Transcript

[BLANK_AUDIO] Okay, we should, now that Claire's settled into her special chair, we should get started. Okay, maybe it's not, maybe it's to help you back. I'll take that back. Okay, welcome to PNS, I'll hand off Jamie to take us to the agenda this morning. Oh, so I've got to the webcast announcement. Welcome to PNS Committee, the meeting of PNS Committee is held in the UM-Gills court room in the city chambers. Actually, it's slowed down for them. We do have BSL interpreters online, so I should probably slow down. Hi sleep, Brad, and remotely by Microsoft Teams. We filmed live and subsequent broadcast via the council's website. The council is a data controller under the general data protection regulation and data protection at 2018, and we broadcast council meetings to fulfill our public task obligation to enable members of the public to observe the democratic process. That did a collective during this webcast will be retained in accordance with the council's published policy, and the seating areas will not be filmed. However, by entering the meeting and using the public seating area, you should be aware you may be recorded, and image using sounds will be stored as above. Children will not be filmed, although sound will be heard. We have got some dictations, but it's my time to take a break at 11th or 30th lunch break at 1, and again if we need a further break at 30th, and to remind members that our debate should be taken in a respectful manner. Jamie? That's the vein. Item 1 on the agenda is Order of Business. Version 3 of the agenda and reports was circulated on 27 May. Motions and amendments have been circulated electronically and are available to view by members of the public on the council's website alongside the papers for this meeting and also as part of the live webcast function. Deputation requests have been received from the British Deaf Association Scotland and the National Deaf Children's Society in relation to Item 7.1, and from Mother's Climate Action Network Edinburgh in relation to Item 9.1. Members, happy to hear the deputations. Thank you. Just a reminder for any members attending on teams today that the VA's hand function should be used to indicate to the convener that you wish to speak, and votes will be taken by a show of hands. If members are planning to substitute for other members for particular items, please make this clear to the convener by confirming who has left and who has joined the meeting. Item 2 is Declarations of Interest. The Council has code of conduct requires members to publicly declare interest in the items being considered at the meeting. These can be financial or non-financial. Are there any interest to declare? Councillor Parker. I have a conflict on Item 7.2 as a fundraiser in the third sector. Councillor McLACHLAN. On Item 8.1. I am an employee of Public Health Scotland, just a transparency statement, and again on 9.2, on continuing care, I am a paid foster care again, transparency statement. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Oh, sorry. Councillor MACKANES. Thank you. On 8.7 we have an amendment in which I'm named. So, as a result of that, I'll step away from the debate at that point and not take part. Thank you. Thank you. So, that takes you to Section 3. Deputations. The first of which is from the British Deaf Association of Scotland in relation to Item 7.1. Could I invite the representatives to come forward, please? Councillor interjecting. I hope you can hear me okay. I would like to start by saying thank you for inviting me to your meeting today. Councillor interjecting. Can you wait one second? We can't hear it very well. We're just turning the volume up and we'll start again. Okay. Okay, I will repeat what I've just said. I would just like to say thank you very much for inviting me to your meeting today. I am Helen Morgan Venhold and I work with the British Deaf Association of Scotland and we are funded by the Equality and Human Rights Fund. We work with local authorities and the Deaf community on the BSL Scotland Act 2015 and the BSL National Plan building bridges between both. We also work with the NHS and other public bodies. Now, I would like to say the Adem had a city council's draft local plan has a good start. We have consulted with the local residents several times this year. What I would emphasise is that the council should engage with the residents at least twice a year in order to build trust among themselves and BSL users. This way the BSL users can feel welcome and safe to collaborate at any time. The same applies to BSL translation resources and BSL accessibility. We know that this is a working document and there may be flexibility in changing some of the aspects of it. We would also suggest that it would be good to set up a BSL working group or forum for the BSL local plan. This would, we would like to remind you that BSL users have their own lived experience and so working alongside them is very important. It is also very important for them to be working with families and parents with relation to the education section. We want to make sure that services are appropriate and that they have the BSL users have their ability to feel proud and are able to engage with their local community. We also would like to say thank you very much for allowing us to speak today and if you want any other information with regards to the BSL local plan you can contact us at any point.

Okay. Thank you. Any questions? That's the dissertation? Council member. Thank you. Good morning. I wanted to ask, he talked about the forum and meeting twice a year which sounds great. I just wondered if there was already a group either through British deaf action or through NHS that already meets that the council could engage with or if that would be something that would have to be set up especially. Thanks. So what we would recommend from British deaf association Scotland is that you set up a working group that would allow you to invite community members to fit into the workings of the plans if not then yes I would suggest you go to local clubs. But what is important of what we very strongly stress is that you are engaging with people who have lived experience and who are living in breathing the barriers they face every single day. They will be able to fit into the plan for learning onwards for the next six years and will be able to advise the right way forward. We have given some feedback into the plan. The one thing I would say in relation to this is that there are some elements of the see your strategy been included in the BSL local plan. These are two very different strategies. Well the see your strategy is one section and the BSL Scotland Act 2015 is another. There are two very different parts and so I would suggest there is maybe a little bit of work looking into taking some of the see your strategy away from the BSL local plan as you're putting water between the two. But I'm happy to give more information on that that be required. It's very important that the BSL users understand there is a difference between the see your strategy and the BSL local plan. The BSL local plan looking purely at language they see your strategy looking at the services that are provided to people with hearing losses across the board. I hope that helps answer the question. Okay thank you very much for that. I'm there questions. So thank you for your deputation. You're welcome to remain online till this item is later this morning. Jamie. Thank you. So the next deputation is from the National Deaf Children's Society. I think we have members in the gallery so if you could come forward please. Good morning and thank you for coming along today. Got ten minutes to address committee and then there'll be an opportunity for some questions over to you. Just press the little button on their red light to come on. Yep. Okay so first. Do you understand that? That's my son's experience every single day in school. And I think it's really important that you understand that and that's the opening part for me. So what I said is my name is Lee my name is Lee Ferran and my son is 13 years old and attends a school in Edinburgh. So I just want to give you a bit of my story to show the context in which I do not think your BSL bill meets the needs of our children. So my son's story is I suppose it challenges your existing bill in particularly in relation to where you state the children and young people. So I need to read because it's quite a motive issue for me and who it says we're all children and young people who use BSL will get the support they need to all stages of their learning so that they can reach their full potential. This is most certainly not the case for the 28% of deaf children who are also known to have additional needs such as my son. I'm here to represent the voiceless deaf children but also as I consider my son the invisible ones and to really beg you as Councillors because you have the power to do this to consider some more concrete actions that can actually help these children access education through BSL. So my son is profoundly deaf. He does have bilateral cochlear implants but won't wear them. So his only language is and only communication is through British Sign Language. Our family story is a long one that involves nine years of battles with Edinburgh Council and for what I have to say I consider the most basic of human rights and that right is communication, that's it. It's a basic right, communication and his is the BSL which without he cannot access anything in the city, country, anything. So I was only at a meeting yesterday with Edinburgh Education Department fighting for this most basic human right and I should say that if Scotland and Edinburgh particular are about to incorporate the UNCRC article 30 you really need to consider this and how this bill that you're about to publish represents and supports the needs of our children. So my son attends a special school in Edinburgh and when he started school he had no BSL support at all despite it being a parent that he was starting to communicate with sign language. Eventually as parents we fought really hard for BSL support in this class and as he continued to show progress we were able to argue more and more for one-to-one BSL support. I make that sound easy it was not. Bear in mind that just having one-to-one BSL support only allows my child to communicate directly with one human being, one. In a school of hundreds of people he can only communicate with one person, no one else, not his friends, not his teacher, not the janitor, no one, absolutely no one. After seven years a small group of parents we were able to argue for a BSL class in this special school that has been running for the past two years. However the meeting I was at yesterday has informed me that this class will now be stopped. Okay so it's stopping at the end of this term and my son along with other children will be integrated back into hearing classes. But guess what with no plan? So as I ask questions well what will that look like nothing? Nothing. We've had a few meetings about it and after that we've been offered a communication support worker so at least our children can make their needs known and access the basic of curriculums. We've had to beg the school to keep a social group for BSL speaking children and all of this time when you as Edinburgh Council are proclaiming success on your BSL plan and about to propose a new one. So my son returns to a classroom after term with a teacher who has no BSL knowledge, peers that have no BSL all the support staff have no BSL and I just have to sit in hope that a BSL communication worker, support worker can be employed over the summer so that when he starts back he'll have at least one person that he can talk to. If not we were told well maybe Edinburgh can't meet your child's needs. I was told this yesterday. This is yesterday. That's not what your plan suggests. It says that all children's needs will be met in terms of education. So when you read this plan you can start to see why I'm here asking you to revise this and to look at concrete actions. This is not happening. This was yesterday. I understand that children in special schools are complex but I really feel that surely a capital city should be looking at why there is no specialist deaf provision across all special schools and worse than that why there's no strategy for how to support these BSL users within these provisions. The only way to get any support in my experience for the last nine years has to be to shout and to shout very loudly. I have to say I'd recognise my privilege in that in the sense that I'm able to do that but what about those parents and children who are not able to do that? So when I was told yesterday that maybe Edinburgh cannot meet my son's needs. I suppose my question is well that's in complete odds with your plan. Your plan says clearly you will meet my son's needs and yet I'm being told by the Education Department yesterday you probably cannot. So I suppose this is my argument additional needs children in special schools despite having a number of hearing impaired and deaf children are not even mentioned within the plan. They're not even mentioned as a specific group. So I need to ask you to please give them a voice because they have no voice. Literally and they are often invisible to them. I would also say if you're feeling particularly generous and I hope you are, to consider the support for us as parents who like most I think about 90% of children born with hearing impairments or deafness are born to people like me who have never spoken a language again. So if you have children I ask you to raise them in Russian would you be able to do it? No is the answer and that's what I'm trying to do every day is pay for constant tuition, learning to improve my ABA itself so that my son can access life. Thank you and I'll pass you over now. Thank you. My name is Mark Ballard and I'm the head of policy for Scotland for the National Deaf Children's Society. Lee talked specifically about the issues that her BSL using child faces I want to talk on a more citywide basis. The production of a BSL plan is a statutory obligation on a whole range of public bodies in Scotland under the 2015 Act including the council. This is the second BSL plan that the council has produced. They're six year plans so the first one was for 2018 to 2024. This one will be from 2024 to 2030 and I think our main point as Lee has said is that this plan needs to be more concrete in what it's actually going to deliver over that long six year period. It needs to be more definite and it needs to be more ambitious. The National Deaf Children's Society deputation is just talking about children you've heard from the BDA earlier about issues for adult BSL users but we're talking about children and young people partly because that's where the clearest obligations on the council are. Not just under the BSL Act 2015 but also under the ASL Act and as Lee mentioned under the UN CRC which will come into force in a few weeks time an Article 30 of the UN CRC reflects the fact that children have a right to language. They have the right to the language of their community and for Deaf Children BSL is their language. The aim stated in this plan is that every Deaf child who uses BSL to reach their full potential. We absolutely welcome that. We know at the National Deaf Children's Society that with the right support Deaf Children BSL using children can achieve just as much as any other child but that support needs to be in place and in particular as Lee said for 90% of Deaf Children in this city their parents are hearing, they don't use BSL and this plan doesn't explain how children will get to use BSL how they will come to access BSL. So this plan needs to be much stronger on how BSL will be acquired from the earliest years. Looking at the consultation on the plan, the plan recognizes that teacher the Deaf caseloads in Edinburgh are around 73% higher than the national average across Scotland and a high proportion of Edinburgh's qualified teacher of the Deaf population high proportion across the country are nearing retirement. Edinburgh needs more qualified teachers of the Deaf, it needs more qualified teachers of the Deaf who have strong BSL skills. At the moment Edinburgh has half as many teachers of the Deaf as five, it's got the same number as West Logan, it needs more teachers of the Deaf. The plan highlights the problem but doesn't explain how that will be addressed. The plan highlights the isolation that BSL users can face in schools, it says that BSL pupils can experience isolation and lack of opportunities for chatting with their peers if they have to speak to adult interpreters. That's a key finding but the plan doesn't deal with how that isolation will be addressed. More broadly, this is not an ambitious plan. There could be so much more. The plan says as its second key aim that we will fully embed Gerfek so that a child and their family are offered the right information and support at the right time. The 2018 plan said that Gerfek would be fully embedded. We don't want the 2030 plan to say that Gerfek will be fully embedded. That means to make Gerfek right for every Deaf child we need to have the health visitors as named persons. The lead professionals who understand the support needs of children with whose language is BSL. That's not in place and at the National Deaf Children Society we're here from parents across Edinburgh who say they're working with professionals who don't know how to support BSL using children. BSL needs to be there from the earliest years. We welcome the fact that in 2018 the plan said Fürdenberg that the Council would explore how BSL can be further included on the One Plus Two agenda to offering training, advice and sharing good practice. That's so important. BSL needs to be fully accessible by Deaf children so they can make the choice to use BSL from the earliest years. But the 2024 plan is weaker than the 2018 plan merely stating that the Council will regularly promote the benefits of learning BSL to schools and offer training for staff and pupils. That's welcome but that's less ambitious than the 2018 plan. If children, BSL using children, deserve a plan for them which will support them in their right to have their language accessible. It will end the situation where only the parents who can afford the massive cost of learning BSL privately can ensure their children are able to properly use BSL. That's the plan that BSL using children need and we hope the Council will reflect on the plan they have and create something more ambitious and more concrete for the next six years. Thank you. Okay, thank you for opening up for questions but just before I do, I was intending to suggest as an amendment that we would set up a BSL users group to include at least your organisations in that but I think given what we've heard this morning and I will, as we will tell other questions, I think we'll probably ask to continue the support to allow you meet with the officers to try and resolve some issues before we make a final decision on the BSL plan, a response to government and so I'll probably pose a bit of an open up for other questions first. Councillor Mār? Thank you and thank you for your deputation. I wanted to just touch on one element, Lee, because as a parent of a daughter with severe disabilities, I recognise many of the struggles that you've described. I also recognise the isolation that children feel and that parents feel. Sorry. I wanted to ask what we as a council can do to support in some senses bringing – enabling parents to come together to share concerns but also to share the fight. So I think for me the important thing to think about is, you need to have parents represented on these things and of course generally, the more able children and parents are represented and I think like you said, so children like mine that are exceptionally complex and away in schools were overwhelmed or busy. So there needs to be an effort for people like myself to come on to these things and I know there are parents that would do that because our children are the least likely to be able to tell you anything. So I think that's really important and I think in terms of ending the isolation, I mean I think that's just a hard reality of the world we live in and I genuinely believe there is no easy way to end that but I think having to battle constantly on your own to just get a basic human right of your child mate just feels exceptionally unfair in a first world country, in a city like Edinburgh. I'd like to thank the councillor for that question but also thank the council leader for the commitment they've just made. I think part of isolation and recognising the particular language needs of BSL children is that encouraging more uptake of BSL generally in Edinburgh's schools. BSL is a fantastic language. Edinburgh has a long tradition of BSL education. Thomas Braidwood's school, at Dunby Dykes was the first deaf school anywhere in the world. We'd love to see commitments in this plan for the number of particular primary schools in Edinburgh that will have BSL as one of the languages that they teach as part of 1+2 and this is a six-year plan. So there's an opportunity to build over the next six years so that more children can use BSL, are familiar with BSL and can communicate with children whose first language is BSL and that's the ambition for the 2015 act that Scotland becomes the best place and Edinburgh can become the best place to learn and use BSL. I have another three questions, so Councillor CUMMARK. Thank you, Lee and thank you, Mark, for the deputation. I think that was really moving so thank you very much for coming along today. I suppose my question is, I've got two questions. The first, I'm really alarmed by some of the things you're saying. So firstly around the schools and what you've been told yesterday, and I suppose my question is what can we do right now in terms of health and support but also that offer of support when we go out these doors because I think there's an ongoing discussion about this and I would really like to push on that. And the second one is, again, alarming that it almost seems as if you've not been involved in this process because a lot of the things you are seeing and saying should not be new to this Council or committee, so I'm a bit alarmed by that. So have you had any engagement with Council officers in the development of this plan? So no, I haven't and it's interesting because I was reading the report and I was looking at how they put the BSL plan out there in relation to the put it on Twitter. They talk how many times they've used social media, how many times they've done this. And it was interesting because also the response rate, I was quite alarmed, it was exceptionally low. I mean I wasn't aware of this. But then I'm thinking why are you not even using your own channels? Have you been being out to the schools and advertised to the schools? I haven't been involved. I've asked to see the BSL plan multiple times and not been offered to see it. And I think why are you not using the channels when you have children in your schools that believe about 200 across Edinburgh? Why are you not sending out information to us directly? I've never had anything. You talk about doing it. It seems like a tokenistic portal. We put it out in social media so we only got 15 tweets so therefore it's okay. We've done our bit. And that to me is not good enough because what about me as a parent? And the thing for me is if you want to support me what I want is my son's, it's interesting because we talk about it like a language. It's not even from my son a choice. There is no other choice. For some children there's no other choice and it's as basic as that. And I think for those children you need to ensure that they have BSL provision so that they can actually access learning education which by the way is your legal responsibility. I'd just like to add to that by clarifying there's nothing in the plan that we disagree with. Nothing in the plan is wrong. The challenge is that it doesn't go far enough and it's not concrete enough. And I think we really value the engagement now in terms of how we make those high-level statements into a reality for deaf children in the city. So there's nothing to disagree with in the plan. It's just we want this plan to actually be a living breathing document that makes a difference for deaf children. And that means they have to be more concrete targets that I guess have to be developed from now on. It's clear that over the next six years we can measure implementation whether it's working, where it's not working and the plan doesn't give a start at the moment. So nothing wrong with the plan apart from it's so high level. Thank you. So there's one more question that is the majority of the focus seems to be on schools but it sort of speaks to the point that obviously the majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents and that means that support needs to start before school so at nursery and possibly even before then as well. So I wondered if either of you have any thoughts about the sort of provision that the council could put in place to support parents of deaf children in advance of their time at school. But one of the key factors around deafness is that it's really high impact. It's a fundamental change in a child's life when they become deaf but it's relatively low incidence. So there are I think just over 200 children supported by the sensory education service in Edinburgh making sure that children as you say from the earliest years can access BSL so as their brains first developing language if children can't if deaf children who can't use oral language also offer BSL those opportunities for brain development will be missed. That's what getting it right for every child should mean that from the very earliest years when oral children hearing children are developing language children who will be using BSL have that same opportunities with their parents alongside them learning BSL learning language and that's where it's got to start as early as possible. That's why as I said health visitors need to be alerting the moment deafness is identified and planning for how BSL will be acquired for that child if that's the right choice for that child. I think the reality is you're just not offered it and I mean when I had my son he was a defined in the newborn screening so I knew from birth that my son was deaf and it progressively got worse and at no point until we were probably into nursery school and we had to ask and fight for that where we then offered support through it would have been like the old ASL service as it is known now and at that we got a visit once a week to do a couple of signs eventually I ended up I found through deaf action a free family signing course and since then subsequently we have paid thousands of pounds of our own and again I recognise my privilege in that because I'm able to do that and we have paid for level one, level two, qualifications we now pay private tuition for BSL. I think the reality is for some parents it's daunting your child is born deaf and the last thing when you're traumatised is you want to think about learning another language but the reality is if you're not even offered it people will not take that up because it's just overwhelming, it's overwhelming but in my situation and I think the other thing that needs to happen is your teacher of the deaf service and I know that our national revision is going on that needs to be looked at they're called a teacher of the deaf half of them don't even sign they don't even have BSL how can you be called a teacher of the deaf if you can't sign so what they do essentially is they check equipment now what happens to the children that maybe don't have equipment such as my child and that's the kind of on loop repeated conversations I have at meetings is what exactly do you do for my child what exactly do you do for my child what exactly do you do and the answers just never come. So I think there are basic things there that need to be improved there are things about accessibility and just getting out there and offering at a very early stage for people if they want to take up. Thank you the final questions from Coors Davidson. Thank you for a really powerful explanation I also set an education committee so I'm really alarmed to hear about your son's class and we're going to ask for an urgent update to the committee as well can you talk a little bit about a little bit more about the explanation you were given for that withdrawal because I think we don't like to know why that's why that happened. So I think essentially my understanding is that it's a special need school so they all have complex needs that's the very nature of a special need school is my understanding. It was initially set up and there was I think there are issues around recruitment for teachers of the deaf there was never any employment of people who were communication support workers so essentially they put all the people's support assistance whose first language is BSL in one class with the children that are deaf and I do understand that there is a wide age range there because it's a special school and so they're saying it's relatively complex needs and so what I was informed of yesterday is that the reality is that this is not sustainable for all the children it doesn't meet all their needs and they were saying that that was based on their age and stage assessment which I asked for details about how exactly that is done because I'm not convinced that you can age and stage so the argument is that my child at 13 needs his peers at 13. I would say as a child who is BSL and who has a cognitive function much younger does not need another 13 year old to hang out with what he needs to be around other deaf children but that sort of seems to have been ignored and I would also argue that I think they were saying that they basically don't have a teacher that can do it and it feels to me rather than try to find the right resources it's just well stick them back in the classes and their needs somehow will be better met and I actually fundamentally disagree with that but what you meant to do when you're such a small minority of people you've got nowhere to go and so that's why I'm sitting here today and I only find out about this deputation on Friday I've arranged my whole work just so that I could come because I feel like this is probably a last chance to do that and I'm not saying that it will be an easy achievement keeping a BSL function in class going but part of me thinks do you just give up and why do we just give up like that it doesn't make any sense to me and I'm not suggesting it's easy and I do appreciate the pressures on local authorities funding issues but if you already have a staff group and that's been running for two years that my understanding and no additional cost why why can't I not be done why not find a teacher who wants to do it why not give them some training is it really that complicated but I think this is what you come up against sometimes now I'm sure that they will have the reasons and rationale behind the scenes is to why but I do not think at any point you can argue it is better for a child to be in a group of people that he has no ability to communicate with than to be with people he can communicate with and I keep saying to them I'm not even arguing about the quality of education yet because that's my next battle but the first battle is I need him to access it in the first instance okay thank you there are no more questions and as we thank you for your dictation think you've heard from members that were disappointed with the response I've had so far as I'll commit to meet with with both of you with the director education within the next week so we can turn our knees out and we'll become to the formal part I hope committee will agree to continue this to allow these discussion to happen so that we can address the issues that you've raised this morning of course you're welcome to join us it is the first item the agenda so it shouldn't be too long thank you for your dictation thank you Okay um final adaptation this morning um it's on behalf of mothers climate action network Edinburgh this is in relation to item 9.1 policy and advertising and sponsorship do we have yeah please come forward thanks Welcome um give your way to you for up to 10 minutes the adaptation to committee which press a little button on the front that should switch on so hello and thank you so much for this opportunity to speak. I'm Hazel Darwin Clemens and I'm representing the mother's climate action network so we are a group of parents grandparents aunts uncles and people in Edinburgh who share a deep concern about our children's future we had a think about it together and the one thing that we could all get behind is this worry that we have about advertising that we see the advertising that is normalizing high carbon behaviors like flying and SUVs so we are calling on Edinburgh city council today to restrict advertising for environmentally damaging products it would help Edinburgh lead the way for the rest of Scotland to do the same and help our city become net zero by 2030 so these aspirations for the things that we're seeing advertised are not only unsustainable but they're also unaffordable for many people in a cost of living crisis by framing them as normal behaviors it's putting pressure on families it's adding petrol to the fire of desire which we desperately need to stop from burning we want to be able to walk around public spaces in the city without feeling worried that our children are being fed confusing and harmful messages my kids pick up on everything and unsurprisingly they're sensitive to climate issues so it's not just mommy why don't we have a massive car it's then but if it's bad for the planet then why are everyone doing it followed by but if everyone does it anyway then what happens so I asked P6 children at Parsons Green primary school if they'd like to add anything to this deputation today and they've sent you a message so it says at now or never it's pretty dramatic but they're in school today so I said I would represent and I think that it's really clear that they want to see us act with urgency so other councils have done it in England Cambridge share Somerset, Coventry, Liverpool, Hackney, Norwich and cities like Sydney and Amsterdam but we'd be the first in Scotland showing the leadership of a capital city and we do hope that others will follow we hope that the council can influence those that you work with to adopt similar policies we hope that the space created makes way for positive advertising for local arts and events for rail travel and for sustainable living. Advertising works that's why companies spend billions of pounds on it the UK advertising spend in 2018 was £24 billion, £260 million if that was from UK airlines and spookily we can even absorb advertising unconsciously so we believe that removing the advertising will work too as it did with smoking it will be an efficient measure in helping us reduce high carbon activity nobody in Edinburgh needs an SUV not only are they eight times more likely to kill one of our children in an accident but globally rising sales of SUVs are the second biggest cause of increasing CO2 emissions after power generation but head of aviation and heavy industry so on one hand we're encouraging walking and cycling to school and on the other hand we're allowing these vehicles to be promoted which is just as a disaster waiting to happen any way that you look at it. So in