Agenda item - Member Involvement

To consider the following matters raised by councillors:

(a)          Petitions: to receive any petitions submitted to the full Council or at the meeting itself;

(b)         Written Questions: to consider any written questions;

(c)          Letters: to consider any letters;

(d)       Notices of Motion: to consider any Notices of Motion referred from Council or submitted directly to the Committee.

42.1    The Chair invited Councillor Nemeth to introduce his letter that had been accepted as a late item and was printed on page 5 of the Addendum.

42.2    Councillor Nemeth apologised for the lateness of the letter and stated that Councillors Mears and Taylor were supporting this letter which requested an urgent report to be brought to the Committee for the next meeting in March in order to get full clarification on the Council’s rough sleeping figures. He explained that two different counting methods had been used in the Council’s figures which had appeared to reduce. However this may have led to a misrepresentation of the numbers of rough sleeping in the City.

42.3    There was a short discussion on the item and Councillor Sykes stated that he was very sympathetic to this issue and confirmed that Audit & Standards Committee was a forum where figures could be checked and that it should not therefore be a significant task to verify this information. Councillor Gilbey questioned whether a new count would add to the confusion on figures and the Chair clarified that they were only requesting a verification of the figures and methods of counting – not a new survey. The Chair asked the internal auditors whether this task was clear and workable within the time frame and the Chief Internal Auditor and the Executive Director, Finance & Resources confirmed that they would discuss this. 

42.4    RESOLVED: That the Council would request an urgent report that would be brought to the March Audit & Standards Committee in order to clarify the rough sleeping statistics used by the Council and the methods used to arrive at these figures.