 colleagues, can I ask if you can mute your microphones please until you are called to speak by the chair. Thank you. Thank you Vice-Chairman. He's not Vice-Chairman until we appoint him, Mr Chairman. No, no, it's all right. Okay, so I've sent us live and there is a lag and I'm just going to check that the audio is running because there's been a Teams update. So when you hear an obnoxious feedback from my line then you know that we're all good. Thank you very much. Okay, yeah, I can confirm that we're now live. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, good evening members and officers and may I extend a very warm welcome to you to this meeting of the Scrutiny and Overview Committee of South Cambridgeshire District Council being held on the 17th of December. I'd like to, my name is Grenville Chamberlain and I am the chair of the Scrutiny and Overview Committee. I'm just a few points of housekeeping before we start if I may please. Would you please make sure your device is fully charged or charging? Please switch off your microphone unless I invite you to speak and when you have finished speaking please turn off your microphone immediately. Please speak slowly and clearly and do not talk over or interrupt anyone and if you wish to speak on an item please indicate this using the chat function which the vice chairman once we've elected one will be managing for me. But could I before we just go on to the roll call of checking members are present extend a very, very warm welcome to the Chief Constable of Cambridge Constabulary, Chief Constable Nick Dean. Chief Constable you are extremely welcome and I'm most grateful to you for giving up your time this evening to come and speak to us. That's no problem thank you councillor. You're very welcome. Members can I just check that you are present and may I call when I call out your names would I ask you please to turn on your microphone and introduce yourself so that we may note your presence and please remember to turn your microphone off after your introduction. Can I start with councillor Anna Bradman? Good evening everyone I'm councillor Anna Bradman, member for Milton and Water Beach. Good evening Ellen. Councillor Martin Cahn. Councillor Cahn is still to join us. Okay I'm going to come back to that. Councillor Nigel Capcott. Yes Nigel Capcott casting moment and I've been on the council for 30 years. Thank you very much. Councillor Sarah Chung Johnson. Oh Sarah Chung Johnson, one of the two members for Longstownton Ward. Thank you. Councillor Graham Coe. President, a member for Fenditon and Fullbourne. Councillor Claire Dalton. Good evening Claire Dalton, one of the members for Fenditon and Fullbourne Ward. Councillor Douglas Delacy. Good evening Douglas Delacy from Gerson Ward. Thank you. Councillor Peter Fane. Good evening Peter Fane, representing Shelford Ward. Thank you Peter. Councillor Joe's Hales. Good evening Chair, Councillor Joe's Hales Melbourne Ward. Thank you. Councillor Steve Hunt. Hello, Steve Hunt. I'm from Heston and Pinkton Orchard Park in Kingsmeddow. Councillor Ian Sollum. Ian Sollum from Haston and Cormerton Ward, substituting for Councillor Jeff Harvey this evening. Thank you Ian. And finally, Councillor Richard Williams. Thank you Chair. Richard Williams, I'm the member for Whittleson Treflow Heathfield and Newton. Thank you all very much indeed. We are all present and correct, with the exception of Councillor Harvey, for whom Councillor Sollum is substituting. So before we move into our formal business, I'd like to invite the Chief Constable to answer a number of questions, which have already been sent to him. I suspect that probably by the time we get to the end of these questions, there may well be some more. But I thought as the members of the public who are listening, may not be aware of what the questions that have been sent to the Chief Constable are, that I would read each of them out and enable the Chief Constable to answer. So question one is, how are we to meet the challenges of the rapidly growing new tone of at Norstow already experiencing issues with antisocial behaviour, with reductions in our local offices? Chief Constable, over to you. Thank you very much and thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening and to try and answer some of the questions. And I'll just caveat that if I'm not able to answer any of the details of the questions, then of course I'll assure you that you get your full responses in due course. But in relation to the first question around Norstow, experiencing antisocial behaviour and reductions in our local officers, well first of all, the whole of the county and indeed South Cambridge here are covered by response officers who deal with calls for service on a routine day by day basis. And they are aptly supported by the neighbourhood policing teams and particularly with Norstow, they are supported by two sergeants who lead two neighbourhood teams out in that area of the county. One headed by Sergeant Rob Taylor and the other by Emma Hilston. And so the ASB in particular is, as with all antisocial behaviour, quality of life issues is really important to the organisation and indeed to partners. And we have a vibrant problem-solving group within the South Cambridge area, particularly overseeing the Norstow development. So by doing that through the problem-solving group, not particularly in relation to being led by police, we are responding to the issues of the rapidly growing expansion, not just of Norstow, but as we see the development right across the county. With reductions in local officers, just to answer that, you may and you probably have heard of the local policing changes which we've announced within the Constabulary within the last few weeks and then confirmed up this week. I just want to give you assurance around neighbourhood policing because certain elements of the media report, we do understand the headlines that are published, but there is a vast amount of detail within this change programme that every neighbourhood will get a PCSO. Every neighbourhood has a quantity of police officers and it's well documented in terms of the investment that I have made in neighbourhood policing of warranted police officers. But just to reassure you and particularly reference to the question around Norstow, then you have done some detailed analysis in terms of the allocation of the PCSOs in the future in our neighbourhood structure. And that's based upon three criteria and an overarching parameter that every neighbourhood will have a PCSO presence. And those three criteria relate to crime volume, crime harm, which is not necessarily the same as volume, and also a vulnerabilities location index, which in lay terms is around the vulnerability of a number of factors, including deprivation, et cetera, which then we feed into an analytical model. And we can always crunch numbers and come up with a number, but actually what's equally important is community feeling and in addition, the professional judgment of those people who lead those particular neighbourhood teams. So all of that is being fed into the mix in order to get the allocation out of not only warranted officers, but also PCSOs in the future. So directly answering the question, yes, we are aware of Norstow in terms of local issues that are being experienced and raised to us. It has been flagged through the neighbourhood policing teams under the two sergeants and being discussed within the problem-solving group going forward and will be. If it escalates, which I hope, of course, it won't or any other issue, we do have neighbourhood support teams and other police assets who can go in there and do some more targeted work in partnership with other agencies and district council, et cetera, who can assist in that issue. Thank you very much. Can I move on to question two? That is, what impact will the reduction in funding for the community safety partnership? I think this was part of the cuts in communities like Longstown to Norstow, which have been identified as priority. Okay, just to clarify, I think with the question, as part of the cuts that we've announced, the community safety partnership is slightly different to community safety officers. So community safety officers are police staff employees within the organisation, and there are six officers who are allocated out to the districts across the county. It is those that our decision has been made to remove that role from the organisation. The assurance I give you is that that work is fully mapped out of the community safety officers, and we are working through how that work can be reallocated without no loss of service within the community safety partnership. I made the real caveat on the local, you know, we go into the changes and the announcements that I've made. Of course, the impact of nearly 60 staff across the organisation will notoriously have some impact upon policing. No one can withdraw, you know, I have to be honest, that no one can withdraw that amount of people without some impact. But actually, we're doing as much as we can to mitigate that impact upon communities on making people feel safe and on our crime and anti-social behaviour levels. So in relation to the reduction of the funding of those officers, we are doing our best to mitigate out the work that those community safety officers do within the organisation and then serving the partnerships and also, importantly, our communities. In relation to community safety partnerships and the funding of that, and that comes under the Police and Crime Commissioner for the allocation out through the community safety partnership of those funds for the local CSPs. And they are clearly allocated out to generate problem-solving tools and to build resilient communities. And of course, including the area in your first question around North Slow. Thank you very much indeed. And this question refers to a press release which said that you would guarantee a PCO in every neighbourhood. What do you consider a neighbourhood and what size patch are those PCSOs likely to have to cover? Okay, so we have 28 neighbourhoods covering the county in totality. And when we split the neighbourhoods up, they are made up of a number of wards. Dependent upon the location of that neighbourhood and the demand upon that neighbourhood is the number of wards which we feed into the neighbourhood geographic area. So really, a neighbourhood, the size of a neighbourhood is really dependent upon demand, upon size, upon population. So there's not one size fits all in terms of the geography, the size, the population. But we do, as I say, then match the resource against not only the size of the population, but also the threat risk and harm, the crime volume, the crime harm, and the vulnerability of that location in order to put in sufficient resources. And what's really important to express is that although there are dedicated officers and PCSOs for a particular geographic area, that does not mean to say we do not flex the rest of the organisation to a particular issue on a day-to-day basis through our tasking process. So the distribution of PCSOs in the neighbourhoods across Histon, Camborn and Sauston at the moment are proposed as one PCSO for Histon, two for Camborn and one for Sauston, supported by a number of police warranted officers. And again, as I've said, the two sergeants of Rob Taylor and Emma Hilston. Thank you very much indeed. But the fourth question is how frequently should any of our villages expect to see a police officer or PCSO on its streets in an average month? So I think this is a real tricky question to answer because there's no direct science or maximum or minimum attendance that we would adhere to a village or a town or a street. When you look at the streets, individual streets across South Cambridgeshire in particular, there are over 2,600 individual streets within South Cambridgeshire. So in order to put a police presence on every street, I think you'll hopefully agree with me, that's considerably unrealistic for us. But just for a sort of illustration purposes, if you talk about Melbourne population of around 4,400, then during the month of November, they had around about 30 incidents during that month. And again, that's for response officers, additional attendance by neighbourhood police team officers. Again, we'll support those calls for service. If you go to a small village or a small location such as or a small demand area, such as Littington population of less than a thousand, only three calls for service were received from that location during the month of November. So consequently, the dependent upon the demand, dependent upon the calls for service, dependent upon the patrol areas, it really does flex in terms of our policing presence. But I can reassure you and the communities who perhaps are listening online that through the analytical expertise within here at headquarters, then that monitoring of the demand through the demand hub, the control centre, the call centre, plus the analytical area will flex as issues are flagged to us. And what's often the question, and you have to put my hands up here, is often people phone in with information or intelligence and they feel, and there's a perception that it goes into a black hole and never heard of again. I can fully understand that. But actually what really