Transcript

we're hitting 4 o'clock, are we okay to go with the webcast? I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands of people waiting to join us. Good afternoon everybody and welcome to this meeting of the Corporate Policy and Development Scrutiny panel here in the Guildhall in Bath. Please kind of remind everybody that we are being webcast. So I think first of all, please can you introduce yourself, say your names before we speak and of course always watch your language. I know this is this committee can be like as we are live, yeah particularly with Cherry being here. So can we move on to the emergency evacuation procedure please. When the continuous alarm bell sounds you must evacuate the building by one of the designated exits and proceed to the named assembly point. The designated exits are sign posted, arrangements are in place for the sake of evacuation of disabled people. Thank you very much Makayla. Then apologies for absence and substitutions. I'm not aware of any substitutions but like to welcome Duncan Duncan Council as a new member of the panel. Welcome I hope you enjoy your time here. No other substitutions or apologies. Then become onto declarations of interest. I'm not aware of any declarations being made but as always if anything crops up during the agenda please flag that up so it can be put into the minutes. Next is urgent business agreed by the chair. There is no urgent business and I have not been notified of any public or councillor statements. Minutes of previous meetings were asking for confirmation as a correct record for the last meeting which was the 12th of March but also for the 16th of January meeting. I think as we remember we actually had two meetings in a week and I think one of those wasn't picked up at the last panel meeting. So can I see any questions about the minutes? And if not can anyone move them as a correct record please. I'm Sean Makayla. I'll pick one of you out for the record for that. And then we come to the cabinet member update. So who is picking this up as we have a couple of cabinet members with us. Is this going to be a double act or is it going to be one act or the other? So due to go first and if it's held for now we have three cabinet members assigned to this committee where we have items on the agenda we can each present a certain aspect of report each time. That's a helpful thing to do. So update from me. So staff recognition so last year we held our second staff recognition evening and we're holding another one next month as well. A categories for that include delivering our corporate commitments, recognizing learning from our staff and staff demonstrating our best values and behaviours. Responsible isn't really good. This time with double number of nominations are 140 compared to last time. Something you might be aware the LC the LGC awards. Bath and North East Somerset Council has been named as a finalist in the most improved council category at the local government Chronicle Awards. This nomination particularly recognises how council has improved people's lives under this and previous administrations. The result of this is announced next month. On communications it's been a very busy time for our committee handling 33 local regional national media inquiries across 11 service areas issuing 26 press releases and reaching hundreds of thousands of people through our social media channels. Annual performance update so it's due to come to the July cabinet I believe and as part of reflecting on the previous year as members probably know we're also working on a new set of indicators for going forward that reflect the 23/27 corporate strategy. On voice box and debate not hate the results of both of those or an update on both of those is on the agenda this afternoon. And finally care experienced people. So remember two months ago I had a council motion around adding care experienced people to our list of protective characteristics. I can confirm the officers of action this and it's now part of our decision making framework and that's taking questions. Thank you very much Dave have any questions. We were circulated earlier today the or yes day the commentary on the times article about the quality of councils and most improved council and yet the time things were done. Well when you look at finance on that thing one of the reasons we score very low is that we have very low spending power because government doesn't give us any grant. It was a complete nonsense that article and I'm very encouraged to see that we can put together a case for the local government as a chronicle that actually shows real improvement so I hope we'll do well on that one. Thank you. So it's a quite right that times article was kind of had had some flaws to it. There was some good bits as well but I'll come to that later on in meeting. Thank you any other questions before we move on to our next. Thank you Chair. So the 23 24 budget out turn reports in preparation officers finalising that for the last financial year it's scheduled to come to you in July we're not ready to release final figures yet but it's looking positive from what I've seen which is good. Actually I'd just like to highlight fantastic work that's been done on the insourcing of adult social care because that seems to have gone very smoothly and within the budget parameters we set which is really excellent work because that's obviously been a massive task both financially and things like IT and HR and you know it's a huge undertaking so well done to all the officers on that. The key one budget monitoring report is also scheduled to come to your July panel. We're working on that at the moment obviously it's the early stages of monitoring for this year. We're kind of looking at where the pressures are obviously there's continued pressures on things like children services and I'm sure you'll be aware so we obviously need to keep a close eye on that and say you'll get some figures coming to the July panel. We've also started work already on the 25 26 budget in line with the medium term financial strategy. The budget process never really stops and so we're already starting on the next year process and obviously they'll be available for scrutiny later in the year when we've done some more work on that and then there's a change to the procurement act which is a more substantial item that's coming up later in this meeting. Thank you. Any questions? Just one observation for myself it was good to hear that you being positive about the out and for the last financial year. There was a compare and contrast I have to say when you talked about the quarter one. Do we get any indication about how quarter one's looking? I honestly can't say for sure yet but from what we're seeing we've got continued pressures in children services but it's not an unexpected level. Would it be too early to ask? That's so interesting. I was at Pan Amisti for Children Young People and there was some reporting back on the safety valve funding that has currently been suspended by central government which fingers crossed it's only a suspension rather than a slush and burn from this government but have you any observations on that? I have many observations. I'm sure that the suspension of the safety valve program will be lifted. We're in negotiations with the DFE about that. At the moment we have a robust plan for how we're bringing that back in line. Should I explain what the safety valve program is? Safety valve program is the system by which the fact that the government has been underfunding the direct schools grant effectively for years and hasn't been covering the overspend on special educational needs specifically EHCPs, that kind of thing means that we're carrying that overspend along with 40 odd other councils. This is not us. This is a countrywide thing where we're carrying that overspend off balance sheet at the moment and that's a statutory piece of legislation that the government passed a few years ago that allows councils to carry that overspend off balance sheet. As long as we have a program for how we're going to bring it back in line which is what we're talking to the DFE about, we have a robust program for that and the things that are feeding into that are around grants for central government for things like building extra resources for providing in area care for building extra provision for special educational needs in the area so that we don't have to send so many children out of area, things like that and preventative work and that kind of thing. I'm confident we will come to an agreement on the safety valve program along with the other 40 odd councils that are doing that. I think it's right in saying that there's only five councils including ourselves that have currently been had the pause put in place. Currently although that changes over time depending on where councils are in the process. I'm confident there is nothing to be concerned about there. It's not a question of us being in trouble. We are merely setting out what our plan is and convincing the DFE it's a robust plan which it is so that's fine. I congratulate you on optimism. Thank you. I just want to congratulate everybody involved in bringing social care back in house. It's where it belongs and hopefully it continues to be a seamless exercise. Thank you Toby. I'm likely then we were having difficulty with the Department of Education on the safety valve program. Would the impact be on the school's budget or the general fund? That would very much depend on what kind of line the DFE or the I think effectively what you're seeing here is a fight between the DFE and the treasury really with local councils stuck in the middle. I say it's not a localised problem to us. So I don't see there being an outcome where it becomes a financial problem for the councils involved because it would mean it would mean 40, 50 councils. It's not a localised problem. I think if it was something where we were doing something wrong specifically badly managing that budget then I would be concerned. That's not the case. It's a case of massive external pressure. A number of VHCPs is more than doubled. Out of area provision has become more and more expensive and central government are simply not funding that. They also dropped the ball when they went through the organisation process in that they didn't make it clear in policy who was going to be responsible for things like preventative SCMD work. So the councils were encouraged to think that the academy trusts were going to pick that up. The academy trusts have not picked that up. So the preventative work has been dropped effectively from where it was. It's just been a huge mistake from DFE. So I don't believe that we will end up having a financial problem with it. That comment was made yesterday that if the DFE did continue with suspensions on this road then potentially 40 or 50 councils could find themselves in a great deal of trouble in six to nine months' time. I'm not terribly convinced that this