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I know that we will all try and work together for the good of the council. I would ask for some forbearance for this meeting, as many of you are newly elected, and it will take a little bit of time to put names to faces. So perhaps for this meeting, if you are going to speak, would you be able to just identify yourself and say your name? Because I think that would help all of us, and it would certainly help the officers. So thank you once again, I'm very honoured. Thank you. I'm going to go now onto item two on your agenda. So please, could I have nominations for the Vice Chair of Council for the Civic Year 24/25? Councillor Brougham. Thank you, Chair. I'd like to nominate Councillor Matthew Sargent, please. Thank you. And do we have a seconder? Are there any other nominations? We will be taking the vote for the Vice Chair of Council by electronic vote. Once the vote has been opened, again, the buttons will flash orange. We're going to get very used to this in the course of this meeting. The buttons will flash orange, and Councillors will need to push button one for yes, two for no and three if they wish to abstain. Has the vote been opened? It has. Remember that each of your names and how you have voted will be listed on the screen. If your name does not show any vote against it, then your vote has not been registered, so try pushing your voting button again. I will now... Oh, I need to vote myself. Oh, all these things that you have to remember. Lovely. Vote closed. I will now close the vote so that we can see the results. Oh, so Councillor Matthew Sargent has been elected as Vice Chair of Council. Would you like to come up, Matthew? [ Applause ] [ Silence ] [ Silence ] [ Silence ] [ Silence ] [ Silence ] Thank you, everyone, for your vote. Looking forward to get going. Let me echo what Chair Kaye has said. So, yeah, looking forward to it. [ Silence ] I will repeat that. We are going to move on to Item 3, which is the appointment of the Leader and Deputy Leader for the Civic Year 2024/25. Please could I have nominations for the Leader and Deputy Leader of Council, who will also automatically be appointed as the Chair and the Vice Chair of Strategy and Resources Committee. Do we have a proposer? Councillor? Councillor Oldham, thank you. I would like to propose Councillor Catherine Braun as the Leader and Councillor Pete Kennedy as the Deputy Leader. Thank you. Are there any other nominations? [ Silence ] We will now go on to vote on those two names. The electronic vote has now been opened. Please push 1. Oh, a seconder. I thought we had a seconder. A seconder? I beg your pardon. Could you identify your name, please? Councillor Linda Cohen. Thank you. Apologies for missing you out. I didn't see you. So the electronic vote has now been opened. Again, to remind you, 1 for yes, 2 for no, 3 for abstain. Remember each of your names and how you have voted will be listed on the screen. If your name does not show any vote against it, then your vote has not registered. So try pushing your voting button again. [ Silence ] I will now close the vote so that we can see the results. So Councillor Raun and Councillor Allen have been elected and appointed as leader of the council and deputy leader. I invite Councillor Raun to say something. Thank you, chair. Just very briefly, I want to say thank you very much for electing me as leader. Again, I'm very happy to continue for a further year. I think this will be coming into the third year that I have been leader of the council. Certainly it has been the practice at Stroud District Council for all political groups and Councillors to work collaboratively. I will now close the vote. Thank you very much for your support this evening. I will invite Councillor Kennedy to say a couple of words as well. Thank you. I'm Councillor Kennedy. I'm honoured to be given this opportunity to work alongside Catherine and with Councillors from all parties across the council as deputy leader. I want to assure everybody that when it comes to being deputy leader of this council, I will support all Councillors and communities to get the very best from the council services and democratic structures. And I hope that together over the next four years, all 51 of our Councillors can play their part in shaping fairer, happier and more sustainable communities. Thank you. Thank you. Now I'm going to go on to item five, item four on the agenda. Apologies. I have received apologies from Councillors Sarah Canning, Helen Caton Hughes, Bob Hughes and John Parker. Please raise your hand if there are any further apologies. Oh, and Charlie Tuffin. Any other apologies? Item five, declaration of interest. Please raise your hand if you have any declarations of interest. No? Oh, I beg your pardon. I'm not even entirely sure if I need to declare this, but be on the safe side. I look for the police in Warwickshire, though anything revolving around the police flatters, I should probably be excused for. Thank you. I don't think there's anything on the agenda today that merits that, but thank you very much. Item six, minutes. I need to consider approving the minutes of the meeting held on the 25th of April, 2024. And can I just advise