Issue - meetings

Scrutiny of Environment Related Cabinet Reports

Meeting: 13/01/2020 - Overview and Scrutiny Board (Historic) (Item 106)

106 Scrutiny of Environment Related Cabinet Reports pdf icon PDF 207 KB

To consider the following Environment related report scheduled for Cabinet consideration on 15 January:

·         Fleet Replacement Funding Strategy

 

The O&S Board is asked to scrutinise the report and make recommendations to Cabinet as appropriate.

 

Cabinet member invited to attend for this item: Councillor Felicity Rice, Portfolio Holder for Environment and Climate Change.

 

The Cabinet report will be published on Tuesday 7 January 2020 and available to view at the following link:

https://democracy.bcpcouncil.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=285&MId=3725&Ver=4

Minutes:

The Chairman asked the Portfolio Holder for Environment and Climate Change to introduce the report a copy of which had been circulated and which appears as Appendix 'B' to the Cabinet minutes of 15 January in the Minute Book. The Portfolio Holder outlined the report. A number of points were raised by the Board in the ensuing questioning including:

 

·     The Board asked for information on what was included within the £4m of funding. It was explained that this excluded Christchurch’s fleet for which separate funds had been identified. It included 140 vehicles in total including highways vehicles;

·     The Board asked about the considerations given regarding more sustainable vehicles versus the cost of replacement vehicles. The Portfolio Holder commented that the first priority was reducing the amount of waste produced and therefore reducing the need for vehicle use. The current investment from government in electric vehicles was not sufficient and they were therefore still very expensive, 2 to 3 times the price of normal vehicles and BCP did not have the budget available.

·     Unfortunately much of the fleet needed replacement in order to continue services over the next few years. Availability of electric vehicles was also an issue.

·     A Councillor asked about how much BCP was prepared to spend in monetary terms and in carbon terms. The Portfolio Holder commented that she was looking at a way to value the environmental and economic issues.

·     In response to a question the Service Director advised that the Dorset contracts would be coming back in-house to BCP in April and services would be continuing as they were. The fleet would be moving to a sustainable fleet over a period of time to meet the Council’s carbon-neutral ambitions;

·     The Board raised concerns regarding the lack of detail within the report regarding the vehicle replacement. It was noted that in a previous version of the report these were included but a corporate decision was taken to remove this information as it was a lot of data and would be meaningless to most. The Corporate Director undertook to provide the details of the schedule of vehicles to Cabinet and O&S Board.  The Board were concerned that it did not have the level of detail needed to scrutinise properly and that Cabinet did not have all the information available.

·     A Councillor raised further concerns about the lack of a long-term fleet strategy along with this report and was disappointed that the two issues had not been brought together. The current necessity for fleet replacement would target environmental credentials as all cars coming in would improve the current baseline.

·     The Board questioned whether different options had been modelled, including high tech vehicles and lease/hire options, as there was no detail contained within the report.

·     Concerns were raised again on the lack of detail forthcoming from the report and Portfolio Holder and questioned whether Cabinet had the information it needed to take a decision. Others noted that funding for this had already been approved and the detail was not  ...  view the full minutes text for item 106