The Council will receive the annual State of the Tendring District Statement from the Leader of the Council.
Minutes:
The Council received the Annual State of the Tendring District Statement from the Leader of the Council as follows:-
“Whilst my annual address is always an opportunity to reflect on the last twelve months, never before have I had occasion to look back at a year in which we collectively witnessed such a monumental impact on our personal and professional lives.
I would like to open this statement by expressing my sincere condolences to anyone who has lost a family member, friend or colleague to Coronavirus over the course of this pandemic so far. My thoughts also go out to all those negatively impacted by the events of the past year, whether that be through missed or delayed medical treatments or diagnoses, the impact on mental health and relationships, including domestic abuse as well as the immense financial impact this situation has had on many people. And I also wish to pay tribute to the incredible efforts of our dedicated key workers, our partners and our voluntary community sector during this unprecedented and difficult time.
It was a year ago today, on 16 March 2020, that the Prime Minister delivered a broadcast on the new Coronavirus asking us to cease non-essential contact with others and to stop all unnecessary travel. We can all recall that a week later, we found ourselves placed into a national lockdown. At the time, it was not possible to comprehend just how significantly COVID-19 would affect us and the journey that lay ahead of us.
It is now six months on from my last statement and as predicted, the pandemic continues to present challenges to us as individuals, as a community and as a Council. I am immensely proud of how we, as a local authority and community leader, have continued to demonstrate our ability to review and adapt our services and plans in accordance with the, often rapid, changes in circumstances.
As Councillors, we have embraced new ways of working, with each other, with our residents and with partners. We have grown accustomed to conducting our meetings remotely with great success, and we have all had to learn how to do that extremely fast! I am keenly following the work that is currently underway to restore what will be our new Council Chamber as part of the Transformation Project. I am sure I speak for us all when I say it will be an especially significant moment when we are in a position to meet again physically in this new, improved space.
Our workforce has shown unfaltering resilience, flexibility and a determination to deliver in the face of adversity, with teams being required to react swiftly to the closure, re-opening and further closure of discretionary services and also to step up to take on entirely new responsibilities, providing essential services that have supported the safety, health and wellbeing of our residents.
As part of our ongoing COVID-19 response Council staff have risen to the call for mutual support from the NHS, many staff have been deployed to the vaccination centres and supported the emergency response. We also have staff dedicated to Test and Trace and working as Covid Ambassadors across the District. They are working to assist businesses and their customers in making well-informed choices and are also making vital personal visits to those residents the Track and Trace team cannot reach by telephone.
This January, £220,000 funding was allocated to the Council in respect of the Community Champions scheme, which aims to expand work to support those most at risk from COVID-19.
As I have mentioned before, our financial systems are set up to collect money, not to give it out, so we have had to completely turn things on their head, as we have worked through and paid money out under the many and varied grant schemes since April last year.
We even had to dust off the corporate cheque book at the start of the year to ensure we got money out of the door as quickly as possible.
Many of the grant schemes have been mandatory, but there have also been a number where we were able to introduce our own local criteria. Where we have had this opportunity, we have always listened to feedback and voices within the business community with the aim of supporting as many people and businesses as possible.
Some authorities have gone down the path of getting the money out of the door as quickly as possible by just paying grants to only those that operate from a commercial property. However, quickly is not always the most effective approach as they will have overlooked a large number of businesses that are equally as important to local economies such as the service sector, those working from home and the self-employed.
Our local schemes have always been more considered, to make sure we support as many parts of our economy as we possibly can, as they will be essential to the district’s recovery.
To date we have paid out over £43 million covering more than 10 business grant schemes. This work will continue as we administer further grant schemes over the period that the Government’s current ‘roadmap’ covers.
Clearly, COVID-19 has significantly changed the way we work and live our lives, as well as impacting on the national and local economy. As such, our Back to Business plan is one of the most important agendas this Council has ever developed. If there is a roadmap to recovering from the pandemic, we want to create a downward slope so we can gather pace and success – not set ourselves an uphill struggle. In such a challenging climate, not only will our ambitious schedule of projects support local businesses to flourish, it will also provide support for residents in recovering from the many challenges they have faced over the last year.
We launched the Shop Safe in Tendring initiative in support of our struggling local businesses and held virtual shopping events in November and December. With town centres suffering right across the country, I am proud that we are now in the process of developing the Starlings site in Dovercourt Town Centre, to support local businesses during this challenging economic climate and improve one of our key public spaces.
The site will accommodate 51 car parking spaces, including four disabled parking bays and four electric charging points. The development will include new public toilets, as well as hard and soft landscaping and has been designed to enable its use as one-off event space such as markets, travelling fairgrounds and open-air theatres, encouraging foot-fall and supporting the town’s economic recovery. I look forward to seeing this exciting regeneration project come to fruition over the next 12 months as part of our Back to Business agenda.
In November, the Council secured almost £2m of funding from the South East Local Enterprise Partnership in support of our ambitious plans to deliver a 9,500 sq. ft. covered market and managed workspace facility in Jaywick Sands. Subject to planning approval, the scheme is scheduled to become operational in April 2022. As part of the project, the Council is also working to appoint an Operating Partner who will manage the facility and also provide bespoke business support services to tenants of the building and emerging businesses in the Jaywick Sands area.
Late last year we published our first action plan in respect of becoming a net zero carbon council by 2030. I know that a number of projects are underway involving many of our officers and we will see more on this as the year progresses.