is important is that does build the picture, even if we do not get back to that individual, where that demand is. So without the demand, without the calls for service, we cannot build up sort of expertise of the issues out in the neighbourhoods, which then feeds how many resources are allocated or where we would target patrols. So it is really important that people come forward, however they feel, and we need to do better. That's my honest opinion about getting back to people. It's really important that people do report the issues through us so that we can apply some problem solving in partnership with others and we can then direct patrols to solve those issues. So not an easy question to answer in terms of, yes, you will get a PCSO or a police officer on a daily basis at this location. It really depends upon demand. It really depends on the workload of those officers as they go about their day-to-day business. Thank you very much indeed. Very comprehensive. The next question is, we have many residents in parish councils who are unhappy with the changes you have made. Who should they contact to most effectively try to get these changes reconsidered or reversed? Well, I suppose we've moved on from whether these decisions can be reversed, but actually we are still open to the fact that, you know, we do, we have done some consultations, some extensive consultation in relation to the changes that have been fed out over the last few months. And certainly if I use, and I know it's not, you know, not everyone's choice, but when you look at social media, we've had over 60,000 posts put out around the neighborhood changes and as well as contact with key stakeholders. So the decisions around the changes have been signed off by myself at what we term an executive board within the Constabulary on Monday. It was presented to the Police and Crime Commissioner yesterday at Business Coordination Group and they have been signed off to be implemented. So those cuts and those changes to our neighborhood policing will be going ahead. And as I said and I've been, you know, honest, those are not easy decisions to take by any chief constable. It certainly isn't easy for myself, particularly around my stance around neighborhood policing, but actually the financial situation I find myself in, and that's taken aside COVID, is that I have to address and I have a duty, as you would well understand, to balance the books at the end of the day. So, but in answer to the question, if people want to contact us, then by all means contact my office or the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner or their local neighborhood teams to express that. We still have a comprehensive change team working on this change program as the changes are implemented and views of the public are most welcome in order to influence our thoughts. Thank you very much. It's very helpful. The next question is quite a long one, so please bear with me. What difference if any, would it make to police resourcing if responsibility for parking enforcement in all or part of South Cambridgeshire were to be handled by civil enforcement, as it is already in Cambridge City and on those parts of the park and ride sites, which fall within South Cambridgeshire? There are parts of Orchard Park, Trumpington and no doubt other areas which currently fall outside civil enforcement because they are outside the city boundary and therefore the police are in theory responsible for parking enforcement. However, because people know that the police do not have the resources to do this effectively, it is reported that some people are parking illegally in those parts of Orchard Park and Trumpington, which fall within South Cambridgeshire. Similarly, there are villages in South Cambridgeshire, including Great Shelford and Sourston and no doubt others, where lack of resources for police enforcement, for example parking on WLO lines, is a cause for some concern. This may become a bigger problem as new developments like Water Beach, North Stowe and extensions to Camborn are developed. Okay, thank you. Thank you for that question. Parking enforcement has been about as long as I've probably been in policing and the civil enforcement of parking through wherever I've served has been a topic of debate. I think we really have to be realistic in terms of what the public would like myself as the Chief and my officers and staff to concentrate on. And I fully accept, as I said, with antisocial behaviour, that some issues may not be top of the threat pile, but actually do cause concern in terms of quality of life. And there are certain issues which, as I've gone throughout my career in terms of community meetings, I could put on the top three. Parking is one of them. Speeding is the other one of which an antisocial behaviour probably is the other one of which are constantly raised. And I think in terms of speeding, the various solutions that have been put in force and in terms of antisocial behaviour, I think we've moved a long way, not only as police, but as a partnership to tackle those quality of life and issues. But parking remains one of those thorny issues that feels many a mailbag, not only mine, I'm sure you as councillors as well. And I know it does in terms of the office of the Police and Crime Commissioner. But I'd be most welcome to enter into, as we have done previously, into conversations about civil enforcement transferring to district councils, because I do think there is an avenue there of which can be dealt with better and more effectively, the constabulary who don't understandably, and ultimately that's my decision about putting it high on the priority list. It may well affect, if we got that right, our respective mailbags in terms of policing and the demand upon policing probably have little impact, because of the priority area that we concentrate on in resourcing this issue. But I do think I'd be most welcome to a conversation about if it's South Cambridgeshire, if it's in combination with districts right across the county, then I think there is a conversation to be had about how we pull our collective knowledge of those areas that have done it, those areas who think they can do it and want to do it, those areas who perhaps are reluctant because they think it might be a financial burden or it is not profitable, if profitable is the right word, in order to do it. And I think there is a solution there. But it is a concern to members of the public. I accept that. Is it a priority of the police? I have to accept that it isn't. But I am willing to work as my officers are in combination with other partners in order to try and solve this problem through. Thank you very much. That's a very interesting response and I'm most grateful to you. The next question that you touched on it is what measures have been taken to combat the increase in speeding in the district during and following the lockdown? Yes, indeed. So as I said, speeding is always an issue which is raised in any community meeting. And I caveat that from my knowledge as being a local beat officer down the market many years ago when people came to me as the inspector there and pleaded with me to put speed enforcement within the town of Downer Market and the surrounding villages. And when I went back three months later, most of them were up in arms because we prosecuted our own residents. So we do have to take that caveat. But speeding is a concern in all seriousness an issue for the community in terms of where we are. We utilise the special constabulary, especially within the South Cams area in order to force speed enforcement, in particular areas of concern again where the data makes good sense and prioritisation road policing units and speed camera vans. But also we can't forget the valuable work that Speed Watch do, a system of volunteers right across the county, coordinated by the camera safety partnership in combination with the officers of the policing crime commissioner. And we have an extensive network of Speed Watch volunteers. And I think we're now getting the coordination of those Speed Watch volunteers really more right, not more right, more correctly deployed in terms of where those problem areas are. We have seen a little bit of a dip in those volunteers naturally because of COVID. And we are once we are through into the new year hopefully as the green shoots, although today's news is not green shoots around COVID, that we actually run another campaign to increase the number of volunteers that we could actively train within villages to make that contribution to reduce down speeding. We also have to bear in mind and this is no debtor grade to the volunteers that come forward, particularly with COVID, then they fall or some of them, I have to be careful of my language, some of them may fall within the vulnerable category. And therefore we do have to pay cognizance to their health and safety quite rightly in terms of being deployed out on the streets against the backdrop of the pandemic. So we do use the special constabulary. We do use volunteers. We do use specialist assets such as road policing and the camera enforcement. And again, issues of speeding within villages is being fed within the camera safety partnership world and the new scheme which has been launched through that multi agency partnership so that we can direct resources into those hotspot areas. Thank you very much, Chief Constable. I have to say we have a very effective and very active speed watch team here in Hardwick and they do a great job. Yes, they do. The next question is how effective is the rural crime action team in working with local officers to combat rural crime? Could you provide some examples for our district? Yeah, I could indeed, Councillor. I am really privileged in terms of inheriting the rural crime action team because I think they do a fantastic job. Are there enough of them? Of course, you know, no Chief Constable would say he's got enough resources in terms of putting them into rural crime in a county like us, but they are an effective team. In fact, only last week myself and the Office of Police and Crime Commissioner held and with the Chief, Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor held an online conference such as this with the rural community about how we could better utilise their eyes and ears, their knowledge and the Crown Prosecutions service and police and RCAP were on that call and particular praise was given to RCAP in terms of their work. They are extremely effective. They are deployed as a team. Of course, they work shifts. They have to have some downtime and when they operate as a team on a regular shift pattern or a regular shift pattern which is flexible, dependent upon the need, but there are days when the whole team are not on and that's simply because they operate most effectively when they're on as a complete team. We have invested in terms of the, you may have heard of the Government Uplift Programme, so extra resource has been placed into the rural crime action team. There is a PCSO within the rural crime action team and that post will remain following the police changes that are announced and indeed they've recruited a number of special constabulary members who are equipped in terms of driving and got those specialisms to enhance their team and I think from memory Craig Flevelle who is the Sergeant within the RCAP gives me about three special constabulary members who are dedicated to that team. So there is never an increasing presence of the RCAP across our rural communities. The question also asked whether I could provide some instances for our, for our district. Well yes I can. I won't go into, there was an operation called Operation Chambers which is a multi-agency day of action conducted across South Cambridgeshire on the 16th of October. There is extensive extensive results within that which I could probably feed through to Victoria if that would help rather than just read out a list of successes but I will concentrate on one operation or perhaps two operations. The first on the 17th of the 11th Operation Pinnacle which was a large-scale search warrant conducted in Meldroth and that was based upon intelligence and despite the pandemic we were able to mobilise a large number of officers over several days despite starting on the 17th of November in relation to that. And what the Pacific Results were around that were three stolen caravans recovered, two stolen trailers, one stolen transit van, five shotguns with ammunition, one rifle with ammunition, £140,000 worth in cash, one suspect has been charged and remanded for multiple firearms offenses and possession of criminal property. And in relation to the 26th of November following a tracker, a location device on a vehicle activation on a stolen digger which was showing on the Willingham area the following items were also recovered. Again the stolen digger from which the tracker device was activated, three stolen trailers, one stolen caravan, two stolen quad bikes, five cannabis factories, that was 77 plants in total, value of £66,000 and six suspects were arrested for a number of offenses including conspiracy to steal, cannabis production, a fray and an assault on one of bi- officers. So they are very successful and that just gives you a flavour of the rural crime action team supported by the rest of my resources