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Bank holiday information - Easter

Bank holiday information for our services, including opening times and emergency contacts. All recycling collections will take place on the usual days.

Agenda and minutes

Venue: Committee Room 5, Guildhall, Swansea. View directions

Contact: Scrutiny 01792 636292 

Items
No. Item

1.

Apologies

2.

Disclosure of Personal and Prejudicial Interests

Minutes:

The Panel raised queries over memberships of groups, organisations etc which have an interest in the natural environment in some way.

 

 

3.

Public Questions

Questions must relate to matters on the open part of the Agenda of the meeting, and will be dealt with in a 10 minute period

 

Minutes:

None

4.

Swansea Council and the Future Generations Act pdf icon PDF 181 KB

An overview of how Swansea council are currently responding and intend to respond to the Future Generations Act, with reference to the corporate well-being objectives and their relevance to the natural environment.

 

Richard Rowlands – Corporate Performance Manager

Minutes:

·         Richard Rowlands came to present his report on what Swansea Council are currently doing to meet their requirements under the WFGA (Future Generations Act)

·         The report aimed to provide the background of the WFGA – it is the legislation which underpins how Councils improve wellbeing

·         A key part of the act is around culture and behaviour

·         Richard discussed what the Council is already doing

·         There was some discussion around how the public are consulted when it comes to policy development. Comments made that there needs to be more public input into policy development

·         The KPI measures for working around the WFGA are not stand alone. It is assessed via a collective look at all KPIs

5.

Discussion

Minutes:

  • The Wellbeing Plan has an objective ‘Working With Nature’ and it seems that the Corporate Plan is incompatible as it does not have a designated target for nature and so the profile is not as high as it could be
  • Any relevant findings from other Scrutiny activities will be fed back into the Panel to avoid duplication of work and to help create an up to date picture of what’s going on
  • Some conversations around how planning is decided and how issues around nature and biodiversity are considered and whether these considerations are at the right stage of the process
  • There are integrated impact assessments to make sure that policies are linking in with the WFGA
  • The Panel discussed the impact of noise and air pollution on health and the concern that schools would be impacted by these issues
  • There is a reliance on grants to fund a lot of the work around nature and biodiversity and there is concern about the impact of loss of grants

·         The Panel will have a Service Policy Overview at the next meeting and this will conclude the planning aspect of the inquiry and inform direction and scope of the work