Meeting Agenda:
Full Council
| Meeting Date: | Monday 14 Mar 2022 |
|---|---|
| Time: | 19:30 |
| Councillors | Jon Aldridge, Angela Baker Vice-Chairwoman, Sarah Compton, Alan Damodaran, Michael Gemmell Smith, Vic Jennings, Alan Layland, Nick Lloyd, Margot McArthur, Stuart McGregor, Angela Read, Peter Smith, Stephen Sumner, Steve Taylor, Bob Todd Chairman. |
| Committee: | Full Council |
| Venue: | Rickards Hall. 72a High Street Edenbridge, TN8 5AR Kent |
| Notes: | |
| Summary: |
Agenda
Minutes
The disclosure must include the nature of the interest. If an interest becomes apparent to a member during the course of a meeting that has not been disclosed under this item, the member must immediately disclose it.
Dual hatted members of the District Council wish to state that although they would be considering planning applications at this meeting they would be reconsidering them at the district level, taking into account all relevant evidence and representations there.
Members of the public, and members with prejudicial interests on items on the Agenda, may make representations, answer, ask questions and give evidence at this meeting in respect of items on the Agenda. (This is the only opportunity for members of the public to make a contribution during the meeting.)
Both public and members are limited to three minutes per person to speak and the total time designated for public questions shall not exceed fifteen minutes unless directed by the Chairman of the meeting.
(meetings where minutes are yet to be published, to note meeting – will be reported back to Council)
- Planning & Transportation Committee 31 January (9671-9674);
- Planning Committee 7 February (9675-9676);
- 28 February (9683-9685)
- 24 January (9668-9670)
14 February (96xx-9682)
28 February (9636-9638)
2 March (minutes to be published)
As of 24 February the guidelines have removed the legal requirement to self-isolate following a positive test, but are advised to stay at home if you can and avoid contact with other people.
However, the employer still has a duty of care to its staff and volunteers to protect the health and safety of their workforce. I have attended a Worknest webinar. The employer needs to consider does it want employees at work who have test positive, if yes then run the risk of a Covid outbreak. If no, then employees to be fully paid. It depends on the risk assessment in place. The RAs have been regularly reviewed and continue to be so (and are published on the website). For now, I don’t see any reason to change procedures but will keep under review and with the view to maintain a safe work environment as reasonably as can be. One consideration will be if the employer maintains the requirement to lateral flow test. Until more is known about the cost of kits and accessing these, a decision on this can not be made, but for now staff will continue to self-test twice weekly. (Personnel Committee to confirm.) The Council has lost a minimum of 38 workdays since April 2021 to Covid; office staff have worked from home if they have been well enough or self-isolating. In the past month, three members of staff have either had Covid or self-isolating where family members have tested positive
| UK Gov Covid Guidance |
| ETC Covid Risk Assesments |
The Council’s Standing Orders were reviewed in 2020 and reflect the NALC model ones.
However, a query was recently raised when a "recorded vote" was requested. The Standing Orders currently says: Unless standing orders provide otherwise, voting on a question shall be by a show of hands. At the request of a councillor, the voting on any question shall be recorded so as to show whether each councillor present and voting gave his vote for or against that question. Such a request shall be made before moving on to the next item of business on the agenda (3s).
This reflects the LGA 1972 sch 12, para 29: On the requisition of any member of the council the voting on any question shall be recorded so as to show whether each member present and voting gave his vote for or against that question.
In my experience, I have seen votes recorded numerically, as well as named. My understanding has been a recorded vote is numerical (for:against), and a named vote needs to be specifically requested. The above is slightly ambiguous to allow for this.
This has been checked with the Monitoring Officer at SDC. He has confirmed that the parish and town councils Standing Orders confirm the constitutional provisions for councils. These do sometimes differ to that which applies the District Councils.
Below is a suggested amendment to the Council's Standing Orders. Alternatively, this matter could be referred to KALC to comment.
