Transcript

[ Silence ] I didn't set my bloody, I'll start that again. Oh! No! Damn, I don't. Let me move it away slightly. Ooh. Okay, so good evening. Welcome to this, the meeting of the Finance Policy and Resources Committee 25th of April 2024. My name is Councillor Gareth Roberts, chair of the Committee, lead of the Council. And as I say, unusually we are in the Council Chamber, which means we are set up a little differently for our meeting tonight. In the housekeeping, please can now remain everyone of the following bits. Firstly, speak clearly into your microphone and do not obstruct your microphone with your papers or laptop. This will help everyone here in both the room and online. When you finish speaking, please switch your microphone off and please ensure that you've switched off or to silence any other devices that may interrupt the proceedings. Present in the Council Chamber with me, our members of the Finance Policy and Resources Committee. We have Councillor Bennett, who is substituting for Councillor Ren this evening, the evening. We also have officers, we've got the Executive Director of Finance among the several other officers who are here to present reports. This meeting is being brought as live via the Council's website and the usual consent supply. So apologies, we've already heard about Councillor Ren, the gender item 1. We have no other apologies at this time. A gender item 2. Do any committee members have any interest they would like to declare in relation to items on the agenda? Councillor Sarah. Thank you, Chair. Yes, it relates to gender item 6, the Community Fund. So I'm the Whitten Community Centre's mention in there, and I'm a Council Trustee for the Whitten Community Centre. Okay, thank you. Councillor B like a pleasure. Yes, same item item 6. I'm a Trustee of the Whitten Community Centre. Okay, thank you for that particular item. When we come to discuss it, you will need to leave the room and then we'll bring you back in at the later time. Okay, thank you. The gender item 3 minutes, we have some amendments which have been submitted in advance by Councillor Ren, which we are happy to accept. Does anybody else have any comments or clarification? Councillor Giesla. I just want to make a comment about under item 83 or list item 83, Richmond Capital Program. The Mr Hackett is quoted as being of the Tennington Residence Association. I just want to make it clear that the group he actually represents is called Tranae, which is the Residence and Neighbors of Ellery Hall, so I think it would be useful to make changes in the agenda in minutes to reflect that more accurately. Okay, we will make sure that those minutes are changed and I will sign them off at the appropriate time. Okay, gender item 4. Ward's concerns there are none. Petitions. There are no petitions to be reported to this committee. Gender item 6 is Community Funds Round 5 and you will have had a separate item for circulation, which we should have received by now and read, so I am going to invite John Evans to introduce the report. Thank you, Chair. So this paper is, before the committee tonight, it's the outcome of an officer recommendations round 5 of the community fund and the community fund is a fund the council allocates to projects across the borough and is funded through the neighbourhood community infrastructure levy, which is the levy the council takes from development in the borough. The paper goes on to say to describe the process officers have gone through in working with the community and engagement with the community and ward members and community groups and various bond sector groups in terms of bringing forward proposals for this round and we work very closely with them. The projects that have been recommended are listed out in the paper and these have been for a very thorough officer assessment process. We have officers input in from across the council and the recommendations for funding are set out and that would result in a series of projects to a total of 577,000 pounds being added to the capital programme effectively and funded through the end-sell process. So I am happy to take any questions and my colleague Harriet is here as well who is certainly versed in most of the detail on these schemes. Thank you. We have one public speaker on this item, Mr Nigel Cole of the Teddington Theatre Club. Hello. You have three minutes Mr Hall, so we are just at the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to address this meeting. Teddington Theatre Club runs Handman Hill Theatre for Community Benefit with a primary focus on the arts. We provide a unique and accessible theatre and community space. Nowhere else in the borough offers the same facilities and affordability and our theatrical hires regard as their only viable home. Our application showed how our building and the activities within it will mitigate the impact of development, in particular the need for community venues and for activities that support education and culture as well as physical and mental well-being. In consultation with community stakeholders we evidence the need for and the impact of LED stage lights, their positive effects on our technical operations, carbon footprints and the involvement of volunteers, plus the boost to our financial sustainability that will come from a 15,000 per year saving in energy costs. We do not believe that the summary recommendations are a fair assessment and we respectfully request that you reconsider. Right in the heart of Hampton Hill High Street we offer a main auditorium, a studio space several rooms and a large foyer. There are two elements to our community. One, the 20 plus local amateur theatre and community groups who rehearse, perform or socialise in our spaces, including several children's theatre schools. Most of our