Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were submitted on behalf of Councillors Mike Booth and Paul Cox.

Councillors Bernard Dawson and Jodi Clements acted as substitute representatives for Councillors Mike Booth and Paul Cox, respectively.

Councillor Aziz declared a personal interest in item 5 - Hyndburn Leisure Trust, due to his children attending swimming lessons run by Hyndburn Leisure Trust.  Cllr Aziz remained in the meeting and took part in the debate and determination of this item. 

Cllr Aziz also acknowledged that, having been a Cabinet Member during the municipal year 2024-25, he had been involved in decision making processes and therefore, he indicated that he would declare an interest should he consider there to be a conflict of interest arising during the meeting.

To submit the Minutes of the Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committees, held on 20^th February 2025 and 18^th March 2025, for approval as correct records.

Recommended                     -   That the Minutes be received and approved as a correct record.

The Minutes of the meetings of Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committees held on 20^th February 2025 and 18^th March 2025 were submitted for approval as correct records.

Resolved                               -   That the Minutes of the Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committees held on 20^th February 2025 and 18^th March 2025 be received and approved as correct records.

The Overview & Scrutiny Officer presents a report requesting that the Overview & Scrutiny Committees note any comments given by Cabinet, and consider the work programmes for 2025-26 for approval.

Recommended                     -   That the work programmes for the Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committee for 2025-26, be approved.

The Overview & Scrutiny Officer submitted a report seeking approval of the work programme for the Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committee for 2025-26.  Members were reminded that items could be added to the programme throughout the year should it be considered important and relevant and approved by the Chair of the Committee. 

Resolved                               -   That the work programme for the Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committee for 2025-26 be approved.

Change in Order of Items Considered on the Agenda

The order of items considered on the agenda were moved to accommodate availability for presentations as follows:

Item 4 – Performance Review Report – moved to item 5 of the agenda

Item 5 – Hyndburn Leisure Trust Annual Report – moved to item 6 of the agenda

Item 6 – Household Support Fund – moved to item 4 of the agenda.

The Head of Benefits, Revenues and Customer Contact provides Overview and Scrutiny with an overview of the Household Support Fund (HSF) scheme and the Councils approach to the administration of this scheme.

Recommended                     -   That the comments and recommendations of the Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committee be noted and actioned, as required.

The Head of Benefits, Revenues and Customer Contact submitted a report to provide the Resources Overview and Scrutiny Committee with an overview of the Household Support Fund (HSF) scheme and the Council’s approach to the administration of this scheme. 

Councillor Dad, Leader of the Council, attended the meeting to report on the item and to answer questions submitted by the Committee.  He provided an overview of the Household Support Fund and informed the Committee of an extension to funding until March 2026.  He explained that the aim of the Fund was to provide immediate financial assistance to residents facing financial challenges and that it was open to all residents regardless of whether they were in receipt of benefits.   

The Committee had submitted questions to the Officer, in advance of the meeting, which had been responded to.  These referred to the following issues: 

·         How clear was the application process? 

·         If the Council processed all applications for funding, irrespective of how they applied? 

·         Which organisations were included in those that could refer applicants? 

·         Which organisations were included in those listed under Food Grant networks? 

·         The timeframe for applying to receive DHP? 

·         Why the administration of the Household Support Fund was taken back in house by Hyndburn Borough Council? 

·         Would the Council need to take on extra staff now that the HSF was being processed in house again and what had happened to the staff that had work for Hyndburn Leisure Trust who had processed applications previously? 

A summary of the responses included:

Hyndburn Borough Council had been approached by Hyndburn Leisure Trust to advise that, due to employee changes, they would not be able to administer HSF from 1^st April 2025, consequently, the Council had agreed to take back this responsibility.  The Council had considered the previous successful delivery of the Fund by Hyndburn Leisure Trust and taken the decision to administer the Fund in the same way, to ensure smooth transition.  The Head of Benefits, Revenues and Customer Services confirmed that all applications were processed by the Council, irrespective of how applications were submitted.  He provided a list of the Direct Referral organisations and those organisations who were listed under the Food Grant Network.  He reported that applications would be processed within two weeks of receipt and that the Council currently had enough staffing capacity to deal with the processing of applications.

Members were also provided with further opportunity to ask questions at the meeting.  Questions included: 

·         Advice on where residents were directed to, to apply for the Funding. 

·         Who decided how much a person was eligible for? 

·         How the Household Support Fund was promoted and if this could be improved? 

·         Applications for Funding were relevant to different categories, was it possible to apply for more than one category? 

·         Had there been a difference in application figures between the administrations by Hyndburn Leisure Trust and the Council? 

Responses to the above questions were given at the meeting: 

The Committee was  ...  view the full minutes text for item 106.

The Policy Manager presents a report to provide Committee with information to monitor and review Council performance, and to focus on key performance indicator ‘Sustainability (environment)’.

Recommended                     -   That the comments and recommendations of the Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committee be noted and actioned, as required.

The Policy Manager submitted a report to provide a performance update on the Council’s Sustainability Environment Key Performance Indicators as part of the Council’s performance monitoring review. 

He reported that the Corporate Performance Review held in 2024 had recommended that the Council monitored its performance progress.  Subsequently, a performance review report had been submitted to the Resource Overview & Scrutiny Committee held in January 2025, at which the Committee had recommended that future Performance Review reports should only focus on elements of performance.Subsequently, the theme of this report was Sustainability (Environment).  This covered recycling rates, household waste, fly tipping, housing repair, vacant dwellings, carbon emissions, Green Flags and air pollution. 

