Agenda item

In accordance with Council Procedure Rule 8, to allow members of the public to ask questions about the Council’s activities for a period of up to thirty minutes.  A question may only be asked if notice of twelve clear working days has been given.

 

a)    Question submitted to the Leader of the Council by Mrs D. Dell;

b)    Question submitted to the Portfolio Holder for Environmental Health and Licensing by Mr R Dell;

c)    Question submitted to the Portfolio Holder for Environmental Health and Licensing by Mrs A Morgan.

Question submitted to the Leader of the Council by Mrs D. Dell;

 

I would like to know please, what steps Bolsover District Council intends to take to ensure that their information is more readily accessible to the public and is kept updated so that it is correct?

 

Within Vision Bolsover, it states:

 

“Our Priorities: …..Improving customer contact and removing barriers to accessing information”

 

In particular, that its website is checked regularly for broken and indirect links, and that meeting agendas are published further ahead of the meeting than the deadline for submission of questions.

 

To explain what I mean by indirect links, if clicking takes you e.g to ‘Bolsover tv’ but not to the episode explaining the Vision Bolsover, and/or you have to scroll down far to see the item you are looking for, this makes it hard or impossible to find.

As regards accessibility, I have also not found any options for varying text size or a readaloud facility although the language choice is excellent.

 

Response from the Leader, Councillor Steve Fritchley;

Thanks Mrs Dell for your question – it gives me an opportunity to agree more than disagree with what you’re saying.  In 2018 I looked at the Council’s website and found it difficult to navigate, so I asked the Communications Team to change it and make it easier to navigate, and because more people use smart phones, I wanted access to be more mobile friendly.  The new website was launched in 2019 with a simple A-Z format which I think works a lot better.  It did in 2019.  Having said that the Council provides 100s of services and functions with information and this is added to the website on a daily basis – so it’s never going to be an easy task to find the information you need straight away.  We use a piece of software called Silktide that monitors our website and highlights problems such as broken links, spelling errors or accessibility issues – this program is checked on a weekly basis and any errors highlighted are corrected.  I completely agree with Mrs Dell that if you have a link about as specific subject, then that link should take you straight to that information – not a generic page where you have to go hunting for the information you require.  Ive spoken to the Communications Manager and asked them to make sure all links are directed to the specific page mentioned.  Moving on to Mrs Dell’s points about accessibility, the internet has progressed massively since its inception 30 years ago and especially over the past decade.  I’ve been advised that varying the text size on the website can now be done simply by pressing control and plus or minus repeatedly.  We used to pay for a specific readaloud platform but no one was using it or downloading it so we stopped it and stopped paying for it.  However, today there are free browsers and apps available such as Voice dream reader, Speechify that will do it for you.  We therefore do not need to pay for this functionality as it is readily available free of charge.  To reassure Mrs Dell, the team have also recently undertaken an audit with the Government’s cabinet office and implemented their recommendations to make the site more accessible.  Finally, the Council sends out agendas in accordance with our statutory deadlines.  The provision in our Constitution allowing members of the public to ask questions is there to enable questions on a large variety of subjects to be raised outside the specific items on the Council’s agenda as members of the public can submit a question to Council or to Councillors at any point.

 

Supplementary question from Mrs D Dell;

 

I am still concerned that members of the public must only ask questions and each member of the public only has one question per meeting and they must only ask questions that do not cover the same material as agenda item - if you’ve got to get your question in before the agenda comes out you don’t know that you won’t have affectively wasted your one attempt because by the time you’ve find out the same item is on the agenda so your question is struck out, it is too late to put another one, that is my real concern.

 

Response from the Leader, Councillor SteveFritchley;

Thank you again Mrs Dell – and this is a serious point and a logical point and I will be asking our Governance team to look at the Council’s Constitution and look at any ways we can improve.

 

Question submitted to the Portfolio Holder for Environmental Health and Licensing by Mr R Dell;

 

Members of the Council, I accept that the World Health Organisation (WHO) only offer advice, but their recommendations are usual accepted globally.

 

On the 22nd September 2021 they published their new guidelines on Air Pollution levels, supplanting their own levels of 2006. In these they recommended fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) to 10 microns per metre cubed ambient and 2.5 microns per 24hours.

 

At any one testing site the WHO recommend that the following four gases are tested:

 

Ozone, Nitrogen Dioxide, Sulphur Dioxide and Carbon Monoxide.   This is because each is harmful in itself and harmful combined.

 

BDC only publish levels for Nitrogen Dioxide and then using the old guidelines. At the new WHO levels the BDC published Nitrogen Dioxide level now falls outside the requirements.

 

The above four gases are seriously harmful and continue to threaten particularly “pregnant women, young babies and toddlers,” Will the Council increase the scope of its Air Pollution monitoring bearing in mind Death by Air Pollution is now established as a Coroner’s verdict?

 

 

Response from the Portfolio Holder for Environmental Health and Licensing;

Thank you for your question Mr Dell - As you have pointed out within your question, the revised World health Organisation guidelines are in fact advisory, and are intended to inform national policies. It is inevitable, and indeed welcome, that air quality guidelines tighten up over time, as our knowledge of atmospheric chemistry and the impact of air quality on public health continues to develop.

