[Tom Barrett]

James McLaughlin Wrote:Are there any examples out there of scrutiny being involved in an authority's processing of applications received under the Sustainable Communities Act?

James

After discussions with Chair and the officers leading on the SCA I will be providing the outcomes of our citizens panel to our Overview & Scrutiny but only as an information item - not for their formal consideration/comment. Having discussed it with officers it seemed that there was very little valuable input the committee could actually have, the decision is with the 'citizens panel' and it (as far as I understood) is neither in the Cabinet nor Scrutiny's power to change their decision. That said the outcomes are likely to be of interest which is why we decided members would just be notified 'for information'.

Tom

[Mark Codman]

Hi, just a comment really i though the guidance said that local authorities need to make a formal decision (via the full council or council cabinet) on whether to forward proposals onwards to the Selector.

This is certainly the way we are approaching this in Harrogate

[James McLaughlin]

Indeed, that is correct. It seems to me though that there may be some merit in scrutiny having sight of the suggestions received that were not forwarded to Government - good opportunity to demonstrate scrutiny voicing and reflecting the concerns of the public and its communities, as well as making the process not seem pointless to those who don't have their suggestions agreed.

[Gareth Wall]

Hackney is planning to make a submission to the LGA (the Selector) on this Act regarding the spread of betting shops in the Borough. Their classification is the same as that of a bank - i.e. for financial use - so it's hard to use licensing policy to prevent them from opening up new ones. Also they seem to cluster in particularly deprived areas. Our submission would be to use the Act to provide powers around place shaping that would enable the Council to prevent this clustering.

Scrutiny is making a major contribution to the evidence base by holding a one-off session next Thursday. We've got submissions from major book-making companies, lots of local coverage and resident interest, many ward Cllrs making submissions, etc..

We'll be turning around our report pretty quickly for a July submission. Scrutiny's efforts will form part of that, alongside a survey report from our online citizen's panel, and additional evidence from our licensing and legal experts. There may also be information forthcoming about crime trends and health inequalities in the areas affected.

Gareth