Agenda and minutes

Members and officers must declare any disclosable pecuniary interests in relation to any business on the agenda.  Declarations should also be made at any stage such an interest becomes apparent during the meeting.

If in doubt, contact the Legal or Democratic Services representative for this meeting.

There were no declarations of interest.

To approve the minutes of the Worthing Joint Strategic Sub-Committee meeting held on 12 January 2023, copies of which have been previously circulated.

Resolved that the minutes from the Worthing Joint Strategic Sub-Committee meeting held on 12 January 2023, be approved as an accurate record and signed by the Chairman.

To receive any questions from members of the public.

Questions should be submitted by noon on Friday 27 January 2023 to Democratic Services, democratic.services@adur-worthing.gov.uk   

(Note: Public Question Time will operate for a maximum of 30 minutes.)

A Member of the Public asked the following question:-

Please can you explain the process of applying for the Community Infrastructure Levy and how groups can apply for this - do groups have to be formalised and have a constitution to apply?

Response

Worthing Borough Council has been collecting the Community Infrastructure Levy since 2015 and in recent years the various pots of money brought in have grown.  The Neighbourhood Pot represents 15% of the money collected and the first round of applications to utilise these funds were made in 2022.  10 community groups were awarded funds for projects that will benefit a wide range of people and organisations. 

A review of the application and assessment process has been undertaken. The revised application process for the Worthing CIL Neighbourhood Fund is still being finalised and details will be provided in due course. Yes, groups do need to be formalised and have a constitution in order to apply for the funds. All the necessary information will be provided to applicants before they submit their application. This year, we plan to introduce an Expressions of Interest stage, where un-constituted groups can be referred to a partner organisation to assist with getting set up to bid for grant funding.

Pre-submitted Members questions are pursuant to rule 12 of the Council & Committee Procedure Rules.

Questions should be submitted by noon on Friday 27 January 2023 to Democratic Services, democratic.services@adur-worthing.gov.uk 

(Note: Member Question Time will operate for a maximum of 30 minutes.)

Minutes:

There were no pre submitted questions from Members.

There were no pre-submitted questions from Members.

To consider any items the Chairman of the meeting considers to be urgent

There were no urgent items for consideration.

To consider a report from the Chief Executive, a copy is attached as item 6.

Before the Committee was a report by the Chief Executive, copies of which had been circulated to all Members and a copy of which is attached to the signed copy of these minutes as Item 6.

The report before Members outlined how Worthing Council will deliver on the Administration’s commitment to become ‘a council for the community’

The key pillars of the Council’s participative approach reflected the vision of the Council:  fair, green and local.  The report outlined what this meant in terms of the way the council worked with the community and its partners as well as where it stepped back to enable communities to be better able to act for themselves.

The report also set out the commitment to make the best use of council assets in order to create an abundance of community action, where Worthing Council made change happen in partnership and in co-production with the community.

A foundation to this, as with the Council’s economic approach, was community wealth building. This was a people-centred approach to local economic development, which redirected wealth back into the local economy, and placed control and benefits into the hands of local people.

This kind of step change in the relationship between the Council and its community would take time.  The report set out the Council’s first steps in this direction and outlined an open and participative approach to developing this work going forward.

Members unilaterally supported the strategy and lauded the opportunities to change governance that it presented

Decision

That the Worthing Joint Strategic Sub-Committee agreed

a)    To set up a working group to manage progress which should include officers, members and representatives from community groups and to delegate to the Chief Executive authority to agree the terms of reference for the working group in consultation with the Leader which shall include the requirement to report back to the Committee (at such intervals to be agreed in the terms of reference) with further recommendations to the Committee. 

b)    For the Working Group to design and develop outcome measures and a roadmap to be reported to the Committee with agreed outcome measures published every 6 months.

c)    To initiate a review of identified policies and strategies in section 7 in order to embed these principles.

Call-in

The call-in deadline for the decision will be 5.00pm on 13 February 2022.