Transcript

during the meeting. Only switch them on when I invite you to speak. If your own privacy, camera set backgrounds should be set to blurred and any non-committing members or officers who are attending remotely and who wish to speak on any item should indicate this by leaving a request in the meeting chat box. Item one is apologies for absence and notifications of substitute members. John, do we have any? Yes, thank you Chairman. Apologies this evening from Murray Litvak, the independent member and from Simon Scofield, one of the parish members. Thank you. Thank you. So onto item two, which is disclosures of interest. Can I remind Councillors of the need to declare any disclosure of pecuniary interest in respect of any item of business on the agenda? The requirement to withdraw from the meeting before the item is discussed. I also invite Councillors to disclose in the interest of transparency any non-pucuniary interests which may be relevant to any matter on the agenda and to confirm that it will not affect their objectivity in relation to their consideration of the matter. Are there any disclosures of interest? I'm not seeing any, so I'll move on. Okay, so item three and the main item on the agenda. The corporate improvement plan may now ask our Chief Executive and Head of paid services, Petro Roble, to introduce this item, please. Thank you, Councillor. Thank you, Chair. Thank you all, Councillors, for the opportunity to speak to you today. I know that you've all had a chance to read the Solage Reports and to read my report and the improvement plans that we included. I don't intend to go over any of those in any detail unless you'd like me to. Instead, I thought it was important to set out what we're asking for here and why. The most important thing to say up front is that the position that the report sets out is one that I recognise, and that's important. One of my favourite authors is Terry Pratcher, and he once said that before you can slay the beast, first you must say his name. What he meant is that before you can deal with an issue, first you have to accept that there is an issue. We accept all the findings of the report. They are correct, and I and the senior officers, all of whom you have here, we accept them, and we think they are correct, and we recognise them. The situation that they describe is not acceptable. Residents and businesses deserve better. As I say, you have all the senior officers here today, all of CMB, and we're here because we all agree that there's a problem, that this is unacceptable and we're united in our determination to deal with it. You have our improvement plans, and these are, I hope you'll agree, comprehensive. They address every recommendation and finding, and they go further, but they are also living documents which we will continue to develop as we move forward. In line with the recommendations, we will report back to full Council on progress every six months, and that will be public. In line with the recommendations, we also propose pointing an independent assurance panel to provide support and challenge and help us to navigate the best course, and we will be asking that panel to provide an independent view on progress every six months, so that the Council has that independent view on what we're doing and how that progress is going, and that too will be public. Everything that we're asking for is set out in paragraph 2.1 of my report. In short, we want the committee to, we would like the committee to recommend to full Council to accept the findings of the report, to endorse our proposed approach, including the setting up of that independent assurance panel, and we ask that you recommend it to full Council for discussion on the 17th of June. And I have a further ask as an officer. I know there's going to be political elements at play today, but this is a moment for the Council to come together, regardless of politics. You have from your officers the very best view on how to move forward, and we would really appreciate your support. Much of this shouldn't be controversial. It's about the basics, getting the right culture, the right strategic direction and values, the right governance, appropriate financial controls in order, and making sure that we provide our services, the services that our residents and businesses deserve, and that we provide it in a way that is very clearly, openly and transparently value for money. So we want your support so that we can move that forward, and so we can play our part in making this a Council that we can all be proud of, and making Guilford a great place to live, work and do this, and that's the objective at the heart of all of this. Thank you. Thank you. Can I ask if our statutory officers, Susan Sowell and Richard Bates, wish to make any comments? I just want to say really, so hopefully Councillors are very well aware of some of the issues around finances over the last 10 months. So I set out back at the end of August last year, financial recovery plan, and part of that was around obviously the immediate actions to sort out the finance of the Council, but also part of that plan was around the improvements needed to make within the finance service itself. So I think you've had a number of reports since then detailing the things we've been trying to do over the last 10 months. We've made a lot of progress, and I think you'll see from the improvement plan the things that are green, where we've actually managed to resolve some of those issues, but we still have a lot of work to undertake, and I'm very glad to have Jo and Lon Simon basically working on the plan together, and I'm sure that we'll be able to deliver this for you. Thank you. Susan Sowell. Yes, thank you, Chairman. Just to add from a governance perspective as well that members will be aware of quite a significant amount of work that's been going on on the constitution recently, and some of the governance changes, and that I'm very grateful to the two deputy monitoring officers who've been involved in that work, and you'll see from the plan that we have achieved quite a significant amount in terms of the constitution, and there is more coming before you at the next Council meeting, and yes, also my thanks to the Joint Constitution work and group who've been very involved in that piece of work as well. Thank you. Thank you. Could I ask the Leader of the Council, Councillor Julie McShane, whether she wishes to make any comments? Thank you, Chair. Yes, just to thank officers for their comments, and also just to also acknowledge that the people of Guilford deserve better than the Council, and obviously we're absolutely committed to putting right the longstanding issues which have been uncovered, and we welcome the reports, we welcome the recommendations, all of the recommendations, which we acknowledge and accept, and we've invited scrutiny and embraced accountability, and we will work with officers and hopefully councillors, and we won't rest until we've got a resilient, well-managed Council of which we can all be proud, so thank you, Chair. Thank you. So, moving on to debate, first off, can I ask of any non-members of this committee have a question or comment? Councillor Sally Barker. Thank you. I just wanted to ask a question related to the plan at the end for the housing team, and the introductions of one-to-ones and performance management, and regular appraisals and things like that, and I just wanted to ask whether the situation within the housing team is unique within the organisation, whether the rest of the departments have a performance management plan and process in place. It might be outside the scope of this, but I just wanted to ask that question if this is an isolated team issue. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Pedro, you want to come back on it? Yeah, and I suspect Julian might want to say something specifically on the housing. Councillor Barker, I think we've got more work to do in making sure that there is clear performance management frameworks across the organisation as a whole. I think that's let's be blunt about it, but we will, and that's part of what's in the improvement plan, but I know that Julian is taking particular action in the housing space where there is particularly a key tissue, and if you don't mind, Julian might want to come in. Thank you. Julian, do you want to come back? Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I mean, I think the report makes it clear that there was not the appropriate level within the housing service of one-to-ones and appraisals, and that's certainly partly contributory factor to what what happened. I think there also weren't a lot of kind of management team meetings as well taking place at the time, and again, I can only say that I don't think that's the right culture that we would want to have. What we now have at the moment is regular shared management team meetings, we are regular team meetings with the repairs team leaders and the repairs team just to listen, and again, they're two-way meetings, and I think it's really important that they are, so we are listening to just to employ these recommendations for change as well. It's really important, we're bringing back obviously making sure that one-to-ones appraisals are part of what we do as part of our organization, our transformation plan for housing, but certainly, I think having a shared single one housing, one council culture that didn't certainly exist, I think, in recent times is what we're aiming for, and I think the pleasing thing for me is that I've met with only a positive response from employees when we try to do that, and when I've talked to them, and I think people are welcoming that, and I think they understand that that's key to success. Thank you. Councillor HOWARD, how do you next? Thank you, Chairman. Yes, excuse me. Thanks for this report, and obviously support it and its recommendations. I'm glad to see that all 70 of those are going to be taken forward. I also support the independence panel, and the fact that the panel will report independently. I would like to make one comment about the—on clause 12.3, it says all members interviewed expressed strong support for Waverly. Well, I was certainly interviewed for the report, but I think it's all known that the Conservatives here and the Conservatives at Waverly have not supported this collaboration, and I can only imagine that I wasn't actually asked that specific question. So that's the first point, and the second point is clause 8.5 of the improvement plan does refer to cost-benefit analysis on future decisions, but it doesn't specifically state decisions that have already been taken. Now, again, the Conservatives have been talking about cost-benefit analyses for some months, certainly, and I would certainly hope that the Waverly would have a cost-benefit analysis, particularly as in 11.8, it says that efficiency savings have not been assessed in any meaningful way. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to come back on that. Yeah, just, Councillor BUCKER, thank you for your support on this, and I know your position on the report. On the point about cost-benefit analysis, I think it's evidence-based decision-making is critical, and we want to make sure that that's in place. I think it would be difficult for us to do it for kind of all historic decisions, but if you mean the cost-benefit analysis for the collaboration, we are taking a specific action. There's a specific action in the improvement plan to bring, to refresh that, and to have that publicly available, so we will do a full cost-benefit analysis on that, if that's what you meant. Thank you. Councillor BILLBY, how do you next then, Councillors? Thank you, Chairman. I'll try and be as brief as possible. I mean, this report is clearly a shock to every single Councillor, and there's absolutely no point berating oneself and saying, How did all this happen? Who was really accountable? Maybe that will come later. But it was clearly a shock. What worries me a little bit is why it took a report to inform a specific report, to inform us of things. Frankly, certainly my commercial career, when I was on the Management Committee of Chase Manhattan, all I can say is if I wasn't aware of the processes that were governing the business, I'm not sure it would have remained on that Management Committee for very long. So it does worry me a little bit, and it's not to try and point fingers, but to ask a very important question, because the ones that the residents have put to me, how can I assure residents who do talk to me, they've seen this stuff, that this really isn't more endemic, that there aren't, I don't think somebody already touched on that question. And this is not something which is going to be repeated elsewhere, because, you know, and I think what's worrying residents from put this into the mix, is whether this required action, and I'm not debating that, what you said, I do is quite important, important, it's got to deal with this, but will that distract people's priorities from other things, you know, and I know this from my commercial career where you start focusing on one thing, there's always a risk, you don't pay attention to something else, it's human nature. So I just would seek an assurance that we're not going to take our eye off the ball across the range of other things that we absolutely must do as a council. I saw some rise smiles over, and I mentioned being on the Management Committee of Chase, I'm not sure I should apologise for that, but I was. So that's what I'm looking for, but the residents are deeply concerned about this, deeply concerned, and maybe they're misreading it, because they're not going to read it as we would as councillors, but I do seek that assurance. So thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Councillor. Director, did you want to come back on any points there? Yeah, I think that's a really fair question, and I think you're right, residents should be, should want us to kind of get this right, and we should, and should be asking for that assurance. So yes, I give it. I mean, just to qualify that slightly, because I think we need to, our objective here is not to get from the situation we're in now to kind of, okay, we want to be a council that is in a position that we provide services that our residents and businesses can be proud of. That's the position we want to get to. I expect that as we go through this, we will uncover things that aren't where they need to be, and we will have to address those bit by bit, and it's possible that as we go through this, some other bits aren't quite where we want them to be as we go through the journey, but the undertaking I want to make is at the end of this process, we will be demonstrably better than where we are now, and we will provide a demonstrably good value for money for the services that we provide. That's the undertaking I'd like to give, and I hope that's okay, because you know that that's the only thing we can say, but the other bit that I think it's important to say is on a personal level, I'm going to, you know, I could not be more determined to get us to where we need to get to, and what we should see across the piece is, as the report sets out, there are cultural issues, there are process issues, there are control issues, and in dealing with each of those, we should be getting the organisation to a better place, and the underlying point that you made about kind of how did we not see this earlier, to some extent you should have some confidence from some of the things that Richard said earlier. So Richard and his team have been working on getting financial controls better for some time, and that's what allows us to have to show so much green here, and likewise the work that Susan and team have been doing on the sort of governance side. So I think it's fair to say that, you know, lots of these are things that we've got to, but sometimes it does take a shock in order to get everyone into the right place and to get us to galvanise the action, but what should also be, sorry, I promise I've got a point, what should also be kind of reassuring is that this is not a plan we had to pull together at the last moment, this is something we've been working on basically, at least since I've joined, so it's been the sort of culmination of bringing that together rather than rather than the last minute thing, which is why you've got some why it reads well, I hope, thank you. Thank you. Councilor Mills. Thank you Chairman. I'm not going to comment on the solace report itself, it seems to me to speak for itself and those with much more experience of the working and knowledge of the workings of the Council have accepted it in full, and it would be important of me to dispute that. What I am concerned about is the so-called plan that has come forward at this time. It doesn't seem to me to be in any sense a plan and any meaningful sense of the term, it is rightly a response to a wide range of specific recommendations which are drawn from the overall text but which are a small part of it. What it doesn't do and what it doesn't provide is that broad strategic framework which the report argues for and which is essential and which has to follow it, and I think it would be unfortunate if we allowed the residents of Guilford to gain the impression that this was all there was to be said. This is just a preliminary to getting on to the broad important strategic work where we identify the underlying issues and the matters that flow from it, what can be done and where the priorities are and what can be done quickly and what has to take a long time. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Pietrades, you want to comment? Yes, thank you, Chair, and I'm sorry, is it helpful that I'm coming back on each point? I'm sorry, massively helpful, yes, rather you get a response than not at all. I mean, there's a couple of points here. First of all, thank you, Councillor Mills. The, I think, kind of the best way to read the plan is which we try to set out in the report, is that there are kind of six elements to it. So this is Paris 7.1 in the covering report. There are six elements to it. So it's better to read the improvement plan in terms of the outcomes we're trying to achieve, and they are those six things, establishing a clear strategic direction and values, making sure that we are set up to provide best value for money, embedding the right kind of culture, and then the right governance, getting service delivery right, and then ensuring that we've got effective housing services. Those are the sorts of six elements of the plan, and the way it's set up is the way that the plan is kind of structured. If you start from those outcomes, we set out the objectives on the sort of first column that we're trying to achieve, and then the actions, and timing, and so on. So yes, in order to achieve those outcomes, we may well as we go through this need to add more actions, and we may need to kind of change some of what we have there, because we're discovering new things as we go through earlier to Councillor BILLBAY's point. But if your point is a wider one about the necessity as the report points out of a clear corporate strategy with a clear set of priorities, then that is one of the items in the plan, 3.1. And as it says there, the intention is that we will take that strategy to overview scrutiny on the 4th of June to executive on the 11th of July, and to full Council on the 23rd of July. So there are plans across the piece to get all of this right. But yes, again, this isn't set up as your sort of classic PPM plan either, but we have our head of business improvement sat there, Laura Froschel, who's going to be who's pulling that together into the right kind of project management terminology. So we've got all of that all planned out properly. Thank you. Thank you. So any other non-member of this committee have a comment or a worse cross question? Councillor interjecting. Referring to the housing governance report, I think it can only be said that the conclusions are absolutely astonishing. I think there's only one word that can be used to describe it as damning. I mean, there is really no mitigation in here at all. What I'm interested to know is a little bit more about the way in which the contracts with civil developments were reached. We're told that there was specifically a contract was made on the 5th of October 2021. That's a contract one. And that related solely to electrical installation condition reports, so effectively electrical matters. Can you tell us the date that the second contract was made? Because if you give us a specific date for the first, I'm surprised it weren't given a specific date for the second. It's just said that it appears to be some time in the summer of 2023. Thank you. Yes, Susan, can I ask you doesn't give a date? Yes, thank you for the question, Councillor Rovin. I think it's in the public domain because our website obviously shows decisions that have been published. But from memory, I'm pretty certain the second contract was awarded on the 6th of June 2023 and the first contract was awarded in October 2021. All this says in new report we have is that following the section 151 officer's email, a second contract was then entered into a second contract. Well, the section 151 officer's email was the 27th of June. If it was after the 27th of June, it couldn't have been on the 6th of June. The reason I'm interested is I want to know exactly how much information there was when this second contract was entered into. How many warnings had there been that it effectively mean disregarded? Sorry, I'm going to go to Pedro to give an answer. Thank you. Sorry, Councillor I think this might be what you're getting at might be what we're essentially looking into via the investigation, the investigation we've commissioned from the external law firm, which is looking into, I mean look, no one thinks what went on there is what's described there is is right. And so that's why the investigation was launched and that's going to find out who knew what when and enable us to act on that. Is that fair, Susan? Did you want to add to that? Paragraph 7, 6th of the report, not the housing report, insufficient mutual challenges between officers and members. When I'm trying to challenge, this is, I think, something that can be given a simple answer to. I'm told it was early June, but that contradicts what's in the report. Paragraph 9, 4 of the report, the main report. The review did not consider there was a culture of secrecy, however, seems to be hesitancy to share information with the members other than through the administration. We're back to the fundamental problem. So I'm going to go after Susan sat again, please. Thank you. Yes, thank you, Chair. I think it's a legitimate challenge to want to know the dates that the contract was awarded. And as I say, that is in the public domain as well. I've just checked the date of the second contract was actually entered into on the 13th of June, with a commencement date of the 1st of June. But as Pedro says, there are some outstanding questions around the timeline, and that's the purpose of the investigation that's being commissioned by the Joint Senior Staff Committee to look at what information was available at what time by whom and when. commencement date of the 1st of June, do you mean the 1st of July? No. Right, it was entered into date after the commencement date. That's right. Right, thank you. Finally, could I ask as regards paragraph 29 of the housing report, which deals with voids. We're told that the average void period is 20 days for housing associations and 23 days for local authorities. The staff member advisor 350 days was the average void turnaround for Guildford Borough. I asked because I received specifically from a pleading constituent indicating that she was living in one room with two young children in a damp room, both children with physical and mental needs, pleading that something could be done to provide it with Council accommodation. It seems absolutely scandalous. There's no other word that when people are without accommodation, we are having houses empty for the best part of a year. Can anybody give me any further information about that, please? Sorry, thank you, Councillor. Julian, I'm going to come to you for an answer. Thank you, Chair. I'm in the figure quoted of 350 days as an average result of one particular interview. I don't think that was necessarily the accurate information at the time in terms of average re-elect time, but it was certainly far longer than we would say was necessary, and therefore there were a number of properties that were in terms of averages. One of the things I think I have to say at the moment about what we've got is an average is difficult on the basis that we've got an awful number of properties that need underpinning and have structural problems, there are certain parts of the borough where that is more prevalent than others. Foxburrows, for instance, and so that tends to skew the figures. So we have put in place since obviously to this, we've got a void team working on this, our own BLO have been trying to reduce the number of properties that are empty and bring them back into use. However, we have to say that the main contract was with the company concerned, Seville, to do avoid properties, and obviously since they've been taken off the contract, we've had to try and find other people to do that work and to enter back into contracts. So we have reduced the number of empty properties since the last September, and I do share your point of view that obviously we do not want properties sitting empty longer than is possible, when we have got a waiting list and we've got people who are living in conditions that are inappropriate. So we're doing what we can, yes, the time to reduce and bring properties back into use has been too long, we're trying to reduce that, we're also trying to reduce that in a way in which we provide people with a really good property relay standard, and I think that's most important as well, that we do not want to return properties to people, I think we need to look at the quality of decorations, the standard of work, whether we carpet etc, because we know that more and more increasingly our new tenants are on average poorer, more vulnerable and unable to do a lot of that work often for themselves, and therefore actually having a higher standard is appropriate. So we've brought a lot of properties back, we're now getting them back and reletting them, they're working through the letting process, once we get new contractors on board to do the void contract, we will absolutely get back to a point where I think we're aiming for at least as good as the sector average, which would be a big step for us, and that's a starting point, and then we can get better after that, but yes, properties were left empty for too long. Thank you, you've answered the question I'd forgot, more partly answered the question I'd forgotten to ask, what I meant to ask was that the first contract with Seville was only in relation to electrical matters, do I take it from what you've said at the second contract with Seville dealt with additional matters over and above electrical affairs? Certainly the whole property contract would have included bringing empty properties back into into into into loose. That was with Seville, that was. Thank you, Councillor. Any other non-member of this committee have any questions or comments? So moving on to committee, as any member of this committee have a question or comment, Ruth Botherill, I'm going to come to you first, sorry, Councillor Botherill, and you did send in some questions previously before the committee, which I did note, so I'm just going to go to you now. Did you want to read it, did you want to read it out your points? Thank you, Chair. I did come with some questions which I'd asked previously, but other Councillors have also alluded to them, so perhaps I could just support their endeavors and not take up this Council's time by asking them again, but ask two different ones. My first question, which is sort of alluded to in section 7.11, it's something which has been on my mind from the previous Councillors, as well as the last year, which is the good old evaluation of knowledge and skills pertinent to Councillors. One of the issues that's been on my mind is that no time that I've been a Councillor here at Guilford has anybody really evaluated my own knowledge and skills, or indeed anybody else, and I'm very aware that within the Council Chamber indeed in this room, there is a huge depth of knowledge and a huge depth of skills. We very, very much valued in planning the contributions of Councillor Bill Bay as a lawyer and contributions from Councillor Blow in the last term as an architect, and I just feel that this report kind of almost assumes or overlooks the fact that many Councillors do have a wealth of knowledge and skills, and those knowledge and skills are never asked for, very, very seldom do we ever actually plummet the depths of the knowledge that we have. So I'm a little bit worried about that because I just think that we are going out using good money to buy in training, and I see why we do that. The improvement plan is predicated on developing Councillors, and yet we overlook what Councillors might already know. I mean, just as one small example, if I may, based on myself, I trained SMEs, small businesses in diversity and equality in order to supply public sector in London. When I attended diversity training here at this Council, I have to say it was pretty roful, but I went because I was obviously intrigued to know how does another training company actually train their Councillors in diversity, and it's a big issue, huge issue, and I and many other Councillors at the time were very, very concerned that the training we were given to develop our skills was actually so poor and really didn't touch the areas of diversity and the equality act. So that concerned me because we were spending good money on that. So I'm just keen to say that looking at the development of Councillors in this report that we take seriously the evaluation of knowledge and skills of our present Councillor base, I have to confess that with the new council, I know very little about any of my fellow colleagues' actual experience out in the workplace, and I think that's pretty bad. Obviously, there's part of it which is my fault, I can go around and ask people, but I think there could be a system in place to underpin this report, which talks about that. And the only other question I would ask is alluded to in 9.11, and I think we talked a bit about procurement of major contracts. Part of my job was actually in the procurement area, and as soon as I became a Councillor, first thing I did was come and seek a meeting with head of procurement here at Guilford. What concerns me is I know how big an issue procurement is. If this report is suggesting that Councillors should take account of the successful throughput and budgetary acquisition of our major contracts since Councillors need quite a bit of development on procurement, on tenders, on what we're asking our major contractors to actually deliver to us in order that Rhea's Councillors can take responsibility for the success of that budget acquisition. That I think needs to be considered, because it's easy to just write a sentence, but I haven't seen anything which talks about developing Councillors' procurement skills, and question whether that's actually something we would really necessarily want to do, but there's no alternative in this report. