Agenda and minutes

To record the attendance of substitute members, if any, who have been authorised to attend in accordance with the provisions of standing order 17(1), with notification having been given to the proper officer before the start of the meeting and to receive apologies for absence.

Apologies were received from Councillor Jason Fiddaman. There were no substitutes.

To adopt and sign as a correct record the minutes of the committee meeting held on 16 February 2012 (attached). 

Resolved: to adopt the minutes of the committee’s meeting on 16 February 2012 as a correct record and agree that the chairman signs them.

To receive any declarations of personal or personal and prejudicial interests in respect of items on the agenda for this meeting. 

None.

To receive notification of any matters, which the chair determines, should be considered as urgent business and the special circumstances, which have made the matters urgent, and to receive any announcements from the chair.

Councillor Halliday reported that the debt from uncollected payments for the garden waste service had reduced to £33,000. Officers proposed writing off about £35,000 of debts accrued before April 2011 as it was neither cost effective to pursue these nor clear whether these were real debts or errors in recording. The audit committee were monitoring the debt collection and current systems for managing the garden waste service.

The committee asked for a briefing note about the garden waste service setting out the outstanding debt, the proposed write-offs, and the breakdown of these by category before the next meeting of the committee.

Any statements and/or petitions from the public under standing order 32 will be made or presented at the meeting.

None.

To consider report 89/11 of the head of legal and democratic services. 

The committee considered report 89/11 of the head of legal and democratic services setting out progress on the implementation of the scrutiny committee’s recommendations on the review of the 2011 local elections.

The committee noted that:

1.    Compensation payments received from Paragon in respect of failings in the 2011 elections had to be allocated against the correct expenditure and had taken some time to apportion.

2.    The elections team were currently running a parish council by-election for Vale and a district council and a county council by-election for South. A different printer had been appointed for these by-elections. Agents and relevant district councillors would be alerted when the postal votes were issued and a sample of recipients would be asked to notify the council when they received their postal vote.

3.    A number of recommendations from the independent review had been implemented. The returning officer was content to involve councillors in the process up to the point where their role as the elected representatives on the council stopped. The public viewed the council as responsible for delivering the elections, and councillors could legitimately oversee the use of council resources and procedures.

4.    Count supervisors would be instructed in a consistent and clear method of counting split votes.

5.    Letters had been written to the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Electoral Commission, and local Members of Parliament as requested. No responses had been received but any response would be reported to the committee and the task group.

6.    A project plan and frequent team meetings would be in place in good time before the police and crime commissioner elections. The risk registers would be updated for this election. However detailed planning was not possible at this stage due to a lack of national guidance about the conduct of these elections. The procurement for the printing for this election would be carried out later in the year and would specify information to be reported to the returning officer at each stage.

The committee commented that:

·       Communication with agents and candidates was crucial. Agents should be encouraged to pass information on to candidates. Candidates and agents could make matters worse by being uninformed but could assist the elections team in notifying the team of problems and explaining solutions and steps taken to the public.

·       The task group would oversee the process and resources allocated to elections and recommend the level of staffing, IT, resources required. It would also recommend a plan for an adequate communications strategy.

The committee noted the report and progress in implementing the recommendations, and asked for an update on the work of the task group at a future meeting.

To consider report 90/11 of the head of corporate strategy. 

The committee considered report 90/11 of the head of corporate strategy setting out the performance of Biffa Municipal Limited (Biffa) in providing the household waste collection, street cleansing, and ancillary services in the Vale of White Horse for the period 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2011.

The committee noted the points below:

Street and environmental cleanliness - litter and detritus

1.      About 800 inspections of street cleanliness were made throughout the district over the year. Officers and the contractor’s representatives inspected some sites together. Sites were selected at random from each type of street and were not reinspected. If a site fell below the expected level it would be visited a few weeks later, after cleaning, to check is the standard was now acceptable. Some roads had been inspected before being cleaned.

2.      Residents were surveyed via the council’s citizens’ panel and it was not possible to work out if the unsatisfied residents came from a few areas or more widely across the district.

3.      Standards of cleanliness had improved on taking over the contract but were now static.

4.      The failure to meet the targets did not reflect the standard of cleanliness. In the town centres this was generally good and had improved, and an increased number of roads were cleaned.

5.      Roads scheduled to be cleaned were cleaned roughly every eight weeks, allowing for variations to deal with high visibility or litter-prone areas.

6.      Un-cleared and overgrown drains were creating problems for street cleaning as the build up of debris in the drains increased the accumulation of litter and detritus. This would be mentioned to the Oxfordshire Waste Partnership for action.

7.      There was a balance needed between targets which were realistic and achievable and those which were unrealistic; and the scoring system needed to be fair and reasonable given that the district had a reasonable standard of cleanliness. Biffa suggested an independent inspection to set a benchmark level of cleanliness.

8.      Currently Biffa co-ordinated community litter picks but had no records of regular litter picking carried out by parish councils.

9.      Extra street sweeping was carried out in spring and autumn when blossom and leaves fell.

Councillors commented that it was better to keep the targets stretching rather than easily achievable to give the contractor something to strive for.

Waste collection and garden waste collection services

10. Refuse crews have clear instructions as to how to collect and replace wheelie bins. Crews worked to demanding targets and could be penalised for missed bins, misplaced bins, obstructing the footpath or driveways, and for leaving lids open.

11. The chips in each bin allow crews to know which bin belongs to which property, problems arise when missed collections are reported because a bin is being used at the wrong address.

12. Biffa was supplied with a list of garden waste bins which should not be collected and this should have been supplied to crews. Garden waste bins were not chipped or necessarily labelled and it  ...  view the full minutes text for item Sc91

To review the attached scrutiny work programme. 

The committee noted the proposed work programme attached to the agenda.

The committee asked for detailed information about the current and proposed schemes for community grants when the report was presented and noted that this may be delayed; and for information about the numbers and categories of people on the housing list and the housing stock and turnover when the report on housing allocations policy was presented.

To note the dates of the forthcoming committee meetings. In each case the meeting will be held on a Thursday at 7pm:

• 19 April 2012
• 24 May
• 28 June
• 26 July
• 23 August
• 20 September

The committee agreed that the next meeting would be held on Wednesday 18 April 2012.

None