new year which will bring in additional income from new council tax from new revenue from rental streams but we will be taking up ideas that are presented by business, by residents, by school children in the competition which we are launching this year. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Brighton and Hove Buses, The Hilton Brighton metropole hotel, Nat West entrepreneurial spark, The University of Sussex and Microsoft for their support for our campaign, our innovation challenge which we’ll be launching on January 4^th.”

61.16      Councillor Simson asked the following supplementary question, “In some local government research that I was also reading it mentioned that about half of the councils that took part had at least one post dedicated to encouraging their authority to be more commercial and I just wondered if this was something we had within this council?”

61.17      Councillor Morgan replied, “We do indeed have officers dedicated in grant support but it is the job of every officer, every Member and indeed now every resident to think of ways of generating income of keeping our services going because as was announced today by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government councils will no longer receive any funding by 2020 and so it is entirely the burden on the residents to fund their local services from that date.”

(e)             Drainage

61.18      Councillor Wares asked, “Recently a report was put forward regarding flood risk management and it highlighted that we have seven hotspots around the city that would receive some project to actually alleviate that problem between 2016 and 2017. In that report it said that extensive cleansing was required to the drainage infrastructure and part of that infrastructure is the cleansing of gullies and at the present time the city does that on a cycle of I believe about every 18 months and I would just like to ask the Chair of Environment, Transport & Sustainability whether or not she would actually consider speaking with officers to implement a revised cleaning schedule of say every 6 months to those area where the seven hotspots exist until such time as these major works are implemented?”

61.19      Councillor Mitchell replied, “Brighton and Hove is primarily a dense urban area with lots of structures and hard landscapes in close proximity to each other. Many properties have hard landscaped their front gardens to facilitate parking and this has had the effect of diverting additional rain water on to the highway. Policies have been introduced to mitigate this. Highway verges do however form a useful and natural type of drainage and it has been recognised more recently that they should not be hardened. Where increased about of water gets discharged onto the highway the drainage infrastructure needs to be enhanced. This has constantly been undertaken by councils over the years and the resultant infrastructure 19,000 gullies and 5,000 soakaways in the highway if working correctly and to capacity are sufficient to deal with the majority of the rainfall even if it is more frequent. As an Administration we have decided to take a more risk based approach to cleaning gullies and improving the service. We are undertaking a study which is looking at things like historic flood events, tree density, local topography and the silt levels in gullies to develop a prioritised list of areas that may require an increased frequency of cleansing. This work will be completed by next April and as always our priority will be to protect homes from flooding and other safety issues.”

61.20      Councillor Wares asked the following supplementary question, “My question was actually whether or not we would increase the frequency of cleaning gullies and perhaps to assist with the survey that’s being undertaken on the 10^th of December a number of residents and myself actually went round Patcham and in that instance we actually found that 37% of every gully was actually blocked or surcharging so I don’t think it will take very much to actually undertake this survey but again I repeat can we actually have some works to these gullies rather than us being in a position where we either resemble Venice or we actually have some of the same problems as our colleagues in the likes of Cumbria are currently experiencing?”

61.21      Councillor Mitchell replied, “Perhaps you missed it but in my previous response to you I did say that the outcome of this review may well indicate that some gullies need to be cleansed more frequently than some others in other areas. So yes that is something we are looking at.”

(f)              School Parking

61.22      Councillor Taylor asked, “Across the city many residents have concerns regarding the lack of off street car parking in our schools this issue particularly effects residence in Withdean ward where we have five schools very near to each other. What assurances can the Chair of the Children’s Committee give the residents of the city and Withdean in particular that they will look to resolve this problem?”

61.23      Councillor Bewick replied, “I must actually confess that I was under the wrong illusion that it would be my colleague Councillor Mitchell who would respond as it was to do with parking but obviously the word ‘schools’ comes in the brief as well. My committee has recently of course looked at issues to do with ice cream vans outside schools. I’m happy for this to be taken up at the next committee meeting and to provide a response in committee to Councillor Taylor. My apologies for not having a more thorough response today.”

(g)             Park Rangers

61.24      Councillor Miller asked, “Can I ask the Chair of the Environment, Transport & Sustainability Committee to explain how the community will be assisted by the council to keep our precious parks look pristine prior to reducing the number of park rangers from 9 to 3 as the justification of this two thirds reduction is an expectation that the community will step in to fill the gap of six park rangers and would she also like to take this opportunity on behalf of the Administration to apologies for the appalling way that staff were notified of their job losses?”

61.25      Councillor Mitchell replied, “I’ll answer the last bit first as I believe you are alluding or you’re trying to suggest that staff were informed that they had lost their jobs by text and that was not the case, nobody was informed they lost their job via a text message. In relation to the park ranger issue as part of the need to find the £68 million savings due to steadily decreasing funding from your Conservative Government City Clean and City Parks are being asked to find potential savings of £4 million and they’re looking at that in a number of ways not just with the park ranger issue but more broadly with how they continue to maintain parks and preserve them into the future. Policy & Resources Committee recently approved consultation on a proposal to reduce the rangers service and officers will therefore be working up these proposals and formally consulting with staff, stakeholders and trade unions but the key elements of the service will be retained those of conservation, rights of way, volunteering including recruitment and support. We will protect statutory and essential frontline services as much as possible, we will look for alternative funding and delivery models too but these are very difficult budget decisions that need to be made and if there are other way of finding the funding to prevent these or other budget reductions then these will of course be looked at very seriously. I am pleased to report that these discussions are very positive and that some worthwhile options are actively now being pursued.”

61.26      Councillor Miller asked the following supplementary question, “I’d just like to ensure that those worthwhile options are pursued sooner before the cuts of six park rangers goes ahead and I would also question whether the Administration should look into why the interim executive director apologised in the paper for the sacked by text if that wasn’t necessarily the case?”

61.27      Councillor Mitchell replied, “Well the Interim Director apologised for the clumsy way that any message relating to the future of a member of staff’s job was communicated and that was entirely the right thing to do. In relation to the ongoing discussion and consultation around the park ranger service I assure you that this is being pursued with all speed not least to give reissuance and some comfort to the staff involved.”