To consider referrals from other bodies (e.g. Cabinet)

Corporate Plan

 

Councillor Johnson introduced the report.  He thanked all Members of the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Panel for the effective challenge session held on the Plan, which had been invaluable in shaping the document. He credited Councillor Werner for suggesting the title be amended to reference ‘sustainable’.  The Plan built on the interim strategy approved the previous year. It provided a clear plan for the medium term; Members would see at Cabinet later in the week how it aligned with the emerging budget priorities.

 

Many people had questioned why climate change had not featured more strongly. Councillor Johnson stated that he firmly believed it did feature strongly and referenced the Climate Partnership that had been set up. However the council also needed to deliver core business including adult social care, children’s services, housing, and tackling anti-social behaviour. These were all priorities that residents valued in addition to tackling climate change. The Plan was one that must evolve over time and be responsive and flexible to take into account external events and future challenges.

 

Councillor Rayner commented that the Plan set a clear vision beyond the statutory duties of the council. The three key drivers were affordable housing, infrastructure and tackling climate change. They were important pillars to make the borough a better place and improve residents’ lives. Aims that would be achieved in partnership with others including volunteers and health partners. Climate change was one of the most talked about challenges. This shift was clearly reflected in the Plan which also set out the tools to address the issue.

 

The library consultation was a good case study. A 12-week extensive consultation had been undertaken leading to proposals for a financially sustainable service. Libraries were also at the forefront of the climate agenda, for example holding workshops and leading by example. In relation to infrastructure, Councillor Rayner referenced the Windsor Master Plan which residents had been asking for and was committed to in the Plan.

 

Councillor Werner commented that the discussions at Overview and Scrutiny and Cabinet had been productive but they had run out of time; some items got lost in the decision making. He had been pleased that some of his proposals had been accepted. Members at the O&S Panel had been advised that it was not possible to measure wellbeing however the ONS measured it at local authority level. Councillor Werner highlighted the issue or rates of anxiety in the borough and requested further work on the issue.

 

Councillor Werner commented that on council-owned land, the council could set any standards it liked for eco-homes. There was no point declaring a climate emergency if the council continued to build homes that did not work towards the targets. Rather than just raising awareness, the issue of climate change needed to be embedded in every decision taken. Tackling climate change should be seen as the council’s core business.

 

Councillor Werner felt that the Plan was just an interim plan which would be comprehensively reviewed by 2023 to put climate change at its centre.

Councillor Davey commented that he felt there were holes in the Corporate Plan. He questioned if the document would really change the behaviour of Members at RBWM. He respected that officers would use the Corporate Plan as a benchmark for progress but he questioned whether it really contained what residents wanted from RBWM.

 

The Plan referenced an ‘enabling council’ which treated everyone with compassion, respect and dignity. Thousands of residents had called for the formation of a Windsor Town Council and the Conservatives then tried to tell Windsor residents they did not know their own minds and refused its formation. If the council was not going to follow through, Councillor Davey suggested it should not get residents' hopes up, or waste hundreds of hours of officer and Member time.

 

The Plan talked of supporting new businesses in the creative space. Councillor Davey’s own experience of launching post-Covid was undermined with threats of letters to his employer. Despite this, the fourth Edition of Love Windsor’s Community Newsletter would be hitting 15,561 business owners and residents in Windsor shortly. He thanked all the advertisers and community groups who had been so supportive. Councillor Davey felt that if more Members were more community focused, driven by love and compassion for all residents across the borough, rather than trying to impress or being obsessed with creating dossiers on fellow Members, then he believed residents, officers and most Members from across all parties would appreciate the change of mindset.

 

Councillor Davey highlighted that quality infrastructure talked of the small cell roll out of 5G. He had advised multiple times of the European Law that put the onus on councils to do their own research into the potential negative effects of 5G. This information was constantly ignored, while with another breath he was told health and wellbeing was a core value. Ignorance may be bliss but it was not a legal position and he suggested the council should at least be looking to be better informed on the subject.