Suggested amendment (in blue):
3.s. Unless standing orders provide otherwise, procedures for voting will be:
i. voting on a question shall be by a show of hands.
ii. Recorded vote: At the request of a councillor, the voting on any question shall be recorded so as to show whether each councillor present and voting gave his vote for or against that question. Such a request shall be made before moving on to the next item of business on the agenda.
iii. The right for individually named votes to be recorded should be stated at the time of the request for recorded vote, as in standing order 3s ii.
The Lloyds Bank account was set-up when the Natwest branch closed in Edenbridge and as a second account in case one bank had a system issue which may delay payments. However, with the advances with online banking and coupled with Lloyds no-longer in Edenbridge and this account holds £128,667.40, and this earns no interest. It is proposed to close this account and transfer the funds to the Barclays reserve account.
In February 2020 the Committee received a presentation by CCLA and subsequently opened two Public Sector Deposit Fund (PSDF) accounts (one for Council and one for CIL). The CIL PSDF account holds £100k; last interest rate 0.0341%. The Barclays CIL holds £466,786.61; last interest rate 0.01% of the CIL funds, and the Barclays CIL account. The CCLA and PSDF accounts spreads investment risk as the money is not invested with only bank or investment, it is an investment fund. Having the CIL funds in the one account/investment fund would provide more clarity. The PSDF also offers more reliable interest rates (although current climate has affected all investment accounts).
Do Members ratify the recommendation from the Personnel Committee?
Do Members ratify the recommendation from the Personnel Committee?
The Children’s Market for Saturday 26th March has been confirmed. The local schools are not involved in this event due other commitments. However, a local person is working with children in Crockham Hill for this event.
Do Members have any comments?
Preparations to be part of the nation’s lighting of Beacons on 2 June is underway to mark this momentous milestone. The working group has commissioned the work for Edenbridge Beacon. A planning application to site the Beacon at Stangrove Park is with validation; it is held up as a scale drawing is required. The lighting of this Beacon will follow the official start of the national Beacon chain at Buckingham Palace, scheduled for 9.45 pm. The Town Band will be present to mark the occasion with residents invited to come along to share the moment. Suitable bunting and flags for the High Street is being researched and costs. The annual hanging basket display will be in red, white and blue colour scheme this year. The Great Stone Bridge Trust has a warded a grant to the Council of £4,250 towards the costs.
The Council hopes community groups will contribute in any way they wish during the celebration weekend, as well as residents perhaps organising their own street parties.
With potentially two new employees (Market Officer and Communications Officer), providing homeworking facilities will help with flexibility and accessing the new IT storage system for homeworking. It is not recommended for personal computers to be used for Council work.
At this stage it is not known if the positions will be combined; this will be dependent on the candidates applying for the positions. If it does become a combined role, then of course only one laptop and homeworking additions would be required.
The Council contingencies (budget £10,200): Rickards new blinds £1,750 and allocated approximately £3k for the new Alarm system. There are sufficient funds to cover the cost of new work equipment in this current budget.
Do Members approve the funding for up to £3,075 to enable homeworking for two employees?
There wasn’t as many residents attend as previous years (27), possibly because of Covid-19 and it was chilly out, but I would like to think it is because there isn’t anything going on that is contentious currently. There has been positive feedback received, saying the presentations and slides were informative - these will be published on the website, with a summary of the questions. The minutes are currently being drafted.
The event was published on the Council’s website, Facebook and advertised in the Edenbridge Magazine. An improvement on this would be to have a banner on the Stangrove railings next year; this is already in hand.
| Annual Town Council Meeting Minutes |
Closing date 02 May 2022
| Plan Tree |
Closing date 20 April 2022
| KCC Bus Funding Reduction |
Closing date 19 April 2022
| School Term Dates for 2023/24 |
Closing date 18 April 2022
| Social housing allocation survey |
Closing date 18 April 2022
| Housing strategy survey |
Closing date 24 March 2022
| Air Quality Action Plan |
9 May Annual Meeting of the Town Council