Agenda item

To approve the refresh of the Council Strategy.

The Council considered a report (Agenda Item 19) concerning the refreshed Council Strategy 2019-2023 which articulated the progress that had been mad and introduced new or updated projects to support the delivery of the Council’s core business and priorities for improvement. The refreshed Council Strategy reflected the changes in the social, economic and environmental context and built on the enhanced strategic framework developed during the first two years of the Strategy. This was an overarching strategic document that set out the priorities for improvement over the lifetime of the strategy and reaffirmed the Council’s commitment to continue to deliver the core services that people in West Berkshire needed and valued.

MOTION: Proposed by Councillor Lynne Doherty and seconded by Councillor Steve Ardagh-Walter:

That the Council:

“approve the refreshed Council Strategy covering the period 2021-2023 set out in Appendix B and noted that the Council Strategy reflected the updated Covid-19 Recovery and Renewal Strategy”.

Councillor Lynne Doherty recommended approval of the refreshed strategy as the first two years of the strategy had delivered some really positive outcomes for the people of West Berkshire. For example, the strong performance of the Council’s Children and Family Services, the continued high performance of getting children into the school of their choice and the continued capital investment into education. Even when the Council’s KPI’s indicate that the Council was making good progress it was still prudent to review any strategy at the half way point to ensure that the priorities and commitments remained relevant and to ensure that the Council was on track to deliver all that it had set out to do. In addition to that it was also necessary to factor in the impact of Covid on local communities and therefore this refresh strategy had also been informed by the Recovery and Renewal Strategy. Councillor Doherty was pleased to announce that there was very little in way of a change of direction. It was essential to focus on core business such as protecting children, economic recovery following Covid, delivery of the environment strategy and waste collection. The strategy would help the Council to drive forward and to maintain the message that West Berkshire was a great place to live, work and learn for its residents.

Councillor Jeff Brooks felt that the strategy was low on objectives and goals. A strategy should involve setting goals and priorities, determining actions to achieve the goals and mobilising resources to execute the actions. This strategy was short on objectives and long on text and narrative. It should be clear to the public what the Council wanted to achieve and what had already been achieved. He queried where the meaningful targets were so that Officers had a clear steer as to what needed to be achieved.

Councillor Dominic Boeck stated that as lead Member for Children and Young People in Education he was pleased that Council was being asked to support the continued prioritisation of protection and achievement as set out in the refreshed strategy. The strategy did update on some of what had been achieved in protecting children and supporting education. The pandemic had imposed enormous pressures on us all and had proved to be extraordinarily challenging to the people who worked in these services and the strategy set out the approach that would be taken to ensure that vulnerable children received better outcomes and to support everyone to reach their full potential. The strategy would drive detailed plans which would set goals against which outcomes could be measured and he confirmed that he would be looking for even greater emphasis on prevention and early intervention. Real benefits had already been seen from initiatives such as the Family Safeguarding Model from engaging with young people as early as possible and through supported learning journeys. He was certain that the adoption of the strategy was the start of new beginnings which would enhance and improve the lives of residents of West Berkshire.

Councillor Adrian Abbs referred to paragraph 4.3 of the Executive Summary in the covering report which set out the two most significant changes in context – (1) the coronavirus pandemic and (2) the Council declaring a climate emergency in July 2019. He challenged the second one in relation to the declaration of a climate emergency as it had only been as a result of pressure from members of the public and Opposition Members that one had been declared and it would be necessary to keep pushing for more substantive action to be taken. The issue was that after two years there was very little actual physical evidence or natural evolution to establish a strategy. He would like to see the wording altered to reflect the cross party push for climate action.

Councillor Ross Mackinnon responded to the comments made by Councillor Abbs and stated that last year the Council had raised £1m through the Community Municipal Investment fund which had raised money for environmental projects and that money had been deployed in the district on the installation of solar panels and other environmental initiatives.

Councillor Steve Ardagh-Walter stated that a strategy should be high level and overarching with a longer term framework than a typical list of actions. From an environmental point of view he agreed that the goal of hitting carbon neutrality, not only for this Council, but for the entire district of nearly 160,000 people, in 10 years by 2030 would be extremely challenging. It would not only take the actions of this Council and of the Government but also the overwhelming majority of all residents over the coming years to achieve this goal. To have a strategy with a long list of things which needed to be done would be bound to fail and would be totally inflexible. The strategy was backed up by a detailed Delivery Plan which would be a rolling and regularly refreshed list of actions as a result of an environment which was constantly changing and which presented a large number unknowns. As pointed out by Councillor Mackinnon the Council had already started to put in place quick wins where it was appropriate to do so but things did take a long time to plan as they were often complex in nature. This Council had installed electric vehicle charging points and it would continue to build on that along with the conversion of streetlights to low energy usage. He acknowledged that there was still a lot of work to do and there would be many challenges ahead but it could be demonstrated that the Council had achieved a lot in the past two years and it would continue with that rate of progress and accelerate in many areas over the years to come.

Councillor Lynne Doherty referred to the comments made by Councillor Brooks and stressed that a strategy would guide the direction of travel but that it was the delivery plan which would follow through with the actions and the KPI’s to monitor those actions. The Council Strategy was heading in the right direction and it had a number of other strategies sat behind it with their own delivery plans. There were areas that the Council needed to refocus on particularly as a result of Covid and these would be covered in the Recovery and Renewal Strategy which would be coming to the Executive on 10 June 2021.

Councillor Steve Masters raised a point of order and stated that this should be about the broader achievements of the Council and not the policies of the Conservative Party.

The Motion was put to the meeting and duly RESOLVED.