the mother's climate action network group we're all really busy people we've got jobs we've got families to look after this week is sports day and the school fair on Saturday so quite frankly we don't have the time to be spending on campaigning but we do believe that this is important so we've made the time to research it to get involved and to show up today so that we can urge you to make this better so I'll just finish by saying listen to your mothers. Thank you very much. I've had questions. Can you park her? Yeah thank you. I thought that was an excellent adaptation and thank you for the video that you sent us as well in advance. You touched on it briefly but I wondered if you have any thoughts about what positive things we could use advertising for instead because obviously at the moment the policy that we've got sort of lets us advertise anything which includes all of the bad stuff that you've referenced but is there anything that we could be using it positively for? So any aspect of local living which is improving people's lifestyle and creating like a local tourist culture where people stay here on holiday time and they enjoy being part of our community. Anything that's improving the community lifestyle in Edinburgh, anything that is allowing people to travel in a sustainable way like rail travel positive behaviours can be advertised, you know. There's a real amazing opportunity there to use that space to make children walk around and feel like oh I like being in this world this is a world where people look after each other. That's the stuff we're looking for. Okay thank you Derek for your deptation and to the poster from the children as well yeah. I'm sure you leave it one for the team they'll pass around all the members and make sure we've got a copy of it but again thank you for your deptation that item is later on in the agenda but you're welcome to stay here or join us online for the moment and thank you for coming along. We only have the BSL interpreters of HAPPAS 11 so I'm intending to take that item now and we'll do the minutes other things after that. Okay thanks. OK. It does take you to item 7.1. That's it. Give me a 10 so British Sign Language plan for 2024 to 2030. This is a report by the Executive Director of Corporate Services, an S&P group at end I'm in a green group at end I've been circulated and Eleanor Cunningham will introduce the report. Eleanor. Hi there I don't have anything to add to the report but I'm happy to take any questions. Okay I think there is someone from education coming online as well to maybe look at the other issues but again I'll say this in advance I hope we will continue this to allow the issues raised to be addressed by Eleanor and Jelly's team and the Director of Education so on that basis if you'd ask all the questions now they'll be asked again in another committee in coming week's time. Councillor CUMMARA. So I agree with the statement that we should defer this however I want to know more about the statutory requirement for us to publish this by May and what are the implications of this and how did we get this so wrong? So the requirement to publish within six months of the Scottish Government Plan is set in the BSL Act 2015 so it's recognised broadly that this time scale is very limiting which is why we have taken the approach that we have which is to provide a high level report saying this is these are the actions that we will take over the next six years and we will now develop a detailed implementation plan. So the consequences of not publishing, I don't think there will be too severe it was potentially reputational damage but there are no other sanctions. Councillor interjecting. Just to commend that we did have a discussion with the Government about whether we could delay the publication to enable us to get into the implementation side as well but their steer was to get as far as you can now which is what we've done and publish that and then come back with more detail from the Q&A plan which we now would like to move on to. Councillor Wight. Convener, thank you. It strikes me, I agree with your suggestion that we continue this because I think we do need some further information on it but the issue here seems to be about the Council's I have fairly standard practice I would say of having policy officers write a policy or a strategy that's a very high level document but that's rather separate from our services which work and it seems to be separate silos and I don't believe in the policy officers for this but it strikes me that a lot of the issues that were raised are actually matters for the Education Children and Families Committee to discuss because there are about how you operationalise the plan and how you implemented and the fact that the previous plan probably wasn't implemented as it should have been so I do agree we should continue it but I wonder if it's possible for us to refer the report to the Education Children and Families Committee and ask them specifically to look at the issues of implementation in light of all the things that a deputation have told us. Okay, thank you. Thank you. So I was really shocked by that deputation to hear that we've a BSL class is being withdrawn that parents were told yesterday and it feels really really wrong to have that in the context of us looking at a plan and so I think I appreciate what Council White saying about I think education do need to look at this I think there's quite a lot of questions that need to be asked about that committee but I would like us and probably education members to get a briefing though as quickly as we possibly can as to what's happened, why these classes are being withdrawn, clearly we've got education members here this has not been a committee decision, Councillors are not aware of this decision, is this part of the inclusion work that's happening, you know I think we really need to understand if these decisions are being taken are quite significant and are impacting families that way so that would be my ask if you can agree to that can be enough thank you. Thank you Councillor MURPH so I think this is an appropriate point just to get a probe a little bit about the consultation that was carried out because that was covered off in the deputation and 4.4 of the report covers off what was done for the consultation. Can I ask then how we made sure that those individuals that we know are interested in this, like those that we heard from the deputation, were aware of these events and actually had the opportunity to come and take part in feeding their views. So again it's slightly influenced by the time skill that we had but what we did was to use the very significant consultation that the Scottish Government undertook to support the development of their plans, so that was part 1 we used the information that had been been generated by their many workshops I think were 41 so we used that to develop the draft plan and we then held two in person events and one online event to which people were invited, we used a colleague who has an extensive BSL network to promote that so I think that it's fair to see that there wasn't sufficient engagement with parents I think we'll certainly see that. Councillor MURPHARD. Thank you, thanks for the work on the report and I fully appreciate this is the high level and there will be an implementation plan. I agree with continuation but I think you'll have seen from our addendum that we're keen to see the implementation plan and the costings attached to it because there's huge challenges there's not enough interpreters or teachers and all those things when we talk about expanding a service and then we say there's no financial impact we know we know that's not right. So I had some questions and I suppose they are less about what we've heard today from the deputation or I share everyone's concerns about the report, it might be that they can be answered in the reporting time for when it comes back but if not I'll ask them again next time. But I had a question about the links with the workforce strategy. We highlight a lot that there are shortages and this is a problem both in terms of qualified teachers but also in terms of frontline users and we make commitments around frontline users and one thing we know from previous engagement with BDA is that when we train up front level staff in BSL they become so highly sought after because they have a new skill that they instantly well quite quickly move up the chain and therefore we're still left with no frontline staff who speak BSL. So I'd be keen to understand how it integrates with the workforce strategy and then a specific question which relates to what Mark talked about about having a lead professional for children with multiple health plans so I wondered how this works with the IJB with health and social care how we're making sure that there isn't, yeah that people aren't falling through the cracks in this plan thank you. So taking the HR question first we will be working with HR colleagues in developing that side but that was part of the implementation plan. Let's have a look at our workforce and what the needs are for that so it will be a separate bit of work. Secondly health and social care partnerships are involved in this and they will be doing further work on developing the health and wellbeing side of the plan and your question and your specific question there is something that we can ask them to have a look at. Thank you and apologies to the interpreter I spoke very fast. Dr Sammala. Thanks, savina, and thank you very much, although seeing thank you for the report in later the deputation it feels awkward. I wanted to ask some questions in relation to the impact assessments which have been carried out to prepare the plan that we've got in front of us at the moment because I didn't find the impact assessment particularly good and there was a couple of things in particular that I wanted to pick up on and perhaps ask to come back to after we have this report back again in front of us. The first one was that I was pretty surprised that the impact assessment says that it's not considered strategic under the fear of Scotland duty and I wanted to know what the rationale for that was so I think it would be helpful when we see the report come back to us if we can please see the template completed which is available on the Scottish Government website when there's a declaration saying that the fear of Scotland duty doesn't apply it asks for the rationale and I think that would be super helpful if we could have that completed. The second thing that I wanted to pick up on in the impact assessment was that both the plan and the assessment says that the census data would help us better understand the number of BSL users. The census data is now out but all that it shows obviously is what is being collected which is the number of people in their age group and their gender but it doesn't sort of go into subgroups. The deputation was talking about how often BSL users are aligned with other demographics, other disabilities etc and the impact assessment doesn't really go into that. An education was quite clearly identified as one of the groups and so I just wondered if you can actually do a little bit more work on using that information that we hold internally in the council in a thing that we have got from the census and actually do some improvement on that IIA before it comes back because I do think that there's some areas for improvement. Yes, I can certainly undertake to do that and have a look at the data that we hold on our own pupils and we'll do the best that we can to explore that more. I do know that we have had a look at what's recorded on CMIS and it is limited so we'll probably have to do some different types of work to have a look at the needs of particular groups so we will undertake to do that. Okay, there are no more questions. Eleanor, thank you for the report I think you heard from the adaptation that they don't disagree with any report, I think they just want us to go further so that's really helpful that I think they support your report as it is but just need to be a bit more. Just to give it to you, I'm pre-posting that we am meet with the deputation within the next week that we'll do a brief notice as the Council Campbell asked for that we refer the issues raised to the education, to the Media Committee things as Council, White and Davidson are suggesting, but then it comes back to this committee for a final decision on the policy before it's submitted to the government and in the meantime, Gillibrone and I will write the government just to make sure that the note will be lit. Are we okay with that? Okay. Thank you. Okay, so that takes you back to section four, which is the Minute of the Policy and Sustainability Committee of 12th of March 2024, that's submitted for approval to create a record. I have to agree that. Thank you. Item 5.1 is the work program which is submitted for voting. Any questions on how to agree the report? Actually, Parker. Yeah. Sorry. I'm just looking. There's three reports about the LHS that are due for August and they are covering slightly different things and I guess I'm just wondering if it is sensible that we get three separate reports about the LHS or if we're going to smush some of them together. I can see a rationale for some of them being separate in the sense that energy for Edinburgh is a separate conversation but could we have some engagement around what would be sensible and what will come forward? Thank you. It will smush as much. Smush sounds good. Yeah. Thank you, Professor Barker. Other than the smooching, are we happy to agree. Yeah, thank you. Item 5.2 is the rolling actions log. Following actions are recommended for closure. Section 25910, 11 part 2, 1415182122, actually 24 parts 1, 2 and 4, 35, 36, 43 part 2, 45, 46, 47 parts 1 and 2, 50, 51 part 2, 56, 59 and 66. Okay. Hope you're listening. Any questions, comments? Councillor Mille. Thank you very much. That was such a long list of numbers. I'm sure we're all following. On Action 20 there was some actions that Council Leader was going to be taking that were initiated last August so I just wanted to check that there wasn't an update missing in that action point because that seems like an awful little time and presume that those have been carried out by now. Um, I will check and get back, if you're wearing the business sleeve. I'm concerned. Sorry about this kind of pattern. Wrong way. Into changes. So some of them. Yeah, I have, I have two if that's okay. So one is number 25, which is about the community climate fund. So we are due a business bulletin update in August and that is to look at the registration process from last time but I'm also aware that officers are working with Edinburgh Community Climate Action Network on a similar participatory budgeting process and I'm just wondering if we could also in that business bulletin update just get a little bit of information about how officers are working with them on that. If that's okay. Yep. Absolutely. And I can also confirm that have actually been some improvements into the functionality of the website and help people log in. So we're going to get an update on that. Also, I can have broader update on PB and the 1%, so there's quite a lot of action there. Thank you. Thank you. And my second one is just looking at action 29 which is the annual progress report on the council emissions reduction plan. So there is an expectation that when that comes back to us in November, there will be a financial strategy attached to it. I'm just wondering if the discussion that we're due to have at finance and resources committee in June will make reference in some way, shape or form to the development of that strategy because I would consider it to be quite appropriate for the budget setting process. I don't know who can answer that. I'm not sure. I'll talk to Richard Lloyd Bethel and see what we can do, certainly if that as it were, scene setting report overarching strategy report that goes to F&R in June, it clearly needs to touch on some of the key pressure areas. So we'll just talk and see what we can do on that. Thank you. Councillor Babison. Yes. I had two of them I wanted to ask, and the first one was number six, council then it's motion on period poverty. It's now was due to report back in August, it's now been delayed again. I was just wondering if we get some clarity of when we'll get that back. Yes, so that's it, so they're education colleagues but we can follow up with them again. Absolutely. The other one was number seven, the motion on dentistry. I think there's only one outstanding action, but it's a letter from the leader, so it's been waiting awhile as well. I would check on office and see if it's gone, if not, your call today. Okay. With that, I'd have to agree that the rest of the enrolling actions log, thank you. Item six point one is the business bulletin, which is a metaphor. Happy not the business bulletin, Councillor White. The question, the section about Elhese and coordination of HEAT networks and planned excavation works, it makes a suggestion that because roadworks are often quite shallow, there's limited option there for coordination. I would imagine the coordination isn't just about the cost of the deeper excavation, it's actually about limiting disruption to people when we eventually do this. So it kind of half dismisses it as a possibility. I'd just like to keep this on the radar for the longer term and I see Mr. Lawrence nodding, he may have a comment on it. And then it also suggests that there's some good options when new things are being developed. I wonder how much our planning colleagues are talking with developers about this for the future. Are we already there at this stage or is that something that still has to happen? Mr. Lawrence. I might just ask David and Hillary to comment first and I might add something comfy now because I know they've been doing the detail, but broadly I agree with much of what you say, Councillor or Hillary, or David I don't know if you want to add it. David or Hillary, anything to add to that? Thank you, Councillor White. On the first subject, sort of with coordination with the road work, staff was. Under consultation with our colleagues in in the roads department, they suggested that while road works do happen, obviously, the depth and frequency of the road works isn't something that necessarily should be taken into consideration when planning something as large scale as a heat network. Heat networks take years to develop as well. So there's a possibility that almost the road works would be coordinated with the heat network as opposed to the heat that were coordinated with the road works, if that makes sense. And then in terms of, sorry, I've forgotten the second part of the question there, too. Coordination with planning colleagues, Hillary. Pardon me, sorry. Coordination with planning colleagues. Yes, sorry. So we've had initial discussions with planning colleagues. There are guidelines for how services are laid out in new developments, but currently that does not take into account the heat network infrastructure, and it's something that it looks like is potentially going to be missed from the new heat networks legislation as well. We've had initial conversations about potentially creating a guidance note. Unfortunately this wouldn't be enforceable at this point, but we have very much had discussions with our colleagues in planning as well as other Elhes officers throughout Scotland because it's something that we feel is missed and that we would really want to see sort of a general approach taken forward. I think, obviously, it's hard to incorporate a standardization for existing roads, but we do see that new buildings, new developments, our real opportunity. We wouldn't want to see a coordinated approach missed. So those conversations are ongoing. Just to add very briefly, if I can, on Hillary's first question, we have been having discussions, not necessarily what you might call day-to-day road works, but where there are schemes of substance, where the council is taking forward schemes of substance, then future-proofing them around issues like heatworks is something that there's active discussion taking place. That's helpful. Could I suggest that Mr Lawrence might want to look at how it's taking this business bulletin item forward, how we can get that coordination right and also speak to Scottish Government about planning things. It strikes me there's a lot of quite strategic things here and that probably needs executive director level input. Yep. Thank you. Now, there's four questions. Councillor Bion. Thank you. My name is, I show exactly the same lines, just in terms of dismissed, can it be very kind of dismissed a bit of how it could be done? So the question was have you spoken to other cities in Scotland and the UK as to how they've done it? Because certainly there's a lot of examples of big heat networks have been set up in other, you know, old cities, for example. To under you've done that, that could be looked at. Thank you. Councillor Bion. We have had discussions with Fife and Sterling, which are sort of the nearest councils that have heat networks in place. Obviously, there's places in Aberdeen where they're further ahead, but most of our conversations sort of circle around this mentorship program that the Scottish government has sort of posted with colleagues in Denmark. So a lot of our conversations around learning from other councils, focus around where in this group called establishing and continuing. And so it includes other councils such as Glasgow, Sterling, and Fife, but there's certainly scope to learn from councils further north, specifically Aberdeen, where they're further progressed with a council owned or operated heat network. Thank you. Councillor Mumford. Thank you. I had a question on the poverty commission and the pay gap. So first on poverty commission, I'm really pleased to see this is happening. I just wanted to ask about it talks about additional emphasis on the themes of climate justice and racial justice, which sounds great, but obviously we're doing it with the same commissioners and the same sort of structure of the group. So I wondered if we needed to look at embedding that commitment to racial justice, for example, in the make up of the group in terms of how we're doing things, and I wondered if that had come up at all. Thanks. Chris? Yes, absolutely. We have an inception meeting of the original commission, original commissioner is planned for 12th of June. And part of that is to talk to them about the details of the process we'll be doing in the autumn, and a large part of that is what additional expertise they want to bring in. So absolutely, and very keen to take any suggestions that members might have on. People they'd like to see involved in the process or as part of commissioners in that piece. Thank you, Nia. On pay gap, it was just around the increase in diversity of the senior workforce and the next steps that are set up there about looking at implementation and external partnerships. I just wondered if we had an anticipated start date for that to happen, and I suppose has there been any pushback against that? Or are we all good to go on that? Thanks. Nareen, is this for you? Yes. Thanks, convener. So really just to confirm, yeah, we're good to go. We've kind of got the two kits already, they've been shared. And actually across all directors, we've had a really positive response, so we're actually just trying to manage the pilots because everyone really wants to take part, so positive, positive position for that. So it's now just time to move ahead with it, but also it will be incorporated into the workforce plan that you'll see come August. Thank you. Katherine Lassend? Thanks, convener. My question is in relation to the visitor level update. I think I can see Eylin there. Yeah. So I was quite interested in what there is here because obviously I appreciate within the framework of the TVL legislation that's coming forward or what it's likely to look like, it is looking like it's not going to be possible basically to charge Airbnbs more to put it bluntly. But the update, I would say quite clearly implies that there might be other mechanisms for charging for applying charges to short-term letts, and I think probably particularly we'd be interested in secondary letts, whole property short-term letts. I was just wondering if there was anything you could tell me about what that kind of mechanism would look like and whether it would be possible within whatever mechanism that is to distinguish between for instance someone renting out their spare room now and again as opposed to a full-on secondary letting. Yeah. Mr. LThree. Eylin, sorry, do you have any thoughts on this, Eylin? Obviously, this bill is being debated in parliament today. So following that debate, we will know much more about the final iteration of the bill and we will be looking at the different options as part of the report coming to PNS in August. I appreciate that. That doesn't necessarily answer the full question just now, but I am also wary of making too many promises that we can't keep just yet. I think just to follow up on that convener. So I think Councillor Astonia, I can see why you're reading that into that wording. I'm not sure that is my interpretation. So clearly we have the existing short-term let schemes that the Council is taking forward. Both on the licensing and planning side. As was agreed at regulator committee, they are up for review later this year following a year of operations and I suspect if anything, whoever drafted this was thinking of that review process as where we look at anything like that, I think the first part of what you said is right is it looks like we'll see what happens today in parliament. It's an important day for that legislation for the Council today, but I think it's unlikely that we'll be able to differentiate through this route. Councillor Campbell. Thank you, Kambina. I wanted to ask about the facilities management update. It was about in-houseing facilities management. Just a couple down from the visitor I think. There's a few things, feasibility studies that are in process and we've had some reports and I just wondered, it's not really clear what the next steps are and I think originally the vision had been, because this is very much looking at different parts and different service areas and can we in-house a few jobs here or a few jobs there. But I think there was a bit more of an ambition to think could we build an in-house service where those skilled trades could move across and meet other areas. If there's need in education, those skills could be used there, then they could be used in housing if needed, you know, a bit more of an ambitious project and I just wondered if we were planning on bringing back a report at any point to bring all these various strands of work together. Councillor interjecting. I was just going to suggest the same thing, Kambina, that if it's all right by committee, what will take these different strands and bring a report update as soon as we can, maybe to the next committee if possible. Good, thank you. Councillor Parker. Thank you. I have a question about a different update on the LEs and it's looking at the energy efficiency programme and the retro fixers projects with the Edamhere Tool Library. So this looks really positive to me and I think is exactly the kind of project that I had in mind when I asked for an update on this. I guess my question is that in terms of taking this forward or supporting it, obviously this is an action within the L-hees, which is why you guys have looked at it, but to my mind this is absolutely an anti-poverty measure as well and it's quite a low cost intervention that could have quite a high impact on a number of households across the city and I suppose as a council if we're looking at or, you know, given the poverty commission update that we've had in the same item looking at the intersection of anti-poverty measures and climate work, this seems like a really good example of that, so in terms of taking it forward, my question really is, is this the sort of project that should be owned by the L-hees office given that they're due a very large argument with planning and many other actions on their programme or is this something that could be taken forward in other parts of the council as well because it seems like a really low cost intervention that would have quite a high impact in terms of anti-poverty. So my question is who's going to own it going forward if we decide that it's a good thing, which I think it is.

• I mean, Hillary, David, any thoughts?
• I think we'd be happy to take that away and make sure that we just update so the actions do you have, sorry actions do you have an honour to them and it's clear who's taking them forward so we're happy to take that forward. Councillor ALLAN.
• Thank you very much, Commissioner. I had a question about the update on work visa sponsorship, which I was really pleased to see and obviously thank you to officers for implementing that important policy changes that we got. I wanted to just ask because we were recently made aware that there was a notice on my job Scotland, which sort of flags to anybody looking for work there, that they do not have any employers on their website offering sponsorship. It says not to ask about sponsorship for these jobs and not to apply for jobs if you do not already have the right to work in the UK. So I just wanted to check whether we have been speaking to my job Scotland, communicating our policy to them and making sure they're able to accurately advise people on what the process is to apply to work in Edinburgh.
• Can you see an answer?
• I'm Nreen. And thanks, Councillor Miller, I have to say I'm not aware of that at all. So it's something I'll go and pick up with my job Scotland and see if it's a tribute to being employed. It's absolutely not our position. So I'll pick that up after the meeting and make sure that that's clarified.
• I have a screenshot, so I'll send it to you, Nreen. Thank you very much.
• Thank you, that exhausted questions on that item. Well, thank you for that. Okay, that takes you on to item 7.2, Regenerative Future Fund. This is a report by the Executive Director of Corporate Services. We have an S&P group addendum, a Green Group addendum and a Conservative Group amendment which have all been circulated and Chris Adams will introduce the report.
• Welcome, Chris, Leah, good to see you again.
• Over to you, Minister Deboard, any Dad?
• Nothing to add. I'm happy to take any questions. I did just want to take opportunity to introduce Leah Black, who's the lead on this project. Leah.
• Hi, yes, Chris, I'm Leah. I've met some of you already so it's great to be here today and happy to take questions.
• Okay, thank you, Councillor HEAP is on line to replace Councillor PAQ in this part. Okay, thank you, Leah, thank you, Chris, any questions? Councillor CUM LAUER.
• Thank you, I've got a few. So the first one is around the £100,000 commitment and can I understand where this money is coming from, given that the budget has already passed. The other questions are around, so in the report it says that 2 million is expected to be secured by end of May. The 28 might count as end of May and I just wanted to know if you have an update on that. The other one was around, again, the commitment to have 100 to 300,000 commitment over the next 10 years, is that going to be ring fans, is that the recommendation or will that be built into budgets? And then the final one is how much of the £15 million do we need to secure now to start the 10-year programme or could be secure partial amount and start that programme. Thank you. Happy to repeat any of those questions, [inaudible]
• Shall I start on the first question? Sorry, I missed the second question because Paul distracted me.
• I was just talking to your answer in the first question.
• I can't do two things. So the first question, about the 100K piranha. So we've worked really, really closely with Richard, our Finance Director, and he's agreed that the initiative that could come from reserves if you want to start it now. But then, conversations with Dabes and Richard, we would need to consider building that into the budget for next year and making that ongoing funding stream. Because it comes from reserves for that reason, we said it has to go to F&R and then on to all kinds of for the final decision.
• I can cover the one on the kind of funding update. So we've got to date, we've got 3.25 million pounds approved. That's 1 million from town to us, 2 million from the National Lottery Community Fund, 250,000 from Foundation Scotland, who are going to host the fund. And then there's another 1.5 million in decisions that are all going to be made in the next month. So that's a million, the Roberts and Trust, and half a million Esme Fabrian Foundation. So we'll have all decisions by the beginning of July, I think is the second of July. The other thing I can update on is when we can start what the threshold for starting is. So although the overall target is 15 million, we're trying to get to this between 5 and 6 million mark. And that means that the fund can launch because we can start the first phase, which is the capacity building phase. And that's really important to get to that stage, given that these other funders have either approved these really large amounts of money, or in the process of approving that as well.
• I'm afraid we might need a reminder on the missing questions. I should have broken down apologies. So I suppose it was that ongoing 100 and 300,000 commitment over the next ten years, I think Julie had said that that is going to be sort of requested by parties to build that in policy. So that's fine. I do have a follow-up question on Foundation Scotland. So one of the things that has been noted in the report that they will be leading on this work, which is good, I have come at the back of a Connected Communities funding distribution where I'm now slightly sceptic in terms of what happens. So could I have some reassurances that the Council and elected members will be involved in as much oversight as possible, because while it's good that Foundation Scotland is involved, I think it's really important that we also have understanding in terms of any criteria, any sort of decision making, what is the makeup of the decidase and who else is involved in that process? Thank you.
• So every funder that's been involved in the process to date is asking the same question. So everybody that's involved, that's putting resources into this, obviously wants to understand how they will oversee that, how they'll track progress, we need to make sure that we're tracking progress really rigorously and carefully, otherwise there's no point in doing this. And yeah, so that is to be worked out, but all the other funders are interested in that and we will have a group that will be for everybody that is contributing to the Pold Fund. Another thing I would say about that is that this is about systems change, and that's what was outlined in the poverty commission is that we're looking for systems change. So there's also an element of learning from that as well and how everybody learns from doing this differently, and that includes all the funders, the Council and hopefully elected members as well. So there's a bit about understanding progress and measuring success and measuring progress, but also there's a part that's about learning and how we all learn from this and bring that back into changing the system or improve the system.
