Agenda item

To consider any questions submitted by Members of the Council, in accordance with Standing Order 4.8.11 (b).

In accordance with Standing Order 4.8.11(b), three questions had been submitted by Members by the deadline date for questions set out in the Council’s Constitution regarding the following:

 

(A)            Garden Waste Re-Subscription

(B)            Community Infrastructure Levy

(C)            Educational Provision in the Local Plan:

 

Councillor Richard Thake declared that he was an elected Member of Hertfordshire County Council and in asking this question, which clearly has implications for the provision of education, for which the County Council is the statutory provider, wished to make it clear that he did not consider that there was any interests that would be improper. He was asking the question as a concerned parent, grandparent and resident of North Hertfordshire because of his concerns about the future of education.

Audio recording – 33 minutes 12 seconds

 

In accordance with Standing Order 4.8.11(b), three questions had been submitted by Members by the deadline date for questions set out in the Council’s Constitution as follows:

 

(A)      Garden Waste Re-Subscription

 

Councillor David Levett to Councillor Elizabeth Dennis-Harburg (Executive Member for Recycling and Waste Management):

 

“Following the extension to the previous charging period for Garden Waste and the introduction of stickers to identify those residents who have paid for collection of garden waste could the Executive Member say how many households have re-subscribed to the service and what percentage uptake this represents?”

 

Councillor Elizabeth Dennis-Harburg (Executive Member for Recycling and Waste Management provided the following response:

 

“There is a question more answerable and probably the one intended. The question how many households have re-subscribed was difficult to get the data for, as it would be onerous on officers to pull together the data regarding all those who subscribed last year but didn’t this year and it would exclude all of the people who did not subscribe last year, but have subscribed this year.

 

I think Councillor Levett may be asking how many households had signed up to the service this year and what percentage that amounts to.

 

As of 3pm today, 25,475 households have signed up to the Garden Waste Service which is 47.8 percent of the households in the District (June, July, August and 1-12 September 2019)

 

During the first 3 months of the 2018/19 subscription period, noting that these were different months due to the extension, 21,354 households who had paid for one or more garden waste bins to be collected.

 

Some residents have paid for more than one bin, the total number of bins that have been paid for in June, July and August this year is 25,366, last year the total number of bins paid for was 21,732. In the comparable period of the first 3 months more people had subscribed this year.

 

Based on anecdotal evidence there are some people who have chosen to drop out of the scheme, but equally there are new households who have opted in and once the autumn leaf fall period is past perhaps we can do some analysis and if you really want to know which households have chosen not to re-subscribe and try to think about the reasons customers might chose not to, then that is a piece of work we could do later in the year.

 

I feel that, at the moment, bearing in mind the pressures on the department, its possibly not the right time to be doing that work,”

 

Councillor David Levett asked the following supplementary question:

 

“That was part of the answer, but it was also to find out why people had not re-subscribed, but this data can be looked at later.

 

Bearing in mind that answer, the new Administration, prior to the election made a number of commitments regarding the charging for garden waste and brown bins ie:

 

·                 Bin the brown bin tax now;

·                 Liberal Democrat Councillors voted against this measure and continue to do so;

·                 If elected, I will do all I can to stop this stealth tax

·                 Labour will scrap the £40 bin tax for garden waste.

 

With this in mind can the Executive Member confirm that it is still the intention to scrap the bin tax and if so, when this will happen?”

 

The Executive Member for Recycling and Waste Management gave the following response:

 

“I will refer to the Labour manifesto for 2019 which is the relevant year.

 

In 2019 the Labour group ran on the basis that the Conservatives had introduced this charge. It is going to be far too onerous in terms of budging restrictions for us to unwind what has already been done, given that it would require us to either pay Urbaser £375,000 per year to provide the service for free and this is better option than lumping the food waste back in with the garden waste when you consider environmental issues. The food waste has to be separate if we are going to acheive our climate objectives. So it is not financially viable.

 

What we did say in our manifesto this year, which is the relevant set of promises which the administration is putting in place, is that we would look into and implement as quickly as possible concessionary rates. This is going to have to be next year and officers have been tasked with researching how we can build the infrastructure and what level to set the concessionary rate at. So that Labour manifesto promise is happening.

