Transcript

. >> Okay. We're live. Welcome to the meeting of Dorset's Cabinet, 11th of June, 2024. This is obviously the first meeting of Dorset's Cabinet since the elections, so I'd like to welcome you all. We have got quite a new cohort in Dorset Council. We have by my count 28 new councillors. They bring with them quite a depth of knowledge and skills, and also quite a lot of them are quite young, and we have a lot of diversity as well, which I'm glad to say. In recognition of that, I intend to bring to full council in July a paper which seeks to change basically the calendar of meetings so that Cabinet always meets at 6.30 in the evening rather than the summer and winter schedule, and I trust that members across the Chamber will support that. We obviously have a new set of priorities as a Cabinet, and we'll be bringing these forward at pace, and the first of those is on the agenda tonight, and I will run the Cabinet as Councillor Flower did before, so any paper, non-Cabinet members, colleagues can ask questions, and then we'll close that and move on to the Cabinet colleagues. I think we're going to do that across all the committees again. So without further ado, we'll go to the agenda. If I can open that. So the first one is apologies for absence, and we do have one, I believe. Yes, Chairman, we have apologies from Councillor Shane Bartlett. Councillor Bartlett unfortunately had a car breakdown, and he can't make it. So item two is the minutes of the meeting which was held on the 12th of March, 2024. We'll sign that. None of the Cabinet were obviously there at the time other than in the audience, so I'm apparently told I can just sign them as a matter of record. That's fine. Do I need to do that now, or we do that later? Item three, any declarations or interest from Cabinet members? Nope. Item four, public participation. So we have a question from one member of the public, I believe. He's online. His name is David Regwell. He's attending virtually, and then Councillor Andrews will answer the question afterwards. So over to you, Mr. Regwell. Thank you very much. So welcome the new priorities of the new Council towards buses and public transport, and obviously continuing the work that Councillor Bryant and Councillor Knott did. But I think we've got to submit tomorrow to the Department for Transport, even though there is an election in process, our bus service improvement plan for the county along with BCP. So my wondering from Dorset Catch the Bus Campaign and South West Transport Network is how the new Council will work with passenger groups to improve the bus network, how the review will go forward in looking at the villages and routes that don't have services now, and how we will also work with Western Gateway and the Peninsula Transport Boards to make sure we have cross-regional connectivity and also into Hampshire to make sure that our buses connect with our coach services and also with our rail services. So we welcome the priority of the Council, but just wish to know how it intends to carry out the work to make sure that we have a bus network that connects all of Dorset and Dorset to the rest of the South West of England into Wessex. Thank you for your question and Councillor Andrews will now answer it for you. Thank you very much for your question, Mr. Regwell. The Council is preparing its third bus service improvement plan. This refresh plan will build on the progress that's been achieved over the last two years and sets out our longer term aspirations to improve local services that are attracted to the government funders. The plan includes a vision for improving our socially necessary core routes, enhancing these routes to form the spine of the bus network and working to develop the interconnecting feeder routes using community transport or demand responsive services to improve the accessibility for more of our rural population. We will work closely with our bus operators within the enhanced partnership to deliver these improvements. This plan will be published and made publicly available on the Council website in accordance with the timescales agreed with the Department for Transport. Thank you. And you will receive a written version of that response as well. So thank you for your question. Thank you, Chair and hopefully past groups will be involved in the plan. Thank you. Item 6 on the agenda. No, 5, sorry, I can't read. This question is for councillors and we have a question from Councillor Paul Kinberg. Thank you, Chair, and best of luck in your new position. This is not only something I picked up from the CPRE, but it also goes to my Councillor's surgery, that the frustration from young people. A recent report put 10,500 people on the waiting list in Dorset for housing from the CPRE. Could we confirm the numbers of families needing social housing to rent and families in bed and breakfast? The need for affordable homes is paramount and a major concern for local families. Soaring house prices, the cost of living crisis and wages have failed to meet many Dorset families. Given the fact that we're starting a new five-year term, are we ready to make the challenge of housing and could we give us indicators of where we plan to build and to meet this challenge? Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Kinberg. I did note that you didn't say you were from Portland. Councillor Taylor will give the response. Thank you, Councillor Taylor, cabinet member for Public Health. I'm sorry, it takes me a bit to get my head around this lot. Public Health, Environmental Health, Housing, Community Safety and Regulatory Services. Welcome, Paul. Nice to see you back again and nice to see you talking about housing again, which is really, really important subject. Sorry, yeah, we've got a lot of history Paul and I have discussing housing in the past. If I can just break your question down into the questions you've actually asked and you'll get a written response to it, but I'll just outline what is in the written response. The first question you ask about the CPRE numbers that are saying there are 10,500 people on the Dorset, on the waiting list for housing in Dorset. I think that figure is both our council, Dorset Council and also BCP. As of the 6th of June, which last Friday, there