Agenda item

So the Committee can review the report of the Leader of the Council to Cabinet in relation to inviting Cabinet to determine its provisional key priority actions for 2021/22 and the means by which performance against the priorities will be monitored and reported on in that year.  Cabinet is further invited to approve that consultation on these key priority actions and the performance monitoring proposals be undertaken with the Overview and Scrutiny Committees.  The outcome of the consultation would then be reported to Cabinet on 19 March 2021.

It was reported to the Committee that the Council approved a Corporate Plan for 2020/24 and that established its strategic direction for those four years.  That strategic direction itself sought to reflect the issues that matter most to local people, the national requirements from Government and the challenges that face the District over that time period.  The Corporate Plan was adopted unanimously at the Council meeting on 21 January 2020 (Minute 78 refers). 

The themes of the 2020/24 Corporate Plan were:

·         Delivering High Quality Services

·         Building Sustainable Communities for the Future

·         Strong Finance and Governance

·         Community Leadership through Partnerships

·         A Growing and Inclusive Economy

Cabinet established each year its priority actions to deliver against the Corporate Plan and thereby ensure that the ambition of that Plan was central to its work. The priority actions do not cover every separate element of the ambition of the four year Corporate Plan; nor were they intended to indicate that other projects, schemes or activities were not being pursued.  They were though intended to reflect imperatives across the Council and for the District and actions that that was right to focus on in that year.

Members heard that 2020 was an exceptional year not only nationally but globally.  In Tendring our Community Leadership role had never been more important.  Working with our members we took on additional responsibilities in supporting our residents and businesses through the COVID-19 pandemic.  Whilst Tendring District Council did not formally report on its performance against priorities during 2020, much was achieved including but not limited to:

·         The roll out of numerous grants in excess of £38million to businesses

·         The adoption of a local Back to Business Agenda which not only supports businesses to survive but preparing to help them flourish.

·         An Economic Growth Strategy focusing on recovery for the future.

·         Allocation of monies from the Tendring Community Fund to Ward Councillors to provide grants to local organisations to enable them to respond to the pandemic locally.

·         Business continuity arrangements immediately being invoked to ensure Council services remained in place where they were able to do so and for those services impacted by the various lockdowns, staff were redeployed to work with different teams in response to the pandemic, such as the Community Hub.

·         Adoption of a Climate Change Action Plan to meet the Council’s aspirations towards the Climate Emergency.

·         Section 1 of the Local Plan was found sound by the Planning Inspectorate establishing the 5 year housing supply of 550 dwellings per annum, a North Essex vision and the Garden Community at Tendring Colchester Borders

·         A balanced budget and revised governance arrangements to ensure democratic decision making continued throughout.

·         Getting ready to build or acquire new council homes. We adopted a Corporate Housing Strategy to deliver homes to meet the needs of local people, making the best use of and improving existing housing and supporting people in their homes and communities.  Separate strategies and polices were introduced to assist reducing homeless and rough sleeping in the district, providing financial assistance polices for private sector housing and acquiring land and buildings to increase council housing stock.

The Committee was informed that all of those provided a great foundation on which the Council would continue to deliver its priorities on the remaining years of the Corporate Plan.  The 2021/22 actions would, of themselves, underpin further actions in 2022/23.  As such, it was appropriate to invest time and energy to delivering them.

A provisional list had been prepared following consultation with individual Portfolio Holders and the Leader of the Council and that was set out at Appendix A to that report.

After a short discussion it was RESOLVED that the Committee notes and fully endorses this report and thanks the Cabinet for bringing forth this piece of work.