Agenda item - QUESTIONS FROM MEMBERS TO COMMITTEE CHAIRS/PORTFOLIO HOLDERS

Agenda item

QUESTIONS FROM MEMBERS TO COMMITTEE CHAIRS/PORTFOLIO HOLDERS

A. Cllr. Robin Parker C.C.

 

‘Section 82 of the Environment Act 1995 provides that every local authority shall review the Air Quality within its area, at the present time and should also estimate what it will be in the future. In two tier local government areas like Hertfordshire, this duty sits with the District and Borough Councils. According to the HCC draft Air Quality Strategy page 9 [published as Appendix A of Item 7 in the Agenda for the HCC Highways and Environment Cabinet Panel meeting on 12.2.2019] there is no Air Quality/Air Pollution monitoring occurring in the Borough of Stevenage [source DEFRA, correct as at 21.12.2018].

(a)  Is this correct?

(b)  If so, why is SBC failing in this regard?’

 

B. Cllr. Andy McGuinness

 

‘Following the recycling bag trial, what are the Council’s plans going forward to meet both the Council’s recycling needs and the requirements of our residents?’

 

C. Cllr. Graham Snell

 

‘How many Parking Tickets have been issued during the last 12 months in the Borough for violations of the rules regarding the use of Blue Badges. In the answer, please show separate figures for:

(1)  Not showing the Badge;

(2)  Parking in the wrong place;

(3)  Staying  longer than allowed;

(4)  Any other issues.’

 

D. Cllr. Tom Wren

 

‘How many hours of council staff productivity have been lost this year due to downtime and performance issues of the SBC IT systems?’

 

Decision:

Council received four questions.  Details of the responses given to the questions are summarised below.

 

A.        Question from Councillor R Parker

 

In response to a question regarding Air Quality, Councillor John Gardner advised that the Council was required to provide an annual report to Defra on air quality and at present SBC deployed 33 air quality monitoring devices around the Borough which were left in place for a minimum of a year to evaluate data trends. Defra encouraged a flexible approach to locating them and officers carry out a review of their deployment annually to assess whether an Air Quality Management Area (AQMA) needed to be designated to achieve the health-based air quality objectives of an Air Quality Action Plan.

 

Stevenage did not currently have any AQMAs because we did not meet the thresholds.   Environmental Health officers were regularly involved in the identification of new sites to monitor; to consider whether any new development proposals were likely to have a detrimental effect on air quality or introduce populations to areas of poor air quality.

 

In response to a supplementary question, Councillor Gardner agreed that an email be sent to Councillor Parker with further information on SBC air quality monitoring including an explanation of how to access the air quality data. 

 

B.        Question from Councillor A McGuinness

 

In response to a question regarding the recycling bag trial, Councillor Gardner advised that the recycling pilot concluded in January 2019.  Officers were currently finalising their analysis of the findings including feedback from participant surveys and resident focus groups.  Initial indications were positive. Officers were also liaising with Councillor Gardner in respect of the Government’s Resources &           Waste Strategy that was published recently.  Consideration was being given to the potential impacts for Stevenage and the future configuration of recycling and waste management services in the future.  Consultations were expected to be launched imminently by Government regarding draft proposals for Extended Responsibility for      producers to cover the total net cost of recycling or processing packaging from their   products and a Deposit Return Scheme for single use drinks containers.  Feedback was also expected to be sought on proposals to harmonise recycling arrangement across collection authorities including the possibility of non-chargable garden waste collection services to households with gardens and weekly separate food waste collections.

 

In response to a supplementary question, Councillor Gardner agreed that the comments received from Councillor McGuinness would be incorporated into the work the Council was doing to determine options for the future.

 

C.        Question from Councillor G Snell

 

In response to a question regarding Blue Badge enforcement, Councillor Ralph Raynor advised that the issuing of Penalty Charge Notices was guided by clear legislation and requirements, with different forms of violation recorded under particular codes. 

 

In relation to violations of the rules related to Blue Badges, there was one particular PCN code (code 40) which  related to non-display of a Blue Badge or parking in the wrong place. 

 

Between 1 February 2018 and 31 January 2019, a total of 625 PCNs were issued for the violation of being “Parked in a designated disabled person’s parking place without displaying a valid disabled person’s badge in the prescribed manner”.  121 of these were subsequently cancelled as the driver produced a valid Blue Badge which they’d forgotten to display or hadn’t been clearly visible in the windscreen.  This meant that 504 notices were issued for parking in the wrong place.

 

Councillor Raynor advised that it was not possible to separate out overstays by Blue Badge holders, as opposed to other overstays because as all overstays were issued with a different form of PCN ticket for “Parking for longer than permitted”. 

 

In response to a supplementary question, Councillor Raynor agreed to ask officers to provide information to Councillor Snell regarding Blue Badge contravention in neighbourhood centres.

 

D.        Question from Councillor T Wren

 

In response to a question regarding IT performance, Councillor Broom advised that over the last twelve months uptime stood at 97.5 %. The ICT systems had four major outages in the past year. There had been two related to Dark fibre cuts by road works and two in relation to our Horizon VDI desktop provisioning system. The Council was mitigating the dark fibre cuts by installing a secondary Microwave network link in the coming months. The VDI desktop solution had a proposed full upgrade for software and hardware this year, which would mitigate the failures the Council have experienced from aging hardware and software.

 

During the downtime staff were able to remain productive by instigating their Business Unit business continuity plans.

 

In response to a supplementary question, Councillor Broom advised that the Council had an emerging ICT strategy which would be shared with all Members in due course.