Agenda item

The Executive Leader, Councillor S J Conboy to address the Council on behalf of the Joint Administration on the State of the District and to present for approval the Corporate Plan 2022-2023.

The Chair will invite the Leader of the Opposition to respond to the address.

(The Corporate Plan was considered by the Cabinet at their meeting on 19th July 2022 and their recommendations will be reported verbally).

[In the ensuing debate, a Member may speak once and no speech may exceed 5 minutes in length without the consent of the Chairman.]

The Chair invited the Executive Leader, Councillor S J Conboy to address the Council on the State of the District and Corporate Plan 2022-23 and to open the debate which was scheduled to follow.

Councillor Conboy opened her address by placing on record her sincere appreciation to Officers and Members who had supported everything that had been delivered in the past year. She also acknowledged the work of the previous administration over the last four years and in particular the response to the pandemic as well as, more recently Homes for Ukraine and Energy Bill rebate initiative.

Members’ attention was then drawn to looking ahead and setting a new strategic direction for the Council to ensure the Medium Term Financial Strategy remained sustainable. Reference was made to the previous administration commitment to ambitious savings for the ensuing financial year and £805k that had been removed from the budget for 2023/24, but the inherited budget showed £2.48m from reserves must be spent to achieve this. Based on this information, Councillor Conboy explained that the initial challenge for the new administration was to understand the detail to determine the savings impact on operational and strategic activities.

Members were advised of the transitional Corporate Plan for 2022/23 that would focus on the priorities of the Joint Administration for the remainder of the financial year, with a focus on supporting the needs of the residents. The response would also build on the network with the community and utilise external funding to extend the residents advice and information team with a focus on supporting residents through the cost-of-living crisis.

The Executive Leader explained that a major communication campaign was under development to assist residents involving the establishment of a financial vulnerability programme, delivery of a £250k project funded by the Clinical Commissioning Group aimed at boosting physical activity, development of a £300k community-based skills programme, closer working with Public Health and expanding the community network.

Attention was drawn to the climate crisis and Councillor Conboy referenced the previous administrations failure to seize the opportunity to address the Climate Emergency and with the recent extreme weather conditions that had been experienced there would be a commitment to addressing the impact, through public awareness, Council policies to enable the cutting of emissions, as well as active travel, local jobs and greener homes.

Members noted the continued focus on the delivery of the Market Towns Programme, including the St Neots Future High Streets Fund and accelerated delivery projects with master planning in Huntingdon, Ramsey and St Ives. There was also further commitment to creating opportunities to join up services, improving digital access, improving the housing situation, strengthening community work with partner organisations and delivering a Place Strategy designed to shape the District and priorities of the Council.

The Executive Leader drew attention to the intention to communicate regularly with residents to enable full engagement, as well as working constructively with the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, Cambridgeshire County Council and colleagues in the health sector, Town and Parish Councils, as well as the wider business sector partners. With this in mind, Councillor Conboy was keen to maximise opportunities for inward investment and connectivity across the District and ultimately focussed on the working together as councillors representing the District and their communities.

In response, on behalf of the Conservative Group, Leader Councillor J A Gray thanked the Executive Leader for her presentation that clearly set out what the administration hoped to achieve and welcomed the broad principles, but drew attention to the financial difficulties that the authority faced and referred to the Treasury Management Outturn 2021/22 report that would be presented later in the meeting by the new Executive Councillor and had commenced in his role with a strong starting base. He broadly welcomed the principles of the Corporate Plan, but drew attention to the commitment made by the previous administration versus those authorities that had declared a Climate Emergency but had made little or no progress since making their declaration. However, welcomed working with Councillor L Davenport-Ray, Executive Councillor for Climate and Environment, particularly in light on recent weather conditions.

In accepting the refreshed Corporate Plan, Councillor Gray was interested to see how this would be taken forward and suggested that responsibility lay with all councillors to work collectively to take issues forward but urged the administration to avoid endless rounds of engagement in tackling key issues such as the climate emergency and cost of living increase to enable decisions to be taken in a timely manner.

Councillor R J West outlined his concern with taking responsibility for addressing the climate crisis and urged that Central Government should be more actively involved as it was impossible to solve climate change alone.     

In conjunction with the meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Panel (Performance and Growth) held on 6th July 2022 and recommendation of the Cabinet in support of the refresh at their meeting on 19th July 2022, it was

RESOLVED

  that the Corporate Plan for 2022/23 as attached as an Appendix to the report now submitted be approved.