Place Scrutiny Committee - Tuesday 30 June 2026, 7:00pm - Epping Forest District Council webcasts

Place Scrutiny Committee
Tuesday, 30th June 2026 at 7:00pm 

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  1. Cllr Joseph Parsons
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  1. Laura Kirman
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  1. Cllr Sheree Rackham
  2. Laura Kirman
  3. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  4. Cllr James Small
  5. Laura Kirman
  6. Cllr Joseph Parsons
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  1. Cllr Richard Bassett
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  1. Cllr Alan Lion
  2. Cllr Joseph Parsons
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  1. Cllr Raymond Balcombe
  2. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  3. Cllr Jodie Lucas
  4. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  5. Rosa Tanfield
  6. James Warwick
  7. Rosa Tanfield
  8. James Warwick
  9. Amelia Hoke
  10. Rosa Tanfield
  11. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  12. Cllr Sheree Rackham
  13. Cllr Tom Bromwich
  14. Cllr Chris Pond
  15. Cllr Sheree Rackham
  16. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  17. Amelia Hoke
  18. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  19. Cllr Mary Dadd
  20. James Warwick
  21. Cllr Mary Dadd
  22. Rosa Tanfield
  23. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  24. Cllr Richard Bassett
  25. Amelia Hoke
  26. Rosa Tanfield
  27. Cllr Steven Heather
  28. James Warwick
  29. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  30. Cllr Mandy George
  31. Rosa Tanfield
  32. James Warwick
  33. Keith Bowman
  34. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  35. Cllr Jodie Lucas
  36. Cllr Mandy George
  37. Keith Bowman
  38. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  39. Cllr James Small
  40. Amelia Hoke
  41. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  42. Cllr Stephen Murray
  43. Rosa Tanfield
  44. Cllr Stephen Murray
  45. Cllr Joseph Parsons
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  1. Cllr Raymond Balcombe
  2. Keith Bowman
  3. Maria Sharple
  4. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  5. Cllr Sheree Rackham
  6. Maria Sharple
  7. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  8. Cllr Mary Dadd
  9. Keith Bowman
  10. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  11. Cllr Stephen Murray
  12. Keith Bowman
  13. Cllr Joseph Parsons
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  1. Matt Winslow
  2. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  3. Cllr Richard Bassett
  4. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  5. Matt Winslow
  6. Cllr Mary Dadd
  7. Matt Winslow
  8. Cllr Mary Dadd
  9. Matt Winslow
  10. Cllr Mary Dadd
  11. Matt Winslow
  12. Cllr Mary Dadd
  13. Matt Winslow
  14. Cllr Mary Dadd
  15. Matt Winslow
  16. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  17. Cllr Sheree Rackham
  18. Matt Winslow
  19. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  20. Cllr Stephen Murray
  21. Cllr Joseph Parsons
  22. Cllr Chris Whitbread
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  1. Webcast Finished

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:00:00
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.

1 WEBCASTING INTRODUCTION

Okay, so before we start the meeting, I will read the webcasting announcement. I would
like to remind everyone present that this meeting will be broadcast live to the internet
and will be capable of repeated viewing or other use by such third parties. Therefore,
by entering the council chamber and using the seating area, you are consenting to be
filmed and to the possible use of those images and sound recordings for webcasting and or
training purposes.
So welcome everybody to tonight's meeting of Place Scrutiny Committee on the 30th of
June, 2026.
I'll be chairman for tonight's meeting, Councillor Joseph Parsons, and I'll just introduce you
to the rest of the panel.
So to my immediate left, we've got Nicola Sayers, the Deputy Monitoring Officer, and
to her left we've got Matt Winslow, who's the Service Director for Planning.
Straight to my right, no one yet, no vice chair yet, and then we've got Laura Kerman
from Democratic Services and Lou Baker webcasting the meeting.
We're also joined by a number of officers in person and online that will be able to
ask questions throughout the meeting.

2 APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE

On to agenda item number two, have we got any apologies for absence?
Laura Kirman - 0:02:50
We've received apologies for absence from Councillor Coyle and from Councillor Janet
Whitehouse.
Thank you.
Any substitute members?

3 SUBSTITUTE MEMBERS

We have a substitute for Janet Whitehouse, which is Councillor George.
Councillor Rackham.
I don't know if there's any or not.
Do you have any apologies?
Microphone.
Cllr Sheree Rackham - 0:03:12
Thank you, Chair. I noticed that Councillor Tom Bromwich is not here, so I don't know whether he's sent apologies or not.
I haven't received any. I'll cheque back through the email. Sometimes things arrive like that.
Thank you.
Laura Kirman - 0:03:23
Councillor Small.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:03:25
Also, Councillor Abbott, I've noticed he's in here and I've tried to contact him, I can't get through to him.
Cllr James Small - 0:03:29
Any absence or apologies?
We haven't received, the apologies we've received have been given.
Laura Kirman - 0:03:36
For members of the committee who are relatively new, there is a process which is on the front of the agenda for sending your apologies.
There's a link you can do it via on that or ring up them services, we'll take your apologies throughout the day.
substitutes have to be made by your leader of your party by six o 'clock on the day of the meeting.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:04:03
Thank you. So item number four, we've got election of vice -chairman.

4 ELECTION OF VICE CHAIRMAN

So at full council, we, or the council agreed that we would elect a chairman at this meeting.
So I think I'd be happy to suggest Councillor Morris that do the role this year.
He's served on the committee for two years, so he knows how place scrutiny works, and I think it'd be a good choice.
So I'm happy to propose that.
Have I got a seconder?
Councillor Rackham, thank you.
Now, before we go, have we got any other nominations?
No, so that means Councillor Morris
is now vice chairman for this year.
If you'd like to join Nick, join me up here.
And please take your name badge.

5 DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST

Item 8, TVS and EFDC Waste Operations Overview and Update.
If I could pass over to Councillor Baucom.
Sorry, I have missed something.
Item 5, Declarations of Interest of Councillor Bassett.
Thank you.
Cllr Richard Bassett - 0:05:46
As always, Declaration Item 9 being Chairman of Corliss.
Thank you. Any others? Oh, Councillor Lucas.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:05:55
Thank you. Similarly, Chairman of TPS. Thank you.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:06:05
Thank you. Okay. So item number six, we've got the notes of the previous minutes. Are

6 NOTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING

members happy to agree those? Thank you. Okay. So item number seven, we've got the work programme.

7 WORK PROGRAMME

programme. Have any members got any comments? So I have had a request from Councillor Lyon.
I know he's not on the committee, but he's requested that digital inclusion be added
to the work programme, specifically an expansion of a pilot project that's been run from Hyde
Mead House for residents and older people to introduce themselves to digital services.
We're due to have a joint chairman's, a scrutiny chair meeting. So I'll ask there for it to
included on our work programme. I see Councillor Lyons online, so if you wanted to come in.
Cllr Alan Lion - 0:06:51
Yeah, thank you, Chairman. Yeah, I've been actively involved with digital services for
a number of years now and I was invited to attend the Highgate House programme, the treasure trove
programme that they're running there, and this was a section for other people and it's a great
initiative. Previously we had funding available and voluntary action, they're
being forested, we're actually running a programme. They're no longer funded, unfortunately, we
haven't got any further funding for that. I wonder whether a positive project
could be included in your work programme to actually scrutinise this and quite
I think it will be a worthwhile addition.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor Lyon.
Yeah, I will bring it up at the joint meeting and hopefully that can be included somewhere.

