Agenda item

A number of Member Questions and Responses were tabled and supplementary questions were submitted to the Officer.

Update on work in-progress for the waste recycling plant next to the railway lines and information regarding arvato’s site off Farnham Road, where the  Health & Safety and Trading Standards teams enforced a closure

Roger Parkin, Director of Customer and Community Services, advised that the Green world site had been cleared under the guidelines of Environmental Agency (EA) intervention and further health and safety assessments on the empty structure had been carried out and the appropriate actions taken.  The site was now closed and secured and SBC was undertaking a review of all waste and scrap sites in the borough to check whether there were any risks similar to those at Greener World or the Birmingham site.  The Council was also in discussion with the EA in light of the Green World problems to discuss how the powers of the EA, councils or others could be enhanced to enable a swifter and more certain outcome.

A Member questioned whether action had been taken quickly enough to deal with the issue. The Officer advised that immediately the problem was identified, legal action was taken to resolve the matter.

The Officer was asked what costs were incurred in dealing with the problem and advised that these were paid by the EA. However costs had resulted which related to the security gates and building inspections. It was agreed that the Officer would report the actual cost to the Committee.

As requested at the meeting of the Committee held on 3^rd March, 2016, could  estimated additional costs (by department) be provided regarding the knock on costs the Curve?

Roger Parkin, Director of Customer and Community Services advised that the capital cost of the creation of the Registrar's office at The Curve had a global figure of £688,795. This was brought to the Capital Strategy board in July 2016 and approved.

A Member advised the Officer that the costs requested related to those which resulted in the delay of the completion of the Curve, for example the continuation of rents and rates which would not have been payable had the scheme been delivered on time. The Officer advised that he would provide these costs for the Committee.

How many residents were affected by the communications issues between arvato and its contracted bailiff / debt collection agents as described in a recent letter by a resident of Little Brook Avenue, where residents were incorrectly told initially resulted from a computer glitch? How many residents were wrongly issued with a summons and what were the unnecessary resulting court costs?  What actions had been taken to avoid this happening again?

Roger Parkin, Director of Customer and Community Services, advised that regarding the letter in question, this was not caused by a communication glitch between arvato and the Enforcement Agent. The Agent had a liability order for 2015/16, collected the money for 2015/16 and then passed the matter to arvato / Council Tax.  The customer had paid some council tax, which they wanted to go to their 2016/17 but did not pay the instalment exactly and made the payment late. Therefore the payment received was allocated to the earliest debt (the system or arvato would not know the customers intention and at this stage did not know the Enforcement Agent had collected).  As there were no payments showing in 2016/17 the customer received a summons and they had already had a reminder. Once the customer raised this via their Councillor, the money was transferred to 2016/17 and the summons removed.

The cost of the Court summons was £3.00.  Arvato had an ongoing project to  to review credits on all the accounts to ensure that they were allocated to the correct payment year.

A Member advised that he had heard of similar incidents and was concerned that this was not an isolated incident. The Officer reassured him that arvato looked at accounts before proceeding to obtain a summons.

Resolved-  That the responses to Member questions be noted.