Agenda item

At the last Council meeting Councillor Topping informed Council that the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority had agreed to produce regular reports on its work [minute 9 refers].   Attached are the reports summarising the work of the Authority for June and July.  [Note: there is no report for August.  The September report will be published at the end of the month and will be circulated with the papers for the next Council meeting]

Council noted reports prepared by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority summarising the work of the Authority during June and July.  There was no report for August as there had been no meetings.  The September report would be issued at the end of the month and would be circulated as part of the agenda for the next Council meeting.  The Council’s representatives on the Combined Authority were invited to comment on the reports, details of which are summarised below:

·         Councillor Andrew Fraser, a member of the Audit and Corporate Governance Committee reported that the inaugural meeting had taken place on 26^th June and had considered a number of procedural matters.

·         Councillor Alex Riley, a member of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, was pleased to report that it was clear the committee intended to hold the Combined Authority to account and hoped that this would continue.  In addition to the three scheduled meetings an additional meeting had taken place to call in the Authority’s decisions on staffing.  Councillor Fraser highlighted some issues to resolve concerning transparency but overall the Committee was making progress.

·         Councillor John Batchelor, Chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, drew attention to the call in of the proposed officer and staffing structure, which he felt was quite significant and had potential serious implications for our own organisation.  He explained that the call in was on the basis of an increase in the staffing budget by 25% over the course of two meetings.  It was clear that the original budget had been based on information that turned out to be incorrect.  The underlying concern that the Overview and Scrutiny Committee had was not about the appointment of staff, but that the Combined Authority’s Cabinet was making decisions on the basis of very little information and with very little officer support.  The question was whether in those circumstances the Cabinet was making informed decisions.  Councillor Batchelor noted that although the questions about the staffing budget were ultimately answered, there remained concerns about support.  There were currently only four officers employed by the Combined Authority with the rest of the work being done by officers seconded from constituent Councils.  If and when the new arrangement is put in place there will only be fifteen officers employed by the Combined Authority. Councillor Batchelor commented that although everyone was keen on having lean authorities it was important to ensure there was sufficient oversight of how public money was being spent.  The Overview and Scrutiny Committee would continue to pursue improved governance.

·         Councillor Peter Topping, the Council’s representative on the Combined Authority, commented that the scrutiny work referred to by Councillors Riley and Batchelor had been extremely helpful.  He believed scrutiny had a valid function and in this case posed legitimate questions about the basis on which a decision had been made.  He provided an update on a recent meeting, not covered by the reports, that had agreed bids to be submitted to Government for major infrastructure proposals and confirmed that this included a bid for £193 million to sort out the brownfield site around Cambridge North to enable housing to be built there.  This included the Milton Pond site.  One of the consequences of housing being built there was that in terms of the South Cambridgeshire Local Plan and the pressure on villages it would not be necessary to build as many houses in villages because they were being built at the waterworks.  The bid would now be considered by Government. Councillor Topping added that the Combined Authority had also signed off a number of smaller bids for infrastructure and he was pleased to report that one of those was a proposition to do something about Cambourne High Street, which he sincerely hoped would be approved.

• Referring to Overview and Scrutiny Committee’s interview with the Mayor, Councillor Deborah Roberts asked if future reports could contain more information about what was said and suggested a list of bullet points was not very informative about what the Mayor intended to do about these matters.  Councillor Topping undertook to pass comments on to the Combined Authority and ask for better quality reports in future.