Agenda item

The Director of Neighbourhood and Environmental Services, Director of Finance and Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance submit a report providing an overview of the key areas and services related to the Neighbourhood Services and Community Involvement Scrutiny Commission.  The Commission is recommended to note the report and use the information to help inform its work for the coming municipal year.

The Director of Neighbourhood and Environmental Services, Director of Finance and Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance submitted a report providing an overview of the key areas and services related to the Neighbourhood Services and Community Involvement Scrutiny Commission.  Members were reminded that no budgetary information was included in the report and that, although no reference was made to service reviews, these would impact the work of the service areas and the Commission.

The Director of Neighbourhood and Environmental Services drew attention to the following points:

·           There were over 140 staff employed in Neighbourhood Services, which had a budget of approximately £5.1 million;

·           A major initiative in Neighbourhood Services was the Transforming Neighbourhood Services (TNS) programme, which was part of the Using Buildings Better initiative;

·           The Private Finance Initiative contract with Biffa for the collection, treatment and disposal of the city’s household waste ran until the end of 2028;

·           Cleansing services had a net budget of approximately £2.4 million and employed approximately 160 full-time employees; and

·           An important element of cleansing services’ work was responding to particular events in the city, such as cleaning after the parade for the reinterment of King Richard III and the recent parade to mark the success of Leicester City Football Club.

The Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance noted that:

o    There were no Heads of Service posts within her division, each team being managed by its own team manager;

o    The work of the Digital Media team included looking after the Council’s social media profiles; and

o    She was the Chair of the corporate Channel Shift Board and led the TNS programme.

The Head of Revenues and Customer Support advised the Commission that the Channel Shift programme fell within her service area, as did management of the advice contracts held with partners.

Councillor Sood, Assistant City Mayor for Communities and Equalities, explained that:

§   Her portfolio included responsibility for how the Council worked with external partners and employees;

§   Work with employees was focussed through nine employees’ equalities groups;

§   Work with external partners was done through a variety of forums, such as the City Centre Board, the Faith and Community Forum, and the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Police Crime Panel; and

§   The portfolio also included responsibility for granting final approval to requests for funding through Ward Community Grants.

The Commission welcomed the work that was being done with employees’ equalities groups and noted that it was hoped that the Council could become one of the top 100 organisations in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index.

The following comments were then made in discussion:

Ø  The wide range of work covered by this Commission meant that it needed to focus on the most important and/or urgent issues;

Ø  The City Wardens and Parks officers worked jointly to try, where appropriate, to deter people from feeding geese and swans if this was causing a littering problem.  If the amount of food put down by someone was greater than the number of birds, it was classed as littering, for which the City Wardens could issue a Penalty Charge Notice;

Ø  Problems were being encountered at recycling banks (“bring sites”) due to fly tipping at some of these sites;

Ø  Hotspots in the city for fly tipping were being targeted, as a result of which the amount of fly tipping was decreasing there.  An intelligence-led approach was being taken, through the City Warden service, but a constant watch needed to be kept on what was happening;

Ø  Grass cutting programmes in parks had been reduced and cuts on highway verges had reduced to either two, six or ten cuts per year.  However, cuts on housing land were unchanged at 14 per year, although a problem this year had been that the very wet weather made it difficult to cut the grass;

Ø  It was not possible to accurately predict when the grass would be cut in certain areas, but general information could be provided;

Ø  The public should be encouraged to use the Love Leicester app to report environmental problems;

Ø  The Customer Service desk at the Merlyn Vaz centre had transferred to a self serve offer at St Matthews library, but this did not appear to have been advertised beforehand.  The Head of Revenues and Customer Support undertook to clarify how this transfer of service provision had been publicised;

Ø  Work on domestic violence and sexual abuse previously had been done in various service areas across the Council, but it had now been brought together within the Community Safety Team.  This enabled the Council to ensure that services commissioned across the city were inter-related and to provide one contact telephone number through which people could be channelled to the right service for them;

Ø  SOCITM had used its own data to assess that Leicester had a low digital exclusion rate.  It was not known what this assessment was based on; and

Ø  Following the recent reduction in the number of Ward and Community Engagement Officers, it would be useful to confirm their activities and what they could assist with.

AGREED:

1)    That the overview of the key areas and services related to the Neighbourhood Services and Community Involvement Scrutiny Commission be noted;

2)    That the Scrutiny Policy Officer be asked to:

a)     include an item in the Commission’s work programme on the being undertaken to combat fly tipping, including that by the City Warden’s service; and

b)     circulate details of Area Cleansing Managers to all members of the Commission;

3)    That the Head of Revenues and Customer Support be asked to investigate how the transfer of the Customer Service desk at the Merlyn Vaz centre had been advertised;

4)    That the Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance be asked to include information on digital exclusion, particularly in relation to the SOCITM assessment of Leicester’s low rate, in the report on Channel Shift scheduled to be submitted to the Commission in November 2016; and

5)    That the Director of Neighbourhood and Environmental Services be asked to undertake a review of the services provided by Ward and Community Engagement Officers, following the recent reduction in the number of these officers.