government is looking for six to nine months' time. But that's an observation rather than a... I think it's a fair observation as to what this government's doing. However, I don't think that this government would be interested in causing that much trouble just before an election. I would be extremely hopeful that your own party's government were that to be the party forming a government after the next election wouldn't also not wish to force a load of councils into trouble. So as I say, I don't see it becoming a problem. It is going to be a problem for the next government that they have to address. Any other questions or any other comments? And if not then we neatly move on to the discussion on about debate not hate. And Cherry, are you introducing the report? How much are we doing today, first? Yes, I'll start off then Cherry would like to add as well. So obviously a motion report to full council exactly two months ago. So I'm here to present what we've done in the intervening two months when our plans are going forward. So action is taken so far. As you would expect, we've issued statements, press releases and written to ministers. The team here also met with our local Bath MP, Vera Hophouse, met with group leaders. This raised the issue in Parliament and I've got the transcript here in case anyone wants to know what was said. And last month the standards committee asked the monitoring officer to be addressed a particular issue of being sympathetic to cases where councillors need not to publish their home addresses. And the monitoring officer I now believe has written to all councillors. In terms of future plans, so we're creating opportunities for briefing and training for councillors. Obviously, regular updates and communications, as you would expect. Issues can be raised with our local police as well as we meet with them and we're committing to regularly promoting wellbeing resources available to councillors and officers as well. So that's a flavour of what's been done and planned in the last couple of months. But I can be able to, Jerry, for any further comments before we take questions. Thank you, Councillor WOOD. Just to say, I don't have a huge amount to add than he has talked about already and that is in the paper in front of you and I'm really happy to take any questions. I think some of the work that we've done supporting both members and officers and I think that was an important distinction that you made in the motion that went to full council was that the work is covering both members and officers. Some of that work was already in train and had taken place last year and really a lot of this is building on that platform that we'd already put in place. We've talked about the future actions but we haven't done too much yet to shape them because we wanted to have the conversation with you all today and get your input and listen to your views. I'm very open to shaping and producing exactly what you think you and your fellow members need. Thank you. Thank you, Cherry. First of all, thank you for the emphasis on staff and officers, not only councillors. I think the discussion in the chamber here understandably focused on the experience of members in the chamber here. I think it's important to stress that probably officers have got less verbal comeback than maybe that we do as councillors. Can I also ask as well about if this work is or information about this work has been cascaded out to parish and town councils. I'm aware that down in radstock, I think about a week ten days ago we had to call the police to reject a member of the public who was threatening councillors and officers as well. It's so beautiful to hear if any of that works going on. Yeah, absolutely. There's a reference report to it going to parish days on meeting on October 20th of June, yes, going to parish days on meetings. Thank you. Any questions? Don't confess. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Councillor don't can hear it. Just an observation. The monitoring officer has said that in future he will be sympathetic to any ward councillor that doesn't want to have their address on their register of interest, but it's a bit vague what sympathetic means. Does it mean that a ward councillor can simply request it? Often these, if there are attacks on councillors or other public officials, they're random and unpredictable and one may not be aware that one is in any danger and I wonder if the default should be that the addresses aren't shown rather than they are shown and that you have to give a reason for them to be not shown. Any comment on that? Yeah, I think sort of part of the issue here is that it's not only to give a reason for it not to be shown, it has to be a very, very compelling and specific reason as well around kind of known threat to violence and so on. So I'm not super comfortable with the idea of it has to be falling on the discretion or sympathy of an individual monitoring officer at each council around the country. We've seen when the minister was requested to take a bit more proactive action on this, they felt that if they wrote to all the monitoring officers around the country, that would be sufficient to give a bit of a steer. That's not a view I hold, I would prefer something more definitive to have happened as we've got an excellent monitoring officer in Bath North East Somerset but it is relying on the discretion of every single monitoring officer around the country to apply it in a particularly sympathetic way. Having had close family members who councillors previously have to go through that process where the area of responsibility was so high on that individual, just to have their address taken off the register of interest in it, it was quite staggering actually how much evidence had to be provided. So I feel like we're in a position where the minister has given a steer, we have a very good and sympathetic monitoring officer but I would much prefer for something more definite as a safeguard for councils right across the country to be in place. Thank you. Councillor interjecting. Councillor interjecting. Councillor interjecting. Yes, I was quite intrigued as to why we were scrutinising this from a panel point of view but you said it was one of our discussions so great, I can understand that. Just picking up on Councillor Hansel's point, just one point of clarity that I'm interested in is previously elected councillors have been able to use a political party office address on their register on the website. As an independent, don't have one of those. Never been a particular concern of mine to put my address there but I absolutely fully concur with people's concerns and somebody did decide to take a photograph and put it out online, my home only lasts two or three months so my 12-year-old was not too impressed with that one. I think we need clarity on that policy and I'm not sure how we go about pushing it but I think we've got an election three years away, the potential new council is coming in. If there is the ability to have a care of, give, call as an address or I think why can't we have that? It just seems nonsense that somebody who may be a Labour party member can use the address of their offices here at Bath and somebody who has come. So that's my comment on that and it's too late to change it afterwards and justify it when you've already suffered that there's more comment on that. Just clarity on that one. Can I just chip in before I think we're in danger of confusing two things here. First of all, it's publishing your address which you don't necessarily have to do. You can use it as a care of address but all of us in our declaration of interest will have to say any property that we have an interest in with its mortgage rent or ownership and that's the point at which the address is published. So it's a declaration of property and trust rather than an address. Toby? I'm co-chair with the Standards Committee so we had a debate on this at the Standards Committee and we did ask the monitoring officer to consider having a default position of withholding and he said he wasn't comfortable with that. People had to make a case but that if they could make a reasonable case and the generic risk to be counsellors he accepted was a possible case. He'd be happy to take a reasonably relaxed line in light of the government letter. My previous authority actually what we used to declare was address within the ballot notified to the monitoring officer and that was the sort of form that we put in that one. So I was also surprised when that registration was refused this time last year but I think that although it's a lot clear I think that the monitoring officer will be taking a reasonable line on the evidence of our discussion from eating. Yeah to go to Councillor Blackburn's question so on the website. Lots of Councillors put care of the Guildhall so that's always an option available for every Councillor for a address on the website. I just hope he's point, yeah that's absolutely right. The monitoring officer has to work within the law and the rules as they currently stand and the letter from the minister said you have to have due regard to this particular thing but how sympathy. So I think our monitoring officer is taking the only position really that the monitoring officer can do at this point in time but can't really go further than that because that would be against the rules as they're set out much as we would like to see them change. Thank you. You've got Lucy then Colin again. So this is a new point if that's okay. So thank you very much for the report and it was really to ask the information that's collected I'm sure you might be able to answer this and on the number of reports taken seems to be of event. Seems to be quite established at council officers but possibly not to establish the members and I just wondered if there will be a more systematic approach to both going forward because I think it would be really useful actually for the public to know the extent of the incidents that happened for members as well as officers. And the second point was really pleased to see a future action and a nominated office for member well-being and how will that be put into place and when? Thank you, Councillor Hodge. So firstly you're right we now have a system for capturing health and safety incidents of which we would consider these to be so. Just for information I didn't include it in the report but in 2021 to 2022 we had 35 incidents reported and then we obviously did the work during '22 and '23 and then in '23/24 so I've missed out a year. We had 139 incidents reported through that system so you can see I don't think the number of incidents increased I think the number of reported incidents increased and I still don't actually think that's particularly representative what really happens. We are just doing some work so that incident reporting system absolutely could be used by members. We just need to do a bit of work to make it a bit more member friendly because it's a