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ITEM CM3

COMMUNITY SAFETY SCRUTINY COMMITTEE – 8 MAY 2006

Minutes of the Meeting commencing at 10.00 am and finishing at 11.35 am

Present:

The Scrutiny Committee considered the matters, reports and recommendations contained or referred to in the agenda for the meeting together with a schedule of addenda tabled at the meeting and agreed as set out below. Copies of the agenda, reports and schedule are attached to the signed Minutes.

12/06. ELECTION OF CHAIRMAN FOR THE CURRENT COUNCIL YEAR

RESOLVED: that Councillor John Farrow be elected to chair the Committee for the current Council Year.

13/06. ELECTION TO DEPUTY CHAIRMAN FOR THE CURRENT COUNCIL YEAR

RESOLVED: that Councillor Rodney Rose be elected as Deputy Chairman of the Committee for the current Council Year.

14/06. DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST

Councillor Lesley Legge declared a personal interest in relation to Agenda Item 8 on the grounds that she was a trustee of local youth mentoring scheme (U13-OX14).

15/06. MINUTES

The Minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 6 February 2006 were approved and signed, subject to adding Councillor Ray Jelf to the attendance list, under ‘other members in attendance’.

16/06. REGISTRATION SERVICE SCRUTINY REVIEW : DRAFT REPORT

(Agenda Item 7)

On 12 September, this Committee had agreed to undertake a Scrutiny Review into the provision of the Registration Service : Budget and Accommodation and appointed Councillors John Farrow, Mohammed Altaf-Khan and Marilyn Badcock to the Lead Member Review Group. Having collected a wide-variety of evidence the Lead Member Review Group now presented its findings in this draft report.

Councillor John Farrow outlined the Review’s findings and recommendations to the Committee.

The Committee was asked by the Review Panel to offer any advice on how to improve the draft report before them, in order to assist with the production of the final report.

The Head of Trading Standards & Registration Service and Ms Bugeja then responded to questions from member’s concerning the financial aspects of The Registration Service.

Following debate the Committee thanked the Review Group and Ms Lloyd for their excellent report and AGREED to delegate any final minor amendments of the Review Report to the Lead Member Review Group, in consultation with the scrutiny review officer; and referred the report to the Cabinet for consideration.

17/06. YOUTH JUSTICE PLAN

(Agenda Item 8)

The Annual Youth Justice Plan was one of the strategic plans which was subject to approval by full Council following consideration by both the Cabinet and relevant Scrutiny Committee in accordance with the Budget and Policy Framework Procedure Rules set out in the Constitution.

Each Youth Justice Service was required by statute to produce an annual Youth Justice Plan for approval by the constituent agencies that were responsible for the service. This had then to be submitted to the Youth Justice Board. Core funding from the Board was dependent on the submission of a report that met its extensive guidance.

The Committee had before it a copy of the draft plan for comment.

The Cabinet Member for Community Safety, together with Mr Mike Simm (Head of Community Safety) had been invited to attend for this item, in order to outline key areas of interest for the Committee in the Plan and answer any questions which members of the Committee may have wished to ask.

Mr Simm reported that, whilst over the previous four years there had been cumulatively a 17.3% reduction in crime known to have been committed by young people, there had been a significant increase over the last period. In all, a 21.4% increase had occurred. This apparent increase in youth crime, however, has to be put in the context of the Thames Valley Police sanction detection initiative, which had seen an over 40% improvement in its performance in Oxfordshire in offences brought to justice (i.e. crime levels were down, but a far higher proportion of crimes were ‘solved’). This major change had had a very substantial impact on the workloads of all local criminal justice agencies and particularly for the YOS in producing very heavy increases in demand for Final Warning interventions and pre-sentence reports.

In addressing those higher demands from within the criminal justice system, the YOS had made considerable reductions in staffing to rectify an historical budget deficit. The Youth Justice Board had provided a cost free consultancy service to assist the YOS in a major Service Review, of which the initial report was approved the by YOS Steering Group in March 2006 and an improvement plan was currently being implemented.

Not surprisingly, there had been some reductions in performance in comparison with the previous year. These had mainly been evident in terms of process (e.g. completion of ASSET forms) rather than outcomes (lowering levels of recidivism, maintaining low levels of custodial sentences).

Prevention had been an increasing element of the YOS’s work and this would be strengthened in 2006/07 and subsequently by additional grant support from the Youth Justice Board to support early intervention and the government’s Respect agenda. Much of this new funding would be allocated to expand significantly the YOS’s parenting work.

Multi-agency support to the YOS continued to be strong and Thames Valley Police had increased its commitment to improve work with persistent and prolific young offenders.

Following debate, the Committee AGREED to urge the Cabinet to pursue discussions with the Learning & Skills Council in relation to providing adequate training to assist young offenders aged 16 and 17 into employment.

The Committee further AGREED to monitor progress on achieving the education, training and employment performance indicator.

18/06. YOUTH OFFENDING SCRUTINY REVIEW : EVALUATION

(Agenda Item 9)

This review had been submitted to the Executive on 1 March 2005.

The Committee was now asked to evaluate this review and to reflect on how successful it had been and to establish the degree of progress in implementing the recommendations agreed by the Executive by means of a question and answer session.

The Committee AGREED to:

1. defer consideration of this item until its July Meeting to allow for a working group to be set up with Mr Bramall to track progress on all of the Review recommendations and prepare for the evaluation and tracking item; and
2. nominate Councillors Patrick Cartledge and Marilyn Badcock to the working group.
   
   

19/06. SCRUTINY WORK PROGRAMME 2005/06

(Agenda Item 10)

The Committee was asked to review and update its 2005/06 Scrutiny Work Programme.

The Committee AGREED to:

1. retain all items listed in its existing work programme and to add to it a Review of Car Boot Sales;
2. nominate Councillors Colin Lamont, Ian Hudspeth and Patrick Cartledge to the Lead Member Review Group.
   
   

20/06. TRACKING SCRUTINY ITEMS

(Agenda Item 11)

Fire Service Control and Command Room

The Committee considered an update (CM11) on the Fire Service Command and Control Room – Fire Control Project. Mr Thomas updated the Committee on progress with the project timescale, accommodation, financial, legal issues and further Governance arrangements.

The Committee noted the position.

Scrutiny Review of Energy Planning

The Committee AGREED to note the outcome of their advice and recommendations to the Cabinet in relation to the Scrutiny Review of Emergency Planning.

21/06. FORWARD PLAN

in the Chair

Date of signing 2006

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