Transcript

and may be recorded by any member of the public or press present. If anyone wishes to avoid being filmed, please let the clerk know immediately. For anyone speaking at the meeting, it is important to speak closely to the microphone, so viewers of the webcast and others in the room can hear you. If you have a mobile phone or other devices, please turn it on to silent and move it away from the microphone as it may affect the audio system and distract speakers. Around the room are exit signs, should the fire alarm sound during the meeting, please make your way to the nearest and safest exit. And then we go on to apologies and substitutes, please. Thank you, Chair. We haven't received any apologies for today's meeting, but Mr Bulldog, Mr Hood and Mr Manion are attending virtually. Thank you. Declarations of interest by any members. I see none. Thank you. Just before we start this bit, I've had a number of members saying that they have meetings after this. We're going to try and finish the meeting by 4.30pm sharp. So if you could, keep your questions and answers to the point so that we can finish and members can leave onto their local borough meetings as well, yeah? So thank you very much. Meetings of the minutes, meeting of the minutes held on 5th of March 2024. Do we accept those as a true record? Yes, thank you. Yes, go ahead. OK, go ahead. The minutes we called that, either the present virtually, as a member of this committee as it's not a decision-making body, it should have been listed in the first part of the section as in also present virtually. Right, OK, I understand. So you want to be present virtually rather than online so-called, Chair? Van, as an apology and substitute, yes, it should be in the top bit. Right, OK, noted, noted. Thank you. Anything else? Thank you. That's all good for that. Thank you very much. OK, thank you very much, Chairman, and good afternoon, everyone. If I may start with this, at the meeting of the Health, Form and Public Health Cabinet Committee this morning, tributes were paid to James Williams, Director of Public Health in Medway, who died suddenly at the weekend. And if you will allow me, Chairman, I'd just like to add my own quick word of tributes to James, who I knew from my four years in Adult Social Care and Public Health, particularly working on the Integrated Care Strategy, and indeed some members of this committee may also have known him. James was passionate about improving health and tackling health inequalities. And while the work of the various directorates in the Council covers a broad range of activity, all of us, officers and members, have the aim of improving the quality of life of our residents. So his loss is a loss to us all. The news was a profound shock, and I offer condolences to James' family and to his colleagues in Medway. Thank you for that. So on to my update, starting off with Folkestone Library. The temporary library service provision remains in place in Folkestone, and the next key step will be to progress public consultation on the future long-term location of Folkestone Library. I recognise the continued interest and local passion for the service, and this will be the best way for everyone to have their say. Timescales for the public consultation are still to be confirmed, but I'm expecting this to commence in the summer of this year. I also want to mention the Home Library Service, which is something that I knew existed, but have only recently become familiar with. And it's a service where library volunteers visit customers, many of whom are housebound for a variety of reasons, to deliver books and other library items to direct people's homes. Alongside the value of the books, the simple contact with the volunteer is a vital social connection. The library service recently completed a satisfaction survey, which achieved 99% customer satisfaction from 279 responses, and it highlighted significant beneficial impacts for its customers, particularly in response to questions about keeping minds active, helping people to continue enjoy reading, helping people feel healthier and happier and maintaining independence. And there were quite a few comments which I won't read out, but things like, without this service, I would be very depressed permanently. It was a pleasure to see the volunteer staff. I rarely see anyone else. I love to read, but can't manage to get to the library, etc., etc. And I was really quite inspired to find out more about this, and I have discussed this with the library team, and hopefully over the course of this year, the service will be working to develop its promotion and the take-up of this part of our library offer. And we're coming on to the performance dashboard later, but in that you'll see that there is a new indicator in the library service, and this relates to the home library service, and it's the number of volunteer hours adding extra value to the service. Fees and charges for libraries following the annual review of fees and charges, the service has started the phase process of introducing changes for 24/25. These do include necessary increases across the majority of charges in response to the rise in inflation, costs to goods and services, but these have also been carefully benchmarked with other similar sized regional authorities. Registration archives, new fees and charges came into effect early May, with changes to library fees and charges to be introduced in June, following a library system upgrade. And the service is also preparing for the annual summer reading challenge called Mischief Makers. That will start in July. There'll be more details coming out, but again, this will be a key focus of teams across the county to engage young people in fun activity and reading over the summer holiday period. Alongside all the day-to-day delivery of the service, the ceremony's team is also gearing up for a busy and positive summer ceremony period. On to community safety. The Kent Community Safety Team worked with partners to deliver a multi-agency Kent Community Safety Partnership event on anti-social behavior in March. I attended the event myself and spoke, approximately 200 people were there on the day with 125 in person at the Kent Events Centre and a further 75 virtually. The event included a number of excellent speakers, covered a range of anti-social behavior topics, including examples of good practice from local teams across the county and beyond. And the presentations are available to partners on the safer communities portal. On to Coronas. The Coronas service delivered a record seven during March. While the teams worked very hard to achieve this, it would not have been possible using the previous accommodation, which as you recall was here at Sessions House. The investment in the new facilities at Oakwood House is already having a demonstrably positive impact on service delivery, and particularly in reduction of delays for a brief families. And then sadly, since the last meeting of this Cabinet Committee, Debbie Large, the Kent County Council Head of Service, has died following treatment for cancer. Debbie's passion and commitment to the service over many years has been instrumental to the development of the service. She was nationally recognised for her expertise and will be sorely missed by KCC and the wider Coronal community. Although personally, I never met her. Debbie is always spoken about with great warmth and respect, and it's clear she was a much valued head of service, and I know many colleagues are very sad at her passing. Finally, I think it's finally on emergency planning. The main focus of the resilience and emergency planning service is on preparing for the impact of the new entry exit system border checks, which are due to come into force this autumn, as well as leading preparations internally for KCC. The Council is also the lead agency for entry exit system preparations for the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum, as it is now, Kent and Medway. So far, meetings have been set up both internally and externally to assure that all services and partners are engaged in the planning work. Across both settings, the work covers risk, plans and capabilities, training and exercising and lessons identified and learned. Internally, the focus on business continuity and making sure that KCC can deliver its services with as little disruption as possible. And where that isn't practical, it's about putting in place mitigations to deliver our services in a different way to ensure they continue to meet the needs of customers and residents. Aside from this work, the teams are continuing to progress the implementation of the new business continuity management system, which will allow an improved governance regime for this critical area of work. Also, continuing with regulatory work, with plan development and exercises due this year for DungeonSB nuclear power station and several top tier control of major accident hazard sites. And these are sites that pose an increased risk due to the levels of certain chemicals they store on site requiring an off-site emergency plan to be developed. And let's just end by saying we're also recruiting into the service in order to drive the work, improving our organizational resilience with interviews taking place currently and over the next month. And although the next six months in emergency planning are likely to be a very challenging time, there's also much to be positive about and we look forward to welcoming and embedding the new members of staff as they come on board. Thank you. Thank you very much, Cliff. First of all, can I just add my condolences to both families, the James enter debuts as well? And I'm sure I'd convey that on behalf of the whole committee here, that our thoughts and prayers are with the family suffering at the moment yet, but hopefully they're all fine and the family. Derek, would you like to go next as well, please? Thank you, Jeremy. Good afternoon colleagues. Start with two really good pieces of news, especially since we're going to do apprenticeships later on. Congratulations to Jake Boddy, who's part of the Know You Symphony team. Jake joined KCC as an apprentice and I'm pleased to say it's just past his level three charted institute of house. What's the other bit? Housing. Thank you very much, cheers, of housing and we'll be presenting with you certificate by the leader of the Council on Friday. So congratulations to Jake and wish him more success in that field. We also, ED, also welcomes Tom Henderson to the team and Tom's appointment will allow us to investigate energy issues faced by the county over the coming years, particularly interesting because this was mentioned all about six or seven months ago that we were going to do this and we finally now got Tom in place so we can start looking at energy requirements and energy issues across the county, which we promised to do. On June the 11th, thinking forward slightly but before the next meeting, KCC will welcome a delegation from West Flanders in Belgium. It will be the governor of the province of West Flanders and the cabinet member for West Flanders who looks after water, rural fisheries and agriculture. The meeting will be hosted by Roger Gough and myself at Sessions House here and will commence with discussions concerning Kent, West Flanders, bilateral cooperation, especially economic, environmental and greater cooperation via the straits committee which actually prompted this visit at the invitation of our colleagues from Belgium. Following the meeting the West Flanders delegation all 35, I think it's more of an invasion than a visit with all 35 of them, bless them, will transfer to the NIAB Centre and visit the wet water efficiency technology centre East Malling. The visit comes about following the highly successful straits committee meeting hosted by KCC in Dover in 2023, whose central theme was water and all the water-related issues affected members of the committee, this visit continues that work. On the 18th of April I had the pleasure of meeting and I'll get this wrong. Councillor Catherine Monde-Dassale, who's Vice President of the Normandy region in France, and the again to discuss economic cooperation and greater ties between Normandy and KCC. As I say, with a focus on economic and environmental issues, this is due in part the upcoming celebration of a thousand years since the birth of William Duke of Normandy and the region's interest in our work with the straits committee and a further meeting is planned for November. Some also good news that Sittingborne is going to be the home to a net zero carbon logistics part after work began on what was the country's largest speculative property development in more than a decade, thanks to 150 million pound voter confidence by the site owners, Panatony. As the largest logistics and real estate developer in the UK and Europe, the company will create Panatony Park Sittingborne at a site near Kenzley and offer a total of 644,000 square foot of space between two units of 439 and 205,000 square feet respectively. When built and occupied, the 26 acre site will offer the prospect of a 1069 new jobs for swale. Panatony is targeting net zero carbon development with an expected bream sustainability rating excellent and an EPC rating of A. All units are to be developed with enhanced sustainability measures within these base specifications, including installation of roof mounted photo of atomic handling and electronic vehicle charging points. We're seeing more and more with our developments of industry in Kent that the developers are having a greater proportion of what they're doing in terms of the environment and environmental sustainability of their premises. Also, please announce that BP Pulse acquires Ashford International Truck Stop, one of Europe's largest truck stops unveiling ambitious plans to help heavy goods vehicles, H.U.V.'s electrify, again part of the environment way forward. The BP Pulse acquires the freehold of a hugely-placed truck stop in Ashford, Kent, one of the largest in Europe. Want to say for the moment, shall we? Thank you. Is that all? Sure. Thank you. Mr. James, would you like to carry on as well? Lovely, thank you. Good afternoon members. I'd like to start with an update on the Council's mineral and waste local plan work that's been recently transferred to Mr Murphy's economic development portfolio. As the minerals and waste planning authority for Kent, the County Council has to prepare a local plan for waste management capacity and mineral provision