• Okay, thank you, Councillor Wight. Thank you, Canvina, and thank you to Chris and Leah for answering questions this morning. My group had a briefing on this back in January, and I think that was quite helpful, because we were able to delve in some detail in a kind of non-exxctrutany way into some of this. I suspect though that there's a long development process going on here, because this report doesn't really answer some of the basic questions that we were asking then, which are about what outcomes are you targeting, what do we expect to see as delivery from this, and I wonder why that hasn't been brought forward at this stage or within the operational plan, so that's the first question. The second question is for Councillors more generally, we put money in our alternative budget around this on the basis that without the money and without the 100,000, how do you fund it? I'm not sure reserves is a good idea, but I'll let others talk to that. One of the things we said was if there's funding upfront from the Council, we would like officers to have a look at the millions and millions of pounds we spend in this area and say if this is about doing things in a new and better way, what is it that we have least evidence that it works at the moment, that could easily transfer some money to this if we want to keep it going? And I don't see any indication of that in the papers we have before us, so why hasn't that work been done? So that's the second question. And then the third question that we asked at the time, which kind of remains out there, how does this fit to our long term goals as a Council? As our own poverty goals are for 2030, the stage we're at on this is we'll only be getting set up at the end of 2024, yet it's a 10-year program. Now, I understand there will always be some work ongoing, but how do we see that progressing over 10 years when we already have targets and apparently actions to be ending poverty by 2030. Chris? I think I shall start that and maybe seek some support for colleagues to come in and help on some of those. I sucked the last point. As we said in the report, this is an action that does arise directly from the Commission's ask for a fund that does exactly this. And I think it's to Leah's credit that she's done the very hard work of pulling that together and doing that in a way that I think the Commission will see as an interesting and innovative way. In fact, Jim McCormick, who's our Commission Chair, is one of the no-chief executive of one of the funding organizations on that. I think we don't expect this fund by itself to end poverty to make everything but it's an important part of that jigsaw piece. And we'll learn more later this year from the Commission and their views on our general progress towards 2030, and we'll have further reports to committee on all of that, including reports on how effective this particular project is being in meeting that objective. In terms of how this feeds in with other funding, what we're seeing with this is as an innovative way and a different way of funding and supporting community sector in the city. This gives us a real opportunity to learn and to Leah's point about encouraging and supporting system change, the evaluation and learning that we can get from working in a different way with different funders who bring their own skills and their own expertise in this area with Leah's project that has developed specifically as a way of testing change and learning. That gives us an opportunity to inform any future changes we might want to do around the way that we manage grant funding and support for the community sector in general. What we haven't done is done a full review of everything and done an evaluation of every piece of our funding so far. That is a huge ask that we haven't put resources to yet but it may be something that Council wants to commit to further down the line. Anything more to come in on that? I've come in very briefly. The reason why Chris and Paul felt this was a piece of work partly because it came out of the poverty question but also when we speak to funders cross city much like yourselves they tell us consistently the challenges of one year funding and going to spend time hunting for money which doesn't enable them to do the prevention and if you would give any organisation an X amount of money over a longer term period they do something very different with it in a community as opposed to what they would do if you want to give them money for one year and we think what Leah has done impressively has managed to make that case to lots of different organisations and pull money together to try a different way of working and we think that could certainly represent an alternative way of funding for the future and therefore what's really important is where I've put really hard as the evaluation methodology that we attach to it to ensure that we've got constant data coming out of this and regular reporting to all organisations involved. Paul did you want to go in? I think on the other point on the point about outcomes in this you're at the conversations we had with yourselves and with other groups one of the very obvious questions is what is this going to deliver and Leah will give more detail on this but at the moment what I think Leah has been able to do and the funding partners generally have been able to do is to give a direction on what we want this to fund so it is community organisations with a commitment to ending poverty promoting social justice and addressing climate justice in the city with also that commitment to working with people with the lived experience as part of it also with that commitment to supporting us in those system change questions that evaluation process. The next stage I find, as Leah talks about the capacity building stage will be go out and talk to actual organisations who may want to bid for funding essentially that's the phase of which we will see more specifics on what is likely to come in terms of actual programs and actual outputs but what we've said all along is that the things that we will be pointed to are the outcomes and the objectives and for instance the policy and poverty Edinburgh plan if it's not working towards those objectives generally then it's not doing what we as a Councillor and what thing other funding organisations are looking to do. Another thing I'd say that is that we have our as Leah has already said we have our objectives and outcomes that we would like to work towards the other funders have their own and we need to find a way of making sure that the whole fund is working across all of those pieces. Just following on from that it's a very complicated thing to have a bunch of philanthropic foundations local authority everybody has their own as Chris says everybody has their own strategies and aims and objectives and it's a very complex thing to sort of try and hold all those together and work out what have we designed together that is a high level that everybody is happy with including community organisations including in poverty Edinburgh members groups so you know it's not just the kind of resource holders it's the complexity across all those different groups and I just want to just talk a little bit about about rigour and trust because we talk about trust with this fund because trust is something that's really kind of fallen off the edge of the cliff or was it even only I don't know we had a situation during Covid where a lot of organisations felt they were very much trusted by funders and by Scottish Government, by local authorities I was running a whale art at the time and so I have that experience of thinking oh wow we feel trusted but there's a really important balance that we have to get right with regenerative futures fund with this tenure programme which is balancing rigour and trust you know we need to make sure that we're trusting organisations to go on and do the things that they know needs to be done in their communities but equally we need to have absolute rigour around how we evaluate this, how we monitor this so we have got outcomes and if we didn't have outcomes we wouldn't have almost 5 million pounds from from other funders what we need to do together is work out how we water the measures and how we track that and so we will develop evaluation and learning framework we've just got some funding from the William Grant Foundation 15,000 pounds because they're interested in contributing to how we work out how we evaluate and learn from this programme because it is innovative but we need to make sure that we have absolute rigour around that tracking and that's something that all the funders in the local authority will need to be actively involved in in making sure that it's right and as Chris says making sure that it fulfills the aims and objectives of November council. Okay I have another three speakers so we can feel a very brief pull up, if this comes back to council and finance and resources in September for money that bit has to be clearer because at that point the council has been asked to buy something with taxpayers' money so I get that that's the situation but can that all be provided appropriately out of that stage? Yes, Councillor Mumford. Thank you I've got three questions I'm afraid probably two for officers and then one for Leah so the first two I think probably for officers is obviously for the amendments it's clear there's some discomfort from groups about a green list and I think partly because we've had to reduce funding for other third sector organisations this year which has been difficult for everyone involved so I suppose how can you my concern with some of this is that the council will see this as well this is the way we're funding third sector organisations now and not fund other things that we would otherwise I know the report talks about not replacing statutory services or things that been provided but can you offer some reassurance that this is not a sort of get out for the council in funding third sector organisations going forward? So that's absolutely the whole intention of effect all of the conversations with Leah's had with all the funding organisations has been about making sure that this is additional money that's brought to the table over that long term and from a council point of view that's absolutely also because that's why we haven't one of the reasons we haven't said or we can top slice this off another funding stream or other that does make it difficult that means there's no such thing as new money in a council setting so we really have to find the right place for that and that's one of the reasons why we have been putting forward as an option for this year so that by the time we get to next year's budget we can properly baseline it into the overall of budget. Thank you and then can you confirm how much money or resource has the council already put into this because when we first got the paper in January I think some of us were a bit surprised that this work had been going on this from from 2023 so what's the council's financial involvement been? Okay so it's very largely it's been in kind support and that's been attending all the seminars workshops work programme that Leah's put together being part of the funders group potential funders group over the past 18 months and that's largely myself other colleagues that my loved ones and others in the organisation and I would say that's part of our general role in supporting and developing those projects. We did at the very very beginnings of projects, pretty any very small financial contribution of I think five thousand pounds and that kind of range that was from a budget line that we had at the time around poverty prevention work that was used in that space and that was basically to fund Leah's time to commit the time to develop the programme that was much funded by other partners. Great thank you and then final question which is shift change because actually this is really exciting and it could change things, no other things you're talking about in terms of the third sector but it is only it's quite a small amount of money we're being asked for relatively and not that we shouldn't be absolutely scrutinising it and having that rigor but it's a small amount of money in terms of what FNR looks at and ten years will take us through two changes of council in that time and I suppose the only way this works is if it is long term and if it is that commitment for ten years which we can't do because we do budgets yearly so I suppose how do we get this idea of this is a new way of doing third sector support and we understand the importance of core funding into the DNA of the council so that it's not just an easy thing to knock off the budget in four years' time when we're all feeling the pinch even more. Well I thought I guess I guess from Leah's point of view of how you're intending to keep us excited about the fund and from Paul's point of view anything else you want to say? Briefly. I think probably just repeating myself slightly about when the question was asked before about kind of oversight I think what was the freeze in the poverty commission it was about, encourage a new citywide fund to encourage innovation system changes to meet cities and poverty goals and the really key part of that is the system change part and you know system change the community organizations can't change systems, individual people for men poverty anymore can't change systems, city of Edinburgh Council can change some systems but actually we won't see like proper system change unless everybody is involved so there's something really interesting for me about in terms of the funders that we're working with and national lottery and we're going to end up working with individual philanthropists through working with foundations Scotland so there's a whole sort of breadth of people and then we have hopefully set of Edinburgh Council and elected members. So I suppose there's just as well as the oversight for me I think there's a really exciting opportunity to get people involved in a conversation about the systems that we design and the systems that we hold power in and how can we learn from each other about beginning to shift that power and shift those systems in order to make lives better for the individual people in our city. I just had very briefly convene at none. If we want to take forward and deliver on the end poverty recommendations then a new partnership with voluntary sector organizations particularly neighbourhood based voluntary organizations is going to be critical to that effort this gives us one route of putting that on a secure footing for the medium and long-term which those organizations rarely have but that shouldn't be the only part of that work and I think a central part of helping deliver the poverty commission recommendations has to be the council and voluntary sector working differently in the future. It's going to be a big debate for the council as we move forward. Thank you Paul, Councillor Bion. Yeah, thanks. It's going to be nice on a similar line here because obviously welcome this is long term just the antidote to what voluntary sector needs but these funding sources you're talking about are they short term or are they also going to be long term when what we're going to have a cycle of applying for short term funding over the ten years so it's kind of up and down. Is this going to be long term? Are these funders sort of agreeing to a longer term, sort of cycle? Thanks. Yes, they are and that's really exciting as well because a lot of them haven't done it before. So we've got big philanthropic foundations doing things we've never done before which is funding for ten years which is contributing to pooled funds which is also working with a local authority but yeah the long term part of it is really key. I think it would just be really difficult to try and manage something like this if you were constantly going back for one year funding so the idea is that and that's part of the change that's part of the sort of system change I suppose in funding as well is that a lot of funders want to try and move to longer term because they appreciate how damaging it is for organisations to be constantly applying for one, two, three year funding. So yeah, all the ones that we're working with at the moment are committed to the long term. Thank you. Councillor CUMBAL. Thank you. You can be and thank you for the report. There's a couple of things. We've got an amendment in the asks for two things. So one is that, and it's been talked about already, the evidence that Council Officers evidence to us that displacement is not happening from other funding streams, so I just want if someone can comment on whether or not that's feasible, that feels like it's not a huge ask so that would be really helpful. The other thing I think is probably more challenging and that is so I agree with a lot of what's been said. We're talking about system change. Jill, you said organisations are struggling because they don't have core funding, but what we're talking about is 10 to 15 organisations. Now there's a lot of other organisations in the city that are not going to get funded by this, and that for me feels quite problematic. So if we're talking about systems change, are we saying that if Jill, you're evidence that it's really successful, are we as a council going to look at our other grant funding streams and say, actually maybe we need to review the way that we do this, maybe we need to think about. So for me, there's got to be a bigger conversation and then I think the other part of our amendment, if we're talking about systems change, the 4.4.4 says improve the ability of people with experience of poverty and inequality to have a say over decisions made in their communities. Well I think our amendment kind of asks us to go further than that, that I was speaking to one of my colleagues, community development and community empowerment, she was working in it 35 years ago in Westerhales and she said it looks the same because there's not people from that community who have been able to be empowered to run those organisations, we should be looking, if we really want to tackle poverty, if we really want to make a systems change for those communities, we should be empowering people within those communities to become the leaders of the organisations that tackle poverty and inequality in those communities. So we're asking for that opportunity, for development, staff development within, so we're asking organisations that get funded to make that commitment, that they will create opportunities for staff development for people from the communities that they're trying to support, we're asking that 25% of the workforce should be scheduled and we're asking for one person in a senior role and I suppose my question to officers, we really want to move this amendment but we don't want to sink the ship, we just want to know that feels ambitious but it feels achievable and I hope you can comment on that, thank you. Thanks, thanks Councillor, I'm going to let Leah talk about local people in local leadership roles, because I mean that is Leah's bread and butter but your first two questions about the evidence that displays that is not happening, I agree with you, that's been our principle from the very start when I got involved in this and I think what we'll do is we can speak to our F&R colleagues, making sure that's in the report, as the decisions go forward and that's baked into the decision process as it goes on to Council. The question about lots of other organisations who want to get core funding 100% agree as well and I think, so Chris and I, we're in a strategy team at the center of the Council, we're looking for how you enable change and we work to try and bring exciting new ideas forward, which we think this is, what we do with it is really depending on the evidence and how it embeds and whether we think we want to broaden this out or bring in other funding models but we have to start somewhere and we think this is the right starting point and what Leah has achieved to get to almost £5 million is an incredible starting point. I'll hand over to you Leah. Yeah I would just echo that as well, just that concept of what we have to start somewhere and it's not enough, it's absolutely not enough, £50 million seems like a lot of money but over 10 years it's not, it's not enough organisations, so actually learning from this and how can we expand it, what does it or not expand it but you know what can we learn, how can we learn from this, is there sort of similar models that we could develop. On your point about local leadership, I couldn't agree more and that's something that has been built into this from the very beginning, is about in 10 years time we want to see a complete shift in who is leading or organisations leading change in the city so yeah that's completely baked into regenerative futures fund and it has been from the very start and I agree about kind of going further than decision making, absolutely has to be about leadership and seeing a big shift in leadership and that also aligns with the work that we've done around racial justice as well so we want to see more black and minority ethnic leaders in the city, in prominent leadership positions that we don't see at the moment and it's about local people from local areas, I've worked in my skills the last 6 years so I know exactly what you mean so yeah that is absolutely baked into the programme. Just quickly to build on that, can you tell us a bit more about how we go about making sure that those people are from the areas where the impact is being felt and that have that experience of living there and that are feeding that back into the community because I recognise this from ward level work where people don't like organisations that feel that they've been parachuted in to help, which feels very condescending and isn't pleasant to experience, but I just wonder about the technicalities of how we achieve that and how we go about or how RFF goes about doing this? I don't know if I feel you understand, could you repeat your question? Yeah so what I'm asking about is this point that Councillor Campbell was talking about about senior managers, people who are more senior in organisations that are receiving funding that are in the third sector and how jobs at a senior level in those organisations can indeed be going to people who are living in the communities that are receiving the support from those organisations, so it is done by us for us rather than people being parachuted in. Can I just briefly Councillor M for an example, so Leira said, as Ron at Whalingwester Hills for the past six years, she's been instrumental personally in developing a local coalition of groups, voluntary and community groups, some paid, not paid, and I've been involved in this work, so I know for a fact that you've had an anchor institution which is then as it were the kind of pillar which other organisations have built round and I can absolutely assure you in the work particularly on place planning to look at the whole of Western Hills and what it's like now, where it needs to go, the voice of local people in a leadership role has been absolutely to the fore in that work and I think we can look to the kind of work that Leira personally has led as a model to achieve exactly what you've described. Thank you, sorry no we're running out of time, so I'm still on this point because what I'm trying to understand is that the SMP amendment asks for, says that each organisation, so 10 to 15 organisations or 25 initially will have at least one person from the local community in a senior role and that at least 25% of all skilled staff will be local to the community organisation serves absolutely no issue with that aspiration. My question is, are we in danger of blocking organisations doing very good work because they don't currently have that make up so you know yes, development and that's the first point of the amendment so we're just asking for information I suppose from Leira's experience of the organisations we might be looking at, would that cause a problem and also are we even able to specify that? That seems like quite a specific ask for a small contributor to a big fund. I think it's quite a specific ask. I sort of read that as an aspirational thing, I mean with regenerative features fun what we're talking about is we get to you know so you're not, maybe I read that wrong, did you mean that that would be a criteria for organisations, OK, yeah. I think that's quite, if I can say so, probably not that appropriate to comment on amendments but obviously that's quite a tight criteria and I think the ambition as we've debated of having local people in key roles in such organisations is the right ambition to have quite how you achieve that might be something that we want a bit of flexibility around Councillor Mumford. OK we've got 8 minutes left and so we need to move to the formal part of the agenda now. So if I can move the report and thank Chris and Leira for all the work they've done in this. I know that it's been a huge amount of work that they've been doing for a number of months and years probably. I think the work they've done in terms of supporting projects like there are two projects in North Edinburgh has been quite helpful so I really appreciate the work they've done so I'm happy to move the report in front of us. Can I second that please, Councillor What? Yeah thank you, see what the S&P amendments are trying to do would concern me that people who had gained experience of getting outcomes that are wanted in one area and then they wouldn't be able to take that experience to another area because they'd be blocked. There's also the issue of people's circumstances change so you might be living in a particular area when you get a job and then you lose your, if it's a private sector right now, you lose your home and then the next thing you're saying you don't fit the criteria so you probably go to a leisure job as well. That just doesn't work so there's loads of things that if we passed this today, if we accepted that amendment today, we wouldn't know what we were accepting, we wouldn't know what the potential consequences might be because that's something that's a long term strategy that you would need to work on rather than a short term thing that you can put in by committee like this so whilst I understand what they're trying to do, I don't think that we've worked out how to do it and then it would come back and say well oh but Councillor aside you must do this so yeah I think that's why we have to go with and support either port. Thank you. Councillor Campbell. Thank you. Thank you, convenience. So I just had a very quick conversation with officers and what we're proposing is a slight change so a second paragraph, we realise that could be quite prescriptive but we think it's a good aspiration so we've just changed to agree that the aspiration should be for and asks officers to bring back a report on how this can be achieved which is something I think officers and Lear would be happy to do because it is a good aspiration so with that we'll move the amendment. I hope the rest of the amendment, other groups can support because it is about monitoring that we're not getting displacement, I think that's really, really crucial in this and I think we should have the aspiration of supporting local people to work to tackle poverty in their own communities wherever possible, accepting that there are, we shouldn't be too prescriptive because I hear it totally what Councillor Watts said, we also will be supporting the green amendment as well so hopefully we can come together on that position. Thank you. Thank you, convenience. Yeah, in moving this amendment, our Addendum rather, one of the things I wanted to share was in my other line of work, one of the best pieces of work we ever led on was on Gipsey Travellers in collaboration with Meekop because there was a Gipsey Traveller with live experience who was in that community and doing all the work so this isn't an aspiration, absolutely but we have to make sure that local people are within that community because they understand it more than, as Councillor Milli put it, people sort of perish it in, so with that I second. Councillor MUMFORD. Thanks very much, Kavina and in moving this Addendum, shall I say, thanks again to Lea and Chris and I think it's clear from the Addendum that with lots of the concerns that have been raised and particularly on that point of it, it's a drop in the ocean of the poverty we're facing but you know, recognise we have to start somewhere so we are excited by this, it does represent systems change, things we've all been banging on about for a long time, it's come off the back of the poverty commission and watch the point of doing all these projects to bring in people with that lived expertise if we're not going to listen to their recommendations, it understands the inextricable link between poverty, racism and social justice which obviously is our bag and it recognises the need for core long-term funding which anyone who's involved in South Sector will know can completely transform not just the things you're able to do, but the well-being of staff, the retention of staff, the feeling of the community that they can begin to rely on a service and not have it taken away at the last minute, sorry I'm laughing because I almost said youinked away and I just said anyway, so as our Addendum reflects though it does feel risky because it's new and it feels a bit scary and I think that's why it's faced a lot more scrutiny and perhaps than other papers on this agenda which actually deal with more money than this, so our group of pored over the theory of change and the strategy and had two really in-depth conversations with Leah, thank you and we feel really confident that this is worth the risk and that with all the assurances around rigour and performance that the committee and council have asked for and you've answered on, so we're really happy to approve this in principle, we're obviously asking that the paper that comes to F&R sets out where those key points are, that council will have involvement in and scrutiny of the project including the objectives and performance indicators that have been raised and we've asked for an additional review point currently it's three years, we think after a year we should know what's going on with it even if we then move to three years, we've asked for information between the council's contribution and other routes which I think would be happy to be overridden by the SMPs, happy for officers to do that in the way that works best and we asked for consideration of how RFF will ensure high ethical fundraising standards so Foundation Scotland already have an ethical policy on fundraising which RFF will be aligned to but we think it could go further in the spirit of other things we're talking about today and you're really, really grateful that SMP have made that verbal adjustment and that was, we're very happy to support everything else in there with that, thank you very much. I'll catch on the milleur. Thanks, just briefly to second, erudendum, and just wanted to touch on the fact that it's a bit difficult for us to see the sort of, the disconnect between some of the decision making that we're seeing around funding the third sector and how that works with our strategic goals, so just in particular the first paragraph of our addendum, in March the members that the EIGB had to make cuts to health work in the third sector because of a shortfall of funding from this council and the NHS to them which then, you know, caused those cuts to have to tap place and it just feels quite disconnected to be making those decisions to health organisations funding and then have this paper in front of the committee to funding without any of the levels of evidence that those organisations were providing to us on a regular basis for pretty much the same populations and a lot of the same goals. So I think we just need to take a better approach to how we join up some of that decision making and understanding of where our money is flowing through in the third sector, for what impact and make sure that it's all strategic. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor Wight. Thank you,house, Councillor Wight. Interesting that officers of Ewok have talked to us today about the combination of trust and rigour and I think that's actually the really important bit about this, we have to get that right, is true. That's the whole basis of the amendment we put forward, which is about making sure that sits in the right place and that's about being upfront about what the outcomes we want to achieve and how we're going to measure them before we hand over taxpayer money to support this. I say that having moved a budget or been involved and voting for a budget that would have funded this and part of my problem about rigour is how this has been approached from the council side because it's been seen as a project off on the side and it's not been linked into, as I can see it, everything else we do because it didn't come forward in budget papers. We put something in, others didn't and we're now looking at broad support for it but without the funding being available and a discussion that comes from the reserves. I have a suggestion in my amendment as to how that could be funded and that's from something, we've got £500,000 coming for the next item on proactively maximising income, an area where I think we're all there and the report tells us we're all already doing and off a lot. I wondered whether that would be an appropriate way to do it. I've talked to some others on the committee and I suspect that will be rejected. But we do need to be looking after this first year at how we provide that funding and where we take it from and we need to be looking over the period of the years, it's interesting the ASMP talked about not displacing. Actually this is all about displacing. This is about changing the way we do things and moving from one system to another. So we have to think about how we can take funding from the many millions we spend, some of it ineffectively and move it to an effective way of spending it. If I were a cynic convener, we could have rejected this completely because if I look at the operational plan without the rigor of some outcomes, you could say it's just a lot of people talking to each other at different levels. But I don't want to do that because I think there is an opportunity here by working with different organisations to do something different and in the spirit of the ends poverty goals. But we have to make sure we're actually doing something that meets those goals. I've watched this Council over a very many years spend taxpayer's money in a way that maybe did that for a few people or maybe did it for a short time and then failed. We need to change that and change the dial. So that's why we need the goals in place. I've suggested we have another report to set that out and I've suggested it in a way that doesn't delay or block the project because the final decision has to be made at F&R on the 19th of September and ratified by Council on the 26th. If we bring that report to this committee in August, all of that time can scale and still be met. So I hope that committee will accept the suggestions that we're putting forward. If there is a concern about the use of the £100,000 from practically maximizing income, I can drop that sentence convener. But I do hope that officers can be made to look at how we can fund this in another way properly within the budget, rather than reserves in future years. Thank you, Councillor Thomson. Thanks, Chair. Just two, just a couple of specific points to make on this. The reason why I printed in my budget back in February was, down to the fact that there was attracted to the idea of a new way of doing things and a new way of doing things, if it worked, would produce better results than what we're doing at the moment, then there would have been very good reason to actually increase the amount of money that we're putting in to RFF over time, rather than necessarily just looking at a level commitment for 10 years. So I'm not particularly worried about the displacement of other funds, because if this is successful, then we should be displacing other funds, and actually looking at the ways that work best. I am particularly concerned, though, that we are going to make a decision today to allocate reserves to this year. We don't know what's coming down the line. I suspect June's F&R will be interesting in a sort of hum free, interesting way, but not interesting in a particularly good way. And I think we're going to be facing challenges at that meeting, and then a subsequent meeting in September, that might actually place us in a very difficult situation of looking at allocating reserves for this when there are other competing demands, which have not been communicated to us yet, and have major concerns about that, that we're doing that around reserves. We know what's coming down the road over the next three years of this Council. We know that we have some big decisions to take. I'm going to keep buying in this drum until someone actually listens from another group, but we just can't keep ignoring it. We have hard decisions that we're going to have to take to make sure that the books balance, and we just can't turn around and say it's only 100,000. It's coming out of reserves. Reserves are needed for good reason. And the final thing I want to say is, while I am comfortable with the innovation, when I'm comfortable with the idea of trying to address poverty actions in a new way to get better outcomes, I think it's very difficult without knowing effectively what the KPIs are. And if we don't have that detail, I can assure you that when it comes to F&R in September, I will not foot for it. Because we were just effectively ready to blank check. We need to know what we're going to get for funding our F&F. We need to know their objectives. We need to know how they fit with our objectives, and what we're expecting to see over the first three years as we have put into our amendment. So, Convener, I would be grateful if other groups would consider what I've said, recognizing what's coming, and recognizing that this might be an opportunity at the same time. But actually, let's think about a better way of finding the money and a better way of doing things. I'm happy to second the amendment. Thank you, Councillor DOGR. Any other contributions? Scott online? Yes. Thank you. So, I think just taking a step back, this is a really positive report. And I'm really excited about where this is going to go. There are some of us, given the fact that poverty reduction has been one of our big headline strategic objectives in this council. There have been some of us who have been a bit frustrated at the recommendations from the Public Committee, not coming forward more quickly. So, it is great to see this, which was such an important part of the Commission's recommendations, that we've got a clear plan to move forward. There's two bits that I think it's worth covering off. One is around this £100,000 funding, and the second is around really what comes from the SNP amendment on the requirements for organisations that would be funded. I am actually not one of those people who just feels that we can always tip into reserves when we need to. But I think when there's a good sound investment case for doing so, I