Issue - meetings

That the Council Plan 2017-23 be adopted by County Council for final publication by the end of September.

The Chief Executive introduced the report on the Council Plan 2017-23.  The Plan had been reviewed and updated to reflect the key priorities of the Council for the 5 year term under the newly elected administration.

The Plan had six priorities with sub-priorities, with the six priorities taking a long term view of the aims for the next five years.  The Plan had been presented to all six Overview & Scrutiny Committee’s, four of which supported with no comments and two supported the Plan but with specific comments which were presented to Cabinet.  A copy of the amendments to the Plan, recommended by Cabinet had been circulated to all Members prior to the start of the meeting. 

Councillor Aaron Shotton thanked all Members who had contributed to the Plan, including the views that had been made at the Overview and Scrutiny Committees.  Constructive comments from those Committees had been accepted by the Cabinet earlier in the day and were now recommended to Council.  He said the six key priorities were the key priorities based on social issues which were high up on the agenda of the administration.  At a time of financial austerity it was important to focus on the priorities.

Councillor Richard Jones commented on the first amendment around ‘Ambitious Council’ and said that during the meeting of Corporate Resources Overview and Scrutiny he did not mention any particular town and had requested that “especially for residential use” be removed which had been supported by the Overview & Scrutiny Committee.  He felt developers would use this high level document to fragment town centres to provide residential areas and asked that this wording be removed.

Councillor Jones also commented on the development of regional and local transport strategies and sought to ensure equitable spend across towns and not just Deeside.  He wanted a plan that forwarded the economic development of all towns and queried why the recommendations around this which had been put forward from the Overview & Scrutiny Committee had not been put forward.  The Chief Executive said the wording had been improved, on the first point, to de-emphasise housing; in the spirit of the Corporate Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committee the wording suggested multi-use development of town centres to support their vitality.  On the second point, there was a discussion on equitable allocation of resources across town centres, and as advised during the Corporate Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committee, it was not possible parity as much of the funding received often came from Government sources and were targeted to areas with specific characteristics such as deprivation. 

Councillor Attridge clarified that the priority to develop a renewed approach to supporting town centres and the specific wording around ‘residential use’ related to improvements to properties above shops in town centres.  The Chief Executive added that planning policy and the Local Development Plan would provide the safeguards against housing over-development.

Councillor Peers commented on page 34 on developing the Council housing growth needs and queried how the figure of 50 homes had been derived at  ...  view the full minutes text for item 37