hires are community theatre groups and contrary to the bid assessment will all benefit directly and indirectly from the project. Two, the volunteers and audiences who enable all our activity. Apart from two FTE contractors, all aspects of the theatre and its operations are delivered by volunteers, including backstage, technical and bar. Our volunteers contribute over half a million pounds worth of in-kind benefits every year. Our non-theatrical community hires range from the weekly Richmond Crossroads Caring Cafe to daily pilates, many with a 40% community discount. Overall, our role as a community venue helps to reduce isolation and boost creativity and expression. Replacing our main auditorium lights with LEDs will improve technical facilities and reduce costs, allowing us to maintain a competitive higher charge and encourage access for all. So the project provides a shared benefit to all our community stakeholders that extends beyond the auditorium and applies across our entire community offering, theatrical and non-theatrical, as well as a much reduced carbon footprint and a cutting energy cost that will help subsidise ticket access for priority groups. To the comment, the costs seem high. We received quotes from three industry specialists. There wasn't much in it, but we went for the second cheapest as they offered the best after-sale support and guarantee. This is kit that will last us decades. The bid assessment acknowledged our plan to offset development, but questioned whether we could increase capacity. Clearly, without extending, we can't make our individual spaces bigger, but we can make our use of them smarter, and we're already doubling up on certain evenings, such as film nights in the main house with a play in our upstairs studio. And to broaden our footfall, we're running a more diverse range of events, variety shows, comedy, talent nights, football, celebrity road shows, even wrestling. And we're already seeing a lot of new faces in our audiences on top of the 25,000 or so that come through our doors every year. In short, this project will help secure our future and enhance all our activities. At a time when theatres are going dark, all over the country, our role has never been more crucial, so we respectfully ask you to reconsider. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions? Absolutely. Could you just say again how much was the increase in your energy costs in the last year or so? And how much were you looking to state for the LED? Well, we think we're proposing we're going to be saving at about £15,000 a year because of LED lights will only take about 20% of the energy of a traditional light. These are big lamps. These are big heavy beasts that consume a lot of power. And it's not like when they're just on for the performances, they're on during rehearsals, they're on during stage setups. They can be on. The LEDs will significantly help us in that regard. Oh, Councillor Brown. Just wondering if there are any other sources of ground, I mean, obviously I haven't found about the energy saving, either any other sources of funding that you could apply for. Well, we're applying for everything that we possibly can, but as you know, particularly in the arts arena, funding is very, very, very tight. And for that reason, as I mentioned at the end there, fairs are going down all over the place. I would just like to say, we've been running there for 25 years. And in that time, we've never had any external funding from the Council of any kind. And we've never applied until this last year. So we've been pretty much self-sustaining through our operating profits. But now we're getting to a point at 25 years old when the building needs a lot of refurbishment and renewal. Last year we spent $140,000 on a new roof, and then we spent $40,000 on an upgrade to fire protection system, which, of course, we have to do for break of three reasons. Any further? Yes. Councillor interjecting. How would that, with the LED lighting, can you also change your offer in terms of what theatre you can put on? Yes, absolutely. Well, it will enhance production capabilities. I mean, LED lights are very, very clever pieces of kit. It's not just that they're LEDs and there is a reduction in power usage. Basically, with an LED, you can have every colour in the spectrum. So it enables lighting changes to be made without people going up ladders and inserting gels. That opens up the technical side of the theatre to a much more diverse range of people. You know, people maybe with disabilities or people who traditionally wouldn't necessarily think, Oh, I'm going to be a techie. Once the lights are set, it's much more a case of, Okay, well, you adjust them on the computer and focus them on the computer. That's how it works. And so we very much see there's an opportunity to increase our diversity of people getting into that side of the business. And we have a good record of taking people through as interns from all sorts of backgrounds. There's a young lady called Priya who started with us two years ago just after COVID. She had a technical grounding with her volunteers, lighting, sound, set design. And she's now a technical manager on street theatre. So it's not just about serving the community that we have. It's about creating career paths for people to go through. Anything further? No. The difficulty we find ourselves in, Mr. Cole, is that we have a finite pot of funding available. I appreciate that, yes. And obviously we are now getting right down to the small end. So even if we were minded this evening to say, Yes, thank you so much, you can have the money, the simplest and the money left within the pot to pay for the full amount that you're requiring. So what I would suggest, if this is meaningful to you, is that I asked my colleague, Mr. Evans, to