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. I'm going to come to the Susan sound. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I think colleagues may want to add something as well, but if I could just come back on the point about the knowledge and expertise of Councillors in particular, absolutely we want to harness any expertise that we have among Councillors, and I think it's a great idea that perhaps we should do some sort of skills assessment. The only note of caution I would suggest is that we need to be very careful about the Councillor role and responsibility and the potential for conflict around roles and responsibilities. So, for example, if a Councillor has expertise on a particular matter and shares that in terms of giving professional advice to a decision-making meeting, it could preclude them from being part of that decision-making meeting. So, it's quite important that Councillors are clear about what their role is and that if they want to step away from the decision-making to take a different role, that's fine, but to be careful about conflicts and to be careful about pre-determination. I think, generally, you have the expertise of officers in those areas to give you that professional advice and for Councillors to be making decisions based on having taken account of professional officer advice. I don't know if colleagues want to. I was going to make a similar point around procurement that I think it's for officers, really, to be giving you professional advice about procurement and for them to be taking responsibility and accountability for contract management and to raise with members where we need greater decision-making around contracts or where we may be needing additional budget around them, but really, contract management and procurement advice should be coming from the officer body, but I suspect Richard may want to come in on that point as well. Richard, do you want to come back? Yes, so specifically in terms of procurement, so I'm pleased to tell you that we've got a lady called Dawn Adams joining us on 17th June to lead the procurement function massively experienced over 30 years doing procurement advice elsewhere, but she comes with a whole host of training she does both in terms of officer training, but also in terms of a member development as well, so I think that's something which I'm very keen to actually sort of a roll out for you, so hopefully that might be part of it. I'm just going back to the previous one about using up member skills, I mean certainly where motels were in the past we've had member champions who've actually been almost advocate for particular things and have helped even just to introduce their training sessions and provide some advice and guidance and sort of how those training sessions are set up, so maybe something we want to think about. Thank you, I would take issue on the champions issue because I think they're different. I don't think being a champion for all people or a champion for the armed forces is the same as having skills in certain areas such as architecture, such as law, such as procurement, whatever it is. I'm not suggesting that the counsellors should make decisions based on that, but it would be good if we knew what we had amongst us and plummeted that knowledge and took notice of it. Sometimes when I read things I find myself feeling a little bit insulted because I think well I know that and I would just take exception on what you said about procurement and using officers because 9.11 specifically says that it is suggested that the award of contract should be monitored robustly and reported regularly to members. We are the responsible people for looking according to this for saying yes that's okay and it's easy to just hear an officer speak and say oh well if you know better than me that's fine but actually in order to be responsible for it under the terms of this report we need to know a little bit in order to be able to know what we're hearing. Thank you, I think Pedro wanted to come back on a few points there, thank you. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Councillor Brothwell, a couple of points. So you mentioned on paragraph 7.11 in the solace report what that so I spoke having seen your comments so you're kind enough to tell us in advance you're going to do this so I spoke to the solace just to double check what they meant. So the 7.11 the point there is that there was a big changeover in Councillors in May 2023 and for those Councillors, for people who were new did we go through a proper thorough induction process so that Councillors understand what's required of them, what's available to them and did we go through the basic training to just enable everyone to be able to do what they're what they should be doing and understand what the sort of statutory requirements is of them and the suggestion from solace is we may not have done to the sufficient level that we should do so that's a key point for us to take. There's a separate point about the quality of training provided which I think we just need to take away, I don't know what it was but clearly where we provide training it should be of sufficient quality. I actually take slightly different view on kind of Councillor skills and again I spoke to solace I've spoken to LGA about this. So it's really important that group leaders understand the skills that are available within their groups so that for example when you're thinking about who to appoint to committees you appoint people with relevant skills who might be able to provide kind of insight but to Susan's earlier point there is a big difference between the roles of officers and roles of members and that's a really important point. We officers have been hired in order to provide professional advice. Having that professional advice from members instead creates a potential conflict as Susan set out and it's really important that we kind of retain that and I think Councillors training Councillors also creates a potential conflict and a problem so that's not that's not anything that's advised by the professional bodies. However that doesn't stop people understanding from each other where they have informal skills and being able to ask Councillor Bill Day if they want a legal perspective you know informally or what have you. So I think it's really important that the group leaders understand what they have available. It's really it's great the Councillors get to know each other and understand that set skills and bluntly as an officer it's quite nice to be able to talk to people on occasion you know off the record to get an alternative viewpoint but I don't think getting into a position where we're doing a specific skills audit with an intention of having Councillors train each other is a good idea. On 9.11 that also is a very specific issue that solace were trying to set out. What they had in mind there was very specifically the solace reports that sorry the the civil contracts where the big issue there was given the the potential size of the overspend as reported why wasn't that spotted and where would where could that have been spotted and the question there is partly about clearly officers did not have the right processes in place but also where could that should that have been reported to members so that members could also have asked the question why is that contract spending way more than than what was actually given to it and that links specifically with the recommendation around audit because there's a recommendation around the formation of an audit committee that should look specifically at these issues and there is also recommendations about making sure that we make much better use of audit and performance management and that is what those two paragraphs are getting at and I completely agree about the importance of having a proper audit committee for what it's worth although I know I'm speaking up turn here but you know I think that's really important having a clear kind of audit regime is really important and having performance management scrutinized on a regular basis by by audit I also think is um is really critical and that would help to address some of the issues that we've got here thank you thank you I've got a few on my list and I had a council looking next thank you thank you chair and following on perhaps from council of brothewell's point about council knowledge I would like to plumb the depths of my knowledge as as a maths teacher and I'll ask a question about averages sorry I seem to have lost the ability to speak the average void period is 20 days which average would that be because I noticed that the Julian had said that a staff in response to this sentence about a staff member advised that 350 days is the average void turnaround he said that there were some properties that required a very long turnaround period and that would skew the results or skew the data if we start talking about averages so you know as a statistics nerd it makes me twitch when people say averages without saying what averages they mean I think in the in in if we have properties that require a long turnaround because of the nature of the stock that we hold then it might make sense to report in terms of a median turnaround time rather than a mean turnaround time and I wonder therefore what what average the source refers to and therefore what are we comparing ourselves against what measure are we comparing ourselves against so I don't know whether that's nitty-gritty for you but I would really value a proper average that would be my my first point slash question the next next question is actually also I suppose a follow-on from Councillor Brothwell's point about Councillor SKILLS and I completely understand the need for separation between our rollers Councillor and our wonderful officers so is it useful is it helpful for Councillors to tap into their networks to get on to LinkedIn and share things and ask questions about what's needed is it is it useful for us to go into our networks that way and make sorry make connections with people that we know rather than necessarily personally giving advice or or delivering delivering training and the last thing I promise three things about Councillor induction and as a new person newly elected last year the induction was amazing but really really full on and given that the learning curve was like a hockey stick it was really really difficult to keep on top of and and take in everything I think that would be the big feedback that I would say that I really relied on my more experienced colleagues to say oh this is important this is not important this is where you can go for this piece of information and yeah the learning curve has been huge the induction was there but certainly it could have been something that was a bit more ongoing so I am very pleased to hear about plans for ongoing Councillor or member training and yeah the whole thing is really exciting actually because it's a fantastic opportunity to grow learn develop and make new things happen which is great thank you thank you Councillor in regards to your first point around statistics Julian am I right to come to you for that one thank you thanks to and thank you Councillor it's a it's a great question I'm glad we've got a math stage among ourselves as someone who's got their child going through the no one's ever said that to me before well as someone who's got their child going through their GCSEs this week including their math tomorrow as it happens yes it's about yes it is and they've been very much grateful for the extra tuition they've had in their particular school um yeah I mean we're hamstrung I think in terms of how we how we present our average void figures by what the sector has got as a standard practice so for many years and for as long as I've been working in housing which is something like years but certainly starts with a three we've always used an average key to sort of key in to key out kind of stuff so keys handed back to keys for somebody moving in as the end-to-end figure so it's a mean figure which we've always used and the set continues to use that and therefore in order for us to benchmark against other organizations we probably need to continue to do that and I think well especially now we've got tenant satisfaction measures surveys and and a move again towards a kind of consistent application across the sector and I think it's appropriate to use it you make a really good point about the two types of properties though and I think it is one of the things we can do and certainly for our own monitoring and we're into we're introducing and have used in the past is to make the distinction between major works long-term properties and those properties that should be able to be able to have been turned around in a quick period of time and to provide separate figures for both and I think we also one of the questions I get asked from residents a lot and since I've been here is you know we see lots of empty properties that aren't being worked on so I think from our point if you I think what it would be useful to do with those properties that are long-term if we can is to put some form of hoarding up with some sort of infam-boarding but with some sort of information about the longer-term properties that say this is a longer-term property we are doing this work to it so to give that information across so that's something we're looking into at the moment obviously not for the shorter term ones hopefully we can turn those around within what we think is a good average target time which is somewhere between 25 probably in 42 days yeah I think that would be oh sorry Carol I think thank you chair I think it would be really helpful to separate out the properties because we would have a much stronger understanding of the reality of our situation thank you very much for that really thank you and I think Susan just wanted to come back from one point as well thank you yes thank you chair just on the comments Councillor King made about induction I think it's all of us recognize there is a tremendous amount of information to take on board when you're a new Councillor and we have huge admiration and respect for new Councillors at induction time as to how they manage to assimilate all of that information that they're given and I think you make a very fair point that it is very focused at induction and that we would be better to continue that and stagger that through through the year and John and the democratic services team and myself are working on reviewing and revising the member development program and we're very keen to engage with members on that when we have a draft to bring to you and to get feedback from particularly those that have been relatively new Councillors as to what they would like to be included in that plan and also how they would like that training to be delivered we don't want to stand up and do PowerPoint presentations and talk at Councillors and so whether that's more of a sort of conversational type of development program but we'd really welcome your input and feedback on that when we come to it thank you thank you and in regards to your point as a new Councillor myself