Issue - items at meetings - Motion

Issue - meetings

Motion

Meeting: 20/09/2017 - Council (Item 55)

55 Motions on Notice pdf icon PDF 107 KB

A period of up to one hour is allocated to consider the motions on notice.  This may only be extended with the agreement of the Council.

 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

New Homes Bonus

 

Members considered the following notice of motion submitted by Councillor P. M. McDonald:

 

“This Council immediately ceases the practice of double accounting, by charging £2,000 administration for the transfer of New Homes Bonus Grant of £27,000 from last year to this year’s account thus reducing the amount of monies available to the public.  The Council is guilty of sharp practice which has no place in local government.”

 

The motion was proposed by Councillor P. M. McDonald and seconded by Councillor C. M. McDonald.

 

Councillor P. M. McDonald referred to the Cabinet minutes of 6th September when it was highlighted that £2,000 had been deducted from the New Homes Bonus Grants Scheme to cover the cost of administration and carrying forward funds from the previous year’s scheme.

 

Councillor S. A. Baxter, as Chairman of the NHB Community Grants Panel, responded that this was not sharp practice as had been indicated but that the officer had prepared a detailed schedule of time spent on administrating the scheme as a whole and this had been included in the earlier report which had reviewed the scheme and been considered by Cabinet earlier in the year.  However, it was acknowledged that it might have been more appropriate to have deducted the charge from the overall New Homes Bonus funds as opposed to that for the Grant Scheme and this would be suggested for any future years.

 

The Leader agreed that with hindsight the administration cost should have been deducted from the overall grant funding and this would be the case in future.  A brief further debate then took place.

 

On being put to the vote the Chairman declared the motion to be defeated.

 

Too Many Cars in Bromsgrove

 

Members considered the following notice of motion submitted by Councillor L. C. R. Mallett:

 

“Council notes that even Worcestershire County Council's (WCC) potentially flawed highways survey data from 2017 shows large uplifts in traffic volume over the past few years over historic levels.

 

Council further notes that on some roads especially on the west of town the actual observed growth is much higher than the previous projections from Worcestershire highways' now discredited models.

 

Council resolves to commission an urgent independent review of all WCC input into current development strategy and any local highways strategy, including the analysis and report around the need for a Western distributor road for Bromsgrove.”

 

The motion was proposed by Councillor L. C. R. Mallett and seconded by Councillor M. Thompson.

 

During presentation of his Notice of Motion Councillor Mallett highlighted the vast number of traffic surveys which had taken place and the impact of roadworks on these.  He provided data on a number of areas, including:

 

·         Dependence on car ownership across the District was very high (Bromsgrove is ranked sixteenth out of 326 English districts in the 2011 census for the availability of cars and vans for household use and tenth for the proportion of workers who chose to travel to their place of work by car).  ...  view the full minutes text for item 55