continue discussion with you to see what the Council might be able to do and ways of either support or finding assistance to help you bid with the next round. But I'm afraid that this evening we won't be able to make a change to the allocations which we're giving. Because obviously the next time we would just find ourselves with all of the other bidders coming along to the same meetings. Actually, can I have some money? No, I completely understand that. But my further understanding was that there were £75,000 that was unallocated. And that would make a significant dent in the amount that we would have to pay for these lights. This isn't a project that we can finance on our own. It's not classed as essential because when we have other essential things that are going on, we can still continue using our traditional lights, but they're just costing us more money. As I say, what I suggest is if John meets you afterwards, perhaps, sets up a meeting, I think you'll find that we're not on sympathetic, but we do have various calls, and we have lots of applications. So we did have to judge against the pre-set criteria, and on this occasion, this didn't meet the pre-set criteria that we're looking for, which is always paying the backside. But as you've heard, we do dispute that. Yes, I agree. I appreciate you. But if we can continue the discussion offline, but as I say, we're not on sympathetic to your calls. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Does anybody have any points which they wish to raise in relation to any of the other points on the paper? Was that you, Nancy? I just wanted to have a quick question about, well, not question, but a comment is that there will be other rounds coming forward, and we are still collecting and so funds to top up that pot. So it's not like anything. This is the end or anything else. And I say this, it hurts me. I'm a professional actor. I hear what you're saying about arts funding being not great, but so many calls on this money, so many calls, and that we have to go with the best ones that we can see in front of us at that time. But I did want to make sure that we are still making sure that we're collecting and sold monies all the time, and there will be another round. So please don't consider this a no forever, never darken our door. I would like you to darken our door again, please. So that's where I stand on this. Thank you. I just wanted to make comments about the more meat sports and recreation limited bid, and, you know, I mean, clearly every, every bit of it is, you know, putting the effort into making the application and then doesn't get an allocation is going to be disappointed and we've heard that. And the same, I know applies to the, the more meat team. This is obviously a project that the council, you know, itself has been supporting to bring this, you know, to get it really in back into action on that sports ground and it will have lots of benefits. I think we're lucky that there's a voluntary group that is putting a huge amount of effort and energy into having a cheap planning commission for that project, and now wanting to take forward the fundraising to get that project off the ground. I do understand that it's fallen foul of the 12 year, the 12 month delivery rule, I think, is a key point here. And I wondered if officers could just comment about that rule and perhaps whether that's something that could be looked at in future because I think what we see here, the danger is again to a bit of a chicken and egg situation where. Sometimes to get these projects off the ground, you do need a bit of seed funding to go in, which a helps the groundwork to get the project to a point where you can actually take it to funders. B, it's also helpful to show that there is community support and council backing for projects, even if we're providing a fraction of the overall spend. I think that support and community evidence backing can be very helpful when you're having conversations with some of these big funders, they look for that sort of thing. So it's disappointing for the more me team, I know that they've actually not been able to be allocated anything out of their bid this time round. Absolutely, Councillor Brown, and I totally recognise that. Clearly there is a, that criteria is introduced to try and create a, we had some scenarios where schemes just weren't being delivered in a particularly timely way. And I think introducing that criteria, we've probably gone perhaps too far the other way, and we've not able to sort of promote some of the schemes that you've, or recommend some of the schemes that you've just mentioned in our sort of seed funding way. So we are still continuing to collect the neighbourhood still, and we will be opening another round up at some point in the future when that money is at a level we can do that. But before that, as we've done before, we'll bring a report to the committee in sort of reviewing, looking at what we've learned from previous rounds, including that criteria and see what we can do to make it work better in the future. So, absolutely. Yeah, no, I mean, I do take the point about deliverability, and of course it's frustrating if still funds get allocated when there are other worthy projects and you come back two or three years later and nothing's happened and money hasn't been spent so there's a balance to be struck. But perhaps we could think about having some kind of way of assessing the readiness of a project or the momentum behind it, the deliverability, so we might be able to rank projects. So, we've got a very active community group, but also get a quite active group of officers currently working to try and help help make it happen. Thank you, that's an event. We seem to have got an extraordinary bias in favour of community centres, three of them take 288,000, half the money. It seems a bit unbalanced when something like the theatre, Hampton Hill Theatre has never had any call on our money and actually serves a very useful community centre role in terms of the groups who use it. And I just think that I can't quite understand that they also seem to get pretty much everything they ask for as well. So, it just seems unbalanced to me. Any further points? Now, are we happy to delegate authority to John Evans to continue dialogue with the Turnington Theatre Club? Great, excellent. So, that takes us on to the main recommendations set out in paragraph 2.1A, E and C, and being mindful of the fact that we will also have to reconsider this particular point when we come to the edition of budget requests later in the evening. Are we happy with the recommendations set out in the report? Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Thank you, Harold. Yes, of course. [silence] [silence] Okay, so thank that we move on to Agenda Item 7, which is the carbonisation and improvements to Twickenham Civic Centre. Dave Sharp is here to assist us with this particular report, Dave. Thank you, Chair. So, in June 2022, the Council commenced a programme of work to intensify the Twickenham Civic Centre through consolidating Richmond-based SSA staff and AFC voluntary and community sector organisations into the Twickenham Civic Centre. Phase 1 completed in April 2023 and delivered relocation of AFC from 42 York Street onto the ground and first floor of the Civic Centre, delivered vacant possession of 42 York Street, enabling the launch of an enterprise and innovation hub known as PATCH, and also provided LED upgrades to the AFC occupied areas in line with the Council's environmental and climate change strategies. Phase 2 of this project focuses on the decarbonisation and improvements to the Civic Centre and is an opportunity to align investment in the building and removes a reliance on gas-fired boilers and focuses on energy efficiency in line with the Richmond Climate Emergency Strategy. The project also uses the opportunity to improve the workspace and layout of the building, benefiting residents and improving the customer experience, and through a state of consolidation provides additional income and savings opportunities through the creation of a VCS workspace model and commercial opportunities with commercial with external partners. So therefore, the project consists of three key pillars, the decarbonisation in line with Council's climate change policies, consolidation to sweat the asset and to improve its occupation and to provide savings and generate income and workspace improvements to improve the look and feel of the office and deliver a modern flexible workspace which will support the recruitment and retention of staff in line with the Council's ambition to be a great employer. So the Committee are asked to agree a capital budget of $350,000 in 24/25 to continue development of the project up to RIBA Stage 3 and to tender, and once the designs and specifications have been developed, the scheme and the scheme has been tendered, the intention is to come back to the Committee to provide a further update and seek further approvals to proceed with the project. Thank you. Councillor Giza, then Councillor Brown. Thanks Mr Shah, I think it's a good great looking project, it's very much in line with what we want to do, and just to comment on the successor patch, I mean clearly that's gone very well so far as well. However, I just wanted to raise, it is also going to be an expensive project, and I'm reminded when you give us a quote about the phase two costs that sometimes in past we've seen those costs escalate quite significantly afterwards. So could you tell us a little bit about the governance of the project to make sure that we get good control of it and also what your views are regarding how the, what the risks are around the cost of the project going forward. Thank you, Councillor. Yes, so the project will be subject strict governance and project controls, the Council has just implemented a new governance process and project management process with a corporate project office. We also, which we'll report into, will also have established governance models around a project sponsor board and a project board that will review the project on a monthly basis, reviewing risk registers, reviewing the time and reviewing the cost and any other issues. And as I said, that will meet on a monthly basis, and that will monitor costs, monitor design and report and flag any risks. You're right in saying that the current market still remains volatile, and there is a risk, as it always is, of increased cost, and we won't know the real cost of the scheme until we go to market. The current high level estimates are at stage two, so that is a high level design stage. However, we have factored in contingency allowances and we have factored in contingencies into those into those cost plans and they have been prepared by professional quantity surveyors. So we'd like to think they are reasonably accurate. We will monitor that through the next days. And as I said, we won't really know the real cost until we've tended it, but we're hopeful that our cost estimates at this stage will be reasonably accurate. I've got Councillor Brown and Councillor Borden and Councillor Bennett. Thank you, Chair. So I'm delighted to see this project is progressing. It does tie back to a number of things that were in the Libden manifesto back at the previous election, so we talked about freeing up space for patch and the affordable workspace and that's gone really well, I understand so far. So we're delighted that that's been brought to Twickenham as part of phase one. We said we would consolidate our office space and that would