Agenda item

For the Mayor and Cabinet to receive questions from members of Council.

Mayor Jason Perry, supported by members of the Cabinet, invited questions from Council on various topics affecting the borough. The Chair called upon councillors in turn and Mayor Perry responded that:

·       The previous political administration had left legacy budgeting issues, preventing the delivery of the Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) scheme in many areas;

·       That there was a £10million hole in the budget from expected parking income;

·       That the Opening the Books exercise was demonstrating that further prohibitive measures would be needed before the council could reassess its spending;

·       That a Public Space Protection Order had been implemented in areas which experienced high levels of crime and anti-social behaviour, and that the graffiti removal team had been reinstated in order to build back residents’ pride in the area;

·       The council had provided a discretionary support fund and a household support fund to support residents with the cost of living, and that information on those, as well as a benefits calculator, could be found on the updated Croydon council website;

·       The Mayor was holding conversations with the Voluntary and Community sector to identify funding going forwards;

·       A independent liaison officer had been appointed by the council to coordinate communication between the council and residents to ensure residents received support where necessary;

·       Residents of the Regina Road block of council-provided housing had been engaged with at least twice by the Mayor, and future meetings with residents were planned;

·       Issues with the procurement and contract management of bus shelters were being dealt with to ensure that previously removed bus shelters would be replaced;

·       There were financial implications with using council-owned buildings as warm banks out of hours, but residents were welcome to access libraries and other public buildings whilst open during the cold months if they wanted to;

·       The Early Years Partnership Strategy was approved and the council was working hard with schools to understand the issues around children not returning to school following remote learning that took place during the pandemic;

·       Money loaned to other indebted councils was £10million and originated from the Pension Fund, and this had been recovered;

·       Vulnerable residents who required assisted bin collections would continue to be supported and the council was conducting a data cleansing exercise to ensure that the service was accurate and contracts for the service could be properly managed;

·       Healthy Start vouchers were administered by the NHS and links to request them were available on the council website;

·       Hubs were being set up in the most deprived areas of the borough to tackle the digital exclusion problem;

·       The revocation of the Suburban Design Guide Supplementary Planning Document, SPD2, had ensure that more Planning applications were being refused and as a result developers were engaging more with the council for approval, and there was more consistency between decisions made by the Planning department and decisions made by the Committee on Planning applications;

·       A new protocol for identifying and supporting rough sleepers was being put in place, as it was absent from the previous administration’s work;

·       The council was nearly at the point of delivery of the new Coulsdon Health Centre development;

·       The South London Waste Partnership was looking into issues with pollution from a building raised in question by Councillor Humayun Kabir.