Agenda and minutes

None received.

RESOLVED - that the minutes of the meeting held on 14 July 2022 be confirmed and signed by the Chair.

The Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Housing, Enforcement and Transport noted that the previous few weeks had been extremely difficult for the whole country following the passing of Her Majesty, The Queen. The Deputy Leader praised officers within the Democracy Team for their hard work over this period.

The Cabinet Member for Finance, Governance and Customer Services presented the report of the Director: Communities, Customer and Commercial Services.

The report provided an update on the Council’s Customer Feedback between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022 and to update Cabinet on the Council’s response to complaints during this period.

The Customer Strategy had launched in January 2021. As part of this updated strategy, Mystery Customers had been recruited to help review services from customer perspectives. In January 2022, the Council had become members of the Institute of Customer Services (ICS), which allowed benchmarking against similar organisations.

In total, there were 759 complaints received across the Council in 2021/22 from 733 complainants. This was against a backdrop of millions of service transactions that took place every week including 10.3 million bin collections and 239,837 calls to the Corporate Contact Centre each year. The total number of complaints therefore remained a small proportion of transactions.

In line with national trends, the Council had seen an increase in complaints received in 2021/22. There had been a sustained increase in compliments across the Council, the number of compliments had increased by 21% over the period.

The Council had scored 72.1 on the ICS business benchmarking survey, a strong score compared to the average for other Councils of 64.4.

Cabinet Members welcomed the report and noted that feedback was extremely valuable to enable continued development and improvement. Cabinet noted the extremely complex cases dealt with in Adult Social Care and Children’s Services and the timescales these were responded to.

RESOLVED that the Customer Feedback Report for 2021-22 in respect of Adult Statutory Complaints, Children’s Statutory Complaints and Corporate Customer Feedback and the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman Review Letter 2022 be reviewed.

The Cabinet Member for Finance, Governance and Customer Services presented the report of the Director: Communities, Customer and Commercial Services.

The report provided a mid-point update to the Customer Strategy which launched in January 2021 and the launch of the new Town and Parish Council / Borough Council Partnership agreement.

A range of actions to improve and develop customers’ experiences when engaging with Council services had been implemented, which included:

·         A new digital assistant ‘Ask-Tom’, which was able to respond 24/7 to the most frequently asked customer questions;

·         Extended opening hours for the corporate contact centre to 8am – 7pm;

·         Introduction of customer satisfaction surveys; and

·         The launch of the ‘My Telford’ app which had been downloaded by over 6,100 individuals.

Cabinet Members praised officers for their hard work and noted that the recently completed peer review had stated that officers went above and beyond regularly. Cabinet Members stated that it was important that all channels were open for residents to feedback and the many different ways that residents communicated with the Council showed how valuable these were.

RESOLVED that:

a)    The update to the Customer Strategy, which noted the progress delivered to date be approved and the refreshed action plan through to 2024 be endorsed;

b)   Authority be delegated to the Director: Communities, Customer and Commercial Services in consultation with the Lead Cabinet Member for Finance, Governance and Customer Services to take the necessary steps to implement these recommendations; and

c)    The new Town & Parish Council / Borough Council Partnership Agreement and pledges be approved.

Councillor Carolyn Healy, Cabinet Member for Climate Change, Green Spaces, Natural and Historic Environment and Cultural Services presented the report of the Director: Property & Investment.

The Council had made a commitment to the retention of locally important green spaces which had value to local communities. This already included the protection afforded to the Green Network through policies in the adopted Local Plan, through the existing 200 Green Guarantee Sites and 17 Local Nature Reserves.   The report sets out proposals to designate a new Local Nature Reserve (LNR) at a range of new sites along with extensions to some existing LNR to cover areas of land which had not been included in the original declarations.  Through this commitment the area of LNR protected would increase by 151 hectares to a total of 707 hectares of approved LNR. 

Maps showing the proposed LNRs were presented in Appendix 1 of the report. 

Following the approval, the sites would progress through a formal process with Natural England prior to final legal declaration.

Members welcomed the report.

RESOLVED that -

(a)       The declaration of the new areas of Local Nature Reserve including both new and extended sites be approved; and 

(b)       authority be delegated to the Director: Prosperity and Investment and Director: Policy and Governance in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Climate Change, Green Spaces, Natural and Historic Environment and Cultural Services to complete the declaration process.

The Cabinet Member for Climate Change, Green Spaces, Natural and Historic Environment and Cultural Services presented the report of the Director: Communities, Customer and Commercial Services.

The report provided an update on the progress made to meet the Council’s target of becoming Carbon Zero by 2030 and Plastic Free by 2023.

The Council had declared a Climate Change Emergency in 2019 and had put in place a target to be carbon neutral by 2030.  Although there had been no recent legislative changes, the increase in fuel prices and trend of climatic extremes would have a bearing on the focus of the work within the Council moving forward.

Members discussed the improvements that had been made to various council buildings, such as Newport Leisure Centre where an air source heat pump had been installed, which would reduce the buildings carbon foot print.

In response to a comment from the Leader of the Liberal Democrat / Independent Group, Cabinet Members agreed that more was needed from Central Government in regards to legislation around house building and development.

RESOLVED that -

(a)          The progress the Council has made over the last 12 months in its journey to becoming carbon neutral by 2030 and how the Council will continue to work to reduce carbon emissions from the Council’s operations and activities and influence carbon reduction Borough-wide be noted;

(b)          The progress the Council is making to becoming plastic free by 2023 and as part of the Borough wide Telford and Wrekin Plastic Free Task Force be noted; and

(c)          This report is in relation to the Council’s response to the Climate Emergency Declaration and will be referred to Full Council for information as part of the ‘Matters Determined by the Cabinet’ report be noted.

The Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Housing, Enforcement and Transport presented the report of the Director: Neighbourhood & Enforcement Services.

The purpose of the report was to approve the consultation for the proposed hackney carriage fares and charges. The hackney carriage fares and charges had not been reviewed since 2011, and due to the ongoing cost of the living crisis, the Council had received a number of requests for the policy to be reviewed. The proposals would be subject to public consultation.

RESOLVED that -

(a)  The advertising of the proposed hackney carriages fares and charges be approved;

(b)  Authority be delegated to the Director: Neighbourhood & Enforcement, in consultation with the Chair of the Licensing Committee, to take all necessary steps to undertake any consultation and introduce any revised fares and charges structure;

(c)  Authority be delegated to the Licensing Committee to undertake any future reviews, amendments and implementation of revised hackney carriage fares and charges.

This item had been deferred.