Yes, can you hear me now?
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Gareth, we were on declarations of interest.
We have had a declaration of interest from an officer, and
we will be switching officers part way through the meeting when the interest is applicable.
So item three, Northeast Wales Archive Project.
And Councillor Chris Biffle.
Yeah, thank you, Chair.
As County Councils, both Flinscher and Denvershire are required by law to provide an archive service,
which entails the collection, the preservation, and making available and accessible documents
of historical and important interest.
Both authorities have for some years faced similar difficulties and challenges in doing so,
principally because they have had to operate for old buildings, which are not fit for purpose.
And are really inadequate and unsuitable for the purposes which they expected to perform.
Such as the lack of sufficient space and indeed controlled storage conditions.
And they're costly to operate.
In Flinscher's case, the archive is based in the old rectory in Hagen and has been for many, many years.
And in Denvershire, it's the old jail in Riffin, that is the archive office.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the constraints, there has been relative narrow user base in both archive centers,
which means that the rich collections have been underutilized.
In the spirit of cooperation and collaboration, the two archive services have been working very closely together
and very effectively over the last four or five years in order to share skills and resources
and improve the services to users.
This resulted in the launch of a shared service, Newer, the Northeast Wales Archive service, in April 2020,
while still operating the services from the two sites.
In memorandum of understanding was reached, and the project is governed by a project board,
comprised of two senior council managers, one from E to authority, and in our case, that's Clare Homad,
plus two cabinet members with myself, Representative Flinscher County Council,
as well as Newer service manager and a part-time project manager.
The Joint Service committed a grant application to the National Office of Heritage Fund in November 2023
to fund the construction of a new purpose-built archive center on a selected site adjacent to theatre-clued world,
to house a new joint archive, its staff and its collections,
as well as having the ability to provide outreach provision in both counties.
The bid was for £7,271,297, from the National Heritage Lottery Fund,
with Flinscher and Denbyshire providing Matt's Funday amounting to £3,07838,537,
and £2,252,358, respectively, and based on the respective populations of the two counties.
These Matt's funding contributions have been formally approved by both cabinets.
I'm very pleased to say that on the 28th of March, the NHLF has approved the grant application,
and work is now taking place to develop a collaborative agreement and the heads of terms for the least
to govern the joint arrangement, both of the delivery of the project and the operation of the joint service.
The project activity is due to commence in mid-May,
and a delegated decision will enable a contractual discussion with the NANHLF
to take place in sufficient time to commence the project on time,
thereby avoiding any delays which could result in additional cuts.
I formally move the recommendations which are listed on page 6, recommendations 1-3.
Thank you, Leader.
Thank you, Cabinet Member.
Councillor Biffle has covered the report in a large amount of detail.
If I just crystallised the two areas that are important,
one of them is the grant and the successful grant loaded in from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
That's very positive, and it allows the project to now proceed.
The other aspect there is to develop the legal framework with which the operational aspects of the project post-completion go forward,
and that deals with how Flinch and Wreckson work together to deliver an integrated sub-regional project and facility.
I have no other comments there to make, Leader, part of those.
Thank you.
The project has long been the name of Flinch County Council,
and we need to remember we do have statutory service.
This is a statutory service we have to provide an archive service.
I think there are some questions from this that we need to explore with our partners, Dembyshire.
I think we've worked very well with Dembyshire in Northeast Wales archives since the two archives joined,
and we are extremely pleased to receive the grant.
It's going to be a passive house, isn't it, which is where the archive itself is below ground,
so it retains a fairly even temperature throughout the year and needs a minimum of cooling and heating.
Our own archives are, well, a beautiful building in heart, no doubt tall, beautiful reading room,
but the ability to adapt those forever improving requirements for the collection of archives is past disappearing.
So this, in my opinion, is extremely necessary and achieves the name of a Molten Council,
a Molten Council from many, many years ago, was it John?
Sorry.
J.O Jones, who was very backed, if you look back in the Council's records, you will see numerous reports on the archive service,
and, you know, it's extremely important, I think, that our history is maintained.
So are there any other members who wish to comment on the archive report?
No, please.
Nope.
Shall we move to the recommendations then?
To a prize cabinet that newer has been successfully expressed application to seek cabinet's authorization to accept the National Lottery Heritage Fund grant offer on behalf of Northeast Wales Archives,
to ask cabinet to authorize delegated authority to the Chief Executive Officer and lead member for planning public health and public protection,
to enable flinch County Council to enter into a collaboration agreement that covers the construction of the new facility,
and operation of Northeast Wales Archives and heads of terms for the lease of the new archive centre in mode.
All those in favour, please show.
There's three on screen, one, two, three, four, five in the room.
Okay, so thank you very much for that, that's carried.
And now we move to part two now.
Can someone move to part two, please? Thank you, Councillor mulling. Seconded, Councillor Biffle.
And can I bring Gareth in first, please?
How are we, as officers, supposed to brief members ahead of a meeting like this?
If someone, whether officer or member, chooses to send you the confidential information contained within that report out to members outside of the organisation.
So it undermines the fundamental reporting process that needs to exist within an organisation such as this,
with officers providing full unfriend reports and advice to Councillors for that reason.
Leader, you have asked me to look into the matter, because clearly and understandably you are very concerned about it,
and you have asked me to report to the appropriate authority, whether that be in the case of officers, their senior manager,
or whether it be the police or the ombudsman in the case of members.
And leader, we will start by looking at whether the email that circulated the agenda has been forwarded to a private email address is outside of the organisation.
We can see, we have something called a registry on our email systems leader that show who sent an email to whom.
You don't see the contents, but you can see who sent the email to whom and we can identify from that,
whether anybody within the organisation has sent that email containing the confidential papers outside of the organisation,
and that will be the starting point for further inquiries.
The second point, Leader, that I made was about whether to debate the issue in private this morning.
It is not the report itself contains exempt information, which has unfortunately been made public,
but in presenting that report to you as members and in answering your questions,
it is still likely that further exempt information would be revealed,
so Leader, the vote to go into closed session, I would say, is still appropriate this morning.
Thank you. Chief Executive.
Yeah, just to build on the conversation from the monitoring officer,
I am incredibly disappointed by this breach and really quite annoyed by the whole thing.
It has undermined, if it didn't need to be undermined anymore, the relationship and the work that we're doing with Aura.
So in that fundamental point, it was somewhat naive, if, well, naive at best,
and I'm being really quite generous there in that comment.
As the monitoring officer was pointed out, there will be further work done on this,
and it will be taken to a point that will get us to a resolution one way or the other in the context of this breach,
which is, I make no bones about this, a significant and serious issue.
It goes to the heart of the relationships from officers, from members, members of staff,
in terms of their working relationships, and, you know, I can, if you detect that I am extremely agitated by this,
it will be absolutely right. It is completely unacceptable, and yeah, it's just completely unacceptable,
and completely unnecessary, to be quite honest.
Right. Okay, then, with those comments, before we go into the exempt items,
do we move on now to item four? Good morning, Marred, Borredar.
Sit my car at the Ethereum housecard after today.
Shall we, are you able to speak today, Marred?
Sorry?
I can't, can you hear me?
Can you hear me?
Can you hear me?
No.
So, right, okay, those in favour of moving to part two, please show.
Carried, cleared.