across the southern half of the county in terms of investigators which assist the RCAP in such complex investigations. That's extraordinary, thank you very much. And the final prepared question that I have is what effect will the proposed reduction in PCSO numbers have on the overall strength of officers, both PCSO and regular officers, available for community policing in South Cambridgeshire? Would the rise of regular officer numbers over recent years leave us with a net gain in officer numbers before or will it be neutral against officer numbers back say in 2010? You're now testing my mathematical skills, Mr Chamberlain, of which I'm not at apt, I was never known for my maths. But what I can assure you as I've assured you in terms of the cuts that have been announced is that the allocation of PCSOs and police officers has been worked out through professional judgement, through harm, through crime, through vulnerabilities location and the feedback from communities and indeed the professional leads of the neighbourhood sergeants and inspectors across, not just Southcams but across the county. And since I've been here, then of the precept rise in 2018-19, I invested 50 additional officers within the neighbourhood policing teams. And since early 2017, the rise in neighbourhood officers has increased from around 57 to 132 at the end of March 2021. So there is a considerable rise. Yes, we are going to reduce down our PCSO strength by 40. Some of that impact will be on South Cambridgeshire in a minimal way, I have to say in terms of numbers. But actually, I believe there will be a net gain. In addition to that, as I say, it's not just about neighbourhood policing officers, it is about response officers, it is about investigators. And at the minute, I sit here and projected going forward with the highest number of warranted officers Cambridgeshire has known for many of years, certainly before austerity kicked in in 2010. And we are intelligently deploying those officers through the uplift program as they are recruited right across the county and into support services. So it is with some, I suppose relief has achieved constable, I can recruit the police uplift program through the government of 20,000 officers over six years. We've already recruited our year one allocation. We will go into next year with our year two allocation, which has been announced today of an additional 58 officers on top of normal recruitment. And again, they will be deployed across the county. Of course, it will take some time to recruit those officers. They don't just, you know, some people think I, you know, not being flippant. I have a bottom drawer of police officers. I have to recruit them. I have to train them. And they have to, you know, they have to get up to a certain speed before they are independent of patrol. But I can reassure you that we are invested across the organization in warranted police officers, despite the unfortunate cuts that I've had to make this week announcements on police community support officers. Thank you very much, Chief. That's the end of the prepared questions I have. But I have a number of members who would like to ask questions. Are you able to stay with us for a short while to do, to take them live? Yeah, if I could just ask that I'd be released by about quarter past six, if that helps, I do have another meeting after this. And I heard you on the introduction to say that Peterborough Community at three is occupied in mine and a number of other people's time during today. So I think we're in, I'm in for a long day, but that's, that's by the ball. Yeah, thank you very much. In that case, the first question comes from Councillor Steafhunt from Histon and Dampington. Steve. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Chief Constable, for the very useful information you've given us. So my question is, is this, our PCSOs, some of them have been in serving areas for a period and they've built up a wealth of local knowledge, contacts, and they're known in the community. And what I want to know is, what can you do to ensure that as some of them move on and others are reallocated that that local knowledge is not lost to us? Okay. There's two aspects to that, Councillor Hunt, is one we, we are, as we say through the uplift program and through recruitment, the option to transfer from being a police community support officer into being a PC, a police constable, is there on the table. And we have mapped out the route for a PCSO to take through the selection process within the organisation to actually go into formal training in May next year so that they are ensured continuous employment with the organisation. And what my commitment to the organisation as I announced this week with, as I addressed the PCSOs on my decision, is that if they do that transfer and notoriously, of course, being PCSOs, they will come from community neighbourhood teams, my commitment would to be that they will be posted back within those community teams as warranted officers. Because as you rightly say, they have a wealth of knowledge, they have a wealth of social contacts and local intelligence and, you know, to their credit, they have put in a vast amount of years and service in terms of serving the community. So why would I withdraw them? And that will be in addition, as additional officers to the numbers that I have proposed within neighbourhood teams. So it won't be that an officer is displaced because a PCSO is transferred goes into the neighbourhood team, I've made the commitment that they will be in addition. So that's one way of retaining the knowledge within the organisation. And of course, what we've done on the build up to this announcement is manage our vacancies within the organisation across the police staff establishment, such as within the demand hub, within the investigative management unit, within the design crime officers and all sorts of avenues. Of course, it will no way cater for all the people who I've unfortunately announced the cuts, but actually that they are available. And because of the redundancy, because of the risk process, they gain certain priority over being maintained within the organisation. So we are doing and we do recognise that. And we mentioned that the community safety officers, the design out crime officers, which sit within the estates portfolio of the organisation. Then we are putting a temporary fixing to that to ensure that someone with the right skills and community safety officers have a wealth of skills within this organisation could well apply for those positions going forward. So what we are doing our best is because I do recognise people have given a great deal of valuable service to the communities and to this organisation. And as I said, it was a great regret I had to announce the cuts. But I will do everything in my power to maintain their knowledge and connection with this organisation. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Councillor Brian Mills from Sourston. Brian is also a member of Cabinet. Brian. Thanks, Chair. And thank you, Mr Dean, for coming and speaking with us today. The question I was going to ask, I think you largely addressed because you referenced the announcement today of £15 billion budget, which is a significant increase. You were saying that you've got your proportion of the 6,000 out of 20,000 recruitment of new officers. But I've got a question about the, in relation to that, which is the amount of skill and experience that we've lost in the previous 10 years and now having to recruit people anew rather than having retained the officers that had the experience. And what a comment from you on that would be useful. And then just a little local issue. What are the plans? I think there were two stations, including the one in Sourston that are effectively going to be closed permanently now. And what are you likely to do with those buildings as a resource, whether you're going to dispose them or not? Thank you. Okay. Thank you. So in relation to the loss of experience across the organisation, I don't think that's unique to Cambridgeshire. That's across policing. Since 2010, I think if we look into figures quoted by the Police Federation and nationally, I think there was about 20,000 or near enough that since 2010 of police officers lost within policing. So that may well come from 20,000 uplift announced by the government, but I'm certainly not going to enter into any political debate. Suffice to say that any increase in police warranted officers is most welcome. And I welcome my contribution, my allocation of contribution from that 20,000. So just to give you a flavour, the first year of that uplift program was 42 officers, and we've recruited those officers. 62 as I say, sorry, 58 for year two allocation for Cambridgeshire. And then although it's not been announced, we expect a further 82 for the year three allocation to us. But clearly that's a ministerial decision and that's subject to any debate going forward. But overall, we have seen an increase. I do have a large proportion of my response officers of young in service and in experience. There is no doubt about that, and I'm not alone that as a Chief Constable. I wouldn't like to quote a figure, but it's considerable. If I said it was 50%, I would probably be an underestimate of response officers within their first four years of service. And of course, with that comes in experience supervision. And then we, you know, that often stems into or could create issues in terms of resilience. So we can't stop officers leaving. You know, at the end of their 30 years, of course, they're entitled to leave at any stage. But particularly after giving 30 years law service to any organisation is sufficient within policing. But what I can say is that the remodelling of the organisation, and this is not in relation to cuts or additional, we remodeled our existing resources, is to put in a continuous professional development unit, which are officers, experienced officers and an experienced sergeant. And if we talk particularly around, there's one in the north and one in the south, one at Thoughtwood, one at Parkside, and they are assigned to each an individual shift. So not only assisting the inexperienced officers going through their service, but also inexperienced supervision as well. And they've been in place probably since mid September. And I have to say that has really paid dividends within the organisation already in terms of that support and guidance to frontline officers. What we've also created, again, within our resources are what are termed command cells, is a bit of a police term. But actually, they ensure the tasking of the neighbourhood teams, of the response teams, of the analysis of the information over the last 24 hours, those in custody. There's a whole host of information, if you like, the brain of the South Cams area as they churn information through on a daily basis to ensure we are deploying officers correctly. And they were born out of COVID. We put into command cells to deal with COVID. They were so successful during COVID in the early parts of lockdown that we've actually put them into business as normal. So there is a huge amount of work being done to support young officers. This afternoon, before officers pass out of Monkswood, which is our training centre after 20 weeks initial training, I spend an hour and hour and a half with them to go through some reflections and expectations of them. I addressed 18 of those this afternoon and they pass out here at Enquart as on Monday, deployed across the south and the north of the county. And I have to say, you know, when I look at the backgrounds of those officers, we are still got a huge amount of people interested in policing. I'm still interested, very interested in people applying to Cambridgeshire and particularly from minority groups in order to reflect the communities of which we serve right across the county. So I give you that reassurance. We are aware of that issue. It's not alone to Cambridgeshire. We're trying to address it by support. We're trying to address it by good supervision and extra training to those supervisors. In terms of police stations, I need to be really clear we are not closing any police station at this present time. So police stations are not being closed and sold at this particular time. Sauston will still be a police station with a neighbour team in. Camborn will still be a police station with the neighbour team in and an addition at Camborn is the neighbour support team, which is a considerable number of officers to deploy. Yes, across the whole of south of the Cambridgeshire, but they are actually physically located within Camborn. And in addition, we have, I hate to get technical, but within the demand of within the control room, there is what's called an incident response team. A third of that team are being deployed out to rural police stations so that they can take appointments for people to ring up, call up, make an appointment and then go to their nearest police station on an appointment basis, which is what we've found more and more in terms of covid that people want to turn up on an appointment based as with many other organizations that the channel shift, the shift in communications within the organization during covid as we have seen with many organizations is certainly