8 TVS & EFDC Waste Operations Overview and Update

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:07:52
Okay, so next we actually have number eight this time, TVS and EFDC waste operations overview
and update.
So I've got Councillor Balcombe, James Warwick and Rosa Danfield from TVS to present.
So I'll start with Councillor Balcombe.
Thank you Chairman.
Cllr Raymond Balcombe - 0:08:13
And before I hand over to the waste team for their presentation, I would like to remind
you of the progress we have made since we set up TVS, our local authority trading company.
The improvements to the waste service have been recognised not only by residents but
also nationally.
We have been nominated for two national awards, reaching the final in one and winning the other.
TVS and Epping Forest District Council, as you know,
jointly won the National Award for Best Recycling and Waste Service Improvements for Councils at the 2025 Waste Recycling Awards.
The recognition reflects the significant progress we
have made together in transforming waste and
recycling service across the district through our
local authority trading company.
The improvements have delivered a more efficient
and reliable customer focused service for
residents and I would also like to say this has
happened over these two years where we've
introduced the new service, TVS, we've introduced
blue bins, we've introduced the brown caddy for the food service and we've also brought
in the charging for garden waste. So it's been a big change over those two years and
to come out with the figures we've got, which you'll hear about in a minute, and winning
two major awards I think is a great achievement in our first 18 months basically of trading.
So now I'd like to hand over to Rosa, Managing Director of TVS Limited, James,
Warwick, who you all know as the contracts and EFDC partnership and procurement, and
Amelia Hoek, service manager for EFDC Leisure
Parking and now WAST as well. So over to you Rosa, thank you. Thank you, so before
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:10:10
Before I pass over to Rosa, I've got Councillor Lucas online who will need to come in as chairman
of TBS.
Cllr Jodie Lucas - 0:10:16
Thank you, Chairman. Just before we hand over to those officers, I would just like to say
a few words. For those that don't know yet my role, I've been chair of the TBS board
since April 2025. Councillor Balcom has already highlighted the significant progress made
since TBS was established, along with the national recognition we have received.
From the board's perspective, I would simply add that these achievements have been delivered
while implementing one of the most significant changes to waste and recycling services across
Epping Forest District in recent years.
Introducing the new Blue Bean Recycling Service, alongside the separation of food and garden
waste collections, has been a major operational change.
and naturally, the one that has brought its challenges.
Delivering these changes has required careful planning,
strong governance and close collaboration
between TBS and Ephraim Forest District Council.
The success of TBS,
together with the continued improvement of these services,
is a credit to everyone that's enrolled.
On behalf of the board,
I would like to thank the staff of TBS and EFDC,
the management team and my fellow board members
for the continued commitment, professionalism and support.
I hope you will join me in recognising this evening
the dedication of our frontline teams
who continue to deliver these essential services
in all weather conditions,
particularly during the recent period of extreme heat.
I will now hand over to the officers
introduced by Councillor Balcom,
who will take them through the presentation
and provide a more detailed update
on the performance of TVS and EFDC waste operations.
And thank you for allowing me to speak, Chairman.
Thank you, Councillor Lucas.
Okay, so I'll pass over to Rosa.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:12:08
Oh, James.
Rosa Tanfield - 0:12:10
James Warwick - 0:12:14
Thank you, good evening.
I just wanted to set some overall context
for the service delivery and then I hand over to Rosa and then you'd be back to
me for a couple of slides and then Amelia and then Rosa. But I just
wanted as I've said the overall context in the scale of the service we're
talking about. As you're aware Eppin Forest District is a mixture of urban
and rural with major transport corridors such as the M11 and M25 running through the district,
which can create operational pressures and impact service resilience on a day -to -day basis.
In terms of the scale, the district has around 137 ,000 residents and 58 ,000 households across
339 square kilometres. Each year the services service manages just under
50 ,000 tonnes of household waste. That includes 22 ,800 tonnes of refuge, 11 ,600
tonnes of dry recycling and almost 15 ,000 tonnes of food and garden waste. The key
point is that this is a large, varied and operationally complex district, but it's also
performing strongly, as you've heard from members, and we have a current recycling rate
of 54%. I will now hand over to Rosa.
Rosa Tanfield - 0:13:59
Okay, so thank you. Forgive me if you know some of this, but I did want to just talk
a little bit about TVS and why we're here and how we've been established.
So TVS launched in November 2024.
That was after the end of a privately contracted out service to a waste company.
And TVS is wholly owned by the council.
It has 100 % of the shares of TVS.
And as a result, the two organisations are intrinsically aligned to each other.
And that includes the values and the culture that we have.
And for the first year, we operated from a temporary site
on North Weald Airfield from Porter Cabins,
whilst the new operations hub was being built.
The new operations hub opened in November 26th,
so a year later, and we're very grateful
that we're not still in those Porter Cabins
in the last week or so, I can tell you.
So you'll be familiar with the type of work that we do.
We've already touched on that a lot.
It's mainly all of your frontline services
that keep our communities clean and safe.
So waste collection, but also through to street cleansing
and dealing with fly tips.
Now,
under the governance agreements between the council and TVS,
a business plan must be adopted each year.
At its meeting on the 24th of November,
cabinet approved the adoption of the TVS business plan,
and that followed scrutiny by the overview
and Scrutiny Committee.
That business plan approved looks towards March 2028,
so it's not a year -long business plan,
it goes beyond that, and that aligns to the EFDC's
medium -term financial plan,
and obviously local government reform as well.
Our ambition within that business plan
is to build on the strong foundation
that you've already heard about,
and position TVS as a company of choice
as we progress through local government reform.
And the business plan itself is underpinned
by a very detailed action plan that guides our priorities,
our operation improvements and our growth opportunities.
That business plan and that action plan is focused
on four key priority areas.
High quality services, which is fundamental
for what we need to be delivering.
Value for money.
Statutory obligations and making sure that the council
in particular is meeting its statutory obligations
through our work.
And lastly, it's about our people, so our staff,
but also our communities and our customers,
and making sure that we're investing in our staff
and contributing to our local communities.
And hopefully, the next few slides,
you'll start to see how some of those priorities
are being delivered.
Now, first, I'm just going to talk about
our street cleansing operations.
We've got an amazing team of street cleansing operatives
that work really hard all year round,
in all weathers, as has been mentioned,
and that they are at the heart of many of your communities.
You've probably met some of them out and about.
Now our street cleaning team are the unsung heroes.
They're emptying dog bins, they're manually and mechanically sweeping the streets,
removing weeds and leafle, delivering bins, collecting bulky waste,
and removing dead animals from the highway and much more.
In the last six months, we've seen investment from EFDC in one additional sweeper
and the team have also been integral in reviewing the fly tipping process and more.
So in addition to our core work, in the last six months one of our focus areas has been dealing with high risk litter picking sites.
So these are particularly roads that are high speed or very difficult to access verges to clear litter from.
One of those sites that we've actioned in the last six months is Crooked Mile.
We attended twice in that last six months under road closure, so in March and November.
And we've got further sites including Dowding Way and sites in Chigwell, Royden, Shearing
and Waltham Abbey in the next months or so.
TVS have also invested into the service as well.
We've got two weed rippers, which I'll talk about in a moment.
and we've also bought additional leaf blowers as well.
From a community perspective,
TVS have also worked with St. Clair's Hospice
to help with the Christmas tree collections,
and we attended our first MAD day,
our Make a Difference Day,
and we've been continuing to attend those,
and we've got another one on Thursday this week.
So I'm gonna just talk to you briefly
about two key areas of work
that this particular team has been focused on
improving efficiency, effectiveness and standards.
So previously weed management has been quite a topic
of conversation in this chamber.
As you will be aware, weed management is actually a function
of Essex County Council as the highways authority
but they've delegated that to EFDC with a budget.
In 2025, so last year weed spraying was commissioned
only once and that was due to the budget
that was provided by Essex County Council and that was all that could be afforded at
the time.
TVS and EFDC have worked collaboratively to look to improve that because we recognised
that last year weed management was slightly out of control.
So what we wanted to do was improve efficiency and make our streets look better for 2026
and beyond.
So EFDC have committed to additional budget and have been able to undertake and commission
a contractor to undertake two weed sprays this year.
The first spray is being completed as we meet this evening and is much earlier than it was
last year and there is another spray scheduled in autumn.
TVS have been working really closely with that contractor and we have followed up every
route that they have sprayed 10 days later to make sure that the dead weeds and any detritus
is removed so that it's a nice clean surface to deter weed growth. In addition, as I said,
TVS have also purchased two weed rippers. That really improves our efficiency in terms
of clearing the edges along fence lines and footpath edges and also removes the need for
very slow manual hoeing. We've also invested in additional leaf blowers which is helping
that whole process of keeping our streets clean.
Now onto fly tipping.
As you may be aware, the process for dealing with fly tips across the district requires
involvement of a number of different teams across the council as well as TVS.
You will have heard in previous meetings that there has been a review and a redesign of
that process.
So in remapping that process with colleagues at EFDC, we have been able to make sure that
the reports of any fly tips go to the right team
as quickly as possible using the data and insight
that we've learned through that project.
The majority of the reports now go directly to TVS
from the council's website and the contact centre,
and that's reduced the turnaround time
from report to clearance from 6 .5 days to 3 .5 days.
And in addition to that, I'm really pleased to report
that TVS have been clearing those reported fly tips
around 99 percent within SLA, and the SLA is 48 hours.
So I think that's a really impressive step in improvement
in that review process.
And that's now creating us a really great foundation to
continue that work going forward with the council and EFDC,
building up the relationships between the enforcement officers
and our own teams, sharing knowledge and intelligence,
and start looking at how we can continue to try and reduce that challenge of flight tipping
across the district.
I'm going to hand over to James to talk a bit about collections.
Thank you.
James Warwick - 0:22:13
The top half of this slide just provides an illustration of how waste is organised across
the county.
The first one is the Essex Waste Partnership,
which is County Council and all Essex local authorities,
which develops the waste strategy for Essex
and sets the targets and ambitions of that.
The next, then it goes into the Waste Disposal Authority,
which is County Council,
then us as the Waste Collection Authority,
and then Terra Verde Service Limited
that carry out our operations of curbside collection
and street cleansing.
Also, the slide illustrates our core collection service,
how it operates with fortnightly black litter bin
and fortnightly drone cycling,
fortnightly garden waste with the yearly charge
and then weekly food waste and batteries and textiles.
So, um, TVS carry out around 470 ,000 individual collections every month, and crews are covering
significant distances, on average, around 30 miles a walk each day.
Performance remains incredibly strong since TVS has been in operation with a 99 .85 percent
completion rate for scheduled collections in the most recent quarter.
So this demonstrates that there's a highly structured and reliable operating model designed
to balance efficiency with convenience for residents while maintaining high levels of
performance.
I'd like to just summarise some of the key service changes that has been mentioned already.
The first major service change was in June 2025,
where the blue -lidded bin was rolled out to replace
the recycling sacks.
So this change stopped the use of single -use plastic
recycling sacks and supports a more consistent
wheel bin model for residents.
Then in January 2026, TVS carried out route
optimization for refuge in recycling, balancing routes,
distribution across all the days,
but without having any adverse impact upon residents.
And they managed to provide efficiency
of reducing one crew.
In March, 2026, we introduced the food
and garden waste separation and the garden waste collection
subscription. And finally in June and July of 2026 we're implementing phase two and three
of the food waste rollout which is being now extended to flats. These have all been well
planned and carefully staged changes. They've been sequenced to manage operational risk,
support residents through the transition and build towards a more sustainable and efficient
collection service.
So the next couple of slides, I just wanted to go back to the blue bin rollout because