 

I can’t speak to what Liberal Democrat colleagues put in their election literature, they ran their own campaign and at that time were a separate entity however, this administration has joint priorities and joint promises and just like any joint administration we have all made compromises and all made sacrifices of things we had in our wish list and we are working together to deliver the best possible service that we can to the residents of this District.”

 

Councillor Sam North noted that the Executive Member had answered the question on behalf of the Labour Group and asked how the Liberal Democrat Group would be able to respond.

 

The Chairman advised that she would allow a Liberal Democrat representative to respond. There was no response before the Chairman moved to the next question.

 

(A)         Community Infrastructure Levy

 

Councillor Richard Thake to Councillor Paul Clark (Executive Member for Planning and Transport):

 

“The Executive Member for Planning and Transport will be aware of the recent Planning Advisory Service (PAS) report that concluded that a combination of Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) and Section 106 (S106) is the most effective way of capturing land value uplift to support essential infrastructure.

 

Would he agree that many developers in North Herts are not making a proper contribution to strategic infrastructure and in many cases making no contribution at all to the same, because NHDC has not implemented a CIL tariff?”

 

Councillor Paul Clark, Executive Member for Planning and Transport, gave the following response:

 

“Yes I do agree. It is disappointing that the previous Conservative administration did not implement it or look at it.”

 

Councillor Richard Thake asked the following supplementary question:

 

“Councillor Clark is fully aware that, sadly, because of archaine Government rules, unless you have a Local Plan in place you can’t put CIL in place.

 

Will he now undertake to instruct officers to do the preparatory work to introducing CIL and bring to this Chamber a set of options so that, when and if the Local Plan is finally ratified and adopted, there is no further delay in trying to extract the maximum for the benefit of our greater community in North Hertfordshire from the development industry?”

 

The Executive Member for Planning and Transport responded:

 

“There is a report coming to Cabinet in December as part of the SPD to review CIL to go out as part of the Local Plan for consultation. So we will be able to try to redress the balance at that stage.”

 

Councillor Clark raised a point of order in that he believed that Members were only allowed to submit one question and asked that this be looked into. He stated that despite this, he was happy to answer the second question from Councillor Thake.

 

(B)          Educational Provision in the Local Plan

 

Councillor Richard Thake declared that he was an elected Member of Hertfordshire County Council and in asking this question, which clearly has implications for the provision of education, for which the County Council is the statutory provider, wished to make it clear that he did not consider that there was any interests that would be improper. He was asking the question as a concerned parent, grandparent and resident of North Hertfordshire because of his concerns about the future of education.

 

Councillor Richard Thake to Councillor Paul Clark (Executive Member for Planning and Transport):

 

“In his recent letter to this Authority, the Local Plan inspector, Mr Simon Berkeley, raised further concerns and queries around the alarming disparity between this Councils proposal for education provision contained within the emerging Local Plan and the County Council’s representations regarding future educational provision in the secondary sector.

 

Can the Executive Member for Planning and Transport confirm that he will be pursuing modifications to the local plan to fully implement the recommendations from the County Council, acting as it does as the statutory authority for the provision of sufficient school places in a viable structure, and in doing so, recognise the current local plan educational provisions are deficient and as such puts at risk future educational standards in North Herts?”

 

Councillor Paul Clark, Executive Member for Planning and Transport, gave the following response:

 

“Following receipt of the Inspectors letter, in which he asked this Council to try to understand the County Council’s view, we are working with the County Council to try to resolve the issue amicably.”

 

Councillor Thake asked the following supplementary question:

 

“I am aware that conversations are going on between officers here and the other place, for which I am grateful.

 

Will the Executive Member please assure this Chamber that he will be bringing back regular reports on the progress of this Authority’s projected responses to all of the questions in both letters that the Inspector raised, so that Members can have full cognisance of what is going on and not just be landed with them at some later point in the future when it is too late to make any input?”

 

The Executive Member for Planning and Transport responded:

 

“I can assure the Member that that is my intention, so that we have all Members of this Council know what is going on. The officer has been on holiday and has recently returned. The Project Board has met a couple of times to plan the way forward. I believe the Inspector has been written to and we hope to have some of the information to him by the end of November.”

 

The Service Director – Legal and Community addressed Councillor Clark’s earlier point of order and advised that when the Constitution was recently changed, in regard to questions it now stated three questions per political group.