Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Councillor Keeling.

The first main item on the programme is Declarations of Interest where Councillors have to say if there's anything in the programme they have a personal interest in.  For example if a Community Meeting wanted to talk about digging up a road and one of the Councillors lived on that road, he or she would have to say they had a personal interest in that.

Councillors are asked to declare any interests they may have in the business on the agenda, and/or indicate that Section 106 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 applies to them.

Members were asked to declare any interests in the business on the agenda. No declarations were made.

The minutes from the meeting held on 28 May 2008 are attached and Councillors are asked to confirm that they are a correct record.

The minutes of the meeting held on 28 May 2008 were agreed as a correct record.

Adrian Russell, Service Director, Environmental Services will give a presentation on the Environmental Services work carried out in the Freemen ward.

Adrian Russell, Service Director, Environmental Services, gave a presentation on environmental services work in the Freemen Ward for January to June 2008.  He explained the position in Freemen compared to the city-wide average in various areas of performance, such as waste collection, recycling, missed bins, graffiti removal, abandoned vehicles, street cleaning, pest control, noisy neighbours and dog fouling. He also mentioned local food and licensed premises and any action that had been taken with problem premises.

In response to residents’ questions, Adrian stated that the current recycling scheme was successful, as, although less waste was separated at home, a lot of waste was separated automatically at the recycling plant. This was why less was collected in the green boxes than in the old green bags. With the introduction of the new City Wardens, problems with bins left on the street could be dealt with more effectively, and persistent offenders would be issued with a fixed penalty fine. There were no plans to fine people for overfilling bins or not recycling. With regard to dog fouling and fly tipping he said it was difficult to catch people in the act, but where there was a regular problem, it could be monitored.

Adrian Russell, Service Director, Environmental Services will introduce the Council’s plan to plant 10,000 trees across Leicester in the next three years and will invite suggestions on where people would like to see them planted.

Adrian Russell explained the Council’s 10,000 Trees Project and asked people to submit suggestions of where they would like to see trees planted.

Residents queried the scheme, saying that more effort was needed to prune existing trees, and that new trees planted should be suitable and low maintenance. They raised concern about trees that were lifting kerbs. Councillor Shelton said that any issues should be reported to local councillors.

Gervase Smith, Acting head of Asset Strategy and Review, Property Services, will be present to talk briefly about the Southfields Library building.

Gervase Smith, Acting Head of Asset Strategy & Review, and Adrian Wills, Head of Libraries, led a discussion on the future of the Southfields Library building. They explained that a bid was being made to allow for a service centre to be built on the site of the old Southfields and Newry Schools. This centre would have a range of healthcare and community services, including a library. This would mean that the library would move from the Pork Pie Building, If successful, planning work would start after September, which would include design work, planning approvals and building, with a handover of the completed building in Autumn 2011.

The officers explained that there were problems with the current library being poorly accessible, due to the major roads nearby, and that usage had declined. They couldn’t currently say what would happen to the Pork Pie building, but that the local community would be kept informed of any developments.

Angela Sansome, Volunteer Publicity and Events Manager, gave a presentation on the upcoming Special Olympics that were to take place in Leicester 25-31 July 2009. She asked for people to get involved in promotion, volunteering and fundraising. She said that local centres would be used for the games, including Aylestone Leisure Centre, the County Cricket Ground, Saffron Lane Sports Centre and Knighton Tennis Centre, along with other sites across the city. Over 1500 volunteers were needed for the event. She also suggested that local events could be set up to raise money.

Jerry Connolly, Member Support Officer, will explain the sources of funding available to the Community Meeting and will give advice on how the meeting can use this money in benefiting the ward. Full guidance documents will also be available at the meeting.

Jerry Connolly, Members’ Support Officer, gave a presentation explaining the budgets available to the Community Meeting. These were:

• £10,000. Two thirds of this was to support issues raise in the Ward Action Plan and one third was for small community projects.
• £2,000 for community cohesion events.

He said that people could put in applications or suggestions for the funding, which would then be recommended by the Community Meeting and agreed by the Council’s Cabinet Lead for the relevant budget. People didn’t need to know exactly which budget to apply for, as this could be sorted out when the application was received.

Jerry Connolly, Member Support Officer, will explain the ward priorities that have been identified from the priority cards that were filled in at the last meeting, and will lead a discussion about how these can be used to form the Ward Action Plan.

Jerry Connolly, Members’ Support Officer, circulated a paper that gave a summary of information gathered at the previous meeting on the green “priority cards.” He said that more work would be done to identify priorities more specifically and that this would be reported to a future meeting.

It was agreed that the next meeting would be held on 3 December 2008 at 6.00pm, at Aylestone Leisure Centre.

The meeting closed at 7.30pm