conscious that I took various reports through Scrutin 8 and to cabinet to get approval,
but I kind of wanted to give an update on how that rollout went
and then kind of what lessons we learned from this.
So this rollout began in June 2025.
It was a major operational and communications exercise.
In practical terms, it replaced around 9 million plastic recycling sacks each year,
which is a significant environment and service improvement.
It generated financial savings of around 405 ,000 from no longer needed to provide the recycling
sacks and around 30 ,000 from no longer needing the blue boxes for glass.
The delivery programme itself was substantial.
we delivered 47 ,307 bins across the district and our delivery success rate
was 96 .43 % which demonstrates strong project delivery across the district. But
as I've said there were important lessons learned from this. We also managed
considerable resident inquiries around varying bin sizes,
exemptions, individual circumstances needed
to be actively managed.
And this kind of one of the lessons was that we need
to be reinforced clear consistent messaging
to residents of not only what the change is
but why we are doing the changes and obviously there was certain
apprehension around would the wheel bin be big enough.
So obviously we had larger bins available and people could have
more than one bin.
So this meant we had to align communication across colleagues,
work closely with customer contact and operational teams to
resolve issues quickly and consistently.
So to summarise, the Blue Bin rollout delivered a tangible
environmental, financial, and operational benefit,
but also has provided useful lessons for the future changes.
I think also I just wanted to highlight that when we took
the original reports through scrutiny.
I think some of the concerns were that
residents wouldn't cope with another wheel bin.
But I think this demonstrates that
we only granted two exceptions.
We only had 18 residents in total through the rollout
apply for an exemption to having a blue lidded wheel bin
for recycling and only two of those met the criteria and were granted. As you can see
we had 266 requests for a larger wheel bin, 549 requests actually wanted a second wheel
bin for recycling and then 77 requests for a smaller wheel bin for recycling. I will
Amelia Hoke - 0:29:44
I'm just wondering when we can ask questions.
We'll get through the report and then we'll go back to questions afterwards.
Thank you.
Good evening, members.
I will now be taking you through the food and garden waste separation, which you will
be aware was introduced as part of the government's simple recycling requirements, which aims
to essentially standardise waste collections across the country.
As a council, as you know, we've gone through a major change where we're collecting food
waste separately and garden waste is now provided through a subscription service.
One of the key things that we focused on with this rollout was continuous improvement.
After the Blue Bin rollout, we reviewed what went well and where we could strengthen our
approach and as a result of that we placed an even greater emphasis on
project governance and stakeholder engagement. So we held multiple briefings
for members, town and parish councils and to customer contact to ensure everyone
involved understood both the purpose and delivery and the delivery of the changes.
services. From a governance perspective, we established a project board which was supported
by subgroups and held frequent meetings across services like customer contact, corporate
communications and our project management office together with TVS, of course. Alongside
this, we've had a strong communication strategy with regular social media updates and frequently
ask questions FAQs which were updated frequently to be as relevant as we can.
We also funded a customer contact officer to specifically deal with waste
calls and inquiries. And it's fair to say that we're seeing good results. We've
collected over 1 ,000 tonnes of food waste already and have 23 ,000 garden waste
subscriptions with several hundred residents also opting for a second
subscription and that shows that the service we provide is really valued by
residents. There is a potential concession scheme for garden waste
which will go to cabinet in July with implementation planned for the next
financial year if that's approved as well.
Moving on to the food waste
rollout project itself. We split this project into phases.
So phase one focused on properties with individual
gardens and that's now complete. We delivered
curbside caddies and kitchen caddies as well as information packs
to individual properties which was over 49 ,000
households and we achieved a strong first -time delivery success rate of 94 .3 percent and
any missed deliveries have since been resolved. Phases two and three focus on flats, which
is about delivering kitchen caddies and information leaflets to individual properties and also
ensuring that there are communal food waste bins at the sites. Phase two was focused around
flats that already had an existing food waste service and that was completed
successfully very recently. Phase 3 focuses on flats that currently do not
have a food waste service and that will start from tomorrow with completion at
the end of August. We have additionally issued letters to residents and all the
managing agents to ensure that everyone is aware of the changes. So by the end of
In August, all residents of Epping Forest will have the means to recycle food waste separately.
Thank you.
Next slide.
We also wanted to talk a bit about where our waste material goes once it's collected because
essentially what we collect is either reused, recycled or used to generate energy.
Our residual waste from the black refuse bins is sent for incineration in Braintree and
that generates electricity from waste that cannot be recycled. Dry
recycling from our blue bins as well as specialist materials like batteries and
bulky items, they're sent to a range of recycling processes and used to produce
useful materials that can be reused or repurposed. Our garden waste is processed
locally in Onge which produces compost and soil improver through aerobic
decomposition and food waste is treated through anaerobic decomposition in
London where it generates biogas for energy and produces digestate which can
be used in agriculture. And this is why separating waste at source is so
important because each material is processed differently so with the way we
collect we can recycle waste in the most efficient and sustainable way. Thank you.
Okay, back to me now for the final section.
Rosa Tanfield - 0:35:19
So you've heard a lot about what we've accomplished in the last six months, but none of that can
be achieved properly, safely, and to the right standard without having our staff at the core
of everything that we do.
So I'd just like to spend a couple of minutes just talking about what that means in practise
within TVS.
So our workforce is the backbone of TVS, and we've focused on stability, wellbeing, and
development from day one.
Engagement with the GMB union is strong and we meet regularly with them.
We have a health and safety and motor risk meeting where we have representatives from
the workforce present within those meetings with the opportunity to feed in to our work
and our strategies.
And we take health and safety really seriously and it's a key focus in our day -to -day operations
and performance on that is regularly reported to the board and supported by regular audits
as well. We're also continuing to develop our staff, particularly their well -being,
wherever possible, ensuring that good performance is recognised and we've begun to develop opportunities
for our staff and developing career pathways as well.
And finally, Councillor Balcombe took a little bit of this away from me in his introduction,
but I'd also like to mention the recognition that our workforce is receiving outside of
organisation. From Barry Ruderford and Jamie Hardy who are street operatives receiving
a special certificate of recognition from Loughton town council to being shortlisted
for collection crew of the year and to the award for both EFDC and TVS for best recycling
and waste service improvement. The award noting the marked improvements in service since the
LACCO model has been set up.
And some of the figures on that slide in your PAC demonstrate
the impact that we've made in the very first year
of operation.
So what next?
Well, operations will continue, and it has been challenging,
as I've mentioned, particularly with the heat in the last week,
but we'll continue to look after and protect our staff to make
sure that they are well looked after and able to continue
to deliver those services.
We will continue to deliver the business plan,
as I've outlined earlier.
And in the next few weeks,
members are invited to come to the operations hub
to see how we work and understand a little bit more
about the detail behind the scenes
of how we manage our service.
The first session is on Monday,
so if you haven't signed up, please drop an email to Emilia
and we'll look forward to welcoming you.
I will be back here again in January
to provide an update on that business plan,
and I'll be supporting EFDC colleagues
in providing updates and reviews
of the waste collection service and fly tipping process as well.
So thank you for your time.
I think we'll open up for questions.
Thank you all for the report.
It's very useful and really good to see good work across the board, I think, particularly
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:38:14
the fly tipping actually.
I've noticed and residents have mentioned to me how much quicker it's being cleared
up.
So that's great news.
I'll now pass over to members of the committee.
Councillor Rackham.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, TVS.
Cllr Sheree Rackham - 0:38:28
I think you're doing an amazing job.
Cllr Tom Bromwich - 0:38:30
Just got a couple of questions.
Obviously, the brown caddies are new,
Cllr Chris Pond - 0:38:36
and we are going to come across issues.
Cllr Sheree Rackham - 0:38:40
I wondered how many damaged or replaced caddies
we've had in the period since we started rolling it out.
And my other question is about fly tipping, which is, I know,
is a bugbear for Ray and probably other councillors.
You're quite right in the fact that fly tipping
is being collected a lot quicker than it has been.
I want to ask, because we have, especially in my ward
and the ward that I live in, we have got hot spots
where the same residents are always either fly -tipping,
and I noticed that they're now starting to put their green
waste in the black bins.
I wondered if there's anything we could put in place,
And I do mention CCTV here because I would like to see it in certain places and I can
give you the hot spots that I know of.
But I wondered if there's anything we can do with these residents to sort of make it
quite clear that we would like them to adhere to what a lot of other residents are doing,
which is placing their rubbish in the correct bins and also not fly tipping.
Thank you.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:39:52
Amelia Hoke - 0:39:58
Thank you, chair. Thank you, Councillor Rackham, for the question. The first question around
the CAD is I will have to get back to you on the data for that one. With regards to
fly tipping, so TVS's responsibility is with the waste, the fly tipping collection, but
our environmental enforcement team deal with the investigation and I think with issues
like this that sort of investigation and enforcement is quite important to send the message to
residents that we are actively looking into this.
What I will have a look at, if you don't mind just confirming those hotspot areas, I will
raise it with our environmental enforcement team and see if we can take any sort of measures
particularly at those sites.
And with regards to just education
and letting residents know,
we are looking at creating a bit of a role
for an educational officer within waste.
And this will be one of our priorities.
So we will keep you updated.
Thank you.
Thank you, chair.
Thank you, Amelia.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:41:07
Thank you, Councillor Dadd.
Thank you, chairman.
Cllr Mary Dadd - 0:41:15
First of all, congratulations on the work that you've done.
And it has been commented by so many residents the improvement in the service and also how
polite the operatives are as well.
I've got a couple of questions.
One of them relates to the Blue Bin rollout.
You've got 18 residents who applied for exemption, but only two were given.
And I'm wondering if you could explain why those others did not meet the criteria and
what has happened about that.
And I may have a follow -up on that.
And then there's one very short question afterwards.
Thank you.
James Warwick - 0:41:59
I don't have that information to hand because it was a year ago.
You need to appreciate.
They wouldn't have met the criteria set out in the exceptions policy.
So they most likely, simply put, that they would have had room
for an extra for another will bend and that.
But there may be some specific, but I can look into that
and get back to you.
My reason was asking, there's one I know in Onga who didn't
Cllr Mary Dadd - 0:42:32
have the room, and at the time she was told she wasn't allowed
the exception, but perhaps we can talk about that one.
You probably know who I'm talking about.
And the other one is just out of curiosity,
the garden waste composting in Onge.
Are we allowed to know where it is and how it's looked after?
Thank you.
Rosa Tanfield - 0:43:00
So that will be the contract that Essex County Council have commissioned,
so we deliver that material to them.
I can find you out some more information if you'd like and share that with you. Yeah
Thank You councillor Bassett
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:43:16
Cllr Richard Bassett - 0:43:18
Thank you. Yeah. Congratulations everything you've done. It's been one of the good success storeys
Question though not about what you're doing now
when winter comes
We have all sorts of problems with pathways and I can remember we used to
where crews couldn't get out because of icy conditions.
They used to come out and help with road clearance
and pavements and that and doing a bit of gritting on the side.
Will we still be doing that?
So our two teams, our collection teams and our street cleansing
Amelia Hoke - 0:43:54
teams, our first priority will always be their core services
and doing whatever we can to ensure that they can do that
service but as safely as possible.
Rosa Tanfield - 0:44:01
In any situation, whether it's a business continuity situation such as weather or any
other issues, we'll always look to redeploy staff to deliver whatever services we need.
If it's services that TVS aren't able to do, we'll work with EFDC to make sure they're
services that are required by the council as well because we are so intrinsically linked.
