To receive announcements from:
a) The Mayor
b) Leader of the Council
c) Members of the Cabinet
d) Chairs of Committees
e) Head of Paid Service
Minutes:
The Mayor
61.1 The Mayor informed Members that she would be attending the ‘Put Knives Down’ event on Monday 31 January 2022 at 6.30pm and encouraged Members to show their support.
Members of the Cabinet
61.2 The Cabinet Member for Culture and Leisure, Councillor Lewis announced that the team at Blackfriars had been crowned a winner for the third time with their latest success in the country rounds of the International Wedding Awards 2022 and congratulated all those involved in making the venue such a success.
He also announced that £42k of funding had been awarded by the Arts Council for the Bright Lights festival. Councillor Lewis informed Members that an exhibition by the Royal Photographic Society had opened at the Museum and would last three years with different exhibits display over that period.
61.3 The Cabinet Member for Performance and Resources, Councillor Norman, provided the following statement to Council:
On Monday the 20th December 2021, the city council became aware that some of our IT systems had been subject to a cyber incident. As a result, since that date, the council have experienced disruption to some of our systems and services.
The council have been working actively with the National Cyber Security Centre and the National Crime Agency to understand more about the nature of this incident and minimise the impact of it and we have been following their advice on the level of information that we can currently share.
It is therefore disappointing that there has been extensive speculation in the press from councillors about the incident. Which can cause additional concern for residents, businesses, partners, and suppliers when councillors know at present, we are unable to share additional information.
I fully support the need to undertake a full review as to the circumstances around this incident, the council’s cyber preparedness, our response, and our recovery. However, I feel it is critical for the council to move into the recovery phase before such an exercise can take place. We also need to be mindful of the impact on any criminal investigation.
I would however like to confirm that the council are still making benefits payments, Omicron covid grants are being processed and paid and supplier invoices are still being processed. New planning applications can be received, residents can comment on these applications and the planning team are working hard on manual work arounds for applications already submitted. Throughout this time the council’s customer service team have been available to provide support via 396 396 or via the here to help email address and issues are being triaged in line with the severity of the issue. Our website is also regularly updated with any adaptions to specific service areas.
I would like to take this opportunity to place on record the thanks of the administration for the hard work of all officers in helping us combat this incident and in ensuring that they provide residents and stakeholders with the best service possible at this time. I would also like to thank the residents, businesses, and partners for their patience.
61.4 The Cabinet Member for Planning and Housing Strategy, Councillor S. Chambers informed Members that The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has awarded the Council £395,000 to develop new software to be used for processing planning applications. Gloucester was one of 8 Councils awarded funding and had been invited to join the existing project team developing new software products, RIPA and BOPS. The aim was to make submitting planning application significantly easier and reduce officer time spent on admin and data processing tasks.