Report of the Chairman of Executive Board.

The Leader of the Council presented Members with his report, pages 63 to 64 of the Agenda refer.

Further to his report, the Leader provided an update in relation to the Healthy Living Team – local support as follows:

It was highlighted to Members that the Council was committed to supporting its residents to access and navigate online support and services as basic digital skills and confidence helped people save time, money, reduce social isolation and helped them fully engage with society.

The Council’s Healthy Living team had been working closely with local digital inclusion charity Lincs Digital to help people at the Council’s community digital drop-ins across the district and together had offered people non-judgemental and friendly help.

Following this successful partnership, the Leader of the Council was pleased to announce it would continue working with Lincs Digital this year and the charity would become ELDC’s ‘digital inclusion partner’ to help it better understand the needs of the community and offer practical help to reduce barriers to accessing the internet.

To find out more about the Council’s digital inclusion work, community-drop-ins or information and advice for people on accessing data, devices and support Members could visit: https://www.e-lindsey.gov.uk/DigitalInclusion

Following which, questions and comments were put forward as follows:

Internal Drainage Board (IDB) Special Interest Group (SIG)

Members were pleased to see that the SIG had successfully obtained an uplift to the one-off grant awarded to meet the levy increases which had increased from £3m to £5m.

A Member considered that it was important to leave a legacy for the future with the IDBs and SIGs and queried how this would translate into a new authority following local government reorganisation and how plans would be put in place for this to go forward.

In response, the Leader of the Council advised that with regards to legacy projects there would be limited time to engage in this, however the Council was in a fortunate position where it had the means to do this.  The Leader added that IDBs would continue after the new local government structures were in place and it was important to ensure they continued to be well-funded, as well as maintaining good working relationships with external agencies.

Thanks were passed to the out-going Deputy Chief Executive (Corporate Development)/Section 151 Officer who had been a wonderful advocate for East Lindsey for the IDB levies.

GDF Update

A Member queried whether the Community Partnership’s (CP) search area/ward boundaries remained appropriate as they did not take Louth into account.

In response, the Leader of the Council advised that the search areas would be discussed at the next CP Meeting and he would continue to attend the meetings until the ELDC Executive Board made a decision to leave the GDF process.

A Member thanked the Leader of the Council for his update on the proposed nuclear waste dump.  However, it was considered that if the Council wished to portray itself as a caring Council then it needed to focus on the people affected  ...  view the full minutes text for item 83