Question to the Cabinet Member Social Services and Early Help from Councillor A Hussain

Can the Cabinet Member for Social Services tell the Council how many community care assessments for residential rehabilitation have been undertaken in the last three years within BCBC and how many resulted in placements in residential rehabilitation centres and which ones?

Question to the Cabinet Member Education and Regeneration from Councillor R Stirman

Bearing in mind Government plans to prohibit the sale of diesel and electric cars in the near future, does the Council plan to implement a strategy for the introduction of electric charging points throughout the County  If  so, when will this policy be introduced? Will this also become a consideration in future LDP development?  Additionally, what provision will be made for the anticipated increase in demand for the supply of electricity within BCBC?

Question to the Cabinet Member Social Services and Early Help from Councillor Altaf Hussain

"Can the Cabinet Member for Social Services tell the Council how many community care assessments for residential rehabilitation have been undertaken in the last three years within BCBC and how many resulted in placements in residential rehabilitation centres and which ones?"

Response:

The Community Resource Team (CRT) is the amalgamation of Intermediate Care Services in Bridgend into a single service; one of these services being Residential Reablement. Referrals to CRT are made through a single point of contact, the Common Access Point, which is staffed by experienced call handlers and a Multi-Disciplinary Triage team who screen the referrals to identify the most appropriate CRT response and the priority of response. This streamlines the process of referral ensuring interventions are delivered by the most appropriate service element, therefore avoiding duplication of referrals. As referrals are not made for an explicit element of the CRT we are unable to provide the specific data requested. The following data shows the numbers of referrals to the CRT for the last three years.

2015 – 2601 CRT Referrals and Re-referrals

2016 – 2404 CRT Referrals and Re-referrals

2017 – 2542 CRT Referrals and Re-referrals

The small decline in referral rates is largely due to the fact that we have been working on referral pathways and ensuring they are all routed through the Common Access point.  This has helped us to reduce any duplication, i.e. Referrals to a number of services and wait for the first to respond.

The Bryn y Cae Reablement Unit is suitable for individuals who, for short periods of time, are likely to need more intensive support with activities of daily living than it would be possible to provide at home. The Unit is able to accommodate a total of 6 people at any one time and the usual length of stay is up to 6 weeks but there is flexibility around this depending on an individual’s progress.   The Reablement Unit is situated in a dedicated wing of the Bryn y Cae Residential Care Home, Brackla, Bridgend.

In the table below, the number of new placements commenced in Bryn Y Cae Residential Reablement unit is provided for the last 3 years together with the occupancy rates.

There a few factors that affect occupancy rates:

• these beds are ring fenced for hospital discharge means that we are relying on one source of referral
• we may have beds available but we may not receive referrals
• referrals may come through but are then actioned by taking the person to their own home, instead, to undertake the Reablement
• the referral may be inappropriate as the person may be too ill, not have goals or may have cognitive issues making Reablement inappropriate.

Councillor Hussain informed Council that he would ask the Cabinet Member Social Services and Early Help a supplementary question in writing.

Question to the Cabinet Member Education and Regeneration from Councillor R Stirman

“Bearing in mind Government plans to prohibit the sale of diesel and petrol powered cars in the near future, does the Council plan to implement a strategy for the introduction of electric charging points throughout the County  If  so, when will this policy be introduced? Will this also become a consideration in future LDP development?  Additionally, what provision will be made for the anticipated increase in demand for the supply of electricity within BCBC?”

Response

Thank you for your question concerning the introduction of electric charging points. Clearly this is an important consideration and increasingly as electric vehicles become more prominent over future years, demand for the provision of charging points in accessible places or at home will increase, albeit currently the Council has had very few approaches concerning this matter.

With regard to planning, emerging national planning policy (PPW 10) suggests that new developments will be required to provide electric vehicle charging points – this will eventually fall under Building Regulations.

It would not therefore be appropriate therefore to duplicate national policy in LDPs.

This policy will however, only apply to new development but the Council could consider aspirational policies in a future LDP to encourage the provision of a charging infrastructure within Bridgend, you will note that the LDP is currently being reviewed.  This does not necessarily ensure that it will be delivered as we could only seek S106 contributions to facilitate a particular development and charging points  would likely fail to be considered as an ‘infrastructure project’ in terms of the CIL regulations. Nevertheless it may help future funding applications if there was a supporting policy in the development plan in much the same way as highway improvements are indicated in the current plan.  We will need to look carefully at this issue as part of the evidence base.

At the moment it is debatable as to whether a charging point is actually ‘development’ in other words if the Council were to decide to provide points in its own car parks [ it is planned to install a few charging points in the Rhiw multi story car park as a trial ]  then it is possible that planning permission would not be required (some supermarket chains are also considering providing charging points in some of their car parks and charging points already exist at Sarn Services).  This is of course a corporate matter for the Council to consider but it may not be possible to secure directly under the planning system and may require a funding commitment.  Welsh Government may introduce changes to legislation in the near future to clarify this issue. There are a significant number of grants available to provide charging points in the right circumstances and right locations and the approach many other Authorities have taken is to rely on a combination of private sector provision and then strategically placed public sector provided chargers. Additionally from research it seems that where Local Authorities permit the provision of EV chargers in residential streets, a process is set out whereby the homeowner is normally responsible for bearing the costs. However, it also seems this can create other difficulties around accessing the particular charger unless a space is reserved as others may choose to park in that location. It is obvious therefore that there are many considerations that would need to be explored fully to develop a credible and workable strategy.

Whilst it is also possible to look to market demand to provide the infrastructure – after all we never had development plan policies requiring petrol stations, we need to be mindful of what form this could take.  For example a national company is currently seeking views on potential EV charging points that they are willing to provide, although this will also incorporate advertisements, in other words we could end up with more adverts with charging points attached, which will have their own visual and highway safety implications.

This would need to be the subject of a wider planning/regeneration/highways discussion as there is some certainty that electric vehicle usage is likely to increase over the next decade.

In summary the LDP has a part to play but we cannot rely on it to fully deliver the infrastructure, charging points may lie outside the scope of planning control and there is potential for new and innovative ways for the private sector to respond to demand.   The continuity of electricity supply and demand is of course a matter for the electricity industry and the grid companies.

All of these matters will need to be fully explored and understood in order to develop a credible and meaningful strategy. It will be a matter for discussion with Cabinet to determine where this currently fits in the relative priorities of the Council and therefore how quickly this should be prioritised.

Councillor Stirman asked a supplementary question as to what will happen in the short term where residents who had purchased electric cars, trail leads across pavements.  The Cabinet Member Communities stated that there were no clear guidelines as yet in relation to charging points and who fund their installation when not on residents’ homes.  He commented that the UK Government should look to the motor industry and retailers to ascertain plans for the future installation of charging points. 

RESOLVED:            That the Cabinet Member Communities write to the supermarkets based locally requesting that they consider installation charging points for electric vehicles and to ascertain their strategy for installing charging points.