more online is certainly more through web chats through online calls calls into the control room rather than actually walking into police stations. I wouldn't say I wouldn't say it's a myth. Of course it's a reassuring presence that we have a police station within a community, but actually the footfall within them is is really minimal. Thank you for your comprehensive reply. Appreciate that. Thank you. That was extremely detailed. Thank you very much. If we have time I have three more questions for you, Chief. The first is from Councillor Anna Bradman from Milton and Water Beach. Thank you Chairman and thank you Chief Constable. You'll be aware there are the proposals for moving the police station from Central Cambridge to a site near the park and ride to the west of Milton and including a new custody suite and this is shortly to be coming to a planning committee at South Cambridgeshire. Now Milton residents are very concerned about the potential impact of the individuals being released from custody on the community of Milton and they are concerned about the potential for drug dealing, antisocial behaviour and theft from residences in Milton. So I wondered what action will you be taking to ensure the residents of Milton are not negatively impacted by the individuals being released from custody and also would you please consider putting a CCTV camera on the footbridge between the park and ride site and Milton over the A10 because that might help to mitigate the problems. Okay thank you very much for that. The CCTV issue I know has been raised before and I can't recall off the top of my head as I sit here today what the answer is but I will look into that in terms of clarification of that issue. In terms of custody and in terms of a police station being based at Milton I think we need to be reassured that police stations now Parkside Thoughtwood big police stations from my experience in Norfolk are actually located within communities now and do I see drug dealing do I see antisocial behaviour do I see theft in the vicinity of those police stations now then no I don't and so why would it be transferred when we build a new police station in Milton but I fully accept that that is a community concern and whether it's a reality or not that is a perception we need to work hard at. The you know if I speak from personal experience I'm not sure Councillor Bradden and whether you were at the con I think you you were and I've spoken before is that when I was in Norfolk for a period of time I lived on an estate next to a police investigation centre a custody centre in Norfolk in Wyndham and again a community concerns there were raised around the impact of that custody I indeed lived on that estate and there was no impact at all. You will see a bigger police presence within Milton which should be reassuring the custody provision is that there is risk assessments around all people taken into custody and all people who are released from custody and those most harm or risk of harm or serious offences if they are so subject to remand in custody and they need to go before a magistrate will either be video-conferenced into the court from the custody centre or actually transported by private security to the court cells themselves and before anybody is released there is a risk assessment and if I base upon my experience in Norfolk then that is a and in in Cambridge here is that that is a legal requirement in terms of risk assessment of people being released. The vast majority of people if not all the people who are subject to either mental health or they're juveniles or they are subject to vulnerability are released in the in the company of an appropriate adult their parent their guardian or indeed their legal representative. So I do get the concerns but actually we have police stations now within communities and do we see when we you know we release people from Parkside in the centre of Cambridge with all those terrorist houses and communities in the centre of that city and do I see theft and theft and criminal damage and vehicles and burglaries being committed by people being released in the heart of the city? No I don't and so I do not expect that to be the case in Milton. There were some concerns certainly where I lived that all people won't be able to get back to Norwich if they lived lived from Wyndham some 12 miles away therefore they will be stealing local vehicles that didn't happen and still doesn't happen to this day. So I think you can be reassured that we will we will we will clearly monitor the situation because we don't want crime happening in Milton as we do in any other part of the location but in in terms of those concerns please be reassured it is within our sights. I should say there are some local farmers who would like to have your police station right in the middle of their farm yard actually so thank you thank you. Constable you will be I'm sure delighted to know that going to the complexity and the detail in your answers you have already answered the remaining two questions that I had so okay could I on behalf of Assault extend to you our most sincere gratitude for the time you have taken and for the detail that you have delivered in your responses this evening I think I've probably speak for Assault when I see the nodding heads that we are all extremely grateful and most appreciative of not only the work that you do but your officers too and may I on behalf of us wish you your families and your teams all the very best for Christmas and happy and crime free 2021. That's very kind and thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening and that you know the invite you know I wouldn't say on a regular basis but if you wish me to come back at some point then the offer is there Councillor Chamberlain and I'd be more than willing to do that so thank you and again my season's green I hope you have a safe Christmas I'm not sure about a crime free right across the county but if I could wish you a safe Christmas then thank you and I'll relay that message back to my organisation so thank you very much for your time. Thank you all the very best to you. Thank you. You're welcome if you wish to stay Chief Constable listen to the rest of it but I bet you've got a better offer. Ladies and gentlemen I hope you found that as interesting and as enlightening as I did and of course the question if there are any further questions then the Chief Constable did indicate that there are ways and means that we could ask those questions through his organisation. But could we move now does anyone have any comments is everyone content with that is that something that you would like to consider like us to do again perhaps once a year we invite the Chief Constable. I think that was an excellent idea Chairman. I think it was extremely valuable. Yeah agreed. Yeah I agree. Thank you. Item one on the agenda is apologies for absence so Victoria can you bring us up to speed with apologies please. Yeah thank you Chair. We've received apologies for absence from councillors Jeff Harvey and Judith Ripeth and councillor Ian Sollum is substituting for councillor Harvey. Thank you very much. As councillor Ripeth is not able to join us this evening and I do hope that all is well with the family. I have heard of volunteer John-Jose Hales as offered to Actors Vice-Chairman for this evening. Is anyone opposed to that? No. Thank you very much. Jose you have a job thank you. Agenda item two is declarations of interest so may I ask do any committee members have any interest that they would like to declare in relation to any item on the agenda? Chairman do those of us who are on the planning committee need to indicate that? I don't think so. No okay. I think that's entirely in order. Item three on the agenda is the minutes of the previous meeting and can I just say from the outset that councillor Richard Williams has notified us that he was indeed present at the last meeting but does not appear on the list of attendees and subject to this being corrected are members happy to approve the minutes of the previous meeting which was held on the 12th of November 2020 or are there any matters of accuracy that members would like to raise? I'm happy with the minutes. Thank you. Chair sorry Sarah yeah I have something. Where it says the chair of the Scrutiny Task and Finish Group looking at equality and diversity issues could we change this to anti-racism because I don't want it to make it look like we are looking across all of equality and diversity because our remit is a lot narrower than that. I guess that's more of a matter arising than was the minute we're correct at the time were they not and we should therefore change the title of it through the process of the meeting. Is everyone happy that we changed the minutes? I'm happy and can councillor John Johnson advise us whether she made that point at the time? I don't recall. Of the meeting? The task and finish group has never covered equality and diversity. No the whole of equality and diversity so it's just it's just more clarifying that we aren't. Okay so it's a mistake but I'm so it's just a minute rather than yeah okay. So subject to that amendment and councillor which is Williams being added is everyone content with the minutes so I shall sign them off at some appropriate time. Agreed. Agreed. Thank you all very much. A gender item four is public questions but I can tell you that we have well we hadn't as of this afternoon received any questions so I presume that's still the case. Pregender item five I believe that we have now dealt with with the Chief Constable and his extensive information that he's delivered this evening it really is I think extraordinary. So we come to item six which is the Greater Cambridge Shed planning service delivery update and I'd like to call on the lead cabinet member for planning councillor Tumi Hawkins to present the report although I believe that Stephen Kelly and Sharon Brown will also be present to support councillor Hawkins. Thank you very much chair. Good evening members of the committee. The last time we were before you in July we went through where we were at and we said we would bring back to you an update report later on in the year and this is the report. We have come some way from where we were then and there's a lot of positives that we can draw from the work that's been done in that time. As you know we've implemented the three area teams in development management and some of the performance issues that or performance enhancing things that we've done is actually now we've created a way in which we provide weekly reports to parishes and members and I hope members actually have found that very useful and also we have created a new online customer feedback questionnaire for our customers. Now we've got onboarding process when we recruit new new staff and also we're now developing a new single customer complex process whereas before in the service we had one from the city and one from for South Cams. Now some of the work that's also been done include updating our pre-application charges and because again we had two charges from South Cams and City as legacy. In addition to that we've actually now created a new and improved pre-app service which we have launched and you know we're hoping that many more applicants will actually use that process because what we realize is that if we have an upfront service that they can use that gives them the right information so that they can create and present to us a proper application then of course the application can go through the system much easier for all of us. I mean details of that obviously we've published and also in terms of customer service we have rolled out what we call a 24 hour callback service you know so that officers can respond back to those who request for updates and are not chasing but we hope that as they get used to the customer service interface and we provide more information on that they can use that to actually get the updates that they require on their applications. We've also introduced a standard planning performance agreement template which we use for you know some of our bigger applications and also for members we have introduced more member development training which happens at the beginning or you know prior to planning community meeting starting and these are kind of bite-sized training sessions which also I hope members have found to be quite useful. And we're working on a single suit of planning conditions for applications which again should help us with with sending out notices after applications have been determined and we spoke about the plan advisory service reviewing the committees. This has taken place and the reports for that will be published early in the new year. There's a lot more that I could be talking about but I know that there's a lot of questions that people would want to ask including perhaps an update on TerraQuest. We have had help from that contract that contract was only actually just signed up earlier on this year but we're able to use them in DM as well as to clear the backlog of validation applications that we had. So I think I will at this point you don't meet. I don't know why that happened I think I must have lost something. If I may at this point ask if Sharon Brown or Steven Kelly might want to add to that because I know they have a