which is used for the determination of planning applications and appeals. The minerals and waste local plan sets out the county's 15-year strategy and policy framework for these types of development in Kent. Work is ongoing to update the current plan that was adopted in 2016 and partially updated in 2020. Members may recall that a draft local plan setting out a revised strategy for 2024 to 2039 was considered by County Council in December 23. Following consideration by the County Council, the emerging plan is to be submitted to the planning inspectorate for the independent examination in May, currently, with local hearings later in the year and will keep you updated on progress. Looking further into the economy team, work is ongoing to finalise the transfer of responsibilities from the Southeast Local Enterprise Partnership to Kent County Council on behalf of Kent and Medway as the new functional economic area. While transition agreements are being finalised in the background by the team, the economic team is developing the implementation plan for the Kent and Medway economic framework which sets out priorities and direction of travel for the Kent and Medway economic growth until 2030. We're working with representatives of the Kent and Medway Economic Partnership and local stakeholders to define programs of activities that will help us support businesses, consider the right infrastructure needs and solutions, develop the workforce and promote Kent and Medway's economic assets. Following the relaunch in November 23, the Kent and Medway business fund is now fully operational with a high level of pre-applications still being received. There's just under 190 to date and several full applications. Recently loans have been awarded to local engineering company in Maidstone, an indoor climbing centre and sustainable garden company in Medway as well as an artisan bakery in Folkston. Much work is underway to support pre-application approved applicants to submit their full applications. A workplace took place in April to kick off a new health and economy workstream in partnership with the Kent and Medway integrated care system and linking in with the Kent and Medway economic framework. Initial focus will be on the employment agenda certainly within the health and economy industry. We have recently received confirmation from the Department for Business and Trade that the Kent and Medway growth hub will be funded for 24/25. Kent and Victor Chamber of Commerce is contracted to run the service which acts as a single point of contact for business support services available to the county's companies. Moving on to libraries registration and archives, work has now started to transfer and refurbish the Dover Discovery Centre. The works will take around a year and will see essential works complete to enable KCC services and Dover District Museum to be better delivered from this K-Town Centre building. While the library museum and adult education were already co-located, these works will enable family services and the Good Day program to also move in. For the duration of the works a temporary library service is being offered from the nearby Dover Gateway. Since April following the successful bid for grant funding from the British Library, the library services has had virtual tours live across 31 county libraries accessible via kent.gov.uk. The tours have been introduced to enhance people's online access experience with our libraries as well as being a tool to improve the confidence and knows that may benefit from seeing our physical spaces long before they visit. The service has been proactive in publicising and extending the reach of the tours and to date there have been almost 2,000 total unique views of the tours. So a very good achievement. In terms of community safety, I can confirm that the community wardens staff consultation has now closed and wardens have now been allocated to their teams they will be working with going forward. Work is now going on to assess the data to allocate wardens to individual communities in line with the geographic allocation policy previously agreed. On top of this we're working that we are also in discussion with several parish and local councils who have asked about funding or sponsoring a warden in their communities. KCC warden Jason Gordon along with his team leader Aaron Grubenshald participated in the multi-agency event for safety and action week at Dreamland in Margate to large groups of primary school children. The wardens had their own information store set up and gave a fun and informative talk to the children about over-the-counter drugs and alcohol awareness. The darkford and graves and the graves from community warden team attended the prevent bus located in St John's secondary school and graves end. Working in partnership with Kent Police, they were raising awareness of internet and media safety, the potential for radicalisation and ideology through gaming platforms to young people between 11 and 13 years old. Moving on to Kent Scientific Services, a very well-run organisation and they had a record business year in 23/24 which saw an increase in the samples received by almost 20% from the previous year. This is the highest since record began in this format which started over 10 years ago and is more the double the number of samples received back then. The lab returned a surplus against budget of over £200,000, a fantastic achievement. Working with our partners in Hampshire County Council, our public analyst has just been formally appointed to provide the legally required analytic service to Cornwall County Council, so again far reaching and fantastic work by the team. Looking into trading standards, they have secured grant funding for the Office of Product Safety and Standards to continue to provide the protective infrastructure preventing the importation of dangerous consumer goods at the Channel Crossings for the year ahead. Elaine Mount, the Victim Safety Guarding Officer supported by Neil Butcher, the Trading Standards Officer, have also continued their outstanding work protecting vulnerable adults and engaging with the communities right across the county during the last year. As well as attending many community events to educate informed consumers about the risks of fraud and scams. Frequently working inside our community wardens, indirect interventions with vulnerable victims have prevented what we can identify as almost £300,000 being lost to fraud, so again a very important role within our community. I'm finally looking at Active Kent and Medway. In the last quarter of 23-24, it's been very busy for the Active Kent and Medway team and they've been delighted to be working with Sport England to deliver two significant programmes. The first of these relates to the engagement with a new national programme to support national government bodies and their local clubs to promote good practice and safe sport for children, young people and adults at a local level. The second focus is on the activation of multi-sports facilities across the county and were delighted to have been awarded £143,000 by Sport England to pilot this programme. This will cover 13 sites across the county and will help to get activity up and running that will encourage more people to be more active more often and with a real focus on those facing the greatest inequalities and challenges when it comes to getting involved in sport and physical activity. I'm also delighted to share that and thanks to KCC investment, 24 facility improvement programmes have also been identified by capital grants this year. The everyday active programme continues to go to its strength and I would like to have a champion in every district of the county and I would recommend that you visit the flagship campaign on the everyday Active Kent website and I'm sure that will be of use to your residents as well as yourselves. My final point is I would just like to touch upon the loss of James and Debbie and whilst I knew James a little I found it to be a very nice and knowledgeable man but I'd like to sort of turn my attention and really pass my sincere condolences on to Debbie and her family. I always found Debbie to be exceptionally knowledgeable and a blooming nice lady and personally I'll find her loss quite hard to take so I'd like to leave it there thank you. Thank you very much once again I'll second that and can I first start by saying I'd like to personally thank all the directors because you know it's taken a good 15 minutes just trying to explain what's happened in the last three to three months and the amount of work that's gone on is phenomenal so you know I just want to take this opportunity of thanking all the officers and the teams very very much on behalf of all the committee here. Mr Holden you have a point. Thank you German yes I do I just wanted to pick up on a Mr Murphy mentioned celebrating the thousandth anniversary of the birth of William that had bastard the Duke of Normandy. I hope that he will be conveying if we go to any of those celebrations our profound disapproval of William the bastard Duke of Normandy who was a mass murderer and a war criminal and a brutal tyrant in his suppression of the rebellions in the north in 1070 known as the harring of the north he killed and burned everybody between Stafford and Derby. He's estimated his story and say 150,000 people died so I don't think that we should be going and celebrating the birth of that man any more than they will celebrate the birth of an Austrian adventurer and conqueror of France Adolf Hitler. Thank you Mr Holden for that and not unexpected comment. I did point out to my colleague from Normandy that we had expected that he was only on a day trip and we did expect him to go back but we were a bit surprised when he did stay on but yes as I say we are trying to put hands across the sea we do realise how important to both countries the Duke was whether we liked him or not but it's a fact and I do accept what you're saying that in certain areas he probably wasn't as beneficial as perhaps our French colleagues would like but I will convey those sentiments at my first opportunity. Chairman if I may he wasn't actually French he was a French speaking Viking so I don't know why the French like to claim him he was a really nasty piece of work. Well again on that basis I must claim that my ancestry is from southern Ireland so I'd probably part of the same clan so I'll take that as it comes. Thank you very much. I have Mr Boldock first. Thank you Chairman I just wanted to fully indulge what Mr Boldock said. It was one of the most bleakest days Hastings and was lost of a very progressive civilisation to what became a very backward European role. Thank you. Thank you. Mr Sol. Thank you Chair I was going to talk about libraries and economic development but first of all we'll have to say that if you put great 24 times before my grandfather's name you get William the Conqueror so I have some relationship going back there but I won't take any offence from members whoever. What I wanted to say was we have heard some good things about our you know our wonderful libraries and the services there and you know and also about some of the you know the great things that are happening in in the county with economic development and I know we're not here to talk about buses but I must just say that having decent public transport is essential for people to be able to get to those you know and in my in my division just this week you know the 89 bus has stopped its route now through bridge so people that might want to go through bridge to visit the wonderful library in Alesham can't do it anymore well they might want to you know so we just need a bit of join up thinking sometimes and you know it's great we've got these services but we do need to be aware that those without their own transport can't often get to work you know get to study or you know get to many leisure activities. Thank you Mr. Jones. I believe next week Mr. Sol we have a session at the environment and transport cabinet committee about the bus service improvement plan so there may well be an opportunity to discuss some of those things and in terms of your bus service that may well be a we know it's a deregulated market and it may well be an operator decision and nothing we can do about that at this point in time but I think the point is well made. Mr. Hang on I've just got an office just before yourself yes sir sorry I couldn't see your name take. Yes James Pearson had a library registration archives yes no I was just going to add obviously completely take that point but I would also sort of play in that obviously the library service can be accessed in a wide variety of ways yes we got the one the wonderful sort of building service there is also the services online people can access there's the mobile library service and as Mrs. Bell was covering earlier the home library service so there's a variety of ways that people can access the service and and whatever circumstances there is a service for everyone. Thank you. Mr. Crow Brown? Yeah Mr. Jones I'm glad you mentioned Community Wardens, Aaron Klubenschiedl and Jason Gordon they offer along with Carl Eilat they offer a wonderful service to the residents of Vannet thank you. Thank you I'd just like to say on behalf of libraries I actually was walking the roads the other day in Wilmington and I happened to bump into our mobile bus mobile library service absolutely amazing and the gentleman there actually remembered me from last year when I walked in just with other constituents so it's an absolutely fantastic service and I would like to say to everyone if we don't use it we lose it so please please please push this service because I think it is you know as we're all saying it's a fantastic service whether it's a library or a mobile library it's the same type of facility that we're pushing towards the harmonisation of residents yeah. Do we have any other further questions or points? No don't see any thank you all right in that case we move on to item number six this item if I may just to say this has got an exempt appendix here this item has an exempt appendix if members wish to refer to the information in it we will need to come back to the item in a closed session at the end what I'm asking is if you wish to refer to the exempt information in debating the issue can I have a yes or a no especially if you're going to be referring to extracts from the exemption papers because then otherwise we can do that now otherwise we