think it's worth looking at it. And actually, what I picked up from the report is that's why officers themselves have actually recommended that £100,000 from reserves is used, because this is very much seed funding in terms of how we then go and actually leverage in significant amounts of money going forward. So, it's not just the £100,000 in isolation, it's actually how we are then able to move forward with a process that ultimately does not rob Peter to pay Paul, which is what I feel that part of the SNP, a big part of the Conservative amendment does, because it's taking money away from other parts of our poverty reduction spending. So, if the – I recognise the points being made, but if the Conservatives were able to remove that part of their amendment, I think that would be helpful because on this occasion, on the base of the report, I am happy to go with officers' recommendations on using reserves for this purpose. The second bit around the – really the first part of the SNP addendum, I get where SNP canes are coming from and I recognise that some of the language has been adjusted, and I'm still worried, can we hear that we are layering in requirements and process and potentially bureaucracy for what could be quite small organisations. And ultimately, what I care about from this process is addressing poverty. And so if we've got organisations that can and will do it well, then I don't really think we should be at this stage layering in more requirements. What I'm more interested in is the outcome, is the objective of poverty alleviation actually being addressed, and I think we do need to be careful, that even with aspirations that we're not building in more process for these organisations. And so for that reason, I still have some anxiety about both of the first two paragraphs. I get the reason why they're there and I know that they're there with the best of intentions. But really for me, what I want to make sure, particularly given the length of time it's taken to even get to this place that we're not building in more barriers, that could actually prevent us from simply getting on with this work. Thank you, Karsang. Any other contributions? Nope. Okay. Let's move on. So again thank you, Karsi, for what you're doing. I think you've heard from members that say great piece of work. It's innovative and we hope brings a new approach to how we might fund organisations going forward, given the continued cuts that the city has had from the government. I saw just a clarify, I think it was mentioned earlier that RFA is part of EVOC. It's not, it's hosted by EVOC just now, but it's not part of the EVOC. It is an independent organisation. I think it comes from the media a little bit about it, getting poverty. We've all got this as a key ambition for the city for our 2030 ambition, and this I think is one of the key areas that we would hope to work with the recommendations of the public commission. And I'm able to keep that over by 2030. I share some concerns that Councillor Watt mentioned earlier and Councillor Lange about the S&P amendment forcing quite often small organisations to come up with bureaucratic processes to just get on with doing a work. And I think we all want to hear them projects getting on the delivering. If I think of some of the many projects in North Irma that are working through the R2 project, what they need is access to funding quickly. They don't need lengthy applications in bureaucracy to help them deliver for poverty. Lea touched on earlier, the sectors in other words that work people in poverty know what they're doing. They don't need other layers of bureaucracy from the Council. So I'm firstly not able to accept the S&P's addendum. I'm happy to accept the Liberal, so the Green Amendment amendment and have to accept the Conservatives as an addendum if they would accept taking out the paragraph, the sentence to start the support. If you'd also detail that £100,000 which I think Ian made reference to. If it ensures agreement in the Committee convener I can do that. I think that our finance officers need to pay attention to Councillor DUCKER's warning given that we're likely to have other constraints on us coming to finance resources. Yep, and this will go to the F&R for that. I think there's probably a majority of us that would rather than come from money already the allocated to respond to poverty. So on that basis, I think we've probably got to go on. That's the convener. So I think we have two positions, so we have a motion move by Councillor Day 2nd, I'd like to request the recommendations in the report and accept the Green Addendum and the Conservative amendment as an addendum with that adjustment that was made by the convener taking out the sentence around the 100K. And against that an S&P amendment move by Councillor Campbell, seconded by Councillor KUMAR, which is as adjusted and accepts the Green Addendum that we move by Councillor MUN for the second of the Council on that one. Okay, so two positions in Administration Motion and an S&P amendment. Could I take the votes first look for the S&P amendment, please. Thank you, and for the motion, please. Thank you. That's nine for the motion and eight for the amendment. The motion is closed. Okay, slightly unexpected, but can we move, take a 15-minute break and come back at 25 past? Sorry, Mandy. Okay, we scheduled lunch in half an hour, so if we can move on with some agenda items and we might just push that back a little bit unless you're all shouting at me. So Jamie. That's going to be the item 7.3 is proactively maximising income. This is a report. Sorry, Chris Adams isn't quite back yet and he's leading that paper. There's no coffee cups. That's why. Okay, I think we're going to come back to the item 7.4 is the report on food overview, council programs, initiatives and regulatory functions. This is a response to a motion by Council of Agenda and it's a report by the executive director of corporate services. The numbers are collected in a green group and a conservative group amendment have been circulated and we have Christine Downey and Sarah Feldman to speak to the report. Christine, anything more to tell us? Nothing more to add. Okay, any questions or comments? No. Okay, let's agreed. Go to Parker. I know you have a brief question. Well, yeah, I do have a brief question. Thank you for the report, excellent. I think it pulls everything together really, hopefully. I have a question about the first appendix which is looking at is a table on page 2 and there's a section that talks about food growing in community gardens, allotments and on social housing land in particular and I am interested in that point around HRA land in particular because I know that we're due a report at housing committee which is looking at opportunities for nature on HRA land and that is looking at the Council's estate improvement program, re-tendering contract, which is a £10 million for a year contract. It feels like there's a very large opportunity for us in terms of supporting community wealth building principles as part of that and also making sure that as we put that out to re-tend it is cognizant of all of the work and all of the strategies that are being pulled together in this paper. So my question really is when we get that report at housing committee in August will it reflect all of the things that we're reading in this report today which I think is good. Justine. Thank you, Councillor. I believe it will. We're very much joined up now with all the services, with all the work that has done to pull this piece of work together so we'll continue to leaves with them before that goes to committee. Thanks, Commissioner. Thank you very much for the report. I've noted that there's a paragraph in the report that talks about how the Council is currently exploring how best to support circular economy opportunities in the city including opportunities in relation to food. I wanted to ask you if you can comment on how existing organisations in the city which are working in this space like the SHOB co-op and food sharing service would be included and potentially even strengthened so that they are a robust part of the city's circular economy systems with regards to food. Thank you, Councillor. Yes, so we've had our initial circular economy roundtable discussion with members and that is setting out a plan for the year ahead and how we can continue to engage. That makes part of the circular economy work. We'll be looking at all of those community organisations and different businesses that we then need to tap into and create essentially some sort of action plan to continue to move the circular economy work forward. Thank you very much, Canavino. Thank you to the officers for this report. It's a very wide-ranging report and it has a lot of useful information in it. At this time we just want to zoom in on a particular couple of points that sit at 5.3 and 5.4 in particular. And it's talking about obviously the development of the national policy by Scottish Government and the funding issues that might emerge from that. I wonder if officers could describe a little bit more about what the expectations are around this and on timing as well, attached to that. And really what they expect to see within the next little part that would allow us to implement some of this work. Thank you. Thank you, Ambassador. Thank you, Councillor. At this point in time there is no guarantee of funding from the Scottish Government. We're not entirely sure what that will look like but we know that the Goodford Nation plan will need to be developed by the Council next year once that's all been approved. So at this point in time we're still continuing to leave with the officers leading the Goodford Nation plan at the Scottish Government and we can certainly inform members when that becomes more apparent around the funding. Canavino, could I come back in here please? Thank you for the answer. I wonder if you could make that return to committee in terms of information on it in a slightly more formal way so we know that we're at least getting a business person and/or briefing coming our way. Kristi? Yes, no problem at all. We'll continue to keep committee updated. Thank you very much. Thank you. Councillor DOGgan. Thanks, Jagener. Question about 5.2, in the report which is next steps and Senators going to be a report brought this C&C towards the end of the year to give options and highly additional funding for this financial year is going to be spent. I take it with that report coming solely in the year that the additional money allocated is not going to be spent during 24/25. Apologies. I'll need to go back and check with the officers leading that report and get confirmation of that for you. A confirmation of which bit of report, please. We might, Councillor DOGgan, just need to check on the terms of any funding because it might be that we can get projects ready. It might be one of those things if their contracts lack within the year but delivery can be later. If we can just take that away and make sure that's included in the C&C report, is that okay? I think it would be quite helpful if we could have an answer to that question provided as well. I think it's quite a reasonable question. I'll need to go back and double check with the services, Councillor. I'll come back to you. Thank you. I have no other questions. Thank you, Christine, and thank you to Sarah for the work. We've had one out of note. It's a huge piece of work, so please show what you've done in that. I'm happy to move the report and my colleague, Councillor F corner, who leads on the Edwil Edmira works unable to get here, I think, social asset apologies to be keen to contribute about the work that's happening through Edwil Edmira as well. I think there's some concern. I think I had a report in the response we had from Christine in terms of, and yet again, having another Scottish Government priority with no resources as of yet, and undoubtedly not enough to do that. But I suppose it doesn't stop us getting on with being ambitious and trying to prove what we can within the resources we've got, so I'm not happy to move the report. In second, Councillor Rot. Just a second, though, formally. Thank you, Councillor, thank you. Thank you. Councillor, thank you, Delaney. Thank you, Convener, and I'm grateful for Councillor Di McInnes for moving my amendments, because the request that we're making is exactly that. There's some clarity around the funding that may or may not be forthcoming from Scottish Government for this proposal and what resources are going to be needed from us ahead of budget setting process. So I think that'd be very useful to have, and I'm very glad to hear officers say that that's something that can be provided for us. But overall, I think this is a really helpful thing to see this, you know, being looked at in the hall, and obviously this is going to be a statutory requirement, so it's nice when those things line up. So with that, I just move our amendment. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Lai. Councillors interjecting. Just a second. Thank you very much. Yes, so I think the report is very clear that food is absolutely central in terms of our ambitions for anti-poverty work and also work on the climate nature emergencies, and I think it's also a really good example of work that can happen around the theme of climate justice, and that was referenced earlier as a priority in terms of the next stage of work of the poverty commission. So in this vein, we are concerned from the report that, you know, we are at risk of this work not being progressed as we wait for kind of news and funding from the Scottish Government, so that's why we're moving this specific request for directors to look at temporary resource within the Council to continue to advance this work. Paul has mentioned that of course there are projects that we can prepare and bring forward and shape in advance of the good food nation bill coming through, so we absolutely just want to make sure that that happens. I think it goes really nicely in hand with the Liberal Democrat addendum as well because we will need a fuller update in advance of next year's budget setting process. So this, I think, sort of the idea is to bridge the gap or tie us over until then as far as is possible, so really just try to keep this on the agenda. Thank you. Councillor McGack? Can we have an amendment? Sorry. Can we - I know this probably won't go down very well with the Committee but it does strike me that there is an awful lot in here where the Council at the behest of the Scottish Government is getting into state overreach in a way that strikes me as just being about nanny state gone mad. Food is a very personal thing, food is a very individual thing and the libertarian in me just finds some of this rather odd communist thing thinking around some of this. Very weird, frankly, people make their own individual decisions and also food is much cheaper than it's ever been. So we have had recent inflation but that comes from a period where food prices have generally gone down over decades. So there is - it strikes me as odd that we should want to completely change the food network when the fact is that we have good growing and farming methods that have allowed worldwide people to thrive and benefit from more nutritious food and better nutrition everywhere. That said, the concept of what I really want to talk about and what we're pushing an amendment on is the fact that this is just yet another example of where the Scottish Government decides to push something onto local authorities without giving us any resources or proper guidance about what we should actually be doing. There is no funding that comes with this yet we've got to provide another glossy document, a good food nation strategy or whatever it's called, that we have to provide under their guidance their direction but what difference will it make to people in Edinburgh? Probably very little and it comes at a time when we're really struggling for resource as we've heard on other things whether it's actually making practical interventions that really do make a big difference to people's family incomes to help poverty or for that matter finding social care for people, getting our services right for children with additional needs. All of these things, very difficult and yet we hear we're making cuts in these services. This is symptomatic of the whole agenda here. If we did away with most of this agenda and spent our resources and our time on our core services I think we'd do better for the people in Edinburgh but that's unlikely but what we should do is at least say to the Scottish Government if you're going to make in positions on us then you have to fund it, you have to resource us properly to make sure that we can take them forward. Thank you Kelly. Just a very quick one, convener. It's no surprise to say that we will not be accepting the Conservatives' amendment. I think outside this committee I would like to have a discussion with Councillor White because I must not be shopping in the right places and perhaps my constituents are perhaps not shopping in the right places because we get a lot of case work saying to us that families are really, really struggling to afford to heat and eat and I think his comment that food prices are going down, I know we should have laughed but this is a real struggle for families in Edinburgh and I'm really disappointed with that comment but I will leave it there. Thank you. Okay thank you. The note for that, I'm so, just a sum up, I so agree that the comments made the consumer. I think I'm here in my ward in North Edinburgh I'm sure people do across the city but the huge energy cost of expense, the huge food costs, the huge rent costs and for people who are struggling, that is a real struggle when you've got three components of your income being attacked every month and I don't see that changing anytime soon. I do agree because I like to comment about when we're forced to deliver policies from the government without resources, it puts most of you know, well council resources on members of staff who are working hard to deliver these policies so thank you for the work and again I want to thank council for changing that and the Edinburgh for the work they've been doing on this as well. In terms of the amendments in front of us, I have to accept that the board democrat addendum. I think council parker was happy to make a minor amendment to the second paragraph if you would have to change that to how would we have to accept that? Yes, sorry I forgot, so it's changed the word weather to how? At 1.1.5. Yeah so 1.1.5 a week, the effort asked them to take the capital services to explore how and how to accept section 2 of the conservators which is in the report as an addendum. With that are we happy? Can I move a different position accepting the Liberal democrats and the green positions please? Okay. Do a seconder. Councillor Campbell. Formally. Yeah. Just before we go to the vote then can I just ask Councilor quite to confirm are you wishing to press your amendment? Yes, we will press an amendment, thank you. Okay and I think we have 3 positions but correct me if I'm wrong. We have a motion moved by Councillor DAY, seconded by Councillor Watts which agrees the recommendations and the report and accepts the Liberal democrats as an addendum. Power graph 2 of the conservative group amendment as an addendum and the green addendum as adjusted. Against that we have the conservative amendment moved by Councillor white, seconded by Councillor DOGGert which is as circulated and the S&B amendment moved by Councillor CUMAR and seconded by Councillor Campbell which agrees the recommendations in the report and accepts the Liberal democrats group and green addendams, so 3 positions. So administration motion, conservative amendment and S&P amendment. Okay. I think I'm seeing that. So can I take the votes firstly for the S&P amendment? Thank you and for the conservative amendment and for the administration motion please. Thank you. So that's 10 for the motion 2 for the conservative amendment and 5 for the S&P amendment. The motion is carried. Thank you. Thank you very much. Go back to 7.3 and welcome Chris. So item 7.3 is proactively maximising income. This is a report by the Executive Director of Corporate Services, an administration amendment, S&P group amendment, green group amendment and a conservative group amendment have been speculated and Chris Adams will speak to move. Chris, I'm going to add to this wonderful report. Only to apologise from my tidiness. I'm happy to take any questions. Sorry. Questions? Thank you. Thanks for the report. I'm really pleased to see plans for this money that was made by Manna. I suppose, I'm asking if you could talk through why -- how you came to conclusion that this allocating the money in this way was the best way to do it. So obviously we have some unfunded in the budget. We had some funds around discretionary housing payment. We had the Scottish welfare payment top up that we were told were under -- under resourced and we had, I think, over a million pounds missing from the Scottish welfare fund top up. When we had to change priority of who was able to access that meant we weren't allowed to provide as many crisis grants. So if you could talk about why this is -- we're investing in capacity rather than cash to people. That would be really helpful. And then, I think also in reference to one of the amendments, just how were the allocations within that being decided and what's that based on? Thank you. Okay. Thank you. So in putting this together, we did two things. One is doing assessments of areas that we thought were under pressure. We could do some additional capacity funding in there. That's across the poverty actions that we do with areas where we thought there was obvious pressures we could support with this. We're also very, very guided by both the wording of the motion and the discussion at council when the motion was discussed, which was very, very strongly talking about the importance of both advice services to help people maximize benefits up takes. But also the important work that the crisis support teams do in terms of Scottish welfare fund, DHP type payments, those places. So what we've done with this is try to get the balance between filling in two areas where we know that there is our current resource pressures and that is our crisis funds. That's why we've put an allocation into that. But also in our money and welfare advice commission services across the city, which have been under pressure and had a few cuts from other funders in the past few months. So we're trying to backfill some of those cuts using this funding to make sure we can maintain capacity in that sector through this year and extend it a little bit as well. In that we've also been looking at what we can do with this resource to, given that this is just a one year fund, putting all of that money in to see investing in a huge expansion of money welfare advice in one year would cause us some issues in terms of next year and also would probably not be deliverable. So we wanted to use a bit of the fund to try and set us up for future years to be a bit smarter in the way that we target our benefits up take campaigning work, but also in the way that we scale up and give frontline workers in the city the tools they need to help people access benefits and other support without having to go through the route of a full benefits check with it and advise. So that's why we've cut this into three. The one is more money for commission welfare advice. The second bit is data tools to help us target our resource better and to help more and more people who work in the council to provide very basic support for people. And the third bit is to put money directly into the hands of people through the top in our crisis funds. That's the strategy. Thank you, coach McInnes. Thank you very much. And thank you for the report. I think it's a very useful one to bring forward. And I did however just want to hold in a couple of points really to try and get a bit more of the thinking that sat behind why the report was written in a particular way. And so when we look at paragraphs, 4.3 and 4.4, there's a lot of discussion there about the current rates of poverty and understandably so and the fact that there have been some measures taken as highlighted 4.3 that have kept some 2,000 children in Edinburgh outside of poverty, thankfully. But then we then go on to say in 4.4 that the overall poverty trends across Scotland, Edinburgh show little overall change in the year 2023. More evidence that people experiencing deeper, more severe forms of poverty. Now we know that there are some very specific actions that have been taken place through the Scottish Government, notably the Scottish Child payment, notably the assurance that nobody in Scotland needs a bedroom tax. For example, those are concrete measures which are designed to keep people out of poverty. And yet at 4.4, none of that is mentioned but also none of the causes of why we're then seeing the statement that 4.4 that we're showing little overall change in the year, what the causes of that are despite these actions from the Scottish Government. Now I appreciate that this report, the email report, is very much about indicating what we can do. And I understand that very clearly. But I think it would have benefited from quite a bit more context around for example the inflationary impact of Brexit, the inflationary impact of it, sorry, the difficulties produced by austerity, the long running austerity programs that have been a result of UK Government decisions and also clearly the impact around the trust government actions. So I just wondered why there was a decision need not to provide a wider contextual background to this particular piece because clearly what the report is trying to do and I very much appreciate the same is to highlight the situation in Edinburgh and what actions we can take. But that contextual information I believe to be quite a problematic commission. So yeah absolutely take that come as a board, I guess what we've tried to do with this report is cover quite a lot of ground in setting up the context for the investment that we've made and clearly we've possibly bit enough more than we can chew in that space and not covered in enough detail. Just have I give a little bit more on the two paragraphs that we did include but what we were trying to do with the report was basically say that this investment that we're putting forward doesn't come in a vacuum, it comes on the top of an awful lot of work that is already delivered by a Councillor and Partners, so that is why we started by emphasizing that to this is part of and in line with our overall in-poverty plan, it is part of and adding to the successful work that we think has already taken place. We wanted to say something about what we can say about the impact of that work overall and that is that estimate that we think around about 2,000 children have been kept out of poverty because of the work that's been done in the city. Now where that comes from that is directly from Scottish government analysis that was published in February, it looks at all of the Scottish government funded programmes that are and gives a cumulative impact assessment on those. What they say is around half of the impact that the Scottish government has achieved is through the Scottish child payment and the other half is through essentially programmes that are delivered by local government, so that is crisis funds, the DHP employability support, all of the programmes that you've mentioned. So what we've tried to say is take that 50% that's not the Scottish child payment and make an assessment of the things that we've delivered that are done in that report, what has been the impact of it, that's where that 2,000 comes from. So we're trying to do with the reports say this is in the context of adding to work that is having an impact, but it is also in the context of work that we know from other Scottish government estimates that poverty rates overall are staying static, haven't changed in the past few years now. What we haven't done in the report is go into all of the drivers and context behind that and that's just because the purpose of the report was to get to what we're going to do in the back of it. Now where we will have the opportunity to delve much more deeply into all of those causes is in our annual poverty report which lands in October/November and that will also be used as the evidence base for the Edinburgh Poverty Commission's work in the autumn too, so by the time we get to that final quarter of the year we will have that kind of full analysis and that full picture provided for you but very happy to talk out of line, very happy to brief members any time about what our current thinking is about current trends and all of the data there. I hope that's helpful. Thank you, Councillor KUMARRA. Thank you, it can be done, thank you very much Chris, for the report, I suppose I've got two questions. The first one is on 4.7. You've talked about the investment of 200,000 and the use of data and article tools that's needed. I suppose my question is what tools are currently used and are we tapping into already existing data out with the Council? The second one was around 4.8 where you've identified that the Crisis Fund supported at least 250 families, which is fantastic. Can I understand? Is that 250 people families who applied for it or received the grant, I'm assuming it's the latter, it's people who received the grant, but do you have a figure in terms of how many people actually apply for the grant and perhaps don't get some assistance, thank you. Okay, so I'll take that second part of the question first. So that 250 is not people who've benefited so far, that's a very broad estimate of the number of families we think would be supported by 150,000 pounds additional investment. So that's what that would be. And that's very, very roughly just based on average grant payments paid over the past 12 months, that's where that comes out in. To the second part your question, I don't have that, but we can give that kind of analysis and in fact that would be part of the analysis of overall social security and benefits work that we would include in our November end poverty report and which we've put in the next step in the report. In the first part on data analytics tools, so in terms of our outreach work and targeting work so far, there's two sets of data that we tend to use. One is just the general poverty statistics and we have those broken down by ward and different levels and we use that as a way of analyzing where we need general support for frantic poverty work. We also have some work that goes on within the place directorates on targeting outreach towards people who are at risk of homelessness and at risk of financial distress. And they use data that we have on rent arrears and counter tax arrears to help us get ahead of the game a little bit and offer some benefits checks and health financial health advice before situations get to crisis point. That's the kind of things we do already. What we'd like to do with this work is take a look at other third party tools that are out there and there's two in particular that we've had conversations with. One is through the university and the other is our third sector supported product which is used in other councils which takes some of our administrative data, joins it together with secondary data sets that are already available and can give some quite disaggregated fine-tune insights into where specific benefits might be needing some support. So for instance, where are there older people who are not claiming other venture credits? That gives us an opportunity to go in and do that work up and in a way that's a lot more targeted than we're currently able to. That's the kind of conversation we've been having so far. Thank you. Councillor HEAP. Thank you very much, Kim Bien. Thank you for this really helpful report. Can I ask just about the status of the different funds? So there's essentially obviously different strands of funding in 2.1, 2.2.2.3. Can I ask, am I right in thinking? In 2.2.2, the money for data analytics tools and that kind of thing. Am I right in saying that's relatively permanent in the sense that once you've made the tweaks to the system and you've paid for the software, whatever it is, that essentially continues or keep that forever. Whereas, am I right in saying that the money in 2.2.3, that's essentially a larger one-off because it's presumably paying for wages to boost capacity, but that's a one-off. So that's your one-off spend. That won't renew each year. Is that correct? I would also appreciate if we did transfer money from 2.2.2.3, which I think is being suggested, would that be helpful? Thank you. First point of principle, all of the investment here we've assumed and we think is in year spent, so it would be just for spent by end of March next year. There's no assumption here of any ongoing impacts. So the Commissioned work would be commissioning extra money advice, basically buying a more advice time between now and the end of this financial year. The Crisis Fund would be money to get to people's pockets this financial year and the data analytics tools and other things that we've got in there. It would essentially be for us to build a pilot and then build a business case for future investments. So if that works, then you would see another report coming further down the line asking for a longer-term resource. That's the way we've worked that. In terms of transferring some from one to the other, what we've made an assumption here is that the first two items are dependent on us being successful in commissioning and getting work out the door in that timeframe, which can be quite challenging. So we've put on a line in the report that says, Any underspend we expect on either of the first two will go over and directly go into the Crisis Funds, because that's the one place where we're very confident, every penny we put in there will go out the door pretty much as soon as we put it in. So we've put that in there to give us enough flexibility to get all the benefit we think we can get from everything that's in 2.2. If you were to make that shift in advance, then it would limit some of the things we could do in that space. But we would be committee's decision. We would work on that. Okay. There are no further questions. So we can go to the report. I'm happy to move to the report. Again, thanks to Christian's team for their work, thanks and what they're doing in terms of addressing all the poverty measures. I think they work the end poverty in redone, we've heard earlier that the public commission will meet again in the next month or so to hear progress in this was reset that dial in terms of what's happening in the country. Now, as you go forward, so I'm happy to move the report that's in front of us. I'll come back to that. I'm the seconder of the cutting some art. Thank you, Comvener. In seconding this report and our amendment, which I think we are doing, sorry I should have said that we were amendment with that, and you're seconder. Thank you. I'd just like to indicate as members know that in the housing committee agreed a tenant hardship fund to support our tenants. And the reason I mention that is it embedded into that is a scrutiny of benefit and entitlements to people. Because we know that a long-term solution to people's poverty is in making sure that they are claiming the benefits to which they're entitled. And I want in that context to read out a quote from the director and founder of policy in practice where they point out that in 2024 22.7 billion pounds and I want to emphasize a billion pounds has been identified in unclaimed benefits. That's a 21% increase on earlier estimates and moving on to the quote. This is not just about the money, it's about the profound impact on people's lives. Support from the social security system is a right. The failure to deliver support to people who are entitled to it directly affects education, health outcomes and social participation for millions of people. We can't afford not to close the unclaimed support gap. And the reason I want to highlight that quote is that one of the asks in our amendment is to request further insight into the scale and source of unclaimed benefits in Edinburgh. And the reason that is important is that only when understanding levels of unclaimed benefits can we address unmet needs and structural gaps in the welfare system. And for these reasons I second the report and the amendment in the name of the administration. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, convener. Thank you for bringing the report to. I think this is a really important report and my amendment for the first part is just trying to ensure that we are using good language I suppose, the escape from poverty slightly just sits not right with me I suppose, so that's a first thing. The second thing was around our proposal to slightly tweak the current proposals in front of us. I want to put an extra £50,000 into back into people's pockets and one of the things that Chris has nicely put for me is that the current £150,000 proposed will go on to help around 250 families. That additional £50,000 using that calculation will mean that we can now support an additional 84 families. Now that might not sound a lot but actually we've got this funding for just one year and given that we are on a cost of crisis stage at the moment, I'd rather put that money back into people's pockets where we are going to make that difference right away. I have proposed that we decrease the recommendation on 2.2.3, sorry 2.2 back to 150, not because I don't believe in data and sources, I'm a huge data geek and anything that increases our data sources, I'm all for it. But given that we've just approved 7.2 report, I think it won't be lost. I think that there will be space to actually do that work that you're suggesting but right now I would prefer that we put just a tiny bit more money back into people's pockets because that's what I'm hearing at the doorsteps, that's what I'm hearing from my constituents and that's I think will make the most amount of difference with that one year additional funding that we have, I'm happy to move. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor McHanney. Thank you, just a second formally for all the reasons given by Councillor Kumar, thank you. Thank you. Councillor Mumford. Thank you, it's actually going to be Councillor HEAP if that's okay, apologies to- Councillor interjecting. It's going to be Councillor HEAP to propose, if that's okay, sorry. Councillor SRI. Good afternoon, thank you very much, Canvena. I just want to very briefly recant an experience I've had with a local resident who was not aware of their entitlement to disability or their likely entitlement to disability benefits. Because they had missed out on this money over the last winter, the heating hardly has been on and they've had to cancel their home internet contract. I'm glad to say that, no, that resident is now applying for Scottish Adelaide disability payment and I haven't heard yet, but I'm hopeful that person will know be eligible for a very significant amount of money. It will be into the thousands per year and likely to cover the energy bills and the internet bills, they weren't previously able to pay. I think it's just a very good vignette, a very good example of the incredible amount of difference we can make to people and to communities. Sometimes it can be as simple as just pointing people in the right direction. Some people of course need more help and more support, but we can achieve huge increases in people's income if we invest in welfare rights, advice and other support to help people claim what they're entitled to. I just wanted to point out in our motion specifically the work of policy and practice. As we have from Council Marl Day have produced some new estimates, which have taken the estimates of unclaimed benefits from 15 billion to about 23 billion. I think it was because of new ways they've had of working this out. And in the Council, we are still working on 2019 estimates from five years ago, because we've not been able to update those. We may now be able to do that if we engage with policy and practice. So all I'm suggesting in the amendment is that we look at maybe using some of that money to look into why the policy and practice could help us generate new estimates. Because if we're doing take it work across the city without knowing really how many people are underclaiming as an estimate. We are kind of doing this with one hand, a tie behind our backs. So that's the major contribution of our motion as well is just also just to check up on progress for reporting back on my motion, which is mentioned in Councilar's motion, if you're following that. In terms of the annual update report process, which we agreed in December and will come at some point this year, but the report's just not precisely when that will come and what form. So it's just asking for a little bit of information on that as well. And I will leave it there. Thank you, Vina. Seconder Councillor MUN >> Thank you, thank you. Much later. Thank officers for the report and the work on this. I'm obviously really pleased to see that this will have impacts soon for people in Edinburgh and can go some way to address some of the cuts that have been felt by those teams. I just want to echo everything. Councillor Heepa said with regards to our addendum and also to speak to the other amendments that have been put through. So absolutely agree with the principal behind the SMPs amendment that we want to be putting money in people's pockets. But I think we haven't heard anything that convinces us that that will be given some of the capacity issues that were raised by Chris in the problems of just giving teams additional budget for one year and not being able to continue that. We're not convinced that that the movement of that allocation of £50,000 will be the most effective use of it. And obviously we disagree with the Conservative group amendment as it relates to the previous decision. Thanks. Councillor wait. Conveneoed the amendment we've put in for this was consequential on 7.2 and as we drop that bit, then this one will be withdrawn. Any other comments? Councillor Bion, why? Thank you, can you hear? So really just to echo the comments that Councillor Mumford just made which I agreed with, I think what we've got before us is a mixture of money for the attempts to try and for some immediate poverty alleviation and money for poverty prevention and both are good things and are deserving of being funded. But it's because of the fact that this is one-off funding with no guarantee that this money will be available in future and that, like Councillor Mumford, I am persuaded by the recommendations that are set out in the paper, which looks to try and ensure that the money that is required to make the changes that are necessary to ensure that we are doing this better, not just this year, but every year going forward, is there. And when we look at the number of families that are being affected, I take Councillor CUMAR's point entirely in terms of the number. But equally with the investment that's there, what I'm hoping is that there will be many more people that we can help every year going forward. So again, I accept the reasoning and the rationale for the S&P agreement. I think we're all reasonably aligned generally. I think it's just more around the detail. But on this, I am persuaded that the breakdown the officers have set out is the right approach. Thank you. Councillor Lange, any other comments? No. I mean, in terms of something up, I would just agree with the comments Councillor Mumford and Lange have made. I think we need to get to the bottom of it if we can help 50 families with 50 pounds to pay for the shop in this week, that's great. But if we can help another 200 people get the proper benefits or into work, that for me is the recommendation that we need to be pushing forward. If we had more and more resources, they would, of course, love to do both. But I totally respect the S&P's position with the component. But I think on this one, we need to get to the bottom of this and get the 80 million or so of unclaimed benefits that sits there into people's pockets and more and more people into work. Should they be happy? There are children. This is an unfortunate Sector, S&P amendment. I was concerned, whites with drawers, withdrewers and helped accept the Greens as an addendum to the paper. Are we okay with that? I assume in the S&P, what to press their position? Are you accepting the agreement? Yes, please. So I would like to push and agree, the Green position and the Labor position, of course, the First Land says, exclude the current funding proposals, so that would be the amended funding proposals. But, with that exception, yes, wishing. So, sorry, accepting all of the Green as an addendum, is that right? Accepting all of the Greens. All of the Labor, which currently says, approve the funding proposals. But that would be the amended funding proposals. But the entirety of that, and the concept of this one, has been one — has been one. Okay, so we have two possessions. Motion moved by Councillor DAY, seconded by Councillor Mar, which is the Administration amendment as circulated, and that also accepts the Green amendment as an addendum. And, against that, we have the S&P amendment moved by Councillor Mar, seconded by Councillor MACKINNIS, which is as circulated, and that also accepts the Green and Administration positions as an addendum. Can I take the votes firstly for the S&P amendment, please? Thank you, and for the motion, please. Thank you. That's 12 for the motion and 5 for the amendment. The motion is carried. So I suggest you take a lunch break now for half an hour, do a quarter two. We've got a lot of work to get through, so we come back for a quarter two. Thank you. A accessibility of council information. This is a report by the Executive Director of Corporate Services, an S&P group addendum and a Green group addendum have been circulated and Gavin Kendall speak to the report. Gavin, what do you do? Just to add that, since the report was published, colleagues in communications and policy insight have met and recently discussed the need for a full accessibility scoping exercise to be carried out, that would include some of the things that I mentioned in the amendment, such as the easy read elements. That's going to have a look at what is available in terms of accessibility tools and resources. It is in the next steps, but it's probably not clear enough. What has become apparent when we were doing this with a work pulling it together is that there was more need for this to be, I suppose, coordinated and pulled together, and that work is happening. We've got Lucy Pearson there, our online who's coming to the council and we'll be doing a lot of this and pulling this together. There is going to be future work which will be incorporated into the development and launching the new equalities and diversity framework. This will hopefully ensure this coordinated approach both in terms of the work streams and in terms of budget and resource requirements. Happy taking any questions. Thank you, Gavin. Any questions, comments? Thank you very much and thank you for the report. I wanted to ask about disabled people's organisations. There's lots of ongoing work with relevant bodies, externally, job centre, social security Scotland, citizen's advice, et cetera, et cetera, to ensure that citizens receive appropriate jargon, fee and knowledge of support. But have we or do we and will we work with any disabled people's organisations as part of this? I will look hopefully at Lucy online and hopefully she's going to come in on this one. No problem. Yes, so the plan is to work with disabled people's organisations and for context my background is third sector around accessible information. I'm going to link in some of those organisations but also do a bit of a scope exercise to see what other organisations exist across the city and to look at this work. Yes, very much. If we are in front of this activity to be led by those specialists working in this field. Thank you. I've got three specific questions about online comms. I don't know if there is anyone that's going to be able to answer them. But just on 4.12.2 around social media accessibility. There's currently no alt text put on any council posts. So it seems like although the learning is happening and you've talked about three sessions per year, that this is not being applied so how can we make sure that happens? That is a requirement for a WCAGA standard which is the minimum requirement on public bodies so I think we are failing on that so I don't know if that is being marked in any of our, like he said, responses or just anything, like in our risks where are we monitoring that stuff. So social media alt text. And then the website, it talks about initiatives and training to ensure the website is improved and accessibility stands as a met. Not clear if it's referring to every council website or just the main one. Obviously we have a number of micro sites and our understanding is that modern gov is hosted separately so it is masked to look like the animal website bit isn't. And then finally just on 4.23.8 around PDF accessibility on web pages. I just had any information on timescales or targets around that. And just to flag that the web page on how to create an accessible PDF on the website has broken links in it so you can't get to the bits that help you do it. Thank you. In terms of the website, I will follow that up. I don't have an answer for you now at the moment but I will follow that up in terms of what it plays to as well. In terms of modern gov, as you mentioned, we are going, having a look at what we are potentially replacing in terms of our contract with modern gov, that is with them or with others. But what we are ensuring in terms of that contract going forward is that the accessibility element and what we do with PDFs for instance is a central element of that. So that will be a requirement for that contract going forward. Well, if I'm honest before, it was just a desirable impact that we wanted before. Now, we are making sure that this is essential and that anything that organisations do, this has to be a central point of it. So, I can follow up on those and see what information we can get for you. Thank you. That's really good to hear. I don't know if anyone can say about the social media sort of accessibility learning and how that's... You're calling online. Yeah, no problem. I can't see much about learning but I can say that we have reviewed this as part of our plan for developing this work this year. We want to look at how we can make our posts on social media as accessible as possible using that kind of bulk text or map also, looking at videos and things as well and bringing things to life and a slightly different way for viewers. Thank you. Casa, come on. Thank you. Can you read on? Thank you, officers, for the report. My question is around our engagement with people who have experienced all of learning disabilities. If I was someone with profound learning disabilities, how would I go about accessing a policy, for example, and what engagement have you had so far with these communities? Happy for me to come in there, Gavin. Yes, please, Lucy. No problem, thank you. So this meeting that I had with communications happen in the past couple of weeks, this is a very early stage discussion for me from the quality angle. However, I do believe that when we'll build together a list of organisations, start having these discussions with and making sure that they're fully engaged in the process. I don't know if you want to be part of your idyllic answer at all, but please feel free to jump in. It's just about how would somebody with learning disability access current policies. Okay. Yeah, so I can't comment on the work that's been done to date on some of this, but I do know that this is part of our strategy, to review this for the quality diversity and inclusion framework. We'll be looking at full accessibility for people with learning disabilities, which will be around that kind of easy to format slightly, but really keen to go out and look at the different tools that are available and different strategies that could be applied to public information. Thank you. Chris Offarke. Yeah, very brief comment. Just really coming back of what Lucy has said and say that the sole reason we have brought Lucy into this new role is to try and bring all this work together into much more structured manner and drive it through error equality framework, which will be reporting next year. So I hope in the future this all seems much more planned out. Okay. Sorry. So the reason I was asking that is just trying to understand what our current practices are. So, for example, and I'm talking from constituent queries. So a carer and someone with learning disabilities, we're trying to access policies or be able to do the council text or whatever it is, and currently they can't access our system. They can't access the information. So I think building into that is something about what is so it's great to have a policy and it's great to have things coming back. I think that's important. But what is happening right now? So right now, people can access that. And I think as a bare minimum, we should be able to be in a position to say if you can't access that, we will get you an easy new profession. We can give you additional support, we can have office, etc, etc. So those things are missing for me, and it's good to have a policy that will bring these things back, but it's not happening right now. And that's the bit that is slightly concerning me. So I can't entirely answer your question, and because I truthfully don't know myself, but that is probably brought Lucy in to try and draw all those different pieces together to think about it across the organisation from a user perspective. So I completely see what you're saying. And it's not definitely not just about policy. It's about making sure that people have the right conversations and making changes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I think it's been a useful discussion so far. I think the report, broadly speaking, for me, I really welcome the comments that we've made in introducing the report because I think that the report doesn't go deep enough. I think it doesn't go wide enough and I think it's not ambitious enough in terms of what the Council needs to be doing in terms of accessible communications. I think my question really is about the next steps within the report. So 4.23.11 talks about the Council's conformance to web content accessibility guidelines and it says that we're nearly at that double A standard. Now, we know, in fact, Council Mumford's question indicates that actually, I don't think we're even meeting the A standard, which is a problem. I think across most public bodies, we would expect to see institutions at a double A standard. So I think we are falling behind in that respect. And I suppose I feel like as a leader in this city in terms of the work that we're trying to do around access and inclusion, we should be a lot more ambitious. And I guess my question is, I'm not currently convinced that this report explains how we're going to get to those higher standards. And I think that there are some pieces of work that this Council does in particular. So I'm thinking things like the budget consultation, which are really, really important. And I would expect us to be hitting that triple A standard, let alone not even achieving the bare minimum. So I guess my question is, throughout this next piece of work looking at this in the round, will we also be identifying specific communications where we need to be making sure that we're absolutely nailing this and using them as examples of good practice going forward? Sorry. It's because I can't see anyone. And yeah, so I think this part of this next stage of work is about reviewing everything that communication applies to making sure that we're empowering our residents and visitors in the city to be involved in different processes and engaging with us as an organisation. So yeah, that's very much the plan and if through the scoping exercise, mapping exercise, we are able to identify in particular areas that we need to focus our energy on. And we will be considering them as a development piece in the new framework. But I think it's worth saying as well, if there's things that we can do now, we are planning to do that as well. We're not just going to sit until the publication of the new framework. There will be things we'll be able to do as immediate fixes. But again, as we do have our communications team here with us today, I would like to take this away and have that discussion with them. Thank you. Thank you. There are a little bit of attention, mate. Thank you, since I think you can be done. It's very interesting to see this report. I wasn't quite sure what it was aimed at, whether it was aimed at groups with special accessibility needs, or the general public. And I think both are an issue. I'll give you a couple of examples. If I go onto our website and I want to look at planning application view or comment on a planning application, it takes you three clicks before you get to the page. Three clicks all say the same thing before you get to the page where you can search for the site. If I want to plot the cycling centre, it takes quite a lot of clicks in the page and quite complex. If I think of other big organisations, they're using chatbots, they're using semi-automated forms, there's all sorts of stuff going on to help you. And they have a lot more transactions that are automated, which we've been promised for. So, is there a plan to upgrade the website so that works for everyone? That should include all of the appropriate accessibility things for those who have different accessibility needs. But right now, even searching committee papers very rarely comes up with anything. Someone once suggested to me use Google and put in Edinburgh Council on what you want, rather than searching in the search and committee papers. So, what can we do to upgrade that general experience so the information is there and easily accessible for everyone. Hi there. Thank you, Candina. Just to come in, just assist with the conversation. So, we do have chatbots already in customer contact, but just to answer Councillor Faiks' questions we're exploring some really exciting conversations and artificial intelligence and how we could potentially use that across the website that we've seen happen in other local authorities. Clearly, we'll have to build business cases around about that and look at funding and actually look at the efficiencies that we gain, but certainly something that we're passionate about and we're exploring right now. Sorry. Do we have any time skills on that kind of work? Is there a general web refresh that will happen as part of that, or even if that doesn't come forward through business cases? I think, Councillor Hight, in terms of the discussions that we're having, they're quite high level right now. We're working with a couple of vendors on how they can assist, not even just on the website, but how they can help us, I guess, organizationally with artificial intelligence. I would say that we'll actually look to shape those conversations up and potential business cases across the next six months. But in the meantime, what we are doing, and I think what's in this report is engaging with lots of different sectors out there to understand how we can tactically improve our offering before we get into the longer term solution. So I'd anticipate having something that people can look at in the next six months. Thank you. Okay. Sorry, Kim, so doggo. Yep, just to pick up on something that Nicola said there, and she said she's looking at what other local authorities are doing, are we looking at private sector organizations, because they do tend to be a five years ahead of us, in what's going on? So why are we limiting ourselves to the public sector when best practice is actually going to be found in the private sector? And I don't think that's controversial or political, so I'm sure nobody would object to learning from the private sector where the best practice exists. We're not buying services, it's just the question about who we speak to. Thank you, Councillor Goge and thank you for the question, yes it does include private sector. I'm from a private sector background. As you know, working in the Council for six years, the conversation that we've had has included both private and public sector. It's really interesting because there is no one leading the way on this, so we're having conversations with two particular vendors where private sector organisations have been involved and those conversations have been really enriched. And we are across the next few weeks having one of those vendors into actually speak to corporate services management team in their particular offering and how they've supported both private and public sector. So really interesting conversations shaping up and then following those conversations, what we'll take the actions away and try and formulate it into business cases to see how, I guess, we can use that technology to enhance our offering out to, I guess, vulnerable residents and those needing assistance just to access standard council services. And just hearing about the clicks on the website, that is something that we are looking at working with service areas to reduce the clicks and make that information more accessible. So we've got some tactical conversations that are going on right now as well as some long-term solutions that we're considering, but considering what activities going on in both public and private sector. Okay, thank you for that, Nicola. If we move to the report then, have to move to the report, I think Nicola Tochna and Nicola now are joining the session with Nicola and our team with CGI, actually, to hear about potential opportunities when using AI and smart sector, you have a lot of things that can sort of like, Tochna and I know that there's experience in their previous roles as about smart technology and things, so I hope we do see a number of these things. Coming forward, I also said we've got one of the best universities on our doorstep that leads to AI and tech and we are engaging in that discussion as well, but I think the comments, because of Kumami as well, whilst we might be quite smart tech and AI needs to be entirely accessible for all of you, but it needs to use that and just share your comments on that as well. And we certainly learn internationally as well about the experience we've got across the world from countries that lead on AI and tech and some of the best people to say that they university. So I'm happy to move the report and thank you to Gavin and Nicola and our team for bringing this forward. I've got a seconder, please, Councillor what? Sure, seconder, probably. Thank you. Councillor Kumari. Thank you, you can read out. I don't have a lot to add here. I think one of the most powerful things we've heard today is experience from Lee, a parent in terms of how Harrison communicates and I think that's how most of our residents feel if they have learned disabilities or whatever disabilities when accessing information and my call is for EZB. So I was very pleased to hear that Gavin mentioning about the inclusion of EZB, I think that's critical, but what we are also asking that we prioritize key policies, key forms and forms of the highest use so that we can really ensure true accessibility and just the list of organisations that might be able to help. So happy to move, thanks. Thank you, seconder, Councillor CUM. Poor me. Thank you. Dolor Parker. Yeah, thank you. I do welcome the report. I very much welcome the facts that we're talking about this issue, but I think that this absolutely and this scratches the surface of the amount and work that we need to do. Councillor CUM I was already referenced, easy read and obviously that's part of our addendum, too. I think from the discussions, it sounds like we're very much talking at very high level on all of this stuff and I think that what our addendum is calling for is for some specific targets and a specific action plan to actually get into the heart of these issues because they are so important. I remain very concerned that I think we are failing our duties in terms of this stuff, in terms of enabling people to communicate with us. I think Councillor CUM I was right to raise the deputation from earlier, that's obviously a specific example of a specific access need, which is not being met, but I think when you look at the Council's communications across the board, there are lots and lots and lots of ways in which we're not enabling people to participate currently and I think that's really concerning. I would also push back slightly on the suggestion that nobody is leading the way on this. Nobody is getting it 100% right, but I'm sure if we spoke to disabled people organisations as Councillor M you'll reference if we engage with other public bodies who absolutely are achieving the relevant standards in the ways that we are not, then we would have learning, there would be learning that we could take from them. So I'm grateful that we have an officer in place looking at equality, diversity and inclusion. I'm grateful that this report has come forward but I think we really need to put a great level of scrutiny on this work because it's so important in terms of the very difficult decisions that this Council is going to have to make over the next couple of years. It's so important that everybody is able to participate in those discussions. So that's why we are moving our addendum. I will say as well, we have a slight verbal adjustment which is our point at 1.6. We will delete that and instead replace it with refers the report to GRBV to consider the annual accessibility audits because what I've written is not competent. So please indulge me. Thank you. Councillors interjecting. I'm just second, sorry, Councillor MUNFORD. Thank you, thanks, madam. Just to echo everything Councillor Parker said, and also make the point, echo the point that Councillor South made that this is obviously our addendum focus is very much on accessibility for people that have barriers whether it's to comprehension or through disability to make sure that we are hitting those standards that I mentioned in the addendum. But this is about a quality of access to information. So it's really, really important for the people that are furthest away from democracy but also we should be enabling everything to everyone, whether that is finding out when you're recycling day is or wanting to find out what happened at a committee and how people voted and we're not hitting out at a community council meeting last night with people that are incredibly engaged, you know how the council functions dedicate their time to sorting these things out. And the discussion came up about how difficult it is to find out what happened at a committee to find out how to get a planning application and make comments on it. So yeah, we're focusing on accessibility and its core sense in the addendum but absolutely in terms of making sure that everyone can get the information they need from the Council, more needs to be done. So, yeah, really keen and from all the questions and comments that this is obviously something this committee has all agreed that, you know, we're not hitting yet and we need to do more work on. So I'm really grateful to have the report that makes a start at this bit of work and the commitment we've had from Gavin and Lucy and others today that this will be taken forward. Thank you. Thank you for any other contributions? No, thank you. So I suppose we have to accept the SMP addendum, have to accept green addendum with the amendment but with exception of point 1.4 and discussion with the officers, you know, the amount of work that's already gone on in this field, feels like this is a duplication of the work. So this is what would be included as part of the framework going forward and at one point, we would duplicate some of that work as a feedback we have from officers. So with exception 1.4, we have to accept the rest of that and the amended 1.6 and the SMP addendum. We would like to push separately. Okay, in that case, I think we have two positions. Could I just ask the greens then are you accepting any of the SMP? We would love to accept all of it. Okay, so we have two positions. Motion moved by Councillor day, seconded by Councillor what would you please the recommendations and the report and accept the SMP addendum and the green addendum as adjusted with the exception of paragraph 1.4 and against that the green amendment moved by Councillor Parker, seconded by Councillor Mumford, which is as adjusted and also accepted the SMP addendum. Could I take the votes first look for the green amendment please. And for the motion, please. Thank you. That's nine for the motion and seven for the amendment, the motion is carried. Okay, that takes you to item 7.6, carbon impact of international travel as a report by the executive director of corporate services, green group addendum has been circulated and I think Christine then will be too important. Christine, anything to add? I can convene or nothing else to add. I'm happy to take any questions. Okay, thank you. Councillor Aston. Thanks, Could've been there and thanks Christine for the report. Obviously this is a report that deals primarily with international air travel but it does obviously mention that domestic flights are still being taken. Obviously, this is an annual report, the last one came in March last year and acknowledged that I think about half of the flights that were taken in the year dealt with in the previous years report were within the UK and a large number of those were to London and Birmingham and obviously in this report we're still seeing a fair number of trips being taken to London and Birmingham and it seems to me that I'm much the same with dealing with unnecessary car trips where someone's driving what would be a five, ten minute walk or whatever. Dealing with the unnecessary domestic air travel is important as well. So there's very little information because it's not the main focus of the report but can you tell me what's being done to get a grip on unnecessary domestic air travel as well. Thank you Councillor. Yeah, absolutely. I think a couple of points to note on this, the last report you would have received would be 2122 and the actual new policy wasn't implemented until 2022 in September. This report updates on 2223 data and what you'll see from the report is that 12 of the 25 trips didn't comply with every new policy. I've spoken to our operational kind of business support unit that actually managed the contract there with our travel provider and actually the data that we have on that actually states that six of those trips were operational needs. So actually only half of those 12 trips were out with the policy guidance. The operational needs is for things like children and families so they have to be obviously dealt with as a priority and people need to travel where they need to for potentially social work in different reasons. So that means only six of the trips since the new policy has been implemented and haven't complied with the new policy. What we've done as a result of that is a number of different communication methods because we recognise that potentially we hadn't done that when the policy had forced to be adopted and that had meant that those six additional trips had gotten through the net when they shouldn't have. So we've put a number of processes in place and been working with the business support unit to make sure that doesn't continue to happen. Our travel provider as well has updated their system to make sure the data quality is actually better for us to then report on and what we're doing now on a monthly basis is reporting back to every direct unit so we can make sure that they are fully aware and actually analysing any potential travel that's going through the system as well on a much more frequent basis than the annual report. Thank you, Councillor DURMING. Thank you, Convener. I'm sure you'll be aware that the reason we've got this report just now is because there were some issues with the data when we looked at it last time and I'm really pleased to see that there's obviously steps being taken to make sure that the data is better going forward so that's really positive and I just wondered, could you say anything about, you know, when we come to comparing data going forward with previous data, do you have any concerns that were actually not comparing life for like? Could you say something about the amount of inaccuracy, I guess, that was there previously that – did you see what I'm getting at? Can we actually compare what we're seeing from now on to what we've had before, given what we know about the data? Thank you, Councillor. Certainly we can go and look at more detail and provide a briefing on that but the challenge there is more operational in terms of what we're able to provide. It would be more on the carbon reporting but I guess it's just hopefully to give you some of the students that the data quality has significantly improved because that new system has been implemented this year. Okay, thank you. There are no more questions but I'll just ask, just to clarify, because there is an amendment – a dendem. It means in 60 domestic flights that were not inland with Councillor Pulsi, you're saying that's not 60 because the policy wasn't implemented then, it's a lower number, you think? Thank you, Governor. It is 60 flights which accounted for 38 trips and of those 38 trips, 25 trips didn't comply, but 13 of them were before the policy. So the number of flights is correct, the 60 flights but that relates to 38 trips, so that is helpful. Okay, another question, so I have to move the report. Again, thanks to the team for bringing this forward and I suppose to see we have to accept the gendem, I think it mentions numbers but I'll come into the report that comes to G. R. B. B. Anyway, so. Councillor interjecting. I'll happily second that but I do want to say one thing and that is to pick up on Councillor Aston's point about domestic travel and I love travelling by train and I do it a lot. I also experience a lot of delay and a lot of cancellation and a lot of problems and until we have a unified and simplified rail system then I think that rail travel is less and less attractive and to my mind that has to be part of the equation to make it more reliable and even more attractive than it already is and I will very happily second the motion and in the Administration's name. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor BARK, Councillor BARK. Thank you I suppose initially just to say I fully agree and I look forward to seeing a Nationalised Rail Service, of course the whole of the UK very shortly. So yes, this addendum just makes the point that obviously those 60 flights are against Council policy, certainly at a high level that is environmentally nonsensical and I think it's also unjust. We have had some answers on this today which I think have been helpful but where Council policy is not being adhered to, I think it's appropriate for us to scrutinise that G.R.B. V which is the point that we make. Finally we have also got a point in there around the burden of reporting on this going forward so we recognise that though this is significant maybe in a symbolic way, the business travel represents a very, very small percentage of the Council's carbon footprint and therefore the nature of reporting against it we think should be proportionate to that so we're also proposing that this report gets folded into the annual Councilam Mission Reduction Plan reporting that comes to this committee going forward. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor Miller. For an aye. Thank you. Item 7.7 is international visit to Munich, 70th-20th anniversary. It's a report by the Executive Director of Corporate Services. A green group of dentists has been circulated, Nick Langen and Chris Adams are here to introduce the report. Nick, or Chris, anything to add? Item 7.7? Nothing to add but obviously take any questions, thank you. Any questions? No? Got a fair feeling? Okay so I just moved to the report then, I didn't have to move to the report, I think Councillor MARA will help the issues of this journey going by and we'd add a few days an additional cost and time for Lord province when I'm sure he's got other things to be done up here. So I guess there's one of these exceptions where it's maybe more appropriate to travel by train so I'll have to move the report. No seconder, Councillor MARA. Happy to second and just one thing, about a month ago there were musicians outside in the High Street and there were a group who were protesting the inability for them to practice their musicianship in Europe because arising from Brexit and therefore I wanted to add to our moving of the report that anything that encourages an increased cultural offer and cultural kind of practice between in this case Munich and Edinburgh is only to be welcomed and let's hope that the journey could be done in the best and most efficient way possible. Happy to second. Councillor MARA. Councillor? Miller. Sorry. Yeah we're doing a switch a few with different amendments, sorry it's a bit confusing. I just wanted to speak briefly to move the amendment, with no declarable interest I'd like to recommend the man in seat 61 website because he does provide excellent advice on easy intercity train travel in Europe which is efficient, he advises that it's a straight forward journey to Munich, you take the Eurostar to Paris, short 10-minute walk to change stations and there is a modern high speed train which goes direct to Munich from there and the train is equipped with power sockets for laptops and mobiles at all seats in both classes so it is possible to work while travelling very efficiently and because overland sustainable transport is so convenient for this journey it is inarguable to me in the current climate ha ha that we should not be travelling this way so I move the Green Amendment. Thank you. Thank you very much Councillor Pucker. Formerly but also just to say that I'm sure a nationalised rail service will support with connectivity with the rail changes that the UK side of the journey. Thank you. Thank you. Any other contributions? I've got what I was there. No. Thank you. So we're unable to accept the D&D unfortunately and appreciate the guidance but at the report it says here that it would take 15 hours, 3 transfers and additional stays so we'll move the report. Okay, so we have a motion moved by Councillor DAY, seconded by Councillor MAR which agrees the recommendations in the report and against that, a Green Amendment moved by Councillor Miller, seconded by Councillor Pucker which is as circulated. That is the votes for the Green Amendment please. And for the motion please. Thank you. Motion and seconded by the amendment. The motion is carried. So that takes you to item 7.8, international travel as a report by the executive director of the place. A green group of tandem has been circulated and Paul Lawrence won't choose the report. Mr Lawrence. Sorry to say something about Taylor Swift convener but I'll forego the opportunity. Very happy to answer any questions. Are any questions on this one for Paul? Councillor Parker. Thank you. I do just have one question as you have mentioned Taylor Swift which is so my understanding is that there is a move to have volunteer stewards in place for the event and I just wondered if that is learning that is being applied from other places where the concert is being held because it feels inappropriate to me in the sense that if somebody is putting on a large scale event why would they depend on volunteers? It's just to do with international travel policy. It's about the trip. Item 2 in the appendix talks about learning that is being applied from that concert so I would like to know is part of the learning about this about the volunteer stewards. So it's not really, it was a specific request from her promoter and from the SIU to look at the management of the event, all aspects of it given the scale of it particularly for our head of public safety to be familiar with the event before it came here so it was very specifically a request in that context. Can I just ask you a quick follow up and ask, is that common practice for large scale events in the city for us to depend on volunteers to run them safely? Well, this is a very unique event so it's probably not possible to generalise I'm afraid. Ok, I don't know the questions so if you move to the report, you have to move to the report and as with the last one, I think it's self-explanatory so I need to accept the report. Oh yeah, second or something. Formerly, convena. We will withdraw as we lost the previous one. Okay, thank you. Ok, that's item 7.9, retrofit strategy, this is the report by the executive director of place, an SMP group amendment, green group addendum and conservative group amendment have been succulated and Paul Jones and Peter Watemore introduced the report. Peter, Paul, anything to add to your report? No, we've briefed all the groups on this report that we hope will help them, that have they taken any questions. Thank you, any questions? I can't remember what the appendix is but I think it's the appendix 4, I was really confused by this, I'm really confused by the approvals process. Can you please explain? So obviously we've got an amendment asking for the individual projects to come back to committee for approval. I just wasn't really clear from the report so I think it's a appendix 4 and there's lots of arrows going to things and back on themselves and I just couldn't look at it a lot and I could not make any sense of it at all. So it would be really helpful for me to understand what is the approval process that you're setting out in this report? It's more the internal process that we will go through with any particular project. What we're asking committee is approve the strategy and let us go on with it. If there's any significant diversion from the strategy, we will report that to the APOC, the five members of which are here today and ask their opinion about whether we need to bring it here. We will also use our judgement and experience to consider when we need to come back to committee. It needs to be. But to get every single project approved means you're approving an amendment and asking for about 30 reports over the next two years and that's, yes of course committee decides that's what they want. That's what we will do. The message from my staff is can we have a mandate to get on and deliver things? Can I just have a brief read. Councillor Campbell, you'll remember and it's still relatively new. We looked at some new officer governance arrangements. It was actually reported to GRBV so when it talks about the capital investment group, I think you specifically asked for a follow-up of the work of that group which was to oversee the Council's overall capital investment and we're working on an update. We would bring that and that would say where are we in the delivery of all capital programs from the Rhodes program to the housing program to this kind of program. So GRBV would get that from the capital investment group on a regular basis. I suppose I'm thinking about if there's specific projects that on a ward level might have a high level of local interest for us as Councillors if things are sprung on us and that's why for me it was about when this first came we were given a list of projects that it was happening to. For me, one of them was a school in my ward that was helpful for me to know and have that knowledge. So I suppose for me is a bit about the dialogue and also I'm not on the oversight group. There's one member from each group that is that quite often I find as a Councillor information gets very much siloed and it doesn't get shared out necessarily because there's so much business going on so actually if there's big changes that are happening and also oversight groups are not decision-making bodies. I think Gavin's here that's in our standing orders. So for me there was a process thing here that I wasn't quite confident that I understood what the process would be asked to approve is and I'm not sure I'm entirely confident with that much responsibility going away without having confidence it's going to come back to us as Councillors to review. Okay well I mean we can have a look at the communication channels at a local level. All members I think at least twice a year get a list of things that are happening and the word works, particularly as we lead up to the summer break and the Easter break. There's a detailed list of what's happening in the ward in the prospective and we can have a look at that. I think in this regard the very nature of the work that we're doing will be bordering on the measures opposed to the minor side and of course within your ward at the Munnet Bronson is one of the schools that we're about to embark on. I think we'll take away and have a think about the communication strategy with local members or local members when there is going to be a major project in their ward. It's not on a committee agenda and we'll build that process into business as usual if I give GNA comfort, I just fear that bringing reports on every project would be resource intensive and I think there's just be better ways of doing it and arguably it's operational decisions, it's more about the information as opposed to the fact that we're actually going to do it and I just think there's better ways of doing that and more efficient ways of doing that. Okay the other thing is what do you mean by changes to the retrofit strategy that would be agreed by the oversight group, like what can you give an example of what changes that might be, is it the individual project or is it the strategic approach? I think of the report as approved today, the approach is not going to change in the near future but at least for the next couple of years. We are involved in an area that is still relatively new to the construction world and as I've been saying at the group groupings, if history tells us anything technology and relation to heat pumps and other aspects of this will continue to improve because the demand is there and the market will react to that demand. So we're two years in with recommended a subtle change to the strategy, it doesn't mean to say that we aren't going to retrofit our whole build and if it represents what we consider to be best value but we will have a lot more projects that are live than what we have at the minute in the context of the revised strategy. But I can't see there being much change to what we're proposing in front of you over the next couple of years but as we continue on our journey, things might change and what we've built in is the flexibility to come back and tell you why things have changed and why we're changing our approach but it's not going to change the ultimate outcome that we're trying to achieve, it's just the way of getting there. Okay, Councillor Parker. Thank you. I thought that was helpful. So my question is about the integration of retrofit with asset management works which is referenced in the report and obviously that is what we need to see happening across the board. So my questions really are, to what extent is that happening already? What are the barriers to making that happen more and how will Councillor see that that is happening in a more full somewhere going forward? Well, kick off, Paul is responsible for both the strategy around both streams. We have no discussions lately about in our capital program where we actually combine those two as one fund as opposed to separate at the minute. It's happening at the minute and it has been happening for the last year in that every asset management work proposal, a material consideration is sustainability. And this report hints, for example, that we're a building needs a boiler replacement. We don't want to just simply replace the gas boiler, we want to look at other options that take into account or sustainability agenda, so ultimately they're going to be one and the same thing rather than just considering health and safety, wind and water tight, wear and tear, sustainability is in that assessment as well. So is actually happening in practice. I think maybe just to add some context there, so at the moment in terms of asset management work's program that is life cycle condition focused and where we have the opportunity to incorporate threat fit approaches or threat fit works and we look to do so by aligning both strategies, what we'll essentially be looking at is what we can do in a proactive basis to bring that sort of retrofit agenda more into the decision making and how we approach that. One of the steps we'll be looking to do is sort of retrofit. I get retrofit plans for each building and looking at how that aligns with the life cycle condition so that we can make the right decisions at the right point in time for buildings. So I guess, and maybe I'm wrong for assuming this, but I assume that it might cost us slightly more to retrofit instead of just doing what we do currently. So I guess my question is within the budget setting process in particular and maybe the medium term financial plan, how will we see that ambition in that plan or in that strategy? Yeah, I can see you're right. Typically, if you're going to red reflect as part of repairsuit maintenance, it is going to be more expensive. We don't feel that the two budget streams have to be used separately. We already are using both funds to fund one project with the life cycle and the retrofit and we will continue to do that moving forward. I think we're going to have a serious think about how we present what's needed moving forward and why based on your question, because it's not an easy thing to answer at this moment in time. I kind of look at it as this report says, we have 34 million left. We also, on top of that, 14 million a year asset management works. That, if you take it then, the next financial year would be 62 million that we would have to spend. If we spent that, a bit delighted. We're kind of when we come back in respect of the medium term plan. We'll be looking from next financial year on about what is needed, but that's also linked to a wider property strategy. About the amount of property we have, the wider condition of it's current usage, which is a report later in this agenda. These are all factors that we'll have to take into account in decision making as we move forward. Thank you. Councillor Bhill? Thanks. You mentioned sinking all the improvements to do with the life cycles. That should hopefully then give you an idea of timing, sort of going ahead in the future, because that's certainly something that's missing from the report in terms of possible time scales in terms of when things are going to be done and when we'll find out about it. I've given this all in the new sort of strategy that will have changed, but can you give us any idea when you think timing of we're going to see a list of potential properties? Thanks. Yes, we have a number of properties that are kind of on a short list at this point in time and we're looking at carrying out some sort of further investigative work, really just to scope out what level of retrofit we'd look at. I think one thing looking at the sort of medium to longer term, one thing that's significant is the way we assess condition in our buildings at the moment is that we're typically looking at what that five-year requirement is for that properties we're looking at. What do we need to invest in this building over the next five years in order to keep that building at a suitable operational level? Given the time scales that we need to phase in retrofit, we kind of need to flip it around and look at trying to make an assessment on how much life is left within any element of that building and at what point are we wanting to phase in those retrofit interventions? There are kind of consequential actions as well, say for example, if you're looking at one element of fabric, then you may want to look at another piece when you're doing that so it's something that we're conscious of and we need to map out. Thank you. Peter, can you just repeat something you said earlier, I think, in terms of the proposal to put all these approvals through the committee? Did you see you think it's more of a operational issue and what would be the impact on your resources if I had to do that? Well, on the resources from what we were looking to do is utilize some of that capital to get more internal resource. The challenge is a lot of the resource we need is actually revenue funded and we have to find the balance between that. But in terms of wide resources, suppose here's the thing, this report originated from the corporate property strategy, the committee approved in August. That approval process also approved for amendments to ask for more reports on various aspects of the property strategy. But one of those strands was addressed as referred to in this report in January, which had two addendoms which has preferred the reports which are on the agenda today. If the amendments are approved on all the orders, I think, being honest, that's really asking for about 30 more reports over the next couple of years to get the decisions. Of course, if that's what committee wants, that's what we will do. But the staff resources in this area are very passionate about what they do and they want to go on with delivery, which we will do. But in the context of all resource at the minute, we'll be looking to complement the team with more so we can deliver more. But as I say, it's got its complications between the capital and revenue budgets. Thank you, Peter. There are no other questions. I move to the report, I want to move to the report. Again, thanks to the work done on this. It is in the report quite disappointing that the government paused or cancelled the Green Growth Exilator fund of £10 million which was offered to the council. Which has obviously delayed that work and I hope that that fund will open up. As we go forward, I'm concerned that the SPM amendment does create an awful lot more work, rather than also to get on with the vital fit and buildings across the city. I think it is risk and is getting operational issues on that and having to move the report. I have a seconder, Councillor Watt. Completely. Thank you. Councillor Campbell. Thank you,it can be next. That was really helpful for the questions. We are actually going to withdraw our first point. We're not going to ask for all projects. The reach approval stage ones have committee approval, because I take on board the point about needing dirty extra reports. I don't think anyone wants that. However, I think the second point when I asked Peter about what it means to make changes to the retrofit strategy and was told, we probably won't make any for a couple of years. That doesn't seem that bigger ask to say if we're making a significant change to the entire strategy, it's not likely to be for a couple of years. We would want a report at that point. For me, that feels like a fairly fundamental requirement of democratic oversight. I didn't get the feeling that that would be particularly onerous for officers. We will just be sticking to moving our second point, asking for any changes to the strategy to come back to this committee. I hope that can get support. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor CUMMING. Thank you. I think our agenda does a couple of things. The first section is pushing on what I think Peter described as the hard question that we were asking in terms of asset management works and how we are integrating retrofitting with this. I tend to think that actually, if we're asking difficult questions, are the right questions. I think it's good that committee asked for that level of detail so that we can consider it in budgets going forward. The second point that we make, it's not really come up in the questioning, which I thought it might do, but it's this point around return of investment. The report is clear that retrofitting works don't offer a conventional return on investment, but of course, we know that in the context of a climate and nature emergency, we're not planning for convention. We're actually planning to change convention because we need to see a very radical and different approach to the way that the council manages its buildings and the way that the council does absolutely everything, frankly, going forward. The question really is, as we look towards the development of that medium-term financial plan, what is it within our business case analysis that needs to change to adequately spotlight the changes that we're going to see across society? We're referencing that, of course, we are already looking at that piece of work as part of the council emissions reduction plan, so we just need to see a little bit more detail for retrofitting in particular because it's going to be such a key part of the council's change program, dare I say, in terms of its building stock. Finally, the point we make at 1.9 is just being really clear that if we are bringing forward to changes to the proposed retrofitting strategy, these need to be good changes that take us in the right direction. So that is about making sure that if we are going to be investing differently or looking at different projects, then we're doing that in a way that delivers best value for money by which we mean has the greatest carbon reduction for the smallest amount of financial investment. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Anfield. Formally, thank you. Thank you, Councillor-- Thank you, Counvinaa. Put forward an amendment. Some committee members might think a bit strange in first sight, but actually gets to the heart of some of the things that others have just been talking about and fits with the best value concept that Councillor Parker has just mentioned, I think. Let me explain. First of all, I do agree with some others that we need to monitor this at committee, but I don't think that rather than an APOC, but I think that means having one source of doing that and doing that as part of the wider strategy around corporate property, it doesn't mean endless reports on individual items, it means let's see the strategy, let's see if it's working and monitor it goes through. And that's what 116 is about saying do bring that to committee, but make it high level and strategic. The rest of it, Counvinaa, is a bit of an addendum, which tries to look back up where we started on all of this and get some clarity. So on the face of it, if I look at what we were told in the mini-stan from lead university and the various bits of work that the University of Edinburgh did for us, on which our 2030 net zero target is based, then going on the costs that they said could be paid back, we could have been sold a pop in that information, it could be absolute rubbish. On the other hand, it might have been accurate and what we've been trying to do is go about this the wrong way, and we need some better academic advice about where we should be targeting our resource to get the best result. So let me again explain that. If we could get 69% reduction in emissions by 2037 on current technology, a large part of our emissions are buildings, so they've got to be part of that, but my recollection of those reports talked about a lot of that coming from grid decarbonisation. So some of the very expensive work we're doing might not be the best value compared with doing other things which would have a greater carbon reduction impact. Also, we've been working until this stage, on a presumption of trying to retrofit buildings to be zero carbon. But the report said we could get 69% of the way at cost on current technology, so shouldn't we have been trying to use current technology that was cheap and effective to make a big reduction and try to get to 50%, 60%, 70% of the way they are rather than trying 100%. I suspect that is what it was telling us, but I don't know for sure. And I think it's incumbent on all of us to check that. But it's also incumbent on us at this stage when we now have real-life costings for our buildings and we know what passive house costs for a new building, and we know a lot more of what passive house retrofit costs to go back to those academics and ask them to look at all that again and advise us on the best way forward. So I hope that on that basis committee will accept what we're putting forward because it fits with supporting the revisions to the strategy that the team have brought forward and it supports using the money we've got to make the highest impact we can in the shortest time. Thank you, Councillor DOGGart. Councillor Wight has explained very elegantly the reasons why we've put forward this amendment and I think just to reiterate the point, it is important that information is brought back to committee and that we're not looking at an APOG being provided with information and committee being left somewhat in the dark. I think that there's something that's absolutely essential. But of course, one of the other things is that if the evidence changes then perhaps we should change our mind and if it does appear that the initial information that was provided to us and setting the 2030, albeit still on realistic target for 2030, and if the evidence is suggesting that we're not going to get the returns, not just in financial terms that were anticipated, not initial evidence then we should revisit this. So I think it's quite important that we do go back to the source of that information and say what has changed and what has changed in the way that will allow us to come up with a strategy that is realistic, that is affordable and that will allow us to reach our objectives. So with that, I am happy to second the amendment. Thank you, Councillor. Any other contributions? Nope, thank you. So in terms of amendments, I'm happy to accept the Green Group, I have to accept it as a member. And part two, I think Councillor Campbell's withdrawn, I have to accept part two of the S&P amendment. As an agenda, because Gavin tells me we have got to do it anyway. So are we clear with that? Thank you. Okay, it takes you to item 7.10. A strategic investment fund, this is a report by the executive director of place, a Green Group amendment has been circulated, and Kayole, and introduced the report. Kayole, anything to add? Nothing to add, but I'm very happy to take any questions. Thank you. Thank you, Kayole, any questions from Kayole? Councillor Mumford. Thank you, thanks very much, Kayole, and for the report and thanks to Peter for talking through it. I just had a question around why the proposal is to give additional funds to the Grant and Waterfront project, because the report doesn't go into detail about what that will be used for, it just says the project has expanded since original conception. So I suppose my question is what exactly will be used for, and when we agreed that we should expand this project, why was budget not allocated then? Thank you. Well, I think broadly the strategic programme set over our allocations a few years ago based in estimates of the time of the cost of each, and those have evolved as time has gone by, and for things like Springfield and the Heat Energy Master Plan we were able to track funding from other places, so some things have cost less than they expected, which is great. And I suppose the implication is that some of that headroom can be used for projects like the Waterfront project, which have seen their scope to expand a bit. If I want to speak for the Waterfront team and, for example, they are now taking on the Heat Network project, which is a fairly major undertaking. They are delivering the Heritage and Place Program project, which is also a very sizable piece of work. And really all this has been done within the existing resources. As it stands, that team is generally funded by the HRA. So there is a bit of a trade-off that basically the more money the HRA spends on that project it's money that's been divided away from other things the HRA could be doing. David, I don't know if you want to add anything to that? Thanks, a couple of blackware. Good. Councilman Ford. Thank you. So sorry, a couple of follow-ups on that. One is how much extra budget does the greater Waterfront... If we are saying it's got more expense than what we budgeted for, we've currently used all the budget in the CSIF. Does that mean it's over budget? But presumably not because you are saying it's using HRA money. Can you explain a little bit more about that? So if we don't agree this money goes into granted, and that takes money away from other things we could be spending HRA budget on, is the CSIF HRA money? No. No, let me try and explain. And David, Kyle, it would be grateful for your input. So on the Grantson scheme, we put a special projects team in, as members will know, led by Sat Patel, Michel Fraser and colleagues, to take that forward with the bespoke development team. We funded that, and this was in the earlier CSIF allocation, partly by the HRA and partly by CSIF. And the HRA element was proportionate to the amount of homes that were anticipated to be taken forward in Grantson that would sit within the HRA. So there was a kind of proportionality between what we use for CSIF and what we use from the HRA and they reflected the proportions of the development. As members will know, and Kyle has suggested, not only is, I wouldn't say the scope of that team has grown, albeit inevitably when you're doing those kind of regeneration projects, you know, you get into, I mean, Kyle's mentioned the heat network. That wasn't part of the scheme when we first put that team together. It became an absolutely essential part of it now. But the key thing is that that scheme has taken longer to reach final business case than we anticipated because of all the kind of external factors that I probably don't need to rehearse with members, particularly around, you know, the availability of Grant, the construction position, the procurement process and so on. So that project has extended in length, a bit in scope, but certainly in length. And what we're trying to do is to keep that proportionality between DHRA, which also funds the development of other schemes which lead to HRA homes and the non-HRA developments. And the only funding we have from that is the CIF funds. Hence this site adjustment, suggested adjustment to CSIF. Thank you. Kyle's asking. Yeah, thanks, converter. I was actually going to ask the same first question as Councillor Comford did there. Because I think it would have been helpful given the reports talking about moving about 445 K just to have more detail in the report itself about, you know, what that is going to mean for Grant. I suppose the flip side of it is, you know, fair enough, just under £100,000 not needed. A bio quarter, which is great news. I'm just interested in why -- because obviously we just had the outline business case for the West Edinburgh Transport Improvement Program reported to tech, including an update actually, just last week in the business bulletin, why the feeling is that that money isn't actually required at the moment for wee tip and why it can be shuffled out into something else. Again, David will jump in if you wouldn't mind. I think the original allocation for West Edinburgh wasn't just for wee tip. It was for the wider development West Edinburgh as a whole. Now as you will know, all of the West Edinburgh sites are owned by the private sector. They're not owned by the Council. So the amount of direct work we've had to do is less than it would be in my late grandson where the site is all owned by the Council and the work is as it were on us. Whereas if I can put it this way in West Edinburgh, I think we originally probably thought we might need to do more strategic work. We have done some of that and I think that's born through. But we've had to spend money less directly because the land isn't in our ownership. We're not taking forward specific projects. Whereas in the case of Grantson, that is funding a team directly employed by the Council to take forward something to full business, a final business case which sat in the team working on now to try and take forward that major regeneration project. So there were kind of estimates of what we needed to do in somewhere like West Edinburgh. We tip has been fully funded by the City Region Deal. So it's a separate project within the wider West Edinburgh program. Okay. Thank you. There are no other questions. So if we move to the report, we have to move the report again. Thank Kyle and his team for bringing us forward. We have two adjustments to meet it. So we do require to refer the full Council as well. So we'll add that in. Well, then the money being put in. I would ask that we ask officers to bring forward a proposal, a probably link to Grantson, to committee within the next three years. And before budget setting process as well. And on that, I have to move the report. The second or please? Seconded. Formerly. Okay. So on for. Thank you. Convener. Thanks. And thanks for the work on the report and the explanations. So this, this amendment came out of the agenda planning meeting where we do an appointment, do we have to spend on this? It can be reallocated and I think maybe the question had not been asked before, but the answer was yes. And we do have that power. It's not a ring fenced fund. And so what this amendment does is to suggest that we place the unallocated money into unallocated reserves that can then be allocated and if Grantson is the best place for that, then fine. But I suppose this is, this is, this is borne out of the concerns that we all share about the budget pressure is facing the Council. We've already had lots of conversation about this today. We had concerns about allocating money without knowing where it was coming from, if it's going to come from reserves. We had the conservative suggested moving 100,000 pounds from the maximizing income budget into the RFF to sort of cover that fact that we're spending money with one hand and saying it's your comfort reserves or another. This money reflects four times that. So we need to, we need a little bit more detail. We need to know what the costs are, where they've come from, what the underspend is, the impact of making or not making the spending decision. If this was a finance and resources committee, I think myself and Councillor Daugut would have many, many questions about this and everyone else on that committee as well. Because this is, this is a financial decision. So this amendment is not meant to shut the door and allocating additional funding needed by Grantson. And if a reasonable request is made then Council will, I'm sure, agree that. But this isn't a ring fence fund. We should be doing what we can to scrutinise the spending of public money at the moment and make sure it's going to the projects, the areas, the priorities most in need. So with that, I move the amendment. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Parker, just formally. Any other conclusions? Nope. So I'm happy to accept the Green Amendment, apart from section three. I think we've suggested that it does come. They also do come forward with their proposal on how to allocate that money before the budget setting process. If there's none, then it should be returned to the reserves. Some have to move. Thank you. Apologies, Convener. Could you clarify? So, yes, we ask also to bring forward a proposal rather than going into reserves that our proposal comes back to committee within 12 months, but before the next budget on how that money will be best allocated. Do you want to accept that, or have another vote? Yeah, we can accept that if you can confirm that that money will not be spent, and that moving it to reserves will want to be one of those options. Not to order the vote comes forward to the committee. So, we agreed. So, routine, I'm hoping to take these by exception unless somebody really wants to have officers questions on them. So, Jamie? Yes, so I think the proposal is that we take the by exception, obviously with the exception of any that we have amendments that we would just ask if members had any questions on any of the other reports as well. Yeah, it's a great one. That's great. So, we will just run through them. But it takes to section 8, item 8.1 is a report by the Convention on Corporate Services, McCray's, Italian Trust, Committee of Services at Conton, diesel K on the 1st of July 2024. Happy to leave this. Thank you. Thank you. Item 8.2 is Local Government Benchmarking Framework 2122, Tackle and Climate Change Indicators. It's a report by the Richard Director of Corporate Services. Happy to leave this report. Thank you. Item 8.3 is Adult prevent capacity. This is a report by the Chief Officer in the Health Care Partnership. A Liberal Democrat group addendum has been circulated. Pat, you need add to this? No, I'm just very conscious of time convener. We do have a K across from here, the legal representative, and we have my Kennedy as the principal social worker officer. Craig, do you have anything to add? Nothing to add at the moment, can we have any questions? Just a couple of questions if that's OK. Firstly, I wanted to ask where the recommendations set in relation to the improvement plans that are already in place, in particular in response to the Adult Support Protection Inspection. Are those going to be merged together? Yes, thank you. Thank you, Mr Miller. Yes, there are part of the overall improvement board jointly chaired by myself and the Chief Social Work Officer, what's happening? Sorry, I've got two more if that's OK. I also wanted to ask about the investment in social work. The report says the investment is needed in social work. The Council has been provided, the Council has been provided with no additional budget by IJB in order to invest in any further social work. I just wanted to understand how that contradiction is explained. Thank you. Councillor Mgarue, yes, there is a short-term financial provision within the existing budget, which will extend into the end of the current financial year. After that, there is considerable uncertainty. That's our position at the moment. The associated risks with the resource will be captured in the IJB risk plan. Which leads me on to my third question, which was about the risks because I was a bit surprised I was supposed to see that these are to be captured in the IJB risk register because I thought that they were a bit more operational and I would have expected to see them being captured through operational level risk registers, or not completely convinced that the IJB is going to be looking at that level of detail of risk at board and audit and assurance committee. Thank you, Councillor Mgarue. There's probably two things. There will be an update on the care inspecting and mental welfare commission improvement requirements, which will come to the IJB and will cover the wider performance, support and mechanism. The second thing to say is that recently we have commissioned a report into our statutory duties and the costs associated with that between now and 2030, and our report will also come to the IJB in that regard. Okay, no more questions. No, that's a move to the report. I am Pat and Craig for their work on this. Shall I have to move that report? Seconded on Councillor MART. Formerly convener. Thank you, Councillor Beal. Thanks for being here. I think there's obviously some improvements that need to be made as a result of this, and I don't see any way in which we are going to get reported because the Council would be potentially at risk. So, I think the amendment just to make sure that we see what the status of those improvements is so that minimise the risk to Council. Councillor LANG. Formerly. Thank you. Any other. Any other constituents on this? Have to accept another simple democratic addendum, shall we read on that? Thank you. Item 8.4 is air quality in schools. This is a report by thesypter Director of Place and a Liberal Democrat group. Addendum has been circulated. Andrew Biden's here for any questions. Andrew, anything to add to your report? Andrew, you need to add nothing to add, hoping? Sorry. Nothing to add. Happy to take any questions? Any questions? Councillor FARCOE. Thank you. I guess it's the obvious question which is in terms of the delays in installation use. So, are we due to any compensation or anything like that as a result of those failures? Yes, we have seen a significant reduction in our costs. So, we have not paid any costs for the first two years. And then the costs due this year are only roughly 20% of the agreed total costs that was outlined in the official proposal from two years ago. Once we have seen some clarity of the increased data when the new gateways get installed, that is when we agree that we will return the full pay schedule as of next financial year. I am happy to move to the report. I will second it. Thank you. Councillor D so downing. Thank you, Count Vener. I will be very, very brief. I think we all recognise that good air quality is really important for our learners and for the people who teach them and people who work with them in our school or state. And so having the opportunity to monitor air quality is a good thing. We all recognise it. I think it is really regrettable that we have seen these delays for various reasons. The report sets out all the ways in which this project has gone wrong. I am happy to hear about the reduction, I guess, across to us as a result of that. That is good. The report tells us that the data is now in a usable shape and it does not give us a timeline for any reporting back on the results of this. Our amendment asks for a report to this committee in October that gives us at least an interim indication of the outcomes of that monitoring just so that we can get