are currently 5,962 households on our housing register. These are households who have an unmet need and have expressed a wish for social housing, but it's also important to note that these people will also be looking for other solutions to their housing problems, which may not involve the housing register, but it's a good guide to how many people are looking for housing. On your second question, numbers, hang on, you're talking about the numbers in Bed and Breakfast. The housing team have done an awful lot of really good work on Bed and Breakfast recently. It's not a suitable place for our residents to be put and it is something that we only use as emergency accommodation for short-term respite for homelessness. As of the 6th of June, there are 21 families in Bed and Breakfast, but there's an intensive amount of work being done with these families to get them into settled accommodation. Bed and Breakfast is not a good alternative. We've got an awful lot of temporary accommodation that we use, so it's only used when absolutely necessary. And then you're also talking about the challenge for housing in Dorset wider. Just a bit of background, registered providers of social housing or housing associations manage something like 25,000 homes in Dorset Council, so we've already got a lot of housing owned by them. And they also provide us with an awful lot of housing, which we very much welcome. However, as a council and housing authority, we really do recognise the demand for housing that is affordable for our residents, both to rent and to buy far outstrips what we have. We're working through the plans at the moment to work out how we can accelerate the delivery of housing. And as you'll be aware, we've recently approved the housing strategy for Dorset Council. That at the moment does not have a plan underpin it. This is just in draft stage at the moment. And I'm hoping to bring the plan forward later on this year in the autumn so that we can look at how we're actually going to fill the gaps. I think it's important that we leave housing associations doing what they do best and basically work as a council on the areas that we can pick up and help them to deliver the housing. I think what is really important on this is that we've got such a dire shortage of housing in Dorset generally that we should only be looking at turning down housing applications, planning applications for housing in exceptional circumstances. When we have the likes of dentists and doctors who can't afford to live here because of the price of housing, that is not acceptable. And I think as 82 councillors across the piece in Dorset, then we have to make a difference as a council and we cannot afford to turn down housing applications, except where there is really good planning need for it. I hope that's all right, Paul. If you want to come back to me or talk to me later, that's brilliant. Sorry, Councillor Kimber. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Saylor. Councillor Kimber, you may have a supplementary if you wish. No, thank you. That's very explicit and also I welcome the report that's going to come through later on. When I put the question down, I really wanted it to be, if you like, the start of a big major debate and I realised that I couldn't kick all the goals like England will do, but that we actually get the process going and I know this council is a caring council and it will be in your hands and you've got a big job to do. Thank you. Thank you so much for that, but I think what is critical is that we take all the members along with us. Thank you. Thank you. And moving on to Agenda Item 6. Sorry, my screen needs to be bigger. Forward Plan. There have been some changes to the published Agenda Item. Can I confirm my colleagues have seen those? I guess one of the biggies is Diana's Hollow, which is quite a high risk to the council. I'm glad to see that on there. Any comments on the Forward Plan? Okay. The next item is the first paper on the Agenda is the Cost of Living Support. I'm very pleased to see this on here and it will be introduced by Councillor Ryan Hope. Thank you very much, Chair. Councillor Ryan Hope at Weston Ward and I'm the new Portfolio Holder for - bear with me so I make sure I get the right title - Portfolio Holder for Customer, Culture and Community Engagement. Members in the Chamber this evening, this paper will be no surprise, I'm sure, to many of you, as was publicised by the Liberal Democrat Group in the recent local election as a top priority should we take the position that we now hold. So it's with really great delight that I'm able to present this paper this evening and also my thanks to Laura Connett, our Communities and Partnership Officer here at Dorset Council for her support in putting the paper together. Just want to outline a few things and clarify a few things around the recommendation, if I can, and then I might hand over to Laura to cover any points, Chair, if I may, that I missed before we invite members to speak. You'll see, members, that the recommendations here are split into four points. Point one is very much for noting the activities of 23 to 24 and the outcomes achieved. And you'll see within that paper that there's been some very, very good outcomes. One of the ones I'd like to highlight is the Additional Specialist Debt Support Officers funded and employed within our strategic partners, which is the Citizens of Device, and this has helped them support over 298 clients with specialist debt, energy and cost of living advice. And it's brought an additional just over a quarter of a million pounds in financial gains for our most vulnerable residents. Point two of the recommendation is for Cabinet to agree and earmark £2 million from our Council reserves, and that's this year's reserves because currently this isn't a budget line sat within the budget that was left with this administration. That will give us £2 million to continue a scheme of work up until the end of this financial year. Point three is for Cabinet to delegate the authority to the Portfolio Holder, being myself, and the Community Engagement to agree the targeted program of works, which the money will be used to spend on. And we're going to involve the Place and Resources Over Committee