We'll always look at what's possible, what can we do safely that meets the needs of the
Council and the communities.
Thank you, Councillor Heather.
Thank you, Chairman.
Yes, and well done, TVS.
Cllr Steven Heather - 0:44:39
Where do we get rid of stuff?
One lot goes to produce electricity,
another lot goes to produce gas,
and another lot goes to produce compost,
which I imagine are all money -making activities.
Do we get any recompense for actually supplying
James Warwick - 0:45:06
their raw product? So the disposal sits with County so so for all our dry
recycling that's our own contract that we've got with BIFA, their
MRF that's in Edmonton so as part of that we do get recycling credits for
anything they they sell. We also do get recycling credits from Essex County Council so yeah we do
we do get some return on everything. Thank you. Any more? Councillor George.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:45:44
Cllr Mandy George - 0:45:47
Hi good evening and well done to TBS and even the workers. I know they work really hard
when they're collecting the bins and they're sweating. So one question for them, we've held
and safety with the hot weather and there's more anticipated, how do they keep hydrated?
I know that I've gone out there and offered bottles of water and then those people that
have come and cleared all the weeds away from the alleyways where I live, done a great job
of going out there with another bottle of water.
But if I'm not around when they turn up, how do they keep hydrated?
That's for them.
And then the other one, is this make a difference day?
Could you tell me a bit more about that, please?
What does that entail and what that is all about?
Thank you.
Rosa Tanfield - 0:46:29
Okay, I'm going to answer the first question and I'm going to hand over to Keith on the
Make a Difference Day.
In terms of the safety for our staff, in particular in heated weather, we make sure that they've
got appropriate uniform.
That's first and foremost and we have like a summer edition uniform that's slightly lighter,
a heavier, more woollen jersey type winter uniform.
They supplied with caps to make sure they've got sun protection.
And our advice, which we provide every year as part of our toolbox talks,
is about various different measures, including trying to fade shade wherever possible,
to have lots of frequent breaks as much as possible.
And then within the cabs they can take their rucksacks so they can have their lunch and their bottles of water, etc., and other liquids.
We always recommend freezing them as well because then they last a bit longer during the day
In addition to that we also provide them on the PDA which is within the cab. There's an app which shows them
Hydration locations where they can fill up their bottles as well
And we are just about to receive I think in the next week or so load of TVS
Bottles that we're going to be issuing to all of our staff as well so they can use those
reusable bottles, either to fill up when they're at the depot or at home ready for work as
well. In addition to that, because of the extreme weather last week, our supervisors
were going out with bottles of water as well in addition, doing lots of crew cheques. We
do crew cheques every day. We visit each crew at least once a week, but in these exceptional
circumstances we'll visit them more. We talk to our crews and our drivers throughout the
whole day, so we're always checking in with them, making sure how they're doing.
And if you come along to the operations, have another plug for the training session, you'll
get to see how we monitor our crews as well, so we can see where they are in terms of location
and see how they're doing, so if they're a little bit slower or ahead of themselves,
we can then make a call and cheque in and see how they're doing.
So there's lots of measures and yeah, they're absolutely our first and highest priority
because if we're not looking after our staff, we're not delivering services.
So in terms of the Make a Difference Day, I'm going to hand over to Keith.
Thank you, Councillor.
James Warwick - 0:48:48
Keith Bowman - 0:48:50
So the Make a Difference Days are a part of the tenant engagement strategy that we have underway.
They're part of a programme of activities that we go through,
and they are intended to enable us to contact the tenants there, speak to them about what it's like to live there,
what they'd like to see different, and generally get them engaged in the council's processes,
which is an obligation that we have. The make a difference element of it is
primarily developed by TVS and Qalis to be honest who come along and genuinely
leave the area in a better state than we than we rocked up to. So the most recent
one was at Birchview just down the road. We got two and a half of the caged
waggons full of rubbish that was taken away. The weed ripper made an appearance
I love the weed ripper, it's a clever piece of kit.
And Qualis were also there clearing up, cleaning,
and indeed the Debbie, your scheduler,
was there taking reports of repairs on site.
And we had well over half of the tenants
had conversations with members of staff
about what it's like to be there,
what their particular issues were and things like that.
So as I say, it's part of a programme
of tenant engagement activities.
The next one is indeed on Thursday
where we're going to Roydon in the morning and then Shelley in the afternoon.
We've discovered we can do this double header.
It's a good use of people's times and it enables our partners to schedule their work around it and things like that.
We aim for areas where we perhaps haven't had a great deal of engagement with residents in the past,
so perhaps not the obvious ones, which is why I went to Birchview,
Roydon, we haven't had a lot of contact there, but we've got a significant number of tenants,
And of course, Shelley, we haven't really done anything over there for a while, I think.
So that's what they are.
Thank you.
Can I just go to Councillor Lucas online?
I think she wanted to come in on one of the points.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:50:43
Thank you.
Cllr Jodie Lucas - 0:50:48
And it was just on when somebody mentioned the health and safety.
I can't not come in on health and safety as that is my profession.
So as chair of the board, I can assure you that health and safety is something that we
that we talk about often.
And it actually also reminded me,
I was on one of the ward walk arounds last week
with the grounds maintenance and TBS,
which I just wanted to take the opportunity
to remind board members to try and attend those.
They are arranged by the officers.
And we was actually carrying out our walk around
on quite a hot day last week.
And one of the TBS supervisors was passing
in on one of the small shops and kindly offered all of us
a nice drink of water, which was really kind
because he could see that we was also out working,
checking all of the areas.
And it just reminded me, you know,
I was really pleased to see that the supervisor was out
making sure that everybody was keeping well hydrated.
And just to remind everybody that TVS does now join
those board site visits that we were previously
just invited to via Qualis grounds maintenance but TVS is also joining. It's a good opportunity
for members that are interested in waste issues as well to join on those. Thank you.
Thank you Councillor Lucas. Councillor George wanted to come back.
Cllr Mandy George - 0:52:18
Thank you. Thank you Councillor Lucas. Thank you. Sorry I forgot your name. Keith and Rosa.
I picked up that they can dispose of goods and you're collecting goods.
So is that a roll out to every resident within EFDC or is it just purely for tenants?
And if it's just purely for tenants, how has this been financed? Thank you.
Keith Bowman - 0:52:46
It is purely for tenants. I mean it's organised through the people who are paid for through the HRA, etc.
The disposal of things that have been fly -tipped in the area.
We have managed to take a few things away that were left on landings, for example, and
Qualis have been able to dispose of them just through their usual disposal methods.
For example, if they're clearing voids and things like that, they have ways of getting
rid of it.
So I have a small budget for tenant engagement, and if we do need anything in terms of maybe
giveaways, water we're going to take for this week for example, I can use the
budget for that. But through the goodwill and the clever scheduling of our
partners we haven't had to put out any additional money to support the events.
They are specifically targeted at tenants and I know some people think
that's maybe a bit not inclusive, however the purpose of the day is to engage with
tenants, we've got an obligation to amplify the voice of tenants and to bring the voice
of tenants to the fore in terms of our policy and process development and this is a way
of finding those tenants who will engage with us and enable us to do that.
Councillor CUNNINGHAM. Thank you.
Councillor Small.
Councillor Small. Thank you, Chair. I'd also like to congratulate
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:54:03
Cllr James Small - 0:54:05
you on your achievements and performance. A question on the food waste roll -out to flats.
In some parts of the district, including my particular part of Buckhurst Hill, we're getting
a problem with rats. Looking at the image of the communal food waste bin, that looks
like quite a flimsy lid. So how rat -proof might it be? That's my question.
Yes, the communal waste bins for flats, yes. Thank you, Councillor Small, for the question.
Amelia Hoke - 0:54:36
They are standard wheelie sort of bins that we have as communal food -based bins.
I will take that feedback back and just look into it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Any other questions from committee members?
No.
Okay.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:54:54
So I have got Councillor Murray online.
Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:55:00
Thank you, Chairman.
and I'm not a member of your committee,
I wanted to join your meeting for all three items.
This first item, like other members,
I've followed it very carefully
from the start and progress.
I do want to just make a couple, a few comments
and then I will finish off with the question of the effort.
I thought it was great that we had the slide
as part of the agenda.
We don't always have that
among the areas within the council
and I thought that was maybe much more useful
than we could study the slides at our leisure
and have them in advance.
And like others, congratulations on the challenges.
I also want to feedback the only really negative comment
I'm still continuing to receive,
and that is about the quality of the ground paddock
that's put outside.
I do know that they're national,
and I do know that we looked at them carefully
and other council members,
because I've asked the same questions
as other members have of officers,
but I just want to report that I am still continuing
to make getting comments about how handouts are broken,
how links are coming off.
So they don't seem particularly scary to me,
but that's the only negative I'll get in.
I then wanted to make a couple of comments on page 25, which is the one on workforce relations.
And people who sometimes remember some of my comments would know that this slide would make me extraordinarily happy.
I want to repeat again that I think it's to TVS's credit that they recognise a trade union.
I think in this kind of work it's absolutely essential that a trade union is recognised.
And I draw members to the words that are actually in that first paragraph about union engagement.
It's obviously union recognition and union representation at its very best because it's a positive for the workforce but it's also a positive for the company.
And I know we've got some QALYST people sitting in the chamber. I can't actually see them because I'm online.
but I will just say I still think it's a pity that qualities have actually taken
a deliberate decision not to recognise trade unions when TVA's have to the
benefit of the workforce and to the benefit of the company so if I go to my
question and it's a question that I do have some concern about it's on page 16
and I read it carefully, I read all the slides very carefully, and on page 16, which is the
weed management, it was made very clear that he was on priority routes. A little bit of
what I've heard tonight does suggest that some residential routes are being done, but
if I look around the ward I represent and also the ward I live in, I'm just slightly,
literally 10 yards away from my ward boundary.
So I live in Buckhurst Hill East and Whitebridge,
that represent road in ward,
but I can literally throw a stone in my house
and hit a road in ward house.
The residential roads are in the Portland state
as regards weeds.
So I really, my question is really twofold.
Are we doing residential roads now,
or is it just priority routes? And if we are beginning to do residential routes, is there
some kind of schedule where if I wanted to I could see let's take Colston Road in my ward, I would know
when Colston Road was going to be done, if I know Avondale Drive is going to be done,
and so on. So that's the two questions. Are we now doing residential roads and is there a schedule of
roads for when particular roads are going to be reached. Thank you Chairman.
So thank you for your comments Councillor Murray and your questions. So in terms of weed management
Rosa Tanfield - 0:59:29
the weed spraying is undertaken on priority routes and that's as I said followed up by a mechanical
road sweeper 10 days later. That doesn't impact on residential areas such as you've described there.
Residential areas are tackled by a street cleansing team,
either with the weed ripper or manual hoeing.
And in the main it's manual hoeing
because we only have two weed rippers.
And we're trying to prioritise those as best we can.
We will have a formal schedule
in that we do attend residential streets on a routine basis.
So if you do want to get in touch with me
and find out when we're due next in your area,
then I'm happy to share that with you.
If I could just quickly come back, Chairman.
That's good to hear, but I would say that's the,
Cllr Stephen Murray - 1:00:19
and I realise it's a highways function
that they give us a small amount of money for,
but I would say that's the one thing
that is really letting the site down at the moment.
You walk down any residential road in Loughton
and I walk down and the week of them in the gutters
are, it's just extremely core.
I won't say anymore.
Thank you, Councillor Murray. Okay, so have we got any more comments from members? No.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:00:50
So that's all on this report. If we could note that report and then thanks a lot for
that. It's really useful. Okay, so item number nine is the grounds maintenance operational

