Issue - meetings

To seek approval to the Corporate Enforcement Strategy following consultation and to seek agreement to implement the Strategy and Services Standards within services.

a)     The Corporate Enforcement Strategy and Service Standards as set out in Appendix be approved;

b)     each service now reviews its own enforcement policy in line with the Corporate Enforcement Strategy;

c)     services now adopt and use the Services Standards; and

d)     authority be delegated to the Corporate Enforcement Portfolio Holder to develop with Officers and agree a harm risk assessment for use across the Council.

There was submitted a report by the Portfolio Holder for Corporate Enforcement (A.7), which sought Cabinets approval of the Corporate Enforcement Strategy following consultation and Cabinets agreement to implement the Strategy and Services Standards within services.

Cabinet recalled that at its meeting held on 16 December 2016 it had considered, and agreed for consultation, a draft Corporate Enforcement Strategy.

It was reported that the draft Strategy had been considered by the Community Leadership and Partnership Committee, Planning Committee, Licensing and Registration Committee and the Community Safety Partnership. The comments were set out in Appendix A, together with the responses that had been given and an indication as to whether the Strategy had been updated in light of the comment.

Cabinet was informed that the updated Strategy was attached at Appendix B to the report and that as well as amendments for any comments from consultees (highlighted in yellow) the Strategy had been updated to reflect the new responsible Portfolio Holder which was the Portfolio Holder for Corporate Enforcement.

It was reported that once the Corporate Enforcement Strategy was agreed, the next steps would be for services to review their own policies in line with the Corporate Strategy and for the service standards to be embedded across the authority.

It was further reported that the Portfolio Holder would lead on further engagement on the Harm Assessment to develop and agree a harm risk assessment that could be used to prioritise and support decision making on enforcement cases across the authority. The harm risk assessment would need to accommodate both corporate and service specific risks and scoring and set out a consistent approach to judgements on which cases were deemed to be harmful and which were not.

Cabinet was informed that further work would also be undertaken to publicise the corporate approach to enforcement and to update the Council’s website.

Having considered the report, it was moved by Councillor G V Guglielmi, seconded by Councillor Stock OBE and RESOLVED that:

a)     the Corporate Enforcement Strategy and Service Standards as set out in Appendix be approved;

b)     each service now reviews its own enforcement policy in line with the Corporate Enforcement Strategy;

c)     services now adopt and use the Services Standards; and

d)     authority be delegated to the Corporate Enforcement Portfolio Holder to develop with Officers and agree a harm risk assessment for use across the Council.