a sense of the actual quality that has been found, particularly where those measurements breach the barrier of the 1500 which is mentioned in the report is one where we feel that the air quality is poor because I think, as we have talked about, retrofitting and other things as well, I think that should also feed into what we do with our buildings in the future, not just in terms of energy efficiency and so on, but also ventilation which is also a really important part of the health of our buildings. So we are really keen to see at least an interim update on the data that is now in usable shape as a report mentioned, so I move our add-in. Thank you Councillor Davison. Just to quickly add an education committee, one of the big things we've been talking about recently is improving attendance and we know there's a significant, a small but significant group of families and children who have worried about air quality and skills and concerned about them parts along COVID so I think it's really important that we get this update back. Thank you Councillors for any other questions? Nope. Nope, I have to accept the agenda from the bottom-ups, so I'll agree doing this. Thank you. Item 8.5, if it's building risk at Ankerfield, this is a report by the executive director of Place, an S&P group at Endum and an allowable democratic with the endum, have been circulated and Jackie Timmons is here for any questions. Jackie, anything to add? No, nothing to add. Thank you. Thank you. I'll be your big questions. Thank you, Jackie. Any questions from Jackie? Yep, of a hook, we could just move to the report. I'm happy to move the report and I see a huge thanks to Jackie and the rest of the team that have been working on this for a number of weeks or months now and it's been a difficult time when we actually have a meeting with the residents tonight as well and for local members and our MP&MSP and so it's been a really difficult time for the residents at Ankerfield, but I hope the council can keep doing what we can to support them through this, so I'm happy to move the report in a second. Councillor MARR. Happy to second Kanvena and to endorse your comments about the, this is a good example of something that comes almost literally out of nowhere is completely unpredictable and I think the way in which council staff came up with the goods and the support is commendable, so with that I'd like to second the report. Thank you. Council ask. Yes, thanks, Kanvena. So, we're asking that this report be unrestricted. I don't know if you've tried to view it just through the public log in. It's not possible. This process has generated concerns from local residents in Ankerfield and building owners. About the level of information that's getting through to them, about the flow of that information and transparency, obviously, we appreciate that sometimes the council has to protect its interest, but that must not be done to the detriment of ordinary people, such as the people that live in the tenement there. As you've mentioned yourself, I can't imagine how stressful this must have been to the folk that live at Ankerfield. Not just the initial shock of issues with their building, but then all the financial uncertainty that's going along with that. We're, as I say, asking that this particular report is unrestricted and also that the further update report that is going to flow from the motion that was agreed at full council at the start of this month includes a detailed breakdown of costs which obviously includes what the Lib Dems are asking for in their addendum, but also obviously goes further than that, really, to try and go at least some way to addressing the very large financial uncertainty that there is for people at the moment. So happy to incorporate the Lib Dems addendum into ours as well, and I move ours. Thank you, Superintendent Senator Kamar. Thank you. Just to echo Councillor Austin's comments, but also to thank local councils because I know they have been going in and really engaging with residents, which is really essential. I suppose one of the things that residents have told our local councillors is the issue around transparency, is the issue around engagement, and this is why we've called for more transparency and ensure that there is a two-way dialogue that is ongoing. Happy to second. Thank you, Councillor Killame. Thank you, Councillor Dix, thank you, Comvener. I'd like to echo comments and thanking officers and anybody who has been involved and also thanking the residents for being really practically engaged for this and sharing information, coming to meetings, making themselves available to have in these discussions. I notice there's a really, really difficult situation, difficult time. We've talked about this on a number of occasions, and yes as our addendum notes, we do now have fortnightly meetings in place and we'll have another one this evening. One of the issues that our amendment addendum is trying to address is this notion of what is reasonable, what is a reasonable cost, and we've picked out particularly the scaffolding cost, which is a point of discussion between the council and residents in terms of the scaffolding that is in place, that was specialist scaffolding. It's very expensive. There's both an initial and an ongoing cost for that, and I think it would be just really helpful if we had an independent assessment which I think might be in hand already, but we really want to see an independent assessment of the cost and what could be described as reasonable because that is something that residents are very, very keen to see. So we'd like to have that shared with members and with residents. But again, I just want to stress that we really understand the levels of anxiety and stress and financial uncertainty that this situation has caused residents, and I certainly know my colleagues too, I'm sure everybody around the table wants to do everything that we can to support residents and help them get to a resolution of this situation. Thank you, Councillor Lange. Formally. Thank you. Any other questions on this? So I have to accept the Liberal Democrat addendum, I think it's helpful, I think, where it's being touched on Councillor Dickson, you know, the independent assessment, I think, is planned for later this week, or next week. Peter's going to nod to that. In terms of the S&P addendum, I have to accept 1.2, 1.4, 1.5, and I think actually we should send the report, a copy of the report, once a degree today, we'll send a copy of that report to all the residents, and I have to get you six up to the centre, and I have to be passed on to residents and pause to the a. Would that be acceptable to the S&P? No. No, we'd like to press dead vote please. Okay, so I think we have two positions, motion move by Councillor day, seconded by Councillor LaM ha, which agrees the recommendations in the report accepts the Liberal Democrat group addendum and accepts progress 1.2, 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6 of the S&P addendum up to the words residents in paragraph 1.6, and against that the S&P amendment moved by Councillor Astin, seconded by Councillor Kumar, which is also circulated, and that also accepts the Liberal Democrat group addendum. Could I take the votes, firstly, for the S&P amendment please. And for the motion please. Thank you. That's 9 for the motion and 8 for the amendment, the motion is carried. It is 18.6, it is the property strategy, utilisation of Councillor state, attacked the director of the place. Are we happy to agree this report, just as Crawford? Sorry, if you're not? Councillor interrupting. Some questions please, if that's okay. The report, if I dig into the bit on community centres indicates 8,200 visits, which I make to be per week, which I make to be about 1.55 per cent of the Edinburgh population. 35 centres, means that's 234 visitors on average per week to a centre, and they're on averaging 20 activities at centres, so that means about 8 people per activity. Is that a good use of 35 buildings within our state when we're looking to divest our state, and this is some of the lowest quality under various guises or parts of our state. Could they be rationalised, and what do we do about the fact that there are other community buildings out there that are owned by various other groups, is there an opportunity here to go much further in rationalising the state? Maybe I'll start with that, groove of my view, just to remind members that a report on community centre strategy was received by Culture and Community Committee last week, the week before, and a strategy was set out. Members asked that further work was undertaken on that, so the report wasn't agreed at the time, and further work is now being taken forward by Andrew Field, but also working closely with Crawford and the team. It's long been the view of officers that there is the opportunity to look at areas of the City neighbourhood, of the City in Toto, if you see what I mean, so not with the history of public buildings is that they're often developed for single uses, is to look at them in a much more holistic way, but recognising that A, and I think Councillor Dogue actually made this point at Culture and Communities, that some of the data we have is not great, so some of the points you made may be accurate, but the truth is we don't hold all that data. And secondly, these buildings, as members have seen again and again, there is huge attachment to them from local communities, so we have to trade, and this is not an academic exercise, it's a very careful exercise, but we are keen to take this forward looking at on a neighbourhood basis, and looking at council buildings, non-council buildings, but being led by the activities that the communities want to take part in, what's currently enabled and really importantly, what's currently not enabled, and that's the approach we set out, members have asked us to do some further work on that. Can Vener couple other things, if that work is going to be forthcoming? On the museums and galleries, and so on Lawriston Castle seems to have had a very dramatic drop off in visitors. Do we know why that is, has it been closed? I think the only explanation I have for that is Covid I suspect that, because it talks about 1920, 2024, and I suspect the numbers are, some of them have been updated since Covid and some of them haven't, so I'll look into that Councillor Whaiting, and check that, and by the way I'm pleased to report that the Nelson Monument is open as of this week around. And finally, Covener, on the school estate, there's some general update there. I read something yesterday in the media that suggested a survey of parents of independent school children at independent schools, as was UKwide, wasn't Edinburgh specific, but that up to 40% might switch to the state sector, if Labour were to become the government and they were to introduce VAT on school fees. Do we have, assuming there's something like 10, 15,000 pupils in the independent sector, do we have 40% of that, 4, 5,000 places in our school estate? Well, I wouldn't like to comment on the particular numbers, but what we do have in place is the Learning Estate Review, and as highlighted in the report, that's one of the elements that we will continually monitor as it comes through. We don't really believe, in terms of our discussions with the sector, that there would be an immediate switch of pupils at every single year group, and there would probably be a slow progress through their state, in which in case we've got much more time to meet that demand-effort transpires. Councillor M Another. Thank you very much, can be note, and thank you very much for the report. I have two questions on quite different subjects. One is about the workplace section and I thought it was quite interesting to talk about the different office-based estate spaces that we have and how things are being used differently. I wanted to ask if officers have looked at the way in which hot-desking and open-plan office spaces have a detrimental effect for a lot of people on well-being, with and productivity, and whether those impacts are being taken into consideration and mitigated when we're making future plans for the way that we use those office spaces going forward? I don't know if you're specifically referring to the fact that working practices have changed and teams calls, etc., so yes, we're looking at, yeah, well, I mean, open plans have been there for a long time. People are used to working on that. We've had hot-desking, et cetera, in place. It's part of our work style policies for well before COVID. I think the big change is the sort of people on teams calls in open-plan offices and that's something that we really want to plan for, is that there's different settings for people to have different types of experiences in the office. There will be places where desks are bookable, where these are bookable for teams calls, etc., so we are looking at all those issues but the planning and implementation will take quite a longer time. It's very convenient, very briefly. I don't know, Councillor Miller, perhaps, perhaps behind you question is that there are a range of colleagues with different needs and adapting working environments to meet everyone's needs, some of whom would be very happy in open plans, some of whom less so, then we do a lot of work on that and Leslie McMillan, who is in Crawford's team, looking at this thinking about both the individual and team requirements, has done a huge amount of work on that and I'm sure could talk to members if they want to, about the way in which we try and build that into space planning. Absolutely more relief to hear that, Paul, thank you. That does go to what I was asking. The other question was about care homes, if I can, so I wondered if anyone's on the call, maybe yourselves, I don't know able to say something a bit more about strategic context because the section to do with care home residential care accommodation sort of doesn't really talk to the fact that the bigger picture is that Edinburgh has got a very high proportion of people receiving long-term care at home as opposed to in residential care in comparison to cities like us and that there is a shortage of some very specific types of residential care accommodation, but the paper doesn't really go into that, so I wondered if someone's able to touch on that, please. Our view from the corporate property strategy is that that is an area that needs further analysis and further investigation working with our colleagues in that part of the council. I think there's a lot of demographic analysis that requires to take place as part of the project as part of that, but I see Pat, he might want to come in. Pat. Thank you, thank you, Councillor Carter. There is a piece of work which is almost concluded now on the projections associated with the requirements for residential care and picking up on your point with regards to complexity of needs and older people in frailty. For example, all of that will be fact authentic to that, so that is a report that will be coming to that, what we will be coming to that G.B. for we. Can I just clarify then how does that link with the work that Crowford and Peter are describing to us in this report because it feels like they're in separate places? This information and this report was gathered from colleagues right across for all the different sectors, so we're working closely with Pat and his team on that situation and the work that he's doing will feed them to any review that's required for property. Okay, Councillor i.e. to withdraw their pupils from the independent sector, possibly, around the 5th of July. Do we have a plan for housing those pupils from the end of August? Similarly, where the independent schools have big intakes, p1, p6, s1, do we have a plan for being able to house those pupils? My second question is to go a little bit further on what Pat said about that I think Crowford can probably pick it up is in terms of the care home provision and the demographics that we know. The city is getting older. Can we make a stab, a realistic stab at guessing how many care homes would be provided in, say, 2032? In terms of your education question, the application process replaces in schools for August 1th, so really that type of impact you're discussing. We'd have an impact in the following year and we would plan for that as necessary. As I said previously, our indication based on our discussions show that I do think there's going to be a big huge wave of people in every year group that would come. People I think would see how their education, particularly for their crucial times in their education process. That's the feedback we're getting, certainly, from our discussion as a sector. In terms of the care home question, again, Pat, who's got his hand up, might want to come in, but I'm not sure that it would be possible to tell that specifically in terms of the number of care homes that would be acquired, but Pat might want to answer it to me. Thank you, Councillor DOGAN. The piece of work that I'm just going to be able to own is our very extensive piece of work and it goes into considerable detail. I can't quote the data at the moment that it will be coming to the IGB very shortly and likely to be within about the next month or so. It's also drawn upon some independent analysis as well, and it takes into account the demographic growth. Thank you very much. I had a question on 4.51 talking about the City Mortuary Building, which says it requires significant investment in creating repairs and maintenance to bring up to a suitable modern standard, but there's conversations with NHS. I just wondered if there was any more detail you could give on that and then also on 4.13.6, which is about the appeals process, looking at schools capacity. We talk about the review, including a legal work stream to determine if changes are possible, which would limit the implications of decisions, and I suppose could you explain if that means making it harder for school placing appeals to allocate spaces in schools that are overcapacity or if it means building in buffer room in schools capacity, because I think there's a way of looking at that, which is there's two opposite ways of looking at it. So any more info on that would be helpful. On 4.51 Peter Knight, more recent information than me, well Crawford thinks about the second part of the question. We've been in discussion for the NHS for a while about the potential relocation of the mortuary building from the cow gate to the bio quarter, so it's closer to the teaching hospitals and so on and the creation of a modern facility, obviously at the moment not obviously. At the moment NHS low the inn doesn't have any capital in its programme for that, so there's discussions kind of on hold, but it remains an issue which we're going to have to deal with because the building is not in a great state, and from a citing point of view actually having it more adjacent to medical research is preferable, but at the moment there's no obvious route to fund that so we can remain in dialogue with them. And on the appeals process really what it means is at the moment we have no real impact on what the appeals panel decisions might be and whatever they are we need to cope with them in terms of capacity. So really what that's trying to say is trying to work with that process in order that could be a bit smoother, so it's not really trying to limit anything, it's just trying to get about a process in place and because it's such a legal process we'd need to get legal involvement in that to see if there's ways that that whole process could change as soon as we've got more of a grip in that really, but at the moment it happens late on in the year and we just have to react and deal with it as to try and make that a bit, improve that process. Thank you, that's helpful, I mean it does say limit the immediate implications of the decisions, so I appreciate all of that, but that was my concern, thanks. Okay, thank you, there are a lot of questions. We have to read the report. Thank you. So we'll take a time and break, come back at 10. Thank you. Good timing. Okay, let's move on to 8.7. Okay, item 8.7 is Local Government Chronicle Awards, it's a report by the Executive Director of Place, an S&P Group, addendum has been circulated and let's begin to this. Paul, Paul Lord it's been an opportunity to add. Happy to answer any questions and Chris is also on the call. Thank you. Any questions? Nope, Councillor Wright, 8.7. 8.7 is this, is this… Ajahn Awards. Yes, Canvina, a couple of things. It says the transport environment convener will be making his own arrangements. What does that mean? Is he paying? And secondly, it says that we're taking a table in conjunction with others at the Awards. Do we know how much that costs and has that factored into all of the costs that we've been given? Yes, and yes, I think, is the answer to Canvina just? Councillor Arthur said to us he was making his own way there and was going to deal with his own arrangements, so that's what we did. And the table is going to be shared between ourselves from memory, I think Siemens who obviously worked on the project, and Turner and Townsend, I think the individual amounts are £350 so we'll pay £350 for four places on the table and others will take care of their own. So, in, OK. OK, if we can move to the report then, I'll have to move to the report, and I can imagine Hannah and Cole, Radio are part of the process to put us forward tonight and along with Chris over some of the tram team so hopefully we'll win this next week or so. So I'll have to move the report in front of us. Give us a seconder, Councillor Councillor MICKENIS, but also officers and other elected members who have shaped a fantastic project so we would like them to be recognized as well. Just very briefly to add to what Councillor Kumara has just said, you know, clearly the work of Hannah Ross and the Tramps New Haven team is the big thing here, and, you know, we now have finally a full tram line as a result of that and delivered on budget and on time. But we wouldn't have been here and I don't think we would have got it on budget and on time without the forethought putting the right governance architecture around the project and also just the basic political will to take forward this project finishing the line after the disastrous first attempt and then, you know, limping that first part from the first attempt over over the finishing line and really what we can contribute as as elected members is providing that political will to empower officers to take forward these these big projects and so I second-error addendum recognizing the contribution of Councillor MICKENIS. Thank you, Councillors. Any other Councillor White? I'll just briefly convener, while I don't mind the Council putting itself forward for these things, I do on time and on budget which as we know has been the motto of Councillor Arthur and we've just heard it there from Councillor Astun. There are still things that aren't finished along the tram route. There are still issues with planters which I think might now be taken away and I have to say as far as budget goes well, when you have an overall quantum of money and you spend within that, that's fine but you had within a big risk allowance, an extra allowance just in case and there was supposedly a contract estimate. We've come in somewhere way above that and probably right at the maximum of the budget I would guess that's not the budget for building it, that's the budget of money the Council had available as opposed to what it thought it would cost and that cost was pretty high given that there was no depot and things compared with the first project or the first attempt of the project as Councillor Astun said's probably a better description of it so while some of it's quite good I don't think everyone in LEITH would think that the resultant LEITH walk is a perfect place making solution and on time and on budget is a bit of a stretch and figure. Councillor Lai. Yeah. Thank you, Councillor for a party that's got Councillor and the LEITH walk ward. It would be brave to go into LEITH walk ward and say all done in dust and thanks very much nothing more to do or see here. As somebody who sits on the transport environment committee like Councillor Astun, he will know that there's still quite a lot of things to be done to address the remaining aspects of the project and also whilst I do congratulate the team that was involved and it was a real team effort. I'm whilst recognising the SNP group are trying to be nice to Councillor Mackinac for maybe recent events. I think it's a little bit excessive of this. Thank you, Councillor Lange. Many other contributions? No. Okay, let's move on. So have to accept 1.1.1.4 of the SNP addendum. I think as we touched on there was a whole number of people, both politicians and members who contributed to the chance to New Haven, Councillor Karyng Dorna for example, Councillor Lacey McKinne, Alyssa Hings, Councillor Mcvay in their roles as community members and vice directors. I think it's important that recognising was a number of and the Transport, kind of the success of the Transport Committee's who were involved in that. Have I said something funny? Okay, so anyway, so that is a move on. So I'd ask that you change that they recognise efforts of the members and staff who contributed to the delivery of the CHAM project. I mean, Councillor Hayson might not have remembered that the time when there was a steel meet the CHAM, it was his part in the coalition and when it went to steel meet. So happy to move the report with 6.1.1.4 and I men did 1.1.5. Is it on a cue with that? Okay, so two possessions of motion moved by Councillor day, seconded by Councillor Pot, which agrees the recommendations in the report and accepts 1.1.4 of the S&P Addendum and 1.1.5 as adjusted against the amendment by Councillor CUMAR, seconded by Councillor Aastin, which is as circulated. Could I take the votes for the S&P amendment, please? Thank you and for the motion, please. Thank you, that's 9.4, the motion and 4 for the amendment, the motion is carried. Okay, that takes you to item 8.8, Women's Safety and Public Places Community Improvement Partnership and you'll update reports. This is the report by the vague director of Children and Education and Justice Services, a green group of addendum and a conservative group addendum have been circulated. Rose, how are we available for any questions? Rose or Angela, anything to add? Nothing to add, Angela Bulgaria is also available to take any questions. Angela LaVargre is the lead officer for the equally safe committee. Thank you, I mean, questions, Councillor Mumford. Thank you, yes I do, so two questions. One is just on 4.18, it talks about an additional desk-based exercise, looking at customer inquiries and comments, and I just wondered if there were any plans to make use of caseworker as part of this, so this is the system by which the casework that is received by Councillors is logged, so if we're looking at people, I certainly get him under a lot about places that women feel unsafe to walk through in my ward, so I just wondered if there were any plans for that. And then, secondly, a sort of broader question, there's obviously lots going on around behavior change in this, which is great to see, and I wonder how we can embed this work in other things happening in this committee, but across the whole Council beyond just embedding the principles of equally safe, and I suppose I want to talk about an example, which was that I was meeting with someone that works in the parks team, talking about changes that were needed in a certain park and saying, you know, women don't feel safe here, I was told by a mail parks officer, well, I'm fine to walk my dog at 10 p.m., so I don't see what the problem is, right? So that, you know, there's lots of people that work for the Council, that is absolutely not a representative view, I'm sure. There is clearly a lot to do in terms of, yeah, in terms of education and learning on this, so how do we embed that across all teams? Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Parker. Rose. I'll let Angela coin on this one, I think there's quite a lot of work that's taking place to address this, and there's a huge amount of work within the Council to make sure that women are safer in public places. I was actually going to ask, Councillor, if you wouldn't mind repeating the first part of the question, you said it quite quickly, and I think I missed part of it. Apologies, yes, it was just about if there were plans in the desk-based review to include using caseworker, so the constituent inquiries that Councillors receive to see if there are hotspots or particular issues that are coming up in our ward casework. Thanks. Thank you, apologies, I missed that a little bit. So just to reiterate what Rose just said, yes, there's a lot of work going on, not just around women's safety in public places, but we recognize that this work extends kind of beyond just specific factors and specific issues that women face when out and about. It is very much about attitudes, it is about education, it's about culture change, so a lot of the work of both the Equally Safe Committee, but also the Women's Safety and Public Places Partnership is around, first of all, raising awareness of what some of those issues are that get in the way of women's safety, but also how do we change those attitudes? In terms of the desk-based research, we are currently in a bit of a not a transitional stage, but more of a restructure and reshaping stage of the community improvement partnership. We realized that the majority of the actions that we had committed to do back in 2021 when the first ever report came to this committee have now been completed, so we are currently in the process of revising our terms of reference and creating a new action plan, so this is certainly something that we can take into consideration while putting our action plan together. I hope this answers your question. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm interested in section 10.6 of the report itself, so the appendix of what we've been given, and I'll just read out the section that I'm particularly interested in, so it says an interesting find was that police presence was not ranked highly amongst factors contributing to feelings of safety, and then it says that this was unexpected, and I guess my question is around why that would be unexpected. So evidence consistently shows that for the different communities, police absolutely do not make people feel safer, I think for women since the Sarah Eberard case in 2021. That's particularly the case. Maybe if we're talking about LGBT plus women, if we're talking about women of color, that is felt even more. So I guess my question is why would this report find that surprising, because you know, from my perspective that would be a common place understanding. Thank you, Councillor. Yeah, it was, it was something that kind of needs to be seen in the wider context of the findings of this report. I think there were some surprises around the fact that you know, in some ways, there were surprising findings in that elements that some people found comforting, or as increasing their feelings of safety, others found as making them feel unsafe. Many people talked about both in the consultation and in focus groups actually that the visibility of people, high food fall, particularly police and people in high visibility, that increased their feelings of safety in the sense that if anything were to happen, there's people here who can support me, people who can react, people who can intervene, but in this, in the grander scheme of things in terms of all the various factors that we offered as potential and factors that contribute to feelings of safety, police presence was not ranked as highly, and I appreciate that you know, there are certain demographics that might find police presence not as comforting as others, but then again, looking at demographics of respondents to this consultation, we expected the findings to be slightly different. Just thank you, that was really helpful, and forgive me if this is in the report, but do we have a clear breakdown of the demographics of who responded to the survey, because I think that's quite key for the point that you've just made. Yes, there is a section in the report that provides a kind of high level analysis of the demographics of respondents, including which post group areas they live in, anything from sex, gender, age groups and so on, there was additional information that we could break this down on. However, we actually had to choose a cut off point for what information we use, because the smaller their percentage with particular characteristics, the more we risk actually identifying people, so we opted out of doing too much of an analysis that might risk people's anonymity and confidentiality, so yeah, that is in the report. Thank you, Councillor White. Thanks, Govinder. The report highlights a lot of things from the data that you've collected from people. Your overview report talks about the work you're doing about behaviour change, and I understand that, and that's helpful, but the detail in the data seems to indicate a number of other things, so you've got reports where people might think more lighting would be useful, or different paths, or these kinds of things, lots of physical things, or things about people's behaviour at specific locations. What is the intention to progress that, given that it probably needs partnership work, and the Council is a partner, with most of the agencies involved, and the other parts of the Council can all have an impact and a part to play in this, how is it feeding into a one-counsel approach? Certainly, yeah, in fact the Council works in partnership with pretty much every agency on the Community Improvement Partnership Councillor. One of the key findings is that we are aware that there could still be a lot of analysis of the data that we have, the analysis that we have so far relies on a very broad, high-level overview of what our findings are. Some of the additional analysis that could be carried out have also been included in the appendix to the report, and in actual fact, to try and really unpick those details. We have additional meetings organised with the officer group responsible for the feminist city motion, so we have been working together for the past few months, and we will be specifically organising a meeting to discuss this data next week. Similarly, an interesting finding has been, for example, where women have told us that the behaviour of many young people, they find particularly problematic, coincides with areas where there are a lot of hospitality venues, a lot of pubs, clubs, restaurants, and a lot of those areas are also over-provisioned areas for alcohol. This is something we have taken, for example, to the licensing forum, and we have brought up this issue around not just the impact of over-provisioned individuals and communities, but also the wider considerations around women's safety and perceptions of safety. So it's a working progress, and as opportunities come up, we will certainly be taking them on board. Thank you, Councillor Miller. Thanks, Convener, and thank you very much for the report. I wondered if I could ask, the Scottish Women's Budgeting Group has said that the special surveys like this should be happening relatively regularly, and that it's important that they do them at different times of the day, different times of the year, because that's going to yield a richer set of results and more insight. I just wondered if you could tell me if that's happening and if there's plans to repeat surveys to achieve that information. Interestingly, this was under discussion by the Partnership just last week, and we have been torn between, yes, wanting to know more and wanting to have sort of consistent communication with residents finding out, you know, how things are changing, if they are changing. On the other hand, we also have to consider that we don't want to give residents of Edinburgh consultation fatigue, and we don't want people to feel that, you know, if those surveys are being done too regularly, what is the point in responding again and again every two to three years? Would it be perhaps more worthwhile giving more space and time to allow other interventions that we put in place to actually take effect and to build some traction, like the campaigns that we held around women's safety, like work that we're planning to do with public transport and so on and so forth, so at the moment, we have a very informal proposal to perhaps look into repeating this exercise seven years after the initial consultation, so that would take us to 2029 or 2030, that would also coincide with Edinburgh City Plan 2030. So I hear what you're saying and I hear their commendation, but we're also thinking of for a city the size of Edinburgh, we need to think and proportionally what is a good space of time that we want to leave between consultations so that we get results that demonstrate what change of any has taken place. Thank you and my question follows on in a sense, from what you've just said. I think this is amazing, you know, I think it's really good and I was particularly one interested in the Respect Her Space Initiative because I think it gave a very powerful message. I suppose particularly to men and if we think about the women in this room and I'm not counting the women who here virtually, then according to the statistics, eight of us will have experienced some form of sexual harassment. But my question is about behaviour change and is there any way - I did look at the evaluation and I couldn't see anything and perhaps it's too ambitious or impossible, that tells me what behaviour changes, if any, arose from this fantastic campaign. Thank you. Thank you Councillor. This is something that we discussed as well. We, I say we, I have our comms colleagues to thank for a lot of this work, actually the majority of this work. Their expert advice on this is that at the moment, because the campaign is so recent, all we can really look at is it's reach and impact, it will take time in order to actually see what the impact has been, if any, because behaviour change, similar to culture change, does take time, awareness raising does take time and what is very hopeful and will be supported in the next steps of perhaps repeating this campaign or raising another campaign will be that in the revision of the Equally Safe Strategy, primary prevention is actually one of the key objectives. So we know that there's a very, very good chance that nationally as well as locally, we're going to see a lot more activity around raising awareness of what exactly are the behaviours that make women feel uncomfortable and unsafe and what we can do about them. So I think this is something that will perhaps go inside with a survey or a consultation later on in time where we can actually have more tangible results as to what the actual impact of the campaign has been. Thank you. And last question, Councillor doggott. That was an intended conveyor. