Transcript

I'd like to inform everyone present that this meeting will be broadcast live to the internet and will be capable of repeated viewing. The images and sound recording may be used for training purposes within the Council. Either Chair have the discretion to terminate or suspend filming if, in my opinion, that continuing to do so will prejudice the proceedings of the meeting. If you are seated in the public gallery, it is likely that the recording cameras will capture your image and this will result in the possibility of your image will become part of the broadcast. Any views expressed by any speaker in this meeting are the speakers own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Staffordshire Morelands District Council. Please members be aware that the webcast will continue to be streamed live for 20 seconds after the closing of the meeting. This is due to the time delay in transmitting live. Thank you. Item 1. Apologies. We do, yes, thank you Chair. So I've received apologies today from Councillor Worthington. Thank you very much. I have the minutes. Are there any substitutes? Yes, yes we do. So Councillor Pat Hughes will sub for Councillor Worthington. Thank you very much. Chair, can I just say that Councillor Henry has replaced Councillor David Shaw on the committee now. Oh right, so that's been a change round of personnel. Right, I'll make sure that's noted. Ben, welcome to the panel. We've only known each other what, 20 years now? Nice to see you. Thank you. Minutes of the previous meeting, item 3. Are there any items that you wish to raise on that? Anything that you're not sure about? Okay, thank you very much. All those in favour? Thank you. Right. Are there any urgent items of business? There are none. That's usually good. Declarations of interest. Item 1. Pecuniary interest. Are there any? No. Other interests? No. Okay. Well, we're doing well. We do have item 6. Questions of portfolio holders. May I say that it's from Councillor Habley and it will be taken in confidential. And Councillor Habley is aware of that because it's commercially sensitive. Thank you very much. Item 7. Work programme. Councillor Johnson. Yes, outside bodies. This issue is mentioned in the corporate peer review, but I'll bring it up here. I wonder, I'm not entirely sure I'd be interested in people's views as to whether outside bodies, particularly those that we do give money to, such as support Staffordshire, under service level agreements, et cetera, at the moment they come to community and I wonder if it's just worth raising the issue whether the level of scrutiny they get at committee, which quite often, to my mind, is slightly anecdotal and less performance and financial related, whether that's something that the resources might consider. I think that's possibly something that Martin might have a view on as well. Thank you. Martin, would you like to respond to that, please? Yeah, sure. It's a good point. There's a lot of groups that we work with, some of which we fund, and the scrutiny of that does happen at communities at the moment. Our head of communities, David Smith, is doing some work with the management team, the leadership team, to look at all of the groups that we work with, the benefit we get, if you like, assessed on a high, medium or low basis, the value we get from it, and that value is a measure of, for most of these groups we're not putting money in. It's fair to say the vast majority is not money contribution, it's time and effort. But nevertheless, it's right to still assess whether or not we derive value from money from that. I haven't seen the final outcome of that work, but I think it would be appropriate to retain the scrutiny in communities, but that perhaps the community's scrutiny panel could be pointed towards the question of value for money, as regards that scrutiny and whether that might answer the question. As I say, I don't believe, and we've got to get to the final outcome of all that, I don't believe the amounts of money that we're putting into the groups as a whole is material and significant, and as I say, the bigger input, by far and away, is the amount of time and effort that officers put into those groups, but nevertheless, we should still derive value for money, and I wonder whether it's something we could point communities towards. Thank you very much. Leader, do you wish to come in? I'll come in if there's nobody else wants to come in at this stage. I don't think we seem to have anyone else who wishes to join in on this one. Leader? I think Councillor Mark Johnson raises an interesting point here. I think the notion that we look at support Staffordshire through community is right, I'm happy with that, but at the same time, I think that value for money argument does come back to resources as well, and maybe the correct route is to listen to and participate in discussions at community about support Staffordshire, but if that raises issues of value for money, they can be raised here as questions, and in that sort of regular analysis of the finances through the quarters that we do, that's a good context for it to come up. But I think the key context, unless I've misunderstood it, that Councillor Johnson's making, is that support Staffordshire is one of those bodies where we do put in a considerable amount of funding, and the more money we put in, the more we have to make sure we're getting value for money. I completely accept Mr. Owen's point that many of the outside bodies, we don't contribute to financing, and I do take a mode as well, that sometimes that's about office time rather than money, and that's something we can always make sure we're looking into. But I think the trace of work surrounding the value for money to support Staffordshire is best started at resources, and those discussions take place, but specific issues about the finances really should come here if members have questions that they want to raise about the finances. Does that seem sensible? That seems very sensible indeed, leader. Just as mention of outside bodies, many of the people that are put onto outside bodies don't have an opportunity to actually report back to the council. There's no spot for it, and I've raised this because being on Peak Park for nearly eight years, I've never been asked to do a presentation on what happens in the Peak Park, and trying to work on something to put together to go to a panel so that people are informed, and if they wish to come to that panel and listen to me going on about it for Peak Park for ten minutes or so, I'd be happy to see them just to inform them about what goes on. Leader, you want to comment? Yeah, I think that's an excellent suggestion, no problem with that at all. It is just about finding the correct slot to do, but if we don't know the correct slot for it, we invent one. My initial thought is it would go to community, but I might be wrong on that, but I'm really glad to hear the notion that our rep on Peak Park does want to give a regular update, and I think that's what we should be doing. I think some of the outside bodies are, and I don't mean any disrespect by saying this, fairly parochial with local issues, people acting and doing things quite rightly on that, but Peak Park, rather like we just talked about with Support Staffordshire, it is one of the key bodies that we link with, and not to have a formal system of report. We're missing an opportunity, so let's take that opportunity, and I'm quite happy to work with you to decide where it goes. Thank you very much, leader. The next one we've got is the corporate pre-achange. Martin, that's yours, I think. Thank you. Apologies you didn't get the report a bit sooner. That's subject to the local government association getting it to us in a form that we could share with you. But for those of you who were around previously, you'll know that we were subject to a corporate peer challenge back, I think it was January 22, something like that, and the intention was always that the LGA would follow that corporate peer challenge review up again. Given we've had an election since then and the time that's passed, the scope of the work that they did in effect was to do the whole review again and pick up the recommendations that they had made before. The report identifies a lot of positives about Staffordshire Moorland's district council. The way that we governed is a strength. I point out item 4.4, which is in regards to our finances. I would always turn to that quickly. We have well-managed finances, clear and transparent in those regards. However, there are things in the report that are recommended to us that we need to sharpen our focus on. One of those is determining exactly the value for money that we deliver