you that members who are not present at the meeting are able to vote for the minutes. We will do this vote with a show of hands. Please raise your hands if you are in support of the minutes. Is there anyone against? Please raise your hand now. Any abstentions? The vote has been carried, and I will sign the minutes now. Item seven, announcements. I have a short announcement, and I think Councillor Braun might have an announcement as well. My announcement, I am delighted to announce that the Longfield Community Hospice has been voted as Stroud District Council's Charity of the Year. Longfield Hospice provides free care, 365 days of the year, for adults in Gloucestershire living with life-limiting illness and support for their loved ones and carers. Their services support patients, families and carers from the point of diagnosis onwards. This includes day therapy, counselling, education and a range of outpatient services. Care at end of life is provided by their Hospice at Home service. They continue to care for family members and loved ones after death through their bereavement support programme. Further information, when available, about fundraising events will be included in the members' weekly updates and on the members' hub. And I intend to work very hard for this charity this year, and I hope that I can rely on all members to support such a worthy charity. Thank you. And can I invite the leader to say a few words? Thank you, Chair. This slot is a small opportunity for me to update councillors on any business that's happened since the last council meeting. There hasn't been a huge amount of business, actually, since the elections, so I would just like to add to the Chair's welcome, really, to all of you. I hope you're settling in well and you're enjoying your new role, you're getting to grips with the induction process, and I really look forward to getting to know you over the next civic year. Thank you. Item 8, which is the appointment to committees. The proposed membership of committees is shown on the presentation screens, and hard copies have been provided in front of you. Are there any further nominations or amendments? So if there are no further amendments or further nominations, we will proceed to a vote. This is to approve all of the nominations for the membership of the committees, apart from membership of the Audit and Standards Committee, which we will take separately. And I'm going to propose that we take the vote for all of the other committee memberships on block. If you're content, that's great. We're not doing it separately anymore, we're using the script. OK, can I have a proposer and a seconder? Councillor Brawn, Councillor Allen, thank you. And I've been told that I've been using an out-of-date script for this particular item, so we are scrap what I just said before about doing Audit and Standards separately. We are going to vote on Audit and Standards, all on block. Apart from the chair. So we'll proceed to a vote to consider all of the nominations for memberships of all of the committees, including Audit and Standards, and we'll take that vote on block. So the electronic vote has now been opened. Please push one for yes, two for no, and three for abstain. Remember that each of your names and how you have voted will be listed on the screen. If your name does not show any vote against it, then your vote has not been registered and you must push your voting button again. The vote is for the membership of all of the committees. I'll close the vote and we can see the results. Okay, now I'm going on to item 8A, Appointment of Committee Chairs and Vice Chairs. The proposals for chair and vice chair of committees is shown on the presentation screens and hard copies have been provided. Are there any further nominations or any amendments? No? So we're going to take the vote. Do we have a proposer? Councillor Brawn and Councillor Alden for a seconder. We will take the vote for the Audit and Standards Committee chair first. As we have received two nominations, we will take a vote for each nomination separately. The councillor with the largest number of yes votes will be appointed as chair. So, is that Bob Hughes' first vote? Bob Hughes first? Okay, so the first vote is for councillor Lindsay Green. One for yes, two for no and three for abstain. So that's 31 no, eight yes and seven for abstain. So can we go on to the vote for councillor Bob Hughes? Again, one for yes, two for no, three for abstain. 39 votes yes, six no, one abstain. I therefore acknowledge that councillor Hughes is appointed as chair of the Audit and Standards Committee. So we're now going to proceed to the vote for all of the nominations of the chairs and vice chairs of the remaining committees. That's all of the chairs apart from the Audit and Standards Committee. And we're going to take those again on block, assuming that that's acceptable to the meeting. So again, can I ask you to vote one for yes, two for no, three for abstain. So again, I declare that those committee chairs and vice chairs are elected. Now onto item 8B. These are other appointments. The proposed memberships are shown on the screens and hard copies are in front of you. The appointments are to appoint one lead and one substitute member representative for the following bodies, which are led by Gloucestershire County Council. The Health and Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee, the Gloucestershire Police and Crime Panel. B to appoint one member representative to the Parking and Traffic Regulation Outside London Patrol Adjudication Joint Committee. C to appoint up to five cross party members to the Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Equity Working Group. