Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillors Arculus, Burton, North and Wilkinson.  Councillor Peach was in attendance as substitute for Councillor Burton. 

Apologies were also received from Councillor Lee, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Environment Capital & Culture and Councillor S Dalton, Cabinet Advisor for Environment Capital & Culture.

At this point Members must declare whether they have an interest, whether personal or prejudicial, in any of the items on the agenda.  Members must also declare if they are subject to their party group whip in relation to any items under consideration.

There were no declarations of interest.

The minutes of the meeting held on 15 February 2010 were approved as an accurate record, subject to:

Item 7 – Carbon Management Action Plan

Amended bullet point 9 to read “The policy of City Services is rather than prune bushes is to remove them completely.  This has an impact in carbon terms as it takes away the capacity of plants to sequester carbon.  The draft Plan had been submitted to the Carbon Trust before the budget meetings had started and before the decision had been made to swap to grass.  City Services had advised that replacing shrubs with grass would be a like for like change in relation to carbon.”

The minutes of the meeting held on 23 February 2010 were approved as an accurate record.

The decision notice for each decision will bear the date on which it is published and will specify that the decision may then be implemented on the expiry of three working days after the publication of the decision (not including the date of publication), unless a request for call-in of the decision is received from any two Members of a scrutiny committee or scrutiny commission.  If a request for call-in of a decision is received, implementation of the decision remains suspended for consideration by the relevant scrutiny committee or commission.

There were no requests for call-in to consider.

To consider the responses to previous recommendations made by the Committee.

The Committee considered the responses made by the Executive to recommendations made at previous meetings.

The recommendations related to:

• Medium Term Financial Strategy to 2014
• Bus Service Review

Observations and questions were raised around the following areas:

• The issue of street lighting at Gresley Way had been raised at the meeting on 14 January and Councillor Sandford had raised the issue directly with the Executive Director of Operations who advised that the lights would be repaired in a couple of week, however they are still not working which is unacceptable.
• A number of recommendations were made at the last meeting about the Christmas Park and Ride service, had these been put forward?  The recommendations had been put forward but a response had not yet been received.
• The Committee were advised at one of the budget meetings that the impact of the budget proposals on the staffing structure were still be worked on, what stage was the work at?

ACTION AGREED

The Scrutiny Manager to clarify the position with the Gresley Way street lighting and the impact on the staffing structure of the budget.

To scrutinise the progress of the delivery of the Environment Capital portfolio.

Councillor Matthew Lee, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Environment Capital & Culture, will be attendance.

Councillor Sandford asked for it to be minuted that he was disappointed that the Cabinet Member for Environment Capital was not in attendance and had chosen to attend another meeting.

The Director of Environment Capital presented the progress on the delivery of the Environment Capital portfolio.

Strong progress continued to be made in relation to the Environment Capital priority despite declining performance against the LAA targets.  A number of highlights were:

City Visualisation Project

The City Council, Opportunity Peterborough, IBM, Royal Haskoning and Green Ventures were engaged in a new collaboration to support Peterborough's ambition of being one of the leading sustainable cities in the UK.  The companies were working on an exciting City Visualisation project which would display Peterborough's environmental performance in real-time and be a key tool in helping the city’s systems to become smarter and more efficient.  These changes aimed to cement Peterborough's place as Environment Capital and directly impacted the quality of life for people living and working in Peterborough for future generations.

The first phase of the project was to use the latest technologies to build a new online platform which could visualise on a city scale an integrated view of the energy, water, transport and waste systems.  Gathering and displaying this key data in an understandable form would enable the city to understand both its current environmental performance and enable it to make informed decisions and strategies to maximise sustainability. The aim was to accelerate the pace of change by engaging the public and professionals in understanding the whole city system.  The Peterborough Model platform would allow people living in Peterborough to view the overall performance of the city and provide feedback on areas to improve.  Utilities, government agencies and businesses in the local area would have a visual platform that would help them to co-ordinate their plans to make Peterborough more sustainable. The Peterborough Model would enable partners to identify the areas where improvement could be made and where collaboration could achieve sustainability targets while saving money.

Carbon Reduction Strategy

The City Council had now adopted its Carbon Reduction Strategy which set out how it intended to reduce its carbon footprint through a range of costed, practical measures within its property portfolio and vehicle fleet.

The Core Strategy

The draft Core Strategy had been adopted by Council and contained a unique policy which would require all new developments in the city to contribute positively to Environment Capital.  The Strategy would now go through its final consultation and examination in public prior to adoption in late 2010.  Work had commenced on the Special Planning Document which would translate the overarching policy into practical measures to improve the sustainability of buildings as the city grows.

Future Jobs Fund

There had been a successful bid to the Future Jobs Fund which would shortly see a group of trained advisors working with households across the city to support changes in behaviour in areas such as travel and energy and water use.

Environment  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

To scrutinise the delivery of the Local Area Agreement Priority of Creating the UK’s Environment Capital.

The Committee received an update on the performance as at December 2009 of the Environment Capital outcomes contained within the Local Area Agreement (LAA).

Peterborough’s LAA contained four priorities: Creating Strong and Supportive Communities; Creating the UK’s Environment Capital; Creating Opportunities, Tackling Inequalities; Substantial and Truly Sustainable Growth.  Each of those priorities had four specific outcomes, beneath which sat a diverse range of actions and interventions to deliver lasting positive change for Peterborough.

The Environment Capital priority was measured by four specific outcomes: Overall Consumption of Natural Resources, Increasing the Use of Sustainable Transport, Growing our Environment Business Sector and Making Peterborough Cleaner and Greener.  A Red/Amber/Green flagging system was used to indicate overall performance against each of the outcomes – red indicated that the outcome was significantly behind target, amber indicated that the outcome was experiencing difficulties, and green indicated that the outcome was on target or had achieved its objectives.

Overall, 7 of the priority’s 13 indicators were currently on track against their targets, with 4 off track. This was an improvement from the previous quarter where only 4 of the indicators were on track.

Amongst the positive aspects, street inspections had shown that Peterborough’s streets were clean, with low levels of litter, detritus and graffiti, the city’s environmental goods and services sector continued to grow and the environmental awareness of Peterborough’s citizens was high thanks to effective education and promotion of the sustainability agenda.

A number of areas were in need of improvement.  The number of people using the city’s buses had reduced over the first half of 2009/10 and reports of fly tipping had increased compared to last year. Peterborough was currently missing its CO₂ emissions reduction targets and levels of recycling and waste were below their quarterly targets.

Observations and questions were raised around the following areas:

·         There was concern that there was a downward decline in performance, were officers aware of what that decline was down to?  We did not know the full cause of the drop.  The natural resources outcome showing red was primarily due to the city’s carbon footprint and because DEFRA had refined the baseline figure.  The baseline had been reduced so there was now a bigger gap against our targets which could not be altered as we had no control over the calculation.

·         The issues around waste recycling were not unique to Peterborough.  Companies were starting to package goods differently and people were purchasing less so the rate was falling back.  However compared to the rest of Cambridgeshire we were considerably better.

·         The issues around the fall in the number of bus journeys needed further investigation as to why it was dropping, up until that point we had had one of the largest increases in patronage.  It could be down to a number of reasons including less employment and there being less money available.

·         Who were the members of the working group which was reviewing the service around enforcement of flytipping?  Officers would find out the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

To consider the latest version of the work programme.

The latest version of the Forward Plan, showing details of the key decisions that the Leader of the Council believed the Cabinet or individual Cabinet Members would be making over the next four months, was received.

ACTION AGREED

To note the latest version of the Forward Plan.