9 Grounds Maintenance: Operational Performance

performance updates. So I'll go to Councillor Balcombe to introduce that.
Cllr Raymond Balcombe - 1:01:07
Thank you again, Chair. This item is the latest update from EFDC and QALYST on the performance
of the ground maintenance service that QALYST provide across the district.
I'd just like to say before I introduce who's going to do it, since the transfer we have seen
a clear improvement in the service performance and customer satisfaction, delivering a more
efficient, reliable and resident focused service. The focus has been on continuous improvement,
stronger partnership working between QPS and EFDC and creating a service that continues to meet the
residents' needs more effectively.
Keith Bowman, who has just been talking, the service manager for housing strategy, performance
and client management, I think I've got that right, will give an EFDC update and Maria
Sharples, head of operations at QALIS, will take you through the latest satisfaction and
performance of the grounds maintenance service.
Thank you, Councillor.
Thank you, Chairman.
Keith Bowman - 1:02:11
We weren't proposing putting our slides up, there's not a great deal of them, but we're going to walk them through between us.
I've got the first couple of slides before Maria takes over.
So the first thing to report from me at EFDC is that the grounds maintenance responsibility has transferred over to the Housing and Property Directorate,
and it now falls under myself in terms of the EFDC role in grounds maintenance.
Since I took that on at the beginning of the financial year, we've also recruited a Housing
Grounds Maintenance Contract Officer, which I know some of you have met, and indeed if
you've been out and about on any of the inspections, you will have met Craig.
He's undertaking those alongside Qualis.
And if you haven't been on it, yes, I do encourage you to go and get involved in the inspections.
The partnership working between ourselves and QALYIS continues
to be strong and we're continuing to build on that
relationship, so we are diarizing regular meetings.
Maria and I have been talking about some core group meetings
around today, so we're looking for the opportunities to
continue to improve.
One of the major pieces of work is getting to grips with the
database, it's run through a package called Confirm, and
we're making sure that that's being maintained and managed and
kept up to date because it forms the core of the contract between ourselves and QALIS.
And there's a lot of work to be done in there just to make sure that the, even simple things
like the mapping is being maintained, whether we're taking on new areas of land, for example,
or whether there's any disposals of land, being able to make sure that's managed because
that drives the work of QALIS.
The grounds maintenance officer is producing reports following each one of the inspections
and is reporting back internally and indeed to QALIS in terms of
how well the standards are being met,
which by and large is very good.
And the other piece of work that we've got on the go at the
moment is we're starting a programme to look at how we're
calculating service charges and making sure that we have the
flow of information, certainly for council tenants and lessees,
making sure that the money that we're paying to QALIS matches
what we're actually recovering through service charges.
We need to investigate that and audit that.
That's not a small piece of work by any means.
That's quite a significant piece of work.
And for better or for worse, I've decided that we will open
that can of worms and start investigating that.
The other thing I wanted to just cover before we move on to
Maria's slides is the latest tenant satisfaction measures.
These were published formally last week.
I know they came to communities,
scrutiny committee earlier this month as well.
And a couple of the headlines out of there were
that three -quarters of the tenants are satisfied with
the overall service provided by the council via
our colleagues in Qualis by and large,
which is an increase on previous years and actually
is above the peer group that we use,
the benchmarking peer group we use.
Two out of three of the tenants are satisfied that the communal areas are kept clean and
well maintained.
That's a statutory measure that we have to do, so that does include cleaning as well
as grounds maintenance.
We do know that a number of our tenants don't realise exactly which areas we're responsible
for.
When we talked about Birchview, for example, there's an area out front which is a large
grassed area.
We don't actually look after that, which is a shame.
It's run by Corporation of London.
So they're perhaps not measuring us on exactly
a like -for -like measure.
But nevertheless, we've increased the satisfaction
with the communal areas by nearly 4 % from last year.
So things are definitely on the way up between our grounds
maintenance and our cleaning efforts and things like that.
We'll be carrying out tenant satisfaction measures again
this year.
It's a statutory obligation.
And again, we'll be carrying out measures in October
and February.
and we'll report back to Community Scrutiny Committee on the outcomes of each of those surveys
and we'll incorporate any of the relevant measures within the reporting on grounds maintenance to this committee.
I'm going to hand over to Maria now, if I may.
Thank you.
Maria Sharple - 1:06:34
Thanks Keith.
So hopefully you've all had an opportunity to have a look at the slides
and what I wanted to do was just talk to you a bit about performance
So some of you would have heard some of this before, but not everybody.
So when Corliss started looking after the grounds maintenance for EFDC, one of the first
things we did was carry out a customer satisfaction survey, because it wasn't something that had
happened previously.
So we did that quite early on.
I think it was nearly four years ago now, actually, we took over the grounds maintenance.
So at that point, customer satisfaction was standing at 44 percent overall.
And just to put some context on it, we only ask the HRA tenants and leaseholders because
that's the data that we hold and that's where we deliver our services.
So when we talk about customers, it's not the whole of the district, it is for the HRA.
And currently, as we closed at the end of March, customer satisfaction was at 62 percent.
So we've done lots of work to get there.
The stretch now will be to keep going, so every year to add on a few more percent to
make sure that we get into those early 70s, so that's where we want to be.
It mirrors the TSM.
The difference between the satisfaction that we do, it's very specific.
So we ask very specific questions about how those customers feel about the certain services
we provide.
So there's been some real jumps.
So we've gone from 68 % to 80 % in hedge cutting and 58 % to 80 % in grass and 55 % to 70 % in
hedge cutting.
So that's quite significant.
The trend is really positive.
It's very visible.
Hopefully, you know, you will all have an opportunity to go
out with both TVS and QPS and do those joint inspections.
They're really important for us to also get information from
members and local community in terms of where we can improve.
So your voices are really important to us.
So we do really champion anybody that can.
Please attend those.
You should all get your invoices in fights from Chris.
So we're moving in the right direction, but there's always
still more work to be done.
And one of the things that we've learned from the trends
carrying out these customer satisfaction surveys and
looking at our performance, our biggest challenge is the
quarter one performance.
So that's this time of year.
It's April to June.
What often happens is you get lots and lots of wet weather
in April and then suddenly you get this really extreme heat that we've just had and everything
around grows really quickly.
So we know that our focus now has to be looking at quarter one performance to make sure that
our overall performance is sustainable.
So that's looking at resources, that's looking at maybe doing things slightly differently,
working hours, et cetera.
So there's quite a lot more for us to do around that.
We give ourselves a visible standard, so all our operatives
know what an A, B, C, or D standard of grounds maintenance
looks like, so when we go out and do our supervisory
inspections, they get scored based on that visible standard.
So we expect everything to be at B standard or above.
And I'm actually delighted that most quarters, most months
actually last year, 100 percent of our inspections,
both joint inspections with yourselves and with QPS and EFDC met that B standard.
So that's something I'm really proud of.
And very similarly to TVS, it's really important for us to look after the people that are delivering
this service because without them, you know, we have poor performance.
So I'm really proud for the people that have delivered this.
I mean, they deliver service in extreme cold, extreme heat,
and we have to manage how we do that on their behalf.
So, you know, lots of water at the moment.
We're getting water dispensed in the office.
Again, similar to CVS disposable bottles.
We've changed their uniform recently.
We look at things like when their training's due,
so we make sure that they can do that during the heat.
So when it's hot on Thursday and Friday last week,
they came in early and they did all their training.
So it's just managing some of their schedules.
The other thing that we achieved last year was Keith talked a
little bit about Confirm, which is a system that we use to
monitor the performance and to monitor schedules.
So last year we managed to get all of the schedules
onto the system.
So now every time a grounds operative goes out and completes
a piece of work out in the local community,
They take a picture, sign it off, and that pings back to the office.
So when a customer or yourselves have an inquiry, we can look onto the system and say, they
were there on this day, and there's the picture of what they've done.
We can then audit those, so we will look at those sporadically and say, actually, yeah,
you're doing a really great job.
Or perhaps you need to go back and do X, Y, and Z and finish that piece of work.
So it just saves an awful lot of time for supervisors physically having to go out and
cheque every piece of work, which we have been doing historically.
I will leave it there.
I will open for any questions.
Thank you both for the report.
I will just encourage again members to attend those joint inspections.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:12:30
They are really useful and you can have your direct impact on the ground if you see any
issues.
But I will go to members.
Councillor Rackham.
Thank you, Chair.
Cllr Sheree Rackham - 1:12:41
again, thank you for your report. As we know, we are going to face some environmental difficulties
going forward in future years, and probably not as far forward as we thought we were going
to face. Can I ask what sort of contingency plans you're putting in place to address these
issues? So obviously, with the weather, I believe that we're going to have a lot hotter
spells than we have had in the past, and then probably with
that we will get some serious rainfall, and then in the
winter we might have worse winters than we have now.
So I wonder what you are actually looking at now to
alleviate these problems in the future.
Thank you.
Dr. Sarah Smith -McKellen It's a really good question, and it
is certainly very challenging and somewhat out of our
control of the weather.
Maria Sharple - 1:13:28
But you're absolutely right.
So one of the things we started looking at is the type
of machinery that we use, for example.
So mowers that can cut longer grass without damaging it.
So when it's wet and the grass grows quickly,
we can go out and cut it rather than having
to wait for it to dry before we can get out there.
So that's one of the things.
We look at resources and how we resource it.
So at the moment, the teams have got,
they do almost seasonal work.
So they do a different working pattern in the summer
and a different working pattern in the winter.
We've started looking at that to make sure that that is still a
viable option because actually what we do know is that we
should be not stop cutting, for example, by September.
Well, actually, September, October, November,
the weather can be glorious.
So we're now looking at when, you know,
changing what we do with the seasons to make sure that we can
continue that service effectively rather than just,
for the last 20 years, that's been the season, so that's what we're doing.
So our QALIS, so we've obviously got lots of grounds maintenance staff that have two
peed over from Epping.
Our QALIS new employees do a slightly different shift to make sure that we've got now all
of that covered, so we're just trying to slowly kind of immerge those two together just to
make sure that we do have all that covered.
But it's a really good question.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:15:03
Thank you. Councillor Dadd. Thank you, Chairman. I've always enjoyed going
Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:15:05
around the grounds maintenance side. One thing that came last time I went around, and there
have been some rather overgrown shrubs, and I know there was some discussion about not
just pruning them, but whether there should be a budget to replace some of these areas.
and I'm wondering whether that is being done now or whatever.
Thank you.
You're absolutely right.
That is something we're looking at.
Keith Bowman - 1:15:36
I haven't yet been able to allocate a budget to it.
We're working on the budgets going forward.
One of the things we need to be aware of is that any works that
we're doing on HRA land, of course,
is rechargeable via the service charges.
So we can find some initial investment.
At the moment it's been very piecemeal.
We did a piece of work down at Chapel Gate.
Yeah, Chapel.
I can't remember now.
Chapel, what's the name of the independent living scheme down there?
Thank you.
Chapel Road, where we brought some of the raised beds back to life at the rear of it.
And also we did a planting project at Buckhurst Court.
Again, we were able to find a small amount of money to fund that, but it was done with residents and with staff who were giving some time into it.
But we do need to look at whether there's a possibility of creating a budget for a longer
term replanting programme that actually puts in plants that have got the longevity given
what we were talking about in terms of climate change, as well as replacing some of the old
tyre planting.
Whether we can do that in time for future years is the question at the moment.
So haven't found the solution to it yet, Councillor, but we're looking at it.
Thank you.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:16:55
Any other questions from members? If not, I'll go to Councillor Murray online.
Thank you, Chairman. I'll start with my comments and then a really important question for Mr.
Cllr Stephen Murray - 1:17:06
Bowman. My comments are a mixture of positive and negative. I always ping an email to Chris Burgess
if I see something really positive, and I just want to share the last two positives in June with
with members, as I'm sure it probably ties in
with their experiences in their ward.
Well, in fact, the first positive was to do
with Loughton in general.
The quality of the public beds that are maintained
across the town in key locations.
There's one outside Morrison's on the other side.
There's one by St. Mary's Church.
There's another one at Bradley Hill Crossroads.
I won't go through all the locations.
I've always done excellently.
the teams that work there are always committed,
always do a good job.
And I wanted to bring that to members' attention.
I'm sure they do it across the other towns.
But Louton is the one I know.
The other positive was I was walking across my ward
two Saturdays ago to attend the surgery.
And I came across, I knew they were there,
I came across three really large, bedded areas of roses,
and I thought the quality of maintenance
was so outstanding.
It was the quality that you would have expected
in a public park.
I was really, really impressed.
As a negative, and we've kind of had an explanation,
but the negative is, I have to say,
I walked the entire Oakwood Head Estate yesterday,
I think it was yesterday, Tuesday, which is a very concentrated piece of land with 500 homes,
right opposite the Quaddus Depot actually, and the condition of the grass areas was just,
well, I felt as if I wanted to get my lawnmower out and mow them all myself.
It would have been impossible to cross, but, and you partially answered that, but there's a lot of
enough to do and I have to just remind you, you are also the people we employ at Louton
Town Council for the Rogen Valley Recreation Ground and I have to say the last number of
occasions in the Rogen Valley Recreation Ground that the Melbourne look very overgrown and
overgrown to the extent that they're having the negative effects on people's use and
and enjoyment of the Rogen Valley Recreation Ground
because it is a recreation ground.
So that was my comments.
My question is, I think is a really important one.
As soon as Mr. Bowman said he was going to look
at tenants charges, recharges,
and whether they were covering costs.
More than happy with that.
But I would also like insurance
that the general fund is paying their fair share
of grounds maintenance.
because we all know that a lot of these grounds, maintenance areas, might be held under HRA
powers, but the actual visual amenity and amenity itself is shared not only by council
tenants, but is so enjoyed by under occupiers because of the right to buy.
And in some turnings, the under occupiers would be the majority, rather than tenants.
and I just wondered when was the last time we reviewed the transfer from the
general fund to the HRA to make sure they're paying their fair share of grounds
maintenance. I know you probably couldn't do it side by side but across the
district I would hope I would like to think that we know the percentage of
right to buy and that would work as a percentage of what the general fund should be paying
towards grounds maintenance. Please don't tell me that it's been picked up entirely
by the HRA because that would be completely unacceptable. So that's the question, the
area I want some answers please.
Keith Bowman - 1:21:22
Thank you, Councillor. No, it's not picked up entirely by the HRA.
If it's a Council lessee, then there will be a service charge and we are recovering
the same amount of money from them as we would be a tenant. So if it's a mixed block, for
example, mixed tenure, they're being charged the same. And indeed, actually, if they're
a freeholder of the Councillors, but they've bought off the right to buy, so they're a
maintenance in their area.
It's pretty rare with a freeholder.
Similarly, there would be a charge on them.
But no, there is a balancing carried out every year between
the HRA and the general fund to make sure that we,
that the HRA land is being paid for via the tenants and
leaseholder service charges and the rest of it is coming from
the general fund.
I don't know off the top of my head when was the last time that
was tested, but as part of the work we're doing to maintain,
confirm the database system that we use, we're looking to test
that on the way through.
Because it's not just that.
There are also other organisations that we're
carrying out works for, some for the council, for the county
council, for example, some bits for Corporation of London and
various others who own land in the area.
And I want to make sure that we're actually recovering the
right amounts of money from them.
And that's not to say that we're not.
It's just that I don't believe that it's been necessarily
tested and audited within the recent past.
and I want to start carrying out that work.
So HRA is not footing the entire bill.
Whether the split between HRA and General Fund is absolutely
right is to be questioned at the moment.
And something that we will look at?
It is something, yes, we've started that project.
We're starting to look at that now.
I'm not going to say hand on heart when I'll have finished
with it, because I suspect it's a bigger project than
I've envisaged when I've opened the door on it.
Great, thank you.
Any more comments from members?
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:23:24
No, if not, great.
Thanks a lot for the report.
Okay, so item number 10,

