Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from City Councillor Davey and County Councillor Shailer.

No interests were declared.

Notes to follow.

The notes of the meeting held on 13 October 2022 were noted.

Councillor Pounds provided an update on a question asked by a member of the public at the previous East Area Committee Meeting on 13 October 2022.

Question: Was there going to be any further rounds of applications for Public Art Grants?

Councillor Pounds investigated this matter since the previous meeting and stated that there was no round of Public Art Applications for Grants running currently.

Representatives from the local Police Team and Council’s Community Safety Team will present the latest report and answer questions.

The Committee received a report from Sergeant Stevenson regarding policing and safer neighbourhoods trends.

The report outlined actions taken since the last reporting period. The current emerging issues/neighbourhood trends for each ward were also highlighted (see report for full details). Previous local areas of concern and engagement activity noted in the report were:

 i. Anti-social driving

 ii. Cycle theft

iii. Drug dealing, ASB, and the protection of local young people –child criminal exploitation.

The virtual Area Committee would not be making a decision, so would not vote on priorities set by the Police. The Police reported back on the local areas of concern they were currently focussing on. Councillors and members of the public could not change these, but they could suggest ideas/issues for the Police to focus on.

The Committee discussed the following policing issues:

i.               Operation Helix was the Policing Operation around the murder of Jesse Nwokejiobi. The operation occupied 100 full and part-time members of policing staff across Cambridgeshire. This was about 8% of the total staff. Sergeant Stevenson was the school’s liaison officer. The Police had already been going into schools speaking to young people, especially year 9 to year 11 range. The Children’s and Young People’s team at Police Headquarters are refreshing and revamping the presentation that they delivered in schools.

ii.             Retail crime was managed by another officer and local police operations were run working with retailers. Sergeant Stevenson had not noticed an uplift in retail crime that he would link to food poverty. The bulk of retail crimes were driven by addiction issues by offenders. When someone was arrested for retail crime the Police did attempt to get to the bottom of what drove this behaviour. When offenders were released from police custody, they were handed a document with a list of support agencies.

iii.            The Anti-Social Behaviour Officer stated that there was a monthly peer group ‘People and Places' meeting. This was in response to an increase in youth related ASB post COVID 19 and attempted to put early interventions into place.

iv.           Sergeant Stevenson stated that the young people who had spoken to him were worried about how to fit in, be accepted by peers and how not to feel isolated in their community.

v.             Sergeant Stevenson was running a police cadet group in his free time. There were other groups run by the Fire Service and Ambulance Service. This was so young people could interact with people and make a positive contribution to society.

vi.           Sergeant Stevenson advised that he did not know the total number of police officers in Cambridge. He believed that they were on target. They were also actively recruiting.

Representatives from the GCP will inform Councillors of the current consultation which runs until 23 December 2022. 

www.greatercambridge.org.uk/mc-2022

The Committee received a presentation from the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) Senior Delivery Project Manager on the Making Connections consultation which runs until 23 December 2022 GCP Making Connections 2022 | Consult Cambridgeshire (engagementhq.com).

In response to comments made by the Committee, the GCP Senior Delivery Project Manager, and the Transport Planning Director for WSP, said the following:

i.       Officers had not captured responses to the consultation in person/verbally, instead they directed residents to go online, email, or write in, to respond to the consultation.

ii.       If rural residents were not represented in the bus service proposal, they would look at this issue as it had now been captured because of Councillors bringing it to their attention at this meeting. Demand Responsive Transport services were proposed for rural areas but the technical team would reflect on this.

iii.      A workplace parking levy would require further consultation and furthermore, would require Secretary of State for Transport permission

iv.      The GCP Communications team had been focussing on trying to reach as many people as possible, particularly those from harder to reach groups.

v.      GCP Officers had been going into schools to engage with young people. They had also been going into sixth form Colleges. Teachers had assigned students homework to fill in the consultation.

vi.      Two events at the Mill Road Mosque had already taken place.

vii.     They had been to Blackwell Road Traveller’s site and would be doing a further visit to the Fen Road Traveller’s site (post meeting note: this took place on 15^th December).

