Transcript

I should have worked out the microphones by now. Welcome everyone to this meeting of Cheltenburra Council and don't worry, I'm not in the wrong place I am meant to be here. We will start with item number one on our meeting and that is apologies. I haven't got any notes of apologies, but if there are any... I have a couple of columns I'm told. My apologies, it helps if I look at the right script. So apologies that have caps the columns and counts the Steinhardt. If there are no other apologists to note, we'll move on to item two, which is communications by the retiring there. So as the outgoing mayor, I have only a small part to play in this meeting today. So I hope if you don't mind if I just take a couple of minutes for some brief remarks before I hand over to Councillor Baker. I won't repeat all of the thank yous from our last meeting and there will no doubt be many more thank yous later tonight anyway. But I really just wanted to thank members for helping to make chair and council meetings over the past 12 months a pleasure. And of course thank our chief executive, Gareth and all the officers of the council, not least Jenny in the mayor's office and democratic services for all of their support over the past year. New members will no doubt have already found their help invaluable. I did want to, however, single out one individual and we'll see if he's listening now. And that is the mayor's office of Bob Bishop. Today's Bob's last day with the council as he's retiring. Returning councillors and certainly previous mayors. So returning councillors and certainly previous mayors will know Bob well from all the support that he's given to mayors over the years and the council throughout the year, especially in making civic occasions such as Remembrance Day run so smoothly and indeed the logistics for the mayor making tonight. Bob's experience in the organisation will be sorely missed. As I know he's going to have his hands full with everything going on tonight. Not to mention, well, shepherding councillors and older men around in the right direction. So I just wanted to put on record my thanks to Bob and wish him a happy retirement. And a crimplusion of pleasure. And I'm not cut out often but you've got to do that. I've always got to be nice but to be up. Thank you Bob. And so I finally just wanted to welcome new members to their first full council meeting. Especially councillors, Pempton and Day and everyone else who I've not yet met. I'll leave my remarks there. This meeting is normally only a brief one. Though for the benefit of any new members this won't always be the case. May I wish very soon to be Mayor Councillor Baker and you all every success for the municipal year ahead. And I look forward to seeing many of you later this evening. Rowena, you wanted to... Would it just take an opportunity, Matt, to say thank you for being a very, very efficient chair and a superb mayor. On behalf of the council, thank you. Sorry, thank you Councillor. That's very kind to me. And that brings us on to item three which is election of the mayor for the 24-25 year. I will now call on Councillor Harvey to move their motion, sorry, proposing Councillor Baker as mayor. Thank you Mayor. Before I stick to my script, I'll just hold hardly echo what the leader has said about just a thank you. I'm honoured that today I am proposing that Councillor Baker be and is hereby elected Mayor of the Borough of Cheltenham and Council Chair for the ensuing municipal year. Thank you. Thank you Councillor Harvey. And now I believe we have Councillor Smith to second the motion. It wasn't to say anything. No, I've known Paul for over 30 years in his business and in leisure. And I wish him all the best, you know. Thank you very much for being the mayor. It's been appreciated. Thank you very much. Thank you Councillor Smith. And with that we will move to the vote. So please indicate on the screens in front of you. Thank you members. That is carried unanimously. We will just take a brief moment whilst we hand over the chains and then move to Paul. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So the first item I have is the election of deputy mayor for the coming year 2425 and vice chair of the council. So I'd like to call on Councillor Atherston to move the motion proposing that Councillor William, Dr. William, as deputy mayor, Councillor Asten. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I propose that Councillor, Dr. David Willingham B and is hereby elected deputy mayor of the borough of Cheltenham and council vice chair for the ensuing municipal year. Thank you. And if I can call upon Councillor boys to formally just second the motion, please. I second that. Thank you. And then we will, so I will put, so I will now put the motion then that Councillor Dr. David Willingham B and is hereby elected deputy mayor of the borough of Cheltenham and council vice chair for the ensuing municipal year, if we would like to move to the vote on that motion. Okay. Thank you very much. Councillor William, would you like to come and join me? Thank you. So, congratulations David, look forward to working with you. We now move on to item five, which is declarations of interest members. Any declarations of interest? Nope. Excellent. Thank you. So item six, minutes of the last meeting, obviously this is only applicable to members who are actually at that meeting. So minutes of the meeting held on the 18th of March 2024, we can move to the vote. Any questions on those or can we move to the vote? No. All done? All done. Great. So item seven is communications by the mayor, I have been inundated with correspondence since the appointment 10 minutes ago, but I would like to just thank all members for their confirmation today. For me, it's an amazing thing to have from growing up in St Paul's and being a student at Denali Street School, never in a million years would I have ever assumed or presumed to have been honoured to take on this role. So I am really chuffed and a little bit traumatised, I suppose you could say, and not had much deep for the last few days. So I'm really looking forward to the role and really looking forward to getting out and about and shouting them in all our different communities, and whilst I've lived through all my life, there's a lot of, lot of things that I am going to clue what's going on and add a taste for that as a Deputy Mayor. So it's a huge privilege, it's a great assignment for me, and I'm very much looking forward to it. Obviously, there'll be a little bit more to be said this evening. I will just briefly mention my four charities, which probably won't be much introduction. A gentleman welcome refugees, a charity very dear to my heart as a founding trustee. I won't say what they do, because it's fairly obvious what they do, they do what it says on the title. Aim up, which was formerly at St Vincent's and George's, fantastic local charity. Their founder Les Boni will be one of the Freeman proposed later this evening. They do an amazing job for disabled adults in our community, both mentoring and physically disabled. Having them to