more operational overview of what's been going on. Sharon are you going to come in at this point? Thank you chair yes I would like to do so. I won't reiterate the issues that Councillor Hawkins has already highlighted but I do want to mention a few other highlights over the from the last 12 months. So in particular I would like to highlight the ICT upgrade that has taken place, the migration from the South Cams APAS system, the introduction of an upgraded uniform system and the migration of the system on to a new server system to create a more robust basis for the system. So that obviously has taken a significant amount of officer time into that and there's been high volumes of testing work that's also been associated with that and data that's been transferred. So those are areas that we've been dealing with throughout the year. I'd also like to highlight the reduction in the number of complaints and the comparison in Appendix B compared to last year. Other areas of the service where I think there's been significant progress include the strategic sites team and the outcomes on strategic sites which are set out in paragraph 30 of the report and I'd just like to update that today. This week we have completed the Section 106 Agreement for the Welcome Trust application and also the Land North of Cherry Hinton applications and the planning commissions, both of those being issued this week. I think in relation to the three geographical areas it's important to highlight the work that the team leaders and their teams have been doing in terms of seeking to improve relationships with the parishes and with local communities and a number of walking tours that have been held by their team leaders and the parish meetings that have taken place. We will have a programme of area parish meetings into next year so we are proposing to have quarterly based area meetings with the team leaders and we're currently putting together a programme for that. In terms of our performance it has improved in terms of comparison with previous years and you can see that from Appendix A obviously it does rely on extensions of time and we do need to do some work in terms of improving our reliance on extensions of time and reducing those that's work in progress and I think in this respect we are consistent with a lot of other authorities so extensions of time are used extensively across the country by other planning authorities. So I think just to say that I just want to highlight a number of positive outcomes but recognising that there is still a lot of work to do. We have a programme of further improvements which we'll be doing throughout next year. We are looking at various systems and processes within development management and enforcement so there will be a structured improvement programme ongoing. Thank you chair. Thank you very much Sharon. Stephen did you wish to say anything? I don't think so at this stage. I suspect there's going to be some questions that members will have and I'll pick up I think a couple of the matters that they might want to discuss perhaps in the answers. Thank you very much. You may rest assured there are some questions and I think the first is from Councillor Dawnton could I? Councillor Dawnton. Yes thank you. I thought that Councillor Trong-Dawnton was before me. I think that was a good six. Right thank you and thank you Councillor Chavelin. So I have two questions. I'll take the second one first now Sharon because you've just mentioned that and that's to do with the area teams. So in the report you mentioned that there's some evening out of work and I think that's really necessary and so I wondered how long that will take and related to that also when you have the meetings with the parishes could members be alerted to the fact that those meetings are happening and possibly also be invited so those are my pair of questions on area teams and then a much more general question it's now four years I think since the decision to merge the two planning departments. Do you think that that merger is now complete or is there any big piece of work that still needs to be done to bring the merger to a completion? Councillor Hawkins you're mute. Right thank you. In terms of the area teams yes I mean the reason for creating them that way was to try and improve on the relationships with parish councils and for sure when the meetings take place we can and we will look into making sure that we actually let the local members know so you know exactly what you know when it is and what is going on and so that you also can receive the same information. In terms of the the mergers of the two planning services the major work has been done the staff were chipped over in May of no I beg your pardon April of 2018 and the area teams creation which we went through and implemented early on in the year I think was the probably the last step in the actual merger what we're now doing is actually working on our processes to bring those in line and the you know merging two services you had sorry Councillor Hawkins please carry on. I think it might be Councillor Cascar's microphone if he could mute himself I think that might help. Thank you. Councillor Hawkins please carry on. Thank you. We are going through now the process of aligning the legacy legacy process that we have I mentioned previously you know the PPA and we've done that for validation for example and you know the process of actually implementing a decision there might be some others that I'm not aware of at this point in time perhaps Sharon can help with that. Yes chair if you're happy for me to to just amplify that and so there are a number of processes that need to be updated and aligned and that's one of the complications of being a shared services that we also have various activities where we support some services outside the shared service and need to work with other services to map out those processes so if I took tree applications for an example so the south campus tree offices are within the planning service the city tree offices are within a different city council service both tree teams worked in quite different ways so one of the processes we will be looking at into next year is aligning the tree application process and working with the offices in both those teams to have a single process so that's one of those examples we'll also be looking at areas such as the appeals processing the way that we process appeals one of the areas that we have gotten aligned process on now is discharges of conditions so that's an area that we've done some work on but there's some further work to do on that in terms of streamlining that process so we obviously want to make a lot of our applications processes as efficient and as speedy as possible and I think there's there's still quite a bit of work to do in that respect thank you. Thank you very much Council Dornton did you wish to come back on? No I don't that was a very good answer and I realised just how complicated it is to bring all those aspects together thank you. Extremely complex thank you very much. Councillor Cohn. Thanks very much chairman so firstly and thank you to the lead member and the officers for putting the report together it's you know good overview as to where we're at and there's a lot of information in there and I've got a few questions the first one is just a quick one really about a terror quest and the how long we intend to sort of continue using that service and the second one was around sort of staffing and have we got figures as to where those staff are going to is that you know they move into the private sector are they going to other councils staying in the public sector and it alludes in in paragraph 37 about you know staff surveys have we got that information through yet for you to update us on and you know why are we waiting till January for the recruitment process to take place why hasn't that started for the enforcement officers and then very briefly on page 20 where we talk about the extensions for applications is it possible to break that data down at all so we can see who has requested that extension because in some cases it might be us and in some case it might be the applicant so if we had an idea of that and you know it might sort of help us when looking at the figures thanks very much. Thank you. Councillor Hawkins. Thank you Chair. Right I think the first was on terror quest. Initially we had three members of staff from terror quest who were working for us on a part-time basis but now that has whittled down to one terror quest staff working for us full-time in DM and then earlier on in the year we took on three additional to help us with the validation of applications and actually it was with their help that we had we were able to actually bring down the backlog of validation applications that we had and now we've got they've gone down from three to two and the staff are now working now that we've got the backlog out of the way they're now working towards making sure that validation is done within the five-day timeframe that we're aiming for. So in terms of staff leaving I believe that those who have left other than one have been contract staff as you know we've got vacancies within the service that we've been feeling with contract staff and you know sometimes their contract comes to an end they go somewhere else I don't know where they go perhaps you know I'm not sure that we do HR the HR process for them because they contract we might I don't know about that one I can double check and the one that was a full-time staff was from the TSO team and again it's I don't know where they have gone. In terms of the breakdown that you're asking for this is the table B is that right on page 20? Yeah that's correct so yeah page 20 sort of yeah table B where we talk about the extension times you know can we get the breakdown of figures to say or is it asked for a question at an extension or it could be the applicant requesting an extension you know on the flip side of that. Right okay I will need to defer to Sharon to find out how easy that would be to do with the better bits that we've got. Thank you chair in the majority of instances I mean it's normally I mean the applicant would be asking for the extensions of time because it would be the applicant who would be seeking to amend an application and then that is why there would be a discussion about requiring an extension of time so if we receive an application and it's unacceptable as it stands it requires modifications to address consultee responses or comments from local community and parish councils then we would request an extension of time if the applicant were willing to amend that application because we have a very high proportion of approvals across the board so we approve the majority of planning applications. We've got so for example in in recent months we've been approving 100% of business applications something like 80 plus percent of household of applications you wouldn't be able to do that unless we were able to amend the application in many cases then most cases it's a discussion between the case officer and the applicant but the applicant would be wanting the extension of time to amend the application rather than having a refuse and difficult to to provide it in the in the way that you're asking Councillor Cohn because there's a mutual discussion and it's in the interests of the applicant normally to request that extension of time thank you. Thank you Sharon. Are you content with that Councillor Cohn? Thanks very much for that yeah very content cheers. Thank you. Next is Councillor Martin Cohn. Martin. Hello yes it's very comprehensive supply report any report about the situation but it's done internally about the main issues of practical management. One of the big issues that's last coming this year has been the problem of parish councils and the extent to which we have to bring to committee place applications where the committee where the parish councils object and how the delegation process works. If we're waiting for the Planning Advisory Service report which will know that recommendation on this but if it turns out that we have to consider the far larger number of applications in the light of the response we get how will you be able to manage with a larger number of applications going to committee is that going to create a problem? Councillor Hawkins. Thank you chair. As I said previously we will be publishing we have the report but we'll be publishing it making it public in the first week of January. There are recommendations that we expect you know will be with the report and one of the things that we wanted to talk to you today about was to support the creation of like a task and finish group that will look into implementing those recommendations. What we don't know yet is you know the extent to which the changes that you have referred to will affect the committee but my feeling is that once we are able to look at the recommendations in full and start considering them we might be able to give you a fuller answer because obviously you know we have to look at the way the whole process works you know how many is requested to go to committee the criteria how many of those actually meet the criteria because there is a set of criteria that the requests have to meet and obviously you know things like how long the meetings