Issue - meetings

Final Report of the Hungate Ad Hoc Scrutiny Committee

Meeting: 21/07/2009 - Executive - for meetings from 03/06/00 to 26/04/11 (Item 47)

47 Final Report of the Hungate Ad Hoc Scrutiny Committee PDF 31 KB

This report presents the findings of the Hungate Ad-hoc Scrutiny Committee following their review of the Hungate development.

Additional documents:

Decision:

RESOLVED: That the following be agreed as the Executive’s response to the Scrutiny Committee’s recommendations:

Scrutiny Recommendation	Executive Comment	Executive Decision
1.Carry out pre-project public consultation before commencing on any major project to identify and take account of the level of public support, in order to inform the project including the budget	It is important that there is clear communication of the reasons behind major projects. This will be assisted by the refreshed Your City which will be published from Autumn this year. However, major schemes will always carry with them an element of controversy	Approve
2.Continue with its best practice approach to pre-application consultation	This acknowledges that there is existing best practice within the authority that can be applied to future application	Approve
3.Agree a code of practice with statutory consultees which seeks to ensure they provide clear, consistent, timely and documented responses to consultation, from persons in authority within their organisation	This will need to be taken forward with the statutory consultees as it was clear that confusion on the position of English Heritage, and the authority held by persons giving comment to the authority led to a position that work was undertaken on the project which was subsequently aborted.	Approve with the specific request that this is undertaken by the Director of City Strategy. This should include discussions with the relevant government departments to ensure that publicly funded organisations are held to account when advising on the planning process.
4. Always provide full and consistent feedback to all consultees no matter whether the Council is able to respond positively or negatively to the issues being raised	This concept is covered within the council’s new consultation policy to give feedback when consultation is being undertaken.	Approve
5.For all major projects, ensure that the Chief Executive and Senior Directors take ownership of the project and give consistent support to the project team	It is clear that the latest work on the HQ project has benefited from having ‘ownership’ at Director level. This overcomes the difficulties when responsibilities straddle directorates	Approve

REASON: To ensure that any future Council projects are delivered on time and within budget.

Minutes:

Members considered a report which presented the findings of the Hungate Ad-hoc Scrutiny Committee following their review of the Hungate development.

The Committee’s final report, attached as Appendix A, had been considered by the Scrutiny Management Committee (SMC) on 18 May 2009. In endorsing the Committee’s recommendations, the SMC had expressed concern that some questions within the remit of the review remained unanswered. They had suggested that the information collected could form the basis of a broader review carried out by the same Committee Members. To date, however, no further scrutiny topic on this subject had been registered.

The Committee’s five recommendations were set out in paragraph 55 of their report at Appendix A.

Having noted the comments of the Shadow Executive on this item, it was

RESOLVED: That the following be agreed as the Executive’s response to the Scrutiny Committee’s recommendations:

Scrutiny Recommendation	Executive Comment	Executive Decision
1.Carry out pre-project public consultation before commencing on any major project to identify and take account of the level of public support, in order to inform the project including the budget	It is important that there is clear communication of the reasons behind major projects. This will be assisted by the refreshed Your City which will be published from Autumn this year. However, major schemes will always carry with them an element of controversy	Approve
2.Continue with its best practice approach to pre-application consultation	This acknowledges that there is existing best practice within the authority that can be applied to future application	Approve
3.Agree a code of practice with statutory consultees which seeks to ensure they provide clear, consistent, timely and documented responses to consultation, from persons in authority within their organisation	This will need to be taken forward with the statutory consultees as it was clear that confusion on the position of English Heritage, and the authority held by persons giving comment to the authority led to a position that work was undertaken on the project which was subsequently aborted.	Approve with the specific request that this is undertaken by the Director of City Strategy. This should include discussions with the relevant government departments to ensure that publicly funded organisations are held to account when advising on the planning process.
4. Always provide full and consistent feedback to all consultees no matter whether the Council is able to respond positively or negatively to the issues being raised	This concept is covered within the council’s new consultation policy to give feedback when consultation is being undertaken.	Approve
5.For all major projects, ensure that the Chief Executive and Senior Directors take ownership of the project and give consistent support to the project team	It is clear that the latest work on the HQ project has benefited from having ‘ownership’ at Director level. This overcomes the difficulties when responsibilities straddle directorates	Approve

REASON: To ensure that any future Council projects are delivered on time and within budget.