10 Section 62A Designation Update

we've got the section 62A designation update.
I'll pass over to Matt Winslow for that.
Thank you, Chair.
Matt Winslow - 1:23:43
So the report before the committee this evening provides the first formal update to a committee
on the section 62A designation, which affects the council as a local planning authority
in the determination of major planning applications.
The report sets out the legal background.
It details the nature of the performance related, sorry, the key performance indicator that
has been used to designate Epping Forest District Council.
The nature of that designation
and what it means for the council
and the planning inspector.
And it mentions that an action plan
will be required for submission to the government
before the council can be de -designated
under the same powers.
What isn't in the report,
and I'll try if that's okay chair,
I'll go into a little bit more detail on,
is that last week a meeting took place
with civil servants from MHCLG, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
That was attended by the leader, Councillor Williamson, as the portfolio holder, the deputy
chief executive, service manager for planning and myself. It was the first opportunity to
meet with MHCLG since the designation. They're meeting with all of the nine authorities that
designated. They explained why the council's been designated and how it can be de -designated.
Just to go into that in a little bit more detail, they have explained that the council's
appeal performance for major applications needs to improve. That is that the council
needs to lose less applications than that are appealed. It needs to do that for a period
of time. The council needs to cooperate fully with the planning inspector proactively during
the section 62A designation. The council needs to submit the action plan which I referred
to earlier which is really a self -assessment of its weaknesses as well as any third party
assessment in terms of how it can improve its decision making for major applications.
And finally, the Government has indicated that it will be looking at the Council's general
approach and attitude to determining major planning applications. I'm happy to take any
questions, Chair, but that's the nature of the update.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:26:21
Thank you for that. Over to members. Any queries at all or any points? I'll go Councillor Bassett
Cllr Richard Bassett - 1:26:31
first. One of the things I've always found an issue with the Planning Inspectorate and
the appeals process is I did the local plan for many years. I was portfolio holder for
planning, and some of the decisions we get back from when things have gone to appeal
just to me seem like they had no idea of local knowledge.
They were just looking at a piece of paper and saying, oh, well, the policy says that,
so it's fine.
I am concerned that with this Section 62A, we're going to have people again with no local
knowledge, no local idea of what the issues are in that area,
making decisions which will impact people.
And you're going, I cannot see why that decision was made
without local consultation and local understanding.
And I know we're in this position,
and I know some of our decisions have not been great,
But I am very concerned that it will become a free -for -all for decisions which bear no
resemblance to local knowledge and local understanding of the issues.
And hopefully they will take the local plan that we've spent an awful lot of time pulling
together into a reasonable state of play.
and I hope that they will use that as a firm guidance.
Thank you, yeah Matt.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:28:19
Thank you, Councillor Bassett.
Matt Winslow - 1:28:23
So just on those few points that you raised there,
just to assure the place scrutiny committee
that local consultation on these applications
still gets carried out and Epping Forest District Council
takes in terms of consulting the parishes, et cetera,
that will still just as any planning application is now,
the only difference is that instead of submitting
the comments to Epping Forest District Council,
they'll be submitted directly to the planning inspector.
And the planning inspector has indicated in the report,
they have a team of planning officers,
just like a planning authority does.
And the inspector is the person that makes the decision
instead of decisions being delegated to officers
or decisions made by the planning committees.
In the same way that the local planning authorities
have to, by law, determine planning applications
in accordance with the development plan,
unless there are material considerations
that are particularly important,
the inspector is bound by the same rule.
And I say development plan because local plan,
yes, being one thing, but any neighbourhood plan
that's been made and brought into effect will also apply for that.
Thank you. Councillor Dadd.
Thank you, Chairman.
Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:29:47
I'm really interested in the feedback that you have for this meeting.
In particular, we had a really detailed report from PAS
with quite a lot of recommendations some time ago.
going back through all the paperwork, a lot of those suggestions were recommended for
adoption and some of them didn't happen. I'm going back to report to the Cabinet date 28th
of May 2024. And some of these suggestions have not really come forward yet. And then
And we had another interim report from PAS, which said that they had actually spoken to
various counsellors, and I don't know who because the counsellors I've spoken to hadn't been
asked, and residents, et cetera.
But what my query really is, and quite rightly, Councillor Bassett is talking about the local
input and the local knowledge.
Several things.
One is we've got some outstanding recommendations
from PAS.
What is the process about how we're going to re -look at those
and decide whether we are going to actually try those out?
Secondly, the recommendations and the changes
of the planning committees was implemented over a year ago now, but we had always been
promised for proper review, and that's been pushed down the line, and I think that needs
to come back, even if it is still another interim one.
But also, in your report, and thank you very much for your report in one tonight.
I know you've been so busy, I don't know how you have time to sleep.
If I may ask a couple of questions, and they are relevant, on page 40, which is section
12, EFDC will also become a statutory consultee and must provide a substantive response to
the consultation that is initiated within a 21 -day deadline set by pins.
Can I ask what happens in there?
We're looking at submitting planning obligations as well, which is part E, and F, a list of
conditions in the event that planning permission is granted.
Where is the import or can there be some input in that 21 days from the ward councillor and
also what happens about the S106?
Because in some cases, like for example, neighbourhood plans, on the neighbourhood plan has specific
policy on infrastructure delivery programme community aspects.
Where is that put in?
That's one part.
I'll go through it all.
I know you're making notes, which is good.
The next point was on page 41, number 24,
resource implications.
And obviously it says here, placemaking, business support,
Environmental and Regulation Services, Housing and Legal, who will need to work faster for
S62A applications given the full period of 13 weeks will not be available.
How are you going to be able to, in that time, ask more information from developers?
Because even if they tick the boxes for putting in the information, we know that quite often
officers have to go back and say, this isn't enough.
We need more information.
I'm nearly finished.
And then over the page on 42 number 28, again,
this is the order to ensure strict time limits.
And it says, officers will be seeking delegated authority
from council to respond and provide substantive response
to S62A planning applications without the need to bring each
application to committee for review to be expressed.
So that links into whether Ward counts as, because of the local context, and that I think
the local context is really important, particularly because there were no appeal afterwards either.
And it says here the nature of the delegation is still being developed and will be considered
by the constitutional working group as a priority.
And you know what I'm going to say here.
What is going to be the process of deciding on this action group, or action plan, and
feeding all those things through, and knowing we're having to work at speed, and then going
to the constitution working group, because as you know, some of these actions have got
to be put in place this autumn. I'm talking about the delegated new scheme
of delegation for planning committees which has got to be in place by the end
of October. We need to have things done yesterday. Sorry about that, thank you.
Thank You councillor Dadd. So in terms of the detailed report from PAS, you're
Matt Winslow - 1:35:25
There's a number of recommendations made in that first report that effectively created
the...
Well, provided the advice which their council took into account when it changed the planning
committees, which is probably one of the more dramatic changes.
Just in terms of a summary review of those.
So, of those, one has been fully implemented, five have been largely implemented as recommended,
one has been not implemented as recommended but has started to be implemented and none
have been not implemented.
I don't think that's a double negative.
So actions have taken place across all of them.
I think there's in terms of this is connected in some ways to the action
plan because clearly what needs to happen is some reflection on whether or
not the PAS recommendation should be fully implemented as recommended but
members need to be aware that that would mean reducing from two planning
Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:36:45
committees to one. I just say the original one said one or two. Yep the
Second, the follow -up one that we received
Matt Winslow - 1:36:49
which came to place scrutiny committee earlier this year,
they feel that the PAS have felt in the report,
the interim report that they issued,
that the amount of business that the council has,
I think it sort of implies,
is that one planning committee may be enough.
And they cite things about operational concerns
about how, you know, that there are further things
that they recommend to council
in respects of the planning committees,
which can be looked at and considered a bit further
by the council.
They talk about the scheme of delegation
and they have some concerns about how that applies
to applications where parish councils comment.
I won't go into lots of detail because I'm conscious or you've got some other questions
here, but it's just to say that in respects of how they're going to be considered next,
as explained in the report, the portfolio holder for shaping the future of the district
is going to be forming a policy advisory group.
And the Policy Advisory Group will be charged with reviewing anything that's not been implemented
by the Planning Advisory Service and determining in collaboration with other, with councillors
and Constitutional Working Group and others, how many of those should form or enter into
the action plan which is the document that's got to be submitted to the government.
Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:38:41
Before you go on to another one, can I just come back? The minutes of the last place scrutiny
committee, which is on page four onwards, noted, or page four, beg your pardon, the
committee noted the past report, but there are probably about ten different concerns
that were actually raised and I hope that those will be looked at in this action plan.
We didn't comment but we raised concerns about them.
Matt Winslow - 1:39:12
Yep, so anything which the council hasn't taken in, hasn't actioned, I feel what will
happen is that the Policy Advisory Group will look at whether or not any further changes
are necessary. But what's important that MHCLG stressed is that this is also a self -assessment
of the weaknesses that the council has in determining major planning applications. So
the council has got to do some internal reflections of what else could be done. And that's not
just in terms of member decision -making. That's also including things such as the time it
for Section 106 is to go from being from a resolution to grant planning
permission to them being signed and some you know that so that's an internal
conversation about capacity at an officer level so there's there's things
that need to be looked at from a decision -making perspective but also
from a procedure or an operational perspective in terms of the in terms of
the proper review, I noted down proper review here, which I think is referring to the original
decision in 2023, 2024, that a review should be carried out nine months after the decision.
I think the decision was made to change the planning committees. I think that needs to
reflecting on in the same light. I think the decisions and certainly obviously it was before
I started here but what I understand had been the case in the past is that it wasn't considered
a good use of time to review that as was originally intended given the government were changing
the schemes of delegation and were consulting I think at the time on changes to planning
committees so that will be for the policy advisory group to reflect on
whether or not that should be brought forward and in doing that I think the
council needs to consider whether or not that nine -month report that review as
originally intended whether it will change anything in terms of improving
the performance of major planning committee major planning decisions in
In terms of the reference you made to page 40, which was the rather short 21 -day period
that the Council now has as a statutory consultee, and how ward councillors will be involved
in that, and you mentioned also Section 106, where will the input be coming from. I think
these are things that still need to be determined. We're in conversations with the Planning and
at the moment to determine whether or not there's any flexibility in that 21 -day period,
given that that's a very short period for the Council to turn around, to consult internally
with its housing service and with other services that normally comment on planning applications
and normally and can comment over that kind of 21 day period.
I think it's a good question to ask about
whether or not ward councillors
will be involved in that process.
It's not really been determined yet,
but so that's still for to reflect
and determine whether ward councillors
can be incorporated into that.
In terms of the request for more information,
So are we able to ask for more information from developers?
No, because we're not the decision maker.
We're not the decision maker.
So we have no entitlement to ask for more information.
From what I understand speaking to some of the other
councils that have been through the designation process
before, there is the planning inspector have tended to not
provide as much of a flexible service
than the local planning authorities provide for that.
So if the information isn't submitted at the time
the planning application is made
and it's not before the inspector,
then the inspector won't have it
in order to make a decision.
Can I come back on that?
But sometimes the conditions are dependent
Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:43:50
on the information from the developer.
Does that mean that we wouldn't be able
to produce strong enough conditions sometimes?
Well, it wouldn't be us producing the conditions, it would be the planning inspectorate that
Matt Winslow - 1:44:01
will be producing the conditions.
What we have to do is make recommendations as to what conditions should be put in place,
what conditions we would recommend the planning inspectorate put in place to address any mitigations.
As to whether or not we will be able to enter into dialogue and seek clarification or further
information, we won't be able to contact the developer at all.
That will be, we could ask the planning inspector whether or not there is additional information
that could be provided, but it's in their gift to, because I suppose what I'm saying
here is that the developer isn't, or the applicant is not applying to us for planning permission.