viii.    They had met with the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB), particularly in connection with the proposed low-income discount. The CAB had offered to pass along information to users of their service.

ix.      QR codes were going on the back of bus seats that direct people to the consultation to fill in survey.

x.      Bus wraps, signs at bus stops, a leaflet drop (over 200,000 distributed) and newspaper and radio media campaign were used  to advertise the consultation.

xi.      Had already engaged with the University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin University Students. They were going to the West Cambridge site to engage there next.

xii.     They were unable to advise which areas of the city were responding most to the survey. Would take this question back to the team. Post-meeting note: the geographic spread of responses would be part of the analysis once the consultation closed.

xiii.    Regarding those doing charity work in their own vehicles, they stated that they must maintain balance between people doing good work and additional administration involved for the system to administer discounts/exemptions for this. This was an area that needed to be looked at in more detail.

xiv.    They were engaging with Food Banks e.g. FoodCycle Cambridge, delivering leaflets there and encouraging attendees to fill out the surveys. Councillor Smith clarified that they should be engaging with Food Hubs. Stated they will look into this.

xv.     Advised that paper copies of the brochure were available at libraries. Needed to check if the survey was also there. Post-meeting note, hard copies of the survey were also sent to libraries.

xvi.    Had been engaging with GP Surgeries about the consultation. Would check on text/push service at GP surgeries. Would investigate how to work with immunocompromised people.

xvii.   Would be willing to work with affected groups to ensure they were aware of all exemptions and discounts.

xviii.  The most inexpensive way to run the scheme was for users to be registered with an account.

Councillors will review the projects received noting that the decisions will be taken by the Executive Councillor for Open Spaces in January 2023.

The Committee received a report from the Project Leader regarding the Environmental Improvement Programme (EIP). The report outlined new suggested schemes for 2022/23.

The Project Leader updated the report (paragraphs 3.1 and 3.3) to confirm that there was a total of £170,000 for the EIP programmes this was broken down into £100,000 allocated to Area EIP for which the funding is split proportionately to each Committee areas population and then the remaining £70,000 is for strategic environmental improvement projects.

Current Project updates could be found at https://www.cambridge.gov.uk/media/11531/environmental-improvement-project-summary-2022-23.pdf.

It was noted that the Executive Councillor for Open Spaces, Food Justice, and Community Development would ultimately make the decision on which environmental improvement projects would be taken forward.

In response to Members’ questions the Project Leader said the following:

i.               If residents were able to assist with the funding and delivery of projects, they were happy to have this conversation with them and try to assist.

ii.             They had attempted to engage with residents more this year regarding the EIP scheme through the Citizenlab engagement tool.

iii.            Residents’ ideas and projects had been taken into account and put forward for approval in the Strategic EIP for a total of £25,000 funding outside of the Area EIP funds.

iv.           They were happy to keep reviewing how the EIP programme was managed. The main challenge was Officer resource required to assess quality of project submission and in the development and delivery of projects.

v.             Many of the schemes put forward by councillors were based on suggestions from residents.

Cllr Robertson produced a ‘help’ spreadsheet to enable councillors to go through the proposed projects, whilst considering the amount of funding available.  Suggestions for re-allocation of funding per project were made particularly for those rated amber/green in order to fund more projects across all wards in the area. These suggestions would be presented by the Officers to the Executive Councillor for Open Spaces, Food Justice, and Community Development, who would make the final decision, taking into consideration all of the discussions at East Area Committee.

A member of the public (Representative from the charity ACORN) raised the following issues:

               i.         Stated there were 600 more HMO’s operating without a licence in the city.

             ii.         Landlords were charging exorbitant rates.

            iii.         Requested a timeline/target of when the Council would be dealing with these properties.

           iv.         They would like a published online register of licensed HMO’s.

Councillor Pounds stated that she and Councillor Holloway had already met with ACORN about this issue. She wanted to reassure the representative from ACORN that she would be meeting with Officers and that action would be moving forward on this issue in due course.