Current Activities of Member Champions

The following is an extract from the progress reports submitted to the meeting of Member Champions on 12 April 2005.

Sustainability/Agenda 21

Councillor Judith Rowley said that in conjunction with Wolverhampton Community Food Initiatives, she had produced a press release and attended a photo-call to promote the Organisation’s ‘five a day’ campaign.  She had visited Chester with the Council’s Planning Committee to consider regeneration in that City. The focus of the visit had been on mixed use development, restoration of heritage sites, the quality of public open spaces, transport issues and the regeneration of the canal corridor.  She had also visited Lichfield City in connection with its recycling achievement. Lichfield was one of the leading Authorities in the country in terms of recycling with over 46% of all household waste being recycled. She had welcomed Centro’s exhibition bus to Queen Square and had supported the staff of Centro to spread the message about the proposed Metro route extensions especially the City Centre loop, the 5 W’s route and the Brierley Hill/Merry Hill extension. She had been involved in the work of the City Council including helping to embed the ethos of sustainability corporately. She had attended a number of scrutiny reviews particularly on Procurement and Sustainability Task Group.  Current issues being considered by the Group  included Green Travel Plans, recycling materials within the organisation, the corporate use of paper, sustainable procurement and sustainable construction.

Councillor Rowley said she had also attended the launch  of ABCD Better Homes project that provided support for both private landlords and tenants.  She had responded to regional consultation on Local Transport Plan targets by commenting that targets should be introduced for sustainable travel, commuting by walking and cycling along canal towpaths and supported Travel-Wise initiatives within the region.  Finally, since February 2005, she had attended five seminars or conferences.

Quality of Design

Councillor John Rowley said that he had met with the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment and had joined a study tour of Wolverhampton regeneration sites in
September.  He had attended three design seminars organised by the Commission in the Black
Country held at Walsall, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton.  He was also due to attend a
further seminar in the next week or so.  In terms of planning and regeneration work,
Councillor Rowley said that he had been a member of the selection panel for a sustainable
housing project at Cross Street South, Blakenhall; had unsuccessfully opposed a planning
application involving the part-demolition of a locally listed building, St Stephen’s Primary
School, Heath Town.  He had subsequently requested a Committee report on the procedure,
criteria and consultation processes involved in the Local Listing of buildings.  He had
opposed a proposal for artwork on the new Library extension on design grounds.  He had also
participated in Committee deliberations on the Art Gallery and Library extensions.  He had
attended an officer and voluntary sector consultation seminar for the retail core expansion and had attended the Environmental Awards ceremony.  Councillor Rowley said he had been appointed a member of the Wolverhampton Regenerating Buildings Preservation Trust in November 2004 and had subsequently attended three meetings and a site visit to the Molineux Hotel.  He was currently chairing the West Midlands Canal Forum during the current year and would be attending a Steering Group for the World Canal Heritage Bid.  In terms of conferences attended, Councillor Rowley had attended a Safe Neighbourhoods Conference in London on the design and management to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour, and a Sustainable Communities conference in London during February on why urban design must change.  He was due to attend further conferences on the Role of Retailing In Urban Regeneration, Urban Design and an Urban Design Summer School in June 2005.  Finally, he had liaised with the Chief Planning Officer to nominate two projects for the  “Green Apple” Civic Pride Awards in December 2004.  Both projects, the
Market Square and Creations, Bilston, had won awards that would be presented on 5 May 2005.

Social Inclusion

Councillor Siarkiewicz explained that her work was in two dimensions:

  • Looking at how the Council promoted inclusion.
  • Reviewing how the Council tackled exclusion.

Work in the last three months had looked at how the Local Area Agreements and Balanced
Scorecard would promote inclusion and reduce exclusion.

The four areas of interest continued to be:-

  1. Improving wealth through improved access to benefits.
  2. Improving inclusion of Children and Young People.
  3. Accessibility to affordable housing.
  4. The role of the Council in promoting local employment.

Benefits

The LAA and BS had little relating to benefits but did include a “poverty proofing toolkit”
to assess the impact on poverty of key decisions.  She had asked to be involved in the
early shaping of this work.

Children and Young People

The enquiries in this work area had related to addressing whether the Council had systems
in place to ensure that children and young people at risk of exclusion were appropriately
managed.

The LAA and BS contained a large amount of activity and monitoring relevant to promoting
the including of children.

A meeting would be held with the relevant Cabinet Member.  Key lines of discussion would be
the definition of “underperforming groups” and baseline performance.

Housing

There were a number of statements in the BS relating to housing.
However further discussion was intended with the Cabinet Member
regarding affordability and targeting of specific schemes, e.g. heating
and insulation.

Contact had been made with the Cabinet Member for Housing and
there was an agreement to meet shortly to explore some of the above
issues and others related to “Wolverhampton Homes” and social
inclusion.  A key line of discussion would be affordability related to
average wages in the City.

Contact was also being made with Beacon Councils regarding their
work on affordable housing.

Employment

The LAA and BS contained a large amount of work in this area and
There were a large number of indicators.  Baseline information was
being south as well as a discussion with the Executive Member.