I totally agree with the induction what you said about the induction as well it certainly helps having more experience Councillors around you you know in particular who can act as like mentors in fact my mentors are sat over there so yeah greatly appreciated I'm I had Councillor Potta next so sorry may I just ask is it about the question about reaching out to our networks is that helpful or not so I think I think it's really important that where there is a opportunity for for a tender opportunity for procurement for example Councillors are of course free to publicise that and that may be really helpful but if if we're looking for and again the same goes for recruitment you know what have you feel free to publicise I think that's always helpful but what we must avoid in all of this is any optic that looks like Councillors bringing in their friends and I think from that perspective we have to be really careful about the way which we play that so public publicity yes quite you know letting us know the x or y's you know is somebody you've always had good experiences with could be really helpful so that we can make sure that there's a wide field out there but really important that we go through the right processes thank you Councillor Potta thank you Chair Chair I'd like to stop asking your permission because I haven't unfortunately I have more than three comments to make unfortunately no but I've but there's a set of points that relate to the governance report and a separate set which relate to the housing report and I think in a way perhaps it's unhelpful we've got two different reports both being considered under one agenda item because it makes it quite difficult to address them both thoroughly at the same time so if your permission I'd like to start with my comments on the governance report and then possibly pause there but then come back later to do my comments on the housing report after they'll just finish speaking or others have had to speak please continue thank you so with that preamble out of the way looking at the governance report in general I think there are a number of items right arising from this some of which have been picked up by the improvement plan but some which it seems I'm less sure that can I say be captured by the improvement plan directly and many of those come back to that issue or so now some of those sit with things say structure so the potential lack of clear reporting lines lack of clear delegations or processes things like that yeah and it is quite clear that some of those things have been covered in the improvement plan I think the recent change from titles of executive heads to assistant directors is indicative of where in which the structure is already being changed to resolve some of these issues which is quite positive and I think other issues such as developing a new corporate strategy which will actually be you know embedded within the organization and that isn't just written once then forgotten about again I'm aware that's underway at the moment as well and it's encouraging that the report recognises that the basic building blocks of good governance are in place and which is something we can build upon but there are some items arising from this which I think aren't necessarily within the gift of the organization directly to change but which sit more with elected members and councillors and it's those that we want to focus on so I think one obvious one that it mentions in reference to this committee is that obviously we have the audit function as part of our remit but this isn't made claim the committee title and that it could potentially get lost now I think obviously we've probably there's discussion to be had around that point although of course I do know that with the recent organization we've made two committees a lot of the finance reporting which came to this committee is now going to the resources of you and scrutiny so maybe that actually we now have an opportunity to get audit prioritised more within this committee but I think it's something we as committee now has probably needed to discuss as well in terms of are we equipped to handle order as effectively as we need to or is it something to be dealt with outside but I think one of our issues in here such as you know for instance I know say 8.9 of the of the Solace government support review noted that statue officers are beginning for the first time to meet together regularly with appropriate agendas and minutes which again is positive but it's it's quite concerning that this wasn't happening previously um and simply in issues with the lack of performance management systems or respite all that stuff is the sort of stuff that the improvement plan can deal with but I think one of the biggest issues though are the points is rewarding referenced around the role of councillors and the culture of interaction between councillors and officers and councillor training and understanding of their role um and I think it's an interesting one because what this report is suggesting is it actually identifies two separate but interlinked problems which is namely that councillors are taking are often taking too great of an interest in operational detail which frankly is nothing to do with them because what you meant to have is a well-run council with competent officers and leadership who oversee who take care of operational matters but councillors are focusing too much on operational details and not enough on the strategic decision making and direction and unfortunately I think we're seeing and I think that's a cultural problem this council has had for some time certainly in the five years that I've been a member of that but unfortunately I think we're actually seeing evidence of the exact same cultural attitude problem in some of the comments made so far this evening um I'll use procurement as an example and the reporting of procurement decisions the point that it being made by solace by solace is that key decisions with a large impact need to be reported by councillors because that is the public scrutiny and accountability and transparency and the point being that elected members should have the final say elected members being able to have the final say is not the same thing as elected members having the expertise to understand and and a pine on every aspect of the procurement process our role is to be generalists not to be specialists being a specialist is often a bonus but it's not part of our role our role is meant to be given the expert information we have before us can we ask the right questions can we provide the appropriate and robust challenge when it's needed such as for instance oh hang on a minute this contract well they last contract they went significantly over budget while we're given from another one for even more money this time round you don't need to be a specialist to ask that question what you need is for reporting and those things coming to you obviously one of the issues that this report makes quite clear is that on a number of occasions things which are major decisions with a major impact on this council haven't even been reported to the executive and the lead members let alone to all councillors and that things have not been going through the decision the proper decision tracking process which enables involvement but this is where have i think there it also needs to be a greater owner of councillors focusing on the right things because in this meeting as we've several other meetings it becomes apparent that there are many councillors who do not keep who do not read the forward plan who do not pay attention to decision tracking notices who you know who have complaints and concerns about the lack of training they've received but aren't we raising it via the council working group that's meant to focus on training um if we're not doing these things i don't think it counts as an only position to to you know we should we have a right to expect the best of our officers but officers should have a right to expect the best of counts as well and that goes beyond simply being polite and respectful about things it actually involves spending the time to do the job that we've been elected to do such as making sure that we understand decision making process such as making sure that we read the paperwork and we understand what is happening in the future because the whole point of these structures is that these things are meant to be published they're set out in law for there's meant to be publication of these things but if we as councillors aren't taking the time to even read what's being published then there's no point in having the structure of having decision of need decision notices emailed out to all councillors because far too often in my expense over the past five years and this includes people who have been councillors just as long as i haven't to therefore should know the ropes by now far too often you see very detailed questions about an operational matter saying well can we tweak say this bit here about how providing particular service or i'm not sure this is the right way to go about doing this or well i've worked in this industry for x number of years and i disagree with where we're going about doing this thing but hardly ever do i see anybody saying oh i've noticed there's a decision going here for xyz what's this about can we have more information about it or and the number of times i see it meetings people saying when are we going to find out about this when this is coming even though it's already published in the four planning the agendas and so i think there's a challenge here for all of us as councillors that we need to simultaneously start leaning in more on the monitoring of decisions and the forward plan and the strategic direction and perhaps leaning back slightly when it comes to the more operational matters now obviously that's an challenging thing to say at a point when we've clearly got some major operational issues going wrong but of course i think that's the point where what we need to be doing is not getting into the region of what's gone wrong but instead it's scrutinised and challenging the senior leadership of the council to say what are you doing to fix this why are you confident that your plans are the right way to fix it and i think that's the challenge that we have to get right because if unless we can get back right as members the council is effectively running on autopilot and i think the common theme which comes out of all of this to me is that for a number of years i'd guess decades possibly there has been a culture of complacency amongst elected members about the running of this council of effectively leaving it to run an autopilot apart from the things which are particular political interests or particular hobby horses and i think in order to get things right we need to start focusing on the basics of is the council's structure and governance fit for purpose and i think obviously this report is a great step towards that but i think that's going to take a nasty change amongst us as well as just these this improvement plan and i'll stop there thank you thank you councillor sousa did you want to come back on yes thanks yes thank you chair firstly to say thank you to councillor porter for his comments um which i think we're really really excellent um if i can just address a couple of the things that you raised um i think there is an issue around the roles and responsibilities between councilors and officers and perhaps we don't have sufficient shared understanding of roles and responsibilities at the current time and and it would be good to have a conversation about that and develop that a bit further we've actually got some training um arranged i think the date has just been fixed and there will be some comms going out in the next couple of days for members and where we're having an external facilitator going to come in and have that conversation and address some of those issues which i think will be helpful in terms of the role of councillors challenging officers which is a very legitimate role and it is part of your role to challenge us and hold us to account i think some of the changes that we've brought forward recently about the immune scrutiny committee will be helpful and that we hope very much that uh we will um facilitate the ability for that committee to more effectively scrutinise and of course they do have the ability to call anything to their agenda um and to proactively scrutinise rather than just dealing with things that are sent to them in effect and i know that the executive have been very clear that they're keen to engage with the scrutiny committee and for them to add value in that way and hold to account and the other thing that councillor potter touched on was around decision making and key decisions it is really important that councillors have oversight of key decisions and that they are brought forwards what we currently have in terms of our scheme of delegations here to officers is actually um quite generous delegations to officers and officers have the ability to make quite high value or complex decisions including some key decisions i think that's quite unusual compared with practice elsewhere and it would be more usual for all key decisions to be brought to members and for officers to be making non-key decisions we're currently reviewing the scheme of officer delegations and that's the proposal that we're going to be bringing forward um the constitution review group has already done a big piece of work on that and we hope to conclude that next week and then that will be coming through the formal um process to stand as committee and then to full council um for approval but i think you will find that the proposal is that uh there is more member involvement in decision making and that you have more oversight of key decisions which i think is the right approach thank you thank you Pedro i think you want to come in um just um on two points um in addition which um i heard you raised councillor potter so and first of all i i i i really do appreciate the comments that you set up because i think i think that's really good um in terms of um structure you're right there there were a lot of comments about the way in which um the officer um part of the organisation structures itself and that's something that we're continuing to look through um one of the things that i think the um report brings out really clearly is that we are underpowered in the finance and the governance side and that came out really clearly and off that's a difficult point to make because it looks like what we're trying to do is spend extra money on the back office but we've just had a really clear illustration of false economy it can be to not have that where it needs to be and i just think it's worth flagging that because that's going to be a sort of slightly um difficult uh sorry um because i you know i think that's a point we're going to have to make down the line so just just be aware that that's that's the case but we're looking at structure across the piece to make sure we've got the right people in the right places um and and you're right you know we we've um we've already taken some of those steps and um i will just note that one of the um one of the green points is about the you know the appointment of Richard um which we're delighted by and and and you know Susan and Richard being at the right at the right level the other point i just um noted um was around audit where it is currently within the purview of of this committee but i think speaking with Councillor Bellamy um i know that he's of the view that