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Agenda item

Public Questions

To deal with questions from the public within the open forum question and answer session of fifteen minutes in total. Questions from each member of the public should be no longer than two minutes each and relate to issues under the Council’s or Committee’s remit. Any member of the public wishing to ask a public question is requested to contact Democratic Services by no later than 5.00pm the working day before the meeting.

Minutes:

Council Borrowing of £76.5M

Mr Dunn’s question was directed to The Leader of the Council, Councillor Joe Harris. He asked “Should the £76.5M that the Council is proposing to borrow, be the subject of a local referendum to enable Cotswold residents to understand the benefits and risks involved in borrowing such a large amount”

 

The Leader of the Council, Councillor Joe Harris stated that a referendum would not be held as the proposal to borrow the sum involved was complex and could not be reduced to a binary ‘yes/no’ decision.  The context of the borrowing requirement was provided, along with an assurance that business cases would underpin each initiative that benefitted from the borrowing.  There was also a commitment that only initiatives that benefitted the local area and delivered a return on investment would be successful.

 

Baunton Parish Boundary Change

Mr Milner’s question was directed to the Council.

He asked “Given that:

·         both CDC and Baunton Parish had undertaken consultation and shown that the local residents didn’t want the proposed change,

·         it offered no benefits,

·         sharing facilities between communities was already routine,

·         the area was a tourist destination and facilities were already widely shared,

·         moving the households out of the parish caused an unnecessary existential risk to Baunton parish (as the voters number will reduce to 165 and the minimum is 150)

What possible justification is there for this proposal?”

 

The Leader of The Council, Councillor Joe Harris stated that the Council needed to make an objective view on whether the boundary should change or remain where it is and a debate would be held later in the Council meeting to discuss and vote on this.

 

Crowdfund Cotswold Grants

Mr Fowles’ first question was directed to the Deputy Leader of the Council, Councillor Evemy. He asked “The Council’s Crowdfunding initiative has been a huge success raising nearly £300,000, however there had been some concern that very small projects that had previously received matched funding were no longer applying. Could the Council publish details of all of the projects including, those that were unsuccessful, the average grant, and how this had compared with the Community Projects Fund?

 

The Deputy Leader of the Council, Councillor Evemy stated that the Community Project Fund had been complicated, bureaucratic and difficult to administer for relatively small amounts of money and did not have the added benefit of encouraging local engagement across the District.  In the first round of Crowdfund Cotswold all 19 applications had received funding and details had already been listed on the  website. 

 

Mr Fowles’ second question was directed to The Leader of the Council, Councillor Joe Harris.

He asked “Unlike Public Questions that tend to get read out in Council meetings, this no longer happens with Members Questions, and therefore in person attendance of Council meetings is required in order to hear these and read the agenda.  In the interest of openness and transparency, could the Council revert to requiring all Members to read their questions and also offer members of the Public the opportunity to ask a supplementary question.

 

The Leader of the Council, Councillor Joe Harris stated that the current process enabled any member of the public to turn up to a Council meeting without prior notice or a requirement to submit questions in advance, and ask up to 2 questions. The Members Questions were printed also in the Agenda that was available on the Council website.