and derive from working in the Alliance. I think it's right to do that. In fact, that's consistent with something that's in our audit reports as well. As well as that, there's a challenge laid down for us about accelerating the pace of change that we're going for across a number of themes, our ICT programs, our environmental aspects and our accommodation. All of these are things that are on our agenda, but we're being challenged in the report to look at the pace of that change and the efforts that we go to to deliver on those commitments and also how we might derive more value by working more closely with the high peak and deriving the fuller benefits from the Alliance. Rather than go through all of the recommendations, I was just going to say that we feel it represents us well. It's always a measure of these types of reports, whether you read them and think that it's writing about you. We do in this instance. We take the challenge on the chin from them. This report will be published along with an action plan from ourselves as to how we propose to deliver on the recommendations that have been made. I'm happy to have the debate, have the discussion and hear from members of the committee. As members know, we're one of the poorest districts in the country. We've clearly got a district council in the years ahead is going to need to play a crucial role in turning that situation around, and we're going to therefore need great people, continue to have great people. The report mentions the management structure and the feeling by staff that that limits potential progression. We need an organization that can attract really good, really talented people and retain them, and we need to be able to nurture the people we have got who've got an affinity to the Staffordshire Moorlands. I wonder if you could say anything at this point about what the council's plan, the officer's plan is, to turn that situation around and prove the picture. It's a good and interesting point. You probably know already that we've looked at the portfolios of the exec directors, and we've got an advert out at the moment for an adjusted post from the previous postholder exec director for communities. What we've found actually across the whole range of adverts that we've put out, and it's probably improved over a period of the last 12 months, is that the caliber and volume of interested parties and applicants that we're getting has improved significantly from where we were before. You might recall some of those have been around a bit longer, where we've put out posts, had little interest, or certainly not got the caliber of person interested in the role, but that's not the case now. I think one of the things that's changed in that regard is our respective performance against lots of other similar local authorities in terms of our financial stability and some of the interesting developments that we've got. It makes us an attractive place to be. You may also recall that we've got in our efficiency program a recruitment and retention team, and that is just to say that we want to do better recruitment and obviously focus on retention. We've also put a lot of effort in looking at succession plans and developing our own. For example, we've just agreed to post in our revenues and benefits team that we're looking to do the training for them to get the IWRV qualifications to go with it, so that's a developmental post as well. There's been a report fairly recently about the number of post holders in the council, including the chief executive, who've been promoted through the council over many years, and it's a very high number, and we're proud of that, and growing our own is really important. The affinity commitment you get through that approach really works well over the long term. So there's a number of things underway, and you'll hear on this committee when we get into the efficiency program, we're intending to bring each of the efficiency leads in to talk in detail about their particular part of the program. You'll hear from Lyndon and Emily later in this meeting about income, and I haven't got it in front of me, but you will be getting an update on the recruitment and retention aspects of the efficiency program. We'll give you a bit more detail on that as well. Thank you. Thank you very much for asking it, very relevant indeed. Councillor Malyam. Thank you, Chair. It's also a very positive report. They say in this report how well both councils, the alliances, are working really well, and the members and staff work well together. The one thing they do pick up on is the local plan, which is on 2.8. But that's a two-pronged thing, as we've said before. We've got lots of planning applications passed for houses, but unless the builders build them, we can't meet the local plan. So we need the builders to build them so that we can actually meet the local plan, which is going to start again very soon. I found it very interesting, and I'd like to hear from other members, like Paul, who were interviewed by these people when they came over to us. It was really good. Looking at this report, it's positive all the way through, and I thank all the officers that have done a lot of work behind this before we actually met them. So let's think positive and move forward. Thank you, Councillor Malyam. Good relevant points there. I did take part in that challenge myself and found it very, very interesting indeed. But I think we get the impression that we do box above our weight quite well compared with other authorities, both financially and operationally as well. Any further questions? Councillor Abbally? Thank you. Just talking about the cost benefits of being the Alliance, and because I don't know the answer to this, how is this affected by the East Midlands Combined Authority in any way? The new mayor was elected a couple of weeks ago, and will that have an impact on High Peak and therefore by proxy an impact on us? Yeah, that's a simple question, isn't it? It's fair to say that that aspect is in the report and is something that we need to really work through in terms of the impact possibly directly on High Peak, but equally the devolution deals and agenda and what might well happen in Staffordshire as well. So we've got to put our thinking caps on. We've got to engage with the new mayor in the High Peak. We've got to consider how that affects us as a really important and significant component of both areas, politically, operationally, the things that we do, and also from a funding perspective and how funding may change in the future. The reality is that that isn't all set out, that we couldn't plot a line now from how much we get financially to how much we might get in the future because it's not worked through. So we stay close to that, so we're close to the agenda there, we have representation in the East Midlands on that side and as well in Staffordshire for any future changes. So it's a case of watching what's going on and then responding appropriately and then if we need to modify our future plans then certainly we will do. The question of value for money and what we need to do at that, the reality is it would be difficult for us to do that as officers and you to do that as members alone because we all have a vested interest one way or another in that. So the intention is that we commission an independent review of that. We're not sure exactly who yet, but I think that's something that would be right and proper to do. Interesting, one of the things, we're members of a series of benchmark clubs and we've looked at benchmarking what our costs are for delivering services and how much we consume from the revenue that we get and when we look at benchmarking we're out of kilter and in fact we're the anomaly that needs to be removed from the statistical data set because we tend to deliver things for so much less than a lot of our peers who are working alone as individual authorities. So a lot of authorities are looking at us and the way that we work as an alliance. Indeed one of the inspectors, one of the peer challenge members was leading an alliance of three authorities that was only fairly recently formed compared to ourselves. So he was really interested and it was interesting for me that he came here with a view to inspect what we're doing, but in reality I think he was taking away a lot of learning from what we do back to the ranch and that to be fair is the way it should work. In fact they're encouraging us as officers and members to join the corporate peer panels that go around the country doing these sorts of reviews. So the intention then is a long-winded way of saying that the intention is to appoint some independent assessment of that and bring the outcome of that