To receive any apologies for absence

There were no apologies for absence received. 

To receive any declarations of interest

There were no declarations of interest received. 

To consider the minutes of the meeting held on 26^th June 2022.

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY: That the minutes of the meeting held on 23 June 2022 were approved.

Cllr Price mentioned that as per page 14 of the minutes the Cabinet Member had not contacted her or replied to her regarding the Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan.

None

To consider the Forward Plan for the period August 2022 to November 2022.

Cabinet noted the Forward Plan for the next four months including the following additional changes:

·         Council Tax Reduction Scheme – removed from Forward Plan as Cabinet decision not required.

·         Calvary Crescent, Cedar Tree, St Clouds Way and Parks Tennis Capital Scheme all added to August Cabinet.

Cabinet considered the draft Building Height and Tall Buildings Supplementary Planning Document due to go to consultation.

The Cabinet Member for Planning, Parking, Highways and Transport informed that there was a requirement within the adopted Borough Local Plan for the preparation of a new Building Height and Tall Building Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) to support Policy QP3a.  The draft Building Height and Tall Buildings Supplementary Planning Document has been prepared to provide clear, detailed and specific design guidance to support both Council decision making on development applications and the adopted Borough Local Plan.

Paragraph 6.14.11 of the BLP, stats the SPD will “identify locations that present opportunities for tall buildings in the Borough, together with site-specific recommendations on building height. It will provide additional detailed guidance on location, height and design of tall buildings and set application requirements for tall buildings.”

The first stage in the preparation of the document was the publication of the draft SPD.  A final version of the Building Height and Tall Buildings SPD will be prepared taking into account the responses from the Regulation 13 consultation. This final document will then be brought to Members later in 2022 to consider its adoption by Cabinet.  Along with other SPD’s and Neighborhood Plans this document when adopted will be material consideration in planning decisions.

The Cabinet Member for Environmental Services, Parks & Countryside and Maidenhead said he was delighted that this SPD was now going out for consultation.  Tall building were always controversial but this offered clear guidance across the borough and also nine specific areas within Maidenhead showing where height was acceptable and where it was not.

The Cabinet Member for Climate Action and Sustainability said that this was a key document for the borough and mentioned a recent planning committee where it would have been useful to have the clear guidance that this SPD would provide.

Mr Hill addressed Cabinet and said that increasing height in the town center makes a lot of sense, however building will increase the use of carbon and the increased height of Maidenhead.  He asked if climate change should feature more in this SPD.  He also made reference to a proposed 13 story building by Maidenhead Station that had been ruled out by the planning inspector and asked if it was still planned to be built.  There was also no mention of fire safety re Grenfell Tower and also no mention about water usage and question if the appropriate bodies had been consulted. There would also be concern with increased density and increasing temperatures given recent heatwaves.  

The Chairman informed that this was a proposed consultation on the SPD and not site specific developments.  The mentioned agencies would be part of the consultation.  From place making it was desirable to have increased density around key transport hubs and that this would also decrease the need to build on desirable areas.  It made better sense to use brown field sites.  With regards to safety this would be covered by the Building Safety  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6a

Cabinet considered the latest budget monitoring report.

The Cabinet Member for Asset Management and Commercialisation, Finance,

and Ascot  informed that we are early in the budget year and at month 2 outturn forecast was a pressure of £1.743M which is roughly where we were in month 2 last year.

Place Directorate reports a pressure of £1.387 M, comprising a parking shortfall of £600K and lost parking season ticket income is forecast to be £500K which demonstrates that working patterns have changed. 

However Windsor car parks have been full with a big boost from the Jubilee celebrations. So, next month’s parking figures will be interesting but increasing the take up of season tickets will be challenging but worthy of some thought.

There were pressures in Adult Social Care with higher numbers of clients in domiciliary, residential and nursing care which has triggered the release of £750K demographic contingency. Our excellent ASC team will not sit on their hands and were working on projects in both domiciliary care and residential and nursing care.

Children’s Services report a projected overspend of £360K. There were increased legal fees and the net impact of the national transfer scheme for 15 additional unaccompanied asylum seekers will cost AfC £238K which was unbudgeted.

There were some other pressures including a significant overspend by the tree team and a forecast overspend on the Tivoli contract where we are told negotiations could add to budget pressures.

Libraries and residential services were forecasting an underspend of £52K but is the first service to report the negative impact of energy costs with a £46Kpressure.