in generating this program of works because it's very important that we do get cross-party working on this paper to ensure that we hit all residents in our community and, of course, those that are most at risk with cost of living crisis. And then point four, which is key, because none of us want to be in this situation again, and it is that Cabinet will agree to incorporate this piece of work in our budget setting process as we look to set next year's budget. I'm going to ask Laura if there's anything else, Chair, if I may, to identify within the report, and then willing to try and take any questions. Thank you very much, Councillor Hope. I think it's keen to say that we, the Liberal Democrats, have asked us to put, to ensure that any future funding goes a lot more out to the voluntary community sector who continue to support Dorset Council with the front line for the cost of living. So any program we do develop will be a bit more of a mix between supporting gaps within government provision and supporting our voluntary sector organizations. I think one more thing just to highlight is that some of the data in the report does really identify that such as the food bank social supermarkets are reporting a much higher usage than ever and are really, really struggling to keep up demand. And though the national energy cap has come down a small amount, it's still significantly higher than 2020 levels. And most importantly, all targeted government energy support ended at the end of March this year, and food costs on average 30% higher than in July '22. Those are the main extra points I wanted to add to enable members to make a decision. Thank you. Thank you, Laura. Councillor Hope, do you want to add anything? We'll go to questions. Okay. Can I seek a proposal and seconder? Councillor Richard and Councillor Hope. Robinson, sorry. Okay. We'll open the floor to non-Cabinet members. Councillor Kemba was first. Councillor Jones is second. We'll carry on from there. Councillor Paul Kemba, Portland. This is a report that I actually welcome, forgetting the party political broadcast, but I welcome it for the families of our community in and around Dorset, and I know Weymouth and Portland, and I know also from the food banks how at times they are particularly struggling. Can I be assured that the news of this will go out and reach our communities any and every way you can? Thank you. Councillor Jones. Thank you very much. Just bear with me because I've got a few points, and I speak from working at the ground level with families that have tremendous disadvantage, normally about 380 families at any one time. First of all, I note that grants will be supporting food banks, social supermarkets, but it also mentions community fridges and pop-up larders, but these are not targeted. In my experience, the community fridges that I know of, mostly it's the volunteers that dip in and out of those. The pop-up larders, they're not targeted. They're not offered any additional support at all, and I think with the way things are at the moment, we have to be really specific in the way that we target. We can't afford to do everything, and we really need to target. The emergency local assistance commissioned by adults supporting people in crisis, I'd really like to know a little bit more about that. Literally, not a week goes by when we don't have a phone call or request from a GP surgery, the volunteer center, and it's generally somebody that's come home from hospital or is on their own with dementia, with no food, can't cope. They don't have access or the capacity to give any money, and it's something we're picking up all the time. At a recent meeting when we were discussing how we as a community could help these situations, it seems to me that there's a lot of people commissioning help, but very little happening at the bottom, and it's the people at the bottom that are actually providing four to five visits a week, which is what we do. We need the funding in that respect to help from a bottom-up approach. Finally, the targeted support vouchers. Now, it says it's going to replace the self-referral scheme. I'm wondering, I'd like to know who the nominated referrers are, because I'm not sure that they are necessarily the right referrers. We need to have a closer working relationship. What was happening last year was that people were getting supermarket vouchers, but actually what they really, really needed were energy vouchers. They couldn't afford to put the electric on in more than one room, and they couldn't afford to run the hob and so on. The response I had there was that, well, it's because people are given supermarket vouchers so they can spend the money on energy. But for a customer going to a food bank where they're not paying anything at all, or they're coming to a social supermarket such as the pantry, they would pay seven pounds. So they're getting their food, but they still can't afford to put the electric on to cook it, and that's a real problem. I just would really like to have a closer working relationship to just knuckle down on the areas that are really, really crucial in this respect. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jones. I expect quite a lot of detail will be brought out by the people and resource overview. But Councillor Hope, do you wish to say anything? Sorry. I'm so sorry, but I just have to say, I'm just wondering why it's going to place and resources and not people and health. Surely it's people and health, not place. I believe it was a matter of expediency in terms of both basically their meeting first. And this week, yeah, it wasn't going to be too soon. Sorry. It was too soon for them to meet when their meeting was just Thursday, I believe. But we could fit it in for July. Thank you very much, Chair. Just to pick up first of all on Councillor Kimbrough's question. Absolutely comms will be a yes. We'll make sure that this message gets out to everyone via many different channels. To pick up on Councillor Jones's questions, if I can, and hopefully I'll cover all of these. And I appreciate her questions, although I know that she does a lot of work around food security in her community. I think first of all, the question on why place and people's overview, that's because