Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Councillors John Cattanach, Melanie Davis, David Ireton (substitute Councillor George Jabbour) and Arnold Warneken (substitute Councillor David Noland).

It was resolved that the minutes of the meeting held on 8 July 2024, having been printed and circulated, be taken as read and confirmed as a correct record.

All Members are invited to declare at this point any interests they have in items appearing on this agenda, including the nature of those interests.

Councillor Steve Mason declared a personal interest under item 7 (Climate Change Strategy) regarding procurement due to his employment as a sustainability consultant.

Members of the public may ask questions or make statements at this meeting if they have given notice (to include the text of the question/statement) to Will Baines, Senior Scrutiny Officer (contact details below) no later than midday on Monday 14 October 2024. Each speaker should limit themselves to 3 minutes on any item.  Members of the public who have given notice will be invited to speak:-

·       At this point in the meeting if their questions/statements relate to matters which are not otherwise on the Agenda (subject to an overall time limit of 30 minutes);

·       When the relevant Agenda item is being considered if they wish to speak on a matter which is on the Agenda for this meeting.

If you are exercising your right to speak at this meeting, but do not wish to be recorded, please inform the Chair who will instruct those taking a recording to cease while you speak.

Three public questions were received.

1.       Statement from Andy Hayes

I am a Director of Oliver’s Mount Racing Ltd. that holds the licence with North Yorkshire Council to hold national level motorcycle race events at The Oliver’s Mount race circuit in Scarborough. We host 6 motorcycle race events each year, and when all is going well, Oliver’s Mount is estimated to bring tourism revenue of circa £4m per annum into the local area, and also provides direct annual revenue to the authority in the region of £80k - £100k. I previously attended this committee on 19^th January 2023 to ask this same question.

Oliver’s Mount uses Jackson’s Lane as the sole route for public vehicular entry and egress once events are running and other entrances are closed off. Events will not be financially viable should Jackson’s Lane be inaccessible over an event weekend.

Jackson’s Lane is a publicly adopted road (reference U563/4/30) and North Yorkshire Council has a duty, as laid out in the Highways Act 1980, to maintain its highway network. This road has been in a state of disrepair and closed to the public since January 2019. NYCC Highways stated in November 2019 that Jackson’s Lane should be repaired by June 2020

NYC Highways have permitted Oliver’s Mount, amongst others, to use the road in a 1-way, traffic-controlled manner for events, but this causes quite a lot of traffic disruption and is expensive to resource and undoubtedly puts some customers off from coming to Oliver’s Mount events. We have managed to live with it though, but due to some recent adverse survey data, we can no longer rely on the use of that road in even a one-way traffic managed operation. We were advised in the days leading up to our last event that our access to the road may be removed. We cannot therefore in good conscience, sell tickets for future 2025 events that we may not be able to provide access to. This renders events at Oliver’s Mount financially unviable from this point on, as advised would be the case in my January 2023 attendance at this committee. 21 months on from my previous attendance at this committee, there does not appear to be a scheme or timescale to repair the road.

As a result of the lack of assurance that Jackson’s Lane can be used in even a one-way managed scenario in the future, the major full-road closure events at Oliver’s Mount will now likely cease and if this results in a prolonged cessation, they may very well never return as it will become increasingly difficult to retain the officials, marshals, competitors and spectators, as well as resurrect aged infrastructure that will not receive investment and maintenance whilst the circuit remains inoperable. There will also be a significant loss to the Scarborough tourism economy.

I would like to ask what is the plan and timescale to repair and reinstate Jackson’s Lane to a 2-way carriageway in good order, or to replace it with a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 12.

The Committee considered a report of Nigel Smith, Head of Highways Operations, NYC, detailing the performance of NY Highways.

An overview of the report was given, with the key points as summarised below:

·       During 2023/24, budget savings in revenue activities of £1.9m was achieved as a consequence of efficiencies and reduced costs of delivery.

·       Healthy and Safety performance figures for 2023/24 were positive, with an improvement on previous years, even with the setting of more challenging targets. Campaigns were introduced to improve safety, for example with driving at work, stress and preparedness for ISO Accreditation.

·       For 2024/25, it is hoped to achieve an external works profit of greater than £100,000, carry out more than 90% of the cyclical gully programme, reduce the carbon footprint and further improve the carbon intensity value.

There followed a discussion, the key points of which are as summarised below:

·       The links between NY Highways and street cleansing colleagues, with a working group known as ‘HAT 03’ set up to develop initiatives to deliver efficient and effective services, with an aspiration for cost savings along the way. This involves a review of equipment and fleet deployed.

·       The capabilities of the gully cleaning system to ensure blocked gullies are cleaned frequently? A ‘Find and Report’ approach is adopted. Also ongoing is a review of locations where frequent non-programmed (reactive) gully cleansing is required, and then adjusting the risk rating to reflect that.