I would suspect to this group in terms of whether or not and how much value we derive from working in the alliance. Does that answer your question? Putting my Pete Park hat on briefly, I've been watching the machinations of various different attempts to try and get a combined authority going through, not just in Derbyshire but obviously through into Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire. It's been an example of where people have basically folded their arms sometimes and decided not to play anymore. And then being very disappointed when they're no longer included in the group. But these things do happen and it's been going on for a long time, so hopefully this new arrangement will stick and will bring benefits. Thank you, Chair. I'd like to echo what a lot of people have said really. The thing that's been frustrating for me is we spent a long time on the local plan and it's now been taken out of our hands with the builders. You know, echoing what Councillor Molyneux said, you know, we give permission for houses to be built but the builders are land grabbing and holding on to the land. And it's very frustrating for members of the planning committee and everything else to sort of go along on that route. Echoing what you've said, I think we have been punching above a weight. You know, we're an example to other councils and I think one of the peer challenges went away, sort of challenging us whether we were doing too much or whatever. But I think he's gone away now realising that what we've done, we've done right and correctly. You know, we've been together now I think, is it 16 years I think, if my memory serves me right. You know, so we must be doing something right to keep going. It's saved us a lot of money on certain things. I'm glad that they went away and listened to what members said, which echoes on quite a few of these things. And also the relationship between the staff and the members I think is very good. The relationship between the executive and the staff, you know, they've gone away and listened to what they've said. We've listened to what everybody's said and for me, I think it's a very good report. You know, it means we've done something right, you know, over the last 16 years. And we can only now move forward and see if we can do better than what we're doing now, you know, on different aspects. So I think it's a very good report and I'm pleased with it. Thank you. Any further questions? Johnson. Oh, Councillor Johnson. Thank you. Yes, I'd like to echo what Councillor Marion, Councillor Roberts and others have said, that it is largely a positive report. But there are areas where we're either coded or more overtly it does say could do better. Councillor Cledhill was a teacher for many years. He can put it in better terms than that. The good thing about the report is actually I think that those areas where it says kind of could do better echo, I think, I will speak for myself, kind of echo our feelings about it. You know, we actually know that we could do better in certain areas like comms and engagements. I mean, when is that website going to be ready, et cetera, but I know that's a priority of the administration. One point which I'd like to bring up was in a way touched on by Councillor Abbley, which is the sort of changing relationship of the nature of this authority with other authorities and bodies. And I think that's going to be quite crucial, this sort of variable geometry, particularly as this administration is explicitly outward looking, wants to develop effective and working relationships. So if I could just make a plea to Councillor Cledhill, the Staffordshire Leaders' Board, things like that, that we get as much clarity as Councillors as we can. We haven't always in the past, and I'd like to get more clarity on that, but that's just a general point. Point on climate, and it speaks of a degree of confusion amongst officers and members, and I think that's right, and not just officers and members, but the public too. We inherited a climate action plan, and well done to the previous administration for actually being leading in terms of declaring an emergency and getting there. But there's no escaping the fact that we inherited a climate action plan which is unwieldy and filled with targets, which there is no hope of meeting. Now I'm not that hung up on targets in terms of that plan, but it's confusing for the public. They don't know where they are, so the sooner we get that sorted out, we're doing a little bit of that in the climate working group, but clearly that is something we need to do. So that wasn't really a question, it was a statement, and I hope you all forgive me, Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Johnson. Anything you wish to add, Martin? No, that's fine. Leader, you wish to come in on this? Yes, my usual request to come in at the end, if that's acceptable, Chair. Thanks. Yeah, it's a really good report. I really will urge members who are here today and who are not here today to read it extremely carefully. Those nine recommendations are all things that we would hope to deliver, and I think I would honestly say that whether we were the administration or the previous administration was, it's a pretty common agenda. It's stuff we can work with, it's stuff that we can make happen, and I would want to acknowledge that sometimes you arrive in a situation where good things have happened in the past, and you find yourself suddenly in a position where you're delivering on those good things. So I do want to credit previous administrations and officers for the work that's been done over time to get this Council to the position that we're in now, which is a very favourable one with lots of potential for the future. And that's, I think, the overriding message of the whole report. I think there's some really interesting stuff about developing the Alliance in the future. We've always seen the Alliance as a major impact on our ability to give value for money through the savings that we get through it. I think they're now saying to us, let's go further with it. What other things can we achieve with the Alliance that we've maybe not yet exploited to the full? There's an awful lot of recommendations there. Talk about joint work with High Peak, which I think, picking up Councillor Johnson's point about looking outwards, you never lose by working positively with partners. So I think that's the first thing I want to say. Positive report, well done everybody on it, and well done to previous regimes for putting us in the position where we can move forward in the way that we're doing. I note recommendation six, if people have noted that one, and basically says increase the pace of delivery. That's the big challenge for us. There are times when we're all frustrated with the time it takes to get things done. And sometimes that time has to be done because it's public money and we've got to do it in a responsible way. But we all experience those frustrations from time to time when something that we really would like to happen tomorrow can't happen until next week or next month or even occasionally next year. And I think that focus on the pace of delivery is something, you know, if we had one motto on the wall for all of us, it would be increase the pace of delivery because we know what to do. I think we probably know how to do it, but we've got to get on and do it and keep us moving forward. On a couple of specific things that people made, Councillor Taylor mentioned growing our own. Yeah, real priority, especially in areas like ours. You know, we have youngsters who get qualified, they move away, often they want to come back. That's because we've got such a great area to live in and with all the attractions that we've got. We've got youngsters who don't want to go away in the first place, they want a career that they can build from apprenticeships upwards in our community. And having looked into what we do here, I think with our apprenticeships, our graduate trainees, the examples of career progression that we've got within the council that kind of serve as role models. If you can see somebody who's climbed the ladder from, you know, fairly young beginnings to where they are now, that must encourage everybody in this workforce to think that where this council sees talent and potential, it makes use of it. And that's not to say that growing our own is always the answer. Martin referred to the new post for executive director, which is out. We're getting applications from all sorts of backgrounds, from a wide range of people across the country with a wide range of skills. So we are in this situation where people do want to come and work here, and that's something we can really