deliver savings and we've done that again through phase one. And I note that here we're freeing up the upper floor of the Civic Centre to give us some income opportunities. We also said we would be decarbonising Council buildings and clearly that's an important feature of this project as well. And finally, as an additional benefit, there's, I think, opening up that ground floor of the Civic Centre, trying to make it a more, you know, a friendliest place for our residents, but also one that doesn't just have Council offices in there but has got some voluntary sector representation. So I think we've long had a desire to bring citizen's advice together with the Council, that's happening, and the voluntary sector hub. So many positive things about it. One other part of our commitment is about delivering affordable housing and there's a point in here about number 91. Queen's Road mentioned in Para 4.84.9. Can you just talk us through what the assessment process is going to be about whether there are realistic alternative uses for that property. Yeah. Thank you, Councillor Brown. So the, obviously, the report talks about 91 Queen's Road and I think it provides an indicative value for that of the disposal of that property. That's based on its current use as an office, as an office building, there will be, throughout the, as we go through the design process, we will be assessing the valuation of that property in line with not just the commercial valuation, but also around its value for affordable housing. So we can look at that option. It could be challenges there from a planning perspective, but that will all be worked through as we go through the design process. So by the time we come back as part of the next stage of reporting over the summer, we should be able to make a firm decision on whether that is best disposed of as a for a capital receipt to help support the project, or whether it could be, it could be freed up to deliver much needed affordable housing. Great. Thank you. Thank you. I have Councillor Baudley. I think that Councillor Brown has said what I wanted to say is just basically thank you very much for putting Susan's advice on the ground floor, along with the VCS of voluntary sector hub. It's really important that residents have a good centralized place, which is friendly and accessible to come and get the advice that they need. This is really going to do the job and especially giving our voluntary sector organizations a place where they can, we'll be talking about with the organizations, how we can use that hub most effectively, but it's great that it's there and thank you. Councillor B Like. Council Boardman will also recall that the risk management strategy requires that a risk register is produced in advance of capital funding. Is there a risk register for this that we can view? Yes, there is a risk register for the project. We have a risk register that's updated on a monthly basis and is reviewed with mitigation measures in place as we have for all of our projects. And Councillor Baldwin knew that and was happy. Councillor Sarah. Thank you, Chair. So I had a couple of technical questions. I refer to page 21.4.3. It's sort of repeated in point 5.2 as well. So where it refers to, I mean, this is amazing that there's a saving of potential saving of 2,720 tons over the 20 year period. Do we have any idea as to, you know, if we try and put that into some kind of perspective, what that, you know, that saving is in terms of the proportion. Is it 50%? Is it 25%? I think it would just give that a context. So I'm assuming you're meaning in the context of the overall portfolio and what's saving that would deliver them. We are currently undertaking heat decarbonisation plans across all of our property portfolio or operational property portfolio that will tell us, you know, the interventions we need to make in order to, you know, hit our net zero targets. That work is currently being developed and will be reporting to a committee this committee later on this year in relation to that specific point of how, what that carbon reduction means in terms of that overall figure. I don't have that information to hand, but I will do my best to find it and let you have it. Thank you. Oh, Councillor, these are then Councillor Baker. I'm just interested to know, you make a reference to grant funding. Can you outline a little bit about the process you're going through because clearly the more money we can put in on this external source is the better. So what opportunities do you see and what actions are you embarking on to make sure we get some grant funding for this? So, you know, grant funding opportunities are quite limited in relation to decarbonisation. I mean, there's one rule, one rule, and that's through the public sex decarbonisation scheme, which is a government grant allocated by the government. There's a phase four of that grant funding that's due to go live towards the end of this year. An announcement is during the summer by the government to set out the sort of the rules of engagement for that process. We are planning on accessing that funding to support our wider decarbonisation strategy as it stands in relation to this project because of the timing associated with that grant coming on stream. We're proposing that we would proceed with this scheme with Council funding. If there are opportunities to apply to funding for this scheme to support it, we would take them. But because we are looking to upgrade the main heating plan at a later date, we're not included. We're working with the existing plan, but the current proposal, there could be opportunities to apply for grant funding to help with that project. Councillor Bater. Sure. David, it was on page 35, 10.5, and it's talked about a fixed price tender sum. This is what you'd