can go to exempt afterwards so we're not going to discuss anything on the exempt papers yes so we can carry on discussing this as it is I'll see nothing else yep okay I don't see any hands on the screen either right in that case then mrs bell over to you okay well this is um sorry this is the this is the post-mortem facilities not the removals and transfers isn't it sorry I've not got that in front of me it's item for the facilities thank you thank you so this is a facility that's always been provided by the NHS there's I believe no private provider or public mortuary and Kent and it's very important to have this contractor in place not least otherwise the NHS Trusts could charge us spot rates for the the the service it's contract for five years um and uh so that's three three years plus two years extension uh total cost of seven million pounds and I believe that the fixed fee currently paid by the east Kent hospital's trust is to be renegotiated as part of this process to to bring the costs down thank you chair um just to say that the report does contain everything that is relevant to the decision um these contracts cover the entirety of the county including medway so it is with all four trusts encompassing their five mortuaries and all four corner areas that again cover the entirety of the Kent and Medway corner service you so you so you you thank you very much um so the county council has a statutory duty when a post-mortem is required to transfer the disease to a designated mortuary um and the cost of this is around 800 000 pounds a year this is three years plus two year extension um and the decision is to go out to procurement for new contracts to start in January 2025 no nothing further thank you thank you item number eight decision to award contracts for public rights of way vegetation clearance back to yourself mrs bell again this is fairly straightforward one um two million pounds over five years this has been divided up into different lots into ten lots in fact so it's not a whole county contract um and i think one of the benefits of this is that it's available to small and medium size enterprises um it's five years plus two if if the extension is taken up um which is in order to make it worthwhile for perhaps a small business uh to work to invest in equipment and and staffing um to bid for the contract so i think it also has that bit of social value as well as uh keeping our public rights of way tidy and free of weeds and things thank you thank you very much grand yep sorry yeah if if i may chairman just highlight a few points i think the the report speaks to itself but it's uh it's just highlight nearly 7 000 kilometers of right of way uh where we're clearing right away there invariably one publicly maintainable highways i think it's important to say that we do have a statutory obligation in terms of maintenance uh we're not doing it for aesthetic purposes these are routes that parishes communities the public have told us need clearing because the vegetation interferes with their use of the highway so i think it's important say that's that's we set the set the bar there and our specification if you like is is aimed at making sure the highway remains open and free and safe as uh as opposed to uh committing sort of economic uh not economic ecological destruction on a grand scale uh also point out why we we do it it's not just it's a statutory duty but these are routes in every day you use pretty much in every community in Kent i'm very keen at keen to get across the important for health uh utility there's still many people still you know go to school and the doctors and church and everything else i'm still using them in the same way they did in 1700s in many cases but also in a modern context for active travel purposes so yeah just a few points to highlight there and i i think the uh probably preempting a question why 10 lots and why limiting the award that's really around risk and price having been through this cycle twice previously if we try and run it as one lot and the contract of fails or fails to deliver we're in the soup as it were yeah thank you thank you very much uh mr balled up thank you no i just wanted to say i welcomed the uh breaking up of this into smaller lots i think that's uh something that is some of us have been arguing for quite some time would be beneficial and um yeah as it said it gives small local companies a chance to bid and i think that's a positive step so i welcome this thank you very much uh mr binks i'd also like to say that i i agree with entirely with mr balled up um i hope that it won't be too onerous to apply for these contracts because that is something that puts a lot of small companies off even applying uh the fact that the uh the uh hoops and and things that they have to get jumped through uh sometimes too much um but i do welcome it because it brings local interest um which is sadly lacking often in the larger companies where it's uh east kent one day west kent the next um and i would say that they're very much used particularly for school children as well and in some cases and in fact for me personally recently um very recently i've had complaints of the lighting being bad in the winter so i think it's very important that we don't just discard these or only think about the ones that are in the pretty roots in west kent but we realize that actually they're used by a lot of people all over kent uh for going to work for going to school so i think it's pretty important and uh sadly uh they have often because there are so many of them they've often been left neglected and run down and then nobody uses them at all um except those for nefarious reasons um so i i think this is a step forward but i hope and i ask that we do not make the uh application so onerous that everybody says i'll forget it is too much because you know paperwork is not something that most small companies want to see as yet another burden on their business so it's good news but um providing it works and we do get the companies using it great if i may yes uh firstly it's not our west kent and no further it most definitely is very much county-wide the entire network county-wide in terms of making it as easy as possible for contract is it it's a fine balance between due diligence and correct process around procurement because although it's a large amount it's aggregated there may be smaller contracts but there's still requirements around that but we do support contractors through the process we do assist where we can or what we can't do is complete it for them thank you very much for that clarification um any other further questions or points no in that case could i ask um members to consider and endorse uh um the recommendations great thank you thank you very much uh onto performance and dashboard uh Matthew Matthew far away thank you very much chair um so this is the performance dashboard covering quarter three uh for the 2023 24 financial year um just due to how the committee times have fallen there's a slightly bigger gap than normal between the the end of that quarter and when we're reporting now the next report should come in july um so the summary report is obviously found within the reports pack followed by a more detailed performance dashboard um as well as that we have a second appendix in relation to the targets and kpi's for next year so of the 22 kpi's include within the performance dashboard 17 a regulated green indicating performance at or above the target level and that's two more than we had in quarter two five the kpi's are regulated amber with performance above their floor standard but below the target level required for a green rating and there were no kpi's below the floor standard so that means none were regulated red in terms of the ambers we had develop a contribution secured against total contribution sought the percentage of public rights of way faults reported online percentage of lessons learned domestic homicide reviews seminar attendees rating the event very good or excellent the percentage of cases progressed for initial coronial decision within two working days of notification of the death the percentage of schools with the highest numbers of children eligible for free school meals that engage the engaging with kent school games um and the footnotes within the dashboard do contain some further context and information around those amber rated kpi's as i mentioned at the start the paper also includes in appendix two proposed kpi's and activity indicators for 2024 25 25 following the review that happens on an annual basis by these services the relevant cabinet members and the corporate director some of the kpi references have changed in terms of that that prefix that we have to describe the kpi to reflect the new structures within the division so for example edo five is now eco five and with the change from the former economic development service into the new economy service um there's new indicators are noted within the appendix and you can also see where targets have been changed and updated i think all of those updates to targets have been to make them more challenging um but there are some which have been removed so those are country park ratings as the services now move to the environment portfolio and obviously be covered under that uh current committee um the stem work experience hours delivered um which was decided to be not the best indicator the core work of that service um and say there's been two new indicators introduced uh i'm proposed for 2024 25 which should capture better the the primary goal of that service also the the engagement cad school games has been removed and the engagement with learning opportunities facilitated by active ken and medway as kkcc's role has changed and performance has already overseen by an independent board um so those are the those are the kpi's that have been removed and just to finish by reflecting back on the overall picture nearly 80 of the kpi's are regulated green none were red and the remaining obviously amber thank you very much thank you very much and it's really nice to see no reds um any points or remember yes far away um this is great thank you chair i've just got a quick question about ED05 which is on appendix 104 uh with regards to the no use empty scheme does that only apply to houses and not commercial properties far away sir yeah that applies to um empty residential properties being brought back into use but not commercial and we haven't got we will only count commercial if commercial has been converted back into which is not as many as we would like to get okay thank you that i advise it thank you very much for that clarification stick mrs binks thank you um my question was on aka mo1 on page 112 the percentage of schools with the highest number of children eligible for free school meals engaging with the kent school games um it's 45 percent it's 17 schools um that engaged so i'm assuming there are about 38 schools in that group um i just wondered how many children actually engaged if you have that number it's definitely not to hand but we'll find it for you and get it for you yes mrs bell sorry i didn't jump in in front of any questions i just wanted to make at one point about the um the appendix two um and as has already been said many of the targets have been increased and um i would just say i think uh speaking about my area they have been increased sometimes quite substantially um i mean i'm looking here the number of customers attending physical and virtual libraries um to go up from 168,500 to 210,200 i mean it's quite a jump and across the board and i i just wanted to pay tribute to officers for this because i think it's quite commendable at this time when we are with such pressure on on resources and and and so on that uh despite that um they're still aiming higher and in many cases quite considerably higher um i think some of these will be a challenge but um i just uh wanted to highlight that thank you thank you very much thank you very much in that case if there's no further questions uh all points um i'd just like to ask everybody to note the performance report for quarter three of 23-24 is that noted noted thank you and on the board item number 10 kent county council support for apprenticeships community learning and skills in the context of kent economy Derek over to yourself please thank you german uh i'll be as brief as i possibly can as you know this committee is very um um interested in apprenticeships and we have recently we'm working very hard with the children education committee about setting some boundaries as to where their responsibilities uh an interest in apprenticeships ends in education and ours takes over so i'd like to commend the officers for the hard work they've done on producing this presentation today and with more ado chairman hand over to my colleague mr spith thank you david faraway david chairman committee this is a continuation of a discussion in this committee that we had last autumn where we promised to come back to you with a picture of how apprenticeships particularly fitted with the work that kent county council was doing on supporting young people and older people into work by improving their skills the the paper itself focuses on kent as a geography for which kent county council is responsible the issues however concern that wider geography which includes medway so we are planning on having a similar paper submitted to the employment task force which the leader chairs next week and which mr murphy attends and so we're putting it into the context not only of kent county council but also midway council's efforts in this area but the figures in this paper and the discussion of what we are doing in this council uh of your responsibility as well as shared by the other committee which we have discussed which is children young people who is having a similar paper to this and a similar presentation later this week uh so i have with me my colleague mite reina who's going to help us understand some of the figures and background to the quite extensive presentation we've given you and circulated it in advance but i'd just like to preface that by saying that what we would like the committee to do is comment on what you hear and in particular consider some of the recommended action points which we've discussed in the paper itself which we've had discussions with partners outside kent county council with the colleges with the schools with all the other providers of uh training and we've got a consensus and i jumped to the