take all of this will need to look into that as part of implementing the recommendations that come with the report. So I'm happy to come back to you further down the line to give you a fuller answer on that. Can I just come a bit further on that point? Obviously we've asked Paz to look at it as you know and as Tumi highlights I'll bring in their report but actually in response to the initial concerns that were expressed earlier in this year and the changes that we've made we have actually revised and put a more transparent process in place that I think initial feedback that we've had suggests the parishes are at least recognising has moved things forwards and just to offer some really assurance I think one of the concerns was that an awful lot of parish requests were being declined to refer applications to committee. Both the chair of planning and my officers and myself have taken that concern on board and in fact since the introduction of the new arrangements something like 22 percent of all requests have resulted in so one in four almost of applications that are called in are being reported to committee and people are getting much more comprehensive explanations around those that are not precisely because we're trying to respond to to those concerns and I don't have the figure in front of me for the circumstances before we undertook that internal review not the standing the Paz review but I understand that the concern was the figures were around one or two percent of applications were only being referred so we have listened we sought to respond and the feedback at the moment clearly not every application that's called in may be appropriate for committee and there are impacts on resources but I hope that certainly members and parishes might recognise the improvements the process that we have sought to bring forward and as as Councillor Hawkins rightly highlights we are keeping that matter under review. Thank you very much Stephen. Councillor McCann did you wish to come back on that? No no that was very helpful thank you very much and thank you very much. Councillor John Johnson. Hi I have a couple of points if I may one one of my parish councils has complained about the availability of the website for planning so that they've had experiences of wanting to review the documentation in preparation for their own planning committees and being unable to access documents or unable to access the website itself so you I didn't see this in the report but are you tracking the availability of the website and are we able to practically inform parish councils where we know that there are issues with the website or if they're down for maintenance that they understand that it isn't available and therefore have the time to preemptively go in and look at those documents beforehand if that downtime clashes with when they need to prepare for planning committee. It's question one. Question two I just wanted to say thank you as one of the strategic sites of the members of the strategic sites that the North Sto planning officers have been excellent and it's been obviously a difficult year for everybody with COVID but I think that our combination of moving the virtual forums with the community online and the responsiveness of your planning officers has really helped to kind of augment our reputation in planning for North Sto so thank you for that and thank you your team for that but we are also just about to lose our fourth planning officer for North Sto and get a fifth one for phase one and that's fourth in the two years I've been elected so and we've lost the last three because they're contractors and obviously what happens is that they lose that they lose both the continuity of understanding what are the issues with North Sto but the community also loses that connectivity with understanding who the planning officers are and who they can reach out to as well as the parish councillors so could we consider for strategic sites specifically to prioritise hiring staff that are there on a permanent basis and kind of build that bank of knowledge which better serves us as a council and also our residents. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Hawkins are you going to take this? Yes I will start off. Thank you for acknowledging the work that the team have been doing on North Sto. It's always good to get positive feedback in terms of trying to make sure we have permanent staff. I think you've just hit the nail on the head. The issue is not just us in South Cams it's a nationwide issue of finding very good high quality planners and especially you know in an area like ours that is you know not the cheapest place on the planet to live but rest assured we are continuing to look you know for these planners and what we didn't want to do was leave those you know the vacancies empty. We wanted to make sure that work was going on. We have to keep going. We can't slow down and you know we've been able to backfill with with contract staff but definitely we are looking for permanent staff and I think you will see from the page of page 21 you know where we have you know we give you a list of vacancies that we have in the strategic sites. Yes there's a number of them but we're looking to fill them and we're trying to do this as quickly as we possibly can. In terms of availability of the website yes there are times when it goes down for maintenance and we do put up on the on the main South Cams website itself when it will be available and we're not but we do recognise at the times when due to server issues you know the site does go down when we're not expecting it to and at those times it's not always easy to get the word out that you know something has gone wrong well it's gone down. Sometimes you know it's it's a it's a short period of time. I know we had an outage that sort of went on longer than it should have done over the weekend this time round. It was down for maintenance but then come back up until you know the morning of late morning of Monday. Again that was due to it was unexpected and as soon as you know we realised that that was what was going on we got pulled up by city were based in Huntington and not forgetting this is a 3C service so in some ways it is out of our hands and that's one of the challenges that we've had actually in terms of keeping the site up. We have a thing as well notification that we send to parish councils anyway and we can make sure that when the site is going to go down for maintenance yes they can be notified but when unexpected happens it's more difficult to do so. Thank you very much. Councillor John Johnson of you wish to come back are you content? No thank you very much for those answers Councillor Hawkins. Thank you very much indeed. Councillor Richard Williams. Thank you very much chair um yeah I just wanted I've got a few points I just wanted to start off by saying one thing I think that I think members and parish councils I know found very useful the the weekly update to the now being said they are they're extremely welcome and I know my parish is very grateful for them so thank you for that that's a really good and useful thing to have done. I did want to go back to this question about extensions and councillor Cohn's questions I can be asked slightly that I'm afraid my internet broke up whilst the answers were coming to councillor Cohn so I apologise if you've already addressed some of these points um but um one thing that that does strike me is an important thing that would be useful for us to know is when an extension was requested was it after the original determination date that that seems to me to be an important point and it would be very useful if we could have that data in addition to the data on the percentage of cases where there is an extension um and my second point on that was um I take the point that was raised earlier that extensions are used across LPAs um but it would be useful to know if our use of extensions is unusual or has been unusual at any point across other LPAs so can we have some comparators um against which to measure our pro our performance thank you. Okay thank you councillor Williams councillor Hawkins. Uh thank you chair then this is quite as um uh a more operational issue which I will ask Sharon perhaps to um explain please. Sharon over to you. I think Stephen Kelly's going to deal with this question chair. That yes thank you thank you thank you all obviously uh thank you councillor Williams obviously all members of this committee have had a a letter or a report from the Fuse Lane consortium on this very point um it's a bit more complicated uh we certainly um have followed the way in which the local authorities approach I think the issue of extensions of time and we're not unusual dealing with that point first first of all so if you want to have live information on on that across all 367 local planning authorities you can actually look online and I can uh I can uh unfortunately I've got another machine I could post the web link um but typically there is a difference between majors and minors in this regard so um if you I will try and circulate a link to the district planning authority performance tables which show this but if I give you a a couple of examples so we're on major applications which is decisions within 13 weeks in fact across the country the the a very large proportion of those are in fact subject to extensions of time um through their processes so um let me just see if I can find um some of uh something that might be recognizable but uh you know they can be up to 75 percent or so because as Sharon highlighted earlier on that the aspiration um what we are trying to do here is deliver sustainable development it's not in our interest to refuse everything get another planning application in for which there is no fee uh and go around the houses again and again uh in that process uh but um uh there are so if I look at um uh so I'm just looking at some tables at the moment if I look at Newark and Sherwood sorry because this is just one that I can put a line on um of 119 major decisions uh 60 of them had extensions of time so approximately 50 percent um I was looking at south uh I was looking at Cornwall which is a very large singular planning service it had 422 major decisions 300 of those were subject to extensions of time uh and and so um for major applications there is quite a large use of extensions of time to deliver as as Sharon's highlighted earlier the welcome application for example it would be perverse to try and deal with that in 13 weeks when it comes to minors and other categories of development um the the use of extensions of time is probably more variable and depends upon sets of circumstances as the um response that I sent out earlier in the week but in fact as the report makes clear you know that the discussion around planning decisions is increasingly a discussion with architects and agents around um the outcome with the objective of being to help our residents who make planning applications actually achieve a successful grant of consent so they can realise their project that's in an acceptable way rather than merely refuse them for the sake of good statistics and so uh although we have made efforts to try and work with local agents to reduce that figure um in terms of the number of extensions of time uh there are uh and because we have had difficulties in terms of validation backlogs that the report has highlighted we have seen extensions of time um increase over the last 12 months I suspect I haven't got a figure for you um Council Williams that I can give you tonight um and um but that is in response to the to the engagement that we've been having with agents in which they have said that particularly if there are to that phase then indeed to get a quicker decision that is just means they have to start the process all over again and that seems a very reductive process particularly if uh unfortunately I'll pretend people have had to wait a bit longer to get the ball rolling um in terms of when the extension of time is sought um uh I suppose this as Sharon's highlighted we don't currently have that uh detailed data in terms of uh when it is sort what we do have is when information was uh confirmed in writing and the subject of the emails that you've had this week is to question whether or not that um use of extension of time uh in writing after the expiry of an application is appropriate or not um and it's better to say the authorities are very mixed on this uh in terms of if there is no definitive position of whether it's right or wrong uh we are nevertheless uh exploring the conversation with um and certainly I'm happy to position for you at the next meeting partly because I could bore you with what table 151 a tab annex footnote two says and indeed what the guidance published yesterday footnote 10 of page seven says but it is uh literally playing around with words of could and should and the absence of must that um Richard will appreciate is quite a fine point as a lawyer and indeed you know I think we probably need to set that out more clearly because there is there is clearly um local dialogue or exchanges on this point and it probably is difficult to to express it um in detail at this committee without a report on the point so I'm happy to bring something back in that regard together with um uh the