bit officer language so we're just doing that work now. So when we do the virtual briefing for members which we're planning for mid-June we'll have made the small changes that we need to so we will roll that out to. In terms of member well-being and the nominated officer we have had a nominated officer we just haven't really promoted it and I think that's really the purpose of much of this work is a lot of, we weren't doing a good enough job of promoting the resources that we have available particularly to members and kind of the support that's there. There's really good solid guidance from the LGA around this not just as part of the debate not hate campaign but for member well-being as well and it is very much a signpost in role and the role of group and group support is still very much, is still important and very much part of it and so we will do a bit more work on that again ready for that virtual member briefing in June and we'll share a bit more when we're there. My other point really was regarding social media. I've not seen in the report a conclusion around it but I certainly have seen in the attachments and observations certainly from members reporting what they feel is something that is aligned to this whole subject of hate etc. I think the leader of the council was quite clear in that debate that he knows always aware of anonymous stroke troll accounts and some of those potentially aligned to elected members. I would like to ask what work are we doing to actually identify or root out or more importantly are we going to ask members to sign to confirm they would not operate an anonymous account. I think we've got to look internally as well and I think the leader was quite clear in that and the debate there is concern out there that actually some of it is generating within here and I'd like to know what we're going to do. That's a really good question actually and I think it's one one we should probably take away and have a discussion about to be honest I've got a number of number of thoughts but I'd like to kind of think them through before. Thank you Toby. Picking up on the incidents matter when I started as council many years ago there was a shared index between officers and members about people who needed to be approached with caution and I think data protection increasingly has got in the way of actually making that unacceptable resource to councilors but I wonder what can be done to make sure that people are aware if there are residents in the ward who shouldn't be approached single hand each week. We still we do hold a cautionary contacts database here but again GDPR rules have affected exactly kind of how we hold that and what we do with it. I think definitely if those if the incident reporting particularly from members improves that's one of the ways that we investigate the incidents that take place and then can correlate and triangulate kind of what's happening and look at particular cases where we might need to. Again I can see it in the information already collated from political assistance around what's happening you can see political assistance have done some of that kind of triangulation internally for groups as well. But again I think that's another point to leave with us and we will give some more thought as we shape this conversation. Any other questions if not thank you Cherry. Thank you Dave for that update and I guess we will see progress as this unfolds but certainly a number of very interesting questions and aspects to to this work. Thank you so moving on to and from the sublime to the ridiculous to an update on so sorry Mark an update on procurement sorry probably going to complain to Cherry now. Most of this is going to be dealt with by Jeff ring the officer but just to introduce it there's some new legislation on procurement essentially post Brexit that's coming in to so this Jeff's got a presentation which is going to go through the information and awareness really. We use the opportunity of the change in legislation to refresh our procurement strategy it was due a refresh anyway so it seemed like the right opportunity we're at the start of the process really so I say this is really information awareness get some feedback. The idea is to align better with the corporate strategy and to particularly keen on the emphasis around local businesses SMEs locally and the changes to emphasise climate emergency in the procurement process but I'll hand it to Jeff to do the presentation. Thank you Mark and thank you chair so just to introduce myself for those who don't know me my name is Jeff ring and I'm director of one west and the pension fund and the procurement function sits within my portfolio and I'd like to introduce you to my right the expert in procurement this is the head of procurement Cheryl Hansford so she'll take all the plaudits I take all the flavour for something wrong today that's how it works so hopefully you've seen the presentation in advance if you haven't we're going to run through it today in some detail just to help you kind of understand exactly the messages which which we're giving exactly as marks outlined the first element of our presentation is going to focus on the new procurement act coming in later this year post Brexit and how we will have a government intends us to untangle ourselves from some EU legislation and effectively put in place some new flexibilities for us in the procurement landscape so we're giving that more as a kind of information awareness but very happy to take questions we go through that I'll be about ten minutes or so and then we're going to spend the rest of our conversation around 15-20 minutes around our refresh procurement strategy so we already have one we are already doing met and met much of this work but what we wanted to bring to your attention was to really highlight the priorities this is where we want to spend our time and our energy moving forward so Cheryl's going to talk through some of those in terms of our ambitions and outcomes and be really pleased to take your thoughts and comments as we go through that as well so I'll hand over to Cheryl to kick us off thanks Jeff. So the Procurement Act 2023 is it's been a long time coming after a number of delays when I kind of on the count dying to that introduction it replaces our current procurement legislation which has been in place since 2015 there was a minor kind of adjustments following Brexit but nothing major in fact this is probably the biggest change to procurement legislation public procurement this century so it's yeah it's been sort of taken quite seriously and there's been confirmation recently of the go live date we've been waiting for quite some time for that but that's now been confirmed as the 28th October so we're in a sort of six month implementation period during which time we will access cabinet office training and make preparations internally ready for the introduction so the state of aims of that new legislation according to the cabinet office are around flexibility primarily around access for SMEs and social enterprises and also on transparency so there's a definite extension of the scope of the legislation to cover contract management rather than just the upfront procurement and tender process so in terms of the headlines I'll just pick out some of the main ones so there will be one set of rules moving forward currently we have a number depending on what it is we're buying and having said that there is still one exception around health care which I will just touch on at the end but largely it does consolidate and bring together the legislation we have currently within that we will then also have quite a lot more flexibility and the processes we run at the moment it's quite specified in terms of what we're able to do and how we do it so this will give us the opportunity to design more suitable processes depending on what we're buying obviously as long as we had heard the general principles around equal treatment transparency portionality suppliers will have access to public sector opportunities in one place moving forward and also be able to submit their standard organisational details in one place at the moment they experience the same questions from all organisations across the public sector who are asking about their organisation so that will improve the experience for suppliers we'll be required to publish some additional information compared to what we publish now that includes a pipeline of our upcoming procurement activity and various notices around the performance of contracts so where there are performance issues or variations to contracts for example a lot of the provisions will still remain sort of reflecting the current position but there's certainly a lot of changes a lot of new language and new terminology so there'll be a lot of benefits and opportunities we think that will come from that act primarily as I mentioned a minute ago the introduction of a new competitive flexible procedure which essentially enables us to design a process and have a bespoke process where appropriate as we're having a think about what that might look like but also allowing flexibility for certain projects to be able to bespoke as is intended in the legislation the central portal should make that access easier for SMEs and also then we have an additional duty to consider where our processes might add a barrier for SMEs and to remove them where possible the act also then expects us to engage much earlier with the market in our processes perhaps compared to what we are doing currently and use that market engagement to really develop our requirements and consider the market availability and structure there will certainly be increased visibility around contracts contracts that are in place the the intention really is that everybody can see where public sector money is being spent where contracts have been varied where more has been spent than perhaps was intended where contracts have been terminated whether that be just natural expiry or whether it's an early termination and what the reason for that is so there's certainly a yeah much more more emphasis on the transparency element and that will need to be picked up by our contract managers across the organization and built into their processes over the next six months cabinet officer providing online training which can be accessed by anybody involved in all elements of the procurement process so that's a real opportunity to get everybody retrained and back to a standard level of understanding around procurement and the relevant legislation so what are we doing to prepare the procurement team we've already been taking steps well over the last six to twelve months I would say to prepare for the new legislation and we've got a program of activity in place identifying some key work packages so things like communications both internally and externally looking at our systems changes that we need to make to those our documents and templates for example and training and advice