Agenda and minutes

[The Chair to welcome everyone to the meeting.]

Members of the Panel were welcomed to the meeting.

[The Chair will explain how the meeting will proceed, how questions are to be asked and any matters of meeting etiquette.]

Meeting procedures were explained to the Panel.

Apologies were received from Cllr Russell.

There were no declarations of interest. 

[To approve the minutes of the previous meeting as a correct record]

The minutes from the meeting held on 7 December 2023 were approved as a true and correct record.

[The Panel to receive a presentation]

The Cabinet Member for Digital and Community Inclusion opened the presentation, Driven by Digital was a key plan for the City, and they had formed a digital Wolverhampton Partnership to deliver this.

The Head of External Funding and Digital Projects summarised the revised Digital Strategy adopted by the Council on 23^rd March 2022 with aims to make Wolverhampton a gigabit and smart city, to ensure all residents had access to devices, connectivity and skills, and to grow the digital economy and talent pool. Progress on fixed infrastructure was: gigabit broadband connectivity increased from 2% in 2020 to 94.61% in 2023, full fibre broadband increased from 1% in 2020 to 72% in 2023, Wolverhampton had moved from lowest full fibre coverage in the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) to second highest. The roll out would include civil works on the highways as well as an increase in using existing ducts and overhead cables. Demand for mobile connectivity was increasing year on year with 21% of residents accessing the internet via smart phone. 60% of the City was covered with 5G network, the highest in the WMCA and one of the highest areas outside of London. They had a device lending scheme, set up in 2020, since then they had provided 3300 devices and supported over 7000 members to get online via 3 schemes. They provided this through 75 partners and they also had a device recycling scheme which provided donated devices to children. The Mayor had hosted a 100% digital wolves celebration event by 58 trusted departments and volunteers who worked to deliver the policy. They had developed technology and sensors to help supported living (such as sensors to monitor damp and mould), environmental sensors in bins and to track fly tippers, air quality monitoring systems and footfall counters in the City centre. Smart bins saw a 50% reduction in unnecessary labour time, as only bins which were full, triggered the sensor for a collection and bin change.

The Vice-Chair referred to page 33 and wanted to know what the time frame was for the quoted 223 residents which benefitted from the “digital bootcamp”.

The Head of External Funding and Digital said that she hadn’t included in the report all of the training available, and had focused on high level bootcamp courses only. She said other courses supported starter level digital training. She said the training was over a 2 year period, she said the proportion of residents taking the training had doubled over 2 years for the higher level bootcamp training. The Trusted partner worked with those who were digitally disadvantaged.

The Vice-Chair requested that next time the report was brought to the Panel, for it to include figures of people the Council had directly helped gain access to the internet. He also wanted data for ward by ward mapping to be brought next time to show where the support was being provided to.  The Head of External Funding and Digital said they had the information and could provide  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

[Deputy Director of Assets & the Head of Assets to present to the Panel]

The Deputy Director of Assets stated that the new Strategic Asset Plan would be launched at the end of the calendar year. The previous 5-year plan was coming to an end, the world had changed so they needed to develop a new plan for the future. She hoped the Panel would endorse the plans laid to  them for the Strategy.

The Head of Assets stated that the Strategic Asset Plan included: An Asset Policy, an Asset Strategy and an Action Plan. 2018 to 2023 was coming to an end, and they would be initiating the 2024 – 2029 plan. The City Assets team were currently reviewing data on Council assets which would inform the new Strategic Asset Plan. They were currently weighing up where demands were from the public, which would inform how they used their assets for service provision. The Policy would support the plan by looking at regeneration or income generating options, how assets could be used to support local communities, ensure assets would meet demographic requirements, to support and assist families. They would be reviewing their data and placing the status of their assets on a financial horizon graph, which would indicate the health of City assets. The Head of Assets hoped this would be done by the summer of 2024. He stated that managing the data would be a challenge due to the size of assets being managed, the plan would enable them to locate losses and make savings, as well as understand future challenges and inform the Medium-Long Term Financial Strategy. The Strategic Asset plan was due to be completed in December 2024.

The Vice-Chair wanted to know how they would ensure best value for the Council in the management of assets, be they maintained with rent or sold off.  He wanted to know what mechanisms would be in place to ensure those who were using Council assets to deliver services to the community were delivering value for money to the Council.

The Head of Assets stated they would be using a benchmarking system where assets were logged and community well being assessments were rated; these would be put up against costs to the Council. This would allow them to measure outcomes.

The Vice-Chair wanted to know if the Council knew which buildings they owned and were responsible for, citing issues in the past where it took months for the Council to find out if a building belonged to them.  The Deputy Director stated they knew which assets they had done a community asset transfer on, but felt they could be better at sharing the information. They had a public asset mapping system. She stated she would share to the Panel a list of the assets they had transferred to the community until the date of the meeting using this system. She also stated she would look into how they could better share that information with Councillors in the future.

The Vice-Chair wanted them to implement a review process for high value assets which assessed  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.