perhaps what clarity we can provide in terms of a breakdown of the extension of time figures for minors which I think is what council Williams is asking for sorry that was a long answer but I hope um it offers clarity I think I'm muted chair sorry indeed I am did you wish to come back uh no just to say thank you for the offer to come back with a more detailed report I'm sorry my internet was breaking up again but I think there was an offer to come back so thank you that'd be very useful thank you very much next it's council Anna Breitman thank you thank you chairman um so I'm looking at appendix D on page 21 and thank you very much for the breakdown of the staff in the various teams and I appreciate the work that you've done to as it were redistribute the work as you've melded the two teams together um and I just wondered um I know uh that we do um you know with all the development going on in South Cambridge here this should be a very exciting um and uh council to work for because there's so much work going on here um and but inevitably people will leave for one reason or another and I just wondered I know we do exit interviews for our own staff but I just wanted to check that we are doing exit interviews for the agency staff as well because these are people who will have worked with different authorities and different bodies and so it might be very useful to hear from them their views too and to make sure that we're learning from those um that might probably be more more appropriately directed actually to um Sharon Brown or Stephen Kelly perhaps uh it's uh I'll leave you to decide well should we give council Hawkins the opportunity to answer and if she decides that she wish to pass it on then she may do so answer the Hawkins uh thank you chair uh council Bradnam is right you know we do do um exits uh interviews for our staff I think I mentioned earlier that I wasn't sure if we did it uh for contract staff so uh we'll ask Sharon if you can confirm that or not at this point in time thank you Sharon please yes chair we have recently put in place a new process for exit interviews so now we have a designated uh officer within the service within our business operations team who carries out all the exit interviews and she carries out exit interviews in relation to both permanent and agency staff um having single officer gives us consistency um in terms of the way those exit interviews are carried out and also ensures that we get the right information in terms of that feedback and um identification of themes that are coming out of those exit interviews thank you very much council Bradnam are you I'm very reassured thank you very much and I'm glad that we're making use of that information thank you yes indeed thank you council do I see thank you very much can I start by pointing out that I didn't get a chance to abstain on the minutes but as I wasn't there um I hope that the current minute won't say it was unanimous approval because it wasn't quite um I've got three concerns uh they're all sort of related um the first one is on feedback we've got a lot of new systems um they don't all work perfectly I've given some feedback on both the weekly report which is great but has problems and on idocs which works but has problems and my feedback just seems to go into a a black hole and I don't know whether I'm just wasting my time it would be very nice to have some response to feedback and and to see the problem solved so that's my first concern idocs I think has one big problem uh which uh council chung johnson has uh indirectly referred to I think it is the case that you cannot um go straight to the planning application bits that you want that for some reason idocs insist that you go through a front door and so we do get often uh these responses that the document you want is not available or you're not allowed to have that document or something like that um and that is a huge problem when a parish council is trying to look at say one document which is very important uh for deciding a um a parish council's response to a particular application so I hope that that will be sorted out um when there is uh expected downtime for idocs I think just putting a notice on the main website is not really helpful um people need to know in advance and I would have thought it easy to develop a simple matter of programming as programmers say an automated way of at least getting members and parish clerks information that the planning website will not be available between these dates and I hope you will consider that as a matter of urgency because it has become such a key issue especially now there aren't paper plans that we can look at in the parish office if only we could get to a parish office anyway um it is key that we know when uh idocs is not going to be available finally Stephen mentioned mr falton uh and he circulated his response to mr falton mr falton has uh circulated his own response to that response it clearly doesn't satisfy him and he said at the end of his own uh response to the response the proper course of action for the council would be to voluntarily undertake an audit of the planning performance returns in question um split infinitives aside this seems to be the only part of this agenda in which we can uh think whether this committee is the right uh organization to take that forward in the council because mr falton is clearly not satisfied with the way that we're dealing with him at the moment uh thank you very much chairman thank you and councillor Hawkins did you wish to start uh yes chair i will um thank you councillor delacy uh we always do appreciate feedback and um sorry that you feel that some of the feedback that you have given has gone into a black hole uh that is definitely not our intention um but if we can come back to you outside of the meeting to you know um i will personally come back to you please if you don't mind um so that i can find out which ones it is you have sent and um make sure that we get that if it's not already in the system to be dealt with that it is we do have somebody whose job it is um you know to actually look after uh um you know the the the idoc system so we'll make sure that that gets fed in um and also i will say to members if if there's any specific sort of keystrokes or attempts that you are making that is that you find that you know you can't access the document it's useful for us to know so that those sets of keystrokes can be followed and tested um i know people are you know approach the site differently but it does help if we can narrow down how people access it to then find out what the problem might be so so we can find the solution to it um automated notification that's definitely something that we can look into i will defer to Sharon to tell me if that is something that we can do i know that idocs has a lot of functions that you know enable it to be the the planning software that is planning software of choice in the country so there must be something we can do about that definitely um as to uh the last one about the uh the response to the response um of Mr Fulton not being satisfied i think um perhaps i should defer this to Steven to answer since he's been the one in communication with Mr Fulton thank you chair thank you thank you to me and and and and just uh chairman sorry um i'll turn my camera off just in in case um hopefully that's a bit better uh we are intending to do some training with parishes to to help us to understand how we can help uh picking up on on cancer delays his point um uh everyone to use the system uh in the best possible way and indeed how we can finesse the system so that is something that will come in the in the new year and i and i am sorry about um the perception that things aren't changing um in terms of um and we will look at this automated notification in terms of the point about mr or the fuselain consortium's request for an audit um what i would say is at this moment in time uh we are in a position where effectively we are exploring uh and a dialogue around the criteria that are used not the information on the data um and as i said earlier on there are some fine points of definition here in terms of the different sources for determining performance data um which i would prefer and i think the right approach because i don't think it's a question of um the absolute performance it's a question of the interpretation of the national performance process um now that process we have followed we have not changed so the way that we approach extensions of time and the determination of applications either inside or outside of time has not changed so the relative performance of the service i think is something that you can note uh rather um particularly the improvement in the ability to manage it but in terms of the point that is being raised by the fuselain consortium that the council is relying on the wrong interpretation the uh unfortunately it's fair to say that sources are mixed in terms of where do you go to define this and that is why i said earlier on i think it's important for us to be able to come back and clarify that point because once you have but once we're able to clarify that point there is then a question about do you want to look at the um uh seven thousand or so applications for the dates that go to things like extensions of time the moment the exploration is around the way in which the council is interpreting the government's requirements for reporting performance and that is um uh as i said the the subject of a dependency on which source you go to which is not clear and we are seeking advice from the planning advisory service on this matter and it seems to me before anything else it would be appropriate to um report back to this committee on the outcome of that before you consider then going back to look at seven thousand cases or so that have been determined so that would be my advice to you and um as you have seen the correspondence has only just emerged in the last few days we have sought to respond to that and um we expect i would expect to be able to respond as a answer to councillor ritchard williams's question within a sense um a more comprehensive report on the point rather than on the figures because the figures in a sense arise from interpretation uh so uh you know it's a it's a matter for the committee um but i think the the starting point needs to be an understanding of what it is uh is is the definition of the performance and that's where the current disagreement with uh the fuse lane consortium exists thank you councillor delosi did you wish to come back thank you chairman yes that that's all tremendously helpful um i think we should just note though that uh mr falton has appealed to this committee and uh for better or for worse i think this committee does need uh somehow to handle his concerns maybe as steven has said via report from steven to the committee uh on which we can say yes we are satisfied but at the moment um it seems to me we we need some sort of closure indeed and and can i just add that um as part of the recommendations that we have we are being asked to support the establishment of a joint member office of planning improvement group on a task and finish basis um and the one of the officers engaged in that would be following conversations with between liz watts and the conversation that i've had with the leader this afternoon would be jeff memory who uh would be part of the internal audit team so and that would be as we will speak shortly if we agree to set that up that will be a fairly rapid task and finish operation designed to report in february that's very helpful thank you chairman thank you council the daughter thank you thank you um i i'd like us just to look at page 21 um the technical support team um could you just give us some more information about the vacancies there i know that in respect to planning officers it's very difficult to recruit planning officers and we do accept that and that's the nationwide difficulty but um technical support team obviously it's quite a different job as i understand it um and i just wondered we just would like to have reflections on why you think there's so many vacant posts there and and what's being done in terms of recruitment uh thank you chair um as i'm not that close to the recruitment process i will ask Sharon to answer that question please thank you chair so the reason for the number of vacancies is we do have agency staff that are held against those vacant posts and the vacant posts that we have are fixed term posts so they under the um the shared service the original shared service report the implementation report uh a number of fixed term posts were due to expire in march 2021 so what we've done is it got newer to the march 2021 day rather than filling those posts because obviously they would expire in march um we um we filled those with agency staff so that um obviously because that makes it more flexible use so um we do have our permanent posts are all filled i can assure councillor dawnson okay thank you Sharon um chairman might i just ask us a supplementary on that um and so these these technical support teams work across the shared service um i'm basically doing the same work across the shared service yes that's correct yeah okay thank you thanks yeah that means that we have streamlined that part of the service to one