Agenda item

To consider any questions which may have been received from Elected Members and which are asked pursuant to Standing Order No. 11.

(a)  Councillor Gillis

‘There are plans in place for a burger King and another coffee outlet on Stairfoot roundabout. Most if not all vehicles that pass through these outlets will have to transverse the said roundabout. Plans are also in place for 230 dwellings south of Bleachcroft Way near the old B@Q site. At present the only access and exit to this housing estate is via Stairfoot roundabout. I would like you to ask, what provision the highway department are going to put in place, to alleviate the traffic situation, bearing in mind the critical state of traffic backed up from the roundabout to, at times, the White Rose roundabout? A distance of 1.6 miles’.

(b)  Councillor Hunt

“Part of the Council’s Digital First project included the tracking of requests raised by residents through the council’s website - for example reporting potholes, fly tipping and broken streetlights. Could a firm date be provided when residents will begin to get status updates of their requests?”

(c)  Councillor Kitching

"There are ongoing concerns about high incidents of fly tipping across the borough, and we all understand that the team does its best to respond to and clear incidents as soon as possible. However, residents have raised concerns about the way this is reported - the quarterly report publicised in March reported 100% of incidents were cleared within 5 days; residents know that to not be the case from their own observations and so clearly this figure has caveats. Can the Cabinet member please let us know how this 100% figure is reached?"

The Chief Executive reported that she had received a number of questions from Elected Members in accordance with Standing Order No. 11.

(a)  Councillor Gillis

‘There are plans in place for a burger King and another coffee outlet on Stairfoot roundabout. Most if not all vehicles that pass through these outlets will have to transverse the said roundabout. Plans are also in place for 230 dwellings south of Bleachcroft Way near the old B@Q site. At present the only access and exit to this housing estate is via Stairfoot roundabout. I would like you to ask, what provision the highway department are going to put in place, to alleviate the traffic situation, bearing in mind the critical state of traffic backed up from the roundabout to, at times, the White Rose roundabout? A distance of 1.6 miles’.

Councillor Lamb, Cabinet Spokesperson for Place (Environment and Transportation) thanked Councillor Gillis for his question and for the important points he raised therein.

The Highways Department were currently looking at the design of a scheme for Stairfoot to alleviate congestion and improve journey times.  An outline business case had been summited to the Sheffield City Region and it was hoped to be able to share more information on this later in the year including engagement with the public.

Councillor Gillis thanked Councillor Lamb for his response and asked as a supplementary question whether there was any possibility of turning the traffic lights off at Stairfoot roundabout on a temporary trial basis to see whether or not congestion reduced.

Councillor Lamb felt that this was perhaps a radical suggestion, but this did not necessarily mean it was wrong.  He would, however, need to rely on the experience, qualifications and professionalism of Traffic Officers within the Highways Department and for them to be able to undertake an assessment of the possibilities.  He also suggested that Councillor Gillis, with his local knowledge, engage with those officers as part of that process.

(b)  Councillor Hunt

“Part of the Council’s Digital First project included the tracking of requests raised by residents through the council’s website - for example reporting potholes, fly tipping and broken streetlights. Could a firm date be provided when residents will begin to get status updates of their requests?”

Councillor Franklin, Cabinet Support Member for Core Services, thanked Councillor Hunt for his question and stated that IT had now delivered the project which had created the capability to provide status updates to customers in relation to online requests.  Work now needed to be undertaken with Services to ensure that information from the systems they used could be fed directly into the online updates.  Work would start immediately with Environment and Transport to do this and this work would be ongoing with other services throughout the remainder of 2021.

Councillor Hunt thanked Councillor Franklin for the response.  He felt that if residents began to get feedback to their requests this would be a massive benefit both to them, to Councillors and other residents and it would demonstrate that the Council was becoming even more customer focused.  He asked, as a supplementary question if the Cabinet Support Member could confirm if this process would be in place by the end of the year.

Councillor Franklin confirmed that this was his understanding and he would report back to Members on an ongoing basis.

(c)  Councillor Kitching

"There are ongoing concerns about high incidents of fly tipping across the borough, and we all understand that the team does its best to respond to and clear incidents as soon as possible. However, residents have raised concerns about the way this is reported - the quarterly report publicised in March reported 100% of incidents were cleared within 5 days; residents know that to not be the case from their own observations and so clearly this figure has caveats. Can the Cabinet member please let us know how this 100% figure is reached?"

Councillor Lamb, Cabinet Spokesperson for Place (Environment and Transportation) thanked Councillor Kitching for the question.  In answering this question, he, and he was sure everyone here, would want to thank all of the staff in Environment and Transportation for their ongoing heroic work they had been undertaking over the last 18 – 20 months.  He had also communicated recently with Elected Members advising that the Green Bin Waste Collection would have to be suspended because of the staffing issues that the latest spike of Covid 19 had caused.  People were working under enormous pressure.

In terms of the specific questions asked, however, during 2021/21, 99.9% of fly-tipping cases had been cleared within the 5 working day Service Level Agreement (within the scope of the Indicator).

This Indicator was based purely on fly-tipping reports on public land and excluded those which were deemed excess loads or hazardous waste requiring additional resources or specialist contractors, for example, asbestos removal.

The Service received 5,490 fly-tipping reports (on public land) of which 5,484 had been cleared within the agreed SLA (99.9%).  A further 193 reports had been received which fell outside the scope of the 5-day SLA due to being excess of hazardous waste loads.

This indicator had historically been accompanied with annotated notes to ensure that the context of its scope was clearly understood.  When viewed without such additional information it could be misconstrued.  The Service would ensure that an annotation explaining the scope of the Indicator was included hereafter in both the published website information and accompanying Power Bi reports.

Councillor Kitching thanked Councillor Lamb for his response which was the information she wanted to hear.  She was sure, however, that the public did not see this caveat around the SLA and she was concerned, therefore, that to some extent these figures could be misleading when viewed in isolation and, for example, on social media.  She then asked, as a supplementary question if the Cabinet Member could confirm that they would extend clear reporting of those caveats to social media posts or perhaps manage public expectation a little bit more by including those caveats in reporting figures as this would ensure that there was transparency.

Councillor Lamb was happy that wherever the Council reported for the annotation to be made available in the interests of clarity and consistency.  What did concern him however was suggestion to post on social media and in relation to managing public expectation.  There may be some elements of fly tipping that for good reason could not be removed for quite some time either because an approved contractor was not available, a team of officers needed to be mobilised or where there could be access issues that needed to be resolved.  It would be doing a dis-service to the excellent staff within the Department to agree to something that would then see the statistics being disproportionately skewed by tiny amounts of fly-tipping that could not be removed within the 5-day timetable.