Meeting Details

Meeting Summary
Scrutiny Panel
15 May 2025 - 18:00
Scheduled
  • Documents
  • Attendance
  • Visitors
  • Declarations of Interests

Documents

Agenda

Part A
1 Welcome and Announcements
The Chairman will welcome members of the public and Councillors and remind everyone to use microphones at all times when they are speaking. The Chairman will also explain action in the event of an emergency, mobile phones switched to silent, audio-recording of the meeting. Councillors who are members of the committee will introduce themselves.
2 Substitutions
Councillors will be asked to say if they are attending on behalf of a Committee member who is absent.
3 Urgent Items
The Chair will announce if there is any item not on the published agenda which will be considered because it is urgent and will explain the reason for the urgency.
4 Declarations of Interest

Councillors will be asked to say if there are any items on the agenda about which they have a disclosable pecuniary interest which would prevent them from participating in any discussion of the item or participating in any vote upon the item, or any other registerable interest or non-registerable interest.

 

5 Minutes of Previous Meeting
The Councillors will be invited to confirm that the minutes of the meetings held on 11 February 2025 and 27 February 2025 are a correct record.
6 Have Your Say!
Up to eight members of the public may make representations to Scrutiny Panel meetings on any item on the agenda or any other matter relating to the business of Cabinet. Each representation may be no more than three minutes. Members of the public wishing to address the Panel must register their wish to address the meeting by e-mailing democratic.services@colchester.gov.uk by 12.00 noon on the working day before the meeting, providing a full written copy of the representation before that deadline.
7 Decisions taken under special urgency provisions
The Councillors will consider any decisions by the Cabinet or a Portfolio Holder which have been taken under Special Urgency provisions.
8 Cabinet or Portfolio Holder Decisions called in for Review
The Councillors will consider any Cabinet or Portfolio Holder decisions called in for review.
9 Items requested by members of the Panel and other Members
(a) To evaluate requests by members of the Panel for an item relevant to the Panel’s functions to be considered.

(b) To evaluate requests by other members of the Council for an item relevant to the Panel’s functions to be considered. 

Members of the panel may use agenda item 'a' (all other members will use agenda item 'b') as the appropriate route for referring a ‘local government matter’ in the context of the Councillor Call for Action to the panel. Please refer to the panel’s terms of reference for further procedural arrangements.
This report sets out the work of the Scrutiny Panel during 2024/25 and requests that the Panel recommend the report to Full Council for approval on 16 July 2025.
11 Exclusion of the Public (Scrutiny)
In accordance with Section 100A(4) of the Local Government Act 1972 and in accordance with The Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Access to Information) (England) Regulations 2000 (as amended) to exclude the public, including the press, from the meeting so that any items containing exempt information (for example confidential personal, financial or legal advice), in Part B of this agenda (printed on yellow paper) can be decided. (Exempt information is defined in Section 100I and Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972).
Part B

This item has been requested by a number of members, who wish to ask the Scrutiny Panel to consider the Council's approach to marketing and selling its residential developments on Mill Road, Colchester.

'We would like to invite the Panel to call in the decision to restrict the marketing of the two key residential blocks at Mill Road to Registered Social Landlords.  The Conservative leadership believes that such an approach may be i) illegal, ii) give away up to £5-10m in value which the Council can ill afford iii) over-rules planning permission 190665 for mixed private and affordable tenures and iv) will result in an unbalanced new community.

We would like to invite the Panel to consider how the decision has been made, what advice has been received and whether the Administration's approach to getting best value is legal. Also what consideration has been given to finding better ways of providing affordable housing on the site at pace, and the low probability that the 50,000 sq meters of office accommodation will ever be built.

If/when this can be included on the agenda we will present the following publicly available evidence that the under-value is likely to exceed the £2m allowed by the General Consent Order:
* the financial appraisals prepared by multiple professional firms as evidence of the viability of the Garden Communities, most recently Gerald Eve.
* the evidence on residential plot values provided as part of the Local Plan review
* recent market evidence on residential and office land values, in particular from Savills

We accept that some matters relating to the quantum of the undervalue may be commercially sensitive and should be discussed in private session.  But the availability of the land is no secret and matters relating to the sale process can and should be discussed in public session.

This is a matter of urgency as we understand that preparations are being made to launch the formal  marketing of the land in May this year.'

Paul Dundas, Sara Naylor, William Sunnucks, Dennis Willets, Tom Rowe

Attendance

Attended - Committee Members
Name
No attendance information has been recorded for the meeting.
Attended - Other Members
Name
No other member attendance information has been recorded for the meeting.
Apologies
NameReason for Sending ApologySubstituted By
No apology information has been recorded for the meeting.
Absent
NameReason for AbsenceSubstituted By
No absentee information has been recorded for the meeting.

Declarations of Interests

Member NameItem Ref.DetailsNature of DeclarationAction
No declarations of interest have been entered for this meeting.

Visitors

Visitor Information is not yet available for this meeting