As a consequence of the delay in implementing IFRS16 (International financial reporting standards) a virement is requested of £202K from capital to support revenue budgets. IFRS16 has the impact of moving leasing costs onto the balance sheet. 

On capital, Property services budgets have been reprofiled and as a consequence a variance of nearly £500k has been identified where schemes are complete and slippage from 2021/22 to 2022/23 will not be required allowing external funding to be use on alternative future schemes. 

This is a forecast and the best estimates of officers on the outturn.  Finance work with officers but it is difficult to calibrate their judgement, some will be more optimistic than others so this cannot be accurate. To use a sporting analogy in the first lap of a 5000 meter race where one cannot predict the winner.

Mr Bagley addressed Cabinet and said there was a concern that there was an  overspend predicated at month two and asked if Cabinet were confident this could be controlled given the increase in energy prices and increasing inflation.  He made reference to the parking figures not meeting target and asked if the one hour discount was an element and if they regretted this and if there would be a review.   He asked if there were any clear data regarding the impact of the jubilee figures and what was being done regarding the £13 million SEN deficient on the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6b

Cabinet considered the report regarding the stakeholder masterplan documents for Spencer’s Farm.

Cllr Coppinger reported that he was a member of the Maidenhead Planning Committee and as there would be an application on this site he left the meeting during the consideration of this item and did not vote.

The Cabinet Member for Planning, Parking, Highways and Transport informed Cabinet that the report explained the adopted Borough Local Plan requirement for the preparation of Stakeholder Masterplan Documents and summarised the process and outcomes specifically in relation to the Stakeholder Masterplan Document for Spencer’s Farm, Maidenhead.

The BLP Policy QP1 introduced a requirement for the preparation of stakeholder masterplans.  Consultation on the scheme proposals originally commenced in 2017 prior to the submission of the adopted BLP. Various meetings and exhibition events

took place in 2017/18 as detailed in the SMD document.

Further stakeholder and community engagement was carried out in 2021 in the form of webinars and workshops, with a three week public consultation taking place in August 2021.

Barton Willmore organised a four-week community consultation on the draft SMD in April 2022. A letter was sent to 1,002 local addresses around the Spencer’s Farm site.  51 completed sets of comments were received and were included within the report.  The site would be in line with our policies that included affordable housing, three entrances, tree planting, open space, a play area and walking and cycling provision and linkage.

The Chairman reminded Cabinet that this was a masterplan stake holder document and not a planning application.

The Cabinet Member for Digital Connectivity, Housing Opportunity, Sport and Leisure informed that this showed the importance of the BLP and that any development on the site would comply with the council’s policies.  There would be 142 affordable housing units with 59 being social housing.  He asked for clarification on what would be happening with regards to the football pitch.  The Cabinet Member informed that the football pitch was on a adjoining site but discussions were ongoing about improving the facility and maybe incorporating it with the school.

Mr Sharma addressed Cabinet and gave a history of his and the fellow ward councilors efforts to make sure that the site was not included for development in the BLP.  He was against development on the site and had managed to get it removed as a development site from the emerging BLP.  Following the 2019 local election he said that the new liberal democratic ward councilors did not continue to fight to get this site out of the BLP and this lack of foresight had resulted in the site being included in the adopted BLP and thus this report was before Cabinet.  He asked for it to be rejected.

The Cabinet Member for Planning, Parking, Highways and Transport said that the BLP had been adopted and this site had been allocated for development.  The details of what development would be on the site would come via the planning process.

Mr Hill disagreed what Mr Sharma had said about  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6c

Cabinet considered the report regarding the proposed new Medium Term Financial Strategy. 

The Cabinet Member for Asset Management and Commercialisation, Finance and

Ascot informed that this was an update on the MTFS published with the budget in February. The most important change was that it now reflected the requirements of the corporate Plan 2021-2026 and importantly took into account increases in energy costs and high levels of inflation.

The Council had a number of risks that we should now know about, low reserves, low levels of income, growing pressure on children’s and adults’ services and others. The pension deficit is an issue but Cabinet will be pleased to learn that in their annual report Pensions and Investment Research Consultants Ltd advise that the pension fund was ranked 5th out of approximately 100 Local Government Pensions funds with a return of 12.5% in 2021/22.

