The Chair to advise the Committee of any items on which members of the public have requested to speak and advise those members of the public present of the details of the Council’s public participation scheme.
For those members of the public who have submitted any questions or statements, please note, a three minute time limit applies to each speaker and you will be asked to speak before Councillors debate the issue.
Temporary measures during the Coronavirus Pandemic
Due to the Government guidance on measures to reduce the transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19), we will holding meetings in a virtual manner which will be live webcast on our website. Members of the public will still be able to register to speak and ask questions, which will then be read out by the Governance and Democracy Case Manager during Public Question Time and will either be answered by the Chair of the Committee, or the relevant Portfolio Holder, or be followed up with a written response.
Minutes:
Mrs Linda Brierley submitted a letter on agenda item 7 - A proposal for delivering future single rough sleeper and homelessness accommodation in SWT.
Canonsgrove and its effect on Trull and Staplehay
Following consideration of the matter at the Scrutiny meeting on 4th November 2020, Officers were asking the Executive to approve the preparation of an Options Appraisal in relation to future permanent homeless accommodation across the Council area.
We attach Trull Residents’ Group’s representations to the Scrutiny committee for your information. We support the Scrutiny Committee’s recommendation that this must be a true Options Appraisal, with full engagement of the local community.
The Scrutiny Committee agreed with us that the report from Simon Lewis of Somerset West and Taunton Council (SWT) was wrongly focused on providing a business case for the ongoing use of Canonsgrove. It was reassuring to hear Members say that any suggestion of a fait accompli should be ‘dismissed immediately’.
Councillors also recognised that the Options Appraisal must be led by technical evidence. How then could SWT Officers propose to undertake the Options Appraisal by December 2020, with a business case provided by February 2021? Likewise, how could Officers already be bidding for ‘funding in 2021/22 to support delivery of our preferred accommodation options’ before the Options Appraisal had been undertaken? This looked like the fait accompli which Councillors had rightly rejected.
Any presumption towards Canonsgrove in the Options Appraisal would overlook the potential for the use or re-use of other sites in the town and would seem to enable procedural challenge via the Local Government Ombudsman and other routes. Given that SWT was looking at the provision of a new or significantly-altered building, and that the Council was in the process of identifying development sites across the district via the new Local Plan, what was actually needed was a wide-ranging, transparent and properly-evidenced review, taking account of all relevant matters including the independent views of the community.
As noted in our earlier letter, it is also wrong for Trull Parish Council’s Canonsgrove Working Group to be excluded from deliberations. Comeytrowe Parish Council should also be consulted. Local residents should be party to an open and evidenced Options Appraisal which takes account of all relevant matters and ongoing/future costs in determining which site(s) were most appropriate for future homeless accommodation in the SWT area.
Councillors of the Scrutiny Committee identified that Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) was the biggest issue in bringing forward new provision for homeless people. Since our last letter, there had sadly been a significant worsening of public safety nearby, with confirmed burglaries (one with a vulnerable young person in the building at the time), bicycle thefts, defecation in residential streets, and ongoing problems with intoxicated people creating road safety issues between the site and town centre. There were four blue-light responses to incidents at Canonsgrove in just one day last weekend.
The response of Officers of SWT and the YMCA that ‘you can’t prove these issues relate to Canonsgrove’ was often factually wrong, as well as insensitive and lacking credibility. A standard response of ‘prove it’ would never instill confidence in the community. In any case, there was enough evidence – the Police accepted a Community Trigger due to issues relating to Canonsgrove and recorded crime statistics paint a clear picture. Such problems had never previously been experienced in our villages, and it was clearly not coincidental that there had been a significant recorded increase in crime and ASB since the current use of Canonsgrove began.
In short, this was not about removing homeless people from the villages. Rather, local people rightly insisting on public engagement and proper management of whatever facility was ultimately brought-forward, in order to avoid the issues which had previously arisen.
I hope that this is helpful in setting the context for the concerns of the local community. Thank-you for your time in this matter.
Yours sincerely L. Brierley, J. Barker, M. Berry, K. Blackwell, D. Brierley, B. Pretty, C. Flood, C. Holder, D. Johnson, J. Kirk, L. Langham, M. McLoughlin, P. Midgley, T. Saunders, E. Sebright, M. Simmonds, T Smith, D. Spurway, G. Steele, B. Sweeting, R. Teale, A. Temblett, G. Tuckett, C. Warburton and all on behalf of Trull Residents Group.
The following response was given by the Portfolio Holder for Housing:-
Dear Trull Residents Group,
We had responded back to the original letter that was sent to Scrutiny and therefore this response focussed on the covering letter addressed to the Executive Committee.
