Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Councillors Lee, Forbes and Kreling. Councillor Over was in attendance for Councillor Kreling.

There were no declarations of interest.

The minutes of the Strong and Supportive Communities Scrutiny Committee meeting held on 4 June 2013 were approved as an accurate record.

There were no requests for Call-in to consider

CRIME AND DISORDER SCRUTINY COMMITTEE SITTING FOR ITEMS 5 AND 6 ONLY

The purpose of this report was to update the Strong and Supportive Communities Scrutiny Committee on the progress and performance of the Safer Peterborough Partnership’s approach to reducing crime in accordance with the Safer Peterborough Partnership Plan 2011 – 14 and for the Committee to scrutinise that progress and performance in accordance with its statutory responsibility as set out within the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, revised by the Police and Justice act 2006.

The following key points were highlighted within the report:

• The Safer Peterborough Partnership agreed one single target for the three year plan to reduce victim based crime by 10% by the end of March 2014. In order to achieve this there were three identified priorities:

v  Reduce victim based crime;

v  Tackle anti-social behaviour and hate crime; and

v  Build stronger and more supportive communities.

• The report concentrated upon progress and performance in relation to reducing victim based crime. Previously the partnership was measured on all crime.
• The reason for this was that the partnership wanted to reduce the number of people living, working in or visiting the city becoming victims of crime.
• All crime included such categories as drug offences, incidents of handling stolen goods and some other areas where it was preferable to see an increase rather than decrease as it was an indicator of proactive police activity. These were excluded from the Partnership’s reduction target for this reason.
• At the beginning of the three year reporting period a number of points were agreed. These were articulated as follows. It was clear that whilst crime levels had fallen across the city there remained significant issues that any city the size of Peterborough would face:

v  There remained a level of acquisitive crime underpinned a group of offenders who disproportionately commit high levels of crime by re-offending;

v  There remained a level of violent crime that required co-ordinated Partnership activity, some of that violent crime was drug and alcohol related and a significant level of all the city’s violent crime was domestic violence; and

v  Communities remained concerned about the levels of anti-social behaviour as was in evidence by all Neighbourhood Panels having some elements of anti-social behaviour as a priority on each and every occasion.

• The Partnership chose to approach reducing crime in the following way:

v  Embedding the ‘broken window theory’ as a bedrock of the approach to reducing crime, tackling anti-social behaviour and building stronger, supportive and more cohesive communities; and

v  Taking an approach to tackle the underlying causes of offending and crime but being equally clear that those who continued to offend or bring risk of harm to the city would be targeted within the full weight of the criminal justice system.

• The main planks of this approach were:

v  Integrated Offender Management;

v  Developing modern, effective and efficient substance misuse (drugs and alcohol) schemes;

v  Developing an over-arching strategy on domestic abuse; and

v  Improving perceptions of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

This report provided the Committee with an overview of the Operation Can Do programme, it’s achievements to date and the forward plan for taking the learning from this approach to other areas of the city.

The following key points were highlighted:

• Operation Can Do was established two years ago in collaboration between the Council and the Police. It followed a short period of heightened community tension in the Gladstone area of the city and a lack of sustained improvement in relation to various issues identified in the Millfield and New England Regeneration Partnership.
• The initial operation was launched with three phases in mind:

v  Phase 1: immediate, frontline responses to visible issues (0 – 6 months);

v  Phase 2: tackling more complex issues through complete collaboration between agencies and the community (6 Months to 3 years); and

v  Phase 3: longer term investment and regeneration in the area (3 years to 10 Years).

• At its launch, a number of key priorities were identified and agreed between partners and it was against this backdrop that the initial work streams and actions were developed. These targets were:

v  To empower communities so they were able to influence decisions in their neighbourhoods;

v  To establish a framework to maximise the economic growth of the area;

v  To deliver positive engagement activities for young people;

v  To improve local parks and open spaces;

v  To improve access to training and employment opportunities; and

v  To reduce alcohol and drug related fear of crime, crime and antisocial behaviour.

• The Operation Can Do area ran along either side of Lincoln Road, from the edge of the city centre to New England, parts of Central Ward, North Ward and Park Ward were included in this boundary. The area was comprised of approximately 10,016 households and approximately 28,263 residents.
• A community board was now in place and was rapidly moving towards registering itself as a charity so that it had its own legal identity and could raise funds and deliver services.
• Residents and local data highlighted the need for robust and targeted activities to address the following key issues of concern:

v  Heightened community tension;

v  Crime and anti-social behaviour;

v  Poor quality housing stock and high levels of houses in multiple occupation and overcrowding;

v  Alcohol and licensing issues;

v  Parking; and

v  Growing levels of dissatisfaction from communities.

Work was carried out on the following areas:

• Housing;
• Houses of Multiple Occupation;
• Overcrowding;
• Housing Prosecutions;
• Substance Misuse  - Drugs;
• Substance Misuse Alcohol;
• Trading Standards;
• Food and Health and Safety;
• Licensing; and
• Parking Enforcement.

The Committee was asked to:

• Note and comment on the information provided about the programme and to suggest areas for improvement or where further effort should be deployed.
• Specifically scrutinise the data analysis report and identify other data sets which would add value to the work.
• Agree that a paper outlining a proposed Selective Licensing Scheme for privately rented accommodation be brought to the Committee at its next meeting.