we don't give in enough time here and i think that's right and that's a difficult point to make but you know that is the point solace trying not that tactfully um to make the actually audit needs its own space um if we're going to take it seriously which we should so we will down the line bring that bring that recommendation in in the right way but i will just note that that is um i think that's the right answer and i just want to call that out clearly because i think that's where you were hitting at thank you thank you uh Councillor Walsh i appreciate you being waiting waiting a moment um Councillor Potter did you have another point to me you said before yes i've got some first point speaking of housing board i'd assess is given i've already woofled on for long enough i think if i let everybody else have their comments he's not spoken yet and then i'll come back to if that's the cage yet okay Councillor Walsh thank you thank you Chair thank you Councillor water um i welcome this report it's comprehensive hard to hard hitting and damning um i see it as a positive thing i think in my life when i've done things wrong personally all my actions i've been up scratch it's always best to fess up lay on table learn from it and move on i think this gives us an opportunity to do that as a council um it's a shame it's taken so long to do it but we're there we're in the right place now i think um i think um what the report shows is there's a lot rot and a lot of weak points in terms of processes a lot of that's been alluded to by first members already and i think a lot of that is about institutional knowledge um somewhere that's gone wrong it wasn't right we have an opportunity now with recommendations to make that right but how do we embed that going forward because obviously i think some of this might stem from when councillors have moved on officers have moved on and things haven't passed on i think that's part of the reason for this um and i'd like to get to the root of it but appreciate we are where we are we need to move forward as well um so i'd like to know how um we plan as an organisation to embed what we're going to do for the recommendations but also do we have the capacity to do what needs to be done there's 70 odd recommendations here limited officer team there's two councillors to manage there's a lot going on are you confident that we have the capacity in terms of resources to do what needs to be done and embed it thank you councillor better you want to come up thank you i think that's the the the biggest and most important question in all of this um can we get it done i think you know we're confident in what we've put forward we've put forward a plan that we think is actionable um and um yeah it's going to it's going to be painful for a bit and i think again this is what councillor bill bay was was alluding to earlier when he was saying can we get it all done at the same time um and it's also something the solace um report um uh the reviewers brought out that actually you need more people at the point in time when you're delivering change um we have brought in some extra help one of them sitting there um and um and you know i think uh well yeah the short answer is yes yes i'm confident that we can we can move this forward but we will be making more decisions about resources as we go through because i think the reality of the situation as we start uncovering things we are going to have to make decisions but um we will do those um we will make those decisions as we go through and that's why i think coming back right to the very beginning of this that's why i think it's so important that this is a plan that is endorsed by and owned by full council because then when we come back to needing to to do things like bring in an additional resource in order to achieve something that's in the plan or do um or or or what have you we all have that same shared context but right now um yes i'm confident um there's a lot of actions due over the next three to six months um we've identified those um we are we are finalizing the governance um within the office aside to make sure that we can keep track of that and when we come back to full council in six months time our intention is that we are able to say what we've done not just in terms of actions but be able to to come back to some of the maths and stats geeks amongst us that we're able to say what the impact is of some of those things in terms of changes to our performance and again six months is not a long time um in in in organizational terms but i think you know as we move forward we have to be able to illustrate the impact that we're having and we will be doing that and on bed in processes can you assure us of how you go we'll go about doing that i just want to spot on that one because that's not even a finance a finance point of view um some of the resources we've bought in in terms of the natural recovery plan have been interim and have been um at that additional resource but part of that was aimed at obviously getting through the crisis over the last sort of um nine months or so but also part of it all the way along has been making sure that we actually document all of our processes and policies and procedures going forwards so you vet Solomon he's been working on documenting all of the finance procedures across the board so when some of these people leave us or potentially join us actually as members of staff if we can then persuade twist their arms um that actually those things will be embedded in the future going forwards another example is the chap we got in working with is Rajin on the closed down press at the moment so again it's not just a case of closing a set of accounts it's making sure those things are documented so it's clear for the future whoever picks those things up has got basically a working manual to work from for the future as well i think the changes in finance is an example of where we should be but i think a lot of this stuff here is very basic i assumed what's happening anyway as George was saying some of stuff is quite shocking it's not happened so it looks like we need to document everything we should do as a council whether we look at best practice at a best performing council getting written down because we've clearly lost stuff over the years which is why we are where we are so i think that's assurance i want that is written down and that if you leave head or eye leave or whoever leaves the person stepping up knows what they should be doing knows how the council should be looking yeah and i'll just add um i i agree what Richard and Richard and team have been doing is absolutely brilliant and um i think you know it is exactly what we ought to be doing Susan is doing similar and like once it looks like she might want to come in on the second on the on the government side so i won't i won't add too much of that but look the there are lots of points here i had the similar reaction to you and not and you know it's not just about reading the report you know you can see some of this in real life um there are basic stepping state but basic building blocks of an organization that aren't where they need to be and we are going to put them all into place and we are going to make sure that there is a clear structure and documentation and we some of those some of that won't be instant because actually we need to get some of this is so not in the place it needs to be that you need to get it where it needs to be first and then document what that looks like so there are kind of steps to be taken with yes this must be sustainable and um we have to get rid of some of the single point of failures um that we have had because obviously they have they have gone but it's the process that protects us because when you look at some of what went wrong in the past it's it's about some of the processes allowed um allowed if somebody were to break the process the control points that you would normally expect weren't there so you don't have your second line of defense the checking the third line of defense the monitoring and then the audit like those things just weren't where they needed to be so getting all of those basic points right will be part of what we're doing and there are examples in finance examples in governance examples in housing examples in regeneration and so on where we're we're just making sure we get all of that right thank you thank you just to add to that I think it's basically the governance framework that is supposed to be to protect the council hasn't been quite there and I think that's that's what we're working on so we're not just trying to fix things and move on we are trying to embed culture and put in place processes systems and procedures um that will take the council forwards and to future proof those arrangements so similar to Richard in in governance um I now have two additional members of staff who have come in on an interim basis they've only been here for um six weeks um I think Deborah Upton and Jeanette McGarry and they are dealing with lots of things that I had identified as being good practice and wanted to bring in but didn't have the capacity so they're already coming forwards with new policies new procedures and new systems and doing training on on those so that there wouldn't be a single point of failure um if any of us left tomorrow which uh we won't be but uh there is that embedded culture to take the council forward and to future proof it thank you I just want to find a good chair for me let's go just on the reporting back I think work on the sixth month report back I don't think it's enough for councillors I'd like to see something monthly even if it's sort of agraggregating via email where we can just keep track on things it's obviously every six months it might happen within between six months but time we get to see it it's too late for us to have any input any say or any overview I think it's something even just doesn't have to be a meeting every week when like an email with a bragg rating we find that Beggio is that potential there for a discussion around that um this is a really tough one um and the reason I say that is because we had this conversation with with solace reviewers and the reason they recommended six months is because um that is based on so that's their recommendation and that is based on their experience having looked at other councilors that have been in similar situations and gone through similar transformations some examples are Middlesbrough and Peterborough um and their view is that if you change the reporting to less than six months it creates a whole activity cycle based around reporting that removes your ability to do anything so their view was six months is the right balance between regularity but also giving people a chance to breathe um and get it done so that's why the recommendation was there I'm a bit loathed to step away for it not because I don't want to be open but just because I want the opportunity to get something done so that we can report changes rather than um you know in between there it just might not be anything understand and accept that but I think we need something a bit more regular not like this is not an official report but just kind of what the office is working on they must be logging actions as they do it so we have that every month so it's not every day every week but every month that goes a bit more regularity than a six month of your report and we have the big report office six months so I'm just going to come to page out but I believe it's that we could take away as an option essentially come back to committee with some with some ideas around it Pedro did you know if you're comfortable with us just thinking through some kind of and maybe grabbing a conversation with you afterwards some kind of compromise that allows us to do something um without which is kind of as last light touch as possible that that might be the best way through it yeah I think that's better than that whole decision here I think we have to talk about it be appreciated thank you I think I appreciate I've got Councillors waiting I'm sorry I believe Julian McShane wanted to come back on one point thank you chair I just want to do um comment on the first part of council wash's question um about whether we can you know we can we got the resources and the capacity to do what's required in the improvement plan um the simple answer is we have to um we have to have a resilient well managed council and I think another important point is that we have to work together counselors with officers officers with counselors we have statutory officers who have a job to do they have to be allowed to get on with that job and do that job and we need to obviously challenge them or hold them to account and actually they probably they should do the same to us as well and and I think that you know perhaps for whatever reason in the past that hasn't happened and I think we all have a responsibility to make sure that all of the things that are in this report which are absolutely vital to make sure that we have robust governance across our council are are done it's the basics it's the foundations of a well managed well run council and um we need to have that embedded to such a degree that no matter who is there doing that job the the council continues to function properly and no matter who is the leader who is the administration who the counselors are it just functions because that's what has to happen for the benefit of our residents and I and I think that we got a really good opportunity to work together to make sure that we get this right we make sure this is embedded and that this can continue into the future to enable our council to to operate properly for the benefit of all our residents and across you know and businesses across the borough so thank you for giving me the opportunity chair. Thank you councilor. Julie McShane, how do you next? Julie. Julie Osborne, how do you next? Sorry. Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. I thought I'd been promoted to leader of the council. So from a parish perspective we recently had to remove our bins due to the increased cost of emptying them by Guilford Borough Council. We've also had community aid grants removed. All of these things are vital for the community and civic well-being. This is a direct result of the financial mismanagement that has gone on in this council. For me poor governance is a major concern and it has long been a concern. I think it extends not just to the housing governance but it extends to other directorates such as the planning directorate which is something I've focused on quite a lot during my time on this committee. I don't think and I don't accept the point that Councillor Potter made. There has been a culture of complacency amongst councillors particularly on this committee. I remember some people challenging very robustly reports that came to it and we've seen that even this evening from Councillor Robin. It's not easy to be a critical voice and I think all too often there has been a culture and not an appetite for change. It's just been business as usual and it's been the status quo. A particular pertinent example to me that I noted in the report was on page 28 at appendix to culture report governance and it is in the housing department. It talks of two strategic directors claiming that documentation was signed in their name for significant contracts and that the actual director, the only thing they knew, was an automated email that was sent to them afterwards. This comes directly to the point about governance that needs to be improved. I know from experience in the planning directorate that there was a decision taken to vary a planning condition which was crucial to the application of Garlic's Arch. It was taken by a delegated officer in the name of the head of planning. I understand that because there was a transition in place the head of planning wasn't aware of that decision. We challenged it as a parish council at the time but again the response we received frankly was not a response that to me indicated accountability and that's what we've got to improve. I could go on with other examples but I'm not going to read a list of them tonight. What I would like to know is how members of this committee, how parish councillors, how members of the public can actually feed any such concerns of this to you now and how you will actually have a regime in place to act and ensure there is that accountability going forward. Thank you. Thank you, Judith Osborne. Thank you, Pedro. Do you want to come back on that point? Thank you. So in terms of making sure that there's accountability for decision-making and all of those sorts of things, is that what you mean, councilor? Yeah, fine. I think you're absolutely right about the necessity for accountability. I think there's lots of things in there that are shocking and that point about not knowing about decisions for which you are directly named and accountable is not okay. Clearly there is a process failure there and it comes to Susan's earlier point that actually getting our governance process right means more than just kind of what's the sort of process flow of things. It means what is the right way to make decisions so that we know who's accountable for each type of decision. We know who's able to do what and we're clear on where the delegations are and so on and so forth. That's kind of that's some of what we're doing and I'll ask Susan to come on to the new decision-making protocol in a second but much like just more fundamentally there's a point here about culture isn't there which is kind of we were in a position where the culture was the one didn't ask the officer culture I mean was that one didn't especially in the housing side one didn't ask questions. Challenge was discouraged and that and actually another comment that the sort of reviewers made as they go through as they went through was that when it came to asking asking colleagues this is really hard to hear but when it comes to asking colleagues why are they here and what is the purpose of the council not many people answered on the half of you know from a public sector ethos perspective we're here to do public you know the right things on the half of the public we're here to deliver value for money that wasn't where people were coming from so my view is that you start you know there's the old adage about about you know a culture needs strategy for breakfast we do need to get our strategy right but we fundamentally need to get our culture right and make sure that everyone here we are clear about the values that we are here to espouse we are all here to serve residents and businesses and to make your food a great place to live work and do business that is the heart of everything you heard that hopefully and Julian's answer earlier about I think to Councillor Oven about how we're treating how we're kind of dealing with voids and everything else the point Julian was coming back to which I wrote down is that is the cultural change where we are not treating housing as a set of service transactions we are treating housing as the homes of the residents who live there that's why it matters that we care about the sort of level of finish and you know the the quality of the finish and so on before we before we relay that's why those sorts of things matter and if you get the if we start from the perspective that we are here to deliver the right services to provide value for money and that we are all accountable and if you start from that position then I think it's much easier to get the rest of it right because we've got the right building blocks and that's the fundamental point for me and and we are doing a number of things it's really it's notoriously hard to change an organisation's culture but it starts with a we've been lucky enough that the you know we have some fresh faces at the top and that helps we are doing different things like you know we will have and publish this month it's in the plan on our corporate values and they will emphasize value for money the Nolan principles the importance of building trust and looking outwards and partnering with parish councils and with and with our communities and with others those are the sorts of things that we're going to be emphasizing and then it is the case of making sure that we also have our governance processes right so I'll pause there and let Susan pick up on that point. Yes thank you Pedro and Councillor Osborne touched on decision-making and I just wanted to give a little bit of reassurance for the future in terms of decision-making that the scheme of delegations that we're bringing forward will be accompanied by a decision-making protocol the ethos behind that which I think is best practice and is usual practice elsewhere is that officers will not be able to make decisions in somebody else's name so anybody that makes a decision makes it in their own name so delegations will be given to senior officers senior officers can in certain circumstances make sub-delegations to their direct reports those people that they consider our competence and have the necessary skills and expertise to exercise those delegations and those sub-delegations will need to be recorded and will be on a register which is transparent so everybody should be able to see at a glance what authority any particular named officer has to make a decision and all officers will need to make decisions in their own name so I hope there will be greater transparency around the decision-making process going forward. Yes thank you that does give me some confidence indeed just one point I forgot to mention earlier I'm just going to skip to something else which is the role of the audit function of this committee if I may just quickly pick up on that. I would endorse actually a separate committee for audit I've noticed well I've been on this committee how much the workload has increased and I just think sometimes it is quite a task to keep up with the agenda pack and as a result audit slips down. I also think coming back to the point of Councillor Brothewell we should clearly tap the members on this committee who have got the skills in this area I don't profess that this is my area but I know that we've got a parish member possibly two parish members sitting next to me that would be extremely good to be on an audit perhaps subcommittee and I think we should definitely consider that thank you. Thank you and I'll share your view in regards to the audit committee in fact that's after reading the report. The first bit of feedback I actually gave to Pedro was around having a separate audit committee because I've often said that audits come through this committee but are certainly never given the scrutiny that they deserve one need. Sorry I had Tim Wolfler next. Thank you Chair so I don't think anybody would dispute that a key issue with the Council over the past period has been around financial monitoring and control as distinct from financial planning and budgeting and don't think there's this semantic difference between the two I think is a very real difference and I'm somewhat disappointed and surprised I have to say there's not more explicit emphasis on this in this office report and in the improvement plan whether it be in terms of people process or systems. I'll leave it there again into more detail although they have to get into more detail. We've been reminded on a couple of occasions that there are already improvement plans in train and finance and governments and so I've got two questions. First of all are those existing improvement plans being subsumed within the corporate improvement plan under with oversight from the independent panel? First question and then second question is does the financial improvement plan cover those deficiencies in terms of financial reporting and control because we haven't heard once we've heard about that financial improvement plan in this committee. We've not seen any detail of it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Richard. So to your later points I think the answers are yes and yes. So yes we've subsumed the things with outstanding within the financial recovery plan into the latest improvement plan and yes in terms of those key controls and things again those things are being built into our processes and procedures as we review them. In terms of budget monitoring itself it's something obviously we had to address straight away so actually I think one of the first things that when I recruited Joe seems like a while ago now but I think within about sort of four or five weeks we put back in place that basic budget monitoring it wasn't great and that has been basically built upon month on month every time every month basically since then so since last September to the stage now where those things are now published on a monthly basis not just to Councillors but on the public website as well so everybody can actually see where the stand so yes it's one of those key things which from my point of view was just not acceptable to have have missing and say one of the very early things that we addressed which is probably why it's not in the improvement plan now because that's been one of our main focuses really over the probably the first six months of the financial recovery plan but I think now we've come a long way. George do you want to say anything? Only really to say that when I joined the council the lack of monitoring and forecasting and you're talking to you is about it really scared us I don't think it was five weeks I think it was five days I started in September he had a month four report followed by month six seven eight nine all the way through and that will continue it's now what the team do it's embedded going back to the point that Councillor Welsh made earlier about embedding processes that is definitely a process that's been embedded I recently joined the Hyzen board and we looked at how we stop this happening again how we don't end up in another situation where we can't have a spend with a contractor and we've changed the way so we've got two systems that don't talk to the talk to each other and we are aware of this and but we can't wait while we re-precure one of the other systems we need a solution that's now so we do a little bit of work around but we've looked at what contracts we've got what budgets we've got and we've set purchase orders so that any spend has gone through a number of checks before it happens and there's weekly monitoring that will go through the Hyzen team and all the way through and the officers within the council to make sure that we're on it it's visible okay thank you that that provides good reassurance I guess just one detail point I would like to erase is in terms of reporting so we've heard from other members of the committee about the wealth of information and the very detailed documents that come to this committee and enjoy similar across other committees although I've no real experience of that and I would and I've raised this before I would suggest actually that that less is more it's one of those instances where less is more and to be honest it is obvious that a number of people on committees don't have opportunity to have time or whatever to read the detail of the report I mean it's a bit ironic in a way that one of the leadership findings in the solids report was that we weren't using strategy but in front of every report the first two pages of the council's strategic framework and then know that in this committee we do refer to them but it's it just goes to show that people don't read the report so I think it's part of that review of reporting and I'm sort of focusing in this instance on financial sort of business reporting we should make the reports concise so we should maybe have a page count on them and just make sure that it's efficient that they can be digested by members of the committee prior to attending that committee thank you No just to just to say thank just to say thank you I've been I've been in a previous place where there was a um where there was a a word count and the page count and um so I'll give all of where that works but the need for clearer more concise reports I think is something we can all get behind and bluntly this is a serious point that again comes back to the culture but this was a serious point where on joining I kind of I share Jo's reaction because I was I was quite frightened by the the level the sort of length and obscurity of some of the language that was being used in reports that were being put up to members and and it's not on we have to be clear less is more we have to be clear about what we're actually asking for and why um I did just want to come back on on just um one other thing which is you know the um the the the the strategy that you had in front of you the corporate plan that is at the beginning of each report I mean the way the solace reviewers reflected on that was the you know the document exists but the test of a strategy is whether anyone refers to it in the decision making that they're they're making and um and the answer was that nobody did and nobody called back to the strategy even though it's it's there that is a really important point for us we're not after creating another piece of shelfware we need to make sure that it's real and used and that means that it's not just about the strategy but about everything that comes with it and the process of creation of it is also really important it's something that we've been really careful to involve staff in throughout the organization thank you thank you i had a council accused next thank you very much chairman um the the report of course is from solace is very revealing and Pedro the chief executive has emphasized the point that's in the solace report about the need to come together and i think that is very important but it does have to be led by the administration you know i've no doubt that all of the opposition parties want us to come together certainly my party does and i believe the others do as well in everything uh uh communications i've had with them but that but i didn't think as much sign of that at the moment and i didn't think there was at the meeting last week frankly or or indeed uh in the press release that came afterwards but we had to put that behind us and we do have to work together and that needs openness and i think that's a plea that's going through a lot of the contributions tonight and indeed in the solace report and and i i also agree with what Pedro said about who knew what and when it's important as he said i mean i don't know who signed off the second contract that has been discussed earlier but plainly it was a long time after the whistle blowing had happened um which of course by the way should have come to this committee but didn't and i think that's something we would quite like an answer to at some point um but was the person who who ever signed this off aware of the whistle blowing or not i don't know if they were it's a very different matter than if they weren't made aware serious though that would be um there's been discussion about the um uh procurement uh procedures and i'd i certainly might experience of of this it is a very