Section One of the Local Plan has been agreed and we are moving at great pace towards the adoption of Section Two. Alongside this, the Colchester Tendring Borders ‘Preferred Options’ plan is going through a process of community engagement and will be presented to Councillors in due course.
Our plans to build more council homes have been progressing. The Council has retained ownership of its housing stock which currently comprises around 3,100 general purpose dwellings that our Housing and Surveying Teams manage and maintain. Work on these dwellings continues, including the upgrading of heating systems, reassessing fire precautions in the light of the Grenfell tragedy and of course thousands of routine repairs and maintenance jobs every year. In addition to the existing stock, the finishing touches are being made to ten new homes in Jaywick Sands and the Cabinet has only recently committed to the acquisition of two new bungalows in Clacton from a developer. Detailed assessment of prospective development sites and potential acquisitions is ongoing and the Cabinet is committed to completing these assessments and achieving its target of 200 additional homes. Notably the Council has been selected as one of only three councils to take part in a national pilot funded by Government, to encourage small and medium sized building firms to build homes for the council to purchase. Adding additional homes to our stock is a key part of the Housing Strategy 2020-25 that we published last year. The document, entitled Delivering Homes to meet the needs of local people, identifies four key strategic housing priorities as follows:
• Delivering homes to meet the needs of local people
• Reducing and preventing homelessness and rough sleeping
• Making the best use of and improving existing housing
• Supporting people in their homes and communities.
I firmly believe these provide us with a strong foundation to work from.
As you will have picked up from the Budget Speech on 3rd March in Parliament by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak MP, I am really pleased to be able to tell you, that Freeport East has been chosen as one of the new Freeports in the UK and I, along with the rest of Council will undoubtedly look forward to realising the potential this opportunity represents. Freeport East, encompassing Harwich and Felixstowe, is ideally located to link the UK with global markets, help to boost the local, regional and national economies, through job creation, tax incentives and strengthening global trade routes. The major strength of Freeport East is its strategic location as well as its tie up with clean energy, transport links and technological innovation. Hydrogen and wind power are going to be major factors in the UK meeting the government’s climate change ambition and so the awarding of the Freeport status to the area is a significant milestone in achieving this goal.
Including Britain’s busiest container port, Freeport East is vital to achieve the Government’s vision of Global Britain, enabling the country to forge new trading relationships with the world post-Brexit. It will also create thousands of highly skilled jobs (13,500) through technical innovation, contributing to the levelling up agenda not only locally and regionally but also across the UK.
In Harwich, the focus is on establishing the Port and Bathside Bay as a clean energy hub, focusing on the opportunities afforded via offshore wind and hydrogen production, and by supporting the new nuclear sector and its developments at Bradwell and Sizewell.
Against the backdrop of COVID-19 and despite all the upheavals of the past year, the Council has yet again been awarded the Investors in People Gold Award. The Council received our first gold accreditation in 2016 and since that time, we have continued to demonstrate significant improvements year-on-year. This latest success bears testament to the hard work and commitment of our staff and serves to highlight the many great things we are doing to support our 600+ full and part-time employees.
In spite of the challenges, this month sees Census 2021 take place in England and Wales and preparations are underway in Tendring to deliver this May’s combined polls in a Covid-safe way for everyone involved.
Tourism remains a key priority and we expect and indeed hope to experience similarly high numbers of visitors to our wonderful seafronts in 2021 as we did in 2020 and are actively planning for this, to help manage the situation for the benefit of our residents and visitors alike.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of Clacton-on-Sea and in conjunction with our partners, we are planning a range of activities to celebrate this wonderful event. Subject to Government guidance, we are planning a Celebrate Tendring events programme to provide a boost to our local tourism economy which, together with the annual Clacton Airshow, will include a spectacular event to celebrate Clacton 150, the postponed Harwich Illuminate Festival, the Octopus Ahoy Sculpture Trail and the long-awaited opening of the exciting Mayflower 400 attractions in Harwich.
We continue to champion work in the areas of Education, Health and Community Safety working with many partners to ensure the best outcomes for Tendring residents. One example includes the work in Primary Schools, where we will be opening a further 16 Wellbeing Hubs this year to support both pupils and their parents/carers.
We will soon see a major new cycling programme for Essex starting in Jaywick, which aims to tackle cycling inequality and ensure it is accessible to everyone. The Essex Pedal Project will remove the biggest barrier that prevents people from cycling, namely the cost of a bicycle. It will provide up to 3000 eligible residents in Jaywick and West Clacton with a quality, GPS tracked bike and if recipients use it regularly they can keep the bike. This is being delivered by working with colleagues at Essex County Council and has been awarded funding from the SELEP Get Building Fund - £600,000 for Essex Pedal Power and £1.7m to provide a cycling infrastructure upgrade along the coast from Jaywick to the Pier and then onwards to the railway station. The Sport England Local Delivery Pilot is also contributing £405,000 to Essex Pedal Power. To add to this investment in cycling, a BMX Pump Track feasibility study is being undertaken to identify, in co-production with the community, the location and feasibility of an installation in Jaywick and this is being resourced from both the Heritage Lottery Fund and Local Delivery Pilot.
In closing Chairman, it is truly remarkable to me that we have been able to achieve so much together while the pandemic has kept us apart.
I would like to thank all my Councillor colleagues, the Council’s Officers and especially our Chief Executive.”
Councillors I J Henderson, Steady and Calveraddressed the Council during the debate on the Leader of the Council’s Statement.