To receive questions, if any, from Members.
Minutes:
Question 1
The following question was received from Councillor Lee Parsons, and was responded to by Councillor Stephen Thomas, Leader of the Council.
Question:
“The current contract with the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board ends in September 2023. Can the Leader inform Council when face to face full Council meetings will commence at the General Offices?”
Response:
“Thanks for the question, Cllr Parsons. Unfortunately, I cannot at this stage, even though I have the same request from members of the Labour Group. Some barriers would have to be overcome before we could resume face-to-face meetings.
Firstly, as you say, the current contract with ABUHB for the mass vaccination centre ends on 31st September 2023. But there is an option to extend for a further six months at that point if agreed by both the Council and ABUHB, dependant upon whether there will be another Winter vaccination programme
Secondly, in the recent Budget proposals for 23/24, both political groups agreed with the business case that referred to a £60,000 saving by renting rooms at the General Offices. A significant part of that saving is the approximate £4,000 a month we receive from ABUHB. If the contract ends, we will have to find the deficit elsewhere.
Thirdly, we have a current Council policy that was agreed upon at the September 29th meeting, namely, the Multi-Location Meetings Policy, which unanimously decided that all Council & Cabinet meetings would be held remotely, and all formal scrutiny meetings could be held on a hybrid basis.
Obviously, if we resume face to face meetings it would not be as it was before March 2020 as legislation has changed post pandemic.
The Local Government and Elections (Wales) Act 2021 provides that Councils are required to:
Electronically broadcast meetings (with effect from May 2022), and make and publish arrangements to ensure that all Council, Cabinet, Committee, Sub-Committee and Joint Committee meetings may be attended remotely (i.e. enabling persons not in the same place to attend the meeting) – also referred to as ‘multi-location meetings’.
The Local Government Act stipulates that Councils cannot mandate physical meeting attendance.”
Supplementary Question:
“Can the Leader of the Council confirm there was no plans to build a political arena in Blaenau Gwent in the future”.
Response:
“The Leader of the Council confirmed that this would be a decision to be taken by full Council and at this point in time there had been no Council decision to create a political arena”.
Question 2
The following question was received from Councillor Gareth A. Davies, and was responded to by Councillor Stephen Thomas, Leader of the Council:-
Question:
“Could the Leader confirm or refute the rumours that Bus Services including the Fflecsi Service in Blaenau Gwent are to end soon.”
Response:
“For clarity, there are three types of services being run at the moment – Commercial routes run by private providers; services which we pay private providers a subsidy to run and the Fflecsi pilot, which has been running since June 2021.
Covid 19 devasted bus usage so WG provided funding during the pandemic and continued post-pandemic, through the Bus Emergency Scheme (BES), as of this moment this is due to end after June this year.
This funding enabled private providers to remain viable whilst it was hoped passenger numbers would return to pre-pandemic numbers.
As you can imagine, alongside the other 21 local authority Leaders, I have been lobbying Welsh Government on the impact this funding reduction may have on local bus services.
To be honest, at this point, we do not know fully the impact this will have on private providers; providers are expected to notify their local authority 21st April what their post-BES operations will be, at which point we will have greater clarity.
Regarding the Fflecsi services, this will continue until the end of June 2023; we are currently in discussions with WG and TfW about hopefully continuing this service but perhaps using a different model; we hope to be able to report back on this in the coming months.”