we couldn't get it to the agenda next week for health and scrutiny. And it's the first opportunity because we want to make sure that this program's available as soon as possible to support local communities. Some of the other points that you've picked up really are for that committee to look at because tonight we are only in principle agreeing the use of the reserves and the framework of work. So I'm sure your comments will be taken on board at that committee when they look at the program of work and how they deliver the support system. Thank you, Councillor Hope. I think Councillor Leary is next. Thank you, Chairman. Firstly, I want to say a thank you to the previous cabinet member, Laura Beddoe, who did an awful lot of work on this subject and the original fund. Is the plan for this fund going forward to be a yearly fund, or is this another one off? I obviously wouldn't want you folks to be in the position where you're accused of lying over cutting of this fund is that would be a very difficult situation, wouldn't it? So what's the future of this fund going forward? I can answer that. As set out in the paper, it's a one off and we'll embed anything going forward into the budget process for the next financial year. Councillor Leary again? One more supplementary. So if it isn't included in the budget and this is only a one off fund, would that therefore be a cut? It will be if it's embedded in the budget. The support will be there. Councillor Parry, I believe, is next. Thank you, Chair, for inviting me to speak on this matter. I've got to return to this matter of which overview committee is going to look at this. I appreciate the desire from cabinet to want to socialise this as quickly as possible and to start the process of getting these reserves transferred over. But we've just heard from the cabinet member talking about a people place overview committee. We seem to be mixing our metaphors here, but it doesn't sit with place. It quite clearly is a people and health overview committee matter. If you want to have it as a joint overview committee, that may be your way forward, but I don't think that's possible on this occasion. So I'd like some clarity on it. It may be that we have to just take a little bit more time to get this navigated the right way through Council and that would, of course, be acceptable to all parties, I hope. Councillor Hope is going to answer, I think. Thank you very much, Chair. I do apologise, Councillor Perry. As per recommendation three within the paper, I can confirm it's the place and resources overview committee it will go to. And I've got Councillor Northam is next. All right, press the right button, they tell me. Okay. Thank you very much. I support the further extension of this programme by the 2 million. And I look forward to the places committee deciding how, where and such like takes place. And I note in the paper today the number of food parcels distributed in the UK has risen to 3 million. That's doubled since 2019. Back in 2014, the figure was at 500,000. And back in 2010, it was much less than that. So what I'd like to say is that we really do need this quickly because the problem is getting worse, not better. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Northam. I have next Councillor Craig Monks. Thank you, Chair. Just a point that I won't dwell on and more maybe an offer of support to Councillor Hope. I share my concerns with my colleague with regards to community fridges and larders. I set up and run a community fridge and a community larder. So I know that quite often they all run on different guidelines and rules and qualifications or lack of qualifications. I just wanted to just to follow up with my colleague to say that I do share those concerns, but I'm very happy to, where Council feel it's appropriate to liaise with Councillor Hope and maybe offer some on the ground advice and experience on the matter, because what I wouldn't want to see is the risk of some of this funding and ultimately taxpayer money kind of being lost in the cracks to organisations that maybe wouldn't make best use of it. But that's just really the point. So I don't necessarily expect a response, but thank you. Thank you for your supportive comments. I'm sure we'll be in touch. Councillor Lacey. Oh, sorry, Mark. Thank you very much, Councillor Monks. I just want to really reiterate the point that at the moment we are just primarily looking at the scheme of work and the funding. But one thing I will just say on the delivery is we are committed to looking with organisations to deliver preventative measures as well. So we will be working with known partners when we will make sure that the people that are accessing these resources are the right people. And we will obviously be looking to offer them support to see how we can support them ongoing to try and reduce this fund over years. Just to add, my community of Fridge and Larder are very good resources. If you'd like to give me some money, Bairmanston would welcome it. Thank you. Next we have Councillor Lacey Clark, who's online. Thank you, Leader, Nick. I don't know what we call you now. Councillor Ireland, thank you, Councillor Ireland for that. My question is more about the precedent this is setting. Obviously, we have the separate overview and scrutiny committees very clearly designed to cover the right subjects and have the people with the best placed knowledge on those committees. By choosing to not follow the system we have in place and to go to the one that is the closest and most convenient, will that be what's going forward with this administration? Will we not be following the correct usages and going to the right committees, but instead going to the ones that just are easier and work quicker? I understand it's expedient, but do it once, do it right, but there's always the way I was brought up. Can I like your comment on that? Councillor Hope again. Thank you very much, Councillor Lacey Clark, for your question. I'm hoping I picked it up because the audio wasn't brilliant there. But I think from the gist of what I could hear is you were asking around the process of this administration on quick and easy or the right process, and I can assure you that we will be carrying out the right processes and