build on. Councillor Malion mentioned the local plan. Yeah, you know, these things, you know, we remember the days when we all sat down and said, right, we've done it, it's here, it's all going to happen, and then it doesn't. You know, and that's the frustration of local plans for the reasons that Councillor Roberts has mentioned, that's the world that we live in. Interesting, sort of blending that point with the one that Councillor Johnson raised. Today, Darren, deputy leader, and David Proudlove, and Andrew Stokes, I'm not sure whether Mark Trillo's gone as well, but certainly Andrew's gone today. The UK Reef Conference, which is a major pitch organised by our nationally and internationally to put Staffordshire and all our districts on the map for developers. They should be on the stands now, schmoozing all sorts of builders and developers to come and do that. And if they're not, well, I'll be texting them shortly to say, well, what are you doing? But it is an indication of us looking outward, and I'll come back to that in a moment or two. Councillor Aberle raised the changing of the guard over the hill, as we say. There isn't a change of guard locally over the hill, but yeah, the East Midlands Mayor development is an interesting one, and one which we will have to watch carefully. I mean, the bottom line is that no money that should be in the Staffordshire moorlands goes out of the Staffordshire moorlands, and that's a clear message that I would want to give today. The vibes currently are that in the responsibilities that we've got as districts, the East Midlands situation will not change greatly. But that's not something, if at all, but that's not something we can just sit here and say, so that means it's okay. We've got to monitor it, we've got to look carefully, and of course, as the corporate peer challenge suggests, we've got to look closely at what devolution options there are for ourselves in Staffordshire in the months and years to come. And that's going to be a big piece of work as and when, currently being as close as we are to a general election, I suspect that there will not be a definite solution that emerges before then, which is supported unanimously by everybody in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent as to what we should do. But eventually, something will have to emerge like that, and there is a lot of work going on in the background. Councillor Johnson mentioned the leaders board at Staffordshire, and one really good development there, and this was agreed some time ago by the leaders board, which essentially has been the county council and the districts of the county council's leaders. And it was agreed by that board some time ago that not having Stoke-on-Trent council within that orbit was not very helpful for buildings for the future. And that decision was taken, I think, before my time on the board, and Stoke-on-Trent, the leader of Stoke-on-Trent, is now a member of that board. So we've got a greater integration across Staffordshire and interesting developments on the notion of North Staffordshire as an economic area. Now that's not about political structures for North Staffordshire, it's simply about are we an economic area which could have its own transport structure, a North Staffordshire growth strategy, whatever. So that's there in the process as well. Martin mentioned value for money in terms of always making sure that our relationship with High Peak has that at its core. But also, I think, as I've said, the challenge is saying you've got lots of creative stuff to do together as well, and I think that would be really useful. I would also say that we've got our own growth committee now, and I think when we sort of embarked on the process of looking at our scrutiny arrangements and putting new things in, moving some things around, I think having looked at the work that the growth committee is doing, well done everybody for making that move. That really is something we can do. And that growth board met with the county council a couple of weeks ago. Councillor Philip White, who's the deputy leader and has that brief at the county council was there, as were several of the senior officers. And the take that I came away with is that the thinking of the county council about growth and the thinking here about growth are extremely on the same track. There's lots of opportunity to work together, and I had a session with Councillor Philip White after the meeting which confirmed that. He said there are some real opportunities to work together. And when we're looking at what we can do, I think something that we've all realised over time is there's things we can do on our own, and there's things that we need to do with partners because they won't happen if we're not working with partners. So I think that's a big trace as well. Lastly, I take the point about notions of targets, milestones, performance indicators. I think that is something where we do need to do some more work on. There's times when having targets becomes a bit flavour of the monthly and you finish up with targets about everything, every single thing that you're doing. And I'm not suggesting that for one minute. But I think we all know where the big issues are, we all know what the big priorities are. And having performance indicators where they fit to do that, having milestones on the progress to delivery, and monitoring that delivery, which we do through Scrutiny, is going to be really important. That's the way we can do things. Summing up, good report, really pleased with it, well done everybody for the work you've done over the years in that, not just in the last month or even year, lots of potential. Let's get on and do it. Thank you, Lita. Councillor Jeb, you have a question? Yes, and I do apologise for my late arrival, Chairman. It was concerning recommendation four, the council control companies, and there were two parts to that. And I wondered, I couldn't see anything specific, but I wondered what plans you have for following the two bits of advice there, and of course for all of the partnerships that we operate. So it's fair to say that the -- I'm just running in a new pair of glasses at the moment, so bear with me. And it's fair to say that the assessment of the LATCO, as we call it -- I know some people don't like that, but it's a working title for now -- is not purely financial in any case. The reason for it is a lot more than the finances, but equally we want to make sure that the financial case for it does stack up. So in terms of recommendation 4.1, the first part of that, and it goes without saying that the whole assessment of the LATCO is much, much broader than just the finances. Clearly finances are important and essential, as you'd expect me to say that, but also recognising that we want the benefits from the LATCO to be much more than just the finances. So as we develop the whole regime and we establish the LATCO, it will be far more than finances. So it's a bit more of an assurance, hopefully, on that part. I'll just read the second bit. Review the outside bodies, and by that they're referring, of course, to Alliance Environmental Services, Alliance North, and then ultimately the LATCO when we've got that established. We do that in several ways already. So on a daily basis we have commissioning officers, so for example, head of assets is the commissioning officer responsible for what we commission from Alliance North, and tackles them on a daily basis in terms of what they deliver and how they work equally. We do the same with the Alliance Environmental Services on a daily basis. Head of service tackles them in terms of performance, and they scrutinise the council-controlled company in terms of what they deliver. Are they sticking to the agreements that we've got and the costs that they're bringing forward to us? And there's a relationship as well in the finance teams. So my finance team, our finance team liaises with the finance teams of Alliance North, AES, and with the LATCO, and we're working up the best arrangements to derive value for money as well on the financial aspect. Then we have commissioning boards established for each of the companies, and we had one of those only two or three weeks ago, I think it was over at Harbour Hill, where we hold the Board of Alliance, where we for that instance held the Board of Alliance North to account for what they were delivering, establish what our expectations were for what they do, what we pay for it, and how things get delivered. So we do that with Alliance Environmental Services, and again, we'll do that on the LATCO when it's established. And then finally, in terms of scrutiny, we've had Tony Taylor here from Alliance North, was it the last