Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillor Angela Goodwin.  There was no notification of a substitite.

In accordance with the local Code of Conduct, a councillor is required to disclose at the meeting any Disclosable Pecuniary Interest (DPI) that they may have in respect of any matter for consideration on this agenda.  Any councillor with a DPI must not participate in any discussion or vote regarding that matter and they must withdraw from the meeting immediately before consideration of the matter.

If that DPI has not been registered, the councillor must notify the Monitoring Officer of the details of the DPI within 28 days of the date of the meeting.

Councillors are further invited to disclose any non-pecuniary interest which may be relevant to any matter on this agenda, in the interests of transparency, and to confirm that it will not affect their objectivity in relation to that matter.

There were no declarations of disclosable pecuniary or non-pecuniary interests.

To confirm the minutes of the Executive Advisory Board meeting held on 9 September 2021.

The minutes of the meeting of the Service Delivery Executive Advisory Board (EAB) held on 9 September 2021 were confirmed as a correct record, and would be signed by the Chairman at the earliest opportunity.

The EAB considered a report regarding a review which sought to explore Options 3 and 4 of the approved mandate in respect of public conveniences (PCs).  Option 3 consisted of the potential discontinuation of grant funding totalling £14,000 paid by this Council to Ash and Shere Parish Councils towards the operation of their toilet facilities.  Option 4 focused on a mixed approach of the closure or passing on to other organisations of a limited number of toilets owned by the Council aligned with a redistribution of work.  The Council aimed to achieve a revenue savings target of £65,000 per annum and reduce future capital investments in respect of refurbishments of PCs.  The report emphasised that the Council had no legal duty to provide PCs which were a discretionary service.

The Budget Survey 2021, untaken by SMSR Research, had invited residents to consider Council services in terms of importance, priority and spending.  The Survey found that public facilities ranked 9^th for all 3 categories, out of the 12 noted services provided by the Council.

In terms of costings, the report outlined all types of current expenditure associated with the PCs which totalled £293,000.  The £65,000 savings target would largely result from making one of the toilet cleaner roles redundant and offering redeployment to a new role avoiding redundancy costs.  It was envisaged that the closure or passing on of 4 of the highest cost toilet facilities from the long list of 8 PCs included in the report would be required to reduce the current toilet cleaning workload to enable the deletion of one cleaner post and would achieve expenditure savings of £51,000.

The report recommended that, in order to achieve the necessary expenditure savings the Council specified a preference for the closure or passing to another organisation of the PCs at Allen House, Bedford Road, Ripley and Woodbridge Road which would allow the Council to reduce the total workload sufficiently to make one of the toilet cleaner roles redundant.  The discontinuation of grant funding to Ash and Shere Parish Councils was also recommended.  Following consideration by the Executive in early January, the proposals would be subject to a public consultation commencing in mid January after which, depending upon the results, the final arrangements would be submitted to the Corporate Management Team for approval with a view to implementation by the end of the current financial year in order to realise the savings in the following financial year.

Associated risks, Equality Impact Assessments, external stakeholders, and the next steps and milestones were also addressed in the report.

Ripley, Ash and Send Parish Councils had been consulted in respect of the proposals and the responses from Ripley and Send Parish Councils were appended to the report.  Subsequent to the publication of the agenda, a response from Ash Parish Council had also been received.  Ash had highlighted that, amongst others, its PCs served many business operatives including Council staff, Post Office employees and delivery drivers in addition to children utilising the  ...  view the full minutes text for item SD43

The Executive Advisory Board (EAB) considered a report which provided information regarding the viability of applying further controls to Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) and reviewed the potential amount, and recovery of, costs incurred by the Council in relation to HMOs.

Due to the level of evidence required to bring forth further HMO controls, the report considered the nature of HMO occupiers and examined HMO spread, density and connection to complaints from the public, including reports of Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) to both the Council and the Police.

The report was led by data which had been collected and analysed prior to the evaluation of the options available to extend HMO controls and this data had informed discussions in respect of the feasibility of further HMO controls in the Borough.  The report discussed legal responsibilities, potential cost gaps and suggested methods to close any potential cost gaps in relation to topics such as waste collection and Council Tax / Business Rates.

The report detailed several areas of risk to the Council and significant challenges to both resourcing of Place Services and Environment & Regulatory Services and in addition, to the effectiveness of either an Article 4 Direction (requiring planning permission for the change of use of a flat or house to an HMO where 3 or more unrelated people would occupy the dwelling) and / or additional licensing controls would have if implemented.  The spread and density of existing HMOs could not be controlled by an Article 4 Direction.

The data analysed in the report did not support the theory that HMO density was causational to ASB.

The data indicated that reports to the Council or Police relating to HMOs were not sufficiently significant or frequent to warrant extending additional controls to the HMO marketplace and the evidence suggested that application to the Secretary of State to either enact Article 4 or to extend HMO licensing in Guildford, to include areas of additional licensing schemes, would not be successful.

The report contained recommendations to the Executive that an Article 4 Direction and additional HMO licensing should not be pursued as these measures were not supported by current data.  It was further recommended that the Council may wish to consider encouraging a change in national legislation to require private domestic landlords to pay business rates and that landlords be free to choose between the private and public sector to comply with their legal duty to have accumulations of commercial waste removed from HMO properties.

The reason for the recommendation was that an HMO review report considered by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 29 June 2021 had prompted further review by the EAB of the options available to the Council to control the spread and density of HMOs and to evaluate potential cost gaps of HMOs to the Council.  In addition, to identify if the Council could successfully implement further controls by analysing the relationship between the current HMO spread and density with links to ASB and complaints to the Council and HMOs.  ...  view the full minutes text for item SD44

The Executive Forward Plan was noted without comment.

To consider and approve the EAB’s work programme with reference to the above Executive Forward Plan. 

Unscheduled items relating to Sutherland Memorial Park and the Housing Strategy were highlighted as topics that should be programmed for future consideration.