Apologies for absence were received from Councillors Capewell, Cordiner-Achenbach, Martin, Pilkington & Robinson-Payne.

There were no declarations of interest declared at the meeting.

Her Worship, The mayor, reported that there were no urgent items of business.

Her Worship, The Mayor, asked the Leader of the Council to make his announcements.

The Leader of the Council wished it to be noted that all members and staff wished Councillor Robinson-Payne a speedy recovery following her recent surgery.

The Leader of the Council reported that the Council had been successful and had been awarded an Economic Support Award for the Operations and Maintenance Campus from the LGC. The Leader would like to thank David Glason, Roberta Wilner & Vince Muspratt from County, John Barnard from Greyfriairs PM, Chris Starkey & David Dukes of NALEP and all officers and staff for their fantastic commitment and success in the competition.

That the minutes of Council held on 18 May 2023 be confirmed.

Proposer: Councillor Smith

Seconder: Councillor Plant

CARRIED

Council were asked to consider the following question received from Ms Fiona Livingstone :-

When is someone from GYBC going to take accountability for the failures within the housing department in relation to inadequate repairs, especially given that Senior Management has known about these failures since 2019.

The Leader responded as follows:-

The Repairs and Maintenance service is delivered by Great Yarmouth Norse (GYN) on behalf of the Council.  GYN are a Joint Venture Company who are wholly owned by the Council and Norse Commercial Services Limited. The Joint Venture Company was established to deliver Repairs and Maintenance and Asset Management functions to the Council’s housing stock. The contract has been in place since 2014 and is due to terminate in September 2024. 

In April 2021, the Council brought the Asset Management function back under the control of the Council to provide a greater degree of control over this contract.

In Summer 2022, the Council undertook a detailed and comprehensive review of the services provided by GYN and from this review there was a change of Management at GYN in December 2022. A new management team at GYN was appointed in January 2023. 

As mentioned earlier, the contract with GYN is due to terminate in September 2024. With this in mind, the Council has undertaken a full options appraisal on the future service delivery when the contract terminates. At the meeting of the newly constituted Cabinet on 5th June 2023, the decision was taken to bring the service back under the ownership and control of the Council by no later than September 2024. The Council are now developing the plan to implement this decision”  

Whilst there have been some improvements needed with the GYN arrangements the service has continued to deliver repairs across our tenure with a high level of satisfaction form tenants for the day to day repairs being carried out. The latest customer satisfaction score with the repairs service being at 94% over the last 4 months. All complaints are properly investigated and overseen by the new management team. 

Ms Livingstone informed Council that she would like to ask a supplementary question. The supplementary question was was checked by the Monitoring Officer for accuracy and appropriateness. The Monitoring Officer informed Ms Livingstone that the question referred to an Ombudsman report and therefore it would not be appropriate for Council to discuss the matter in an open forum as we needed to await the outcome of the Ombudsman's report.

Her Worship, the Mayor, thanked Ms Livingstone for attending Council this evening.

The Leader reported that this report is to inform Members that following Council approval on the 18 May 2023, where Members agreed the re-appointment of the Independent Remuneration Panel, one of the panel Members subsequently resigned from the panel. 
As a result of this resignation the panel is therefore inquorate and unable to meet. In light of the panel needing to meet imminently to review allowances and bring a report back to Council in July,

Council are now asked to consider the appointment of Mr Ivor Holden without undertaking a recruitment process. Council are informed that Mr Holden has assisted with numerous Independent remuneration panels across different authorities and was recommended by the Chair of the Council’s current panel. 

Proposer: Councillor Smith

Seconder: Councillor Wainwright

That Council:-

(i) Agree to the appointment of Mr Ivor Holden to the Independent Remuneration Panel; and

(ii) Give delegation to make an appointment to the Monitoring Officer & Corporate Services Manager to make an appointment if circumstances urgently require it.

Her Worship, The Mayor, read out the following Exclusion of Public clause:-

That under Section 100(A)(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the public be excluded from the meeting for the following item of business on the grounds that it involved the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraph 1 of Part I of Schedule
12(A) of the said Act.

CARRIED.