delicate matter very difficult to involve members uh in that but i do think there could be more information to members on those emails we get about procurement decisions there's a tab that says detail and when you click on detail it tells you the same thing as it's just told you in the previous page and i've had to ask on a number of occasions well what was this how was this done what was it for and it takes forever to get an answer on that so i think there could be more transparency to members on procurement but as i say i do recognize the involvement is difficult um there are about five pages in this report um that that uh refer to what i will only describe as the merger by stealth with waverly um and i think anyone reading those five pages would say one earth did anyone embark on this without a business plan um and it talks about overstretched officers and if anything needs to be done as a brave decision frankly it's bringing an end to this which is doing nobody any good at all i agree with the points made by uh james walsh about not waiting six months and having uh ragged rated great fan not a great fan of ragged rating but nevertheless it is a tool that can be used and we need uh progress reports i'm very pleased that the chief executive said he would take that away and think about how that could be done one suggestion on that is progress so far you know had a lot of talk about the things that uh and we know the difference that uh uh richard and joe have made to the procedures i think reporting on that would make a very good first start in all of that um and just lastly i as i indicated i think we need to work together members and officers across the uh uh political divides and certainly i want to have confidence in the plan i'm delighted that the uh that that part of the um uh section d has been amended um i'm grateful for that but we do need to see detailed proposals possibly one by one as they come forward did we do need do need to know that there is uh continued uh um emphasis behind all of this until we get to a point where we are delivering the the points that the chief executive has made about delivering for the people and the businesses and making gilford a fantastic place to live and work but there's a lot of work to do before we get there thank you just on your first point um did you want to come back on on the working together point at all in regards to working together across there's any point in that did you want to come back on that at all um yeah i mean obviously we we need to work together as a council to make this successful and and i'm not sure given that you know this administration has faced challenges since it was elected in in may and we've dealt with the you know we've been dealing with officers working with officers to address the financial issues uh we've made those public we've provided updates on on that work we created an executive working group invited members across the council to be part of that group uh obviously we then had the situation in housing which again was made public and uh we commissioned the reports that we now have in front of us we're working with officers to we've acknowledged and accepted all of those recommendations uh and are working with officers to um make sure that those uh recommendations are carried through and and acted upon so i'm not quite sure why it's not obvious to anyone in this room that the administration is not leading on this uh this work with officers of course because we all need to work together to deliver this improvement plan and i've already stated before and made it quite clear that we will continue to not leave any stone unturned we will root out all of the issues that need to be addressed we've still got two investigations ongoing one with the police and obviously the other one that's been referred to this evening where we will find out who knew what and when so there is still this still information to come forward to provide further answers and and we will continue and we will not rest until uh we've addressed all these issues and we've improved this council and we have a you know as i've said before a resilient and well managed council that we can all be proud of um and we have absolutely we will be committed to that absolutely until we reach that point of course so i hope that reassures people uh in the room and i hope you know as i've said before and it's been reported in the press um hope it you know also reassures our residents businesses across the borough because they're the people that matter the most thank you Edra you want to come back um yeah um so firstly just to say to councilor who's the um uh yeah absolutely um keen to be um open um and um you know your chat um we had a conversation ahead of this and and um councilor who's asked for a couple of changes um which i thought were entirely reasonable and we've made and in particular he made the point similar to the point council broker made earlier um which i think is really important and that is that we must be able to evidence our success um and um and i wholeheartedly agree and everyone i've spoken to across across the um the political spectrum and here um wants us to be able to do that and as officers i want to be able to put each of you in a position where we're able to say this is how we spend every pound of your money this is why we're providing value for money and i want us to be in that position to be able to do that um so that that's the objective again that's not going to be in the feature in our first um monthly update because it won't i've just been corresponding with with a couple of key officers um so um in order to come back to councilor what councilor Walsh asked for yes we'll be able to come into doing a monthly email update um and we'll try to make that as as helpful as possible um in my need to we might need to grow into it but we'll um we'll kind of get things right but the very least will show movement in terms of what we've started value what's gone what's gone yellow um and what we finished what's gone green and maybe a bit of narrative around kind of what the key things are that we're focusing on in that month so at least give us a sort of sense of progress um so hopefully that is reassuring um in evidence progress um the other bit i just wanted to um to point it to say is that at the six month update we do want to be able to provide some of the measurable things again we might need to grow into it as we get because you know the quality of our data is one of the points that solace makes so we're a bit limited by that but we'll do what we can i want to be able to say that one of the key points of difference that hopefully we can point to at the next six monthly update is the um something Richard alluded to before we will close down our accounts by the 31st of may which is normal except that it hasn't been so um so i think that's that's it you know that will be a clear demonstration of something that is happening differently accounts close down on time audit available hopefully depends on the auditor at that point um but hopefully takes place in a normal timescale of june july and again that will be a return to where we ought to be and hopefully will be the first sign that um the you know confidence and trust is bad Richard wants to make an extra point yes council usually you referred to as sort of reporting back on progress particularly around the finance stuff so back in september last year the sn loads have raised some points around value for money and six point one in the improvement plan basically is me saying that actually we can report back the next meeting of this committee in june around the progress and financial recovery plan and all those things we've done basically so some of those things that probably are less transparent from this improvement plan now but all those things we've actually done over the last sort of six to nine months we'll be in that report to you next month thank you i'm very grateful for the uh two responses i think that's very encouraging and uh to use a phrase that as a vegetarian i almost never use i look forward to seeing the beef thank you councilor um i had a council wash thanks just like a general point in a specific point about them point i have a general point being i think we do need to have a session with all counselors and this has been really useful tonight but i think there's a lot of voices that for one reason rather not here i think just have a we've had this paper for a week people should have had a chance to read it but now so there's now's the time to hear what councilors think so if we can arrange over the next week or two i think a good step forward on this journey now the second point in 11.8 regarding the collaboration um which quote from this um is evident opportunities for efficiency savings in respects to the partnership wavy bower council have not been assessed in a robust systematically meaningful way i struggle to understand how we continue with this um without having that kind of information what are we doing in terms of this collaboration what what are the end results and that's another reason i've raised before and it's now down on paper i'm raising it again thank you in regards to the first point i believe that is an option and that patreon is going to see if you can cover yes sorry i don't know any dimension to about uh having group meetings but i think i'd find it so if i need to have whole council meetings to find out you know george's view george's view jose's view i think that's i think that'd be more constructive than just group views okay yeah i'm happy to offer whatever's useful so um we will um you you've asked for it and we will organize them all council or sorry a briefing open talk councilors um should they wish it equally we're happy we retain the offer to come and talk to groups if that's something you want to do thank you councillor uh councillor father oh sorry did you want me to come back on the collaboration point um no just just i was going to just point point two 11.2 on the um on the improvement plan which is to um establish the effectiveness of that so we are looking again at the um at the um from a finance perspective what are the savings and we've committed to providing a full cost benefit analysis of the collaboration to be produced over um summer 2024 so um so we'll come back on both those points uh yeah i mean yeah this is a government summer that goes on until december council bottom thank you thank you um yeah comments part two housing boogaloo um before i get into that i just want to make it a point when i look at the point i made it all about complacency i think what i'd like to just expand about slightly given it received some pushback is i quite strongly remember when i was when we when i was first set to May 2019 as part of the induction the program you know all the stuff about getting to learning growth being councillor the message we were given consistently by officers is that gilford was a well-run council um it had good finance officers good leadership a good culture um but there was a 10 million pound body gap to fill via the future gilford program but that that was going to be fine and you know we knew what we were doing it's all going to work out well and you know that basically you know we were a well-run council there's nothing to worry about and the point i would make is particularly having sat as chair of court the governor's standards committee for almost two years under the last council is that consistently what we have found out and what we have found out since then is that none of that was the case and when i talk about complacency i think there was complacency from councillors not in terms of the nitpicking or of specific points the individual reports that we had plenty of at this committee at that time period but a complacency around the strategic direction and governance of the council i mean for instance to take an example there was a 2018 corporate peer review which and it's mentioned in this report that we've not had one of those for a long period of time of the last one was in 2018 i looked up on the council's website one of the issues that identifies is a weakness in governance and um and planning and so in organizational development that could be quite relevant to the upcoming future gilford program in 2019 in the for the election we find reports saying that future gilford is critical to deliver savings to plug a 10 million pound whole in the budget gap but if you look follow through that 2018 peer review it was never finished it wasn't there was a report came to council saying saying oh yeah we've got the report here's here's the recommendations but implementing the recommendations appears to have never happened it never came back to council in the 18 months between that report coming to full council and the uh local elections in May 2019 the peer review vanished without a trace the recommendations it made around future gilford apparently never went anywhere which given that we see in the support that future gilford particularly in housing and also as you know with finance in particular was a huge part of the hollowing out of these core functions of the delivery of good services of good financial monitoring it's quite clear that there was a gap then there's a complacency about that and i you know i will also note that we noticed over the period of time at this committee in the last council term issues with financial reporting issues with completing accounts on time um issues which i have to say the then portfolio order the finance tended to brush off when they erased this committee but quite clearly things have been going wrong and the point i would make is it has only been since the collaboration with waverly and the bringing it and the restructuring of the executive and a joint management team and a joint you know and joint directors that we have had the new people coming in and we've had we've had the cost fertilization from waverly people coming in and saying we're having a minute there's something not quite right to gilford you are not doing things in a way that's in accordance with best practice that work is what has led us to this point of where we are uncovering these problems and we started to deal with them so i think on that point about the collaboration with waverly quite apart from the hundreds of thousands of pounds a year it saved us on doubling up on assistant directors and directors i think it's also been invaluable in terms of we have uncovered these issues in time to avoid hitting the iceberg rather than after hitting the iceberg as which has quite clearly happened to other councils like Birmingham for instance where the financial governance issues didn't become apparent until they were hitting section one more four notices um but to focus on housing in particular there are some quite shocking things in here and i think shocking just really cannot be understated i think somebody's word damning earlier that's also correct uh one which stands out is the fact that a key software system has not having had software updates for eight years yeah and that this is the system which of course which also turns out is i think is the same system which doesn't talk to the financial reporting system and i i remember discussions around that going back a couple of years this the same system which has not been updated eight years but went out of active support by the provider i think two or three years ago we've got issues quite clearly here with um a number of long-term issues such as for instance the issue that bear had identified as a