end of this discussion which is that what they're recommending they've seen those recommendations and largely thought they were good to be the ones put to you is that we should form a small group that would consider those in practical terms in the next month or two with a view to making representations to the government of today but also writing to uh members of opposition parties so that our kent position is very clear to the people who are currently funding us and providing the rules as well as any changes that might come in the future so chairman um if i may pass it over to mr reina here just to be clear some of the things in this paper don't belong to mr reina's responsibilities in the education people because we've tried to widen it to our colleagues in the community learning and skills service and they have been part of the preparation of this so we've got colleagues across the county council including in personnel we have a couple of slides on what county council is doing by way of apprenticeships to show what we as a organization are contributing to that overall contribution to the Kent economy thank you thank you very much mr reina right thank you so um the first few slides this are about contextualizing so what's going on in that six formage of come of um education so we can understand where um apprenticeships sit in the in the mix so that first slide here shows that in Kent we actually have quite a different educational system from the rest of the country in the much higher percentage of young people remain in school six forms compared to going into college or other forms of vocational learning um even if you account for the fact that we don't have six form colleges in the county it would still be that we keep more young people in six forms than the rest of the country do so and the sixth form offer is a much more academic offer so if i'm skipping down through the slides also there's a slide here that looks at the where young people go by their level of attainment and overall you can say that the young people with lower levels of entertainment of their GCSEs and more likely to end up in colleges apprenticeships or unemployed and those who have um a higher level of attainment are staying in their six forms and again that's that's slightly different to the rest of the um the country but so that that gives you some percentage so within the schools we see within the colleges we're generally seeing young people with much lower levels of attainment than we're seeing in the six forms um six forms yeah from about 60 percent of the cohort they're largely a level equivalent qualifications rather than vocational qualifications so we call that level three i don't know if you're aware level one with and level entry level are pre GCSE level two is a is a GCSE level three and above are a levels and higher so in schools it's almost exclusively level three so it's a higher achieving young people again in colleges sorry the actions here we have some some changes in the qualifications that can be offered in schools coming up they've already started implemented but there is a chance of qualifications which we call apply general qualifications they're BTEX they're generally done by students who aren't going on to A levels but they've passed their GCSEs that chance of qualifications is being defunded currently and hasn't been replaced so we're looking at possibly even as much of a third of our young people not having a good pathway forward at the moment so the six forms of reference are wrestling with that they're having to look at how they changed their offer um to adapt to that and to accommodate those young people um and also i've already said it's a very academic offer so i'm one of the actions we're trying to do at the moment is encourage schools to work more closely with employers and you know meet the needs of the local economy more um we have an organization called the careers and enterprise company offering operating in the company in the county you know we'd recommend their support and if we're in a position to it's a lobby for these qualifications that are disappearing not to disappear um that so that's going to be a challenge um Kent's training providers for those that don't make it in schools and colleges these are often our most vulnerable learners and they will be generally offering vocational and sort of re-engagement provision to get people into work or back into education but predominantly into work over the last few years we've seen a huge falling off since the end of the European social fund of that kind of delivery um and we've been working to hold the line in the sense to keep that sort of provision in existence now we've just um unfortunately we didn't get it into here we only just found out in the last couple of days we've been working with the department for education for about four years to turn this around and we've just been told that they're going to allocate additional places for this type of provision so that for those lower level for our needs we're hoping um that we're going to get an additional 450 places per year so we've had some success in that area um skipping on the colleges are almost entirely um vocational in their delivery out of 12 campus is only two duet levels and there are large amounts of those students are studying level two again so they're repeating that level the GCSE level again um so again very different to the sixth form when you change slides can you tell which number it is i don't know if my numbers match that but we're in totally different we're on a side that says Kenseff e colleges there we go keep going one next one there we go um yes so that that's where the colleges are vocational lower level summer training and and very different to the sixth forms um community learning and skills um the next slide please um now these these are this is um our adult education team um now they are currently in a position of transition so they're focused now moving forward is support the Kense economy support the most vulnerable and promote healthy creative active communities and be inclusive i'm working with them on the inclusive bit um the next few slides aren't my slides so i can't actually talk to those so if you have questions about community learning and skills we will take those away from you i will skip down if only laptop allows me moving to the slide excuse me computer is the apprenticeship slides please uh it's page 150 in the pack i'm not sure what slide number that will be it's headed apprenticeships there we go right why was to just wish to point out in here um traditionally our under 19s will be studying what we call an intermediate level two apprenticeships but if you look at them the stats there um our numbers of those studying that level of apprenticeship have declined from about 950 down to about 750 that's because the government is now prioritizing um apprenticeships at higher level um which is the a-level equivalent um the issue for that is that excludes some of our more vulnerable learners who haven't achieved well with their GCSEs so whereas before a lot of our needs would go into apprenticeships that's now not the case um also there's an issue of the level of an apprenticeship not necessarily marrying up to a level of academic attainment so going from a level three a-level to a level four apprenticeship isn't possible because they won't have done the skills please to make that jump so there's there are issues around the systems not matching up and are more vulnerable who would normally go into these apprenticeships not being able to access them overall as the age profile goes up and we would expect more people to be going into higher levels of apprenticeships and that's the case sorry okay next slide compared to nationally um we are doing better um at the under-ninths we are seeing an increase in the number of those a we are seeing a fall in the 19th 24s but not as much as nationally not performing quite well as well in the 25 classes um most of our interest goes into those nine up to 19th 24s of the 16th 19 and 19th 24 is where we're working most and the next slide within kcc again this comes from the kcc um HR department team over a thousand of our staff have access to apprenticeships there's where you can see the breakdown not going to go through those slides you can have a look at that if you have any questions we can defeat that back to the HR team sorry thank you i'm having my two issues i do apologize if we can skip to one down to one that says 204 apprenticeship vacancies this is a snapshot of um sort of the breakdown um other apprenticeships that were available as i well you see at the date business snabman has always been our biggest um this just as a caveat this may be somewhat misleading misleading these are the sectors that the companies are in not necessarily what the training is in so it could be an engineering company but they might be offering a business snabman apprenticeship in up in the office or an accountancy apprenticeship in the advertising agency so this is the breakdown of where the companies are so you can see business snabman dental health health and science and then at the other end surveying surveying is always a tricky one because there's no training flat in this county and then the challenging the challenge is funding this is always a fun and an issue for this um many providers would argue that levels of funding don't allow them to deliver this some providers are actually deliver which are warm from delivering certain fees an increased level of student need again many other um apprenticeship training providers aren't as geared up for dealing with them you know more vulnerable students and a lack of capital funding training providers can't access capital funding in the way that colleges and schools can so a costly apprenticeship is difficult to deliver without that capital and funding um there's also the issues there are actually quite a lot of apprenticeship opportunities but they don't necessarily marry up with what young people want to do um so there's a bit of a mismatch there um you can very quickly and fill an apprenticeship in media or an advertising agency or a sports center not so easy to fill it in um i don't know any state agents so there's there's a bit of a mismatch there and there's also a bit of a firm confusion around where they're advertised and how you get bumped because there isn't a central system anymore so again it's it's a little bit messy to come get a firm apprenticeship and they don't work with the academic year so they may not be available when a young person is looking for one so that transition can be tricky so that's one of the reasons they'll end up in school or college because it's easier um and we are having issues with government focusing on level three and above because it just doesn't allow for those more vulnerable learners um to progress so again it's lobbying really we need to policy policy changes around this um there's also an issue where now young people who haven't got their maths have to keep doing the English and maths and that again is a barrier for certain young people they just don't want to do it and it's also hard to deliver i think we're here and that's that's me done thank you very much mr reina mr louis thank you um i think that was one the greatest um presentations i've heard for honestly i mean for once we've heard the truth about why things aren't working and um i think it comes down to supply and demand there's a massive supply of demand for apprenticeships but the supply is not there only 204 vacancies on that's a snapshot of one day over the course of the year there's many more but that that was a snapshot yeah but i mean one of the things i see coming from fannins is most of the employers are small businesses and most apprentices are based on big companies or medium-sized companies um friendships so how can i ask how does a small business man apply for apprenticeship because that seems a barrier and also this mismatch is i think made worse because for many years in the Kent especially with the grammar school system that academia takes precedence over apprenticeships and when 75% of the population at the age of 11 are told you're not qualified enough to go to grammar schools then education becomes secondary and some people just don't want to learn and then again as you said with the emphasis on English and maths only um people who aren't particularly great in maths or English are kind of discarded almost because they're not they haven't got that particular qualification so i think it's a great presentation for showing that we need a resets for use the modern jargon on the apprenticeships i haven't got the answers but i'm glad that the presentation shows the difficulty that we have going forward thank you very much for the presentation thank you very much david would you like to come in on that please i may before mrs binks comes in respond to mr lewis's um challenges about what do we do about it now this is not only for kent county council this is the same issues of facing our colleagues in the job centers of kent run by department of work and pensions they have extensive books of people who are not employed and they're constantly trying to persuade employers to take those people on and the skills that are offered through apprenticeships is one of those routes so this challenge is um now being we've we've analyzed it we're into the mode of saying let's look at the practical ways that we can enable those small businesses run by entrepreneurs who've not got hr departments who don't want to read government websites who don't want the paperwork who would like to have their positions subsidized more than they do at the moment so we're looking at the the levy and improving the sharing we're looking at methods of advertising apprenticeships at the moment an employer who has a who has thought about it and wants one doesn't necessarily connect with somebody who might want to be the apprentice in their business so there is going to be a practical program that we're going to develop over the next few months and we're going to produce that in a short persuasive propaganda document both for ourselves in terms of implementation but also for the government who do provide the funding and also provide a lot of the rules which we think get in the way that's fantastic and can I just say on that front um I am and was a small business in hospitality sector and I was looking for an apprentice many many years ago it took three attempts