meeting? Yes. I think it was the last meeting. And then there's a cycle of bringing in the lead person from each of the council control companies to this meeting for scrutiny from members as well. So there's a lot of levels to that, making sure that delivering what we want, that we nudge them towards things if they're heading off course a little bit, and also assessing the cost and value for money for what they do. So hopefully that answers your question in a multilevel aspect. Thank you very much. So just, leader, do you wish to come back? Just picking up Councillor Jebb's question. Again, I think it's important to note that arriving at the position where we are now with the proposed LATCO for our leisure operations went through a whole process of scrutiny and of exploration for a couple of years now, where we looked across the whole gamut of leaving the operation as it is, basically in the hands of a private company, looking at the opportunity to bring it in-house totally, looking at the opportunity to bring it in-house partially with certain aspects. I'm thinking of payroll and things. Am I thinking about payroll, Martin? The bit where we, whether to do the aspects ourselves or whether to continue to use partwood for certain things. So that mixed approach. So all those three possibilities were really well investigated, and the conclusion came that the right thing to do was what we're doing with the LATCO. I did a course with the LGA in sort of November to January, and it was interesting to talk to leaders from other councils, and often the gist of the conversation was, Wow, we're thinking of doing that. How do you do it? How do you make it work? and this sort of thing, and I think we've blazed quite a trail there and started to blaze that trail with AAS and more recently with Norton now with the LATCO for Leisure. We really are out there at the cutting edge of this stuff, which is a very good place to be. However, having said that, it puts us under a greater obligation to scrutinize the companies really carefully, because it is public money. Ultimately, we're responsible for that public money. We have a vested interest in these companies working, and if they don't work, we've got to do something about it. One of the things that we've been looking at as an administration is are counselors in the right places in terms of our ability to scrutinize what the companies do? I think the answer to that is we're getting there. There have been some changes recently which have brought members of the cabinet closer to the way that these companies work, and that's the right thing to do. So it's a really good question in terms of what we're doing and where we're going with it, but I would urge members to follow it carefully, ask the right questions, make sure that we can deliver the services in the best possible way for the residents of the district. Thanks, Chair. Confusion of terminology. Martin alluded to it and got it right. In the definition of outside bodies from the corporate peer challenge, they are referring to these three companies. They're not referring to every outside body that we call an outside body. So just bear that in mind. Just in conclusion, we were the first to go into an alliance with another authority. And it's gratifying to see around the country, and I read it in my newspaper continually, about arrangements between other authorities. I think one of the ones a couple of years ago was a Lakeland authority going in with two Lancashire authorities. And people are copying what we've done. Also, the advent of the tackle companies. There was this great fashion to, shall we say, put it out to a private company to do. And we've been in the forefront of designing and working these tackle companies owned by the councils, the partners on behalf of the residents, and a lot of other authorities are watching what we do. So it's been a very, very interesting report. I welcome it. It's got some very, very good positive conclusions. But it really does show that we are very much one of the first to do things. And people do follow us, which is extremely gratifying that obviously a lot of other people out there in the country think we're doing it right. Thank you. Next agenda item is the efficiency program update and fees and charges. Martin, you'd like to start this one, and then we'll go over to Lyndon. Thank you. So just before I start this one, I just wanted to add a little bit more to the discussion from the last item. And that is that our auditors come in and audit us on questions of value for money. So anybody that goes to audit and accounts will be seen a report that assesses value for money and what we derive there. And that's an independent assessment of that. So I just wanted to point out that there are other places where this question is raised and that they're scrutinised and that we have independent places of assurance on that. So coming back to agenda item 9, then, the efficiency program. You'll all know that it's really critical for our medium-term financial plan that we had an efficiency program, that we only balance our books because we've got one. And with that then being such a high and critical -- high prominence and critical thing for us to do, what the approach that we sort of floated at the last meeting was that you would get to hear from the -- there are five themes to the efficiency program. Then on a rotating basis, we'll bring the head of service who's responsible for each of those themes into this committee to tell you what it is that they're doing, what impact it might have, where the risks are, and for you to ask them questions about what's happening in that particular theme. So there are two critical things as well within the efficiency program, and I just want to remind ourselves of those. One is that we have no need within that program for any redundancies, any compulsive redundancies that are not necessary as part of the efficiency program. And then the second critical thing is that we are not running anything that would have a material detriment to frontline services. So I think it's really important just to establish those two aspects to the efficiency program. Now, when we look at efficiencies, we're not just looking at saving costs, and you'll hear that on this one. We're also looking at where we can derive income, where we should, especially where we add value and where someone may value the service that we deliver. So Lyndon and Emily are first up in that regard to talk about our income and charges theme, of course, which is to do with how much income we derive from that theme. So Lyndon's got a presentation set up. Over to you. Lyndon, you're far away. Thank you. Yeah, so hopefully this isn't going to be death by PowerPoint. Please let me know if you think it's coherent in that direction. On the first slide, I just wanted to give you a flavor for the kind of things that we're going to be covering during this short presentation. I should add at the end, of course, the most important thing, there's going to be lots of time for you to ask questions to myself and to Emily about this particular theme for our efficiency strategy. And on this slide, we've put out an overview of the savings that we've set ourselves. You'll recall they were approved in February as part of our medium term financial plan saving targets. There are a number of different themes showing on the screen there. I'm the lead head of service for income and charges. And then in addition to that, we've got our head of assets, interim head of assets, Matthew Arthur. He's looking after the asset management theme and counselors will be aware that there's also a full kind of asset review. There's a working party taking place involving counselors as part of that review that links into our efficiency savings. We've got some project management that's been led by Tony Cooper, head of OD transformation and something that we've already alluded to this morning. Our council controlled companies and that's been led by Rob Wilkes, our head of leisure and environmental services. And just Martin. So the astute amongst you will have noticed that I said there were five themes and you only got four up there. So I just wanted to point out what the fifth theme was and that's that recruitment and retention I spoke about. So we've set it as a target for something that we need to do but there is no financial saving that will derive in our budgets as a result of doing it. The benefit of having better recruitment, having better retention is long term, medium to long term, so that's why it doesn't appear as a column in there. So I just wanted to point that out in case anybody was doing the auditing for us there. Thanks, Martin. And as Martin mentioned