Agenda and minutes

The Chairman welcomed Councillor Martyn Ford to his first meeting of the Improvement & Scrutiny Committee - Places.

To receive declarations of interest (if any)

Councillor Ford declared a personal interest in agenda item 6 (minute no.18/24) as Chairman of the Derbyshire & Derby Joint Area Committee.

To confirm the non-exempt minutes of the meeting of the Improvement and Scrutiny Committee – Places held on 15 May 2024.

The minutes of the meeting held on 15 May 2024 were confirmed as a correct record. 

(Questions may be submitted to be answered by the Scrutiny Committee, or Council officers who are attending the meeting as witnesses, on any item that is within the scope of the Committee. Please see the procedure for the submission of questions at the end of this agenda)

There were no public questions. 

Daniel Ayrton, Assistant Director Resources & Waste provided the committee with information on the cost structure and comparative cost of Waste Management in Derbyshire.

The report also provided an update on the matters raised by the committee on 27 September 2023, when Mr Ayrton attended the meeting to discuss collaborative waste collection and disposal. In particular, the report set out developments to the national policy and legislative framework since September 2023, their implications for Derbyshire County Council and the opportunities for joint working with Derbyshire’s eight districts and boroughs.

The Resources and Waste Service which delivered the functions of Waste Disposal Authority for Derbyshire had a net revenue budget of £46.427 for the current financial year. The vast majority of this expenditure was through high value, long term contracts covering:

-         the operation and maintenance of nine Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRC)

-         the operation and maintenance of Council owned In-Vessel Composting facilities (IVC)

-         the operation and maintenance of Council owned Waste Transfer Station (WTS)

-         the provision of waste transfer and bulking services

-         haulage of waste materials, and

-         processing, recycling and disposal of waste materials.

Together, these contracted services represented over £42.5m or 91% of the total revenue expenditure (excluding allocation of corporate costs). A further £5.2m was paid to the County’s eight WCAs. Thes payments were either set out in statute (as is the case for recycling credits - £5.1m per annum) or under agreement with the WCAs for services provided to the County. The County also received payments from the WCAs for the disposal of trade waste for which they charged the businesses from which they collect, as well as a contribution to the administrative cost for managing the waste.

The Council’s primary means of influencing and controlling costs in the short-term was robust performance monitoring and contact management. The Committee was provided with a high-level breakdown of costs over three financial years. The single most significant factor affecting Derbyshire’s cost of waste management was volume. Compared to 22 other shire counties for which complete data was available, Derbyshire produced more waste per capita than 21 of these.

A number of changes were being introduced this financial year (2024-25) in order to reduce the volume of material entering the County’s nine HWRCs from outside Derbyshire. Whilst this was expected to contribute to reducing the total volume of waste being presented for management by the Council, this affect was expected to be relatively modest compared to the overall disparity.

Derbyshire had performed well in regard to recycling performance compared to similar authorities, however, as with the country as a whole, recycling levels had remained stubbornly flat for the last decade. The report provided an update on the range of policy interventions that were being rolled out over the coming months and years in order to deliver a step change in performance.

As set out in the report submitted to the Committee on 27 September 2023, there were two primary areas of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 17/24

Steve Buffery, Strategic Planning Manager provided the Committee with information on the management of Section 106 agreements.

A planning obligation was a legal obligation under Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and was entered into to mitigate the impacts of a development proposal. Planning obligations may only constitute a reason for granting planning permission if they met the 3 statutory tests as set out in the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) Regulations 2010 (as amended) and               in paragraph 57 of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF):

a)    necessary to make the development acceptable in planning terms;

b)    directly related to the development; and

c)     fairly and reasonably related in scale and kind to the development.

Derbyshire County Council was responsible for the delivery and operation of much of the largescale infrastructure required to support development such as highways, schools, libraries and waste. The County Council’s requirements for s106 contributions were set out in its Developer Contributions Protocol which was updated annually to reflect indexation and reviewed every three years or sooner if there was a change in legislation. A review was currently in progress and will be published for consultation in the near future.

The County Council was a statutory consultee in the planning process and in response to a planning application consultation would identify the implications for the provision of strategic infrastructure and services which were the responsibility of the County Council. Ultimately it was the Local Planning Authority (LPA) who considered whether a contribution request was CIL Regulations compliant.

Planning Services acted as the conduit for planning application consultations and collated responses on behalf of Education, Libraries, Waste, Adult Social Care and Health, Countryside, Greenways, Broadband and Employment and Skills. LPAs consulted separately with the County Council as the Highways Authority and the Lead Local Flood Authority. Each s106 agreement is bespoke and can contain a number of obligations, each of which has trigger points at which the funding is payable. All s106 agreements and their triggers were recorded on Mastergov (software used by Planning Services) and included indicative dates when triggers may be met, allowing proactive monitoring. Planning Services monitored all s106 agreements against the progress of development. The five-year annual average for contributions achieved in signed agreements was £13.7m with the average amount collected per year over the same period being £10m.

On behalf of the Committee, the Chairman thanked Mr Buffery for his informative presentation.

RESOLVED:

That the Committee notes the s106 process and management of contributions across the County Council.

The Committee received a report asking them to note the Executive/Scrutiny Protocol as a framework for the relationship between the Executive and the scrutiny process.

RESOLVED that the Committee notes:

a)    the Executive Scrutiny Protocol at Appendix 2 to the report; and

that the Scrutiny Co-ordination Group would review the operation of the Protocol in 12 months’ time. 

The Committee’s work programme for the remainder of 2024-25 was presented and Members were invited to suggest possible items for consideration. The following items were put forward:

-         Public Library Service Strategy

-         Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP) update

-         Reporting system for issues relating to highways

-         A broad outline of the winter maintenance strategy for highways (February 2025)

-         Mayoral and EMCCA update (February 2025)