to find the best one right okay um and when I found him I didn't want to let go of him but I didn't want his aspirations to stop themselves holding him back I could have left the business just to him and he would have run it that's how good he was and then we were expanding then we went for a second apprentice and through that scheme we went through about four until we found the right one and again he was very good and then we were looking at another one we wanted a carpenter he came he did two days work and then he said my wrist is hurting I don't know how to use a drill properly and that's the kind of stumbling blocks you face you know you're advertising what you want but they uh the um the uh provider can only work on something what the applicant has said he can um I want and what the um employee wants so it's it's really frustrating when you think you've got the right asset but you haven't because they can't use the tools and you know yeah it's just phenomenal but it does it takes time and I was only a small medium business I wasn't a large multinational so you know it does take time but these things do work and as I said you know I didn't want to stop anybody but that was the aspiration of this individual he wanted to go into brewing brewing alcohol and that's what and we said right okay here's the reference on you go we didn't want to stop anyone but that's how good he was when we found that right asset and you know credit goes to him I'm not going to mention his name or anything but he was fantastic and you know and I'm sure KCC will work in the right direction to make sure that these things are fulfilled uh mrs binks thank you David was ahead of me there um I probably knew what I was going to say having grown grown up in Ramsgate on the Isle of Sannet um I could have told you all that's about what happens to in schools um because that is why the area of Sannet has such a dearth of of the higher academic uh residence of 25 to 40 because there were no jobs that were good enough for them as they thought and they all thought or shall we say challenging enough and well enough paid so they all went away um so you not only did you have a cudra went you you lost that ability to maybe start new businesses in the area um so this is the problem uh it's a national problem because the productivity in the UK is lower than France and Germany and uh scrapes above one or two countries in Europe but is notoriously low and uh it is one of the reasons and there are many so I won't say that it's all that reason it is that the the level of education and qualifications uh and skills are low here on average compared to other areas um so I think that you've hit on the the nail on the head with saying that you've got to organize it has got to be better organized it's got to be more accessible for um for for small businesses because Kent is is is a county of small businesses by and large um maybe there should be work done working with with national companies as a county so that you have an agreement so that apprentices may be in a in a local small business but can also have a certain amount of time as an agreement I'm throwing out ideas here um but I think the problem is also in the schools I've said it for a long time the careers advice in schools is not adequate and I think that's where you have to start you have to as it were give give a students a reality check not what they want as much as what is going to be the best for them and what's going to actually take them forward um not just what they want to do because I think that is a problem that many understand and the schools don't seem to be able to bring children into that frame where they understand that work is not all about what you choose you know there's a bit of hard work there that you might not want in order to get to where you do want to be and I think it's there's a lot of work to be done in the schools in the careers I think the careers advice is sadly lacking or shall we say not good enough um but I I think that's KCC can play a much larger part in this because organization of opportunities well that's just getting it organized and centralized you know it's not that difficult it's a communications problem um but I think you've got to teach both the students what they can expect as well as um as the the employers but I do think that we should be looking because we have relationships with large companies and I think that should be quid pro quo and I know it is with some of the ones that use that we have contracts with already but I think that should be something that we we could build on to ensure a county-wide plan which means you could have the opportunity to go to a company in the Midlands or in London and yes you're there for a while and you're getting a little bit of an extra experience of big company work then you come back and you're you're more useful but it's a very good presentation but uh I think it's something that we have needed for a long long time go ahead David I think Mike and I accept your challenge with his pinks um just on two things that you mentioned uh we've learned a lot in looking at the evidence and the data one interesting thing that we've found is that only 5% of the people who've got construction qualifications actually go into construction jobs so the simplistic thing that says just provide some background education for people and expect them to get jobs isn't necessarily true there's a lot of other things and that's a that's quite a challenge about lifestyle of the of the younger people and so as you said the schools are really important element of this and we've been talking to head teachers as well as the careers advisors in the from privately employed and a lot of the head teachers are coming back and saying we never knew this so we we're starting on that program with the Kent schools the second point I just like to respond to is about large employers the where we can get uh so the SME is absolutely difficult but we need to work on that but the larger employers just like to refer to um the lower tems crossing um construction project which will employ at its peak thousands of new jobs some of which will probably only last for the period of the construction but some of which will then require the maintenance and the rest of it so we're talking to the team that is funded by the Department of Transport which has a significant training budget to make sure that the way that is used is not only for their own selfish purposes of drilling the hole and putting a road through it but also in terms of the legacy of the jobs the skilled jobs that will retain be retained in Kent so that's there's a there's a very big program ambitious program I hope to deliver what you described but it's going to take us it's it's not as easy as we think it's it's something that has been challenging for quite a many years of a lot of very clever people but we're going to have a real go at it yes I mean the piece of work with the head teachers we did a review of post-16 education two years ago it's taken us that long to get them around the table we now have eight groups across the county of head teachers and senior managers meeting to plan their open local offer and we're starting to bring businesses into that group those groups and careers teachers you know we're looking at a long term transformation process but it's it's happening it's the pathways for all if you've heard of pathways for all you know there's a big piece of work that's going on with that six form age mrs binks if you'd like to come back yeah thank you i i mean i know david and i've spoken about this before um because productivity is the big keyword for the uk the economy will not not to do well unless we up our game and um and frankly that takes quite a bit because we are so far behind so many other countries and so i welcome this but i do emphasize the schools because i think unfortunately the whole nature of the educational system in in the uk has particularly with with a Kent weather or grammar schools has been that many teachers go from university school university school they don't actually have that experience of being out in the wide what the wider world um i would add actually a lot of people in the public sector don't have that experience where you can lose your job if you're not good enough um you know it they have to learn that and uh and i can assure you most most people in the eastern europe know that so there'll be plenty of competition if you haven't learned it so i i think that we have to bring business into the schools much more uh to teach them the hard facts of life there isn't a free free ticket you know in this country uh and i think that's something you have to inspire people and the lack of ambition that i saw when i first came back to the uk was absolutely incredible total lack of ambition in certain areas but aspiration and that is that sad and we have to do something about that so yes i welcome this um very much thank you thank you very much just before i bring the next speaker in i actually work with um one of the local academies in wilmington taking businesses to the schools uh it's called just a networking club for the businesses and um teaching the talking to students and the students actually giving a two-minute spill on their life of what they would like to do and i think that works works very very collaboratively between the two groups and the teachers as well the third group you know i've had financial times turn up there go into these networking events just talk in seeing what students actually want and they're looking at the the list on page 154 the 204 apprenticeship vacancies i think it could be an opportunity where you're gonna where you're working with the schools it could be an opportunity where you share this list and up to date list whenever you're going to have your meeting right which type of businesses would you like us to supply you with because you have the connections as kcc if you haven't it's where maybe the counselors the members could help and support we have enough networking between us to say you know what i have this connection let's go there let's go there and promote that aspect because apprenticeships is a very very valuable asset in the coming future you know when when you talk to some of our senior peers i started as apprentice back in 1854 or whatever you know 1954 but that's the way forward nowadays you know because not everybody has the skill and the degree that they require nowadays so you know please work with the members on that and i'm sure that we can aspire and and hit that target that you require mr hood waiting patiently thank you very much i'm very sorry i can't be in the chamber today it's obviously a huge concern that we can is underperforming in terms of the skills deficit which is outlined in the in the paper compared to nationally and indeed indeed originally i think there is a there's a cultural problem isn't there with the way that the english view academic success and the way the attitude we've got to um vocational training because i think vocational training should be um should be much higher in in everybody's estimations because a degree is not going to not going to fix it you know your house when you got water cascading through it um we all want our young people to be best prepared to allow them to achieve their personal potential and to be able to support our economy here in king um but i think there are too many people currently falling through the gaps in provision um and i'm very pleased to see that this report has come to the chamber today because it has been a huge concern for me um i'd just not to ask what mechanisms are there for chasing up this needs to be about is it 10 of 16 year olds who aren't actually um in training or employment and they they're presenting his knee i'll just wonder who once they've left school who is responsible for for making sure that they're they're not just sort of sitting home just laying laying in bed wasting their lives um we're told that we've got three further educational colleges which are making improvements to meeting employees demands but the picture is it's not um it's not spread evenly across campus is it because here in where i am in tambourish we've got the campus of North King College and we've got a situation where the number of courses provided to shrunk um we've got whole buildings and floors which are mothballed and with the people who are storytelling they can't actually get on those on those the lower courses to bring them up to a standard where they can actually access further training in apprenticeships so that is a huge um huge concern um mr. Lewis i thought made a very good point about enabling small businesses to actually engage and navigate the system for apprenticeships and i just wonder we've got a huge amount of apprenticeship levy that the council is responsible responsible for how much of that levy would it be possible to use to actually enable those kind of companies to to get people into the their um into into apprenticeships um but there do seem to be a lot of positive steps in this in the document and what's being presented today um and we're heading in the right direction uh the local skills and program plans seem to but are absolutely crucial it's really interesting to see that there's local leadership for this because i think that local let ensuring that there is a geographical um a comprehensive geographical um way to address this is is really important um i think it's really good to see we're bucking the trend nationally in terms of those young people in the apprenticeship that is really good news that's come out of the report um i think really we just then we need to see a pragmatic way of getting the people who have been falling through the gaps in terms of educationally allow retaining young people into a position where they can where they can make a difference where they are valued and where we can put them to work and where they will help our our economy thank you very much for the report it's been it's a so reassuring thank you look thank you very much mr hood i know mr reina would like to come back he was very eager ten minutes ago just the first point around needs that's our responsibility for the 16 to 18 year old the 16 to 18 the sort of them six form age we have a neat support service with 10 staff in it and we have a service we have four peer members of staff who are on the phone actively so trying to find those young people so we've got a whole sort of raft of ways you know