lead as normal a life as they can and as they want to lead. The third charity is my local one, which is Friends of Samford Park, and we all know what a role friends groups play in our town across the town. So they have really been instrumental in investing in and raising funds and working with the Council on improving Samford Parks, like so many other groups do. And finally is CCP, which again, long established charity set up by Michael Radcliffe. Many years ago, Michael will be getting the Freeman of the Borough as well, later on. A fantastic charity which works with the homeless, tries to prevent homeless nurses working with family breakdowns, and also involved in all sorts of things, including food banks, which sadly we have far too many in our town. So that's an introduction to my charities, rather presumptuous, but I've had a charity committee running there for about six months, and we have got a lot of events planned and we hope to have a very exciting year to raise much new funds for those four charities. So that's all for me. The next item is item eight, which is appointment of the leader of the Council, and if I can ask Councillor Jeffress to propose, please. Thank you, Mr Mayor, you're getting a great pleasure in proposing the Leader of the Council for the Insurance Board, yet. And Councillor Joy, can I call you for a second, please? I would really like to second Councillor Hay on for the leadership of Council, please. Lovely, thank you both. If you can go to the vote on that, yeah. Okay, that's unanimous, thank you all very much. We now move on to item nine, which is Communications by the Leader of the Council, Councillor Hay, thank you, Councillor Baker, or I'm there now, I should change that. Just thank you very much for being Leader is an enormous role and carries with it an enormous responsibility. Group Leader, I might be of a great many people, but I'm also the Leader of Chutland Borough Council. So every single Councillor, I take that responsibility for leading on. I'd like to reiterate, thanks to Bob, and wish him well in his retirement, just to echo, I'd also like to welcome many new members on both sides of the Chamber, very, very welcome to you all. That's really all I want to say at this point in time on this, thank you. And that she was remiss to me not to mention Bob myself, because we've had a short relationship whilst I've been deputy mayor, and I'm just very disappointed that he's chosen to retire at the point of my appointment. I'm not quite sure what I said to him in that car on that occasion, but there we go. Okay, so now we'll then move on to item 10, which is to note the membership of Cabinet, doing the zip to Leader, and I think Councillor Roo and Haye again, please. Thank you, Councillor Baker. So just in brief, it gives me great pleasure to let you all know who the Cabinet members will be. So the Cabinet member for Finance and Assets will be Councillor Lewis. For major developments in housing delivery will be Councillor Jeffery's economic development, wellbeing and culture will be Councillor Haward. Planning and customer services will be Councillor Flo Kukas. Climate emergency will be Councillor Ian Dobe. Safety in communities will be Councillor Victoria Rotherston. Planning and building control will be Councillor Mike Collins, and waste recycling and public realm will be Councillor Isaac Talford. Thank you, Mayor. I didn't. I forgot. I should have said, and the Deputy Leader will be Councillor Jeffery's. Oh, I couldn't do this without, believe you, me. Thank you. Congratulations to all the new Cabinet members and the old ones who have been recycled as well. And if we can move to the votes on... You don't need to go on that. I would... There's a lot to run a vote here. I think you turn the page. Ah, I have to end the page. Item 11. To establish and appoint to the following committees. The nominations for the committees have been published as a supplement to the agenda, so I hope members have received those. Please can I ask the Councillor to approve the nominations as laid out. So 20 to go through these committees here. No, that's the next one, isn't it? Yes, so we're... So you've taken one vote to approve all of the nominations, and it will take a second vote, which is on the chairs and voice chairs. Okay. So we're going to move to the vote then on the nomination for committees. That's all done. There you go. Thank you. I'd say, that's an easy job, this, isn't it? Not sure what all of us was right. Anyway. Okay, we now... I'd now like to propose the council that the chairs and the vice chairs of these committees be appointed by council rather than by the individual committees in separate meetings. The proposed nominations are attached or indicated on the attached. So again, I'm assuming everyone's seeing these. Just we're looking at appeals, appointments, immunization, audit compliance, governance, disciplinary, licensing, licensing subcommittee, miscellaneous, overview and scrutiny, planning and standards. So we're going to move to the vote on this one. Okay, that's unanimous again. Thank you. Item 12, to a point to the following joint committees, including substitutes. We're going to do these one at a time or on block. On block. On block. So we've got the... We're not... Yes. So the first one is appointments across your health, overview and scrutiny committee. We're not doing the City Region Board at the moment because that hasn't been formally constituted. The appointments of the Gloucester Police Crime Panel, Joint Strategic Planning Member Group, Gloucestershire Resources and Waste Partnership. Please ask the council to vote on those nominations, please. Okay, that's great, thank you. Item 13, to a point to the following advisory panels and working groups. So this is the Constitution Working Group and the Treasury Management Panel. Please can I ask the council to vote on the nominations I've laid out again. Okay, and I would like the council to note the remainder of the appointments, which is Community Infrastructure Levy Neighbourhood Panel, close off the tongue. Joint Monitoring and Liaison Group Building Control, Joint Monitoring and Liaison Group One Legal, Member Development Panel, Planning and Liaison Member Working Group, Budget Scrutiny Working Group, Asset Management Working Group, Housing Supply and Members ICT. That's just to be noted, we're not voting on that one. And then we have item 14, to a point to the following member, Champion Roles, Armed Forces Covenant Cycling and Walking, Mental Health, Refugee and Safeguarding. So the nominations are on the proposed supplement, please can I ask the council to approve the nominations as laid out. Excellent, that's all done. Thank you. We then move on to item 15, which is to receive petitions, I'm not aware of any petitions. And finally, item 16, any other item in the Mayor determines as urgent, and which requires a decision, again, not aware of anything there. So without the meeting, this part of the meeting is closed, but if a short break, and then we'll resume for the second meeting in, say, five minutes, thank you all very much.