 

Councillor Davey was pleased that the project he had led on, the New Windsor Cycle Hub, had been references. All he had done was apply logic and brought the right people together under one virtual roof for a single meeting where those involved grabbed the bull by the horns and ran with it. The hub met weekly at The Swan Pub in Clewer, helping and inspiring hundreds of local residents. He was happy to be of service, like thousands of other community minded residents across the borough and he would actively support positive initiatives that were rooted in the community and driven by councillors and officers with love and compassion at their core. Councillor Davey asked that the next Corporate Plan be more inclusive, sharing more of the opportunities caused by the very real problems that existed but people were afraid to talk about

 

Councillor Haseler, as Chairman of the Corporate O&S Panel, explained that the Members had reviewed the draft Plan, the evidence base, and a report on the outcome of the public consultation. All Members were given the opportunity to ask pre-Panel questions and were provided with written responses.  Three registered public speakers had been heard. The Panel had agreed a number of recommendations to strengthen the Plan, which had been discussed by Cabinet and accepted. Councillor Haseler clarified that the proposal to change the title of the plan to include ‘sustainable’ had come from a public speaker. He thanked all Members of the Panel and the supporting officers for work on the many stages of development of the Plan.

 

Councillor L. Jones agreed that the O&S Panel session had been productive but she would have liked to have seen the documents for a longer period of time in advance. She urged that future significant reports be published well in advance of the minimum period. She did not agree with all aspects of the Plan but as long as it had meaningful, measurable targets and accountability she felt that having an adopted Corporate Plan was better than none.

 

Councillor Carroll commented that the issue of wellbeing had been raised at Cabinet.  He had stated at that meeting that the council, through its Health and Wellbeing Board,  was required to produce a Joint Strategic Needs Assessment and a Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy as a legal requirement. Both documents were reviewed each year and would form seminal parts of the Corporate Plan. The Board, in conjunction with the Public Health team, was looking to review aspects of the mental health strategy particularly in the context of the pandemic, recovery and learning to live with Covid.

 

Councillor Stimson commented that she was not a fan of long documents but it was clear what was needed: to create homes and communities for people, look after health and wellbeing especially for the most disadvantaged, and to stop the carbon numbers rising. There were great difficulties in this balance. Councillor Stimson felt that sustainability should be at the heart of everything the council did.

 

Councillor Hill stated that he would support the Plan but with one reservation. He commented that by the Leader’s own admission, the plan was deficient in tackling climate change and protecting the environment. The Plan represented a great missed opportunity. Members had seen the residents outside the meeting room who did not want development on the golf course. He highlighted pages 159 and 160 of the report that gave a clear indication that protecting the beautiful Royal Borough outweighed other issues for residents.  The report was very professionally produced by officers and included all the right detail but it did not include the overriding point of the protecting the environment. A detailed rewrite was needed to put the issue first.

 

Councillor Johnson requested a personal explanation. He stated that at no time had he used the term ‘deficiency’ or indicate that the Plan was in any way deficient in terms of climate change. He had said it naturally formed a key part of the document but that was also balanced with delivering core business, which was looking after vulnerable children and adults, economic development, cracking down on anti-social behaviour and also delivering all of the other services residents deserved and paid for.

 

Councillor Price commented that if she could vote she would be minded to support the Plan despite some reservations. It was an improvement to what the council currently had but lacked sufficient ambition. She would listen carefully to the Cabinet meeting when she understood the annual SMART objectives would be set.

 

Councillor Price provided two examples where she believed the Plan lacked ambition, Objectives for air quality had been set nationally for 2004, 2005 and 2020. She did not believe the borough had met any of those targets and yet the Plan said it would meet objectives by 2025. The O&S Panel had requested some targets relating to green space. Objectives had been set by Fields in Trust to ensure residents were in so many minutes of different types of opens paces but these seemed to have been watered down.