working working with the schools working with the colleges to find those young people track them down and offer them support so that's in place um actually our percentage is 3.6 at the moment and we're doing very well nationally um considering that we've had a collapse in um provision this year which finally we've rectified so that's our statutory responsibility we're doing it and we're doing it well at the moment in terms of the actual growing the provision how long have you got so i think that's another day thank you very much mr reina mr soul thank you chair um the report talks about the the skills deficit you know and broadly speaking um when you look at our workforce the higher up the educational um skills and qualifications you've got the the further we fall behind the national average i i personally don't believe that um youngsters born and educated in kent fit that pattern the problem we've got is that don't stay in kent once they're educated you know if i just look at you know my own children or their peers you know most of their friends i've gone off to university haven't returned to kent so whilst i think apprenticeships are important much more important than this is getting the employers here we we need high paying jobs in this county to make people want to stay here and then that will bring up the level of education and and and skills um in in the workforce so whilst this is you know a very interesting paper and of course i you know i approve of apprenticeships i think they're a great thing and we we should be doing more of them probably more important than that is to do whatever we can to make people want to bring their business here set up their business and and grow it so that we don't continue to see this exodus of people moving out of kent and just leaving us with retail and hospitality and other lower paid jobs thank you david you're right again but the issue is we don't we haven't addressed that particularly in this paper because that's covered in other things that we've brought before the committee so for example the kent and medway business fund expressly targets companies who want to expand in kent and we always ask applicants about their workforce and what extra they need and we will consider how we might help them find those skilled the skills that they need to for the workforce that they're hoping to employ similarly the work that the inward investment agencies do when a company that is possibly based abroad or elsewhere in britain the first question they ask is having looked at kent and liked it is where are they going to get the workforce so we've got connections with our colleges who are very very eager to put on specific courses to produce the level of skills that those employers the inward investors whether they're large or small I mean we don't really mind if they're small as long as they bring innovation and employment to kent so that's a bigger part of our agenda and it's it's it's such a large issue and it affects actually the rest of the country so we're in competition for that sort of investment with all the rest of not only the united kingdom but our colleagues if I can call them that our friends on the other side of the channel as well as the united states so this is a competitive market and as mrs binks has said we have in the past somewhat fallen behind in in bringing that into kent and so we're we're determined to reverse that thank you very much thank you mr hold him thank you i mean i think there are a lot of big themes here which it can't be resolved either in a meeting of the committee of the county council or by the county council as a whole because it's a national thing and it's a social thing i mean the first thing and it's been said for many years and it's been said here now rightly that the remedy should be seen to be lying in the schools and that the first thing we need to do is to change the long-standing social bias towards academic success and against technical success and that can start early in secondary education and there was an interesting thing i think it was the labor government which did it which i thought was for a moment uh encouraging when they brought in specializing schools and one thing that we can see in our school system at the moment is that the children who are academically capable they're catered for but the rest of them when we might say how are you capable how are you capable how are you capable but you all get lumped into the same school and perhaps we should be looking at choosing more appropriate schools for the right people and that that's what was going to be done i thought when these specializing schools came in for instance some would specialize in sport but it fell down because it was non-selective they weren't allowed to select people on the basis that they were good at football uh and uh and so uh it didn't really work but if we looked at some kind of changes like that uh in the technical side uh and and that's a long-term thing as well but this has been going on a long time people have been saying since i can remember oh look at the germans if you've got a degree or qualification in plumbing they view that in the same social light as a degree in english uh and uh and we don't and still don't and we need to make that change um i think we also need to change uh so the attitudes of the young currently a lot of the the the ones who are feeling that they don't want to be economically active and they can make a bit of a claim here and deal a bit of stuff there and don't really need to go into a job and they're relaxed about that we need to um mrs binks talked about ambition we need to um put some ambition and the idea of ambition the idea of bettering yourself again in the schools i think uh one of the things i hoped it was going to do and that's to make people more work ready and one of the things that i thought that people uh we're doing to make people more work ready was this requirement for english and maths so i wouldn't go away from that uh because it's it's the continual complaint of employers that uh that uh the young people turn up both illiterate and enumerate and and we and i thought that we were trying to stop that by having this requirement for english and maths and i think we should definitely stick at that and not be put off by people saying well it's too hard for me what have you got for me work harder is what i've got for you and and we need to be a bit more robust i think with the young people who say oh we don't want to say if you want a career as an influencer you're going to have to work that yourself but for most of you it's going to be a sort of more regular path and uh and there's a lot of changing of attitudes then going further mr chairman and then i'll stop um i think that uh it was a huge mistake and it was a conservative government mistake but it's also compounded by tony blare afterwards and uh was to change the polytechnics into universities and to change the emphasis of polytechnics uh away from that and to uh more academic uh uh subjects i think we should be looking at uh cutting down the number of universities increasing the number of technical type uh academic establishments uh and and working with that because we now have when i went to university five percent of people went to university now it's 50 we've got we've got people coming out with completely worthless qualifications and and and all the uh um the infrastructure that goes with that so we need to make a look at changing that as well uh and that mr chairman it's my vast overview of this long-standing problem and i think it's more than just here but it's certainly we can start in our schools in Kent by changing attitudes both of the children and of the teachers and of the uh of the uh authority here thank you thank you very much for that um well is it because that that that is exactly what we're trying to do is take suggestions so that they can fulfill them try and lead them up the corridors as they say to the uh higher powers um i have two more further speakers and i think then i've given the debate a reasonable time uh mrs grem thank you chair a few points first of all that report has horrified me um all my life i've heard about great education system we've gotten ken and all the great things it does it strikes me that uh maybe the grammar school doesn't work that well when we've got an average population with less qualifications than other parts of the country the other thing i'm very aware of is we're all sitting here and forgive me if i get this wrong and i miss anyone out but i think everyone in this room gave up school in the last century so we've all naturally got um opinions on school that with the best one in the world or out of date i say that to someone that's been to schools a lot recently because one of my sons is choosing his options and one is just started his a levels and schools are vastly vastly different places to when i was at school in in many many many respects i think it'd be really helpful for us to speak to people that have just left school about what they need rather than us always assuming that we know better i think both both of my children their friends would have very different views about what they need and what would help them that when i was at school for example when i was at school it's very common that people got a Saturday job those jobs really don't exist in the same sort of numbers now shops don't need cashiers uh or even shelf stackers in in the way they once did so they're not getting that kind of well they have they have those tills when you just swap yourself and everything else like that now i don't know time i don't know time um so things i've vastly vastly different now um and i think i think it'll be useful for us to ask young people what they need and what they're missing education the other thing that's always shocked me in this country as we constantly see we've got a shortage of this we've got a shortage of that none of that matches up with training places on obvious ones we've got a shortage of nurses we've got a shortage of nursing places it has never made sense to me why we don't match up what is needed with what the training places are and until we do that i think we're always going to have shortages thank you very much that's an ex-relation chairman i didn't give up sport in the last century i i write a school school i thought he did say school because i ran three miles before i came here because when she saw that i saw mr mead look round he's going now leading on to mr mead so thank thank you chairman there's a a lot i could add to that but i'll stick to the points that i was going to speak to and it's really to say that i commend the the important work that's being done in this era and i'm fully supportive of the action points that are contained within the reports so i'm encouraged to to hear what you had to say about the lower terms crossing obviously it's uh a route that will go right through the heart of the the division that i share with mr ridges so it's something we're particularly keen on working with you to ensure that there is ample mitigation against what is at the moment a devastating scheme for for us in graves end but my point on that is just an overall concern that we're often too late to the game and i experience and i i say that uh acknowledging that there are significant challenges around getting change in this area of national infrastructure planning highways planning as well but we've known about the lower terms crossing and the possibility of it for years and i still have a huge concern that when they come to actually bore those holes the the skills set will not be there to provide local jobs for the for the residents of graves end and just to to continue that point there are currently five schemes that are currently going through the the planning process that are categorized as nationally significant infrastructure schemes and i'm just wondering if we're having similar conversations with them to make sure that there is an opportunity to get apprenticeships out of these nationally significant infrastructure schemes thank you david yes the answer to that it because the lower terms crossing is very close to home we're having regular conversations with the team that's managing it on the point of uncertainty the uncertainty has been created by the planning process and the treasury not committing to the funding and of course until that timetable is known a lot of people will not commit themselves to the things that then should follow so the analysis that part of our endemic issues around uncertainty around big projects doesn't help but on the other point about the other projects absolutely big projects can fulfill a big demand for skills they come with a budget that whoever's financing them has provided for those skills so we are absolutely determined to make sure that those are valuable to ken lovely thank you very much i think that's summed it up nicely to be honest i think we've had a fair debate on this and hopefully you've taken out a lot of recommendations and suggestions which have come forward by the group so thank you very much if everybody's in agreement on that and then we go on to item number 11 district visits program the members are asked to note this report over to Derek first of all i say hope Rob Hancock recovers because i understand Mr Hancock fell off his bike and that's why he couldn't be here today's so i hope he's better and i think it's Colin at the back he's going to take it forward thank you. Colin go ahead thank you Mr Chairman yes you'll be aware that the last visit took place with most time borough council on the 11th of March the details and outcomes of the report are in within the report of that visit future visits are being planned for gravion darford and swale just a couple of points on 2.3 of your report to pick up we will be confirming to mason borough council that the adult education center has moved to Oakwood house the second or the second third and fourth bullets we've initiated dialogue with infrastructure colleagues to try and address those points and the last bullet point they're on leveraging seal and section 106 we'll discuss but probably look to direct colleagues to the our infrastructure funding statement and the relevant parts of the infrastructure funding statement thank you thank you very much point of order yes of course previously did we note at the last report i think that would be right any questions or points on this item this is for noting and and report in