process so they walk across okay council thank you very much indeed councillor Ian sol thank you chair um so uh just on page six and seven under paragraph 14 there's some discussion of the the much improved performance and reference to to appendix a and it is it is you know fantastic see and well done i just one of the there's obviously a discussion of extensions in there and some other reasons but i there's no mention at all of volume of applications and i just i just curious as to to whether there's been any sort of change in overall volume of applications on any of these types and also just as a as a as a stretch may be given that the improvements in performance that we've seen would we would the planning service be considering raising some of these targets for next year or that's a challenge answering that one thank you thank you councillor solemn we are we are measuring ourselves by the national nationally defined targets so i will be happy for us to carry on doing that and when we have comfortably um you know done that to our house confirmed perhaps you can consider um you know increase in the target but yeah give us some time and i'm sure we will get we will get there um in terms of application numbers what we noticed was that obviously with covid we had a drop um in application numbers and um some of it has since come back but especially the householders is where the numbers have come back up obviously people were holding things back not sure when they could start work or you know if they could do anything and we're happy to see that come back um but we've also had a drop in major applications i think because we had quite a number coming from the city as part of the joint service but that has reduced okay so but generally application numbers have come back up to what they were uh pre-covid some of the losses we have incurred in the meantime we will be able to get some of the uh some of that loss back from uh government uh promising that they will give us i think about 75 percent of the losses that they will cover um but yes you know in terms of workload it is still high uh for uh for our um uh officers because the number of them were i think um juggling about 800 cases cases at some point during the last few months and that's a lot for um one officer to deal with. Grenville you are on mute sorry. Thank you Ian i should practice what i've preached shouldn't i what one more question from Councillor Bradman and then we move on. Councillor Bradman you're mute. Um and i've promptly forgotten the question i wanted to ask so i shall leave it okay thank you very much um well i have no more speakers so i suggest that we move now to the recommendations which are noted in paragraph seven on page four and they are firstly that we note the content of this report and secondly that we support the establishment of a joint member office of planning improvement group and a task and finish model to oversee the implementation of the planning advisory service recommendations arising from its planning committee review report now um this i have spoken to the leader this afternoon and we would assuming that we proceed with this uh aim to have a very high intensity task and finish group working in January with the intention of bringing a report back taking report to cabinet as soon as we can um so this is obviously going to be a significant amount of work so once we've agreed it i would like them to look for volunteers i'll see Councillor Bradman has got a question on before we take the recommendation yes uh chairman that's exactly what i wanted to check uh the two things one which you've covered which is the time commitment for it um but also um given that a task and finish group normally works quite quickly but actually some of the outworkings of what uh the improvements that working through might take some time to work through and i was just wondering does the timescale of a task and finish work with the job it's being tasked to do i i'm absolutely appreciate it's useful to pick it up um these initial um targets as it were but i just wondered is that going to work if we need to follow long term i believe that everyone's minds would take part will be focused in doing exactly that so it will have high intensity and it will carry the support of of the entire council is anyone opposed to the recommendations which are set out in paragraph seven i'm seeing no responses so thank you very much to uh to you Councillor Hawkins to Sharon and to Stephen your answers this evening have been extremely comprehensive and i think it's uh significantly demonstrated by the fact that uh councillors have almost entirely been satisfied with your responses so well done to you all thank you very much you may wish you may stay if you wish but if not may wish you merry christmas and a happy new year thank you very much chair on behalf of uh Sharon and Stephen and the entire planning team wish you all a happy christmas thank you everyone thank you very much thank you excellent report uh can we move on then to item seven on the agenda which is the work program you have a copy of it in front of you uh it goes with sorry sorry did you want to look then at volunteers for that yes i did i i do i do apologize um i'm really looking for sorry thank you for the reminder i'm really looking for uh three members that to serve on this task and finish group uh and i've already got one councillor rigid williams thank you very much um it will be high intensity my my expectation would be that it will start very early in january and perhaps at least one meeting a week for four weeks of that sort of order to complete the tasks so it will be high intensity and high commitment so if i could have volunteers i would be extremely grateful there's always a but i'd like to be part of it grenville because um on the planning committee you know i think i have an insight but uh but i am slightly anxious about the workload involved well if you were taking on and richard were taking on then i will make up the third if there are no other volunteers it looks as low there are no other volunteers so that's the three of us we'll try and uh work it between us thank you very much so we go to the uh the work program uh the health warning of course that i gave last night is that uh january does look uh to be a heavy program i'm not sure that we can uh wiggle it down much but we will the vice chairman and i will talk as we get a little closer to the date uh of course there is a possibility that some of these reports may slip um but they can't slip too far a lot of it of course is budget related so there's not much scope for that to slip um and february starting now to look a little bit heavier too as we were likely to have uh perhaps the report of three task and finish groups that sarah's anti-racism task and finish group the covid 19 response task and finish group and the planning of like the planning improvements task and finish group so um i suspect that you may wish to plan in january to have either a very early dinner or a very late one the next day now for a while did anyone else no chairman it may also want to book a holiday perhaps um yeah it sounds like a good idea um if everyone is is content with that then can we move on to automate on the agenda um you have chairman i interrupt you just a second uh peter peter just mentioned he lost sound for a while and he says this is the only one could would you put your mind just check and make sure everybody can can hear i didn't lose any sound no i didn't is everyone else okay i think it's just you peter it's that scarf covering your ears thank you for that um sorry just to say that did peter was peter did peter lose sound when we were discussing the task and finish group did you miss the opportunity to volunteer peter chairman i think i'm quite happy to have missed that um it was entirely fortuitous my sound went to that moment i'm not at all surprised um so we come to the uh the task and finish group document on agenda item eight and you will see that um that we have proposed a draft terms of reference but thanks to uh the comment made by councillor solemn last night and a point three you will note that we have proposed to support residents over the winter months i think it perhaps might be better uh to extend that through to early summer which will give us time to probably start a second task and finish group once this one is complete to look at the longer term so my view is that this particular task and finish group that we're dealing with now should look at the medium short that the immediate short term and then we take a little bit longer to look at the wider aspects of supporting um those vulnerable and lonely people within our communities uh for a longer term um solution is everyone content with that one just you've got the question chair it's it's more of a point rather than a question if i may government announced today that they were extending the furlough scheme till the back end of april so i i i guess that probably government and the experts were probably thinking that we are obviously not quite out of the woods as yet so i think probably anything that we do in from Ian's point of view wouldn't he suggestion and this committee is that if we can extend it further out in time that possibly will be of great benefit thank you because everyone happy to just extend that thanks through uh let's say until june 2021 and then we'll look at the uh the further task and finish groups subsequently till we can go longer term yeah i can't we've had two um really really good meetings so far and i have to say the input from officers j clark and cecelia murphy roads has been extraordinary they've been incredibly helpful extremely well motivated um and have given us some really good information um cecelia is presently putting together a news information sheet which will go out to all the voluntary groups this side of christmas um j is and she are planning to provide over 800 meals to vulnerable people on the 23rd of december with the compliments of the council which i think is a massive task and they really are to be credited for excellent work that they have done and are doing and i am hopeful that we will come out with some very useful responses we're presently waiting for results of a survey which has gone out to all the parishes within the district seeking indications of what facilities that they have what are open what are closed what those facilities have been used for there have been 36 responses so far but and there are obviously a lot more to come and so we pause now until after christmas when we will reconvene and look at really trying to identify the best course of action so my thanks so far for the work you've done to claim to jose and to Judith who can't be with us this evening but thank you for what you've done but it's nothing compared to what you're going to do in the future jose you've got your hand up yeah thanks chair um i you may not have seen this actually uh grenville um succelia sent an email out at 20 24 past for uh the winter warmer collection of ideas this is the initial stab at this newsletter it is impressive it really is um i think i can't add to what you said that they are superb it's got interactive uh video for for help it's it's got everything so it covers a vast array of of potential help so this is as well as going to support groups you know this will be for loved ones looking for help for loved ones as well so it's it's it's a stonker have a look at it and measure this this evening over a glass of pork it's a red wine i think and uh lose what's with us on my last list of parts on our tanks i think they've done a sterling job i really do is everyone content with the uh with the scrutiny covid 19 response uh taking note of the report and uh agreeing to the amendment yes thank you for the work the people who the work that people have done it's been an absolute pleasure working with uh two young people who are so committed and dedicated is an absolute delight thank you yeah um so members can i just remind you that the date of the next meeting is Tuesday the 19th of January at 5 20 p.m does anyone have any further questions i'd just like to thank you grandville for sharing you've been and for the good humour and also to thank victoria on her work i was i was coming to that because um there's no doubt that we couldn't do half of what we do without the talented victoria who is um although i have to i must tell you because not everyone will know this uh joe jose did complain the other day because or yesterday because victoria was late with the reported notes uh we left the meeting at 3 15 jose expected them at 3 30 and they did not arrive until four o'clock absolutely outrageous to complain we've had outstanding service from victoria and tremendous tremendous support from liz as well so um to both of you thank you so much for all your contributions but to you the members you made this all possible and i would like to wish you and your families a very very merry christmas and a very happy and safe new year and i look forward to seeing you all in january and because i think this is probably my last council meeting before christmas of the yesterday's jdcc i'm absolutely thrilled to say that on the very best of you all thank you very much thank you very much thank you very much thank you very much