Issue - meetings

Report of the Chief Executive

Presented by the Business Portfolio Holder

Before The Business Portfolio Holder presented the report to Members, the Chairman asked Members to take into consideration Councillor Legrys’ comments and invited Councillor Neilson to speak.

Councillor Neilson addressed the Cabinet

“I welcome this movement towards what looks like a strategy for dealing with some of the more intractable challenges facing North West Leicestershire. A document setting out the districts growth priorities is long overdue, however despite the wait for it this document is, in my view, a missed opportunity.

I believe this will be reflected in the consultation responses of which one of those will be from the Labour Group.

Dealing with the process before I move on to my more general comments on the plan itself. This paper does not set out any time frame for the consultation, neither does it set out how the groups mentioned will be engaged. I believe you must ensure these issues are dealt with in your deliberation.

The second recommendation before you means that once you have consulted you as a cabinet will essentially be ignoring the results. There would be no public discussion on the consultation responses. This will not provide any confidence in the consultation process nor will it encourage buy in from the community into the plan. Therefore I believe it would be wrong for cabinet to make any decision on this until the consultation is over.

Moving on to some of my concerns relating to the subject matter in the report.

Firstly I wish to say that this report highlights a lack of leadership from this executive. The North West Leicestershire Business & People group has absolutely no member involvement in it at present. This cabinet has an important place leadership role to play. A role that you seem to be avoiding completely.

As Ed said in his in his speech earlier today, we work better together, so this plan needs to be more than business and bureaucrats, it needs to include the wider community and workers right across the district.

In my never ending desire to help you make the right decisions, I have a number of questions that I am asking you to consider today.

Where is the democratic accountability in this process, where is the opportunity for local communities to play a guiding role?

When you say increase female participation what is it specifically you are trying to achieve? Why is the target for such a small increase in wage averages for Women? I believe this is an area we need to be far more ambitious.

Cllr Legrys has made a written submission that echoes my concerns about the paragraphs relating to housing growth and the Bardon Sustainable Extension. If this remains in this document the work of the local plan advisory committee could be compromised.

In addition to my earlier point on member representation I strongly believe that Trades Unions have an important role to play on the group that owns this plan.

I was shocked to see that the regeneration of Coalville  ...  view the full minutes text for item 38