Agenda and minutes
PDF 84 KBVenue: Committee Room, Council Offices, Urban Road, Kirkby-in-Ashfield. View directions
Contact: Lynn Cain Email: lynn.cain@ashfield.gov.uk
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Declarations of Disclosable Pecuniary or Personal Interests and/or Non-Registrable Interests Minutes: No declarations of interest were made. |
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Minutes: RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 15 November 2023, be received and approved as a correct record. |
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Petition Received - Community Sites. Minutes: In accordance with the procedures set out in the Council’s Petition Scheme, the petition regarding “STOP The bulldozing of Community Sites”, having received in excess of 500 signatures, was presented to the Committee for consideration.
The petition organiser, Councillor Cathy Mason, was in attendance to discuss the details of the Petition and put forward three questions for discussion. Both the Assistant Director for Strategic Housing and the Strategic Asset Manager were in attendance at the meeting to respond to the petition and questions accordingly.
Question 1 “The Annual Monitoring Report (AMR) for 2020-21, compiled by ADC and accessible at https://www.ashfield.gov.uk/media/hc1je04a/annual-monitoring-report-2020-2021-final.pdf, designates Leamington as an deprived area. The report further highlights that the majority of Carsic also falls within this category.
Notably, the residents of Carsic were not engaged prior to the proposal announcement and its presentation to the cabinet, a deviation from ADC policy outlined in the Statement of Community Involvement (SCI) section 1.1, emphasising “We ARE COMMITTED TO ENGAGING WITH LOCAL PEOPLE”. This information is corroborated by written confirmation from the Secretary of the TRA, underscoring the lack of communication with existing groups.
The Community Engagement Strategy 2020-23, which emphasises a people-focused approach, explicitly states, “We won’t expect people to come to us. We will go to where the people are, whether that is by knocking on people’s doors or standing outside the pub on a Friday night.” However, Carsic, lacking any form of engagement, cannot even claim tokenism.
Carsic received nothing – a stark inequality,
Can this committee give an explanation as why Carsic residents are being treated differently from Leamington residents?”
Officer’s Response The Assistant Director for Strategic Housing made reference to the community engagement programme currently running for a 6-month period in respect of Willetts Court on the Leamington Estate. He explained that all the Council’s community centres were subject to regular reviews, which enabled officers to ascertain their ongoing viability taking into account usage, income received and costs for running and maintaining the facilities.
As pointed out by the questioner, the Council had previously adopted a Community Engagement Strategy which reaffirmed its commitment to engage in a meaningful way with residents to achieve the Council’s core aims (as per the Corporate Plan). The Strategy did make clear that consultation should be appropriate for each project and not a one size fits all approach.
On conclusion of the review for Brierley House, it was agreed that consultation with local residents was not appropriate because evidence on current/likely future use, running costs, future investment requirements etc. had shown that the Centre was no longer viable. The conclusion had been based upon the following;
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