administration, and I'm sure the leader will support that. Thank you, Councillor Hope. And we have Councillor Suttle, I think. Thank you. I suppose the question really is, given there will be information we've received this evening, particularly from Councillor Jones, the demand, we've just heard from officers that demand's increasing, so it makes me ask the question, why £2 million? Did you just copy us, or did you not think that you actually needed more? And if you do, will you be considering that? That's a fair question, and we probably did copy you to be first. No, that's fine. £2 million is a lot of money. As you say, it may not be enough. We also have to take this out of reserves, as you're well aware. £2 million seemed to be a reasonable amount at the time. I'm sure that going forward, if situations so dictate, we may have to look at this again, but I hope we don't. I hope we do enough work going forward with Laura Connett and the team across the Council that we identify where we can spend it both equitably and to the most effect, and hopefully if we have it in the budget process, we'll manage that going forward. And who knows how much it will cost then, but yeah. I don't think we have any other questions that I can see. Councillors, I was going to say, I'm now going to cabinet members. So Councillor Claire Sotten. Thank you, Nick. It's essentially picking up on the points made by Councillor Jones and Councillor Monks, and I genuinely recognise the concerns about ensuring that the money goes to the right places without a shadow of a doubt. But what springs to mind is that an example of this is, for example, Councillor Kimball know much more about this than me, the community fridge on Portland. And I suppose one of my concerns is that in our very, very porous communities, there might not even be the capacity to set up the organisation which has, you know, the right governance to be able to deliver it properly. So I wouldn't want to, you know, necessarily chalk off organisations that don't have the government's arrangements in place. It will be important to help them get them in place, and that would be actually be quite a good use of some of the resource here. And particularly, you know, this isn't going to be this isn't necessarily going to be an infinite stream of resources, you know, we can all recognise that. So it's really important to use some of it for building capacity and making it sustainable, you know, making the money count longer than, you know, the initial 12 months. So in that vein, so these are questions. So the first question is, can we consider using it to also some of it to build capacity in order to improve sustainability, and also in some cases, be proactive, and not only go to known partners, but go to communities where there's very, very clearly a need for community infrastructure to deliver these things, but there might not at the moment be the capacity within those communities to do so without a bit of a helping hand. Richard Biggs wants to speak. OK, so Richard Biggs, deputy leader of property, assets, environmental, economic growth and levelling up. I hate that word, levelling up. I'll get rid of that. Clearly, the need is there. It's very sad that that need is still there, and it's needed throughout the country. We're not out of the woods by any means, and whoever wins the next election, things are still going to be extremely tough for many in our community who are really struggling. I talked with interest, the comments about should we go with place, and clearly there are reasons, diary-wise, why that has gone not to people, rather, to place. But I would say that there are aspects of it which do sit in place, and I think we need to look wider than we've done before and not create a sort of benefits dependency. And there are other areas that need to be picked up, and I'll give you an example which sits in my area, which is digital inclusion, which comes under the digital infrastructure. Currently, they have a budget of about £150,000 a year, and they have to find bits of revenue across various streams wherever they can, any grants they can pick up, and it all takes an inordinate amount of time. Digital inclusion can often mean examples where many NHS services are now provided online, many young mothers, et cetera, pregnancy, et cetera. Some of them do not have internet access, do not have enough mobile data on their mobile phones to use the service. So free NHS service has gone for some people, and they're the sort of people who can really be helped with targeted help if they really can't afford it, to give them the skills to use it, which is sometimes a problem, but it may be sorting out an internet connection for them to use those services. That sits very much in place, as well as transport issues getting to work, that can sit in place. So I think we need to think wider than just supporting some of the excellent work that is out there, looking wider. So just make that plea, and I think that's one example I would give. But certainly, I would support it. I think the evidence we have is £2 million, and we know what that can be spent on. So that's a really good guide, and I think it is a fair amount to use. That question will come up again when we set the next budget as to whether that's appropriate amount, whether we can afford it, and whether we need to change that, and whether it's business as usual within certain budget headers. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Hicks. I think Jonathan Moore wants to come in before Councillor Taylor. Thank you, thank you, leader. Jonathan Moore, monitoring officer. There was a suggestion earlier in the meeting that, in effect, it's not constitutional, and within the terms of reference of the place and resources overview committee, to consider this matter, and I'll just explain why that's not the case. So first of all, as Councillor Biggs has explained, there are some cross-cutting issues here that cut across both overview committees, and then article 7 of your constitution deals with the business that goes to overview committees, and it explains that, except in relation to education functions, which can only go to people and health overview committee, the fact that there's a primary responsibility seen for one of the overview committees does not prevent the other overview committee from considering that matter where you've got an issue that cuts across the terms of reference, the main role of both committees. So your constitution is absolutely clear that you can do that, and especially when, as Councillor Biggs has explained, we're dealing with something which is cross-cutting in nature, but I just wanted to make that clear that you are acting in accordance with your rules if you agree the recommendation. Thank you for that very useful clarification. Councillor Taylor. Thank you. I just wanted to look for a second at paragraph 3.1, which talks about the money that's already been given to the Council through the Household Support Fund of nearly £2.3 million, which needs to be spent between April and September, I think, now. Appendix 1 outlines how we're going to spend that, and this, please, isn't meant to be any sort of criticism. The distribution of that money, to me, reads that it was decided by SLT, and I think it's probably because that was during the election rather than any other for any other reason. Could I ask that Appendix 1 is also considered by the overview committee? I know this is money that is already being spent at the moment, but I just think it would be good if we had some member input into that. That's my first question. My second one, we've had a lot of debate, which I think is a bit of a wasted debate, and thank you very much, Jonathan, for clarifying it, about which committee it goes to. This is really dancing around the head of a needle, as far as I'm concerned. Wouldn't it be just as easy if we asked Councillor Canning if he would like to invite all members of the other overview committee in? Because we are a very open and inclusive administration under the Liberal Democrats, and as we are doing in this committee, we are inviting anybody to speak on any item, and I'm sure that would be the case. Certainly, when I was chair of Scrutiny, I would have welcomed anybody coming in and talking. Thank you. Councillor Azar, you're out. It's cabinet members only, so. The advice I've been given is that the appendix one should probably go to Scrutiny to be looked at. I don't know if Jonathan Merr wants to comment, because it's retrospective. Although I take Councillor Canning may wish to involve other members, I'm sure he'll be open to that. He's obviously away on holiday this week, but I suspect I won't get an answer till the end of the week, but I can ask him. I understand the comment about it going to Scrutiny, but I think because we've got another amount of money that is being added to it, it needs to complement. Therefore, we need to be sure that what we're doing is correct. I know it's a bit of a difficult one. Thank you. Thank you, chair, for allowing me to comment. So the 2.294 million has already been spent. That's the money that's already had. We've got an additional sum from April through to September when the scheme finishes this year. That's a delegated function that comes as a direct grant that comes from government. So whilst the 2.294 that's been spent, you could look at the outcome of that. I would suggest that's a scrutiny function, not an overview because you're not taking any decision otherwise. There's nothing for you to do. It's been spent. It's gone. If you wanted to look at where the money is going over the next six months, that's something you could take to overview, but I would say we're already committed. I mean, the spending for this summer is already in plan. I can see nods from officers to my left, your right in terms of that. So it's already committed. So maybe a scrutiny review of that. Of course, that will all depend on whether an incoming government after the election decides to continue the household support from beyond September, I would argue. Otherwise, it's a bit of a moot point about what we might not do in the future because we don't have that, if that makes sense. Okay. Thank you. Any other cabinet colleagues who should comment? I don't see anybody. I think there's a slight concern that the recommendation wasn't read out properly. If I just read out recommendation three, just for clarity, so that's authority be delegated to the cabinet member for customer, culture, and community engagement to agree the targeted program of work in consultation with the executive director of corporate development, brackets section 151, and have in regards to any views and recommendations of the place and resources overview committee. Okay. Just for clarity. Are there any members of the cabinet who disagree with any of the four recommendations? I'd like to take them all as one. So in the absence of any disagreement, I think we can take that as accepted. Recommendation is accepted. Thank you. The next agenda item, if I can bring my agenda back up, is send inspection outcome and plan, which is a good news story. And I think it's Councillor Sutton who's going to introduce this. Thank you chair. Yeah. Claire Sutton, cabinet member for children's services, education, and skills. I'm sure we've all read the report, so I won't go on in great detail. Yeah. This is, it's, it's, it's really, really good news. I mean, the team have been very modest about this, but we're the first unitary authority to receive a grade, grade one in this particular type of inspection, which is, which is fantastic. You'll have noted that it's jointly, it's, it's a partnership inspection from Ofsted and the CQC. So embraces both education and health. So it's not just an inspection of children's services. And it particularly focuses on the lived experiences of our children and families. The PAC also includes the self evaluation, which demonstrates that the partnership knows itself really well in that the self evaluation had already identified areas for improvement, which cross cut with what, with what the inspectors found. So actions to deliver on recommendations are already well underway and have been added to the revised SCND strategy due for review this year. Clearly we all know from our case work, et cetera, that there's always more to do. But I firmly believe that the inspection findings reflect our culture and values, which are essentially born of the leadership