In cases where Section 62A is invoked, we are bypassed in respects of that.
We don't receive the fee, we incur admin work at cost, and we have less engagement in Section 106 negotiations,
and we have less engagement throughout the application process.
That is part of the penalty of being designated.
In terms of the, I think you mentioned something about, I've written this I'm not sure what it means.
Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:45:38
Sorry it was section 28 relating to going back to Constitution working group I think,
But on the same on that, would there be, what is the process about what is being decided?
Does that go back through place scrutiny and then to constitution working group and timing?
So I don't have the process worked out yet.
Matt Winslow - 1:46:04
Obviously that needs some discussion with a portfolio holder as well.
In terms of the, you mentioned about the constitutional working group has got other priorities at
same time in terms of making the necessary changes to the constitution due to the national
changes to the planning committees and scheme of delegation.
We are at least benefiting from planning advisory service workshop later this week where we'll
be joining a number of officers are joining a number of other councils in London where
we will be given the training, I guess, to make the changes to the national constitution
and sorry, changes to constitution as a result of national changes. It's understood those
changes are going to come with a national template so that all councils can have less
work to do to make the amendments to their constitution, but the exact nature of that
is not known at the moment. I think the council has got, obviously those changes are as a
result of statutory change.
So we've got to do both, really.
We've got to programme both, and we've got to consider whether there's, if there's too much
work for the constitutional working group, I would advise that we would be looking at
prioritising the work of the constitutional working group so that it can focus energy
on those planning changes.
But it needs to do that, I would say, in tandem, or we need to work out a process as to how
the constitution of working groups remit will fit with the policy advisory groups.
I've not had a conversation with the portfolio yet to determine that.
Thank you. Can I let other members come in with their comments and then if there's any more, come back to you.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:47:52
Thank you, Councillor Dadd. Okay, next we've got Councillor Rackham.
Cllr Sheree Rackham - 1:47:57
Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your report. Just a few issues.
I'm quite worried about the planning, Inspector, especially listening to Councillor Bassett and what he said.
about them perhaps not having the local knowledge
that we would like to see.
And I wondered what sort of, if you would know,
I know this is quite a wide question to ask,
and what sort of due diligence do you think they will have
to carry out their task?
And I'm also quite concerned about unsuitable
applications passing, because what effect will that have
on our district and residents going forward?
And my last question is, and this is again, is a hard one to answer, do we have any sort
of idea how long the timeframe will be that we will be in this special measure?
Thank you.
Thank you, Chair.
And thank you, Councillor Rackham, for the questions.
Matt Winslow - 1:48:52
I've finished writing the last one down, as you might see.
I've got a sore hand at the moment, so I'm writing a bit slower.
In terms of the procedural steps, the Planning
Inspector have a procedural guide that's on their
website, which is one of the background papers, and
they've had four or five local authorities already
that have been through this before in the last two or
three years.
I would hope they've got a fairly slick operation now
from the very first authority that was
designated back in 2022, which was our neighbour,
Nuttlesford.
So they have a casework team which do the analysis
of the planning application,
much like the planning department do here.
And they have the planning inspectors themselves
are the ones that adjudicate and make the decision.
I'm, you know, I have no reason to believe
that the procedural steps or due diligence
that the planning inspector would be taking
are inadequate.
They clearly may be making decisions
which are contrary to the views
of Epping Forest District Council residents or officers,
but that is in their prerogative if they feel
that as the decision maker,
the applications are otherwise acceptable.
Just to remind members though,
that there are some downsides
to an applicant following this route.
the principle one being that there's no right of appeal.
So an applicant's got to be fairly confident.
I would say that for the investment required
for the planning application to the planning inspector
that they would stand a reasonable chance
of obviously getting an approval.
Otherwise they, because they have bypassed
the local planning authority, there's no second go.
There's no second chance to convince somebody else
that the wrong decision has been made.
the only thing they could do is seek a judicial review,
which is the same as they can do for the planning authority
decisions.
In terms of unsuitable applications
and what their impact could be, that's
really where our role would be to step in during those 21 -day
consultation period to express if we
feel that there is a particular impact that can't be mitigated.
So we need to do that, I would say,
as a planning authority in the same way
we do it for our current applications but obviously in a much shorter time, which is
to determine whether or not they're policy compliant and if they're not policy compliant,
whether the impacts that the developments causing or could cause can't be mitigated
by conditions or by Section 106 agreement. Really, if applications that even go into
the planning inspectorate can be mitigated in those ways, if they were before us, it's
likely the officer recommendation would be to approve them even if they came to a committee
for a slightly different consideration.
So it is feasible, bearing in mind the council does not have a five -year housing land supply,
which would be the same consideration the council would have before it as well, the
applications on unallocated sites that are not in accordance with the development plan
could come forward through this route.
But that is essentially part of the penalty, I guess, of underperforming as a local planning
authority.
It's important that we reflect that although we have a legal responsibility as a planning
authority, that comes with certain rules.
And for a period of time, so for a period of time between the 21st of June 2023 and
the 18th of October 2024, we refused seven applications that resulted in appeal overturns.
And that is what essentially has triggered the intervention.
In terms of how long could this go on for, we did ask the plan,
we did ask MHCLG that question as well, because what we was
worried about going into that meeting was that the guidance
indicates that this will only be reviewed annually.
Now, we did a little bit of research ourselves and found
that there's one authority in the country that was designated
for three months and it was lifted.
But that authority was able to demonstrate massive progress in terms of performance.
We have to appreciate that when the government's monitoring period for this is in arrears.
So the last date that the applications or the appeals that are currently being reflected
upon is the 31st of March 2025.
And they've done a point in time reflection to determine whether
or not, if there were any further applications until the
end of last year.
In terms of these specifics, they couldn't give us an answer
as to how quickly we could be de -designated.
But the power or the mechanism is that we have to request
de -designation because we believe we have evidence of strong performance of appeals
that we've turned our situation around, that we've got a positive mindset in terms of major
applications in the district, that we welcome them in the right places and to the right
conditions, that we have got an action plan that has set out the necessary improvement
journey and that we have cooperated fully with the planning inspector over that time.
Thank you.
Any other comments from members?
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:55:07
Okay, I'll go over to Councillor Murray.
Cllr Stephen Murray - 1:55:15
Thank you, Chairman.
I'm not sure there are necessarily questions and therefore I'm not necessarily expecting
I do want to just make three what I consider really important points on this issue, otherwise
I wouldn't have hung on.
Councillor Richard Bassett is quite right in the sense that the National Inspectorate
is likely to make all the decisions because of their distance from where they're actually
from Equinfoys.
And if you want to look at a relatively recent example
of what I would consider a poor decision in planning terms
that went straight to the inspector
because of the moratorium as regards to Equinfoys,
just have a look at Lutens Close in my member,
Councillor Rackensmore in Paul's Lane.
About 200 properties there.
EFDC strongly opposed.
and the National Inspector Day Commission.
I'm not saying the residents there now
aren't making a valuable contribution
to our ward into the life of an outer.
That's a completely different issue,
but the actual decision to allow that application
in the manner in which it's been built
and has been advocated with an excellent example
why we need to get out of this section 62A designation
as quickly as possible.
I, like everyone else, was very critical of the government.
This is my second point, Chairman.
I, like everyone else, was very critical of the government
when they made this designation.
But it was a kind of mechanistic one.
We prowled the 10 % threshold.
And though I'm not naive politically,
I was, I have to just put on record, I was a little bit surprised and disappointed by the very
partisan reaction to the decision from our Conservative leader of council and our Conservative
MP. They were right in what they said but I would have been a little bit happier with their reaction
if they had at least recognised the fact that this decision was made under powers that had
been passed by the previous government and had indeed been used four times by the previous
government on the four councils. One's been listed, I won't list the other three, they
have been circulated to members and all for the very same reason, quality of major decisions.
So I would have expected our inquiry, and certainly our leader of council, to, yes,
stand up for ethnic authorities, but not to have been quite so partisan in the nature
of their attack on the government.
Because you would have thought they were the first government A, to introduce the power,
and B, to use the power, when we all know that's not the reality.
So a little bit disappointed.
The third point I want to make, and to me in Loudon and in Rodden Ward, it's an absolutely
crucial point.
I'm very disappointed that Section 62A designation has been used to determine an application.
And this is the first, or the manner in which an application was determined.
And this is the first time I've publicly been able to talk about this.
In Road in Ward, there was an application for an absolutely massive data centre in Langston
Road in an industrial state that we actually own.
And the ward members were informed by EODC officers that one of the reasons why it isn't
going to committee and was determined under delegated powers, which I fully accept is
I'm not saying anything unconstitutional has been done, but we got the email on the
22nd of June saying that with discussion with the portfolio holder, it had been determined
under dedicated powers.
And the very first reason that was given, and I've got the email in front of me tonight,
was because of this section 62A designation and the implications arising from that.
And I just want to put on record publicly for the first time.
And I've certainly obviously replied by email,
but given the nature and the size of the application
for that data centre in Manchester Road
and the public concern around it,
and the fact that the town council objected,
fact that EFDC urban design objected,
EFDC conservation objected,
and Essex County Council of Landscape objected,
it should have gone to committee, that's my view.
I accept this question of judgement,
but section 62A designation has been used
as one of the main reasons why they felt
they wanted to determine it at, you know,
at Officer Neville and I just wanted to put on record.
I'm deeply unhappy with that.
And when the public gets to know that
that decision has already been made on a really massive value application that has major implications
on a whole range of issues. There's going to be an awful lot of unhappy people chairing.
Thank you. I'll start with Councillor Whitbread.
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 2:01:13
Thanks, Chairman. First of all, I apologise to Councillor Murray if my tone of my comments
Cllr Chris Whitbread - 2:01:15
on this position didn't include a recognition that the last government actually brought
this act into power. I would be as angry with them as I am with the current government if
the circumstances were as they currently are. I think we should recognise that as a Council
we worked very hard to get in place a local plan. We were 92 % green belt and as Councillor
Bassett knows it took a 10 -year period, probably one of the longest ever public
inspections of a local plan and I feel that the council went through the
difficult decisions from the PAS report and reduced a number of committees, took
them away from the old area committees, took off all members. I think there's
still a lot of work to be done and I think we have to recognise that with
regards to training of members on those committees. I still don't think they're
quite right in that respect. But I do think as a council, we have done an awful lot not
to have been put in this position by the current government or any government in that fact,
because I do believe that we're on the right trajectory. But that will take time, as you've
just heard from Mr Windsor. The amount of work that's gone in from our planning officers
over the past week has been phenomenal. And I have to pay tribute to them. Councillor
They have quite rightly said, you know, they're up to their
eyeballs, they're up to their eyeballs, and they are working
tirelessly to try and deliver all the things we want to deliver.
But we are going to have to be very focused as we move forward
in order to get that plan in place and into the government
as quickly as possible.
Our number one priority as a council has got to be to get
back our planning powers.
What I would say, and I think it's important to get this
message across to the residents of Epping Forest, because they
will be worried by this, particularly in areas like Epping, like Loughton, where there are
sites that could come into play. We have been putting special measures for a very small
part of our planning piece, the most important part, but it is just on major applications.
We still have control over the largest part of planning, and we still have to run that
to a very high standards. But I have every confidence that the officers will put together
with members a plan that will get us out of this position as quickly as possible.
It's really, really annoying. This isn't a political position and Councillor
Murray's quite right to pick up on that fact. This isn't a political issue.
Planning is quite quasi -judicial and should be treated as such. We have to
work on that basis and move forward but we are so lucky to have the planning
officers in place that we have and with our legal team we will get through this
and we need to do it as quickly as possible.
Thank you.
Matt, did you want to comment on anything?
No, okay.
Any other comments from members?
Cllr Joseph Parsons - 2:04:13
No, okay.
So I know it's going to be looked at
by a cabinet policy advisory group,
but I think the significance to the districts
means that I think it should come regularly
to the place committee with regular updates
on how our progress towards the designation
is going. So if members are in agreement, I think I'd suggest regular updates to this
committee. Brilliant. Thank you. So that's agreed. So the last item is dates of future