·       The number of apprenticeships employed across NY Highways was encouraging to see.

·       The work undertaken with parking services to co-ordinate gully cleaning to give prior notice to parked vehicles to move in order to allow the required works to take place. Occasions when work is unable to take place due to vehicles not moving is closely monitored, currently at around 6% for 2024/25 to date.

·       Are poor response rates to non-essential queries linked to staff capacity? It was noted an NYC transformation restructure is ongoing to fill vacant posts. It was noted that resilience could be brought in from the NYC arms length companies if required.

·       A fear of flooding with the wetter weather has led to increased reports of blocked gullies. When warning is given of named storms or future serious weather events, teams can be quickly deployed to flooding hotspots to ensure those parts of the drainage system are working efficiently.

·       How work is evaluated for quality control? It was explained that getting things right first time is the priority, with completed works photographed and kept on file, together with regular sampling of works. On occasions when work is not up to standard, these are reviewed by both Heads of Highways Ops, and an improvement plan put in place, at no additional cost to the Council.

·       It was noted that the level of sickness absence for NY Highways is higher than the previous year. This was felt partly to be due to the aging workforce of NY Highways.

It was resolved to note the information in the report.

The Committee considered a report of Peter Jeffreys (Head of Service Waste), Aimi Brookes (Service Development Manager – Waste) and Michael Leah (Assistant Director – Environmental Services, Climate Change & Integrated Passenger Transport, to seek views on the plans for the future harmonisation of waste and recycling services across North Yorkshire.

Some of the key points highlighted in the report were as follows:

·       A Waste Harmonisation Task and Finish Group, with representation from all of the council’s political groups, had been meeting regularly since November 2023 as the proposals and public consultation process had developed.

·       Discussions of the various options started three years ago, as it became clear that future funding for North Yorkshire from national government would depend on how efficient and effective the waste collection service is.

·       The current service includes:

o   Fully comingled – Craven, Scarborough – 1 wheelie bin

o   Twin stream – Hambleton (box & wheelie bin), Harrogate (boxes & bags, rolling out wheelie bin)

o   Kerbside sort - Richmondshire/ Ryedale - (boxes & bags)

o   Twin stream (alternate fortnightly) – Selby (2 wheelie bin)

o   Capacity varies from 115 litres to 295 litres per fortnight

·       A desktop options appraisal, looking at nine assessment criteria, found the alternate fortnightly option with two recycling wheeled bins (Selby model) scored the highest, followed by the kerbside sort option with three containers, with the fully comingled option scoring the lowest.

·       Previous experience in North Yorkshire is that changing from boxes/bags to wheelie bins does increase recycling. For example, comparison of kg/household in 2019/20 (pre covid) to 2023/24 (post covid) showed a big increase in Selby recycling rates following the service change.

·       The initial estimated cost of implementing the changes would be around £8 million over the next five years, but it is anticipated the alternate fortnightly collection option with two wheeled bins would save about £560,000 per year, with the potential for even more savings.

·       Wheelie bin systems require the fewest vehicles and staff due to the efficiency of collection.

·       One of the key findings from the ‘Let’s Talk Rubbish’ public consultation (over 10,000 responses) was the need for clear and concise communications with residents. Nearly nine in ten residents say it is ‘important’ or ‘very important’ to have access to an equal recycling service in North Yorkshire.

·       With regard to carbon modelling, all of the three options considered reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to the baseline. Kerbside sort saw the biggest reduction, followed by alternate fortnightly collections then fully comingled delivers the least benefit.

·       Officers are conscious that one size doesn’t fit all, and there are storage concerns around the two bin approach. Where there are genuine issues with storage or access for properties, bespoke/alternative collections will be provided. Approximately 7.5% of properties in North Yorkshire currently receive a sack collection or are classed as ‘hard to reach’.

·       The Malton area will be the first area for the rollout this summer, linked to the vehicle replacement programme requirements, with the rest of the county phased in over a two-to-three year  ...  view the full minutes text for item 14.

Report of Jos Holmes, Climate Change Strategy Manager and Michael Leah, Assistant Director – Environmental Services, Climate Change and Integrated Passenger Transport, to provide a progress report on the implementation of the Climate Change Delivery Pathway.

Some of the key points outlined in the report were:

·       Over 100 current actions from the Climate Change Delivery Pathway were being delivered or recognised as priority areas of focus and progress reported against each of these.

·       The estimated level of investment in climate change delivery with the available figures over a two year period to March 2025 is £2.8million internal funding and £32.7million utilising external funding (this excludes some investment figures not currently available) across the three sections of Mitigation, Adaptation and Supporting Nature.