and guidance to officers across the council so the team our team have been completing that training very recently it was only launched a few weeks ago and also encouraging officers across the council to do the same we'll then be working with services across the organization to ensure that we've got all the information that's needed for the relevant notices and the mandatory pipeline that we will have to publish and also then making contract managers aware of the new obligations that they will have in respect of reporting throughout the contract management cycle and then finally we are looking and working on the procurement strategy as has been mentioned and also then contract standing orders to work alongside that new procurement act so that they all work together so finally just for completeness just to mention because I referred to it at the beginning there is a separate set of legislation in place also fairly new came into place on the first of that says April up there but I think it was actually January so apologies that's the provider selection regime which applies to the provision of healthcare services so that's of relevance to us only in certain areas when we're purchasing certain things but certainly some of our public health funded services that will be applicable to so that's already in place and that's already being applied for certain project where it's relevant but just to note that that is also sits alongside our current regulations and also will continue to sit alongside the new procurement act by that kicks in okay so that was just a whistle stop tour through the new procurement legislation is there any questions before we move on to the next section yeah okay very simple question system behalf of residents when you say something is going to be transparent and published where would it be published and who would have access to it so there will be a central portal that's being introduced by central government so that will hold information around all contracts and upcoming opportunities as well across the public sector questions at this point before we move on it's interesting that it's about making it about making opportunities more available to local SMEs and the rest and so the first question is how can we make sure that that is advertised in a way that will be available to the small businesses will know where to go and also more general risk register question presumably when as the process is more transparent and decision making becomes more transparent what risks are there that unsuccessful companies can take action if they feel they've been unfairly treated and is that potential financial risk so yeah in terms of the making those opportunities available to the local organizations we're looking at that now what the act will do is will subject to a piece of secondary legislation that we're waiting for it will repeal some current legislation that's been in place a really long time which is sort of hamper our ability to pointedly offer stuff to our local suppliers and so what we're doing is looking at how the flexibilities that that will offer us can you know how we can kind of bring those into being at the moment all of our opportunities are advertised by our one central e-tendering portal but we will look at how we can get how those can be made available and how we can ensure that the local suppliers know where those opportunities will be thank you I'm sorry you think you had a secondary question as well didn't you so the secondary question is just as relevant now as it is in the future and there is always a risk of challenge against any piece of procurement activity so this in terms of transparency you might say might raise that risk but that risk already exists so the purpose of having very clear fair rules and procedures to go through the process is part of the governance element of our procurement function so that's what we do to try and mitigate and manage that risk to ensure that we don't get into a position where procurement is then subject to challenge at the end of the process it doesn't take away the risk but it helps to mitigate that risk so in terms of that it's not a new risk it's one that already exists itself okay as I think the question was more about whether that raises the potential risk because of transparency but I think as you say yeah yeah in a sense it partially raises it but that's in a sense why we're doing the refresh of our strategy in all our rules which is our contracts down in order to ensure that we thought through the detail of that so we've kind of recognised that if you see what I mean and so that we're able to try and mitigate that as best as possible thank you Colin thank you Chair I'm not sure whether it's appropriate now to answer this one but I think some of us are aware of on a national level cost overruns and IT projects and what have you where does scrutiny come in in terms of the rules maybe it's the next part but local example we approve a budget on hardware for security bollards and that budget seemingly is radically changed through the process what level of scrutiny what changes with this new legislation to allow us to be confident that that original 2.4 million budget in this instance that has shifted significantly allows us to scrutinise it and I'm just trying to understand what these rule changes will do for us as a as a PDS panel to scrutinise situations where financial cost implications have got out of hand well in a sense it doesn't change anything from where we are now in terms of the processes and procedures that we actually play in the way in which you'd want to apply scrutiny so if the budget overruns and all those specific if there's a contract which has gone significantly wrong for instance obviously that can easily be scrutinised by this panel or any other panel I think the issue which Cheryl is alluding to is the fact that the transparency element raises the profile of that much more significantly so this is about how we ensure that offices fully understand the implications of that so that it actually helps to hopefully mitigate some of that risk if you see what I mean around the back way so that's one of the hopefully that we can see from benefits from this so it will enable us to more clearly managed performance as we go forward and not be met with surprises at the end of the day or at the end of the process as such so that's part of increased corporate monitoring better performance metrics in the system so all of those things are part of a long journey which we want to do to ensure that that level of scrutiny then is able to be met and had in the right place within our governance framework which obviously includes this panel as well. Any other questions? If not I'll just chip in with the last couple myself. First of all I think it's for information for the counsellors but a question about the potential date for the updating the second legislation as you're probably aware that that will also involve a change in the council's constitution so that will be something that will have to happen through a council working group again. I think that's anticipated coming to the November council meeting. I'm assuming the November 2024 although I wouldn't necessarily hold the year to that so any of you is on that date. Also more general question we do have as the many councils contractual arrangements with armed-length organisations which are wholly solely owned by ourselves. Does this potential legislation have any potential impact on that relationship with aqueous for example? It wouldn't have any potential implications on our relationship with aqueous so the legislation that kind of surrounds that set up continues they change the word slightly but it will continue but obviously then this new set of legislation will apply to them as well just the same as the public contracts regulations currently do. Okay thank you very much, thank you for that update on procurement, second part yes, so now we get an exciting bit so thank you those comments in fact you covered some of the areas which we might be talking about as we go through some of these slides. This is an outlying at a high level of priorities for our refresh procurement strategies so we're just going to take you through each one. So I can't read that, it's a bit far away from that. So as it says obviously procurement activity that you know we believe could be really powerful to support the council towards achieving its long term vision. We really believe that there is a direct link between procurement activity and the outcomes that we want to achieve through our corporate strategy. And pretty much everything the council does relies on some way on goods, works and services so as a direct impact on the council's business proposals, quality and costs of services to our citizens and as I say achieving delivery on our corporate and functional objectives. It's a strategy for the organisation it's not for a team of six people at the centre of the organisation, this is a strategy for organisation, this is our procurement strategy, this is our procurement priorities so it's one for all of us. But it also supports our being our best culture programme, all about accountability, responsibility all the way through the system so this really sort of chimes and aligns with that programme. And as I say we've got six priority themes which we want to talk about and this is where we want to put more energy in, more investment, more time, more effort into and this is what we just want to sort of touch on today because we think these will have the biggest impact on achieving all of those things above. And what we ask is commitment and obviously this is pitch very much it offices as much as members but clearly commitment is really important to achieve this right across the organisations to try and help us achieve these outcomes and aims. So as I say we have six refresh themes, I'm not going to read all those six ones out so we're going to go through them in particular detail. But please if you have questions you can either wait to the end or if we're going through if it's easier for you to raise a question as we go through please do so. So I'm going to hand over to Chair or Chair who's going to outline the ambition around some of those and examples of some of the outcomes we hope to achieve as a result of each one of those. So I'll hand over to Chair. Thanks Jeff. So for each theme, each of the six themes we've got on ambition so our overarching aim and then a number of outcomes or targets that we believe the organisation should be working to achieve. Sitting below those there will then be a range of actions for officers to deliver. That level of detail isn't included here today. There's a lot of detail here in these slides around these ambitions and outcomes so I'm just going to give an overview really of each of the themes and then reference one or two of the example outcomes just to give you a bit of insight. So the first theme that we've identified is delivering