Minutes:
21. 1 The Leader noted that he had been honoured to join the Mayor at her Civic Service, and a highlight had been seeing Rev’d Rattue following the Jamaican tradition of blessing the cake.
21.2 The Leader, and Executive colleagues, had been following closely the information reported by Guildford Borough Council regarding their financial situation. He had had several meetings with the Guildford leadership over the last couple of weeks, and both Executives had met informally as a group. The Leader reassured Members that Waverley and Guildford were still separate councils, with separate accounts, and whilst the scale of issues at Guildford were larger than expected the issues themselves were not of a surprise and had been factored into Waverley’s risk assessments of the collaboration.
21.3 Waverley’s collaborative work with Guildford continued to save the council hundreds of thousands of pounds per annum and there would be a report on the next steps for the collaboration in September, after the details of Guildford’s financial issues had been properly absorbed. The Leader reminded those opposed to the collaboration that while Guildford’s issues were not on the scale of Woking’s, unless the Government and Chancellor started to address the crisis in local government funding there would be many more councils issuing Section 114 notices or starting urgent remediation works as Guildford were doing. Net debt for the districts and boroughs in Surrey plus the County Council itself was now more than £5.5bn, with at least £1.5bn of that attributable to Woking. For comparison, Waverley had a debt of £138 million, almost all of which was contained in the Housing Revenue Account as the remainder of the loan that all councils who wanted to retain their Council housing were forced by government themselves to take out.
21.4 The Leader was proud of Waverley’s own relative stability and relatively favourable position in this increasingly bleak local government picture and thanked, the council’s Finance Team and Portfolio Holder, Cllr Merryweather, for their work in this regard.
21.5 The Leader referred to matters at The Edge, which would be raised again under public questions. He noted that the petition being presented had reached the threshold of signatures for the matter to be discussed at Overview and Scrutiny, and he intended to attend and speak on that occasion. The Leader apologised to users of The Edge for the gap in service, which was especially disappointing coming over the summer months. The Leader further noted that there were members of the public present who had been present at a meeting with Sport Haslemere prior to the May elections when he had given good faith assurances based on conversations with Surrey County Council and the school about the future of The Edge.
21.6 The current situation was deeply concerning, because discussions had started with Surrey County Council in early 2022 regarding the future of the building that was owned by Surrey County Council and that Waverley had been managing at public cost since 2003. Surrey County Council had stated that they did not run leisure centres, and the Leader emphasised that they were a discretionary service for any council, and Waverley continued to run four leisure centres in the major settlements.
21.7 Given the previous comments about the state of local government funding, the Leader found the response of the County Council and the intervention of the local MP quite distressing. He urged Mr Hunt to reply to one of the many letters from the council about local government funding, business rates retention, and a number of other issues material to the survival of local government and the provision of its services. The Leader renewed his invitation to Mr Hunt to meet to discuss The Edge and other issues that impact local government and its funding, and the consequences to services that the lack of funding brings.
21.8 Finally, the Leader referred to the recent appeal decision for Waverley Lane that the council had lost. This had been an incredibly disappointing decision and the wording of the Inspector’s actual ruling had been quite disturbing in terms of the council’s understanding of the Local Plan process and the role of Neighbourhood Plans in that process. The appeal decision had been discussed at length with Farnham Town Council and other councillors, and Waverley would be seeking a legal opinion on the appeal decision and options for a legal challenge.
21.9 With the agreement of the Mayor, the Leader then invited Executive members to give brief updates on matters in their remit not otherwise on the Council’s agenda:
· Cllr Peter Clark provided a brief update on the Farnham Infrastructure Programme (FIP) which was launched three years ago. There had been a number of changes of personnel involved, and challenges between those in favour of pedestrianisation of Farnham Town Centre and those against, leading to a change in the leadership at Farnham Town Council. The support of Tim Oliver, Leader of Surrey County Council and Chair of the Farnham Board, had been constant throughout, but there had been a real challenge now to get the funding in place before it was too late. Cllr Clark was therefore delighted to report that on 27 June, the Surrey County Council Cabinet had singed off £14m to support the delivery of the project over the next 2 – 3 years, once the final designs had been approved and the business case and final costings prepared. The next stage was to look at the mitigation to alleviate disruption to Farnham town centre during implementation.
· Cllr Paul Rivers reminded Members that the Landlord Services Advisory Board would be meeting on 20 July, and encouraged Members, tenants and leaseholders to attend.
· Cllr Liz Townsend endorsed the Leader’s earlier comments regarding the Waverley Lane appeal decision, and the surprise and disappointment at the Inspector’s decision and his interpretation and planning weight attributed to the Farnham Neighbourhood Plan policies and the Surrey Hills AONB review. Cllr Townsend was concerned at some critical inconsistencies between the weight of harm given to the countryside afforded in the Waverley Lane decision compared to the Green Lane Farm and Lower Weybourne Lane appeals, and agreed with the Leader that it was right to obtain a legal opinion to determine whether the council had grounds to challenge the appeal decision.
· Cllr Steve Williams reported that visitors to Frensham Common were being warned not to enter the water at Frensham Great Pond because of the presence of blue-green algae which had been confirmed by the Environment Agency at its regular assessment on 7 July. Blue-green algae was extremely dangerous, especially to dogs and children, and could cause dermatitis, irritation, rashes, blistering, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, and nausea. Warning signs had been put up on site, there were warning messages on social media and Waverley’s website, and Waverley’s rangers were on site to provide advice to visitors. This was a seasonal occurrence and it was likely that the blue-green algae would persist until well into the autumn before the Environment Agency gave the ‘all clear’.