effectively yeah i don't see anything right one thing i would like to say is members are losing out on the experience as as mr sol said earlier it's about growing business and bringing it to kent if we can't as members we can't go out there and support them to see what we have in kent right you know this is being paid for by a small budget from kent county council and we should be supporting this making sure that we go and help and support these local business it falls back down to that point where i said originally about apprenticeships and schools and businesses working together it's these connections that you're going to take into a school or a university to make sure that this apprentice scheme follows and that's one thing i do aspire on and you know i will try not you know i will try not to miss one of these district visits because i think they're absolutely brilliant and and that day we came across a science lab making all sorts of technical equipment i i think off the top of my head i think one of the machines was just over a hundred thousand pounds if i recollect and that's the kind of investment that we're bringing in or other organizations are bringing into our borough whether they come from outside or within the borough that they are there and we should be helping to support and promote those businesses because they bring a return back to kent county council and to the local district so please i do urge everybody whenever the visits are they're all listed on there and please you know i urge everyone to make sure that we participate and support these great organizations that's the businesses to make sure that we know what's going here so in that case if there's no other points but thank you very much for that absolutely brilliant report um thank you and is that report report noted agreed thank you thank you very much um now we go on to uh no use empty Derek over to yourself thank you again chairman um yeah i'll be brief you don't want to hear from me the gentleman who does all the work is Steve Brimshaw he's over there who do the presentation for this fantastic scheme so i'll hand straight over to Steve Steve over to you okay thank you very much thank you for the opportunity to provide you with an update on no use empty appreciate time is tight sorry okay so I appreciate time is tight so i'll try and be as concise as i can so you have a very detailed report which has several appendices which cover facts and figures examples of projects under the empty property initiative as well as the new build scheme projects that we've funded with growing places money and our future plans so some updates if i may so with reference to uh section two of the report as mentioned earlier by mr murphy um colleague uh jake body uh continues his career path with kcc since joining us as an apprentice five years ago and as said earlier has achieved his level three qualification and will receive his certificate this friday from the leader uh since the report was written um we've brought back into use another 59 properties which now takes our cumulative total to date 8244 as of the 31st of march 2024 and i'll refer you to appendix one of the report for stats on on empty properties um recent update as well uh no use empty have been asked to speak at the local government association conference in july in hara gate and this follows previous coverage um that the lga have given us site in our scheme as a model of best practice under section three uh under the traditional empty property scheme we've now surpassed 60 million pounds worth of recyclable loans uh 3.3 and 3.4 covers the value of council tax receipts achieved to date and potential to increase going forward uh appendix two has more detail on that uh 3.6 that covers our pipeline of projects and already into the new financial year we have six new projects approved and at any one time no use empty has around on average about 60 projects on the go across the county at any one time 3.7 in relation to the growing places fund um the funds we received under that scheme have now been exhausted uh but that funding did allow us to bring long-term empty shops back into use as well as creating new residential accommodation as well and i'll refer you to appendix three for a selection of projects which we funded using that money uh section four in addition to the traditional empty property scheme uh back in 21 22 we launched a product a loan product to provide secured short-term interest bearing loans primarily to create to create new build homes which has generated a return on investment for KCC and for NUE to cover its operational costs to date we have funded 232 new builds and 24 business units around about 122 of those properties are completed sold and the money's been recycled back into the fund and there's examples of those schemes in an appendix as well we've also got examples of projects which we have funded which have then been acquired by district councils which is then been taken into their own housing stock and that's something that we would like to do more of going forward if we can increase the level of funding that we've got for for our new builds with reference to our our flagship project in Dover which has created 24 business units that particular project commenced in April 2022 and the loan was repaid in fall by January 2024 a number of visits have taken place to that particular project including district colleagues cabinet members and more recently the leader of the council it's and i'll refer you to appendix four for more details on that particular project and new builds regarding section five i mentioned that NUE makes a return on investment for KCC the value that has been returned as at the end of march 2024 was nine hundred and forty point four thousand pounds and five point four shows the projected turn for the next three years which forecasts 780.7k for 2024 25 and the reason why the interest due to be collected in the current financial year is higher than in previous years is because of the internal rate of interest that KCC treasury charge uh the scheme which is now 4.5 percent uh section six of the report covers revenue and as mentioned NUE operates with no revenue budget we're relying on income generation from the interest that we charge and loans and the application fees that we charge regarding section seven um no use empty we can't solve the housing crisis alone but i hope that the report conveys that we are making a valid contribution to helping um provide homes and bringing by bringing empty properties back into use and with the opportunity to create some new builds the demand for all of our loan products is not diminished and NUE will seek to secure some additional funding going forward so following the closure of CELEP we would like and seek to submit an application as part of future funding rounds to be developed and launched using a retained allocation of GPS recycled loan monies which was previously administered by CELEP and NUE mark for use by KCC going forward in from 2025 um again going forward we'd like to explore the opportunity of accessing more funds with our colleagues in treasury and section eight um there's reference to another idea to explore the potential uh for NUE to internally borrow funds which are currently allocated for future years use in the Kenton Medway business fund which would support specific no use empty commercial type projects just like the one that i've previously mentioned in Dover um as a template that could be replicated um if we were successful any any KMBF funds allocated to NUE could be ring fenced for an approved time and repaid back to that fund to be used in future years um the standard uh KMBF business loan could then be offered to those businesses perhaps that are looking to acquire or move into the new business units that have been created uh they could be startups or they could be expanding or relocating um so the benefits of this would mean that NUE does not have to request any further funding from KCC's treasury funds to take forward larger commercial projects and we can concentrate our funds on the residential schemes that we've been doing to date any interest that we generate from that kind of arrangement if approved would be collected by NUE and could be provided back to the KMBF fund which would then help support their their own operational costs that concludes my overview of the report thank you for your time and i'm happy to take any questions thank you very much uh originally i have mr louis chair um thank you for the report it's sobering report and well done on the action you've taken so far um and a broader point i just think we're in the middle of a house in crisis and anything you can do is very useful um but i think anybody in society that leaves their properties empty on purpose is a crime against society and i just i might have missed it but can you tell me how many empty houses are at present in Kent yes at the moment in Kent there are approximately 7200 long-term empty properties so they would be properties that have been empty for more than six months would you agree with me then that if those were possibly filled we would not have the housing crisis in Kent that we have at the moment i would say that that possibility could contribute to reducing the number of empty properties we also work in partnership with our district colleagues as well um so the districts have also got the ability to charge premiums on properties that remain empty for long periods of time and one of the things that i'm find uh comments that have fed back to me routinely as well and that all of our district councils have a full complement of staff that are engaged in empty property work sometimes it's a part-time function for them and sometimes one empty property case alone can maybe distract you from trying to encourage some of the other owners to try and get their properties back into use can i come back yeah briefly yeah i just find it incredible that in the 21st century we've got 7200 empty houses in one county and yet we've got hundreds of people seeking decent accommodation i'd i'd just like to say that is a crime. Mr Murphy thank you to perhaps add some clarity to this you know this is a district problem um we have we have the funds we have the funding we do not appoint the developers we do not tell them where to go it is a district issue there's nothing we can do about that apart from us mr. Grimshaw saying we work with our district colleagues we you know we we don't appoint the builder to go to a building and then given the funding they come to us and apply so i take your point but it's a district issue thank you very much mr. Holden i think it's overstating it to say it's a crime but i'm curious as to why um why so many are empty what what are the main causes for these becoming empty and are they derelict or are they just being used as holiday homes or is it a combination of lots of things so i'd say there's a whole variety of reasons why properties remain empty um some as you say might be second homes where councils now have the ability to charge premiums just try and get them back into use sometimes probate issues can take uh long times to um materialize as well to move properties i can tell you right now about probate and uh and the complete failure of HMRC which is taking months to do what it used to do in about ten days uh and and that is an interesting point you make and i think one of one other thing that's sometimes clouds the issues is the actual council tax data itself because what what we found recently is a number of properties have been removed from the empty property list because councils have been tried trying to review the council tax data that they've got um so it's when a property has been moved into that was previously classed as empty some of that data is not necessarily translating back to the district councils and feeding into the systems as well as we've seen a couple of examples of districts where the numbers of empty properties when we get the returns have actually been reduced dramatically and that's one of those reasons because they're no longer they're no longer empty they're actually occupied but the local system isn't picking up that information how many would be environment chairman how many could we brought into use as as uh mr lewis would like to see happen uh i know i know about no use empty and i'm a great admirer of the scheme uh but uh is it realistic to think that we could bring all those into use in in in what way would we look at doing that um personally i think you'd have to seriously increase the level of funding that we have available to to do that because the the pot itself to bring empty properties back into use at any one time is around about 10 million pounds so you would have to treble four times that amount of money if we are to be giving loans out to encourage people to get their empty properties back into use as opposed to taking or allowing the districts to take action because they are to house an authority with the ability and the tools to to do the enforcement side of things and again that goes back to the point not every district council has a full complement of staff because they're under resource in order to try and help and move that forward thank you very much on that point again it's it's when you know it's it's mentioned in the report as well when we visited Dover a few months back you saw the empty properties refurbished and back into use and it is it's phenomenal the amount of work the officers have to do just to get um the local uh owner to participate in these programs you know it's it's absolutely phenomenal but well done to all the committee um or the team sorry oh sorry now you tell me after all that yeah that's okay then right so um the report is to note is that noted yep thank you I thought I pressed the button earlier um item number 14 just back in time Kent Kent Film Office clear over to yourself please yes thank you very much um so this is um I think this is a positive report um it's always um a pleasure to talk about the Kent Film Office um I think it's great benefit is the um economic advantages it brings to um Kent the figures are in the report but um it's estimated 58 pounds I was 54 pounds for every one pound um and not only that I think um I really enjoy it being in my portfolio because um it's our subject always of interest to people it always brings a smile to people's faces when you talk about the Kent Film Office and mention the productions and so on that uh that we support um