A considerable number of indicators linked to the Council’s own
workforce, especially with respect to ethnic equalities.  A scoping
meeting had been requested by the Member Champion for Equalities
and the Cabinet Member for Human Resources.

It was hoped that the work of the Member Champion would move
towards policy development in some areas.

It would be very helpful to be aware at an early stage of the likely
scrutiny agendas so that value could be added to these.  She said she
mindful however of the limited support available in these important
but challenging areas.

European and International

Councillor Bob Jones gave an update on activities since February 2005.
 
On 10 March he had hosted a European schools project meeting, for which D’Eyncourt Primary
School was the lead partner.  The Headteachers of their European partners from Italy, Spain,
France and Holland and elsewhere in the UK met Members and the Mayor in the Civic Centre.
The project had received EU funding under the “Comenius” programme, and he was working to
encourage more schools to get involved in projects like these.

All members had expressed an interest in seeing more schools international projects and
he had experienced some difficulties in progressing this through the Education Department.
Councillor Jones referred to the recent appointment of Rita Chowdhury as Schools Inspector
for improvement with special responsibility for global citizenship and international
projects. He was planning to meet with her later this moth to discuss how to take this
agenda forward.

He had led a team of 6 members and 5 officers to a regional European training event held
in Birmingham Council House, organised by the West Midlands Local Government Association
on 18 March.

He had also attended the Christmas Markets Officer Working Group on 21 March to see a
presentation of the products for the Hungarian Christmas Market and noted progress following
the delegation visit to Kobanya on 9-11 March.  He also attended the French Market over the
Easter weekend to monitor the event and offer feedback.

He had met regularly with the European Policy Officer to identify issues that may be of
concern to Members and in particular shaped the second issue of the Members’ newsletter
“Euro News: Bringing Europe into Wolverhampton” which was published in April.  He had also
asked for an electronic version of this newsletter be made available to a mailing list of
partner organisations across the City.

He was also looking into the possibility of additional promotion activities within the City
to mark “European Day” on 9 May, perhaps with exhibition stands in the Civic Centre in
addition to the European flag.

In addition he was am continuing to work with the European Officer to arrange the next
members’ European information seminar, scheduled for Thursday 21 July.

Older People

Councillor Docherty explained that he had encountered a number of problems in his dealings
with a number of external organisations.  For example, he had submitted a request to Travel
West Midlands to provide a specific bus service for the elderly.  However their answer had
been somewhat negative.  He also bemoaned the amount of discrimination that occurred in
respect of elderly people.  He had found that many elderly people could not obtain travel
insurance for travel abroad but those who could found that the cost was often double the
going rate.  He also referred to the fact that upon election, a number of Councillors were
disallowed from serving on certain outside bodies if they were beyond a certain age; this
he believed was blatant discrimination too.

In response, the Chief Executive said that the local issues raised by Councillor Docherty
could be raised with our partners.  However the wider issues now referred to would probably
be best dealt with by the City’s three Members of Parliament.

Equalities

Councillor Dr Passi indicated that there were a number of current scrutiny reviews that were relevant to equality.  He had recently attended a meeting of the Scrutiny Review dealing
with the Education Attainment of Looked After Children and was keeping in touch with the
progress of other reviews such as Access to Accident and Emergency services.  He said he
would attempt to make time to discuss the equality implications of these reviews with the
Chairs of the Review Panels.  He mentioned important links between his work as Member
Champion for Equalities and the Member Champion for Social Inclusion.  With this in mind
he had arranged to meet with Councillor Siarkiewicz together with Link Officers to discuss
how to progress joint objectives.  Councillor Dr Passi referred to the new Member Project
Board for Equalities that was holding its first meeting on 19 April.  The focus of its work
would be to ensure that the Council met the requirements of level 3 of the Equality
Standard by March 2006.  In order to achieve that level, he would be holding discussions
with a range of external organisations as well as drawing on the expertise of the Council’s
own staff and partners.  To help in that area of work, the Council now had a Corporate
Plan and strategic priorities that stressed the importance of reducing inequality.  Level 3
of the Equality Standard required, in addition, the Council to have clear targets and
evidence of improvement.  The Project Board would be focussing on those areas.

E-Government

Councillor Page said that he had attended meetings of the Board of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister’s National Project for Local Democracy.  He had also attended meetings of the
E-Government Programme Board under the chairmanship of the Chief Executive.  He believed this meeting was very positive and had been extremely pleased with the progress it had achieved.  He said that four Councillors had received training in order to be able to
update the Council’s WebPages.  He referred to a number of member IT related issues raised
by Councillor Mrs Bradley at the last meeting of the Scrutiny Board.  Although he had
undertaken to investigate those matters, he referred to a survey of Members that was
currently being undertaken, the outcomes of which would be reported to the Scrutiny Board
and the ICT Working Group.  He also reported that a number of Members had indicated their
desire to be issued with laptop computers; the Head of ICTS was currently investigating
these requests and how to meet those demands.  He had chaired a briefing for Members on e-government and whilst a small number had attended there was a need to target other Members.