in forthcoming panel meetings, those other heads of service will come along and provide a similar presentation to you. So we've set ourselves a number of objectives in terms of our income and charges and that they're all listed, the seven objectives on the screen there. Some interrelate with one another, so things like identifying the potential for additional income and the appetite for maximising income. Things like the scope to charge for services that are not currently charged and also some services where we build in a level of subsidy as well. And I think the important thing to say is that everybody in our district, every household is affected by our fees and charges, whether it be they pay themselves a charge for being a service user directly, or if there's no charge or if there's some subsidy, then of course the rest of our council taxpayers bear the cost of that, so everybody's impacted by it. And it's important that where we do identify a service should be free or should have a level of subsidy, then it should really be linked into what our corporate priorities are as a council that we approved last October. Because income and charges, it's not just about raising money, although obviously that's very helpful for us given the financial climate. It's also about using it as a tool, as a lever, as I say, in order for the council to achieve its corporate priorities too. Something that's really important is that as we do review income and charges, that we ensure that we mitigate any potential risks. So aspects like, obviously we want our vibrant and busy town centres, and key to that is our level of car parking fees. So we want to make sure that we're getting those right because we want people to be coming into our town centres still. And of course we want to protect vulnerable groups, people on families on low incomes and so on. So there are things we can do as we review our fees and charges. There are aspects that we can build into that to make sure that we do protect those particular groups of people. I thought it'd be useful just to give you a feel for where the council's income comes from. There's actually a pie chart taken from a page in our corporate plan that was adopted last October. And I think something that really for me kind of sticks out from there is just what a big segment now, or a big piece of the cake, fees and charges is in comparison to the other income streams of the council. You can see there that what we collect in income actually is used to deliver about 30% of our service expenditure as a whole. The other big segment there of course, we've got business rates which are retained and council tax that we collect. And I guess the important thing to mention there is in terms of council tax, there is in effect a cap on how much we can raise that each year, 2.99%. So it does put more and more pressure on what we do raise as fees and charges going forward. And I think if you take a step back, it's interesting to compare perhaps to what councils in other countries, how they collect local fees and charges. I think when we've all been on our holidays abroad, you'll get the bill at the end of a meal, and you'll probably see on there quite often a local sales tax. There's a lot of debate in the local government world in terms about at the moment there's quite a narrow band of charges and levies that councils can use. Something that is changing in the UK at the moment is you may well have seen in the news. Although councils don't through legislation have the power to collect a tourist levy, you'll see there are some parts of the UK where that is starting to happen. If you look at Manchester and Liverpool, from last year they started to collect a city visitor charge. Now councils can't do that directly, but what they have done is they've created an accommodation business improvement district in order to do that. And in Manchester that's collected over the past year about 2.8 million. That in turn is going to be used to promote events, conferences, enhance levels of street care. I understand that down on the south coast, you know, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Pull Council, they're going to start to implement one from I think this July. So visitors in that area will start to pay a two pound per room levy for accommodation in hotels and so on. So it's an example as to what's happening elsewhere within the country and outside of the country as well really. This slide now shows us that the various charging structures that we apply for our list of fees and charges. And you'll recall that when we agreed our budget back in February, there was an Appendix C, which lists quite a long, long list of various fees and charges that we collect as a council. And they are split into these particular categories, which were some time ago set by the Audit Commission. Most of the fees and charges that we collect are there to recover our costs, not really to make a profit. There are some where we do where we compete with the private sector, areas like rental, income for properties or pest control is an example. But in the main, it's about making sure that we recover our costs in delivering services. And I just thought it would be useful to use a slide to run through some of the areas that we've been looking at over the past few months. So as an example, if we take planning, maybe planning has fees and charges in different segments. So we do charge for pre-planning advice that attracts a certain amount of income, and that was increased by the inflation rate last year. By far and away, though, most of the income from planning is a statutory charge, and that's connected with our planning fees set by government. Government changed the regulations last December and allowed significant increases in planning fees. I think for major applications it went up 35%, for all our other applications it went up by 25%. And going forwards, we can apply an index linked to the inflation rate as well, which will be very useful. Now although those increases sound very, very significant and very large, it's worth remembering that those fees were last increased by the government back in 2012. So it has a massive impact on how well we can deliver the planning service. And obviously the income that we raise from planning fees has to be put straight back into the planning service as well. So that's an example of a statutory fee. We have many more of those linked to licensing. One of the other areas that we've looked at is the costs of collecting council tax. So if for whatever reason someone doesn't pay their council tax on time, then obviously the council incurs a cost in trying to progress and collect that money in. So we've taken a look at our costs for summons costs and so on. They were increased slightly last year, but again those costs had been changed for some years. But at the same time we're very, very conscious, as I mentioned earlier, about those risks that we want to protect vulnerable groups, people on low incomes and so on. So our revenues team has policies in place and works very, very closely with organisations like Citizens Advice to make sure that we don't incur those costs for people in those groups. We want to make sure that we protect those people. Pest control, as I mentioned, is an area where we compete in effect with the private sector and most of our pest control services attract a charge. There's one that doesn't at the moment and that's treatments for rat infestations. For the first block of visits that's currently free and we've introduced charge for subsequent blocks of visits that may be required. And we also have a number of charges that are subsidised. So here's an example in our parks and open spaces. We charge a fee for organisations that want to use those spaces, but if that organisation is a charity or it's a community group, then we apply a slightly lower subsidised fee. So there's a range of charges that are included within those various different categories there. And we've tried to kind of target those that we know generate a significant amount of income and, as I say, take a balanced approach as to how we treat those going forwards. So in terms of next steps, we continue to work with all of our service areas to make sure that the income charges that we apply are appropriate and we review the levels of subsidy that we currently provide. It's really important that we review the cost of delivering services as well. As I say, the key to this is we certainly need to make sure that we're recovering our costs of service delivery. So we need to continually refine and update the calculations that we make. Like any organisation, the Council has been impacted by levels of inflation over the previous few years. Fortunately, those are now going down, but we do need to make sure that those different levels of fees and charges are adjusted as required. In terms of car parking, you'll recall when the budget was initially presented, there was a recommendation that the base car park charge be increased by, I think it was 20p at the time. As the budget went through scrutiny, that was an area that Council has picked up on and the recommendation was refined by cabinet and reduced to 10p rather than 20p. That was also on condition that we take a step back, we look at our approach to car parking across the district and that's something that we're going to be looking at in the forthcoming months. We're going to be looking at various aspects of car parking. It's not just about how much income we raise, it's how, as I say, we use that as a tool to better manage our car parks. And I've listed there the types of different areas that may well be included in that review. So that's the end of the formal presentation, as I mentioned, but very happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you, Lyndon, a very comprehensive report. I've got a number of people who want to ask questions. The first one is Councillor Johnson and then Councillor Adam Parks. