(a) Moved by Councillor Fielker
This council notes that in the lead up to a General Election the Household Support Fund has been extended for an additional six months, the lateness of the notification announcement and that guidance was not provided at the same time.
This council also notes that the Household Support Fund provides hardship support for the poorest households in Southampton who are most impacted by the cost-of-living crisis and that a failure to continue the fund after October or replace it with a more permanent crisis support system would lead to a surge in families unable to meet basic living costs in the winter.
This council resolves to write to the Leaders of the three largest political parties to ask that if they are in government following the election they commit to:
· continuing to provide support to those most in need through hardship funds delivered by local authorities
· that funds are distributed to local authorities based on need
· that local authorities, who understand the needs of their communities best, are able to make local decisions on how those funds are distributed.
that a multi-year commitment is made to enable local authorities to enable them to plan distribution in an efficient manner
(b) Moved by Councillor Barbour, seconded by Councillor Wood
This motion recognises the River Itchen as one of the natural assets of our City and calls on the Council to ensure that commerce can thrive and that the balance between private and public access to the waterfront is maintained and improved.
The banks of the River Itchen have been used for centuries for commerce. In recent years sites have been built on for residential flats. With the decarbonisation of electric production transportation now produces a greater percentage of CO2 than any other sector. Transportation by sea only produces 1% of the CO2 compared to by lorry for a given distance per tonne. There are businesses in Northam that currently use bulk transportation by water of scrap for recycling importing aggregate and cement for concrete production. This is carbon efficient transport and should be supported. There are limited locations around the UK where shipping and use of wharfs is possible. Southampton is one of these few precious locations. Shipping of materials also requires multiple locations around Britain to thrive. If we want this to remain a possibility for future generations we need to prevent the building of flats on these sites as once built the land and wharves effectively becomes unavailable for commerce. To reduce climate change we will need to make difficult choices. But we should not be jeopardising long term strategy, not only for Southampton, but the country as a whole.
For the wellbeing of the citizens access to the waterfront needs to be maintained and improved as its benefits for mental and physical health are well described. The Council needs to aspire to 40% of the waterfront being accessible by the public as an initial goal in the next 10 years with 50% as the goal by 2050.
Council therefore resolves to urgently explore revising the adopted Local Plan to add appropriate planning restraints
• to residential development on locations suitable for sea transportation commerce. This will prevent splitting up the sites and putting out of reach for future waterfront use these limited locations
• to maintain waterfront access, and where sites are being redeveloped, make it a planning restraint that public access to waterfront is included.
(c) Moved by Councillor P Baillie
Southampton Council has just passed a budget for 24/25 balanced only by a loan of £40M from the government.
This financial disaster was one of this Labour Council’s own making and was entirely preventable.
The recovery plan assumes the underlying £40M structural deficit for 25/26 is solved within the next seven months.
This council has no confidence whatsoever in the current administration’s ability to procure the required savings and transformation in that timescale – the failure of which will cause even more financial misery on the people of Southampton.
This council calls upon the Labour administration to apologise now to the people of Southampton for their past, current and future financial failures.