Members can ask up to two questions to two different Chairs.

Any Member may ask a Chair a written or oral question on any matter in relation to which the Council has powers or duties or which affects the Council’s area and which falls within the area of responsibility of the Chair’s committee.

The period allowed for written and oral questions and answers will not exceed 60 minutes without leave of the Mayor.

Cllr Kendall put a question to the Chair of Policy, Resources & Economic Development. 

At the recent Policy, Resources and Economic Development Committee, concerns were raised by Liberal Democrat members regarding the new evening car parking charges and a discussion took place on those challenges.  Clarification was given but can the Chair confirm are all those new charges now set in stone or following that discussion are they going to be reviewed?

Councillor Hossack, Chair of Policy, Resources and Economic Development responded:

The PRED committee approved the charges that you saw in the schedule on the night so they will go forward but what I also recall from the debate was the impact which was unquantified at this point as to whether people who are residents in the area may use that parking overnight if they haven't got available on street parking.  So the charges as we discussed in the schedules will go ahead through the budget setting process.  The question around resident parking which we did agree that we would take note and that's something that we do need to come back to you at either at a future PRED meeting or sometime sooner or I can provide you a written answer when Greg's looked into that.  That was the only issue for me that we took away from that everything else would be as approved. 

Cllr Laplain put a question to Cllr Russell, Chair of Community, Environment & Enforcement:

There has been a mattress dumped to the corner of Wash Road. It is more than just a Ward issue – It has been there for coming up to four weeks.  I have chased officers to get it removed and they suggested that there is an issue with resourcing in terms of clearing.  This troubles me as four weeks is a considerable amount of time for just one item.  Is there an issue with resourcing?  In terms of fly tipping, is there something being done to address it?

Councillor Russell, Chair of Community, Environment & Enforcement responded:

There has been some resource issues as you are aware and there has been some issues at the Depot with staff.  Without going into too much detail about that, we are reviewing the situation and there will be an update at the next Community, Environment & Enforcement Committee. 

Councillor Mynott asked a question to Cllr Tanner, the Chair of Planning & Licensing:

In relation to the issue of the land north of Roman Road, paragraph 8.1 of the planning chapter of the Constitution says that planning site visits will take place in relation to sites if in Case Officers opinion they should in relation to Major applications and sites of strategic importance.  In this case, the Case Officer apparently assumed that a site visit had taken place so she clearly wasn't opposed to a site visit.  Paragraph 7.2.1 the planning code of good practice says that site visits can be beneficial if particular site factors are significant in terms of the weight attached to them or difficult to assess in the absence of a site inspection and obviously in this case the amount of noise that that site is subject to is something that can't be assessed from pictures on a screen and a presentation of that kind.  So it's exactly the kind of thing that a site visit is intended to serve but in this case there were no site visits.  We got two different answers and I'm not going to quote that they seem to be contradictory; one of them seemed to be saying there was no site visit because the site couldn't be accessed; the other one said that there was no site visit because the site was easily accessed and could be got onto by any member at any time which was also true of site R22 directly opposite and we had a site visit in that case so I still don't understand we didn't know why we didn't have a site visit for this major application where there was a crucial factor that couldn't be assessed without actually visiting the site so I'd welcome an explanation. 

Councillor Tanner, Chair of Planning responded:

This issue has been covered at the Planning Committee and was covered

before the Planning Committee in an email exchange.  No law regulation requires a site visit to take place, the Constitution doesn't require a site visit to take place in every case.  We had advice from the Officers as to why a site visit wasn't appropriate in that particular case nevertheless Councillors from all parties on both sides, or I think almost every Councillor did make a site visit in any case and they were able to assess that for themselves. 

Councillor Poppy put a question to Cllr Hossack, Chair of Policy, Resources & Economic Development:

What the resources of the Depot in general are at the moment and what plans are ahead for that?

Councillor Hossack, Chair of Policy, Resources and Economic Development responded:

There are challenges and issues that we are facing at the Depot.  In terms of pay which is which is a challenge particularly for those who are operating within Street Scene, some of the lower paid in our organisation and the  retention of such staff in a cost of living crisis puts pressure on.  For example with our drivers and their pay at the moment, they can easily migrate out into private sector if they have an HGV License and do something slightly different for maybe £10-20K more.  We are dependent on agency staff or on people who step up and do those roles so which in itself is the sort of issues you have got but I think what I would say about resources is this and this is the overarching message and the financial resource that this Council has.  We discuss widely at this forum and the PRED Committee, it is quite clear there is a challenge in resourcing everything we need to do.  Now the reality is as I have said it before in this Chamber, if we were to provide resource at the level of these illegal fly tippers we just couldn't do it - we couldn't afford to do it we probably need to find a significant amount of money to put the right number of resource to clear away at the rate it is being dumped.  That is the reality that we need to factor into our budget so we are getting by as best we can.  I accept that it is not always as good as we all like.  It is not just the economic climate that we're in at this stage and I think many Councils across the UK across England certainly are facing the same sort of challenge. 

Councillor Aspinall put a question to Cllr Hossack, Chair of Policy, Resources & Economic Development:

In regards to the High Street, we are coming up for a perfect storm on Saturday with the Seasonal celebrations and the England football match.  I don't know what if any particular efforts are being made to police the High Street. 

Also we have a question of parking that has been ignored – we have gone

to the expense of providing these planters on the High Street to keep

traffic off of the Pavements and you can see the damage they've done to them but at the bottom of the High Street they are using the other side of our street.  One night last week, a car was parked with four wheels on the pavement right up against the windows of the shop double parked and nobody could get past. 

Councillor Hossack, Chair of Policy, Resources and Economic Development responded:

We all know there is an issue – your concerns are not being ignored.  You talked about the expense of the planters which were a part of a solution, they may help a little.  I think there was some other information coming forward to a decision-making committee where we can talk about the extension of the planters further up the High Street.  I believe that is in progress but I can assure you the issue is not being ignored.  Regarding the football on Saturday, we are promoting quite heavily particularly on social media the amount of effort of the Enforcement Team are doing and their presence around the Borough.  It has really ramped up and the promoting of the Team has had a really good reception from the public in terms of they can see that we are making a visible effort to tackle any potential instances occurring.  It is not an easy problem to fix. 

We are applying pressure points in different areas and the other thing that happened last week is an engagement event with Deliveroo due to the vast number of take away drivers parking on the pavement on the High Street particularly.  We are pioneering with Deliveroo and are the first Council to do this and they now want to show what we are doing in Brentwood with City councils like Cardiff and Edinburgh.  What we have done is we had the whole team down from the Deliveroo Head Office in London and we engaged with all of the Riders.  We have said to Deliveroo riders can park in specific allocated  off-street parking bays in Chatham Way and in William Hunter Way where they can pull up they get 15 minutes free parking.  We issue them with a magnetic sticker that says “I'm collecting food for a delivery” and they don't get a ticket.  We are trying to make it really easy for them to change their parking behaviours and I am hoping it will have a positive impact and they actually want to take away what we are doing in Brentwood to fix this problem and share it with other Town Centres who are also suffering the same problem.  I don't think we will eliminate it entirely and it is not an easy battle but we are  being quite Innovative in the way that we battle it. 

Councillor Fulcher put a question to the Chair of Audit & Scrutiny:

In regards to the BLT Working Group report, is there any update and outcomes on this. 

Councillor Hirst, Vice Chair of Audit & Scrutiny responded:

The report came to Audit and Scrutiny, it was accepted and the Committee referred it on to Community, Environment & Enforcement Committee.