Issue - meetings

Council Plan 2018 / 19 -Mid Year Monitoring

Meeting: 15/01/2019 - Environment Overview & Scrutiny Committee - Expired 13/07/20 (Item 46)

46 Council Plan 2018 / 19 -Mid Year Monitoring pdf icon PDF 118 KB

Additional documents:

Decision:

That the Committee notes the mid-year Council Plan Monitoring Report 2018/19.

 

Minutes:

The Chief Officer (Streetscene and Transportation) introduced a report to present a summary of performance at the mid-year point 2018/19 for the Council Plan priority ‘Green Council’ relevant to the Committee. 

 

The Chief Officer advised that the mid-year monitoring report showed that 88% of activities were making good progress with 81% likely to achieve their planned outcomes.  79% of the performance indicators had met or exceeded their targets.  Risks were being managed with a minority of 18% being assessed as major.  The report was an exception based report and therefore focussed on the areas of under-performance.

 

The Chief Officer (Streetscene and Transportation) referred to the major risk identified for the Committee regarding adverse weather conditions on the highway network.  He advised that the risk trend had increased due to the severity of the 2017/18 winter, with road conditions throughout the County detrimentally affected by road surface defects and potholes.  Additional funds, resources and contractors had been deployed across the County during the summer to repair the network as defects were identified.  This included the priority resurfacing and patching capital schemes.  The Chief Officer explained that although expensive and permanent repair work to remove significant defects and improve the condition of the roads whilst reducing the risk on the network was undertaken this may  not be sufficient to halt decline in the network.  However the Chief Officer reported that additional funding had been allocated to enable the Authority to undertake some major schemes this year.

 

Councillor Owen Thomas expressed concerns regarding the risks associated with public safety due to potholes on some of the roads in his Ward.  Councillor Carolyn Thomas offered to discuss the specific concerns raised by Councillor Thomas following the meeting.

 

Councillor Chris Dolphin reiterated the concerns expressed by Councillor Thomas regarding the poor condition of some roads and commented on the method of inspection used to identify defects.  Councillor Carolyn Thomas acknowledged the  point made and explained a backlog of repair work was required to bring roads up to the required standard, however, without sufficient funding to undertake the work the network would continue to deteriorate.

 

The Chief Officer (Planning, Environment and Economy) referred to the major risk that funding would not be secured for priority flood alleviation schemes, as detailed in section 1.11 of the report.  He advised that the implementation of Schedule 3 of the Flood & Water Management Act  which required the local authority to also act as the Sustainable Drainage Approving Body (SAB) as of 7 January 2019, placed further duties on the Flood Risk Management team with no additional funding being made available from the Welsh Government.

 

Councillor Patrick Heesom commented that local authorities should not be expected to undertake additional duties without adequate funding and expressed the view that local Members needed to be involved in pre application discussions for planning matters.  Councillor Carolyn Thomas emphasised that strong representations had been made concerning the need for funding to be made available.

 

In response to a query from Councillor Haydn Bateman concerning the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 46