be coming back to this committee with. Can I get just a flavour as to what you mean by a fixed price? Because this is obviously one of the concerns about projects, ongoing projects. So the intention will be to procure a contractor through a design and build process. So once we've developed design up to the right stage, there'll be a set of employees requirements produced and specifications, and we'll run a tender process. By the time we've gone to market, we hope that the intention will be to transfer a risk over to that contractor, risk in relation to design and risk in relation to the project delivery, and that will form part of their fixed price. As with any project, there was always that discussion around the balance of risk, and there will be some risk that contractors won't want to accept, and there may be additional costs incurred if there are changes or certain issues that aren't covered by the contractor. But I think in relation to this project, as we do on every project, we'd look to factor in a contingency allowance that can manage that, but essentially a fixed price contract means that the contractor should be carrying the bulk of the risk, but there's always a sharing process attached to that, if that makes sense. I think one of the other issues we're seeing in the market at the moment is contractors are projects over a certain value, then they're not keen to do a single stage tender process, so they don't, in order to get that sort of that risk balance and to get the good understanding of the project, they prefer to bid on a two stage basis. So it may be if the market dictates it, we might have to embark on a two stage tender process, which means we will appoint a contractor on a pre-construction services agreement, and then we would look to close out the second stage in almost an open book arrangement. But that's very much dictated to us by what the market tells us when we go out to tender. Thank you. Dave Shabbar, just wanted to follow on from what Councillor Giese was asking earlier on about the grant funding. Just trying to get a handle of, I know it may be difficult at this stage, but do we have an estimate as to how much of this project can be met by grant funding? I think at this stage it's difficult because we're waiting to see what the criteria is on PSDS Phase 4, because they do have some quite specific carbon reduction figures and set criteria to take their boxes. And as I said, we may, in terms of this phase of the project, we may be ahead of the, you know, of that announcement and that allocation of grant funding, so it's quite difficult to start to say at this stage. Thank you, Councillor Bennett. My question is about phasing, and what challenges do you see in establishing what right phasing should be, and how do you think that might impact on costs and timescales? So I think, thank you, Councillor. I think the phasing is going to be key. We have had an initial look at it at this stage, very high level, and the current cost plan has been based on essentially doing the works of the building and occupation. So we're not planning a full decan as it stands, but as we go through this next design process, we will be looking at those phasing options in more detail. I think if you look at current occupancy levels and you look at the majority of staff are able to work flexibly, I think there is a case for undertaking works and occupation. But if you did do a partial or some kind of a decan, you could produce the construction program, which could give you savings on contractors, preliminaries, and OHP, et cetera. So I think we need to work through that as part of this next design stage, and I think it's also something we'd want to test with contractors as well, because there's contractors out there who specialise in this sort of fit out work and they're sometimes best placed to, you know, to give you that steer on the phasing. I think if we were looking at decanting services, clearly there would be a decision to be taken, but there is a reception here and there are spaces available, which perhaps we could make work, but of course there's a cost associated with that as well. So the estimated costs we're seeing here, don't assume any phasing at all, really? They are based on doing the works in occupation and the program that we base that cost estimate on reflects that in terms of its length. So we're going to have to work around work around occupants, floor by floor. So there is an element of phasing built into that program and into that cost plan. Councillor Sarah? Yes, thank you. I mean, just following on from that, I mean, I hope this is probably what we're trying to do anyway, which is to when we're decanting and phasing, trying to make sure that costs are kept at a minimum by moving perhaps different departments from one floor to another, because that would mean a cost saving in itself. Is that the right understanding? I think it depends, not necessarily. I think obviously the phasing approach will have time implications and those time implications will have cost implications. So it's really about the benefits of doing it in occupation versus a decant. There's costs associated with decant, but if you can reduce your construction program, then clearly there's savings to be had from that. Thank you. No further? Oh sorry, Councillor Baker. Sorry, thank you very much. I just wanted to clarify again, the bulk of this is going to be financed through a loan. Is that right? The current intention is that the project will be financed through borrowing, but there are potentially, you know, there could be capital receipts gained depending on the outcome. I think that's what I was really going to ask was perhaps the overruns and things. Will that see the loan being increased, or will we look elsewhere for that? Well, I