best value and good governance. That's obviously key to our procurement activity. So this relates to us achieving best value and ensuring that procurement activity delivers the required outcomes. That clearly needs to be supported by robust governance processes so that we can ensure alignment with the corporate strategy as well as the legislation that we have and the Council's own standard contract standing orders. So in terms of the outcomes, just a couple of them to pick a couple of them, we're looking to use our spend data more proactively to inform procurement activity and contract management approach. So identifying where procurement activity needs to take place where we might be able to consolidate requirements potentially across the services, across the organisation and perhaps explore collaboration with other public sector organisations and drive better value. Also looking then as we've heard through the procurement act, but increasing visibility and transparency around our procurement options and decisions, so at a kind of earlier stage in our decision making process, introducing a gateway process for procurement that can be applied consistently across the organisation. I pause there for questions or just continue on to the next. So the second theme is embedding sustainability and climate actions that really relates to the spending power of the Council and the potential that we have to influence and drive sustainability within the local authority area and thereby contributing towards the resolutions around the climate and ecological emergencies. So that's really looking to ensure that the climate and sustainability impacts have been considered fully in any procurement process and that any relevant considerations are built into the process. So for example, by understanding the impacts of the service that we're buying and specifying any particular requirements for the market and for the provider to meet in delivery of the contract as well as building in some assessment of the provider against relevant sustainability criteria as part of the tender. And by embedding this into our procurement activity, we would aim to raise awareness across the supply base and encourage their commitment to our declarations, policy and strategy around these issues. The next one relates to opportunities for economic, social and environmental well-being. So that's directly an opportunity to directly support the overall priorities set out in the corporate strategy. We have an obligation to consider social value through the Public Services Social Value Act, but we also recognise that this is an opportunity to leverage our expenditure with our suppliers and then that will help the Council to enhance outcomes for our communities. So in order to do that, we will look to revise the organisation's social value policy and ensure that that is supported by a clear toolkit for officers so that it becomes embedded in procurement activity rather than being perhaps seen as a bolt-on to our procurement processes and look to introduce a mechanism which will record and track our social value outcomes that are delivered via contracts through the contract management so that we can evidence the benefits that have been delivered. In order to deliver on those three themes, we think there are also a number of enabling themes that we have that need to sit alongside those. The first one of those then is enhancing the supply market. So working with and understanding our supply markets because that's essential to ensuring and achieving good procurement outcomes so we need to engage with our markets fully, ideally have access to sustainable markets who are innovative and able to meet our requirements. So we will look at how we can engage with those markets more earlier in our processes and also look, as we have already mentioned, how we can maximise benefit from our local supply base where that's appropriate. So we'll ensure that suppliers are able to access opportunities offered by Bains. They will be offered and available centrally but also ensuring that particularly our local suppliers and SMEs and voluntary sector are able to or know where those opportunities will be published and are able to access them easily and we will consider barriers to SME engagement and look at how we can ensure that processes are as simple as possible for them to partake in our tendering. As already suggested, we look to engage those suppliers then earlier in the procurement process and that's obviously supported by the new procurement act. So that's engaging suppliers ahead of a tender opportunity so that gives them the opportunity to influence what we buy and how we buy it helping to encourage innovation and driving best value. The next one then is around contracts and commercial management. So it's really key that we look at how we manage the contracts we have in place and ensure that we are effectively and robustly managing those contracts so that services are delivered as we intended so that we can support our communities and achieve the outcomes that we intended. So the commitment here is around a contract management framework to be embedded across the organisation which will give officers the appropriate tools to manage our commercial relationships. So that management, sorry, contract management framework will ensure that contract managers take a proportionate approach to the contracts they manage. I think it's fair to say that the same contract management approach isn't necessarily right for all contracts so we're looking at a tearing approach that will then help to inform contract managers in the approach that they take. What we need to be doing through our contract management is ensuring that our contracts deliver or even exceed what we wanted in terms of quality service outcomes and cost targets. So improving visibility around contract performance for the council's key contracts will also be another outcome, thereby giving senior management and leaders assurance around delivery of some of our key services. We obviously rely on a large number of third party suppliers for delivery of some of our key services to our residents so it's important that we can have access and transparency around the performance of those contracts as well. And then our final theme is around skills and capability. So that's across the organisation and not just in respect of the procurement team and also not just in respect of the legislation that we've been talking about here but also skill sets around confidence to act commercially and manage those contracts in the best way to achieve the best outcomes for the council and our residents. So we have an opportunity as we mentioned earlier to have a look at revisiting some of our training skills and capability through the procurement act training that's being provided and we'll need to do that to ensure we can take advantage of the flexibilities and opportunities that the new legislation offers. So we will ensure that officers across the organisation have access to guidance, templates and training along with advice from the procurement team where needed to support their procurement activity and also to develop that commercial mindset which needs to be applied in a contract management setting. So that's a very quick whistle stop to offer three to six themes. Yes thank you for that. Are there any questions? Thank you. In terms of the themes and things there, when you get conflicts between them how will you manage that? For example it could be easy to think that perhaps sustainably in climate action might conflict with best value options at some point. Well I don't look at it as conflict, I look at it as opportunity. So this is about how we achieve the best possible outcome. So yes that would be potentially a robust conversation around where the criteria might sit in terms of the importance of that. But this is both balancing achievement of delivery on our corporate strategy as well as managing it within our budget. So we have to come to a professional and safe decision in terms of those. So I don't look at it as conflict, I look at that as a robust opportunity to kind of get the best possible outcome. So is there some kind of scoring group then? But it can be because obviously people are aware of you know they like price quality models etc. So what this is about is about how do you specify a contract, how do you indicate exactly what your outcomes are and that may guide you towards a particular space that may encourage more innovation, it may encourage more focus around the climate opportunities. Your price quality mix then will enable you to hopefully achieve the right outcome. There is no perfect model here but this is about learning from what we have done in the past, learning from, I am working with other councils that surround us, we have lots of collaborative relationships with them and looking at how we can get the best possible opportunities. But yeah you are absolutely right, that is what it does in terms of the detail. Any other questions? So it is such a complicated process, there are so many things to think about that I was thinking to myself I would need to have some AI routines to assist me when I was setting up contracts, when I was thinking about decision making and even for scrutiny, are you thinking of getting those kinds of stuff into a sister? In terms of AI, AI is a, I am the best place person to kind of comment on. What I would say is we are not talking about doing something radically different here, what we are talking about is reinforcing good practice and actually trying to raise the bar using the procurement act as our statutory framework and then using these themes as a way in which we encourage more innovation which is going to be a very challenging climate over the next few years. We all know that the financial constraints are really, really difficult so none of this is very easy. So I do not believe it is about going back to sort of square one or a black piece of paper or asking in terms of a kind of AI solution. I think this is about really being collaborative across the council, really being inclusive and ensuring that us from a corporate perspective get involved in those conversations which is why we saw in one of those priorities it is about us being involved in the high risk high value elements and that is where we need to be spending and focusing our time. It is a really good question and there are definitely some opportunities out there but that is a very broad subject at which as I say I am not particularly the best person to answer that in any detail. No, I am sure that is right but your suppliers are going to be bringing AI into the, they are going to be coming at you with those things. Well actually I want innovation, that is actually what we want. We want suppliers to be coming and presenting to us new models, new ideas for doing something, that is what we want. We do not want the same odd solution, if the same odd solution is going to put us in a place where