Questions are invited from Elected Members about the work of the Cabinet. 15 minutes will be set aside for Member Question Time, if required.
Notice of any Member question must be given to the Monitoring Officer by 9.30am 8 October 2021.
Minutes:
The following question was submitted in advance of the meeting by Councillor Russell Bernstein:
Bearing in mind the feedback from the LGA Corporate Peer Challenge how will Cabinet ensure that critical priorities both current and future will be delivered in a timely and appropriate manner?
Responding, Councillor Tahir Rafiq reported that delivery against the Corporate Plan is monitored and reported on a quarterly basis to the Council’s Cabinet. These reports provide an opportunity to reflect on scheduled progress; identify new priorities and reconfigure planned work programmes if necessary. Reported delivery progress is underpinned through individual performance management of the council’s workforce, which has recently been strengthened and a significant improvement in the volume of PDRs completed has been secured.
A further supplementary question was asked:
How will resources be moved around the organisation if and when different priorities are identified?
Councillor Rafiq reported that resources would be reviewed based on the assessment of priorities and allocated appropriately. Councillor O’Brien added that this was wrapped up in the budget process.
The following question was submitted in advance of the meeting by Councillor Carol Birchmore:
According to the Manchester Evening News (dated 6th October) Paul Ormerod who heads up the Rochdale Council backed Rochdale Development Agency said at the Conservative Party Conference that Rochdale does not want any more affordable housing because "the council gets no money from it".
He went on to say that they wanted “unaffordable housing” and that they were deliberately creating homes that were expensive for the area and according to the Evening News when talking about Manchester residents and their housing costs he stated that: "We want some of them to come and live round Rochdale station where they can get it for half the price and the cost of a 15minute train journey."
Can the Leader please tell us if Bury Council has adopted a similar approach? If the Leader does not agree with this policy please can he explain why Bury Council are not following the lead of Salford and Manchester councils who are planning to build genuinely affordable housing available at social rent on brownfield land that they own rather than selling the brownfield land off to housing developers and only insisting for the majority of these sites that developers provide 20-25% of so called “affordable” rents which are based on the Local Housing Allowance figure for Bury.
Responding, Councillor Eamonn O’Brien reported that Bury has carried out an assessment of housing demand and need and developed a housing strategy. There was a shortage of affordable housing, a genuine issue many residents across the borough faced, and the Council’s priority was to have as much affordable housing as it could reasonably get in the current housing market. To that end, the ambition to secure a mix of types was at the heart of the housing strategy.
He noted that there were numerous definitions of ‘affordable’ housing, some of which was not truly affordable to the majority of people so Bury Council was trying to use multiple types of ‘affordability’ to get a mix of uses with sites on tonight’s agenda securing above the 25% target for affordable housing. Councillor O’Brien also spoke about the shortage of social housing and the lack of support for that type of development under the current system.
A further supplementary question was asked:
Looking at the local housing allowance, a two-bedroom house is £477 per calendar month and a three-bedroom house is £593 per calendar month. A significant part of building housing is the land itself so, by using land already owned by the Council to build on, this cost was removed and would allow for houses to be built for less and achieve rents closer to what most people would consider as ‘affordable’.
Councillor O’Brien acknowledged and supported comments that rents in-line with the local housing allowance were not necessarily affordable to many people. In terms of building on brownfield land, it did have certain advantages but some sites were tricky, requiring a subsidy up-front to remediate and prepare the land so it was suitable for development. This allowed the Council to, hopefully, bring forward more than the market would do, as demonstrated by the developments on tonight’s agenda.
The following question was submitted in advance of the meeting by Councillor Jackie Harris:
The LGA report states that “Responding to all of these demands has been tough. Capacity remains stretched and the Council must get better at prioritising”. How does the Council intend to address the issue of capacity and prioritisation going forward?
Responding, Councillor Tahir Rafiq reported that in 2020/21 the Cabinet introduced a Corporate Plan which sets out the strategy and priorities for delivery across the council and CCG on a rolling annual basis. Behind this corporate framework each department operates its own plan about how these priorities will be delivered and this, in turn, informs the objectives and performance management of every member of staff. This “Golden thread” of corporate objectives translated into individual work plans allows for detailed consideration of operational capacity against vision.
The Cabinet has also now developed a strategic planning framework to guide the Covid recovery strategy: the “3Rs”. The 3Rs are guiding principles to direct the near-term work plan which are “response, recovery and renewal”. All priorities in the current corporate plan have been validated against these principles and new and emerging priorities will be tested against the framework to ensure they are congruent with wider strategy and therefore a priority against which capacity should be applied.
The following question was submitted in advance of the meeting by Councillor Jo Lancaster:
The delivery of the Let’s Do It! Vision will require particular leadership from the Council on health and care integration; public service reform including community engagement; economic development and climate change. What steps are the council putting in place to ensure the Let’s Do It! Strategy is delivered and there is the required leadership from the executive team down?
Responding, Councillor Tahir Rafiq reported that the Let’s do it strategy is a vision for 10 years of reform. Within this time it was agreed that specific delivery priorities will be defined on a bi-annual basis and progress reported through an annual “state of the Borough” report.
The strategy was launched with the initial 7 priorities for 2020-2022 included, against which a detailed delivery plan has been agreed with the Team Bury partnership. The 2021 “State of the Borough” report will focus on managing inequalities in the context of the Marmot report (Build Back Fairer in Greater Manchester).
The Leader and Chief Executive/Accountable Officer lead a network of Chairs and non-Executive leaders in the Bury systems to shape and oversee delivery of the strategy. The Deputy Chief Executive chairs monthly delivery meetings with all Team Bury system partners and the majority of Council Executive Directors attend. A strategic planning session is also in the process of being arranged to remind partners of the vision and inform detailed work planning for next year.