The MTFS shows we need to save £7.3m in 2023/24, an increase of £2.4M from February but after then the numbers have little changed. Over the 4-year period 2023/24 to 2026/27 savings of £15.27m will be required rather than £12.7M reported in the 2022/23 budget papers. This £7.2m is a loss of business rates as a consequence of the critically important regeneration of Maidenhead. 

The Medium-Term Financial Plan is showed in Appendix A which includes the assumptions used and appendix B provided a sensitivity analysis. 

Lastly cabinet should be aware of the risks around Adult Social care changes and particularly a cap on social care costs which could add £3M to ASC costs.

The revised MTFS provided the basis for developing the 2023/24 budget a process that starts this month and will be completed by December 2022.

Mr Bagley addressed Cabinet and said that Maidenhead regeneration had resulted in over £7 million loss in business rates and the Lead Member had said at the scrutiny panel that this was the right thing to do, he asked if this was a mistake from a financial point of view.  He also asked that with regards to Council tax the Head of Finance had contacted the government about a need to increase council tax, he asked if council tax could not ne increased would there be a cut in services. 

The Cabinet Member replied that with regards to business rates it was the right decision to make a year ago based on the MTFS and the benefits that the regeneration would bring to Maidenhead. With regards to council tax they had contacted the government about this, as a low council tax authority they had been disadvantaged compared to higher council tax authorities in being able to meet demand.  The council could increase tax and still be one of the lowest taking authorities in the country.

The Chairman reiterated the importance of regeneration of Maidenhead and the benefits that would come from this.  With regards to council tax we would continue to press government as we wanted to remain one of the lowest taxing council in the surrounding area and the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6d

Cabinet considered the report regarding the proposed purchase of Cavalry Crescent.

The Cabinet Member for Asset Management and commercialisation, Finance and Ascot reported that Cavalry Crescent, Windsor was a former Defence Estates property consisting of 53 number 2 and 3 bedroomed houses. There were also two small parcels of land at the site that, subject to Planning Consent, could accommodate 10 new build apartments. It was proposed that the council purchase the freehold site that was on the open market.

The site would provide 53 houses and 10 new apartments to rent. The properties would be managed by the RBWM Prop Co. The site provided the opportunity to meet a range of housing need in the Borough through a variety of homes to rent in collaboration with RBWM Housing Department.

There would be refurbishment  of the properties to an agreed specification to market habitation standards and planning permission and build the 10 new residential apartments on the infill sites. The Part II element of the report included the cost of borrowing, particularly inflation on interest, capital repayment, Minimum Revenue Provision, maintenance, and management cost. In addition legal and tax advise would be taken on the final contract form, funding structure and tax implications.

The Deputy Leader of the Council & Cabinet Member for Business, Corporate & Residents Services, Culture & Heritage, & Windsor said that this was a really exciting opportunity for Windsor. It’s very rare that such an opportunity comes on the market to have 53 homes on the rental market.

Mr Bagley addressed Cabinet and asked if MRP had been correctly calculated, how much needed to be paid and could the council afford to pay the MRP.  He also asked if refurbishment was better than demolishing the properties and rebuilding.  He also said that it had been reported that the Ministry of Defence and UK Government Investments was seeking to buy back former military homes, such as more than 3,000 properties in Yorkshire, was this a risk with this investment. 

The Director for Resources informed that MRP had been correctly and there had also been a full review two years ago with another review due soon.  With regards to the development and new builds you had to think about the carbon footprint as well as value, the site was still under negotiation.

The Head of Development of the council’s property company, said that as far as they know, the government was not seeking to purchase back Calvary Crescent.  There were no plans to demolish the existing properties and that the two parcel of land would be built for affordable housing.

Cllr Jones reported that she was pleased to see the RBWM Prop Co being used as originally intended.  She asked that if the project proceeds could they be informed of property tenure and details of open space.  The Lead Member reported that tenure was in the business plan and there were no plans to change this.

Resolved unanimously:  that Cabinet notes the report and:

i) Recommends to full Council to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6e

To consider passing the following resolution:-

“That under Section 100(A)(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the public be excluded from the remainder of the meeting whilst discussion takes place on item 8 on the grounds that they involve the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in Paragraphs 1-7 of part I of Schedule 12A of the Act"

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY: That under Section 100(A)(4) od the Local Government Act 1972, the public were excluded from the remainder of the meeting whilst discussion took place on the grounds that they involved the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in Paragraphs 1 and 3 of part I of Schedule 12A of the Act.

Cabinet noted the Part II appendices.