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Champion. D to appoint four cross party members to the Constitution Working Group. Apologies and good evening, everyone. I'm just helping the chair out a little bit there. We have actually received five nominations to the Constitution Working Group. With council's approval, we can amend that to five seats on the Constitution Working Group. And you can see the additional name is shown there in red. So the first thing that we need to just check is that council is happy for that. We can do that by a show of hands and then to accept the additional member on there. So, Chair, back to you, please. So could I see a show of hands if you agree to an additional place on the Constitution Working Committee? Could you put your hand up, please? I think that's almost unanimous. So I think that's acceptable. So again, to amend that, we are going to appoint five cross party members to the Constitution Working Group. To appoint six cross party members to the Members Development Working Group. To appoint two Armed Forces Champions. One champion must be either the chair or vice chair of council. And for the benefit of the meeting, I have put myself forward to be champion and Armed Forces Champion. And we have had three nominations. Right. Again, with your approval, we can amend that because you can never have too many champions for the Armed Forces. So, again, with a show of hands, could you indicate your approval for there to be an additional Armed Forces Champion? Again, I think that's unanimous. So three Armed Forces Champions. To appoint one Migrant Champion. And to appoint three Health and Wellbeing Champions. Are there any further nominations or amendments that have not already been notified to the council? So do we have a proposer and a seconder? Councillor Brawn, Councillor Aldum. As there are no further amendments or further nominations, we're going to proceed to a vote. This is to approve all of the nominations for all of the other appointments. And again, I'm proposing that we take this vote on block. One for yes, two for no, three for abstain. This, again, to remind you, is a vote for all the other appointments listed in the agenda from A to H. And again, unanimously, I think that's all agreed. Two abstentions, I beg your pardon. But it is passed. We will now come to the ordinary items of business for this evening. For these items, an officer or Councillor will provide you with an introduction for the report, which will include a short summary of the report being considered. I will then ask for any members who have questions that they wish to ask to raise their hand. And I will invite you to ask your questions in turn. Members can ask a maximum of three questions per report. And again, perhaps I could remind you, if you are going to speak, if you could indicate your name for this meeting. Once the questions are completed, I will read out the decision box on the report and ask if there are any Councillors who wish to propose and second the decision. This will then open the debate, where members who wish to speak can raise their hand, and I will then ask them to speak in turn. Members will have a maximum of three minutes to speak. A timer will be displayed on the bottom corner of the screen that counts down. I will ask the seconder of the report whether they wish to speak in the debate at the beginning or at the end. Once everyone who wants to speak has spoken in the debate, I will ask the seconder to speak if they haven't spoken already, and ask the proposer to sum up, and we will then take the vote using the electronic voting system. Appointment item 9, appointment of the independent person. Can I introduce Hayley Sims, our monitoring officer, who is going to present the report? Good evening, thank you, Chair. Members will have seen that there are four decisions to be taken in relation to this report. I have read the details, so I will just run through each one briefly. The Council has a statutory duty to appoint at least two independent persons, and it has been agreed that we will appoint three to maintain impartiality, ensure availability, and that where necessary we avoid any conflicts. In 2022, Council appointed three independent persons for a two-year period, with the option to extend these appointments for a further two years. John Acton, one of our current independent persons, has advised that he will be standing down, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank him for his contribution to the Council over the past few years. The independent persons have successfully carried out their roles over the past two years, and we would recommend that we extend Adrian Stratton and Felida Piper's appointments for a further two years. As John will be stepping down, we are also asking for approval to advertise the vacant post to maintain our pool of three independent persons. With regard to the Town and Parish Council representatives, these appointments need to be reviewed following the Town and Parish elections. Previously, it was agreed that the Council would appoint two Parish and Town Council representatives to the Standards Subcommittee. Our recommendation is that we appoint three, so that this will mirror the position with the independent persons. This recruitment will be advertised through the Parish and Town Clerks and the Gloucestershire Association of Parish and Town Councils. Finally, the Council are asked to approve the membership of the Standards Subcommittee, as detailed in the report. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Hayley. So, can I first of all... Does anybody have any questions? No. Very happy then to read out the decision that you're going to be asked to vote on. The decision is, this Council resolves to appoint Felida Piper and Andrew Stratton as independent persons for a further two years until the annual meeting of the Council in May 2026. (B) to commence the recruitment of an additional independent person; (C) to begin the process of appointing three Parish Town Council representatives to sit on the Standards Subcommittee; and (D) to agree the membership of the Standards Subcommittee as follows; Chair of Audit and Standards Committee; Vice Chair of Audit and Standards Committee; Chair of the Constitution Working Group; independent person; Parish and Town Council representatives. Do we have a proposer? Councillor Pearcy. Do we have a seconder? Councillor Kennedy. Does the seconder wish to speak now or reserve the right to speak later? I'll waive my right to speak. Thank you, Chair. Can I now open this item up for debate if members wish to make any comments? Oh. Absolutely. That's wonderful. Could I ask the seconder if they wish to reserve, to exercise their right to speak, or the proposer to sum up? Councillor Kennedy doesn't wish to speak, so can I ask if the proposer, Councillor Pearcy, wishes to sum up or say anything? Thank you, Chair. I just want to say a few words and just echo my thanks to Philadelphia and Adrian and John for their work on the Standards Panel over the course of the last few years. When we appointed the independent persons, we appointed them for their professionalism, their expertise, including their objectivity, and they've demonstrated that amply over the last couple of years. And similarly, I think the inclusion of parish and town council representatives with their experience have again contributed greatly to the good running of the panels committee. And it helps also bring the crowd in an open and transparent way, working with both town and parish councillors, and I think that's really, really important that we can see that we want to get them engaged in important decision making, particularly as the Standards are dealing with those that might be within the parish or town councils. It is quite sporadic, but when it does happen, it can be quite demanding, and so therefore the decision to make three rather than maybe two independent or town councils is the right one in my view, because people can't just drop everything and get on to the meetings, which can be quite intense at short notice. So it gives that resilience in our model to ensure that happens, so I would recommend this proposal to the members. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Pearcy. I'm now going to move to the vote. Again, electronic vote. One for yes, two for no, three for abstain. I think that's the, again, almost a unanimous acceptance, so thank you very much. Going on now to item 10, which is the Brimscom and Thrupp Neighbourhood Development Plan. This item was added as an urgent item to the agenda following the publication of all reports. The reason that this report has been included as an urgent item is that following the referendum result, the neighbourhood plan must be made by the local planning authority within eight weeks of the referendum date. The decision needed to be made by full council and therefore the report would need to be considered at this meeting as the July meeting would take the decision past the eight week deadline. Can I introduce Councillor Chloe Turner to present the report? Thank you very much, Chair, and good evening members and officer colleagues. Yes, my name is Chloe, I'm the newly re-elected Chair of the Environment Committee, a role I absolutely love, so thank you very much. So, yes, making the Brimscom and Thrupp Development Plan, the Brimscom and Thrupp neighbourhood area was designated under delegated authority on the 22nd of February 2016. As you may be aware, a neighbourhood development plan is an opportunity for a community to come together to form a shared vision and to shape development in that area and it's something we very much support as a council helping communities to do this. A final submission version of Brimscom and Thrupp's NDP was received by the council on the 3rd of August 2023 and as prescribed by the regulations, the council consulted on the plan for six weeks and arranged for the plan to be independently examined. The