We, like you, also supported the Scrutiny Committee’s recommendations that this should be a true options appraisal. The Executive Summary of the report explains the purpose of the report “To propose an approach to identify our future requirements for single homeless and rough sleeper accommodation in SWT and to evaluate and bring back recommendations on the best options to deliver against this need.” The questions raised at the Scrutiny meeting were focussed primarily on Canonsgrove and on reflection the report itself had more content focussed on this one site, simply because it was currently where we were housing a large proportion of our rough sleeper community and there was some urgency to resolve what happened to these people in the future. We fully acknowledge it was one of the options we would consider – but it was one of a number. We could only continue to reiterate that there was no prejudgement on any decisions and any supposition of Canonsgrove being a ‘fait accompli’ had no factual basis.
The option appraisals would be led by the council (or council officers) with technical support from architects, engineers and other consultants as required.
We had not started on any bid for 2021/22 NSAP Funding.
We would continue to engage with the Trull Parish Council and report to them monthly on Canonsgrove which we were currently doing. Officers attended on Monday this week and provided a report. They had also responded to the 17 questions raised by the Trull Parish Council subgroup, the ‘Trull Residents Group.’ We would also engage with Comeytrowe Parish Council. As part of our engagement, we would be able to share with you information on:
· Our required housing need for the District, the mix, quantum and types of accommodation we forecast we need;
· Our accommodation strategy that provided greater description of what we were seeking and how this would work;
· An outline methodology of how we would approach undertaking the Options Appraisal; and
· Our analysis of the Canonsgrove site to meet this need once we had done this work.
It was worth saying that the findings and recommendations for this work would be taken back to our councillors for approval before progressing plans on our preferred options. These reports would again be publicly available on our website and would only progress if they had the required democratic approval.
We would not be asking the Trull Parish Council or Trull Residents Group to be involved in the appraisal itself as we need this to remain independent and objective and avoid claims of impartiality from other communities who could end up with accommodation provision within their locality.
With respect to anti-social behaviour, we had provided a report to the Trull Parish Council outlining the 5 complaints we had received in the last month and the 5 compliments from the local community. Most of the complaints were not incidents of serious crime (including someone’s dog barking at another dog; and two people walking past, playing loud music at 10.30pm who were assumed to be Canonsgrove residents). However we were aware that one of these complaints related to a serious crime (two burglaries) which included the theft of the bicycles and this was very regrettable that two of our residents were involved in this. The police had confirmed that this was the first burglary that Canonsgrove residents had been implicated in and the situation was managed swiftly and decisively, with strong partnership working between the YMCA and the Police - the police turned up immediately to arrest them, stolen goods were returned and both were evicted and were awaiting trial. Every incident we were made aware of was addressed and managed professionally by the YMCA Dulverton Group.
With respect to the notion that there had been a general pattern of increased Crime in the residential and community areas of Trull, I could only go back to what the Police had consistently been telling Trull Parish Council and ourselves, was that that simply wasn’t true. The police did get called to incidents and altercations at Canonsgrove itself and that was to be expected with the nature of supporting people in homeless accommodation, but the police had told us that there had not been a noticeable increase in crime within the Trull area itself. An email received from the Police this week confirmed that, explaining “The figure for crimes reported in the Trull area (within ½ mile of postcode TA3 7HP) for April –September 2019 was 13. By comparison, figures for the same period in 2020, not taking into account those incidents that occurred on site at Canonsgrove were only 11, suggesting a slight reduction in reports in the area that would potentially have an impact on the local community.”
Officers from the Council were pleased to hear acknowledgement from the Chair of the Trull Parish Council at the October meeting that “troubles had calmed right down”.
We have never received any complaints of our residents defecating and the police had confirmed that there had been one complaint to them of this nature in the past six months by person, unknown. Canonsgrove had received one complaint of a suspected tenant urinating in public in the past but was able to clearly determine that the culprit was not a resident of Canonsgrove.
The Council and the YMCA Dulverton Group always take every concern and complaint raised seriously at Canonsgrove and address this swiftly and professionally. We never take the stance “that you can’t prove these issues are related to Canonsgrove” however both the Police and the Council have requested from the Residents Group and complainants that sufficient information was provided to enable us to identify the culprit as a Canonsgrove resident, understand the nature of the complaint, act on the complaint and ideally provide a description to identify the culprits. An example of this was a complaint we received from a house adjacent to a public footpath into the countryside that did none of these - “two people were sat on the pavement outside of our house”, with no further information to go on and no-one there when we arrived. We were not trying to be obstructive, but genuinely want to be in a position to address issues and need enough information to do so.
We know from our evening patrols that sometimes rowdy groups of young people did walk through Trull making a noise, who were not our residents and as in the example above with the urination, both the Police and the YMCA feel that an immediate assumption that any wrong-doing is undertaken by Canonsgrove residents was false and unfair.
The Council would continue to work with the YMCA Dulverton Group and the Police in partnership to ensure Canonsgrove continued to be managed professionally and we hoped our response above goes some way to answering your questions.