Report of District Councillors Carla Hofman and John Williams
to Parish Councils for June 2023
This report contains factual information which we hop will be of use and of interest to the parish council and to the wider community of the parish. For queries, please email us at cllr.williamsjg@scambs.gov.uk or cllr.hofman@scambs.gov.uk
South Cambridgeshire has 5 Year Housing Land Supply
The Greater Cambridge planning area has 6.1 years of housing land supply for the 2023-2028 five-year period. This conclusion is based on our five-year housing land supply being calculated jointly, using the Liverpool methodology, and applying a 5% buffer.
As we can demonstrate a five-year housing land supply for Greater Cambridge, the planning policies in the adopted Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire Local Plans 2018 will be given full weight in decisions on planning applications, unless there are other material considerations to take into account. This will be relevant for any planning applications that are being considered.
You will recall that prior to 2018 South Cambridgeshire did not have a five-year housing land supply and this enabled developers to get planning permission for land not allocated for housing under the previous local plan, such as the land east of Teversham Road, north of Cow Lane.
Four Day Week Trial Extended
A trial of a four-day week at South Cambridgeshire District Council has been extended by 12 months, after Cambridge University independently reviewed data showed the initial pilot was a success reporting that not a single area of performance fell to a concerning level during the trial.
At a time of increased public sector spending pressures, the four-day week aims to allow the Council to continue to deliver excellent services to residents and businesses, whilst improving consistency and reducing cost.
Following the well-publicised success of many similar trials in the private sector, the District Council became the first local authority in the country to trial this way of working between January and March 2023. Around 450 desk-based staff have been involved. The Council decided to undertake the trial because of the acute recruitment and retention issues it was facing – mirroring the national recruitment and retention situation in the public sector.
Before the trial started, the Council was spending about £2million a year on agency staff, often in specialist roles where the private sector pays more. This bill could be halved if all the agency posts were filled permanently. Although the three-month trial wasn’t expected to see improvement in recruitment, because there was no certainty about whether it would continue, the Council’s annual wage bill has already decreased by £300,000. Additionally, some staff have decided to stay at the Council when they may have otherwise moved-on.
The Council outlined in September 2022 how, for more than a year, it had only been able to fill around eight out of every ten, or fewer, of its vacancies. Not being able to fill vacant posts – or using agency staff to cover them – is not only expensive but also disruptive. For example, when case officers change during the process of a planning application, it can cause delays and frustration because a lot of context and institutional memory is lost.
The combination of reduced agency spends and improved recruitment during the three-month trial is a positive indication of what the Council hopes to see in the year-long trial, saving costs whilst maintaining high quality public services.
It has also been decided to include bin and other Shared Waste staff in a three-month trial from July. This will mean that bins will be emptied on Tuesday to Friday, and if successful will avoid the problem of Bank Holiday Mondays.
Draft Regulations for changes to Postal and Proxy Voting published
The Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities published draft secondary legislation which will implement changes made to postal and proxy voting arrangements by the Elections Act 2022. The update includes a new online service for absent vote applications, new identity checking for all absent vote applications, new rules around how long a person can have a postal vote arrangement in place, and a new limit on how many voters a person is able to act as proxy for. A draft Explanatory Memorandum is published alongside the draft Regulations. For questions on the draft secondary legislation, please contact: EIPBusinessChange@levellingup.gov.uk
Carla and John