11 DATES OF FUTURE MEETINGS

meetings. The next place meeting is scheduled for the 1st of September. So with that, I
will close the meeting at three minutes past nine.
Cllr Raymond Balcombe
District councillor for Rural East ward
Conservative Party
View profile Cllr Raymond Balcombe
Cllr Richard Bassett
District councillor for Roydon and Lower Nazeing ward
Conservative Party
View profile Cllr Richard Bassett
Keith Bowman
Team Manager - Housing Strategy and Information
Epping Forest District Council
View profile Keith Bowman
Cllr Tom Bromwich
District councillor for North Weald Bassett ward
Epping Forest Independents Group
View profile Cllr Tom Bromwich
Cllr Mary Dadd
District councillor for Ongar ward
Conservative Party
View profile Cllr Mary Dadd
Cllr Mandy George
District councillor for Epping West and Rural ward
Liberal Democrats
View profile Cllr Mandy George
Cllr Steven Heather
District councillor for Waltham Abbey South and Rural ward
Conservative Party
View profile Cllr Steven Heather
Amelia Hoke
Team Manager - Leisure and Car Parking
Epping Forest District Council
View profile Amelia Hoke
Laura Kirman
Democratic Services Officer
Epping Forest District Council
View profile Laura Kirman
Cllr Alan Lion
District councillor for Grange Hill ward
Conservative Party
View profile Cllr Alan Lion
Cllr Jodie Lucas
District councillor for Waltham Abbey West ward
Conservative Party
View profile Cllr Jodie Lucas
Cllr Stephen Murray
District councillor for Loughton Roding ward
Independent
View profile Cllr Stephen Murray
Cllr Joseph Parsons
District councillor for Waltham Abbey West ward
Conservative Party
View profile Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Chris Pond
District councillor for Loughton St John's ward
Loughton Residents Association
View profile Cllr Chris Pond
Cllr Sheree Rackham
District councillor for Loughton Roding ward
Loughton Residents Association
View profile Cllr Sheree Rackham
Cllr James Small
District councillor for Buckhurst Hill East and Whitebridge ward
Reform UK
View profile Cllr James Small
Rosa Tanfield
Managing Director
Terra Verde Services Ltd (TVS)
View profile Rosa Tanfield
James Warwick
Service Director - Contracts Partnerships and Procurement
Epping Forest District Council
View profile James Warwick
Cllr Chris Whitbread
District councillor for Roydon and Lower Nazeing ward
Conservative Party
View profile Cllr Chris Whitbread
Matt Winslow
Planning Director
Epping Forest District Council
View profile Matt Winslow