it is going to be financially challenging. So again I look back more as opportunity, I do not see that as a challenge, I see that as an opportunity. So if suppliers are using AI to rethink the way that they provide or deliver their services or can propose new or different ways of doing things then we are very much interested in that. I was perhaps answering that more from the internal perspective. So it is not that we are not thinking about it, it is just from a procurement perspective I would not say that is particularly well developed at all internally. I am sure there is a whole discussion about intelligence, artificial or other wise man's counsellors but it is not necessarily one that we want to bring into this debate. Are there any other questions? I just think here is a high value, high risk procurement and a member involvement in any cabinet member, having a view on the balance of the themes and how that is weighted. I am kind of thinking of a high value, high ways contract actually. It is hard to imagine practical terms how the interaction might occur for maybe governance of the decisions and outcomes. Yes, so I think you are right. I think there is an element in how we can use the governance framework to make that work effectively. As electric youngsters you are very busy people, we can't involve you in every single element of every contract but you are absolutely right. The whole thing about tearing, thinking about how we categorise our contracts pipeline is really important to understand what is high risk high value. And as Cheryl referred to as well, we are looking to introduce some new governance around some early gateways and that is where we would expect a cabinet member to be more involved. So for instance there might be an outward 12 or 24 month plan for procurement activity in which cabinet member might be more involved to ensure that they are aware of the activity coming up in their space. So that is something, it is not saying it does not happen but it happens more individually now rather than more cohesively and corporately. So these are just some of the things and it ties into the transparency element. As we are publishing more data we have got to ensure that we are up to speed with that internally with our own processes. So that is something we are still learning and kind of hoping to develop more fully over the coming months really to come up with the best solution. What is going to be the effect of changing this on EU suppliers? Are they likely to get left behind because you are doing something different and they have some unifying system which they work on? We have whilst we are not moving forward be subject to the same legislation because obviously we have left the EU. We still have various other arrangements in place and under those arrangements essentially it puts them in no different position. They are not having the same set of legislation. So they will be able to access opportunities in the UK in just the same way as they were able to pre-Brexit and vice versa for suppliers that are UK based. Just checking, what are we asked to be doing with this strategy today? Are we being presented to or noting it or just noting it? Yeah, scrutiny does not have any decision-making powers however much will I like that opportunity. It is for noting. Just to say obviously all feedback is welcome though, please do. The point of bringing it to scrutiny early is to get early feedback. If not, thank you very much for coming along for the presentation. Yes, very interesting which is possibly not something that is procurement is necessarily raised in the consciousness with seeing it on the agenda but yes, genuinely interesting. Thank you very much. Moving along to the voice box outcomes of residence survey. Thank you very much, Jeff. John has agreed to come and present some slides based on the voice box survey. There are a few bits I wanted to draw attention to particularly before John started with the presentation. So, beans are tended to follow each time we have done this annual voice box survey, national trends on most indicators where they are available. The ones I wanted to draw particular attention to is satisfaction with where we live, the council providing value for money and satisfaction with how the council runs things. Each year since we started collecting this data, beans have lagged behind the national average in a very consistent way that has followed a national pattern. So, nationally each year as these percentages have changed, improved or got worse, beans have changed in basically the same extent and the same has happened with the most recent as before each day. There just seem to be an anomalous figure in here around the number of people who feel they influence decisions which are dropped but didn't have or doesn't have a national benchmark to compare it to that data is not collected nationally. That particular figure is taken in the context of this survey was done last autumn. In the context of quite high profile cuts to bus services at that point in time and many people not necessarily automatically distinguishing between decisions made by private bus companies, combined authorities, the council and so on. Where people interact with the council, one piece of consistent good news is they have an overwhelmingly positive experience. Consistently more than two thirds of people rate their positive of their interaction with the council as good or very good compared to 10% is fairly consistently as not positive. So, this says that we always have more work to do, of course, but it seems to point towards an issue of perception here as well. So, Council Simon mentioned the times of the league table earlier for want of better expression that had quite a lot of flaws in quite a lot of places. One thing you've got absolutely right though was Bain's being ranked second of all rural, you know, trees and council's joint top on waste services and performing well across a range of functions according to the off log figures. And as a reminder as well, we're a finalist in the most improved council of the year award coming up next month. And when you take that performance data further in the context of thinking value for money, our council tax consistently being one of the lowest in the southwest. It feels like we do need to better understand the concerns and motivations of a portion of our population. And the report draws particular attention to older working-age people who tend to score Bain's lower across a range of questions. I will pause there. I invite John to go through the slides and then we'll take any questions. Thank you, Councilor Wood. I'm going to apologise to advance. I've got a cold. So, if I dissolve into spluttering, I apologise in advance. Yeah, so I'll just sort of give a quick background to the survey in terms of what it is, why we do it, how it's been, how it's been run over the years and take you through some of the findings. I'll skip over one's Council already highlighted, talk through some of the other bits, but the key findings are reflected in the attached report. So, this report is to give you some background and key findings. At the end of the report, you'll see a link to the more detailed report that's produced by our market research partner that goes into everything that's asked in effect, so it's a particular area. If you want to find out a bit more about that, that's the place to look, that report's held on our strategic evidence base on the public website. So, what is VoiceBox? It's a corporately funded resident satisfaction survey. Questions developed with service areas on points of interest and then ratified with the corporate management team. It's the second year we've run VoiceBox in this way. VoiceBox, the surveys have been, some of you may well have received them in the past, have been run this way for some considerable time, but this is the first time we've actually taken a corporate view on making sure that we're asking questions that align to the corporate strategy and have some more strategic relevance. Without going into too much of a technical deep dive on a Tuesday afternoon, VoiceBox runs as a random probability sample, random probability sample postal survey. So, every year, a random selection of households in Baffinothee Somerset is selected and are sent initially an opportunity to respond to the survey online and then a follow-up email, a follow-up letter with the ability to fill it in a paper survey. We've seen really positive responses online, we've been trialling this for a few years and it's increased from 10% to 20% and now we're roughly about 44% online. We get around about 28% response rate and I think sometimes the response to that can be that feels intuitively quite low. From market research terms for postal survey of this nature, it's about average bordering on pretty good it's what we expected. We deliberately designed the sample to assume that we're going to get the level of response that we do. I won't go through the detail, anyone who wants to have a bit more detail in reading into random probability sampling and how it works. The bottom line is that similar to national surveys run by the Office of National Statistics and polling companies etc. There's a point at which as long as your sample is totally random, you can draw a view with a reasonable degree of certainty that what we're hearing is representative of the views of the population as a whole. And in this case, the roughly 1,000 odd responses we get give us a good enough view. It's not going to be absolutely perfect, these things are always subject to chance to some level. It gives us a good enough view. So in terms of our headline findings, the Council would talk to some of the key areas so I'll skip through those around local priorities. To start with, I don't know how visible that is on screen. As I say, the second year we've specifically asked these questions and they remain largely similar to those we've seen in 2022. Those are recorded in the 2022 survey, affordable decent housing having quite a significant increase in a resident saying the issue needs improving. And to note with regards to the priorities around health services and level of crime and antisocial behaviour, that the field work takes place every year between October and December and at that time there was significant national coverage around industrial relations in the health service and the level of health services also corroborates by findings in the consultation for the recent health and well-being survey. There's also read this in the context of local news regarding serious youth violence, which can also be seen to play in later in the survey into perceptions of safety. In terms of satisfaction, I think Council would have talked to this. To some level, one thing that I think is worthy of note here is that while satisfaction with the local authority tracks quite notably lower than satisfaction with people's last customer experience with the local authority, which