Decisions made

To appoint Simon Clark as a member of the Independent Remuneration Panel for a period of three years.

Noted.

Noted.

Approved.

To approve the Public Electric Vehicle Charging Policy.

Recommendations approved

Reasons for recommendations

The contract award will provide continuity in utilising the existing hardware and infrastructure.

The recommendations ensure compliance with the council’s Contract Procedure Rules.

The recommendations present the least risk to the council.

Other options considered and rejected

As part of the renewal exercise, alternatives to the Citrix desktop have been considered to ensure that the best product is in place to support the council. There are potential alternatives which over the coming year will be investigated further as longer-term options.

An alternative option has been rejected at this time as an alternative will require a full hardware and infrastructure refresh and will need a considerable initial capital investment to implement.

While further investigations are carried out there is an immediate requirement to renew the existing licences to facilitate everyday access to business systems.

Recommendation approved

Reasons for recommendation

Outlined within the report.

Other options considered and rejected

To not agree the contract award would fail to comply with the Council’s procurement rules.

Recommendation approved

Reasons for recommendation

Enforcement Policy amends the current Chorley & South Ribble enforcement policies to create a generic approach having regard to the Enforcement Concordat.

Public Protection & Environmental Health teams in both Chorley and South Ribble, operate using generic officers covering the following subject areas, Food Safety enforcement, Private sector housing enforcement, Health & Safety enforcement, Environmental Protection enforcement & Community Safety.

Housing teams at both Chorley & South Ribble enforce Housing legislation in relation to homelessness.

Both Chorley and South Ribble Public Protection and Environmental Health teams subscribe to a national system called RIAMS (Regulatory Information and Management System).

The Enforcement policy has been amended to reference the use of RIAMS (Regulatory Information and Management System) for quality assurance purposes. RIAMS is regularly updated when guidance or legislation is amended by the government.

The Enforcement Policy has been written to enable subject specific policies to be linked as appendices.

Other options considred and rejected

The policy outlines the general approach to enforcement having regard to the national enforcement concordat, which all agencies responsible for enforcement must have regard to.  

Recommendations approved:

1.             That the neighbourhood priorities proposed within each neighbourhood management meeting are agreed (as per paragraph 26 of the report).

2.             That when scoping out the detail and financial resources required for each priority, financial or in-kind contributions are sought from partners within the neighbourhood including parish councils, County Council, voluntary sector and other stakeholders.

3.             Where a priority is subsequently scoped out as requiring increased financial resources, consideration will be made in consultation with the Executive Member (Early Intervention) for this neighbourhood priority to be carried out at additional cost, phased, or developed further as an individual corporate project.

Reasons for decision

The council is committed to supporting projects and partnership delivery that focuses on the wider determinants of health as these issues impact on the daily lives of our residents, how happy and healthy they feel living in in their community and in turn their individual life choices and outcomes.

Alternative options considered and rejected

To not support the continuation and development of neighbourhood priorities across the borough and not make the £50,000 funding available. This was rejected for the reasons stated above.

Recommendation approved

Reasons for recommendation

This BIG Grant application is from the owners of You Dental Aesthetics / Swidham Limited which is a dental practice on Gillibrand Street.

They purchased adjoining properties on Gillibrand Street back in 2023 and this project involves the development, extension and complete renovation of the properties to turn it into a contemporary, digitally focused dental practice which will being highly skilled clinicians into the Borough.

The practice will be a 'squat' dental clinic and so they will be starting to recruit staff in the coming months. To start with they will be looking to employ 5 members of staff, along with various dental clinicians. As the clinic grows, they will continue to employ more staff possibly up to 12 new posts.

Other options considered and rejected

The alternative option considered is to not pay the grant. Without this grant, the pace of growth would be significantly reduced. The business would still need to renovate the building, but this could be delayed due to costs and available funds.

Recommendation approved

Reasons for recommendation

Nelipots is a well-established quirky Micro Bar based on Chapel Street in the heart of Chorley Town Centre. The owner, is applying for the Retail and Hospitality Grant which is open to businesses in this sector for a limited period.

They are planning to undertake an internal refurbishment of the business and is applying for new chairs to increase the seating capacity and new shelving and mirrors to give the Bar a fresher new look and also will be refurbishing the toilet facilities in the customer toilets.

Other options considered and rejected

The alternative option is not to pay the Grant. Without this Grant they would not be able to proceed with the project. This could have a long-term effect to the future of the Business, given that they need extra seating in order to boost lost trade.

Recommendations approved

Reason for recommendations

There are circumstances which are exceptional, and which are not of the Council’s making, which have prompted the recommendations, Further details about this are in paragraphs 8 to 12 of the report. 

Other options considered and rejected

Allowing the existing contract to expire and not seek to extend was considered. The Handyperson service is not a statutory service, and it would have been possible to discontinue it. However, this would have created a significant gap in service provision which would have disadvantaged vulnerable residents and potentially led to adverse reputational damage for the Council.

Recommendation approved

Reasons for recommendation

Outlined within the report.

Other options considered and rejected

The alternative option is not to pay the Grant. Without this Grant the work would not immediately go ahead, which would hold back the growth potential of the Business. The knock-on effect of this is that the improvement of the facilities to attract new customers would not happen.

Recommendations approved

Reasons for recommendations

Due to changes to other car parks in the town centre there is a need to increase the long stay provision.

Fleet Street car park is appropriate to be changed as it is suitably proximate to the town centre to support workers. Shoppers would still benefit from the 1 hour free like they do on all car parks (except Flat Iron) so there is still an element of short stay for the area.

This will be relatively simple to do, the machine is already set up for long stay so the short stay program can simply be deleted.

The tariff boards already have the long stay information so we would simply need to cover over the short stay info.

This would also eliminate confusion for visitors as the car park would be purely a long stay, therefore reduce officers’ time answering complaints and refunding tickets as the car park is currently split long stay and short stay.

This would provide an additional 51 long stay spaces in the town centre. 

Other options considcered and rejected

Make no changes. The changes to other parking provision and the loss of the temporary car park at Cleveland Street mean that additional long stay parking is required.

To split West car park street to allow short and long stay parking. This arrangement is already in place at Fleet street but would require lining works to split the car park, the tariff boards changing and the machine re-programming to allow long stay. As mentioned, this arrangement is in place at Fleet street and can sometimes cause issues, people parking in the wrong area get parking tickets resulting in complaints. This takes up officer time responding and sometimes rescinding fines.  It is considered simpler to have car parks that are subject to the same tariff throughout.