examination concluded on the 18th of January this year with the submission of the examiner's report, which recommended that once modified in accordance with the examiner's recommended changes, that the plan proceed to referendum. The referendum took place on the 2nd of May. The question which was asked in the referendum was, do you want Stroud District Council to use the neighbourhood plan for Brimscom and Thrupp to help it decide planning applications in the neighbourhood area? A majority of 84.2% voted in favour and the plan now carries full weight in the decision making process for planning applications within the Brimscom and Thrupp neighbourhood area. It's now up to the council to formally adopt or make the Brimscom and Thrupp NDP so that it becomes part of the development plan for Stroud District. So this neighbourhood development plan came through the Environment Committee and returning members of that committee might remember we saw that in March, it was very well received, a very solid plan with few changes recommended by the examiner. So I'd definitely like to commend this adoption to members tonight. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Turner. Are there any questions, first of all, concerning this item? So can I read out the decision that you're going to have to consider this evening? Council resolves that the Brimscom and Thrupp neighbourhood development plan is made part of the development plan for Stroud District to delegate to the Director of Place in agreement with the qualifying body, the correction of any further minor spelling, grammatical or typographical errors, together with any improvements from a presentational perspective. Do we have a proposer, Councillor Turner, and a seconder, Councillor Brown? Do you wish to speak at this stage or do you want to reserve your right? Yes, thank you, Chair. Very briefly, I'd just like to say that, as I'm sure many of you know, neighbourhood plans are really important local democratic creations that mean a lot to the communities they're in, and are important not least because they are then legal documents that have to be taken into account in planning decisions. But they're much more than that, they're visions for the local communities that help lead them. And I say this feelingly because I've been on the neighbourhood development plan committee of my own ward, Bisley, for several years now. These things take a long time, though a lot of work, and the Brinscombe and Thrupp one in particular I think is a really terrific one, and we in Bisley have been using it as a model and have met with some of the committee in Brinscombe and Thrupp who have put it together and continue to develop our own, modelling it on what I think is a really superb and somewhat unusually for neighbourhood development plans. It's a very user-friendly, a readable and beautiful looking document, and I commend you to look at it and I commend us to vote to make it this evening. Thank you. Thank you. Can I open up this item now for debate? Councillor Lauterna? Councillor Alden? Thank you. I just wanted to say a quick word to thank all of the people involved in creating the Brimscombe and Thrupp neighbourhood plan. It really was a community effort and lots of people put a lot of work into it, so I'd just like to say a big thank you to those people. As you can see, it was incredibly popular. More people voted for that than voted for their councillor. But I'm still here, it's fine. So it was fantastic, and particularly thank you to Greg Pillie who worked really hard on bringing it through, and he's a member of the parish council, so I commend it all to you. Thank you. Councillor Green has indicated. Thank you, Chair. Obviously we've got two of these on the agenda tonight, and I'm really pleased to see that residents are engaging and parish and town councils are really taking an interest in these NDPs now, so I will be fully supporting both of these. Thank you. And Councillor Watson? I want to echo Becky's thanks and Lindsay's comments. These documents are absolutely invaluable to local communities. They're so important to help protect the local spaces from unwanted development in the wrong place and to support community aspirations and the right developments in the right place. Brimscombe and Thrupp is a unique ribbon development, a rich biodiverse wildlife corridor that is constantly under threat of infill. This neighbourhood development plan would have saved many years of angst and challenging planning fights by local residents in a corner of my ward, which finally culminated in a good news story recently where Charlie Gardens successfully took on a playing field behind Queens Court to be in community custodianship for perpetuity, rather than yet another executive housing development. I welcome the NDP to clearly designate the green space and appropriate allocations for housing and commercial development to maintain a thriving community and natural asset in this beautiful valley, and I urge everyone to vote for, as Lindsay says, both of these. Councillor Watson, is there anybody else that wishes to say anything? So Councillor Turner, would you like to sum up? Just a quick word of thanks to Simon Maier, the officer who - oh, sorry, yes, sorry, out of practice. Yes, quick thank you to Simon, the officer who supports these documents as they come through, and yes, I hope members, you can support it tonight. Thanks. So, again, can I open up the electronic vote? One for yes, two for no, three for abstain. And again, unanimous vote. Thank you very much, councillors. Can I now go on to item 11, which is the Slimbridge Neighbourhood Development Plan. This item was also added as an urgent item to the agenda following the publication of all reports. The reason that the report has been included as an urgent item is that following the referendum result, the neighbourhood plan must be made by the local planning authority within eight weeks of the referendum date. The decision needed to be made by full council, and therefore the report would need to be considered at this meeting, as the July meeting would take the decision past the eight-week deadline. Again, could I introduce Councillor Turner to present the report? Thank you, Chair, and apologies for the repetition, but I do have to say the words. So another very solid neighbourhood plan from Slimbridge. The Slimbridge neighbourhood area was designated under delegated authority on the 23rd of July 2020, and a final submitted version of the Slimbridge NDP was received by the council on the 26th of July last year. And as prescribed by the regulations, the council consulted on the plan for six weeks and arranged for the plan to be independently examined. That examination concluded on the 14th of January with the submission of the examiner's report, which recommended that once modified in accordance with the examiner's recommended changes, that the plan proceed to referendum. The referendum took place on the 2nd of May. The question which was asked was, do you want Stroud District Council to use the neighbourhood plan for Slimbridge to help it decide planning applications in the neighbourhood area? An even bigger majority of 84.7% voted in favour, and the plan now carries full decision making weight in the decision making process for planning applications within the Slimbridge neighbourhood area. It is now up to the council to formally adopt or make the Slimbridge NDP so that it becomes part of the development plan for Stroud District. And once again, I would definitely commend this neighbourhood development plan to members. Hope you're able to vote for it tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Turner. First of all, can I ask are there any questions on this report? No. So again, can I read out the decision that you're being asked to make this evening? Council resolves that the Slimbridge neighbourhood development plan is made part of the development plan for Stroud District. To delegate to the director of place in agreement with the qualifying body, the correction of any further minor spelling, grammatical or typographical errors, together with any improvements from a presentational perspective. So do we formally have a proposer? Councillor Turner. Do we have a seconder? Councillor Brown. Again, Councillor Brown, do you wish to speak now? Yes, please. Thank you, Chair. Even more briefly, please see all my comments on the Brimscom and Stroud one. I would say just the same for the Slimbridge and commend it to this council. Thank you. And can I now again open up this item for debate? Councillor Robinson. Councillor Green. Thank you, Chair. Obviously, Slimbridge being in my ward, I fully support this. I know that Slimbridge Parish Council have worked immensely hard on this with officers, with all the members of the public that have taken an interest in this. So again, I won't go on. Please, please vote for this. Councillor Robinson. Thank you, Chair. Councillor Steve Robinson. The Labour group, as before, with the Brimscom and Stroud neighbourhood plan, will be pleased to support the Slimbridge neighbourhood development plan. We see the importance of these. We've all worked in our own communities and we will be pleased to support it. Thank you. Anyone else that wishes to speak? So can I ask or invite Councillor Turner to sum up? Thank you, Chair. Just to say it's fantastic that we've got these brilliant templates coming through and I hope that other communities are able to follow in the footsteps of Brimscom, Stroud and Slimbridge, and that we see plenty more neighbourhood development plans coming through over the next few years. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm now going to proceed to the vote. The electronic vote has opened. One for yes, two for no, three for abstain. And again, a unanimous decision. Thank you very much, Councillors. And that effectively concludes the business for this evening. Can I thank you again for being so kind to me on my first session in Chair. I think I've remembered one to vote, two yes and two no, and three abstain. I'm going to be dreaming about that tonight. Thank you very much for attending this evening. Could I please ask you to collect your plastic nameplate and your microphone ID card and place them in the tables at the back of the room on your way out. And can I all ask and hope that you have a safe journey home. Thank you very much indeed, Councillors, and look forward to July. Thank you.