Agenda and minutes

At this point Members are asked to declare any personal or prejudicial interests they may have in the business on this agenda.

Members were invited to declare at this point in the meeting any personal or prejudicial interests they might have in the business on the agenda.

Councillor Simpson-Laing declared a personal non prejudicial interest in the called in report as a member of the Traffic Congestion Ad Hoc Scrutiny Committee.

At this point in the meeting, members of the public who have registered their wish to speak regarding an item on the agenda or an issue within the Committee’s remit can do so. The deadline for registering is 5:00 pm on Friday, 5 March 2010.

It was reported that there had been no registrations to speak at the meeting under the Council’s Public Participation Scheme.

To approve and sign the minutes of the meeting held on 25 January 2010.

RESOLVED:                         That the minutes of the last meeting of the Scrutiny Management Committee (Calling In) meeting held on 25 January 2010 be approved and signed by the Chair as a correct record.

This report sets out the reasons for the pre-decision call-in of the above item, which appears as item 5 on the agenda for the Decision Session of the Executive Member for City Strategy to be held on 2 March 2010.  The report also explains the powers and role of the Scrutiny Management Committee in relation to dealing with the call-in.

Members received a report which asked them to consider a pre-decision call-in of an item related to the City of York’s Local Transport Plan 3 – Stage 1 consultation results and preparations for Stage 2 (options and impacts) consultation which had appeared as item 5 on the agenda for the Decision Session of the Executive Member for City Strategy held on 2 March 2010.

The original report to the Executive Member was attached as Annex A to the report and a copy of the Executive Member’s provisional decisions made at his meeting on 2 March were circulated at the meeting, for information.

The pre decision call in had been made by Cllrs Merrett, D’Agorne and Hudson on the grounds that:

(i)                 The report fails to take into account the recommendations from the traffic Congestion Scrutiny report and the current household scrutiny questionnaire that is being undertaken on the long term strategy for the city, contrary to assurances given by the former Assistant Director that they would be.

(ii)               The 10 year strategies in annex C do not match the Government's LTP 3 guidance (paragraph 4) which is looking for a twenty year long term strategy and shorter term policies and implementation plans.

(iii)             The outline questionnaire in annex C is extremely confusing and unlikely to produce useful results in its current form.

Members were invited to decide that there were either no grounds to make specific recommendation to the Executive Member in respect of the report (Option A) or to make specific recommendations to the Executive Member on the report (Option B).

Councillor Merrett addressed the meeting on behalf of the Calling–In Members.  He referred to the work of the Traffic Congestion Ad Hoc Scrutiny Committee and to their interim recommendations in relation to short and medium terms measures which, it had been agreed on 3 February 2009, would be fed into the LTP3 document. He questioned how the recommendations of the Scrutiny Committee would be taken into account in the LTP3 process. He went onto refer to the questionnaire, particularly to the overlap in questions in the two questionnaires and to the confusion this would cause residents. Finally he referred to the options section in which disagreement with one component would result in some of the options no longer being credible.

Councillor Hudson also spoke as a Calling-In member and referred to the three years spent by Scrutiny Committee members on putting together a vision and options for improvements in traffic congestion in the city. He confirmed that it had been agreed that the findings of the Scrutiny Committee’s questionnaire would be taken into account in LTP3 and he felt that traffic congestion was such an important issue for the City that the consultation on LTP3 should be delayed to allow time to incorporate results from the scrutiny questionnaire.

Officers confirmed that Annex C had only set out all the options to be included in the strategy questionnaire and that this was not meant to be the final version.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 44.