Agenda and minutes

The Mayor reported that he had already nearly undertaken 100 official engagements during his term of office, to date.

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting held on 24 July 2018 be confirmed, subject to an amendment to reflect that Councillor Kerry was not present at the meeting and that he had submitted his apologies for absence.

Please note that, in accordance with the Members' Code of Conduct, when declaring interests members must disclose the existence and nature of the interest, and whether it is a disclosable pecuniary interest (DPI) or personal and/or pecuniary.

No declarations of interest were received.

No questions had been received.

Councillor Hilton Spratt, Leader of the Opposition, asked the Leader of the Council the following question:

“Will the Leader of the Council congratulate the Government on its commitment to build more social and affordable housing and will the Council make a bid to the funds which will allow this to happen?”

Councillor Ric Metcalfe, Leader of the Council, responded by saying that he would consider offering his congratulations if and when such a commitment was made, which he said was currently not the case. Councillor Metcalfe reported that the City Council was building hundreds of Council houses despite the Government, not because of it. He added that the Council would always apply for funding that it was eligible for but highlighted that a frequent problem with the Government’s offers of funding was that they were almost always on the basis of match funding. The Government had also made it very difficult for the Council to be able to use its own resources to address the housing crisis.

Councillor Hilton Spratt asked the following supplementary question:

“Does he agree that if the Government embarked through Councils on a public housing campaign, building more social housing, that this would solve the problems and help generate increased economic development for the area?”

Councillor Metcalfe provided a historic breakdown of previous Conservative Governments and their record in relation to council housing, highlighting the principles of the 1980 Housing Act, the introduction of the right to buy scheme, the offer of guaranteed 100% mortgages, discounts offered to tenants, the extension of the right to buy scheme to Housing Associations and the overarching Conservative policy on public sector housing which he claimed was to denigrate and devalue it. Councillor Metcalfe highlighted that in 1982 the Council had 12,500 council houses on its books and it now had less than 8,000 which represented a loss of a third of the Council’s housing stock. Surmising whether these houses were now owned by grateful former tenants, he confirmed that the vast majority had in fact ended up with buy-to-let landlords. He concluded, therefore, that the Conservative Government’s record in relation to council housing was shameful and a failure. He called for the Government to abolish the right to buy scheme and allow Councils to retain 100% of right to buy receipts, lift the borrowing cap associated with the Housing Revenue Account, force developers to cease land banking, increase the threshold of affordable housing on new developments and make a meaningful amount of money available for social housing.

It was proposed, seconded and RESOLVED that the City of Lincoln Council Annual Report 2017/18 be approved for adoption and publication, subject to the amendment of typographical and formatting errors.

It was proposed, seconded and RESOLVED that the amendment of Houses in Multiple Occupancy Licensing Fees in accordance with the relevant Financial Procedure Rules be approved.

This report will be considered by the Executive 24 September 2018. An extract of the minutes from that meeting will be published in due course.

It was proposed, seconded and RESOLVED that the fees and charges schedule contained within the report in relation to the introduction of the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018 be approved.