Observations and questions were raised  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

This report identified proposed areas for scrutiny to be considered in a detailed report at September’s Strong and Supportive Communities Scrutiny Committee meeting. The areas for consideration included the service delivery, other wider benefits and value for money obtained from the Council’s culture and leisure partnership with Vivacity Culture and Leisure. The report invited the Committee to comment on the proposals and whether there were any other matters members wished to include.

The Committee was recommended to comment on, and agree to, the matters to be addressed in the report to be submitted to the 11 September meeting of the Strong and Supportive Communities Scrutiny Committee on the Council’s Culture and Leisure Partnership with Vivacity Culture and Leisure.

Observations and questions were raised around the following areas:

·         Members commented that in part 7.1 of the report, consultation had only taken place with a small number of people and it was queried whether consultation would take place with a wider range of service level users and similar groups and if so, could examples of groups be provided. The Cabinet Advisor to the Cabinet Member for Culture, Recreation and Waste Management advised Members that Vivacity would be consulting wider with groups within Education and Health and local groups Such as the Music Hub, Cops at the regional pool and the athletics clubs.

·         Members congratulated Vivacity on the success of the Heritage event and were very impressed with how they greeted the Mayor.

·         Members commented that the pointers they would like Vivacity to focus on were as follows:

1)    Libraries – How service was being provided to ensure the public were still receiving a good service.

2)    Leisure – It was very important that the public got reasonably priced leisure.

3)    Archives – What relationship Peterborough had with Northampton and Huntingdon as they were the two archival providers, what was available on the internet, whether there was a process for people to obtain information from the internet and how much usage were people getting from the archives in higher education.

The purpose of this report was to provide the Committee with an overview of Commercial Operations and forthcoming plans for the City Centre along with the Commercial Operations Business Plan.

The report provided a focus on the services provided by Commercial Operations which were as follows:

·         Parking Services;

·         CCTV;

·         City Centre Management;

·         Events and Public Realm Management;

·         General Market;

·         Visitor Information Centre;

·         Visitor Economy Development;

·         Visitor Economy Framework (VEF);

·         Visitor Economy Strategy (VES) 2014 – 24; and

·         Destination Management Plan (DMP) 2014 – 17.

Outlined within the report were the four key strategic objectives:

Objective 1 – Promoting the city

·         Broadening the visitor offer of the city by extending the events diary and marketing existing attractions more extensively.

Objective 2 – Managing the city

·         To communicate and co-ordinate the work of all city stakeholders and monitor outputs; and

·         To communicate and engage effectively with businesses.

Objective 3 – Improving the Environment and public spaces

·         To encourage and facilitate improvements to the environment and public spaces that was inviting, clean and was a safe environment to be enjoyed.

Objective 4 – A prosperous city

·         Diversifying and strengthening the economic base. The city should be the last catalyst for encouraging the growth of both new and existing business within the city.

Observations and questions were raised around the following areas:

·         Members commented that the Willow Festival was a very successful event and there were no alcohol related incidents. The Head of Commercial Operations commented that the volume of people that attended the Willow Festival was not anticipated and there were only eight reported low level crimes. The fencing for the event had economical benefit as it was used for following events. Money was made on programme sales, funfair, raffle tickets and businesses within the festival.

·         Members were concerned that the Mayors Last Night of the Proms event was not properly advertised which resulted in less tickets for the event being sold. Members were advised that Commercial Operations would be happy to promote the event in future through the visitors centre as they did not have the marketing budget.

·         Members queried whether it was time to move the Peterborough Market to a more central location. Members were advised that it would not be necessary to move the market from its current location, it just needed a strong management structure and refurbishment as people would go to a quality market. It had the potential to be a thriving market with surrounding businesses.

·         Members commented that the market did not have an encouraging appearance and it was not well signposted and queried whether there were any plans to change this. Members were advised that Commercial Operations could work on signage although it was down to planning to look at appearance.

·         Members queried whether there were any plans for another Country and Western festival. Members were informed that Commercial Operations would like to bring more events like this to the embankment only if it could be cost neutral or profit making.

·         Members commented that the motorcycle  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8.

The purpose of this report was to set out proposals to hold a cross-scrutiny committee event that would focus on the impacts of welfare reform. This event would be held in order to understand and mitigate against the breadth of impact on individuals, families, communities and businesses. It was noted that the Welfare Reform team was also looking for nominations from each Committee to form a working party to help plan and provide input for the day.

Observations and questions were raised and discussed including:

·         The Committee noted the proposal for a Scrutiny in a Day event.

·         Councillor Fox volunteered to be part of the working party.  

·         Members suggested that Councillor Forbes was contacted to ask if she would like to be part of the working group as she had a particular interest in Welfare Reform.

AGREED ACTION

·         Members agreed that the Scrutiny in a Day was necessary and they welcomed the proposal.

·         The Governance Officer was to contact Councillor Forbes to ask if would like to join the working group.

The Committee received the latest version of the Council’s Notice of Intention to Take Key Decisions, containing key decisions that the Leader of the Council anticipated the Cabinet or individual Cabinet Members would make during the course of the following four months.  Members were invited to comment on the Plan and, where appropriate, identify any relevant areas for inclusion in the Committee’s work programme.

AGREED ACTION

·         The Committee noted the Notice of Intention to Take Key Decisions.

This was an opportunity for Members to review the work programme and make notifications of any items they wished to be added to the programme as well as to confirm their agreement with what was currently on the programme.

AGREED ACTION

·         Members noted the work programme and confirmed agreement with the current plan.

Wednesday, 11 September 2013