Agenda item

The Scrutiny and Overview Committee considered the final report and recommendations from the Young People Task & Finish Group.

Councillor Richard Stobart, Chair of the Task & Finish Group, introduced the report describing the outcome of 12 months’ investigation into the aspiration of young people in South Cambridgeshire as a ‘call to action.’ Councillor Stobart commended the way in which youth engagement had been championed by the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service and said this should function as a model for other Council service areas. He highlighted communication as crucial in understanding how young people perceived the world they lived in and the issues that directly affected them.

Councillor Graham Cone, Chair of the Scrutiny and Overview Committee, and Councillor Helene Leeming who had both been members of the Task & Finish Group thanked Councillor Stobart for the way in which he had led the Group and dealt with various challenges that had been met along the way.

Referring to paragraph 15 of the report, Councillor Peter Fane said that the work conducted during the past year should be seen as the start of an ongoing process aiming to seize long-term opportunities through setting up a more formal structure for engagement.

The penultimate bullet point in paragraph 3 recommended that Cabinet should instruct officers to incorporate into an updated Statement of Community Involvement (SCI) a specific and easily understood statement of intent relating to young people. This had already been done and this recommendation therefore was disregarded. The Deputy Director of Planning and Building Quality referred Members to an SCI Toolkit that might prove useful in the future.

The Scrutiny and Overview Committee endorsed the final report of the Young People Task & Finish Group and, subject to deletion of the recommendation relating to the Statement of Community Involvement, recommended that Cabinet endorses the investigation carried out by the Young People Task & Finish Group and recommends that Full Council:

·       instructs officers to share the general feedback received from young people during the Task & Finish Group’s work with local authorities and educational providers so they can take this into account when providing their services.

·       notes the successful youth engagement programme currently run by the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service and supports the provision of appropriate coaching to enable officers in other priority areas such as housing and local business to find ways of similarly involving young people.

·       Instructs officers to investigate the feasibility of holding, within the next 12 months, a scheduled meeting of the Climate and Environment Advisory Committee at a local educational establishment, to which students and other young people should be invited.

·       asks officers to write a letter to the Mayor of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority highlighting the feedback from young people on the limitations of public transport and urging him to take into account their views when developing proposals for bus franchising.

·       invites young people, including from the groups approached as part of the Task & Finish exercise (Appendix 1), to contribute evidence to officers involved in developing a new Equality Policy embracing generational differences.

·       encourages all Members of South Cambridgeshire District Council to commit to engaging with young people and representative organisations in their wards by establishing regular visits to local schools, colleges, youth clubs and other locations as appropriate. In the longer term, a more structured form of dialogue might be appropriate.