clear lack of adequate investment in properties over a long period of time and of course that is part of course why we had this major spend initiative in housing about two years two or three years ago of a major overhaul of refurbishing stock and investment in the service but what to make it becomes quite apparent from this report is that the failures in procurement and governance have allowed the vast bulk of that investment to either be misdirected or just simply to not be spent with things needed to be done that software system that's not been updated eight years that was meant to have been replaced clearly it hasn't been um the investment was meant to help starting you know the issue of void in the fact it takes a year to let out an empty property well that was something which started trending in a vote was already bad in 2019 and got stupidly started to get worse during covid and again the investment was what was meant to be about fixing that problem about reducing the number of boys instead as you can see the issues with the management of procurement and the management of that contract have allowed it to get worse not better the report picks out that we're spending I think something in excess of 30,000 pounds on average for repairing avoid for repairs to avoid property whereas the average for other councils such as a waverly is more like 5,000 pounds now part of that might be ascribed to the historic underinvestment of the maintenance of housing and you know perhaps you know foreign portfolios might be able to shed shed some more light on that point about you know how that went on historically but 30,000 pounds compared to 5,000 pounds on average staggers belief and I find it very hard to believe that all of our properties are in such a poor state that you need to spend 30,000 pounds on average every time they become empty but all of this starts to make a bit more sense when you consider that it's quite clear from the supporting that we ended up in a position due to future guilt or due to a lack of permanent staff where we ended up with the same contractor being in charge of commissioning work, carrying out work and then signing off that work had been done satisfactorily in order for it to be paid we see here issues with permanent staff having been isolated by the contractor to the extent that they were no longer in the loop on decision making and that's even before we get to the issues with what appears to be a habitual issue of contracts being issued for just for values just below the 50,000 pounds reporting threshold only to then run into the hundreds of thousands of pounds that to me cannot be explained by accident that that is a pattern of behavior now I think obviously with a lot of this we're going to need them about need to wait for that separate report on about who knew what and when and we've got and I'm sure a lot of this is covered by the police investigation but to me what makes this to me it goes a very long way towards explaining a number of these sort of issues which residents have been feeding back on a piecemeal basis bit by bit over years and which is starting to make sense you know I have I'm aware of properties in Mero for instance where the a perfectly good garden was completely ripped out all the vegetation cut down all the trees removed it was to landscape it back to flat grass once it became vacant as part of the work which had to be done before an attendant can move in now I'm sure that wasn't always the case but a neighbor complained to me and said well why are you taking out these perfectly good trees but of course it starts to make more sense when you start when you realize that oh well potentially the same people getting paid to do that work where the people commissioning that work to be done the first place and then signing off as being necessary and obviously we're going to have to wait for the police investigation but a lot of these very odd things that we've seen that start to make sense and I think what what it also makes abundantly clear is that no matter what the strategic direction for the service was when the governance and procurement was so poor and so dysfunctional and so potentially open to abuse no amount of strategic decision making or investment could fix a problem there's no point pouring money into service if that service is not spending the money efficiently there's no point trying to you know trying to fix the software system if the money you're putting into replacing it doesn't result in this or in the software being even updated let alone replaced and I think there are a number of serious issues there and I think in many ways actually we quite it is quite helpful to us that we have Wavley Council as a comparison point of what a you know what I'm sure is not an ideal service and Wavley but it's quite clearly a housing service which functions far more smoothly and far better than ours does and has done so for a long period of time and I think we benefit from having that comparison point but one question I did want to raise off the back of this is well two key questions really is an obvious question that many people have been asking in the public and that council has been asking and I think that there has been some confusion about amongst councils is very simple question of how much money has been lost as a result of all of this and I mean what's quite clear to me is that this report doesn't actually give us an answer on that in that it identifies how much money was spent on a contract compared to what the original value of the contract was meant to be but that is not but that was not but it is also quite clear that was not money which hadn't been budgeted for it was just money but it had been budgeted for being spent with one contractor above what the value of that contract was meant to be which given the ongoing investigations means presumably it's quite difficult or not impossible without knowing the quality of work whether for work needs to be done to actually quantify has this money been misspent or not has there much has money been lost or has it just simply been spent in ways outside of the proper process and I think what I'd ask officers for is if there could be any if there's any clarity if they could just confirm whether that's the case and whether or not we are yet in addition to understand how much money if any has been lost the second question I wanted to raise was around how this issue was detected in the first place because it is quite clear that financial controls were introduced in 2023 in response to the issues identified in around sort of March 2023 about the budget gap and the need to make some serious for that you know make some serious financial savings in order to you know in order to meet that budget gap and it's off the back of that we then sort sort of starting in summer 23 in particular we started seeing the introduction of new financial controls now it's those new financial controls which this report identifies flagged up the overspending on the contract and that sort of happened in in summer 23 however it's also clear that there are whistle-blowing reports in 2022 and in early 2023 before that and obviously those whistle-blowing reports are quite clear what Susan picked up as a new monitoring officer when she came into post the question I have though is was it the overspend being flagged up which resulted in those whistle-blowing reports being picked up or are those two things independent of each other because it seems to me a bit anomalous that we had whistle-blowing reports going back as far as 2022 but then not being picked up through the correct channels and as you know council used mentioned not being reported this committee and I suspect and I was far from where not being reported to executive members either and by my and so what kind of a process wasn't being followed up to a certain point in time my question is that point of was it that we started taking whistle-blowing reports seriously and dealing with them appropriately because of the overspending being flagged up or was that something which happened independently of overspending being flagged up so that's probably three questions there but that points about are you are we in a position to identify whether any money has been lost and if so how much I think the answer is no we're not yet and with the financial controls flag up the overspending and the whistle-blowing reports being picked up with correct process are those two was was very one of those things resultant on the other were the independent of each other thank you thank you councillor potter i'm going to come to the students out first thank you thank you chair thank you for the question councillor potter um so i think your question around whistle-blowing i i can respond to partially and then Richard might want to pick up on some of the the financial issues around your question um so there was a whistle-blower um in september 2022 and that whistle-blowing report was investigated what happened with that whistle-blowing matter after that is part of the investigation that's being looked at by the joint senior staff committee but you're you're right to be raised in questions there are some unanswered questions as to what happened next with that matter um in terms of after I arrived my involvement then I think it's fair to say that there were some other whistle-blowers came forwards in the summer of 2023 at a similar time to some awareness of the overspend on the contract um so I would say that the action around that time was probably independent of the first whistle-blowing matter so coincidental not consequential yes probably that's that's fair to say yeah and just Richard wants to come in on the finance yeah I think you've summarized it very well George in terms of what we know at this moment in time so we know that we are 17 and a half million pounds overspent on those particular contracts that part is the easy bit to determine what's much more difficult is that there were over 9,000 jobs that are undertaken some of those things we know are perfectly legitimate and those work work was done to a perfectly reasonable standard but that we also think there are things in there basically that were done in advance of need so things that should have been done in the future program some things that perhaps were not done and some things maybe not done up to standard but we are nowhere near at the moment been able to quantify exactly what those figures are and um to your more general points um Councillor Potter about kind of because you asked a lot of very reasonable questions about what was done why and so on and unfortunately like none of us are in a position to know that what we have in front of us and neither do we you know you didn't ask us to but but we also shouldn't speculate so all we've got in front of us is the position that we're at now we have the the external legal firm who've been commissions to investigate who knew what when and that will allow us to address some of the more sort of egregious issues here but the important point now is to make sure that we have the right um the right processes the right structures the right people the right culture all of those things kind of moving forward and that's what our improvement plans are intended to address so um so coming right back to the beginning I think this has been incredibly incredibly helpful um conversation and I really appreciate all the interventions and hopefully what you've had back from us is um is you know well you have what you've had back from us is our our honest view of where we are and and hopefully you've heard the determination to um just as we've heard it from you to get the right um get the right result for um for Guilford and so um we would really love it if you could um yeah agree the recommendations in 2.1. Thank you any other member of this committee have a comment or wish to raise a question no thanks all for contributions this evening um so moving to the recommendation is this committee happy to approve the recommendations to the extraordinary council sorry extraordinary meeting of the council on the 17th of June 2024 which is set on pages eight and nine to eight and nine of the agenda subject to the minor amendment to paragraph d as set out on the supplementary information sheets is that agreed council washing um thank you um yeah there will be four people on the proposal as initially at least because we retain the flexibility to change this going forward but um four people initially um two of them will be um people who took part of the reviewers um the intended composition is one chief ex chief executive or somebody with with experience of being chief executive someone with the experience of being a section 151 officer someone with the experience of being a monitoring officer someone with the experience of being a director of housing that's the that's the sort of four um the two um that our repeats are um Andrew Flockhart former chief executive of Paul um who was one of the who was the the sort of chair of the um uh main solace reviewers and Chris Bus um former um section 151 officer in amongst other places Richmond and Onesworth he um uh he is um again was part of the um the um uh review panel we are going through the process of looking at um uh or solace of putting forward some options for us on um on um somebody with a monitoring officer background and somebody with a um a housing director background so that we have the sort of key areas that the um because those represent the four key areas of the solace report recommendation so that's that's the intended um um uh composition and what's helpful about that is um we wanted to make sure the usefulness about having the reviewers on there is that they are the ones who've already been um done the review they understand what's at the heart of the recommendations what the real issues are so they can help us to make sure that wherever actions we're taking we actually address the number of the issues that they identify thank you councilwoman applauds his chair but just but just before we go on to that to approve recommendations just one other point I just want to make as a formal comment uh in regards to recommendations I think it is worth noting that the report we have on solace pre-dates for changes to the structure of the committee is on this council which was only adopted um a couple of a couple of weeks ago um and I think and as you know on the and as a supplementary sheet for this meeting notes the a lot of the financial paperwork that came to this committee a lot of the paper work which it restricted our ability of time to focus on order it has now been transferred to resource over in scrutiny committee so I note there are a couple of comments made about presidential which is our ability of setting up a separate audit committee I was like to expect of record but I think would be a mistake to rush into setting one up on the base of recommendations which precede it which predated a major change in the remit of this committee in the first place thank you uh duly noted and obviously that'll be in the minutes as well um so again just uh moving to the recommendation so and to get this fully on record so is the committee happy to approve the recommendations to the extraordinary council meeting on the 17th of June 2024 which I said out on pages eight and nine of the agenda subject to the minor amendment on paragraph d set out on the supplementary information sheet is that agreed thank you as there are other meeting items of on the agenda, I'm closing the special meeting, can we now terminate the webcast?