Issue - meetings

Cabinet Member with Special Responsibility Councillor Smith)

Report of the Head of Environmental Services

(Cabinet Member with Special Responsibility Councillor Smith)

Cabinet received a report from the Head of Environmental Services which provided members with a number of proposals as to how some aspects of the District’s public realm could be best maintained.

The options, options analysis, including risk assessment and officer preferred option, were set out in the report as follows:

The outline report was provided to allow Cabinet to consider at an early stage what options existed with regard to maintaining the public realm. Cabinet were requested to consider each of the proposals and if required add further. This would provide officers with the direction required to develop the relevant parts of the corporate plan, for later consideration by Members.

For the purpose of the report ‘the public realm’ was defined as any publicly owned streets, pathways, parks, publicly accessible open spaces. The main activities that had an impact on the public realm for the purposes of this report were-

·         Street cleansing

·         Grounds maintenance

·         Planning

·         Street nameplate management

Street Cleansing / Grounds maintenance- Following an earlier organisational restructure and comprehensive review of service provision these two functional areas were delivered through the same line management structure. This merging of the functions had resulted in improved efficiency and had led to higher standards of service delivery.

Currently a situation existed in Williamson Park where some cleansing and grounds maintenance functions were provided directly by Environmental Services and some by Williamson Park staff. Greater efficiencies could potentially be generated through reviewing how maintenance in the park could be best delivered.

Working with other Partners- The overall appearance and perception of the public realm could clearly be improved by working closely with other partners.  The County Council has a huge impact on the management and maintenance of the District’s public realm and intend to use the proposed 3 Tier Forum as the main way of consulting with stakeholders and thus developing the commissioning plan.  From a City Council perspective feeding into the development of this plan provides a real opportunity to put forward public realm priorities within the District.

The Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee has been requested to consider the opportunities the commissioning approach provides and make recommendations to Cabinet in the future.