Issue - meetings

The information in the report was accepted and noted.

The report was submitted by Cllr Dafydd Meurig

DECISION

The information in the report was accepted and noted.

DISCUSSION

It was reported that the department was leading on five projects which were part of the Council's Plan 2023-2028. The following were noted as an update on those projects:
 

·       Management of second homes and short-term holiday lets - It was clarified that the consultation period on the Council's intention to introduce an Article 4 direction had closed on 13 September. It was pleasing that a few thousand responses had been received and officers were now analysing those responses before submitting a timely report to update the Communities Scrutiny Committee and the Cabinet.
 

·       Waste and Recycling - It was noted that the department had set a target of recycling 70% of the County's waste by 2025. It was acknowledged that achieving this target would be challenging but the department was hopeful it would succeed by following a new internal restructuring arrangement.
 

·       Active Travel- It was confirmed that the Department had successfully received a grant in this area for the next period. It was noted that two additional applications had been made for grants but these had been unsuccessful.

·       Public Transport - It was announced that the SHERPA'r Wyddfa service has been short-listed for this year's British Transport Awards (UK Transport Awards) following its restructure in recent years.
 

·       New Local Development Plan - It was explained that a governance arrangement for the scheme had been accepted. It was detailed that a Planning Policy Working Group of 15 members had been established and met for the first time recently. It was noted that the working group had dealt with the initial work and planned to meet regularly.
 

Members were updated on three of the Department's services which had seen progress recently.
These included:

·       Planning - It was confirmed that the service had successfully responded to 88% of planning applications within the statutory time limit at the start of this year. This was noted as an improvement over recent years. It was announced that the service had recently successfully appointed two new planning trainees. It was explained this would be a great help with capacity issues within the service. It was noted that attracting staff to service posts had been a challenge in the past, but it was hoped that these appointments were a positive sign.
  

·       Planning Enforcement - It was reported that capacity problems were still affecting the planning enforcement service. It was explained that this was a challenge because officers strove to deal with new cases as well as historical cases that remained open on systems.
 

·       Land charges - It was explained that the land charges services had now been upgraded to a new computer system. As such, this service was performing well. It was noted that officers had to stop dealing with land charges applications for a period of time while the system was being upgraded, due to a lack of capacity. It was confirmed that this problem had now been  ...  view the full minutes text for item 12