Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillor J Jones.

Apologies were also received for Councillor S Smith as Portfolio Holder in respect of item 14.

The minutes of the previous meeting held on 17^th October were approved and signed as a correct record.

(Moved by Councillor D Cook and seconded by Councillor R Claymore)

There were no Declarations of Interest.

The chair advised the committee a response had been from officers in relation to the queries raised at the last meeting from the Housing Strategy Quarterly Update item which had been circulated.

The chair referred Councillor Cook and Councillor Maycock to update the committee on the progress of the housing repairs working group who advised that following Councillor Maycock chairing the first meeting an update would be provided shortly to the chair.

(Update on responses to the Reports of the Health & Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee)

The chair confirmed that further to a recommendation that was made by the Committee to Cabinet previously to recommend to Cabinet that a member benefit scheme in terms of Mental Health Wellbeing be considered and be extended to Councillors, the current employee contract is due to end in March 2024 and the Council are looking to commence tendering for a new service to include Councillor cover as well as employees.

The chair thanked Councillor Maycock for his efforts in the matter.

Further to the meeting on the 17^th October 2023 I attended Cabinet on the 09.11.23 to present the Committees recommendation to recommend to Cabinet to continue to Lobby Government to have funding for DFG to be allocated on the need of the district rather than the current calculation.

Cabinet agreed to the recommendation.

(Discussion item)

There were none.

(To receive the Digest from Staffordshire County Council’s Health and Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee and an update from County Councillor T Jay)

The chair advised that there was no digest to share and handed over to the County Council representative Councillor T Jay who shared updates in two areas from county.

To recognise progress towards improving maternity and neonatal services whilst acknowledging the challenges they face.

It was highlighted that an influx of new recruits was placing additional short-term pressure on services as extra support was needed.

Inductions of labour continues to be a challenge across the Midlands. Vacancy rates have reduced in North Midlands, Derbyshire, and Burton hospitals.

North Midlands is on track to open a new Maternity triage unit in September 2024.

The ICB is working to achieve the aims of the three-year maternity and neo-natal delivery plan.

Performance and Finance report of the Staffordshire Integrated Care Board.

Urgent and emergency care are still facing challenges and ambulance response times are still deteriorating and there are increasing handover delays.

There is still a backlog of patients on the elective waiting list who have waited over 65 weeks for treatment, but they are on track to reduce this list to 0 by March 2024 despite industrial action having hampered work.

The six-month financial position is a deficit of £66.4 million which is £52.7million adverse to the plan. Deficit is due to inflation and the impact of industrial action but capital is due to be on plan.

The chair expressed concern at how they would meet their targets considering the challenges faced.

(Report of the Assistant Director, Partnerships)

The Portfolio Holder for Environment Health and Community partnerships introduced report of the Assistant Director, Partnerships to give an update on the Tamworth Wellbeing Strategy Baseline Report produced for the UK Shared Prosperity Fund Board.

The Officer highlighted the following –

Ø  Community Together CIC commissioned to complete the report which identified the four priorities in the report.

Ø  The County Health Inequalities Directors Group had identified £255000 allocated to Tamworth through the Covid 19 Contain Outbreak Management Fund which must be spend by September 2024.

The Committee made the following comments/observations and asked the following questions:

1.     While the committee acknowledged that work has to start somewhere and that the two areas of Tamworth identified in the health inequalities document as having a ‘high’ level of need do contains areas of high deprivation which may bring the data for these areas, there are streets in every ward that would fall under that category. By marking these areas as red on a map they could be creating a perception of the whole area and as a result encouraging behaviours to become normalised and that the impact of the residents in these areas needed to be considered when labelling them. The committee highlighted that this could also give a negative impression to people considering moving to these areas. Despite a number of projects being introduced to tackle the issues in these areas over the years the same issues are still  being highlighted.

The committee acknowledged that whilst the strategy is good, that they need to identify actions and funding to back this up and that work needs to be done within the borough to drill down and identify the areas of need rather than rely on the blanket data from county. It was highlighted that both officers and members would be able to identify streets and even families in need.

The committee agreed that it was more meaningful to address health inequities rather than equalities within the borough and that further work should be done before this is put to Cabinet in March.

The committee expressed concerns that other areas would be ignored by using this approach and not benefit from any resources where current programmes in place focus on the whole borough.

The officer confirmed that the building resilient families programme worked across the whole borough and was very successful. They confirmed that through the Health Inequalities Directors group it was agreed that that two wards would be identified, and then further work would be done to drill down within those areas. They agreed to feedback the committee’s comments to the group.

A recommendation was moved by Councillor D Cook that through Cabinet we send a request back to county that we can target this money better across Tamworth to where the money is actually needed rather than pigeonhole it in to two wards, using our local insight.

The officer confirmed that it is clear from the initial meetings of the director’s group that they do want the data to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 58.

Please see the link to the Forward Plan:

Browse plans - Cabinet, 2022 :: Tamworth Borough Council

There were no items identified from the Forward Plan.

To receive any working group updates

There were no Working Group updates.

To consider items for Health & Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee Work Plan

The Committee endorsed the Work Plan.

To consider excluding the Press and Public from the meeting by passing the following resolution:-

“That in accordance with the provisions of the Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Meeting and Access to Information) (England) Regulations 2012, and Section 100A(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the press and public be excluded from the meeting during the consideration of the following business on the grounds that it involves the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraphs 1, 2,3 and 4 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A to the Act and the public interest in withholding the information outweighs the public  interest in disclosing the information to the public”

That in accordance with the provisions of the Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Meeting and Access to Information) (England) Regulations 2012, and Section 100A(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the press and public be excluded from the meeting during the consideration of the following business on the grounds that it involves the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraph 1,2,3 & 4  of Part 1 of Schedule 12A to the Act and the public interest in withholding the information outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information to the public.

RESOLVED: That members of the press and public be now excluded from the meeting during consideration of the following item on the grounds that the business involves the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in Paragraph 1,2,3& 4 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act 1972 (as amended).

(Moved by Councillor D Maycock and seconded by Councillor R Claymore)

(Report of the Portfolio Holder for Entertainment and Leisure)

Report of the portfolio Holder for Entertainment and Leisure to give an update on the leisure strategies currently being undertaken by external leisure consultants, Knight, Kavanagh & Page, with additional bespoke Facility Planning Modelling via Sport England.

Presentation from the Assistant Director, Neighbourhoods

Presentation from the Assistant Director, Neighbourhoods, Tina Mustafa and the Head of Housing and Homelessness, Sarah Finnegan to provide an update on the Councils Statutory on-call and out of hours arrangements.