The deadline for questions to be submitted to the Monitoring Officer is Monday 7 October 2024.
Minutes:
Question from Councillor Anne-Marie Moriarty
Several residents have raised concerns about the increasing amount of dog faeces in public areas, including parks, pavements, and particularly Kings Park Cemetery. One resident highlighted the issue by sharing that her sight-impaired mother regularly steps in excrement while visiting her husband’s grave. She has faced verbal aggression when challenging dog owners and has raised complaints to the council but has not received a satisfactory response.
Could you provide information on how long it has been since the bylaws enforcing dog owners to clean up after their pets expired? Additionally, when can we expect new bylaws to be implemented to address this issue?
Response from the Portfolio Holder for Communities and Partnerships, Councillor Sandra Moore
In Bournemouth, dogs were historically prohibited from entering council-controlled cemeteries as part of a 2011 Bournemouth Borough Council control of dogs order under the Clean Neighbourhood & Environment Act 2005. However, in Christchurch and Poole cemeteries, this legislation was not taken up and dogs were permitted access to open space including cemeteries.
This legislation lapsed in 2017 and was replaced in 2020 by PSPO Public Space Protection Order legislation.
Under a PSPO, and when an offence is witnessed, local authorities can issue a fixed penalty fine of up to £100 to those who fail to clean up after their dog in public. This fine could be increased to £1000 by a magistrate’s court if a person refused to pay.
Fortunately, most dog owners act responsibly and remove any fouling.
It also needs to be mentioned that these orders require evidence gathering, mapping, legal input and consultation etc all of which takes time and money.
However, work to review, implement and enforce a PSPO is on the forward plan to be explored in the future. But in the meantime, we are of course, asking the minority of dog owners responsible for failing to clean up after their animals to respect the public open spaces they access, to be considerate to other users and pick up after their dogs.
Supplementary Question from Councillor Anne-Marie Moriarty
I am just wondering what to say to my residents in the meantime.
Response from the Portfolio Holder for Communities and Partnerships, Councillor Sandra Moore
I sympathise with the situation, but I will be looking to see what we can do to move this forward. It is currently work in progress.
Question from Councillor Mark Howell
Councillor Howell requested that his question be carried over to the next meeting of the Council when the Chief Executive would be in attendance.
Question from Councillor Patrick Canavan
‘Can an update be given on the position with Kings Park Nursery in terms of what has happened with the site since the decision to close it and what the plan is for the future?’
Response from the Portfolio Holder for Communities and Partnerships, Councillor Sandra Moore
The Kings Park plant nursery site has just come into my Communities portfolio.
Expressions of interest to take on the entire site with the existing users (Tricuro and Linwood School), in situ on a lease arrangement for a period of 25 years with a break clause after 10, 15 and 20 years was sent out following input from Legal, Estates, Environment and Communities.?
A range of groups came forward and 3 expressions of interests for the full use of the site were received. These were reviewed based on the following?
o Approach to the financial operation and business plan of the site????
o Outline of organisational structure, experience?
o Community and social benefit from use of the site???
o Sustainability of future use?
We are now working with a preferred partner to explore options for the plant nursery site while they seek funding for resourcing. The development of a lease arrangement for the site can then progress.
Supplementary Question from Councillor Patrick Canavan
I'm sure Councillor Moore will recall when the decision was taken to close the nursery, the amount of money in savings in Virgin Commerce was quoted, and as part of that, an allocation of money was set aside to enable the transfer of this facility to the community. I wonder if you could explain what has happened with that money and whether that transfer is going to be enabled. Thank you.
Response from the Portfolio Holder for Communities and Partnerships, Councillor Sandra Moore
Thank you for that. I don't have the answer. I will look into it and give you a written reply.
Question from Councillor Joe Salmon
“In the Financial Outturn 2023-24 report to O&S Board on 16 July 2024, it was highlighted that there has been an unexpected pressure on parking income as a result of high charges from card transactions. Given this it is more urgent than ever we look at this decision. I have yet to receive the evidence base that was used by the administration to make this change. Yet again I am asking for this to be shared, and for the decision to potentially to reviewed and overturned if this is in the best interests of residents, but practically and financially”
Response from the Portfolio Holder for Finance, Councillor Mike Cox
The decision to move to cashless terminals in BCP car parks was taken in early 2019 (pre-covid) in response to high levels of theft from car parking machines and the increasing costs to repair or replace the damaged equipment.
In response certain other services they moved to cashless as a direct response to the global covid19 panic and the position was not reversed as the situation has eased.
At this stage card payments remain the most cost-effective payment method as the cost of collecting, counting, and banking cash is significant and not without risk.
Just as an example cash represents 12% of our parking income, yet it represents 56% of our costs related to collection, and that does not include staff costs aswell. It is recognised of course that the use of cash is a symptom of financial exclusion; therefore, the use of cash is being reviewed on a service-by-service basis. It may also be useful to highlight that the council is increasing the use of PayPoint locations.