is worthy of note, we've mentioned that reduction in the increase in decision making and again that can be contextualised by quite high profile discussions or happening in the public domain at the time of the field work, but the priority around residents informing decisions remains a key one for the council. In terms of customer services, I think what's notable here is that we have different levels of satisfaction between the council's website, which is, as you'll be aware, being redeveloped and subject to continual review and those people who have that most recent interaction with the council, again, I note the disparity between that and the overall satisfaction level, suggesting that those people who are perhaps having contact with us are experiencing a positive outcome, so it's something else informing that view. We've also, particularly post-pandemic and in recent context, we've been asking questions around cost of living and food insecurity and the findings here have been largely reflective of national views that there remains a substantial proportion of the population who are concerned worried or very worried about around rising cost of living, so it's reduced notably since last year, again, feels likely within the context of what we understand nationally and the increase from around 13 per cent to around 18 per cent in residents reporting worry about food security is potentially reflective again of those national pressures but does represent quite a size of poor shift in those proportion of households who are feeling, really feeling the pressure in terms, and that is supported by national trends that have been reported by citizens and Vice Bureau as well. We've tracked questions around community safety and, again, as I mentioned, in context to that high proportion of people feeling the level of crime is important for their area, we see that borne out by the proportion of the population who feel children aren't safe from violence whilst outside, which is significant at night, which is significantly increased and, again, can be seen in the context of recent publicity and profile regarding quite severe violent crime incidents both within Baffordi Somerset and neighbouring local authorities. The other question that we've asked since the pandemic is around people's working behaviours and working practices, so if you're currently working, whether you're how much you're working at home and while we still see a substantial proportion of the workforce working at home, we can see that really gradually of that sort of quite severe, not gradual, quite severe reduction since pandemic period in proportion of respondents saying that they are working at home regularly, that clearly has a knock on impact into traffic and transport use which relates as well to priorities around both economic development and our climate emergency commitments. With regards to - we also ask questions with regards to perceptions around energy generation and we remain having broad support for renewable energy generation, particularly domestic and commercial solar and rural wind turbines, although there has been reduction across all sources since 2022, so last year. Similarly, finally, in terms of this summary, we also look at perceptions of modes of transport and I think what we see is again that slight production but particularly regarding wanting to walk more that is something that is both available to people and something that they would like to do and I think what we do always see is there's a perception of people who would like to be able to and would want to be able to take more sustainable transport options but in reality it doesn't fit in with their lifestyle. In terms of the key findings, there's a bit more information here which I won't go through because Council would largely cover these and then in terms of more information, I've just given you a very quick whistle stop through what we've found this year, the full report available online here and you can get in touch with us in terms of business intelligence team on the email address below or by our request call if you happen to be on the network. I'm happy to take any questions. Okay, I've got Lucy first. I did have a question really set, the outside really pleased that this residents service is coming to us as scrutiny and I like to discuss in the public forum and I think there'll be a lot of interest from the committee to follow up on feedback from our residents and dig a bit deeper in this. The timing isn't by chance, I was going to ask the cabinet member what were the next steps to the actions that may arise from the discussions, I think there is a plan for next step so Dave comes back, I'll let him elaborate on that. I'll go in with a first point actually, there was a lot positive in here, two-thirds, interaction with the council's positive, over half satisfied with the website, only around 10 to 13% dissatisfied and others without a view and the sort of things people worry about, 78 to 80% were satisfied with the waste collection. So I'm wondering whether the value for money and that kind of overall satisfaction, a really more a marker of whether we're not communicating in the best way we can with residents about what's happening, all the positive things we are delivering on their behalf, but that message may not be getting out and that our council tax is low compared with other local authorities. And I also noted, sorry, Dave's back, with interest that the majority of the responses were from paper surveys on the second turnaround rather than on line 60% from paper, 40% which obviously may reflect, be reflective of the demographic, but I think possibly on the communication subject matter, our blanket approach to no paper communication may not be the best and whether we in certain circumstances where we reach out to more people in sharing what we're achieving with that. At the beginning, Dave, I just had a question that the actions arriving from this, I think there's a process here, isn't it, if you're happy to explain that, so people will worry about too. I think the next step is will everything come before informal cabinet that the points we raise? Yeah. Absolutely. I've got Duncan, then Malcolm, then Colin. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. The explanation of the methodology is good and I agree with you that the response rate actually is a good one. Councillor Simon and Councillor Wood, earlier in the meeting, reference the Office for Local Government's data surveys comparing councils which led to an article in the Times. There are many good features in there, good things to talk about for Bain's council and Councillor Hodges mentions some. We have one of the lowest council taxes in the southwest, a few details, collection rate of council taxes, extraordinarily high, 98%. Bain's recycling rate, 60% going up year on year, the amount going to landfill, getting less and less and less, there's lots to be pleased about and that's why it's so frustrating really to see or hard to understand why the satisfaction level is not as high as we would expect. It's actually lower than we would expect. I'm just going to make one small suggestion which I hope might be seen as positive. Bain's puts out a lot of really good social media about what it does. Highways puts out a video and so on, but what happens is that there are people out there who are very anti-Bains and it doesn't matter what you do, they'll come in on social media with a negative. If anybody else comes on and says, Actually, I think differently, I think it's fine. What happens then is often there's a response to that person that's hectoring and could almost be described as bullying. People that have got a positive view are kind of pushed off from making that view. They can be intimidated or not go into public about what they think. Suggesting to me is why allow comments to be made at all to Bain's social media. Sulfa Parish Council, I live in Sulfa, has a lot of excellent social media, but some time ago decided not to allow comments to be made on that. There are plenty of ways if people have a genuine complaint or frustration. There are a number of positive, sensible ways that they can deal with that and approach the council and have that dealt with in a proper way. Just allowing people to chip in with their prejudices latched on to our social media. I don't think it's helpful at all. Something to think about, just simply allowing people to share or like or whatever, but not the comments. There's no need for it. Overall, I think the Bain's is providing good value for money and it would be nice if that was recognised more fully in the community. Thank you. Thank you. A very interesting report, lots of interesting information and things in there. You've alluded that there are follow-on steps and things on this, but I don't know what they are. I think this report would be even more useful if it came to us, having had cabinet members reviewed it beforehand and confirmed from seeing what they've seen in there, what they're changing, what they're not changing, and that would give us a better opportunity then I think to go and scrutinise it and say, yes, for that sort of information, we agree or disagree or we'd make follow-on suggestions and things like that. Thank you Colin. Yeah. Just picking up on a couple of other observations from Councillor Hodge, is that the paper side of it. I thought that was really quite telling. We've driven so much, especially through our consultation side of it online. If we're getting 69% of genuine engagement on paper, then we've really got to think about this and think about what the implication is. I think the decision-making one is quite a fascinating one, because whilst we just say it's 9% points, it's actually a collapse in the belief, it's nearly 50% from 20 down to 11%. That's massively telling, and that's our resident's belief in how they can engage in our decision. I think the conclusion of old buses, I think we've really got to dig a bit deeper than that and start saying is that around our consultation processes, and more importantly, how we respond to those, and if we're only getting 40% because they're the only people going online, we've got to have a rethink. This was always meant to be the administration about transparency, and that is clearly a massive indication that it's not happening, and I think it's a wake-up call. So I'll be keen to see what the cabinet make of it, and I'll be keen to see how we then progress through on that side of it. I take some real positives, of course, there's some fantastic stuff out there, and I think the two differentiations, that interaction is with us and our processes as a council, and that is the delivery by our officers of everything from being the services to it. It's actually very good, it's positive, and that is valued for money, but the direction that we're giving as an elected administration, that's where we've got some real wake-up calls, I think, here. I'd like to understand