Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Patricia Stuart-Mogg, Jane Hill and Amy Kavanagh.  Councillor Peter Hiller gave his apologies for his expected late arrival.

As this was a special meeting to enable parishes to be consulted on the Council’s proposed budget, the minutes of the meeting held on 17 January 2013 would be considered at the next ordinary meeting.

Steven Pilsworth, Head of Strategic Finance gave a presentation on the proposals for the City Council’s budget for 2013/14 and Medium Term Financial Strategy to 2022/23.

During discussion the following points were noted:

·           The Community Leadership Fund was not always used properly by city councillors and would suggest a reduction of 50%.  Applications for use of the fund should also be thoroughly assessed for need. Spending of the Community Leadership Fund was published on the website so the public were able to see how it had been spent.  How the fund was used was also an issue raised by the Youth Council who had suggested that there should be one pot of money where bids were independently decided on.

·           Whilst supporting the end of the Neighbourhood Committees, there was concern about the role of the Neighbourhood Managers being relegated.  They did an excellent job in providing support to parish councils and parishes would want assurances that the role would be maintained to support parish councils.  Thank you for the positive comments about the Neighbourhood Managers.  City councillors also had concerns about whether there would still be the same level of support as now and this needed to be looked at.  Before neighbourhood management was introduced councillors were previously directed to the relevant officers but having the managers may have made some councillors reliant on them to get problems solved rather than speaking to the relevant officers directly.  We needed to take the pressure off the managers to enable them to work on major projects and with parish councils.  All departments needed to make significant savings and we could not commit at this stage that there will not be changes, however as stated at the previous meeting we were committed to parish councils.

·           Litter bins in some parishes appeared not to be emptied as often as they should which was leading to more littering.  Litter was an area that the Council had received much feedback and to address this we had proposed an additional street cleansing team to work in targeted areas.  It was important for both city and parish councillors to raise issues around litter with Enterprise Peterborough.

·           Could the Community Payback Teams be used to help clear litter?   It was believed that they could only be used for specific issues and not day to day work.  Neighbourhood Managers could help parishes obtain help from the payback teams.

·           How much money does the Tour Series bring into the city?  This had been one of the difficult decisions the Cabinet had to make.  The race brought people into the city and also brought wide media coverage including television.  However it costs the Council money to bring it to Peterborough as we were unable to secure our own sponsorship, unlike events such as the Great Eastern Run.

·           There appeared to be some anomalies between the budget book and the consultation document around renewable energy.  In the budget book it stated capital investment of £100m and in the consultation document it stated  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.