·       Officers are currently preparing a new round of funding proposals and projects to Great British Energy and an initial pipeline of proposals has been submitted to the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority as part of its Carbon Negative Challenge Fund.

·       Annual ‘territorial’ statistics from the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero are included with an 18-month time lag with the figures for North Yorkshire in 2022 and a comparison to 2020 figures. Also included are the North Yorkshire Council Operational Carbon Emissions for the 2023/2024 year. This is the first year of operational emissions for the new Council and data indicates the total emissions and derivation of emissions. This now provides a baseline for the new Council, but the calculation will vary depending on the addition or removal of building assets and ongoing transformational activity or organisational restructures.

·       It is the intention to bring the carbon emissions of Brierley Group companies into these calculations in future years.

·       The focus of the policy development work over the coming months is the development of an Adaptation Strategy by March 2025.

Following this, key points raised by committee members were:

·       To detail the work ongoing around active travel and sustainable travel initiatives. In response, support for programmes such as North Yorkshire Lift Share were highlighted  and encouraging low carbon travel options through the Bus Service Improvement Plan. One of the proposals submitted to the Combined Authority is the development of a multi-departmental, cross cutting project on air quality, cycling & walking and education. It is hoped to pilot this in the Darlington Road area of Richmond, where five schools with similar finish times experience regular congestion and air quality issues.

·       Examples of inadequate cycling and walking provision were highlighted and how these discourage residents and visitors from using more sustainable travel options, particularly as part of new housing developments built with poor active travel infrastructure.

·       In deeply rural areas there has been substantial investment in a community transport decarbonisation project, installation of electric vehicle charging points in rural areas through the LEVI programme, where points were not seen as commercially viable, mainly due to a lack of grid capacity.

·       The importance of local bus services for rural communities as a low carbon option and increasing the frequency and reliability of the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 15.

Report of Jon Clubb, Head of Parks and Grounds and Helen Arnold, Tree and Woodland Manager to provide a progress update on the development of North Yorkshire Council’s first Tree and Woodlands policy.

Key points outlined in the report included:

·       A new Tree and Woodland team was created within the Parks and Grounds service as part of the new North Yorkshire Council because of restructuring the previous legacy authorities’ teams. This has created an integrated and coherent team that works across the disciplines of arboriculture, tree surveying, tree operations, and woodland creation.

·       Four of the previous legacy authorities had developed individual approaches to tree and woodland management, prior to local government reorganisation. These documents remain in place in the interim, however as the new unitary authority, North Yorkshire Council has a unique opportunity to combine this knowledge and experience to develop a robust policy framework for the county.

·       Trees form a significant element of our urban and rural areas. They make an important contribution to the natural beauty, culture, and heritage of our landscapes, whilst providing a range of ecosystem services such as habitats for wildlife, pollution control, flood risk alleviation and mitigation from the impacts of climate change.

·       North Yorkshire Council has a legal duty and powers to manage the risk and to protect trees on the land that we manage (such as in open spaces, the highway and across property assets) and within the private realm. This should be reasonable and proportionate, to balance the many benefits that trees and woodlands bring. Therefore, developing a county wide approach to policy is crucial to this undertaking and provides all stakeholders with clarity on how this will be managed.

·       Themes of the new policy will include sections such as risks from trees, methodology to inspect trees, operational works and what will and won’t be undertaken and the legislative tools at our disposal.

·       As the policy is built up, engagement and consultation will be very important. Trees are right across the county and estates and many different council services will have some interaction with trees, such as: Children and Young People Service, Planning, Highways, Housing, Bereavement, Countryside Access, Environment and Climate Change, and Insurance and Risk.

·       The Tree and Woodland team has been broken down into four separate areas:

o   Protected trees – planning consultations, TPOs, conservation areas and high hedges.

o   Tree asset management – tree surveying and inspection with a focus on benefits and risks

o   Tree operations – mixture of in-house tree surgeon teams in the East and the West, together with external contractors

o   Tree and woodland creation – initiatives such as the Woodland Creation Accelerator Fund and the White Rose Forest partnership

·       The new policy will act as the rule book for all interested parties and to manage expectations while protecting the tree asset. It will act as an essential go-to reference for local stakeholders and landowners, as well as guide the council in managing vast numbers of trees and using resources effectively.

·       Officers  ...  view the full minutes text for item 16.

The report of the Senior Scrutiny Officer inviting Members to consider the work programme and confirm, amend or add to the areas of the work listed.

Following discussions as part of a previous item, a private briefing on Allerton Waste Recovery Park was requested by the committee.

Resolved -

That the work programme be noted and updated to reflect the discussions at the meeting.

Any other items which the Chair agrees should be considered as a matter of urgency because of special circumstances.

There were no other items of business.