offered by our children, young people and families. I particularly actually want to thank the Dorset Parent Carer Council, which is our own parent carer forum, which celebrated its 15th birthday last week, which I think is a milestone in itself. And to mention the leader of this group, Leslie Mellor, who having been in post for what a matter of three weeks, I've already met her three or four times, so she's everywhere working incredibly hard and doing a fantastic job. So fundamentally, I just want to ask members to welcome the findings and agree to the publication of the self evaluation and the recommendations. Thank you, Councillor Sutton. Are you prepared to propose that recommendation? I propose that. >> Councillor Taylor. Do we have any questions from non-Cabinet members? My cabinet colleagues, anybody wish to speak? Is everybody -- no, Councillor Taylor. >> Somebody's got to speak. Can I just say congratulations? I think it's a fantastic report, and well done to all the staff involved. Does any cabinet member disagree with the recommendation? In the absence of any disagreement, we can say the recommendations are approved. Thank you. And the next one is Councillor Sutton again. It's Children's Safeguarding Partnership Review, item number nine. Thank you. Again, everyone will have read it, so I'm not going to go on. As most of us at least will know, the current Pan-Dorset Safeguarding Children's Partnership comprises Dorset Council, BCP, Dorset Police and NHS Dorset. Fundamentally, the challenge over the last three years has been, to be honest, a divergence in the performance of the two local authorities, so it's not just performance, but also the practices are different. We've done our best to adapt, but fundamentally, it's been difficult to deliver the Pan-Dorset policy for this reason, and examples of this, which I've been provided with, include the extra familial harm strategy, which was delayed because of these issues, and the different needs and priorities of the two authorities, and therefore, needing to allocate resources differently has also caused delays. So the proposal is to create two separate partnerships with the new Dorset Children's Safeguarding Partnership to also include Dorset education, and the statutory partners, that's the police and NHS Dorset, have already agreed to this proposal should it be agreed. The positives are focus on children and families in Dorset, having policy and priorities in a timely way, and including education as a full statutory partner I think is really important in terms of generating a stronger focus on Dorset schools, integrating that far more closely, and better oversight of wider legislative changes, which my team can provide further details of. I'm reliably informed that no additional money is required to deliver this, and the partnership has agreed a fair budget split. Some functions, such as safeguarding training, very sensibly will continue, Pan-Dorset, and work is being undertaken to ensure that the Pan-Dorset website still works. Obviously, we don't want any disruption there, but we need to be clear in terms of signposting where there are differences. So the recommendation which I'm going to propose this time is the creation of, sorry, I haven't got the words in front of me, which I need to find. So what we're looking to do is create two new children's, two new partnerships, including the new Dorset Children's Safeguarding Partnership. The boards of both NHS Dorset and Dorset Police have already agreed this in principle. So what I am formally proposing ... My apologies, doesn't seem to be working on this side. In order to meet the needs of two separate local authorities and enable the effectiveness of the partnership arrangement moving forward, the separation of the Pan-Dorset safeguarding children's arrangements and the creation of the Dorset Safeguarding Children's Partnership and the BCP Safeguarding Children's Partnership be agreed. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Sutton. Do I have a seconder? Councillor Ryan Holloway. Any questions from my non-cabinet colleagues? No. Any questions from cabinet colleagues or comments? Councillor Lucas. It does seem sensible. I just wonder, are there any downsides? Is there any risk in that separation? I'm thinking people who work across BCP and in Dorset, is there a small if not minuscule risk of somebody sort of slipping through the cracks, I suppose? Would you like that assurance that that's being considered, please? Thank you. Yeah, we've discussed this in some detail. Obviously, I'm quite new to this, so not in the strongest position, to be frank, to provide the detail. But I'm absolutely confident that's the case. But I'll hand over to the people behind me to give you a more comprehensive and reassuring answer. Hello, Lisa Reid, Corporate Director for Quality Assurance and Safeguarding Families. There has been consideration across the Safeguarding Partnership, which includes our BCP colleagues, and there won't be any considered risks. It just allows both local authorities with the Safeguarding Partners to allow sole focus of Dorset children within the Dorset Children's Partnership and similarly for our BCP colleagues to do that independently as well. Thank you, Lisa. Does any cabinet member disagree with the recommendation? Okay, in which case the recommendations are carried. We move on to item number 10, which is the quarter four ad term report for the 23/24 budget, and it's presented by Councillor Simon Clifford. Thank you, Chair, Councillor Simon Clifford, Cabinet Member for Finance and Capital Strategy. So this is a slightly odd report in that it's me marking someone else's homework. So this is a year-end report of how the Council performed in terms of its budget over the previous 12 months. Having said that, there's an awful lot within this that underpins our future sustainability as a Council, our future spending and our forecasts. So there'll be an element of both being touched on here. First off, I'd like to give my thanks to all our staff for the work over the course of the year, particularly those contributing in terms of budgets. You might expect most Councils with a demand-driven adults and children's services that they would really struggle under the