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 were submitted by Members by the deadline date for questions set out in the Council’s Constitution regarding the following:

(A)     Direct Debit take up for Garden Waste Collection Service;

(B)     Council Special Reserve Fund;

(C)     Splash Parks.

Audio recording – 1 hour 43 seconds

In accordance with Standing Order 4.8.11(b), three questions were submitted by Members by the deadline date for questions set out in the Council’s Constitution.

(A)     Direct Debit take up for Garden Waste Collection Service

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

“What percentage of direct debit has been taken up by our residents for garden waste collection this year, now operational?”

The Executive Member for Recycling and Waste responded:

At the moment, because we are not at the official start date of the new subscription period, which is 1 October, the data is still quite fresh and fluctuating quite rapidly. From the data they have been able to access there have been 700 people signed up via direct debit.

The total number of people who have subscribed for the coming year was 17000. At the moment direct debit was quite a small percentage of total sign ups. We are going to do a wider exercise of digging into the data and understanding what our residents want around direct debits or to just click and pay every year as their needs dictate. Now we are in the final week before the new subscription starts we are starting to see an increase in the daily subscriber numbers, especially now we have started running the social media campaigns. If you check back in a couple of weeks time, I will be able to give a bit more data around percentages and different customer types and which brackets they are fitting in.

Councillor David Levett asked the following supplementary question:

Bearing in mind that the direct debit number is a very small percentage, do you believe that this could be down to the problems for members of the public setting up direct debits with Urbaser, which many of us have had reports of. Also having reports of difficulty making payments and getting through. Also many people seem to have received two bin stickers which is causing some concern. Do you believe that impacts on the way that people are subscribing?

The Executive Member for Recycling and Waste Management responded:

At this point in time it is too early for us to know for certain the reason why we have seen a relatively small number of our customer base opting to go with direct debits, obviously there are going to be a number of different reasons. For example some people want to have a garden waste service, but are on a 6 or 12 month fixed term tenancy, so clearly for them, they might not want to tie themselves into a direct debit.

You referenced some problems with the web site. There was a deliberate soft launch over the summer this year in order to try to avoid the problems that we saw the first year, when the previous administration had this system up and running. Anny issues seen have been some technical regulatory things to do with Barclays who are our payment service provider. There were one or two small issues with moving the web site from the previous provider to the new one and getting that all set up to offer the new customer facing portal. As each issue cropped up it was tackled and resolved by the website provider, officers and Urbaser, usually with 24 hours. Anecdotally, I don’t think the website is going to be the main barrier. It could have been an issue for some people wanting to sign up for direct debits. This is a piece of work we can do post project completion, when undertaking the lessons learnt exercise, so that we can understand and make things better for subscriptions next year and for any other service that we might shift over to this kind of format.

You referenced the duplicate stickers. This was an issue with Permiserve, the company that provides the stickers. They had a problem with their system and it decided to run duplicates. This has been picked up and they are doing a rectification piece of work. I don’t know how many people are affected, but have been told that it is not a large and substantial number. That is completely separate from the direct debit issue.

(B)     Council Special Reserve Fund

Councillor Morgan Derbyshire to Councillor Ian Albert (Executive Member for Finance and IT).

“Huge pressures are now being placed on the Councils special reserve fund, could the Executive member advise as to the current situation?”

The Executive Member for Finance and IT responded:

As I said earlier regarding the Medium Term Financial Strategy, the real issue is the Government’s failure to deliver on its promise that they would adequately fund local authorities during the pandemic, rather less than the pressure in the special reserve.

The balance on the special reserve at the beginning of the year was £1.175 million. The terms of the use of the reserve are now maintained for any special finance pressures, such as pump priming initiatives for shared services, changes in working practice, major contract renewals, unexpected contract variation, supporting and response to and reducing the impact of major incidents and other financial pressures.

So for this year the following amount are forecast: Full Council have approved the use of the reserve for costs in relation to redundancy, which will provide ongoing revenue savings and further details as in the Part 2 report from the July Council meeting. Following recommendations from the cross party grants panel just under £74,000 of grants have been allocated to community groups to help them to support our residents, this amount will have increased after the meeting yesterday. This has been welcomed by organisations and some of the presentations received from those groups have shown this support has been well received. The current forecast is that we will spend about £150,000 on grant this year, although that will depend on the applications received.

We are funding the Commercial Manager and Commercial Officer posts for this year totalling £100,000, this decision was confirmed by full Council as part of the 2020/21 budget setting process. We are funding a small Transformation team, as agreed at full Council in July and separately there is a full Council decision from 2018. That we would spend up to £130,00 on a valuation process for proposals in relation to Churchgate prior to a final decision, £43,000 has been spent to date on that.

To conclude, the current forecast is that the balance on the reserve at the end of the year will, in fact, be around £700,000. So we will still have about 2/3 of that special reserve still left and the terms of that special reserve are quite broad and in assessing our sustainability in the Medium Term Financial Strategy, as discussed earlier on in the agenda, the balance of this reserve will be considered alongside our general fund balance. The general fund has of course been hit by the impact of Covid-19 and the shortfall in funding from Government. Hope that answer has helped, more than happy to discuss this with you separately if you would like to.

(C)     Splash Parks

Councillor Tony Hunter to Councillor Steve Jarvis (Executive Member for Environment and Leisure).

“Bearing in mind the delayed opening of our splash parks this year, could the Executive member advise as to whether any consideration was given to extending the closure date this season?”

The Executive Member for Environment and Leisure responded:

The simple answer is yes, but I probably need to provide you with the background. As you know the splash parks were unable to open in July and when they did open, in order to open them in a satisfactory, Covid secure way, it was necessary to do quite a lot of things that we had not done in previous years, not least that whereas there are usually two members of staff supervising four sites, this year the Baldock site we were unable to open for technical reasons relating to the operation of the equipment, we then had to put two staff on each of the sites that we did open. Those staff were all hire on fixed term contracts and there was various equipment that needed hiring fixed term as well.

Towards the end of the period we considered whether or not there was scope for extending the opening period, but it became apparent that many of the staff that had been hired were either going to or returning to university very shortly after the end of their contract and they were unwilling to extend, so it would have meant recruiting and training new staff for a short extension.

Normally the utilisation of the splash parks drops off quite considerably once schools return. Inevitably, having made the decision, the day after they closed was one of the warmest days for some considerable time, that is one of the vagaries of the English summer. Having made the decision that we were essentially going to close them on the normal date, it really wasn’t practical to extend it at short notice. That is one of those things that is regrettable, but there wasn’t a viable alternative.

Councillor Tony Hunter asked the following supplementary question:

I am grateful to the Executive Member for the answer and that it is now in the public domain. I have been asked by a number of local Councillors as to whether any thought had been given to extending the period.

Obviously the weather conditions for the last few years for September and early October have been exceptionally good and I wonder of the Executive Member could revue the budget and the opening times for the forthcoming seasons, hopefully with things back to normal in the forthcoming years.

The Executive Member for Environment and Leisure responded:

I think that is a very interesting suggestion. I think you are absolutely right that the weather is frequently better in September than it is in August, or it has been in the last few years. I would be quite interested in investigating that. There is a question as it usually drops off when children go back to school, but that is something I am prepared to look at to see if it is feasible for future years.