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Lyndon, very comprehensive. Car parks came up quite a lot and we all know the potential controversy arising around any increase in car parking charges. You said in your comments that it's crucial, the level of car parking charges are crucial for the success or otherwise of a town centre. In one sense you can't disagree, but I wonder whether they are actually crucial or just important. I seem to remember another committee when car parkings came up, someone from the bench over there, I think it might have been Councillor Abbally or apologies, James, if it wasn't you, it might have been Councillor Ward, made the very shrewd point that actually the evidence doesn't really necessarily stack up for that. What really makes towns and cities, even villages, thrive is actually making them attractive and that in fact car parking charges are of relatively marginal importance in the future. So could I just make a plea that when this subject comes up, because we know it's subject to all kinds of comments, that there's some evidence available for us in whichever chamber, whichever committee it comes to, that we actually have some evidence to look at, because there is evidence out there, there's a lot of evidence on the relationship between car parking charges and economic performance and visitor numbers. So it would be very useful to have an informed debate on that when this controversial subject comes up. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Johnson. Pointing out that Staffordshire Moreland's car parking charges are substantially less than many of our near neighbours who you really do pay out a lot of money, particularly if you go to one of our very near neighbours. It costs a tremendous amount of money to park. Thank you, Chair. This is more of a general question and I don't know if it can be answered with the people currently on the top table, but I'm sure it can be taken away if not. Both the leader and I in past lives were head teachers of council controlled schools and the word efficiency and efficiency programme struck fear into the heart of us all. If the word efficiency was used, we always thought, well, who's going to lose their job? If an efficiency plus the word assets were used, it was which football pitcher they're going to sell. And I think this is important. It's important that efficiency isn't something that is brought upon us. It's something that all those that actually have an active role within it and are impacted by it have a say. And therefore, I was asking whether or not when you are discussing efficiencies and efficiency programmes, and particularly with regard to assets, which is spread amongst many of the towns and parishes, whether or not you ensure that the town and parish councils are actually involved in that decision making, because it is them that are directly impacted and it could even have a direct financial impact on them. So therefore, are the towns and parishes involved in the efficiency programme discussions? It sounded to me there, Councillor Parkes, there were two aspects to that point. So one is the sort of branding around efficiencies and you're right, we've all heard the efficiency programme when we've been working somewhere and thought, oh, my God, whose job is it next? And that's why I was really clear to make the point at the start that there are two critical, and they are critical, aspects to our efficiency programme, which I suspect in the next few months might be determined to be the productivity programme, and everybody will know what that means in terms of our friends at DLUC and what they expect. But the efficiency programme has been, if you like, marketed across the Alliance as that, that it's not about losing jobs. In fact, the recruitment and retention aspect to it is keep the people we've got given a succession plan and recruit as much as we can as well. So it's really, really important and we make that point consistently whenever we talk about that. So hopefully we're on a journey with the branding around it and it's also one of the things around efficiencies is people tend to think, oh, you're going to save cost. And that's why I thought it was important that we brought the other aspect to efficiencies and, well, where can we derive income because it's all part of the same approach for us about ultimately delivering the best value and value of the money for everything that we do. And that in some of the aspects, as Lyndon outlined, that the consumer derives a value for what they're getting from us and they rightly should pay for that in most instances. And where we have a deliberate decision to make as to whether we might subsidise it, that we do that as well and protect those who are most vulnerable in our society. The second part of it drifts beyond Lyndon's aspect into the asset management plan and we are, I think it's next up on the work programme is assets and the asset management plan and the rolling programme of bringing the lead person, the lead head of servicing. And clearly if there's an asset that we're doing anything with, it will involve engagement and consultation with those who are closest to that asset. So ward councillors will be involved and engaged and any other parties that are relevant to that will be involved. So you'll, by all means, bring that question again to the next one, but you might assure us that that's an intention of the programme anyway. Thank you. Good question, good answer. Next is Councillor Hopcroft. Well, yeah, thanks Jay, you will get my name right. Thanks for the report Lyndon. The details of delivery dates are not set out clearly for each objective. Going forward, can we have a better breakdown of where we are within the timescales set out so we can scrutinise progress better please? No doubt you have that in hand, so I welcome the progress reports at every stage of the programme. Yes, so the intention is that finance - we're very early in this financial year, so some of the things that we've put in place, it's too early to judge yet exactly how we're doing. But finance have been charged with looking at our run rate, if you like, and then we'll get a report in our quarterly reports as to how we're delivering against the efficiency programme. So it's all calibrated on a quarterly report that we'll report back in terms of how we're doing, and you'll see that on a regular basis. As well as testing the head of service for each of the lead areas. Thank you Marty. Next speaker, Councillor Aberle. So just relating to the car parking charges and the review of that, are we looking at this in the prism of trying to stick to what's in the budget for the next four years? In terms of the estimated revenue, but obviously then tweaking how that actually comes to that amount through the variation of hours and charge and costs. Or are we accepting that this might be very different and we might end up with significantly lower or higher revenue amount for the car parking charges ultimately? It's a good question because my start point is that we can't get any less because if we're going to reduce the income from that source, we've got to cut something back from somewhere else. So it's about recalibrating what we get and where we get it from. By doing that you get winners and losers. However, I'd be keen to look at how we might change things that might have a longer term impact and a longer term benefit. But we've got to get into that review