Agenda and draft minutes

Apologies of absence were received from Cllr Brown, Cochrane, Ejaz, M Forster and Watts.

Members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary or affected interests and the nature of that interest, including the existence and nature of the party whip, in respect of any matter to be considered at this meeting.

Any Member with a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in a matter should withdraw from the meeting when the matter is under consideration and should notify the Democratic Services Officer in attendance that they are withdrawing as they have such an interest. If the Disclosable Pecuniary Interest is not entered on the register of Members interests the Monitoring Officer must be notified of the interest within 28 days.

Any Member with an Affected Interest in a matter must disclose the interest to the meeting.  There is no requirement to withdraw from the meeting when the interest is only an affected interest, but the Monitoring Officer should be notified of the interest, if not previously notified of it, within 28 days of the meeting.

There were no declarations of interest and no indications that members would be participating while under the party whip.

To provide a summary of the review and discuss and agree recommendations.

The recommendations for the Thames water review were presented and discussed.  The following points were noted:

·        There was a suggestion to expand the reference to Storm Henk to cover the recent and ongoing changes to weather patterns and increases in storms as this could be an issue going forward.

·        Regarding the first recommendation around creating a cross borough water and sewage partnership a question was asked about the links between this and the Leaders forum and whether the recommendation had been shared with the Leader of the Council.  In response the Chair confirmed that he had shared this with the Leader.  A point was also made that the recommendation should be more specific in what is meant by engage and to include who and how. 

·        Recommendation two which was to nominate an officer in the council as a touchpoint for local water quality issues received no comments. 

·        Recommendation three, to review planning procedures ensuring load on sewage treatment works (STW’s) is minimised.  Comments were made about the increased pressures from additional housing on the sewage system and the value of this recommendation.

·        Recommendation four, to make aggregated information on current water quality accessible to residents and other stakeholders, was expanded.  It was felt that this would be straightforward to implement through modern data management software.  The more precise details around implementation would be open to further discussions.

In summary, the panel were in support of the recommendations.  It was agreed that any amendments to the wording or further comments on the report could be sent to the Chair of the panel by Monday 29 January 2024.  

To consider possible ideas for future scrutiny reviews to be undertaken by the Panel during their administration.

There were no further new ideas put forward for discussion at this time.