Agenda item

To receive reports and any announcements from the Leader and members of the Cabinet on matters falling within their area of responsibility:

(a)        Report of the Leader;

(b)        Report of the Assets and Economic Development Portfolio Holder; (attached)

(c)        Report of the Environment Portfolio Holder; (attached)

(d)        Report of the Finance Portfolio Holder; (attached)

(e)        Report of the Governance and Development Management Portfolio Holder; (attached)      

(f)        Report of the Housing Portfolio Holder; (attached)

(g)        Report of the Leisure and Community Services Portfolio Holder; (attached)

(h)        Report of the Planning Policy Portfolio Holder; (attached) 

(i)         Report of the Safer, Greener and Transport Portfolio Holder; (attached) and

(j)         Report of the Technology and Support Services Portfolio Holder (attached).

(a)          The Leader of the Council

The Leader informed members that he had attended a number of meetings representing the Council since the last meeting and thanked those who had recently attended the Local Plan workshop.

He advised that he had visited the Epping Forest Shopping Park and noted that good progress was being made in time for the completion date in late September 2017. Furthermore, he had also visited the new depot at Oakwood Hill with other Cabinet Members, where they would be actively pursuing full use of the space available as part of the transformation process and similarly, he had met with the Assets and Economic Development Portfolio Holder, Epping Town Council and the nominated partner Frontier Estates regarding the St John’s Epping Site.

In addition the Leader had met with the Police and Crime Commissioner for Essex, Roger Hirst and Essex Leaders to discuss concerns generated by unauthorised incursions and developments by the traveling community, which would ensure that all forms of development were properly regulated and sections of the community were treated equally.

Finally he had recently attended the staff briefings, where Chief Executive and himself had presented their vision for the future of the Council. He advised that a Task and Finish Panel had been set up to review the scrutiny of the Transformation process. 

(b)          Planning Policy Portfolio Holder

The Planning Policy Portfolio Holder advised that he had been very grateful to the Members who had attended the recent Place Making workshop and that the South of District’s workshop would be on Thursday 27 April 2017. He advised that they were drawing up a list of remaining workshops for the year and where possible he would try and avoid weekends. He stated that further evidence bases were currently being considered and he would feed back the information to Members as part of the regulation 18 consultation. There had also been a number of new sites identified which had not yet been analysed and this would be reported back to Members.

(c)          Governance and Development Management  Portfolio Holder

The Governance and Development Management Portfolio Holder highlighted a number of items which included a revenue increase of 15% in the last two years in both Building and Development Control, which had been reinvested in the service and thanked the Legal Section who had completed the recent Leisure, Off Street Parking and St John’s Road Development site contracts.