To receive any apologies for absence.

Apologies were received from Councillors Jesse Grey and Asghar Majeed.

To receive any Declarations of Interest

None received.

To confirm the Part I Minutes of the previous meeting

RESOLVED: That the minutes of the meeting of the Panel held on 12 October 2015 be approved.

To receive the above report.

Andrew Green, Community Partnership Co-ordinator introduced the report and explained that the Community Right to Bid was established three years ago under the 2011 Localism Act. Local authorities were required to maintain a list of ‘Assets of Community Value’. If or when a building came up for sale community groups were given an additional six months to prepare a bid. Nominations had been dealt with by the Community Partnerships Team. Members noted further details of the report which included the following:

Ø  Recent changes to the legislation meant that nominations of drinking establishments would affect permitted development rights. In view of those changes the Lead Member suggested that responsibility for Assets of Community Value should be passed to ‘Development Management’ (Planning).

Ø  However, following consultation with Planning it was now proposed that the process should stay with Community Partnerships but that Planning would be involved in the process.  The arrangement would be reviewed in 12 months time.

Ø  Where an owner appealed against a decision a Listing Review had to be carried out by a senior officer not involved in the original decision. It was proposed that the Corporate Management Team should nominate who carried out Listing Reviews.

Ø  Appendix C explained what lessons had been learned from previous bids.

Ø  The Community did not always have a good grasp of the legislation and sometimes, expectations were very high.

Ø  Councillor Bathurst requested the Community Partnerships Team to look at the criteria around decisions made as the scheme was about giving the community the opportunity to make a bid.

Ø  The team were only judging if the nomination did or did not meet the requirements and if it did meet them, the asset should be listed.

Ø  There was a test case going through the scheme where a National Trust property had been nominated but was held inalienably so that it could not be sold. The team were seeking legal advice regarding whether a property must be listed if it met the criteria irrespective of whether it was likely that the community could bid for the property.

Ø  Page 16 of the report listed financial implications. There was a small administration fund that was no longer available from Central Government so the council would have to meet the costs itself.

Ø  It was a Manifesto Commitment to support the national pub loan scheme and discussions were taking place with the local CAMRA group around potential collaboration.

Ø  Owners of buildings could claim compensation if they felt losses had been incurred. Potential compensation claims were initially underwritten by central government up to £20,000 but this provision is no longer in place so the full cost of any future compensation claim would have to be met by the Council.

Ø  Legislation allowed eight weeks for the Council to make a decision on whether or not to list the property.

Ø  Occasionally, people wanted to mount a bid where there was no need, which could add a lot of bureaucracy that there was  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

To receive the above report.

Devolution to Parishes

Members were referred to page 1 of Appendix A for a tabled breakdown of the current actions / next steps, SMART objectives and the Key Risks / Issues / Barriers.

Members noted the key points of the update included:

Ø  Further workshops planned with parish councils.

Ø  Feedback from workshops would be summarised with outcomes to be presented in a report with an action plan for Cabinet.

Ø  Nick Davies, head of strategic commissioning for adult social care and housing had met with parishes regarding devolving some adult services.

Ø  Sunningdale parish council were actively engaged with a street cleaning contractor to identify local issues and amend cleaning frequencies.

Ø  David Perkins, Head of Neighbourhood & Streetscene Delivery to attend the next Big Society Panel to provide further details of progress on devolution of services to parishes.

Adopt A Street

Members were referred to page 1 of Appendix A for a tabled breakdown of the current actions / next steps, SMART objectives and the Key Risks / Issues / Barriers. 

Members noted the key points of the update included:

Ø  There were currently 1067 volunteers registered on the Adopt A Street database and the numbers continued to rise.

Ø  The target numbers had been revised upwards for March 2016.

Ø  It had been a bit of a struggle to register volunteers for the Adopt A Highway scheme and the Community Partnerships team had asked the Highways team to highlight some streets that could be adopted such as Dedworth Road.

Ø  Another area the team were struggling to recruit volunteers was secondary schools. The team were writing to secondary schools and informing them that the scheme could be incorporated as part of the Duke of Edinburgh awards.

Participatory Budgeting

Neighbourhood Budgets:

Members were referred to page 2 of Appendix A for a tabled breakdown of the current actions / next steps, SMART objectives and the Key Risks / Issues / Barriers. 

Members noted the key points of the update included:

Ø  15 schools were taking part in the scheme.

Ø  Less votes had been cast for this round than previous rounds

Ø  Action: Policy and Performance team to establish why voting numbers were lower this round and report findings to the next Panel meeting.

Greenredeem PB Scheme:

Ø  The top five groups awarded funds (£1,000 each) were:

o   Alzheimer’s Dementia Support

o   FoodshareMaidnehead

o   Norden Farm – Lantern Parade

o   Windsor and Eton Sea Cadets

o   4^th Maidenhead (Methodist) Guides 50^th Anniversary Celebrations.

Member Budgets:

Ø  19 Councillors had spent some or all of their funds with another three or four in the process of allocating their budgets.

Ø  The Policy team confirmed they would write to members that had not spent or allocated their budgets to remind them of the deadline.

Transparency

Members were referred to page 3 of Appendix A for a tabled breakdown of the current actions / next steps, SMART objectives and the Key Risks / Issues / Barriers. 

Members noted the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8.