 

The UK’s Clean Air Strategy and the Environment Act 2021 set out an approach to revising targets that will take account of the World Health Organisation’s guidelines, along with other sources of expert advice, including the UK’s Independent Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants and the Air Quality Expert Group, who both provide independent scientific advice to DEFRA.

 

The new Environment Act requires targets to be set in priority areas including air quality, as well as a target for fine particulate matter, known as PM 2.5. These targets need to be brought forward by 31 October 2022. We understand that interim targets are likely to set a five – yearly path toward meeting long term targets in the UK.

 

Monitoring for the pollutants which you mention in your question is undertaken by the Automatic Urban and Rural Network, which is managed by DEFRA and which is the UK’s largest monitoring network and the main network used for compliance reporting against the Ambient Air Quality Directives. It includes automatic air quality monitoring stations with high resolution hourly information which is rapidly communicated to the public. Their nearest monitoring station is in Chesterfield.

 

At the moment we do not intend to increase the scope of our air pollution monitoring, because our initial screening work concluded that whilst there were some small exceedances of Nitrogen Dioxide, there were no exceedances of particulate matter and furthermore, the monitoring which we have undertaken has demonstrated continuing improvements in local Air Quality. This has in fact led to the revocation of all three of our Air Quality Management Areas included on the agenda for this very meeting of Bolsover District Council. This has also been independently validated by an expert air quality consultancy.

 

We will continue to undertake our own monitoring at 23 locations across the District, including in the locations which until now have been covered by the Air Quality Management Areas.

 

We will also continue to work in partnership with other authorities and the Environment Agency, to reduce sources of other pollutants, including particulate matter. We have also published an action plan within our Annual Status report, which is available for residents to read on our website.

 

Supplementary question from Mr R Dell;

 

Most of what was sent out in terms of publicity referred only to nitrogen dioxide – there are has has been agreed, 4 gases to consider – will all 4 gases be monitored and the results publicised and if not, why not?

 

Response from the Portfolio Holder for Environmental Health and Licensing;

I believe I did cover that in my response to you Mr Dell, that those gases are monitored by the automatic urban and rural network.  Local authorities such as ourselves cannot be expected to do the detailed monitoring that they can do and we do the monitoring which is required by us.  The nitrogen dioxide levels are often as a result of traffic and if they are at a lower level it is unlikely that there will be excedences of the other gases that you mention to us.  If you want any further technical response I don’t know whether Matt Finn who is here representing Environmental Health could give you some further response on that or indeed we can send you a written response and any other details you require.

 

The Chair commented that a written response would be sent to Mr Dell.

 

Question submitted to the Portfolio Holder for Environmental Health and Licensing by Mrs A Morgan (presented to Council by Mrs D Dell in the absence of Mrs Morgan who was not able to attend the meeting);

 

Will BDC please plant many more trees in Barlborough and elsewhere, specifically chosen and located to maximise capturing pollution arising from road traffic and protecting homes, children's nurseries and schools from pollution?

This will have health benefits for years to come and needs to be started urgently as the trees take time to grow to an effective size.

 

As a resident of Clay Pit Way Barlborough for 20 years this year, I have noticed a huge increase in the amount of vehicle exhaust fallout in the air and in my home. I have black particles on internal windowledges.Traffic alongOxcroft Way and surrounding the Links Estate has multiplied during this time and is now posing a serious health risk. We are surrounded on 3 sides by busy roads. Traffic around schools and nurseries has also increased enormously.

 

We know that trees soak up carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, ammonia and particulates through their leaves, bark and roots.  They also provide sanctuary for wildlife. Trees slow climate change and reduce global warming.

 

World Health Organisation pollution limits to human safety have been reduced.  Roads with heavy traffic are dangerous to human health and Barlborough is a pollution hotspot.

 

 

Response from the Portfolio Holder for Environmental Health and Licensing;

Whilst I entirely understand your concerns about traffic, I am afraid I cannot agree with your comment that Barlborough is a pollution hotspot. Our local air quality management work has evidenced that pollution levels are well within UK limits at that location.

 

Despite that, anything more that can be done to bring about further improvements should be welcomed and tree planting would certainly be beneficial, both in terms of air quality and climate change.

 

I am pleased to confirm that at Bolsover District Council, we take our obligations to combat climate change very seriously, and we are seekingeffective ways to both reduce our own carbon emissions and to reduce existing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

 

As part of this we ambitiously aim to see one million trees planted in Bolsover District over the next few years in order to help reduce existing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

 

The main focus of the Council’s tree planting efforts is the Bolsover Community Woodlands project, utilising funds from the Woodland Trust, and I am pleased to say that the Council planted the first 1,000 trees justbefore Christmas on the project’s flagship site on former colliery land in Creswell.

 

The Council is looking to increase the number of tree planting projects and we are working in the first instance with other public bodies to bring forward tree planting on publicly owned land, although we have also received a large number of community suggestions of where additional trees could be planted.

 

With this in mind I am happy to advise you that your suggestion of additional tree planting in Barlborough to help combat air pollution has been added to the list of community suggestions for further consideration in April or May this year.

 

As Mrs Morgan was not present at the meeting, no supplementary question was allowed.