and determine exactly where we need to land on that. But clearly, as I said at the start, our medium term financial plan only brings our noses above the water at the end of the four year cycle. So we don't really have a lot of wiggle room within the medium term financial plan. You might have noticed on one of Lyndon's slides that the demand for the efficiency program is slightly overmet from what we've got in the program, but not by a lot. So we've got a little bit of contingency, but not a lot. And clearly if we were to lose some of the benefits that we're expecting to derive from income and charges, whether that be from car parking or something else, then we've got to make that up somewhere else. And so we would rather not have to do that, but if it needs it then we'll have to look at it. Thank you. I think sometimes you might use the analogy of squeezing the balloon. We push in one direction and it goes out the other. [inaudible] Thank you, Chair. It's just a piece of commentary, really. I think it's fair to say that when I inherited the portfolio back last summer and started to meet with parishes, it was clear that historically there'd been very mixed relationships with the towns and parishes right across the Staffordshire moorlands. And I had a lot of very interesting conversations with different parishes, although I do suspect some of them had invited me just so they could see what a socialist looked like. There's no doubt that we need to develop our partnerships with towns and parishes in a much more stable way so that all parishes feel they're being treated fairly and that they have equal opportunity. I think myself with the leader and the chief executive are doing some preliminary work on this to make these relationships much more explicit. We'll be coming to scrutiny soon with that work and we'd be very interested in listening to see our members respond to that. And I think that's the right decision. We're also changing our approach to the parish assembly and kind of stabilising that over the next three years and I think that's the right approach. It's clear I think as a town council as well that cost savings will inevitably involve us having very detailed discussions with towns and parishes about transferring assets, whether that's through full transfer or leasing or joint management of assets. And inevitably there'll be some quite challenging discussions about how the money flows to the point of delivery. So it helps me if I can see all over the scrutiny groups as well as this one, bearing this in mind when they do their job, that we have to have a balance between passing assets over and asking towns and parishes to take over more responsibility. But that needs to be balanced out about the importance of that close collegiate working relationship with them, which is certainly necessary to deliver the tourism strategy that was commissioned by the previous administration, but also the overarching green spaces strategy that Councillor Yates and I have been working on, and forthcoming strategies that will be flowing through in the next couple of years. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Swindoll first. Councillor Wood. Yes, thank you, Chair. Very interesting debate as well and very interesting points. But I think one of the fundamental things we need to understand is at this present moment in time, the government policy is we get a 12 month settlement, so we can't project what potentially we can get in the next year, two years, three years, and that does provide some difficulties for obviously the financial team to set out a budget. We set out a medium term financial plan based upon what we think the settlement is going to be. So therefore, in terms of the fees and charges, our policy was not to impact on frontline services and no redundancies, and I think that's the correct strategy we should be going down. So therefore, we have to implement fees and charges across a wide spectrum of areas of the local authority. And sometimes it's difficult decisions. The cost of living crisis, we're fully aware of that, and I think the cabinet took notice of that when we reduced the initial suggestions of a 20p increase and reduced that down to a 10p increase. And you're quite right, Chair, as you say, other local authorities charge far more than the Staffordshire moorlands. Well, we want to make it the best we can for our residents without affecting the frontline services. So, you know, it's difficult decisions based on a 12-month settlement, and, you know, there may well be a change of government come next year, and hopefully, you know, I certainly feel that governments need to look at projecting what, you know, the financial settlements local authorities are going to be getting so you can plan better. And I think that's the right way to do things. 12 months is a bit difficult. So from our point of view, yet the fees and charges are flexible in terms of what we do and the frontline services we provide, but it's an inevitable fact of life that sometimes charges have to go up and we can't get away from that and difficult decisions have to be taken. And, you know, Lyndon alluded to the, you know, the planning hasn't gone up, I think, was it 2012? Was it planning fees haven't gone up? You know, the questions are why haven't they gone up since 2012? If all our fees and charges are going up on a yearly basis, why haven't the government, you know, changed the regulations? So that's happened. So it's a balancing act, and I think the financial team, you know, Martin's obviously the principal of that. The financial team have a difficult job to do, and the medium-term financial plan is a plan, obviously, over the four-year period. And I think the team have done a really good job, and it was endorsed at full council in February. But we can't get away from the fact fees and charges only go one way, and we can't, you know, unless the government install more money into local authorities, then, you know, we can't get away from the scenario that we have to balance the books, try to protect frontline services, try to protect jobs, and the only way we can do that sometimes is we have to take the hard decisions of increasing fees and charges. Thank you, Councillor Wood. Councillor Yates, you want to make a very brief comment, I take it? Yeah. Just firstly to really reiterate what Councillor Johnson and Councillor Parks were saying, and that in the past, the efficiency was seen, the word efficiency was seen as a euphemism for a cult. Whereas, as far as I'm concerned, and something I've stressed since day one, it's providing, and efficiency saving is providing the same services at less cost, therefore more efficiently, or additional services at no additional cost, therefore broadening the scope and being efficient. In some instances, however, it may be necessary to invest up from first before we see the benefit of those efficiency savings, and the two areas which immediately spring to mind is the implementation of the green space strategy, as both me and Councillor Swindler have worked on, in the context that we may need to invest and change the equipment which we are using to actually get a benefit further down the line, because there's plenty of well-researched evidence to suggest that proper implementation of the type of green space policy which we are introducing does have significant cost savings down the line, but it does need the investment and machinery up front, now whether that's direct or through subcontracting is a mute point, but that also comes on to the use of AI, which will need investment up front of one form or another, to produce improvements and triaging, and ultimately customer service and other things which you can bring to, which again would come under the category of really, in some respects, additional services at no extra cost, but would require that little bit of investment up front, so there might be a little bit of a sort of peak before he comes down, and that also sort of alludes to some of the conversations which we've had with Martin Owen as Finance Director about investing in human resources to actually give us a greater depth and greater breadth to bring in more financial results at the end, and perhaps offer more subcontracting services. These things take time, these things have a long tail, but these things have fixed, indefinite, tangible benefits moving forward beyond this Council. Thank you very much. Right, that's been a very, very good debate with a lot of good questions and good replies and answers. I'm very encouraged, we've had a good airing, we've had a couple of very good agenda items today. I'm going to move on now to the exclusion of the public, and we'll just have to wait.