mean, we would look to fix a project budget and would have a contingency within that, and that would basically form the basis of the borrowing for the project. Now, if we saw cost increases, which went over and above our contingency allowances, then that could look as likely to impact on the amount that's being borrowed. Just to clarify, Councillor Baker, so we will always aim to minimise borrowing as much as we can by using alternative sources of funding. So there's a kind of a hierarchy of sources of funding that will go through. The capital receipts, obviously, is one of them. Grant funding is another, and any other sources we have internal borrowing to reduce the actual borrowing costs. And then, as Dave said, the balance and figure would need to come from borrowing. That's the assumption at this stage. Councillor Bernitz. I have the impression that these costs could go up. Is there any – I'll look at Phase 1, and the savings on Phase 1 are very good. Is there any lesser project that could deliver as most savings? This is it, basically. We've looked at those options, and we've scaled the project back. No, that's the answer. I mean, I think it should be remembered that the project that we have here will deliver savings in the long run in terms of the more efficient use of energy and costs contained therein. Also, in making sure that we have a better working environment for our officers, we will necessarily – one hopes – save in ongoing recruitment costs because we will aid with staff retention by making sure that we have a good place for people to come and work. So this is all part and parcel of a classic invest-to-save model I would suggest is what we're embarking on here. Councillor Brown. Yeah, I mean, just to build on that point, and it's hard, of course, to build it, and it's a hard benefit on this project. But I think there's always a benefit in consolidating down your office-based footprint because, I mean, not only do we get the potential benefit of being able to realise and value out of 91 Queens Road and the other buildings, either for affordable or for selling them, but actually longer term, you're also not having to maintain them. At some point, these buildings are also all going to need decarbonisation or money spent on them or refurbwork, and actually the council's avoiding that medium term costs as well. That's not built in here, but it's another benefit of doing this type of work, I think. Can I just be a little bit nostalgic for a moment, which is my first two years here? I can remember every time I came here into the Chamber, I said every light is blazing in the Civic Centre at seven o'clock, and that's where we moved on from. I make it a point when I come into the Civic Centre to go around complaining loudly and switching lights off, because we all have a duty on that. The additional knock-on benefit, of savings to the council in the long run is also the investment, which we will see going into Trickman, because if we consolidate all our staff here, that will necessarily have a benefit to businesses within Trickman Centre as all of the staff will go out, one hopes, and make use of those shops and services. Anything further? Sorry. Okay, so you will see the recommendations, there are four of them. They are available on your papers, and there's 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4. Are we content to support all of those? Great, that is carried unanimously. Thank you, we move on to agenda item 8, which is additional budget requests. As mentioned earlier, the two decisions which we have made so far just need to be ratified at this particular point, and there is an additional budget request from the Transport and Quality Committee. Are we content to approve all of those budget requests? Yes, I agree. Okay, thank you. We move on to the final substantive points on the agenda this evening, which is the forward ban, pages 61 to 64, in your bundler agenda item 9. Are there any items which members of the committee would like to add to the forward plan? Councillor Giesler, I just want to note that I think we should be noting the fact that the nighttime strategy will come forward in the June. Okay, so the nighttime strategy for the June meeting, thank you. Councillor Brown, we will, I hope, be getting regular updates on the change program. I think the next one is probably due for September, so we could maybe note that as well. Okay, thank you. That's the change program and the nighttime strategy, and with the change program, we will hear from our new to change. I just ask, is there a terms of reference for the nighttime strategy? Yes, that was already. Yeah, that was agreed at the very beginning of the process, so we've, I mean, the basic idea was behind it to look at all aspects. Of the borough in terms of how it works between the hours of six in the evening and six in the morning, with a fairly wide ranging brief. So looking particularly not only at entertainment and the sort of things that go on there, but night workers looking at safety, looking at the economy, looking at all the angles of what makes nighttime work. And it's very, it's actually come through from very close working with the GLA. So there's a GLA, overall crossed by a nighttime approach. And indeed, one's worth, council, he wants to actually look on their website because one's worth, in fact, led this program. So the same offices have been involved in that. So it's very much in line with all GLA. Thank you. And as I was just saying, you will be able to hear from our new change, the Director of Change and Innovation, Sam Olsen, who is in the meeting in the audience with us today. So the time is quarter to eight. Thank you very much. The meeting is now closed. So thank you very much for your contribution. This evening, we may stop the tape.