what we're going to be taking from that working from home piece. It's great we're asking that question, but what was the data beforehand, because that will impact what that traffic flows, and if we've got all this forward traffic about LNs, that's changing, and it's a changing piece, and that's really something that's got to be taken into consideration, so I'd like to see what the Cabinet is going to propose about that in terms of looking at the next three years of their administration. The key findings, so I'm trying to put the positive spin on it, really, it's all reducing that engagement towards sustainable travel is reducing, and is that a reflection of lived experience? That's what we've got to drill down to, because if we've been driving in the agenda and we're turning people off, they don't even want to walk, well that's dropping down, I think we've got some wake-up calls, so I'm really keen to see where this next bit of scrutiny comes, because there is a lot to go into here and unpack it, and just getting it just before a meeting, we can only touch on certain things, but I want to acknowledge that as an authority we do some fantastic work, and that's been seen and acknowledged by our residents, but I think we've got to think about absolutely other core issues here that should be a wake-up call. Thank you, Hel. So are there any major differences between people in Bath and North East Somerset and Harlan? About Harlan, but I expect to say, so John was informed me that the sample size that you need, for each particular segment that I was wondering, I think it was the second slide, the data exists, but it's too small as data to sort of really be robustly accurate, but I think it's something that I do have an interest in looking at different sort of geographical communities within the area, so that's something we can feed into to future voice boxes, but based on what we've got at the moment, we can't get data with any reliability. The more questions was, I love a set of data, so I just want to be clear, because I think we can be negative about the sustainable transport categories, but I think there's some anomalous things in this data, I think it is interesting why are people this year less likely to walk and cycle last is slightly by percentage, and I think the, I wouldn't mind knowing sort of the response rate was 75% were over 45, and last the previous one, 80% were over 45. That distribution must, how does that relate to the demographic that we're, the overall demographic, that was one question, and twice as more responses of over 75s than in the category 18 to 34 in both years, you know, so a lot more over 75s, so I think we need to dig down a lot before we found any criticisms of what we're delivering, and then, so that would be interesting, I had a couple of other points, so in terms of picking up on the pandemic that working from home, it would really, we got the peak from 2020, so we didn't have the baseline to compare it with from pre, and also I think in terms of designing it in the future, there's some things that were really good to have some supplementary questions, you know, so from, so knife children not feeling safe in the city at night has gone up, and obviously we've had, there's been local incidents that might, but if we could have more breakdown from that, is it, what are your top reasons, was it knife crime, is it poor lighting, then that gives us some action points to work on next time, so I leave it with those three, and yeah, no, yeah. Can you certainly give a technical response to, technical response to two of them, so you mentioned response rates and different response rates by age ranges, so what we don't do is analyze the results and the percentages you see aren't just the crude results that we get back, so we know, we know that certain demographic characteristics respond differently to different types of survey, so traditionally women towards late working age and into retirement are far more likely to respond to an online survey than younger men, that's been the case forever, so that as long as these kind of research has been done, so what we do is a methodology called 'waiting', so what you do is you effectively take those results and you normalize them to the shape of our population, so every year we adjust the results to fit what we know Baffinorphy's Somerset looks like, of course we get fewer results from 18 to 24 year olds because the survey comes out often times during periods where their students aren't necessarily in, for instance, and we know if we look at the distribution of our population, big chunk of that is students and students on campus and in accommodations that may not necessarily be responding or experiencing that nature of it in the same way, so we do adjust to take account of the fact that different population groups will respond at different times, further go on to the challenge around size of survey and getting sort of small area breakdowns etc, it's possible, but basically the smaller an area you want to look at, the more responses you get and the larger your field work needs to be and the more expensive the overall project gets. In terms of your pre-pandemic questions, yes, it re-its really only the satisfaction value for money and satisfaction with local area questions have been tracked over a really long period of time, it's only been since we took the decision to run it as a corporate survey that we've been able to hold the questions the same and so allow from that tracking over time, but yes, there's a number of things where it would be really nice to have a pre-pandemic baseline. Thank you. Any other questions? Just an observation, Councillor Vatmoen was talking about wake-up calls. In quality control, if you come across an extreme result, it's very sensible to look for a cause for that, but what you don't do is change your production line because what it required is that you look for continuing trends, so it would be very unwise if we had sudden shifts in policy or processes or whatever based on one sample, but certainly we need to look at things year on year and see how things develop. Just another comment, of course a random sample is exactly as you say that every person, every resident has an equal chance of being selected, but of course that can mean that it's unlikely but you could get 10 people in the same street being selected, so I think Councillor McPhee's point about having some awareness of maybe a difference of opinion between residents in North East Somerset, residents in Bath, would be a good thing to know. The experience could be very different in a rural area to an urban area. So if there is the finance to extend the survey next year to two cohorts, I would value that. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry I misunderstood the population data. Just thinking of simple things that could come out of this and the discovery card, something I came to mind actually on heritage, we had a heritage talk recently, and so many people aren't aware that it exists over 50% and don't have it and a large number aren't aware and that seems something simple we could possibly in the Council tax bill or something we could draw to people's attention and positive thing for people to have. Thank you. If there's no other questions, I've just got a couple of comments and questions myself. I think the point's been well made by Duncan and by Hal about Ness and Bath and the experience being very different and probably the questions about walking to work, transport and the rest, we'll see a very different response rate from Ness and is probably the clearest example of the difference between the two. 28% as a response rate, I think I took a similar view, but yes, that's kind of where you want to be, but are we looking at possibly incentivising people to respond and I appreciate adding to cost and does that make a difference when it comes to response rates, particularly within certain demographic groups. In a room full of politicians, you're always going to have an interested discussion in polling, waiting and outcomes, particularly running up to a general election and I suppose at this point it's the word of caution that comes in from myself. 70% of people haven't responded and that's for many reasons and some of them are quite good ones, I mean technically it could come under the can't be asked area of viewing and that isn't necessarily because people have a negative or a positive view of the local authority, it's just because they can't be asked, but there is an element of people, a group of residents out there and it's not just in Baines who are disengaged from the political process, who believe it's a plague on all houses and have a negative view on any institution, whatever the institution is, and coming back to politicians polling and how election results actually as an example of polling and reality, you are seeing a group of people who will express that negative, who won't engage but will express that negativity when it comes to voting for let's say more negative political candidates. So there's a degree of caution I think when looking at extrapolating responses to how that works in terms of what that means for the population, but overall I think that thank you, it's an interesting, I'm sure that some bar charts will appear in leaflets to appear soon, but whether that's positive or negative is by the by, but it's always interesting to see this and to see the consequences over a period of time. So thank you, and I don't know if there's any reason to summarize, but if not, oh thank you very much, and then we move on to the last agenda item which is a panel work plan, I know that for the next panel we have quite a substantive agenda, but I'm sure there are comments from people about what should be on the the work plan heading forward, any questions or comments? That's a good excuse because I've got to be somewhere for another meeting, so I'm going to run, but yeah, bollards mentioned in terms of scrutiny from that process, you know, where I want to be in terms of procurement with ADO IKEA, it's my only addition to work plan that I still see nothing on it. Okay, thank you. I think it has been a discussion that there are only, sorry, go back a step, corporate scrutiny traditionally in the past has tended to be policy and resources, statistics, finances, stuff, but with only three scrutiny panels, maybe that scrutiny should be more extensive when it comes to policy issues like ADO, which will reflect that more in the work plan. I know that as I've said before, if there are issues that members have and they want to be raised, please come to either myself or to Lucy and make sure that we can include those in the discussions before panel meetings. Sorry, the echo coming and at quarter to six, that's around three quarters. Thank you all for attending and I hope you all enjoy your evenings. See you all in July. We'll actually see you all on Thursday. See you all in July for this meeting. [BLANK_AUDIO]