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So thank you for that, Rose and Angela, I have to move the report. I think, Councillor Marnall has obviously it's a fantastic piece of work and I know that Councillor Wach has been working on a lot of the work by the scenes as well. I'm really pleased to see the report in front of us here so I'm happy to move the report in the seconder, Councillor Wach. I'll be second to do it. Just want to thank the Community Improvement Partnership team and the Equally Safe team for the fantastic work that they're doing on this. And looking forward to achieving even more. Keep raising the bar, achieving even more in the year to come. That, I'll be second. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Marnall. That's the report. Thank you, Carina. And thank you, Angela and everyone for this report. It's really exciting to read and I'm so pleased it's coming forward. And also how it's dovetailing with the other work being done by the Council, for example, the Feminist City Working Group and I think the proposals you're setting out for how those will sort of divide up and the tasks is really, really sensible and will be effective. There's clearly really good work happening with really minimal resource and three positive partnership working and making sure we're taking opportunities and echo the comments about the Respect Us Space Campaign, which was really brilliant and got people talking around the city and was really effective. The report that we've got this year, this update, references the recommendations from the original report. I suppose I'd be prepared to bet that not everyone looking at this report on the webcast or whatever has clicked through to that, but there are some really big chunky and exciting things in there. So how we embed this in the business plan, how we revisit IIAs, how we look at planning guidance and training. And there are some next steps, some of those recommendations that are in action, the Park Lighting Guidance Review, the Workaround Nighttown Coordinator, but I'm really keen to see where those other things fall, who's got the responsibility for them, what resource will be going to them. And that's the really clear point for me. What resource is needed because it is amazing what's happening with so little, so imagine what we could do with a little bit of dedicated resource and capacity. And I'm just going to read out from the impact section of a report section seven to make the point for me. And that talks about the impact of this work. Women's concern for personal safety often precludes them from full and meaningful inclusion in public spaces, further limiting their ability to be involved in activities that would improve their overall physical and mental wellbeing, support income generation and enhance their overall participation in public life. Women and girls turn down opportunities in employment and training due to limited transport and travel options and feelings of unsafety. Making public spaces safer for women and girls will have considerable social, health, and financial benefits through reducing the wider inequalities women experience in society. The work this group is doing is absolutely integral to achieving the Council's aims and objectives. And I think it's really clear that supporting this supports lots of the other things we want to achieve. Council, what talked about raising the bar and doing brilliant stuff. And we are, but we are in danger of falling behind. These ideas are now pretty mainstream, pretty widespread. It used to be that you just had to, you know, you could just talk about Vienna and a few places doing, you know, doing gendered public safety well. The list is growing, anyone that's, you know, been to a Mayist talk recently knows that this is a really popular subject people are cutting on, so we have been leading the way, but we need action and we need resource to help us continue being a leader in this. So that's why I'm asking for, just to get a little, this committee has kept up to date on what the plans are, where they fall. So we can take it forward where we need to, and setting out any unfunded costs in advance of the budget so that we can decide as groups if we want to prioritise this work. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor MUN Oh, Councillor Smaller. Second. I feel like there's nothing else to add to that. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Waite. Thank you, Convener. And, you know, I may have a very different politics with my colleagues in the Greens, but we can see that there is something here about safety that we all want to improve. And I see that the addendum is quite helpful in that regard. I want to add to it, though, because I think we're missing a bit of a trick here with some of the data that's come forward. It's highlighted some things in the final report that are not only a women's safety issue, they're a whole community safety issue, and I look at where it's talked about hotspots and mapping, and particularly around the area around the Cargate, the food please walk. It's an area I know well, Convener, I grew up in the area, I still live nearby, but a lot of my constituents visit for their shopping, for doctors dentists, that kind of thing. And it is clear from this data that there is a problem there. And it's affecting women's safety and it's affecting wider safety. And if I think of incidents that have happened that the police will know about, there is an obvious issue around there, and they will have - the police will hold data on that. So I think we're missing a trick if we don't take action on things that this report highlights. That's one of them. And in the old days, I would have said it would need a problem solving policing approach, which brings in all of us as partners, the owners of the buildings there and all of that, and looks at finding ways to stop the anti-social behavior and violence and any of the other things that are happening. And I think we really need to do that. What I'm concerned about is that there may be other places in the city where this is hidden because it was picked out as a case study in the report, and there may be others, so we need to look at that too. And then there's a wider issue about just general improvement. So I get what Council Mumford says about looking at lighting in a new approach across the Council. But actually we should be looking at logging specific requests, whether it's to Councillors or through this work, to see where we need to target some of that funding that we do on a regular basis, but to make improvements. And there may be other wider things that we can do, which are about place, and making those safe places for people to be and places they're more happy in, particularly sometimes at night. But it's not always at night, some of it is daytime too. So I've moved this in the hope that we can work with partners and improve safety in that one particular area, but take it as an example of getting back to the days when our partnership work with Police was all about preventing crime and making places safer in the first place and not having to have deal with the after effects of it, which we see too often present. That's going to be there. Thank you, Councillor LRIKE. Councillor DOGGERT. Thank you, Councillor interjecting. Thank you, Councillor LRIKE. I can't match Councillor Vides local knowledge formally. Thank you. Any other contributions? I have to accept the Green and Councillors' name, so are we agreed? No? Sorry? No apologies, thank you, Councillor white. We do agree that there's a problem, but I think we disagree with the solution, so we'd like to move just with our addendum, please. Thank you. Okay, so we have a motion moved by Councillor Day, seconded by Councillor what? Which agrees the recommendations and the report and accepts both the Green and the Conservative Addendums and again that the amendment moved by Councillor MUNFORT, seconded by Councillor M Heller, which is as circulated. Could I take the votes freshly for the Green amendment, please? And for the motion, please. Thank you, that's nine for the motion and seven for the amendment. Motion is carried. Okay, that takes you to item 8.9, internal audit, opening overdue, internal audit actions, performance dashboard 29th of April 2024, as is a referral from the governance risk and best value committee and nor do you call to see if there are any questions. There's no amendments on this, I think questions, Councillor MUR Julian. Yeah, just really quickly, on the health and social care partnership, there's one overdue and one in progress action for the loan-working item, so I just wanted to know what's the overdue action because they assume that the in progress one is the one that's extended about taking a sample audit. So, it's actually the same actions, what we're seeing is there's one that is in progress, so it's been worked on but that current action is overdue, so it's not double count, it's not two actions, it's one action. Can I also add just for members, for awareness that all the overdue actions for the poor facility security plan have now been closed, so it's just to make you aware they were for the remot Bascomity as well? Okay, I have to agree with this report, thank you. Item 8-10 is the Internal Audit Update Report, Report of 04, 2023 24, again this is a referral from the governance risk and best value committee, a green group addendum has been circulated and nor do we call it if there are any questions. A lot of anything to add to this report? Nothing to add, happy to take questions on the audit process but we also colleagues here from the Health and Social Care Partnership to answer any specific questions on, the findings that are brought in and the audit and the management actions that have been taken. Okay, thank you, any questions, come to Campbell. Thanks, Kavina, thanks Laura and Pat. It was just at the start, obviously the referral from GRBB has a recommendation for this committee to specifically monitor recommendation 3.1, which covers the development of the procedure for the Council owned elements of the medium term financial plan and also to monitor recommendation 4.1, which identifies the work required to address factors contributing to delays in inputting financial data in the SWIFT system. So I just wondered how would you recommend that this committee could monitor those, are they updates? I think this is probably more for Pat than for Laura, are these updates that you'll be able to bring back to committee through regular reporting? Pat? Yes, yes, Councillor CUMBLE, we can do that and we'll be taking it through the AGP anyway and we can come back here and report back and keeping with the internal audit action points. Thank you, Councillor Agile. Thanks, Kavina. I recognise what Councillor CUMBLE says about what the GRBB asked us to scrutinise an ongoing basis, I get that, but I want to actually ask about a couple of other things that are in here and it relates to agreed management action. So at 1.1, it tells us management partially agree with the recommendation. So I have some concerns about that because this seems a fairly simple recommendation and if you're not using a joint strategic needs assessment to determine future change in service and demand for each individual service, I don't know what you're using it for. So perhaps we can have an update from the Chief Officer as to whether that has actually been accepted and how it's going to be implemented. And similarly at 1.3, and the financial cost of any proposed initiatives to improve performance and service delivery should be assessed prior to approval and commencement. And it says we would agree with this however, well that however is quite important at that point because it goes on to say it's difficult, practical challenges of implementing change and all the rest of it. Well there may well be all those practical challenges, but ultimately convener, if you don't assess prior to trying to change it, how do you know if your change is working and whether you're on track or you need to review the change project. So maybe we could have an answer to those and see whether those two can now be accepted and embedded. Certainly, thanks very much Councillor Wight. So perhaps in the language here, this is in addition to a joint strategic needs assessment. The JSNE will only take us so far and we have to be realistic about what it is, it's got a wider impact. So the JSNE will not hypotricate for changes in policy and legislation that's impacted upon the service and particularly in the last couple of years. The relaxation of homeless, local connections, positive asylum seeking, for example, all inadvertently impact upon the budget of the health and social care partnership. The JSNE will not take into account the national increase that's been experienced in relation to adult protection and in rural London with an increase of 40% of compulsive treatment orders. And also it does not take into account some of the unforeseen circumstances associated with, for example, the closure of a care home that we experienced just in the last month. So just to reiterate, this is in addition to, so the reason as to why we've added that comment is to reflect the fact that it is above and beyond the JSNE and that's how we need to consider this and moving forward. The point that you made in relation to how do we assure ourselves that we are in the very main on track, those 24 different watch streams associated with our MTFS and all of them are rigorously controlled over our savings governance board with a built-in escalation process for any of those watch streams that are going off track. Thanks. So, can we do that, give some explanation which I think I can partly agree with, the base is still the base and you change the strategic needs assessment if the external change I would have thought. That's really then a question for the auditor. How are you going to judge whether these have been implemented or not, these recommendations and sign them off as implemented or leave them standing? And if they're left standing, is that then a risk that management have to agree to carry? Thanks for your question, Councillor. So we've agreed the evidence that we would require, so we will review what comes back in relation to this. I think it's important for members to know, and we discussed this at the Government of Riskin Base, where you committed when the report was initially presented, there was quite a discussion between audit and management on this particular action and, in turn, a lot of it were clear that we consider the GISNA to be an important part of this piece of work, but we do appreciate that there's other elements to it as well. Generally when the evidence comes in, we will review and that's our process and if we feel that there is not enough evidence to demonstrate that the actions being complete and that we can see that their associated risks are being managed, then management would consider a risk acceptance, where they will detail all the other actions that are taken to control the risk. Just to be clear on our marketplace process, so management, do own the right to accept the risk on managing the actions in general audit, are supportive of that. However, we do report all risk acceptance to the Government of Riskin Base, so for future scrutiny as well, so there's an opportunity to review that and just really important to add. While management has the right and the responsibility to risk accept, if I believe in my role as chief in general audit, are exposing the organisation to an element of risk that is outweb the risk appetite, then I would bring that back here so hopefully that gives some assurance on the post-sets that we will go through as we work through that. Thank you. Getting another question, so if I move to the report, I'm happy to move to the report and thank you to Laura and Pat for the contributions to the South and just to note we're happy to accept the green agenda. A seconder? I hate it formally. Councillor Milner. Yes, thanks, CanBinaire. Just for the avoidance of doubt, I wanted to put down the agenda and to say that we don't indeed want to agree to regularly monitor management delivery of those two audit recommendations and with special thanks to Councilor White for making some of the points that we discussed at GRBV when the report came there, there is definitely a need for us to continue to keep our eye on this because there's a lot of – yeah, to put it mildly, there's a lot of issues around the finances, around health and social care, so I think monitoring these management actions is incredibly important for us as this committee and strongly of the view that we want to see these through and given that there is this professional difference of opinion between the partnership and internal audit in terms of exactly how we keep our eye on demographic changes and how that's reflected in the finances, I think it is incredibly important that we make sure that we keep our eye on that here with our role over health and social care as it is. So, yeah, just to make sure that that's on our work plan and on our actions a little. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Perks. Thank you. Thank you. I was going to make a suggestion of a verbal amendment but it will be up to Councillor Miller if she wants to accept this. That was to take out 3-1 and 4-1 and just say so that it would read, agrees to regular, we monitored delivery of the recommendations from the audit and monitor all of it and I wondered if that would be acceptable because I think there are wider concerns across the whole audit here. I think that's probably fine actually because it is more general than just those two exact management actions but that was the referral that we had from GRBV so that was why I did it that way but yes, I'm happy to broaden it. Okay. So, I have to accept the amended addendum. Agreed. Thank you. Okay, let's take Section 9 policy decisions. The convener suggested that we agree the reports where we don't have any amendments and then we'll come back to the to where we do if that's agreeable to members so that would be items 9.2, 3, 4. 0, 4. Oh, sorry. Items 2, 3, 9, 2, 9, 3, 9, 5, 9, 6, 9, 7, 9, 8, I remember is happy to agree those reports in a block. That's all we did last time. Agreed. Councillor MURPHY. Yes, sorry. I did actually have a question. Well, a couple of questions on 9.2, the continuing care policy and I had contacted Rose before committee to seek some of the student that's on the IIA but I don't think we've managed to link up so I don't know if it's possible to like maybe just make a commitment that we do get those answers because I did have some concerns about the quality and some of the answers in the integrated impact assessment which I think needs them follow up. Rose, can you commit to giving that information to the council and other members? I certainly can, yes, and apologies, Councillor MURPHY. I haven't got back to you in time. Thank you very much, Rose. Okay, so if we're happy with that, item 9.1, then 9.4. Okay, so that interactions in 9.1, policy on advertising and sponsorship proposed amendments. This is a report by the Executive Director of Corporate Services, a green group of Denver and a conservative group amendment have been circulated and Richard Lloyd-Beth will see it for any questions. Richard, anything to add to the paper? Nothing to add just to say that the policy has been updated to reflect some of the climate and nature emergency elements of the business plan and have to take any questions if there are any, thank you. Thank you, Regent Sviggum, Councillor Parker. Thank you. Two questions. One is quite small, which is just to clarify that the intention of the policy is to exclude advertising by fossil fuel companies irrespective of the product that they bring forward. That's my reading of it, but I just wanted to clarify. And then secondly, it picks up on a question from the deputation, which is whether any consideration has been given to the positive use of advertising or sponsorship within the council. So obviously, this is a list of exemptions, but is there anything particularly under the community wealth building agenda that the council might be considering in terms of how it uses its advertising sponsorship going forward? There we are. Councillor Parker, I'm happy to take the first question, and the answer is yes, it is intended to do that. And if it's helpful, we could just add that in to make that clear at the appropriate pace, which I think is just lost at a minute ago, where it says the table below high carbon products. We could put and fossil fuel companies just to make that clear. And if that's acceptable to the committee. Councillor Manfred, sorry? Thank you, sir. For Richard, I think. I'll point. Sorry. I'll just comment. Can you repeat the second question? I can. The question is, this is a policy which excludes lots of things from our advertising and sponsorship contracts that will be agreed, and wondering if any consideration has been given to how we can use advertising and sponsorship positively, for example, by promoting local businesses, local services in line with a community wealth building approach. Yes, absolutely, Councillor. So I think this part of our general commercial process is for identifying sponsorship, we would, of course, look to do that. But I can take a look at it, take a look at that and bring back some further information on examples of where we've tried to do that, and of course, building on the point you're making, look to see how we can further integrate that into identification of appropriate sponsors. Councillor Crawford. Thank you. Just as a question around the application of this to contracts, and it's really clear this won't be applied retrospectively, and it'll be for new contracts, but it's not uncommon certainly in F&R committee that we're asked for contract extensions without going through a full tendering process. And so I wondered if there's scope to make these new conditions, but this new policy part of an extended contract, I suppose, in cases where it would be particularly relevant, for example, the continuation of bus stop adverts or something, thanks. Councillors interjecting. Councillor interjecting. I mean, I'd really like to refer to the next, but I know she's not on the call, but I think that the answer would be, it depends, Councillor Mumford, because some contracts obviously have an extension built in at the start, and that would be to extend on the same terms. In other cases, the Council is choosing to roll a contract forward, in which case there might be a chance to negotiate with the contractor on what those terms might be. So I think it might depend on what it is, but we could be alert to it in F&R definitely depending on the circumstances. Thank you. Yes, I think alert to it is, yeah, I was going to request that I suppose the way we'd like the opportunity that that option is taken to committee where possible, I suppose, would be my request, so that's helpful, thank you. Okay, thank you, there are no other questions, sort of move to the report, I'm happy to move the report and thank officers for their work on this, and the seconder, Councillor what? It formally. Thank you, Councillor Parker. Yeah, thank you. So we very much welcome this change in policy, and we think it is an excellent step forward in terms of aligning the Council's policies with its ambitions and intentions as set out in the business plan. I think the deputation earlier was excellent in terms of its explanation of the reasons why advertising can be so punicious and therefore why it's so important that the Council is mindful about the sorts of advertising and sponsorship deals which it approves. We have a commitment to climate and nature in this Council, so it's absolutely right that we see that commitment threaded through all of the work of the Council. That said, there are other standards that we think this Council should uphold and those include ethical concerns. It is not the job of this Council to clean up the image of arms companies by granting them access to public advertising across the city, and I think in the context of this Council's support of a ceasefire in Gaza, it is even less appropriate for us to permit contracts with those very same companies whose weapons are being used in the horrific and relentless bombardment of Palestine as we speak, and in other parts of the world historically and depressingly I'm sure no doubts in the future too. To be very clear, we don't need their money, we don't want their money, and we don't think it's right for the Council to legitimise their business practices of organisations who profit from war by entering into contractual agreements with them. It is as simple as that. We also move to exclude military organisations from possible contracts including branches of the armed forces. A group does not believe that the Council is an appropriate recruitment arena for the armed forces and we think the Council has a responsibility to support action to deliver peace. I would also add, as a final note on the addendum, we'd be very grateful for that small verbal adjustment that I think was suggested to be through Deb's at 4.14.9 just to be extra clear that that is the intention of the policy and to remove any ambiguity. Thank you. Thank you, Camina. The 'want to echo' everything Councillor Parker said, we're very grateful for the recommendations in the report, but of course we always want to go a little bit further, so that's why we're putting in the point there around arms and military, we think it's very inappropriate that the Council should be offering its venues, it's advertising space for these things. But I also want to speak to the point about allios in our addendums. That's the final 2.1.1.1.1.1.4. We know that there is an allio review happening and this will obviously be part of this and we know that some allios currently consider themselves to be bound by the Council's ethical advertising and sponsorship policy, some do not. There are some very real cases at the moment where we think allios could potentially be doing things that are not in compliance with what the Council would want. Obviously, the review will tell us whether we're going to make it a requirement of the allios, comply with this, but so we're asking that allios would be asked for voluntary compliance, if they're willing to comply with that, we know things like the oil club dinner have been hosted, we know that there are arms conferences hosted and adverts for arms companies on Council supported assets as part of allios. So that's just that second part of the addendum. The last item I spoke on in Women's Safety, I said that Edinburgh is in danger of falling behind the curve on things. This is an item which represents the opposite of this. We would be the leading Council in Scotland on ethical advertising and sponsorship, we'd be the first, others would very soon follow, we know that ad-free cities are having these conversations, we've got the opportunity now to say that we understand that there's what the Council does with one hand impacts on Council's aspirations in the other, we've talked a lot about joined up thinking today and I think this is really part of that. As a Council, we believe in climate justice, we believe in emissions reduction and we believe in making Edinburgh a better place to live and work, and I just want to echo something that had been said in the deputation which hadn't even crossed my mind before as a part of this, which I very much see as a finance and resources person, it's about money and it's about use of Council assets, but Hazel shared she wants Edinburgh to be a place where young people look around and think I like this world, this is a world where people look after each other. We know that climate anxiety is very real and having a massive impact on the mental health of our young people, obviously we know how much people are suffering at the minute with global conflict, so that's just a whole other element I'd like to again thank Hazel for bringing that into this conversation. This is about what we say about ourselves as a Council and as a city, so incredibly grateful for officers for all the work on this, thank you. Councillor interjecting. Thank you, Councillor Linde. Thanks, Governor. Trigger warning time. I think the Looney left are trying to take over the asylum again. To be honest, I really didn't know where we'd end up with this review of policy, but I do wonder when we're getting to a stage where we're being told that we should ban advertising of perfectly legal, perfectly normal things that are part of everyday life. And you know, even in practical terms, adverts are used by marketers to get people to choose between different brands, different similar products. They're not normally chosen to increase sales, maybe people need to go away and have a bit of a look at that. I really do think it a bit odd that we've come up with this banning things that are perfectly legal because of certain sensurious authoritarian looks at things that some disagree with and don't want other people using when actually we live in a liberal democracy. We give people information and they make their choices. The report itself is a problem for me, contributor, because it seems to be based on doing a troll through the websites of various left-wing groups who want to ban things. The look at information around Europe seems to actually mostly come back to the UK and looks at citizens and assemblies who've been told certain information so they come out with a certain answer. And it basically works on the basis that government should interfere in the way people's lives work. There's then the issue around the extras that are trying to be added on here. We have a number of employers in this city who are involved partly in the arms industry. If we didn't have them, we wouldn't have a proper defense of this country. But, more importantly, we wouldn't in this city have really good, highly skilled, highly paid employment for young people coming up to school and gaining skills and moving forward. So I think banning that is banning them advertising and the only advertising they'd be doing is to recruit. So banning them doing that is likely to damage young people's prospects in the city. I think we should just stick with what we've got. We have a perfectly reasonable advertising policy. People can make their own choices on products. And you know all of these things bring perverse results. The report mentions the London Underground ban on junk food as they call it, so-called junk food. Well we know about that because a certain comedian put forward an advert for his show and was told he couldn't have it. Because he described his show as a hot dog of a show and had a picture of a hot dog on the advert. He wasn't advertising hot dogs. He wasn't suggesting people eat hot dogs. But it was banned. Well that's the kind of perverse result you end up with these kind of things that can lead out. Let's keep out of people's individual lives and choices and let them make their own decisions. Thank you. Thank you. I was going to say formally but perhaps the extreme left would be more suitable for your convener so I will formally second that. Convener if I've used inappropriate language I apologize if the far left or extreme left or any other description is appropriate then I'm happy that that goes in its place. Thank you, Councillor-- any other contribution? Councillor Lange? Yep. Thank you so much, Counvener. I was going to suggest maybe the armed forces don't need to advertise because the consensus within the election, it looks like all 18 years ago, I have to go in automatically to the armed forces. At least that's what my daughter asked me about on Sunday. I think we as a council for a right or for wrong have agreed that it's important to have an ethical advertisement policy. Now that opens up some difficulty because you then have to make a subjective decision on what is acceptable and what's not and there will always be black and white and then there will be areas of grey in between and that will not be an easy decision to take but we're not talking about banning people from doing anything. What we're saying is as a local authority and we are not a purely commercial organisation. We're a public authority and I think it is fair and right to ask the question, well, OK, given who we are and what our objectives are, where is it right that we take money to allow organisations to advertise their services and organisations advertise their services because it clearly has an impact on how many goods or services they're going to sell. But these are not going to be easy decisions. When we looked at the revised policy, we were comfortable with the direction of travel on it. We've looked carefully at the Green Amendment and actually we do think there is a case to be made for 1.2E which relates to arms manufacturing and whether that is appropriate for us as a Council to be taking money to allow that kind of advertising. We do differ from the Greens on B because we do recognise that our Armed Forces who do keep this country safe have got an important role to play particularly around recruitment of people and we think there is merit in allowing sponsorship or advertising there so I think it is worth saying just in case, because it could get into a complicated series of votes. But if the Greens are looking to press both A and B then we would be looking to press B but not B. Thank you. Maybe in the second of the opposition then. So Laura, thanks for the opening. Yeah, seconding the opposition. Thank you. Thank you. Any other contributions? Sorry, here's my list. Yeah, I'm drawn to this debate to make a contribution which is the classic counts of the Freeze, I was not intending to contribute however and I try not to say that because it's so annoying when people do it especially at 6 minutes to 5, but I just feel compelled as I'm sure you'll understand, convenience. So I don't think that this amendment is a question of exactly how far left the Scottish Green Party is although I'd be very happy to discuss our politics with anybody outside of this meeting not using up our 6 minutes. And I think it's very strange to hear counts their whites saying that it's important that we just give people information that they will make choices because I think what he's doing by saying that is doing marketing as a profession, a great disservice. People spend billions of pounds every year on marketing because it is very powerful and it has as a profession and as a service come an extremely long way since Mad Men and they're outdated ideas about marketing and society started that profession. I also believe that if you begin an apology by saying if I have then you have not really grasped how to particularly apologise for something that you have said or done that has caused damage especially if that statement is expressed in a way which fails to show any sorrow in tone, language or expression. I would also like to add, I think that Councillor White's comments were also disrespectful of officers and the work that they have put into bringing forward a very articulate report which we are here to take seriously. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor, any other contribution? No. Okay. So I think there will be some complicated books, but we're happy to... Sorry. Can I just clarify? The Liberal Democrats is happy with 1.1.3 and 1.1.4, which is about Aelios. No. To clarify, I think we were comfortable with 1.3 but not 1.4. In which case, we would be happy with that position. Thank you. Okay, so let me give a different position. So we'll have to move the report with the MD and accepting 1.1.3 and that's all. So leave the rest of Jamie and you don't want to give that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So I think we have three positions. Administration motion moved by Councillor DAY, seconded by Councillor WART, which agrees the recommendations and the report and paragraph 1.3 of the Green Addendum. We have a Conservative amendment moved by Councillor WITE, seconded by Councillor Doggett which is a circulated and a Liberal Democrat group amendment moved by Councillor LANG, seconded by Councillor D Creates-Donate which agrees the recommendations and the report and the Green Addendum with the exception of 1.1.2b and 1.1.4. Sorry, just as my colleagues I might say that probably we're happy to take a supportive team position. Yeah, okay. So we've got two positions. Okay, so we're going to two positions. So we have--we'll take the Conservative amendment as the motion in that case and the Liberal Democrat position as the amendment. So I could have the votes for the Liberal Democrat group amendment, please. Thank you. That's two for the motion. I'm fifteen for the amendment as carried. Okay. Well, Jamie gets his papers. We're moving to 9/4, we've got a couple of minutes to meet if you wanted to quickly move something on a forced managed policy review report by his next election and families. But quickly say any questions to officers? Nope. Councillor CUMMARA. Yes, this is a very important policy. So I'm not asking questions. You've not moved your report. She just moved the report for me. I mean a seconder, please. Thank you, Councillor Caput. Councillor CUMMARA. Please start. Okay, this is a very important policy. But one of the things that offices have got right is actually capturing the cultural aspect in this report, which I thank you for, for noting, understanding the differences between arranged marriage versus forced marriage. And I do appreciate that. So the Council employees have quite rightly recognized that we have one amazing opportunity to actually make a difference. But the idea that people have to then come back and ask for this information in other languages, which will never happen in practical sense. So what I'm asking is, given that this is a particular issue that's most prevalent in South Asian communities that re-translate information, like really basic information, in those three or four languages, because that's where we can hit it more and make a difference. So I move. Councillor CUMMARA. Thank you, seconder. Councillor CUMMARA. Thank you. Are we agreed? Yeah, thank you. Maybe the last, yes, that's our business. I suppose to say that they're going to welcome to Councillor CUMMARA in her new role in Penis and Councillor Davidson. And I forgot to do it. And I also believe that Councillor M Mark will be joining us as well as a member and so welcome. And finally just this, we Andrew's last Penis committee. So I thought I'd just hand over to Andrew to say a few words as he... we've still got a few weeks of them, yeah, but I'll answer if you would start. Councillors interjecting. I just wanted to say thank you. I don't get up. Very opportunity to say thank you to everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor M but I just wanted to say thank you for the way in which you conduct your business and the way you seriously take all these issues. They're very important for the running and the city, the political hierarchy of this organisation acts well and I think Edinburgh Council has done that fantastically. So I just wanted to thank you over the last nine years, the experience of the last nine years. Good, bad and indifferent for everything you do. I know you don't get paid enough. I think... I know you say that. That's right. Nine years. But I know you don't get paid enough. I know how much many hours you put in in your communities and in preparing for these committees, etc. So I think it's worthwhile saying thanks. It's been a privilege to work with you for the next nine years. That's all I want to say. Thank you. I can do it. Okay, go home now. Thank you, all right. [BLANK_AUDIO]