The opportunity to expand the PayPoint counter service to Bournemouth has recently been taken thereby enabling more residents to pay their council tax bills (with cash) at more convenient and accessible locations such as their local corner shop.
Supplementary Question from Councillor Joe Salmon
I'd love to see the working, you know? I just want to see the numbers. I just want to see, here you go, Councillor Salmon, this is what it cost in 2019, because having a fix of a broken payment machines, this is how much it's costing now. I just want to see the working and the justification for the switch. That's all I want, just for numbers.
It doesn't have to be right now, obviously, but at some point I would love to see it. You don't get to... Oh, no, you do. I'm reluctant at the moment, but
Response from the Portfolio Holder for Finance, Councillor Mike Cox
I will see where the figures come from and I'll get back to you. But if I can, I will do.
Question from Councillor Sara Armstrong
“In light of the recent anniversary of the tragic murder of Cameron in the town centre and it also being a year since BCP passed our Knife Crime Motion.
Please can council receive an update on the progress being made to ensure that every family and community in BCP should be safe from the loss of a life due to knife crime?
How is the council measuring up against all of the actions we resolved to take last September?
I am especially concerned about the progress being made regarding the implementation of the serious violent crime duty and the resources available to enable the council to deliver it in the longer term.”
Response from the Portfolio Holder for Housing and Regulatory Services, Councillor Kieron Wilson (Read by the Leader of the Council, Councillor Millie Earl in Councillor Wilsons absence)
The BCP Community Safety Partnership’s Serious Violence Strategy, was adopted in January 2024, and we are now ten months into the new duty for Serious Violence and making good progress. The campaign #livesbeforeknives #changesaremade to raise awareness of knife crime ran between May and September and included, a range of activities for young people, parents and carers and professionals to educate and provide support around knife crime. This includes working with partners including AFC Bournemouth, Town Centre BID, Dorset Police, Community Champions and the community and voluntary sector in a Public Health approach to address crime. Dedicated Task & Finish groups focus on specific activity such as the Young Person’s Serious Violence group which aims to look at safeguarding vulnerable young people from harm and or exploitation.
The key priorities for the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole area under the Serious Violence Strategy are to reduce:
· Sexual assaults and rape
· Robbery
· Domestic Abuse
· Violence Against the Person which includes knife crime
There has been a wide range of community safety activity take place over the last 12 months focussing on reducing serious violent crime which includes the Unity Promise, Keeping our Young People Safe Conference and Purple Flag accreditation. I’ll send over some further details rather than go through them all here.
In terms of how we measure and monitor progress, overall, there has been a decrease in Violence Against The Person reported occurrences in Q1 compared to the same period the previous year, with a total reduction of 10.7%.
The Community Safety Partnership produces quarterly KPI reports which are reviewed by the CSP Executive Board along with monthly reports on serious violent crime. They also produce an annual report which is presented to Overview & Scrutiny in December of each year to ensure that there is scrutiny of the partnership activity.
The funding for the Serious Violence Duty, the Domestic Abuse Duty and the Safer Streets funding is currently only committed by the Government until 31st March 2025. We continue to lobby central government through the Local Government Association and the Office for the Police and Crime Commissioner for Dorset for long-term sustainable funding to carry out this vital work, however as yet no funding has been confirmed.
Supplementary Question from Councillor Sara Armstrong
I have got a number of issues to follow up, but I'll stick with this one. So this week I received a message from one of my residents who described a situation that had happened in the town centre with a group of young people where a young man was stabbed.
So there is still, I think, a perception that there is more that we can do and there's more that we can be doing with the night-time economy and how we work with those clubs and bars to keep knives out of the clubs.
Although we are making progress in terms of reducing the amount of the knife crime, the people impacted by knife crime are younger in terms of perpetrators and victims. Councillor, are you going to a question?
My question is, what are we doing to engage with the night-time economy and to ensure that they have the right equipment to be able to detect knives? And also, what are we doing to ensure that young people were intervening much earlier with them to prevent this? Thank you.
Response from the Leader of the Council, Councillor Millie Earl
Thank you, Councillor Armstrong. I'm really sorry to hear that someone was stabbed in the town centre it is always a tragedy when these things happen. I'm not convinced that the clubs are necessarily the problem when it comes to detecting knives in fact we do have a good relationship across the night-time economy and we want to continue encouraging them to report and we know that they take that seriously, particularly through our work on things like the Unity Promise and also the Purple Flag accreditation.
I think that what we probably need to be doing more of is working with our police partners and partners across the town centre around tackling maybe younger groups below club age because I think that that's where a lot of the problem sits around knife crime, especially for children and young people who are understandably really scared of this issue and don't have the protection of the clubs to go to in many ways, so are out on the streets in the evenings. However, absolutely, I think we need to all work together. I think we do recognise through the community safety partnership this isn't just a council problem, it's not just a police problem, it's not just a night-time economy problem, it's everyone's problem to tackle.
So, yeah, I think we'll continue to do that and hopefully get some additional funding in the long term to be able to address some of these issues, especially amongst youth tackling youth violence in general. Thank you.