northlincs.gov.uk

125 (25) COMMUNITY RIGHT TO BID – NOMINATIONS REGISTER AS AT 05/12/2014 – The Director of Places submitted a report updating the Cabinet Member on the progression of the Community Right to Bid process in North Lincolnshire.

The Community Right to Bid initiative allowed local community groups or parish councils to nominate buildings or land for listing as Assets of Community Value under the Community Right to Bid initiative.

For a local group to successfully nominate an asset it would have to show that:

• it was based within the local authority area (or a neighbouring authority); and
• it was a group that was qualified to make a nomination.

Listed assets must either improve, or had recently improved, the community’s social wellbeing or social interest.  They must also be likely of doing so in the future.

The Nominations Register set out the progress made for each nomination from the date it was received through to the listing review, as applicable.  The Nominations Register was appended to the report.

Resolved – That the latest information held within the Nominations Register be noted.

126 (26) HELP FOR SINGLE HOMELESS FUND – The Director of Places submitted a report providing the Cabinet Member with an update on the outcome of a sub-regional bid to the Help for Single Homeless Fund.

In August this year, the council submitted a partnership bid, along with the other three Humber Authorities, to the government’s Help for Single Homeless Fund.  The purpose of the fund was to; Break the route into rough sleeping by improving co-ordination for single homeless clients across boundaries, agencies and the voluntary sector and spread good practise to improve the quality and consistency of the service for single homeless people.

The council’s bid was to cover the cost of an Assertive Outreach Worker for North and North East Lincolnshire.  To adopt and implement the government’s No Second Night Out Initiative, the council required an Assertive Outreach Worker to work with new rough sleepers and prevent them becoming entrenched in the rough sleeping culture.

The council had just received confirmation that the bid to the fund was successful.  The council’s share of the allocation would allow an Assertive Outreach Worker to be employed on a part time basis, allowing the requirements of the No Second Night Out initiative to be met.

Resolved – (a) That the employment of an Assertive Outreach Worker, as set out in the report, be approved, and (b) that an update report on the No Second Night Out Initiative be submitted to the Cabinet Member in February 2015.

127 (27) EXTENSION OF HANDYMAN SERVICE – The Director of Places submitted a report updating the Cabinet Member on the additional resources provided by Health to extend the handyman service to provide seven days a week working as a pilot scheme for the next three months.

The handyman service carried out small scale adaptations, handyman and target hardening jobs.  A large number of the adaptations were requested by the hospital Occupational Therapy service.  They were often necessary before a vulnerable and often elderly patient could be released from hospital.

With the introduction of the Better Care Fund, two of the main key performance indicators for health and wellbeing boards and the integration of services and care across Health and Social Services were the time taken to discharge elderly and vulnerable occupants and preventing unnecessary emergency hospital admissions.  The handyman service could assist in helping to meet both these targets by responding within 24 hours and across weekends as well as weekdays.

To assess the impact that seven day a week working could have on reducing delays in discharge and lower emergency admissions, the handyman service was going to pilot seven day a week working between January and March 2015.

Resolved – (a) That the available funding to provide an additional handyman initially for a pilot period of three months to work across a weekend to provide minor adaptations and agree a service level agreement to complete minor requests for service within 24 hours of receipt be accepted, and (b) that a further report be submitted to the Cabinet Member in April 2015 on the outcome of the pilot scheme and performance against key indicators.

128  (28) NORTH LINCOLNSHIRE BULK OIL BUYING SCHEME – The Director of Places submitted a report seeking approval to partner with the Humber and Wolds Rural Community Council to set up an oil bulk-buying scheme for North Lincolnshire.

Humber & Wolds Rural Community Council (HWRCC) had approached the council to work with them to extend their established bulk heating oil cooperative scheme to North Lincolnshire. The scheme had run successfully in the East Riding of Yorkshire since 2013. It aimed to save residents and businesses money by bringing communities together to obtain cheaper heating oil.

The choice of fuels was very limited in off gas communities. There was often no opportunity to take up the advantage of dual fuel discounts. There were significant areas of North Lincolnshire with no mains gas supply.

The scheme was open to any resident, business or community organisation. This included churches and village halls, which used oil for heating. In particular, the council believed rural micro-businesses were likely to take advantage of such a scheme as they could achieve significant fuel savings that on their own they would be unable to access. Collectively however their significantly larger orders would help the co-operative agree cheaper prices for the scheme as a whole.

The report gave details of how the scheme would be administrated, along with details of membership fees and estimated savings that could be achieved.

Resolved – (a)That option two, as set out in the report, be approved, and (b) that the scheme be publicised.

The corresponding report of the following item (Minute 129 refers) contains exempt information as defined in Paragraph 3 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972 (as amended).

129 (29) PROPERTY TRANSACTION SCHEDULE – The Director of Places submitted a report for consideration, and where necessary, approval of a schedule containing the terms of all recently negotiated property transactions.

The schedule covered both operational and commercial property.

Resolved – That the schedule appended to the report be approved.

Note: Reports are in Portable Document Format (PDF) and therefore require a suitable reader to view them. A reader can be downloaded free from the Adobe website (full instructions for downloading the reader are provided on the site). 

Where there is no report this is because it is exempt, as it contains information which is considered to be of a confidential nature, as detailed in the Local Government (Access to Information) Act.