The Policy Manager referred to appendix 1 of the report which listed the Sustainability theme’s KPIs (eight indicators) and compared performance over the past 5 years, benchmarking and providing Service Manager commentary.  He explained that of the eight indicators, three had seen an improvement in their direction of travel, four had stayed the same and one had seen a downturn compare with previous years. 

The three indicators that had seen an improvement in performance were: the number of fly tipping incidents, the number of complaints of housing disrepair and the number of Green Flag parks held.  The indicator that had slightly dropped was the household recycling rate.  This had seen a slight drop from 32.2% to 31.6% although this was still below the Lancashire average of 39%.  The Committee was informed that this figure included garden waste and would be affected by each borough’s housing stock and garden type.  In a positive light, Hyndburn did have the highest rates of dry recycling across Lancashireand residual household waste which had remained significantly below the Lancashire average. 

The Committee had submitted a number of questions, in advance to the meeting, which had been responded to and referred to the following issues: 

·         Fly tipping could be effected by volume as well as the number of incidents – could this be included in performance monitoring? 

·         Fly tipping of mattresses was a problem, was a delay in collecting bulky waste a contributory factor to this? 

·         Was there data on the fly tipping of bulky waste? 

·         Could data on ‘housing standards disrepair’ be broken down into further categories? 

·         Why do the performance indicator rates show garden waste and residual household waste to be comparably worse than neighbouring authorities? 

Committee Members also asked additional questions at the meeting as follows: 

·         Is there anything that can be done to target air pollution, particularly pollution from traffic in the Clayton Triangle area.  

·         With reference to Household Waste Recycling rates, could the Council do more to educate residents to boost rates of recycling. 

·         People did not want to pay for disposing of their waste so this often led to fly tipping.  Was the problem of fly tipping worse on private land?  Could data be provided? 

·         Could an improved bulky waste disposal service and better advertisement of the service help  ...  view the full minutes text for item 107.

The Chief Executive of Hyndburn Leisure Trust to present a progress report highlighting in-year challenges, opportunities and future plans.

Recommendations              -   That the comments and recommendations of the Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committee be noted and actioned, as required.

The Chief Executive of Hyndburn Leisure (HL), Lyndsey Sims, presented the Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committee with a progress report for Hyndburn Leisure, highlighting in-year challenges, opportunities and future plans. 

She reported on the Trust’s financial position including: 

·         Reducing grant funding paid to the Trust by Hyndburn Borough Council to zero since 2008-9.

·         The year-on-year reductions to the management fee providing cumulative savings to the Council of over £9 million (exclusive of VAT). 

·         External factors, over the last 3 years, had meant that the charity had required a subsidy from the Council to maintain the operation of all facilities and services.  A subsidy of £1 million had been agreed for 2024-25 which represented 17.5% of the overall turnover in 2024-25. 

·         In 2024-25 an overall operating profit of £15k was achieved. 

·         Over the next two years, the Trust aimed to move back towards a zero operating subsidy although the Charity had indicated to the Council that a subsidy of around £700k would be required for 2025-26. 

The Chief Executive of HL also referred to the work of the Charity and their achievements in respect of project work to improve health and wellbeing in the community.  She explained that they worked with other partners to deliver projects to support people’s needs and explained how this had had a beneficial impact on people’s lives, which the Charity was proud of. She reported that the Trust would continue work around improving healthy outcomes and reducing inequalities for the community by working closely with stakeholders across sectors such as public health, funders and service users.  In 2024-25 there had been 611,941 attendees at their facilitiesgenerating an estimated £19.5 million of social and economic benefit to Hyndburn. 

She informed the Committee of the launch of a new mobile app providing people with more flexibility when booking activities.  The Trust had also made efforts to reduce its carbon footprint and, in doing so, made their facilities more energy efficient and they had launched its most recent company strategy, updated annually, which had four major pillars: People, Provision, Partnerships and Performance. 

Prior to the meeting, the Committee had submitted a number of questions in advance which had been responded to.  The issues raised related to: 

-          The future plans of Hyndburn Leisure Trust, in respect of the Local Government Review

-          Plans and utilisation of Accrington Town Hall and its facilities

-          Accrington Town Hall revenue and its expenditure

-          Integration into town centre plans for Accrington Town Hall

-          Using Accrington Town Hall as a centre for performances?

-          Plans for separating the arts and entertainment side of the Trust from the sports side

-          The Trust working with neighbouring authorities to provide entertainment provision

-          Consideration of the Trust working with bodies such as IMEP to provide entertainment

-          Questions relating to running costs and subsidies.

Responses to the above questions were provided at the meeting.  The main points were summarised as below:

The  ...  view the full minutes text for item 108.

To consider options for filling the vacant co-optee position, allocated for a young person aged 18 years to 25 years.

The Overview & Scrutiny Officer submitted a report to inform the Committee that there was still a co-optee vacancy for a young person (18 – 25 years).  She reported that the co-optee position would cover the remaining municipal year for 2025-26 and invited the Committee to submit nominations.  She informed the Committee that nominations would be considered at the next Committee and any recommendations being submitted to Full Council for approval. 

The Committee suggested that nominations should be sought using social media and that consideration should also be given in respect of a youth M.P. or a young person interested in politics.

Resolved                               -   That the report be noted.