 

Councillor Cannon commented that he was glad that the recommendation he had raised at Cabinet to reduce the level of public concern about anti-social behaviour had been incorporated in terms of a zero-tolerance approach using all enforcement powers. This proposal had not been universally accepted by all councillors but he felt that residents deserved to have their environment protected from anti-social behaviour.

 

Councillor McWilliams commented that it was fantastic to see the importance placed on housing, in particular affordable housing. For too long the council had not delivered enough genuinely affordable and social rented accommodation. Over the last few months about 50 new social housing tenancies had come online. Councillor McWilliams highlighted the commitment to ensure no resident had to sleep rough through necessity. There were currently 209 households in temporary accommodation supported by the borough. The aim was to reduce that figure and get people into long term sustainable accommodation. There were over 1000 people on the housing register which demonstrated the clear shortage of homes.

 

Councillor Baldwin commented that he was delighted to hear that all possible resources would be dedicated to fulfil the policy of zero-tolerance of anti-social behaviour and he looked forward to seeing concrete plans which would restore the budgets for street cleaning, removal of graffiti, and vandalism of bus stops and open spaces. Without those proposals he felt it was another empty promise.

 

Councillor Johnson highlighted that the vast majority of the recommendations from Corporate O&S Panel had been accepted by Cabinet. There had been a discussion on wellbeing at Cabinet and collective agreement that due to the inherent flexibility of the Plan, there would be the opportunity to include additional measurements on a range of issues.  In relation to eco-homes he commented that looking at the council’s land holdings there were not many areas that could accommodate the volume required. The difficulty of bringing forward brownfield sites left the major site in Maidenhead or other sites potentially in Windsor. In relation to anti-social behaviour, Councillor Johnson stated that the administration believed in an education and enforcement approach. This was not a view shared by all Members, some of whom felt there should be no enforcement at all.  He looked forward to seeing costed amendments as part of the budget debate. Publication of the draft budget had been brought forward by a clear month to enable this.

 

It was proposed by Councillor Johnson, seconded by Councillor Rayner, and:

 

RESOLVED: That Full Council notes the report and:

 

i) Agrees to adopt the Corporate Plan as the council’s five-year strategy for the period 2021-2026, following design finalisation.

 

The vote was taken by a show of hands. 25 Councillors voted for the motion. 9 Councillors abstained.

 

 

Gambling Act 2005 Statement of Principles – Three Year Review

 

Councillor Cannon introduced the report. He explained that under the Gambling Act 2005 every three years licensing authorities were required to prepare and publish a statement of the principles that they proposed to apply in exercising their functions under the Act.  A wide consultation had been undertaken with statutory consultees and other stakeholders to ask if the statement provided a clear robust policy on gambling premises in the borough, and if not, what should be included. One of the key responses received was the need to strengthen provision for vulnerable adults. As a result the following changes had been made:

 

·         an area profile had been included to provide operators of gambling premises with information about the areas in which they were, or may choose, to operate, specifically in relation to areas of deprivation and ethnic minority populations as those groups were disproportionately more likely to suffer harm from gambling.

·         reference to RBWM’s obligations under the Equality Act 2010 had been included.

·         the provisions of the statement covering vulnerable persons, in particular vulnerable adults, had been strengthened.

 

Councillor Bhangra, as Chairman of the Licensing Panel, explained that Members had debated the statement at its meeting in October 2021. Members had concluded that the review had ben robust and unanimously agreed to recommend it to full Council.

 

Councillor Price requested clarification on the area profile referenced in paragraph 2.5.1.1. She also asked why all protected characteristics had been treated as ‘medium’ in the EQIA despite the report saying some groups were more vulnerable.

 

Councillor Brar commented that she had asked for parish councils to be included on the list of statutory consultees but this had not been done.