so uh and I believe also it brings a lot of tourist um benefit too because people do like to go and visit locations where they've seen um a film or a tv show um being at a set of one of those so um this is an update um there is also um I think you know have to be realistic about it the um there is a budget for the film office and the income which the county council derives uh doesn't cover the costs of it we are looking at ways of increasing the income that uh we we get from the Kent Film Office but as I say it's one of those things that uh has benefits for the wider economy and um and that's basically why we do it uh so I don't know if any if there's a presentation as such or we just go straight into debate I'm back to you chairman straight into debate yeah um is that okay or has any other officer got to make yep is that okay or would you like to make a comment we we've actually got a quite a quick example right Tony Farwad illustrate the reason charges and leverage yeah karaoke yes I just rather than going through the report again I just wanted to give an example of what the film office does because I think that the the committee has changed a little since the last presentation um we had um and the O2 um commercial which is apart from the John Lewis Christmas commercial probably the biggest funded and biggest commercial that will be produced this year in Broad Souths and Margate at the weekend and um it features Julie Pahus quite a well-known music star and um that came to us two weeks ago and um we helped them uh finding parking accommodation um locations uh local crew marshals actually from colleges as their first onset experience within those two weeks so this is the kind of stuff that we did um in the end there was um 320 people for the weekend in Broad Souths and Margate spending over 250,000 pounds in accommodation I had the figures from the production only an hour ago um 85,000 pounds on locations 20,000 pounds on local security people this does not count for the um 120 150 supporting artists that were on the beach that were all local and given money to be there on the day um and um planet council um through parking and whatever um there went about 10,000 pounds into the council for parking fees and location fees and there went only about 430 pounds into the film office and that is largely because we take uh um with some of the uh district councils that we work with closely for whom we do the filming we take like a 10% agency fee to facilitate some of this filming when it's on their property and um we also take some admin charges like they had to check their drone licenses and do the permit in the end that facilitates the filming and um yeah and I just want to say and in addition there I think um Jolipa and this particular project which fits in really well with the picture of Margate with Dreamland now having the concerts uh and an extra visitor so when that goes out um to connect on it with the big music star and having a big music offer in the town will I believe um enhance the visits to Margate following that going out that's brilliant and funny enough I had actually made those notes generation for income um generation income for local businesses hospitality sector and you've covered it all and that's phenomenal and we only get 400 I couldn't believe that but at least something's better than nothing I guess yeah it is a standard agency fee of 10% of anything they pay for for the land use and the issue is that the the assets the land most of the land used within Ken is within the district but like the houses um so um if there was more capital assets for cases see we essentially have some some of our buildings and we have the country parts but but not half as much as land owned by districts on parishes really and that's where where the money is being paid to because of the use and the higher of that land yeah this speaks I have to express an interest here because my daughter has filmed in Kent quite a bit with the crown and various other films and things um and I sincerely hope that if they follow the usual pattern if they were filming in Margate as well as Broadstairs they'll be staying in Broadstairs by and large um which is what usually happens so Broadstairs as I represented says thank you very much um I I agree with you you you don't get very much for for all the effort but I know from my through my daughter what it was like before the film office was doing anything very much and it was a nightmare to work with the district absolute night where to work with with senate they'd had no understanding and why would they they had no understanding all the effort all the the the organization that it and the hard work it takes to set this up um for what is often a very short period of time when filming costs a lot of money um and so I think this is a fantastic asset if it were followed up by the studio I quite agree it would make it even better um and we we do need to use all the buildings we have because for the crown for example most of that filming has been done in the past in west country where they have where they have the big big houses and we have them here to some degree and I think it's it's unfortunate that the districts don't give us more but I appreciate that whilst we don't benefit directly the county does benefit enormously from this and I think we should grab every opportunity and sign it has been particularly fortunate in this respect thank you thank you very much for that Mr Lewis thank you sir echo what Ross has just said I've got a declared interest also because I'm retired film extra so um which says a lot about my age um little Britain I think I was one of my famous entries um which was done in her own day many years ago um that dates me doesn't it um but I think it's a wonderful it's about the only growth industry in the moment at the moment apart from road works um I just think it's it's amazing I mean the film empire yeah was incredible and I think timeout said Margate is the coolest um place in in Britain there didn't they say that which surprises me because that makes me the coolest councillor as well so um but uh that that's up for a debate so thank you very much again tears thank you very much mr brazier yes thank you chairman I got involved very peripherally in empire of light um because the producers of the film required road carriers in Margate and well whereas of course the last thing anyone needs is a ham fisted amateur like me interfering my officers at the time I was cabinet member of course I handled the whole thing with enormous efficiency now the production company were grateful but they had caused to be grateful to quite a number of people and they organized um a preview of the film out um a fascinating local cinema in Westgate which um I attended to on the day and as did many others and the crowds to see Olivia Coleman were enormous I didn't think anyone was there to see me but my I have a niece who is in the film business and I mentioned the fact that we have a film office and she said oh yes she said they were extraordinarily useful in facilitating um all the local arrangements that needed to be made in a way which production company could not have done itself so um they they were a real value in in the equation and the making of that film that's really good to hear fantastic and you know going through the list some of those names you know um the beekeeper the crown and mr baits absolutely fantastic you know and to think that they were filmed here I think it's absolutely superb but well done credit goes to yourself and all the team and the cabinet member so thank you very much for that we've been asked to note the report you've all made comments so do we note the report agreed thank you um item number 14 project gigabyte gigabit broadband program over to yourself Derek thank you german and welcome to Liz who's going to take us through the presentation so basically we're what this is going to Liz is going to outline his work how we're working in partnership with BDUK which is the government's delivery arm for broadband rollout also highlighting how we encourage telecom providers with their own upgrade programs and it's important to point out we do not have any uh leverage over the companies or in fact BDUK we have to encourage and facilitate we have no statutory powers over them we're pleased to announce and Liz will take you through in more detail 112 million pounds for Kenton Medway for broadband provision for premises out of scope of the industry funded programs and again BDUK to note are the leading are the leading on the contract management of this work of broadband rollout in short it's not a KCC specific responsibility we can only facilitate and encourage thank you chairman thank you very much over to yourself Liz thank you and good afternoon so as as as has just been said to the project gigabit it is the name of the government program to deliver full fiber or gigabit capable broadband across the UK I won't repeat what's just been said but just to highlight a few points what we've seen over the last few years is a dramatic increase in the availability of gigabit capable broadband across the county just to give you an example on in January 2020 it was just it was less than eight percent as of today having just checked the figures again this afternoon it is currently at 77.9 percent almost 78 percent however I think it's really important to note we are not there yet and it's always that last quartile which is the most difficult and is the most challenging as we know from the super fast program and this is why the project gigabit investment being made by government being made being delivered by building digital UK it's very very welcome because it's going to help enable and support those areas where the telecom providers are going to find it too difficult or too expensive to go and it is at 112 million to date an unprecedented level of investment two points really to flag that are different from what's gone before with the super fast program firstly as has just been said be building digital UK or BDUK are the contract managers they are in the driving seat on this one they have centralized it across the UK and they are responsible for awarding the contract making the decisions and managing the supplier the second key point to note is that full fiber brings new build challenges unlike super fast we are this time around we are replacing or over building that copper network that final delivery to homes and businesses so we're not as with the super fast program putting in fiber from the exchange to the street cabinets this is actually putting connections into premises and of course what that means is it's not only a massive and complex infrastructure build project and that's easy sometimes because it's so dispersed to lose sight of but it does create some new issues it particularly creates issues around where we've found we've got direct buried cables where there's no ducks to use it also creates significant issues around access whether that's access to flats social housing or just generally crossing private land and obviously because we're there's more cabling going in there's more of that that we've got to negotiate and we've got to get ourselves we've got to get we've got to get round it is very very early days building BDUK they only announced the contract earlier this year they are with a pointed supplier city fiber they are now going through the mobilization phase and we understand from the conversations we're having with them that later this summer they should be releasing more information about the deployment plan however in the meantime this is 112 million of much needed investment we welcome it and we are of course committed to working with building digital UK and city fiber to make this work in the very best way it can for Kent thank you thank you very much for that presentation members we are asked to note the current position and provide to the cabinet member any comments on the proposed approach mr sol thank you the report talks about a hundred thousand or so UK homes in the very hard to reach area do we have any idea approximately how many of those may be in Kent and if we do do we have we gone as far as working out exactly where they are so we know those homeowners and those locations it's a very very good question and one that we are constantly asking the Department of Science Innovation and Technology are overseeing it we understand they've done modeling they haven't shared where it is where that hundred thousand is and we absolutely want to know whether there's any incidents of those in Kent and if so what is their proposed approach forward thank you very much please mr menion thank you gentlemen yeah i just tweeted i spoke to one of my communities he stumbled in the parish of Sutton by Dover which is still not got much access to broadband actually it's an interesting one parts of the parish do have it may be coming through from Whitfield but some there's still some parts of the parish that still can't you know a lot of businesses can't get this broadband which they need so you know anything that you can do chairman or through the cabinet member and the officers you know to try and help some of the more rural communities get access to broadband i think it's imperative in the 21st century that you know we do have access because you know we're any sort of 60 70 miles from London and we're still just lacking that you know good broadband access that we need for life these days you know this is important infrastructure as electricity water or power those other utilities i think broadband is that important chairman thank you very much um here we are mr Murphy i'd just like to reassure my colleague mr manion i'll do my level best to make sure we can resolve his issues in his division thank you very much uh i don't see any other hands no thank you thank you very much um do we note the report thank you very much thank you very much to the officers once again um item 15 work program is everybody in primarily in agreement yeah and then we'll redo that yep you need to be um is that okay yeah yep agreed thank you um future meetings they're all listed on the sheet that's all okay yep right in that case then can i take this opportunity once again just to thank all the officers and their teams behind them uh on a great job that you've successfully done and it was absolutely interesting and we finished the meeting before half past four so everybody can go to their next meetings. Thank you very much. Thank you.