Agenda item

            The Committee considered the following report:

“1.0     Purpose of Report/Summary of Main Issues

1.1       To consider a proposal to re-survey 20 streets being processed under the dual language street signs policy which were affected by postal issues and to consider an extension to survey response times which may be impacted by delivery schedule changes.

2.0       Recommendation

2.1       The Committee is asked to agree to: -

·        The re-survey of 20 streets where residents’ returns have been impacted by a postal service issue.

·        To extend the survey response times to 21 days from the current 14 days for all applications going forward to reduce impact of delivery schedule changes for second class post (Initially one month on policy implementation)

3.0       Main Report

3.1       Key Issues

Re-survey of 20 Streets

3.2       The Director of Planning and Building Control provided an update to members at the People and Communities Committee on 5th August regarding an issue which affected the return of dual language street sign surveys using prepaid envelopes.

3.3       An account suspension applied to BCC Royal Mail account between 15th April 2025 and 17th July 2025 has impacted a number of survey returns being processed and delivered to BCC by Royal Mail. It is unclear and we have been unable to ascertain to date when this suspension resulted in letters being held by Royal Mail. During our account suspension the Royal Mail Delivery Centre held 375 surveys. In addition, a number of surveys had been internally transferred to their National Returns Centre for return to sender (residents).

3.4       Whilst we have received all the survey returns held by the Royal Mail Delivery Centre and are continuing to receive surveys from the National Returns Centre we are unable to obtain accurate numbers for the surveys which were sent back to residents. A small number of residents have contacted BCC directly to advise they had received their survey back. This involved the surveys of Rosetta Avenue, Skegoneill Avenue and Victoria Road. 

3.5       Officers have been closely monitoring the returns and have been able to identify 20 Streets which have been impacted by this issue. Given the unknown number of surveys that have been returned to residents and the inability to obtain accurate figures from Royal Mail, officers consider the only option to ensure fully accurate survey results would be to conduct a re-survey of these streets. This re-survey has been extended to any streets where we consider there is the potential for results to have been affected by residents returns. This analysis took into consideration streets we have received held mail from the Delivery Centre and National Returns Centre, and those streets where surveys were returned to the residents.

3.6       The list of these streets and the number of surveys involved in the re-survey are listed in Table 1 below which will follow the same process as the original survey.

Return will be by prepaid envelope for all surveys in line with existing processes.

3.8       As part of the re-survey, correspondence will be included providing an explanation to residents of the reason for the re-survey and that any existing returns from the original survey expressing a preference in respect to the proposal will not be counted.

Review with Royal Mail

3.9       Officers have used the information available at present in the proposal above.  The account has now been confirmed as operational, and a review is ongoing internally within BCC. To facilitate this, we are working to establish a senior contact within Royal Mail to discuss this matter to ensure that this issue cannot happen in the future, it is proposed that a further update report will be brought once this review is complete.

Survey Response Times

3.10     Royal Mail second class postal services have changed their delivery schedules which include discontinuing Saturday deliveries and implementing a weekday rotation schedule. These changes took effect on July 28, 2025.

The breakdown of these changes is as follows:

·          Second-class letters will no longer be delivered on Saturdays. 

·          Second-class mail will be delivered on a two-week rotating schedule: Week 1: Monday, Wednesday, Friday; Week 2: Tuesday, Thursday. 

3.11     The revised dual language street signs policy indicates that replies should be received with one month. At a meeting of the Strategic Policy and Resources Committee on 24th March 2023 it was agreed to reduce the response times for surveys to 14 days.  However, given the reduced delivery schedules 14 days may now not be sufficient to allow all residents to have their preferences lodged within time.

3.12     Members are asked to consider the proposal to increase this time period to 21 days for all surveys moving forward, which officers believe will have minimal impact on the processing of applications and should not create any delays.

Financial and Resource Implications

3.13     The cost for the re-survey of the 20 streets will be covered by existing budgets. Dedicated existing staff working on the current process will process the new surveys.

3.14     There are no costs or resource implications associated with increasing the survey response times to 21 days.

Proposal

Moved by the Chairperson (Councillor Brooks),

Seconded by Councillor Dornan,

      That the Committee agrees that the period of time permitted to allow for the receipt of responses for dual language surveys be extended to 28 days.

            On a vote, eight Members voted for the proposal and nine against and it was declared lost.  

            Accordingly, the Committee agreed to adopt the recommendations as set out in the report, that being:

·        to re-survey the 20 streets where residents’ responses had been impacted upon by a postal service issue, and

·        to extend the survey response time to 21 days, from the current 14 days, for all applications henceforth to reduce the impact of delivery schedule changes for second class post (initially one month on policy implementation).