 

Councillor Cannon explained that the local risk assessment was referenced in paragraph 2.7.1. The local area profile was in paragraph 2.8.1. There was no particular breakdown in the report but if anyone applied for a licence, this would be where it would feature. Officers had rated all characteristics as medium in the EQIA because nothing in the paper indicated an increased risk for any group. Once an application was received the local area assessment would be looked at to determine if there was any increased risk due to demographics.

 

It was proposed by Councillor Cannon, seconded by Councillor Bhangra, and:

 

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY: That Full Council notes the report and:

 

i) Agrees to adopt the RBWM Gambling Act 2005 Statement of Principles 2022 – 2025 with effect from 31 January 2022.

 

 

Constitutional Amendments

 

Councillor Rayner, Chairman of the Constitution Working Group, introduced the report. She thanked the Members of the Working Group for their role in developing the three recommendations. Councillor Rayner explained that during the pandemic a single Development Management Committee had been held, but Members had agreed a return to two panels in June 2021, with membership based on geographic area. The Monitoring Officer had advised that this was a potential weakness for the council and increased the risk of challenge.

 

In relation to the Code of Conduct, Members recalled that a revised Code had been agreed in April 2021, based on the LGA model. However the council had decided to keep the threshold of £25 for gifts and hospitality rather than £50 as in the model code.  The proposed amendment would deal with the issue of recurring gifts. The proposed Communications Protocol set out how the council could make the best use of its resources to support open, accessible and responsive communications whilst acknowledging the reasons it could not be used for party political purposes.  The Protocol also set out the respective roles of officers and councillors dealing with the media.

 

Councillor Baldwin commented that the report made it clear that the existing terms of reference were agreed by full Council in June 2021. Yet only 147 days later Members were being asked to change them and tear out a key principle of localism insisted upon by the Steering Group. He questioned what evidence had been accumulated to support the recommendation? The Committee had only met 5 times under the current terms of reference. He was only aware of two meetings that might have helped identify there was a problem. The inaugural meeting held on 18 August 2021; on that occasion three non-qualifying Members had been accepted as substitutes. Councillor Baldwin had objected and they were excluded. At no time had the quorum been threatened. In the brief interval for the Chairman and others to take advice, several geographically qualifying substitutes miraculously appeared. This made him, wonder why they had not been the original substitutes. The complication was not caused by geographical exclusion but a manifestly unnecessary and largely unexplained attempt to ignore the rules. It was possible that the original four Members asked to be substituted because they had a conflict of interest. However, had that been the case then they would have done the same the previous week when a near identical application was considered.

 

Councillor Baldwin commented that Development Panels rarely had only one item on the agenda. He could believe a Member may need to recuse themselves from one application but to ask to be to be substituted for the entire meeting suggested that the Member was so compromised that they should never have been considered for the Panel in the first place. As for a general increased difficulty to meet the quorum, Appendix A set out that the membership must be in line with the political balance, however a quorum did not.  Councillor Baldwin therefore felt the proposal had a very different set of motivations to those offered in the report. He had concluded that it was a ruse to lock in a Conservative majority on both panels under all scenarios. That intent was far more damaging to impartiality than the current arrangements.

 

Councillor Baldwin had intended to submit an amendment but had listened to officer advice so had decided not to. Instead he called upon all those who had influence in the Groups to use that influence to ensure the use of substitutes from outside the relevant geographical area was minimised.

 

Councillor Werner stated that he could support the recommendation on the Code of Conduct, which had come from the Liberal Democrats. He was unable to support the other two proposals. The Communications Protocol read to him as a recipe to use the communications department to spew out press releases and social media that blatantly promoted the current administration rather than informative items on issues such as bin collections and how to be a foster carer.  The protocol would even allow the infamous banners of 2019.

