Agenda and minutes
Venue: Boardrooms 3/4 - Brent Civic Centre, Engineers Way, Wembley HA9 0FJ. View directions
Contact: Peter Goss, Democratic Services Manager 020 8937 1353, Email: peter.goss@brent.gov.uk
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Declarations of interests Members are invited to declare at this stage of the meeting, any relevant financial or other interest in the items on this agenda. Minutes: None declared. |
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Deputations Minutes: None. |
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Minutes of the previous meeting Minutes of the meeting held on 14 July are to follow. Minutes: The minutes were tabled at the meeting. Members agreed to approve them as an accurate record but asked to be allowed to raise any matters arising at the next meeting.
RESOLVED:-
that the minutes of the previous meeting held on 14 July 2015 be approved as an accurate record of the meeting. |
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Matters arising (if any) Minutes: See above. |
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Council's future Transport Strategy PDF 78 KB The Long Term Transport Strategy (LTTS) has been developed to provide strategic direction to transport investment throughout the borough over the next 20 years (2015 - 2035). It is being submitted to Scrutiny Committee before it is considered by the Cabinet on 24 August 2015.
Additional documents:
Minutes: Members considered the report on the Council’s future transport strategy. The Chair welcomed Councillor Southwood (Lead Member for Environment) and Tony Kennedy (Head of Transportation) to the meeting. Councillor Southwood explained that the strategy presented a long term framework and needed to be seen in conjunction with supporting strategies that provided more detail such as the cycling strategy. In future years a walking strategy and a freight strategy would be developed.
The Committee heard from Councillor Choudhary and two members of the public: Mr Dilwyn Chambers and Mr David Kaye. The comments put forward included the view that there were gaps in the strategy because there was a lack of reference to the potential for developing rail links with specific reference being made to the Dudden Hill rail line. The committee heard criticism that the strategy did not mention global warming or air quality; did not pick up on the uses that could be made of the canals and did not address the transport difficulties caused by Wembley Stadium on event days. There was criticism of London TravelWatch which it was suggested appeared to have achieved little in the way of improvements to transport in the borough. It was pointed out that Kilburn High Road served one of only two town centres in the borough and yet was not mentioned in the strategy. This was also an example of where the Council had to work with a neighbouring borough and the issue of inter-borough conflict at the borough’s boundaries was not picked up in the strategy.
The Committee expressed concern that the strategy was too brief and lacked ambition. Members felt that it lacked evidence in places whilst making certain assertions and was rooted in the possibilities as they related to Transport for London (TfL) and the availability of funding rather than going beyond this into areas where the Council needed to send out strong messages and councillors needed to lobby to address some of the major transport concerns in the borough.
Members of the Committee in considering the strategy raised the following points:
- the strategy appeared to have been overly influenced by the feedback to the consultation and restricted itself to those areas listed in paragraph 6.1 of the covering report,
- there was a lack of information on the budgets available for improvements to transport,
- reference to the Council’s Disabled Transport Fleet and working with other Council departments to improve accessibility was missing,
- the strategy did not articulate or reflect the needs of the borough in order to support future Local Implementation Plan (LIP) annual spending submissions,
- evidence, including demographic data was not included to show the effect car clubs had in different areas of the borough,
- the objective to reduce the number of car journeys by changing behaviour to avoid unnecessary trips was not included, along with more information on the level of car ownership and trends in the borough,
- whilst recognising that the cycle strategy provided more ... view the full minutes text for item 5. |
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Food Standards Audit PDF 253 KB This report sets out the background to the July 2014 Food Standards Authority audit of the Council's discharge of its Food Safety Act 1990 duties, the report findings, the council’s response and progress since. Minutes: Members considered the report on last year’s Food Standards audit of the Council’s discharge of its Food Standards Act 1990 duties. The Chair welcomed Councillor Denselow (Lead Member for Stronger Communities) and David Thrale (Head of Regulatory Services) to the meeting. Councillor Denselow stated that he recognised the concern about the capacity to carry out the over due inspections but pointed out that the Council was being expected to provide the same level of service as it had done in past years when the Council was better funded. At the same time the borough had a rising population and more premises to inspect. The number of outstanding inspections now stood at 192 and he assured the Committee that these would be dealt with by the end of the year by utilising additional resources from elsewhere in the service. In the meantime Regulatory Services was undergoing a review which would need to establish the basis for being able to sustain the service in the future. The Food Standards Authority would be visiting the Council during the following week and Councillor Denselow undertook to ensure Scrutiny Committee was informed of the outcome to this.
The Head of Regulatory Services explained the staffing structure and the challenges facing the team. In response to questions, he explained the rationale behind not prioritising the higher category inspections. It was the smaller businesses that often created more work in bringing them into compliance.
Councillor Denselow emphasised the financial pressures by explaining that resources had been re-allocated in order to eliminate the outstanding inspections and this in turn put pressure on other parts of the service. The Committee was informed that although there were resources available to recruit additional staff this would still not be sufficient to meet the level of inspection and enforcement demanded by the Food Standards Authority. This was a position faced by many other councils. In answer to a question from the committee, the Head of Regulatory Services confirmed that consideration was being given to different models of service delivery.
Councillor Denselow acknowledged that there was a need to get a message across to local residents in response to press headlines, that the number of outstanding inspections did not mean the borough was full of dangerous premises.
The question of how the present situation impacted on the health of local residents was raised. In response it was admitted that it was hard to measure this and no precise data existed to help identify the potential health impacts.
The Chair referred to the action plan attached as appendix A to the report and asked if there were any concerns arising from it. It was explained that where the ‘Action taken to date’ column was in red it tended to indicate that decisions had yet to be taken to deal with the required improvement target, rather than to any underlying issue so progress was being made on all the targets included in the plan.
RESOLVED:
that the findings of the Food Standards audit carried out ... view the full minutes text for item 6. |
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Any other urgent business Notice of items to be raised under this heading must be given in writing to the Democratic Services Manager or his representative before the meeting in accordance with Standing Order 64. Minutes: None.
Items for information. The Chair informed the meeting that Mr Iram Yaqub, a governor at Oliver Goldsmith primary school was to be appointed to the committee at the next Council meeting as a new co-opted member representing primary school governors.
The Chair informed the meeting that a system for logging key requests for information made at meetings of the committee would be brought to the next meeting. |
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Date of next meeting The next scheduled meeting of the Welsh Harp is on Minutes: Noted as 9 September 2015. |