 

Councillor Coppinger explained that he had brought the Development Management Committee proposals to full Council to meet the democratic needs of both Councillors and residents. At that time he had no idea that the situation could arise where a panel was deficient of Members that could lead to decisions being challenged. The recommendation had come from the Working Group; it had not been discussed with him as Cabinet Member.  The proposal would ensure safe decisions and would only be used where absolutely necessary.

 

Councillor Davey referenced the statement in the Communications Protocol that ‘The communications team will never knowingly mislead the media on a story. In order to maintain a good long-term relationship, the department needs to be trusted by the media and the wider community.’ Councillor Davey asked that Members read and applied this to their communications before publishing videos that said one thing, written words that say another, successfully misleading residents. Car parking tariffs were part of the budget and so not a decision for Cabinet but for full Council.

 

Councillor Price stated that she supported the points made by Councillor Baldwin. In relation to the Communications Protocol, she welcomed the proposal that press releases would be issued to councillors at the same time as the media and those that were embargoed would be sent at the time the embargo was lifted. She welcomed this as in the past councillors had not always been sent press releases and had had to read about things in the local newspaper.

 

Councillor Hill commented that what had taken place at the planning panel a few months previously had been appalling and had done the borough a lot of damage. The application had been withdrawn and subsequently approved. The potential existed for the situation to happen against. He wished the amendment had not been proposed. For the majority of his time as a councillor it had always been the case that Windsor did not judge Maidenhead on planning issues and vice versa. Only when there was a dire need would there have been a swap.  If there was a controversial decision to be made, residents wanted it to be made by councillors from the right part of the borough.

 

Councillor McWilliams commented that all press releases were shared with all councillors at the same time. Comments from a councillor or spokesperson may be different. If Councillor Price had examples where press releases had not been shared he encouraged her to contact him. The suggestion that professional communications officers were being used for propaganda was unpleasant and called into question their integrity. No evidence had ever been presented to him to support this. The team did promote issues such as foster caring and awareness of the Town Forums, and had played a huge role in the pandemic to keep people informed. It had won awards for its work supporting the Royal Household and media outlets during the recent funeral.

 

Councillor L. Jones commented that she had always supported local ward councillors being the decision makers on planning. It had worked in previous years yet Members were now being told that for practical reasons it should change. She therefore echoed the call for Group Leaders to only use non-geographical area substitutes in extreme circumstances.  Councillor Jones supported the Communications Protocol but urged all councillors to consider the perception or residents when communicating through council channels.

 

Councillor Bateson highlighted that councillors were elected for their ward but also needed to represent the entire borough.

 

Councillor Johnson commented that the amendment relating to gifts and hospitality was absolutely right in the interest of transparency and engendering of trust with the electorate. He highlighted that Members represented the entire borough when sitting as the Local Planning Authority. The amendment would give flexibility particularly at a time when individuals could not join face to face meetings for a number of reasons. He had been disappointed to hear the negative phrases about the communications team, which had done a great job during the pandemic in reaching areas of the borough the council had previously had little engagement with.

 

Councillor Rayner concluded that it was important to take into account the advice of the Monitoring Officer. She was pleased that all agreed on the issue of gifts and hospitality. The communications team did a fantastic job and had increased engagement on social media exponentially during the pandemic. The protocol was explicit in stating communications could not be used for party political purposes.

 

The Mayor had agreed to allow separate votes on each recommendation on the basis that they were three distinct and unrelated recommendations.

 

It was proposed by Councillor Rayner, seconded by Councillor Johnson, and:

 

RESOLVED: That full Council notes the report and considers the following recommendations from the Constitution Working Group:

 

i)             To amend the Terms of Reference for Development Control Committees as detailed in Appendix A.

 

A named vote was taken.

 

ii)            To amend the Members’ Code of Conduct as detailed in Appendix B

 

The recommendation was agreed unanimously.

 

iii)          To include the Communications Protocol (Appendix C) as Part 7K of the constitution.

 

The vote was taken by a show of hands. 24 Councillors voted for the motion; 10 Councillors voted against the motion.