heat of inflation, energy bills, and everything else that's been going up that causes our suppliers and everyone else so much pain. I think it's commendable that our adults and children's services have kept largely within budgets within 2 or 3% or so, which is quite remarkable in many ways, and I give them full credit for that. I'd also like to thank the rest of our staff who contribute, but particularly in terms of the leadership that's shown across our Council, I think there has been some outstanding directors who have done a fantastic job. I think this Council has some absolutely first-class management, and I think the staff are hardworking, committed, and very passionate about their jobs. Everyone has contributed to that. However, when you read this report in detail, you will see areas that will raise some red flags and certainly did raise some red flags with me. If I refer you to page 173, we have the finance team, the finance director's own view of the risks associated with this Council. You'll see that the one risk is at medium, the current risk is at medium, but the residual risk is at high. Residual risk is an amalgam of national problems such as funding, such as the demand-driven services, but also some local problems. One of them is the dedicated schools grant. Over the course of the next few years, we're going to hear a lot more about that, and another phrase, you're going to hear a lot more is a high needs grant. These are areas that are going to be very difficult for all Councils to resolve, and Dorset is no different. We have a plan in place of sorts. It is with government being particularly helpful towards it, but we have a plan in place that will enable us to ride out what is a very significant financial risk to our Council. On top of that, we have, as I said, this report underpins much of the future spending. We have an acknowledged financial black hole. I know finance people don't like the word black hole. They prefer deficit, but for most people, financial black hole in five years' time of 50 million pounds. That is a huge amount for this Council to adjust to in order for us to be sustainable. It is a little disappointing that the previous administration have not had concrete plans in place on how they're going to deal with that, and it's something that we know across all our cabinet positions and across all our management and all our staff are going to have to start to work out how we do that and how we deal with that issue. As well as that, you'll notice that at the end of year we finished just slightly under a million pounds overspent. Well, the size of our budget, that on the face of it, is great news, really well done. That does slightly hide the issue, though. Had it not been for a close to a 15 million pound windfall, we would not be in a position that we are now, and we would have had to done some fancy footwork in order to make our budget balance. That windfall was very welcome but is not a regular occurrence, so we have to be careful where we're going with service overspends. And again, we've had a year with services overspending across the board but a lack of control there that's coming from our political colleagues who are no longer in power. Finally, I remember in February at the Council meeting, much was made of an 8.6 million pound transformation program that was going to take us into the promised land. It was going to make our budget balance and we were going to take the money out of reserves in order to cover it. I can remember at the time the now leader of this Council asking pertinent questions such as, what's going to happen? Where are the cuts going to come? And how much of this money is going to be spent? The answer was, don't worry about that. Don't worry. All is in order. We Tories have got a great track record of delivering transformation and we will do that again. Sadly, that is not the case. As I came into my brief, I've only been in it for three weeks and it was almost on the first day I realised that there is no plan to deal with this 8.6 million pound hole. No plan. Something that the party opposite like to bandy around at this time of year. That leaves us with various issues that we're going to have to look very hard at over the course of the next few years. It is disappointing to be in a position we're in, but I know with commitment we've got from all our cabinet colleagues that we will get there and deliver a positive budget. My thanks again to all the staff who have contributed. In particular, I'd like to thank the finance team sitting behind me at the minute who have been invaluable in bringing me up to speed as best they could, accepting within three weeks or so that there's an awful lot to be learned. They've done a great job and I'd like to propose the three recommendations we have, one, two and three as written. Thank you, Councillor Clifford. Do I have a seconder? Councillor Biggs. I'll open the floor to non-cabinet members. I'm sure there will be lots of questions. Councillor O'Leary, I think was the first. Thank you and congratulations, Councillor Clifford. It's nice to see one of my residents doing well. The question I have is following that political ramp, is the Council on track to still increase Council tax by the maximum amount following next May and how will that impact your promises and plans to reduce car parking charges in Weymouth, build new Council houses and other such promises that were made? Thank you. Yeah, I'm not sure what that's got to do with the out turn, but that's a future budget. Councillor Clifford will answer. So two conflated issues there. The first one is Council tax. So we've inherited the Conservative Party's forward plan for the year where they had a maximum Council tax increase planned. I should note that in the medium term financial plan, which is a plan that they put forward in February for the next five years, they have Council tax maxed out throughout that entire period. We wait and see what happens with the adult social care grant as a potential new government comes in. As to car park charges, there will be more on that in the coming weeks. I know a decision is imminent and I don't want to prejudice that decision. I'm just trying to see from the body language of the cabinet member sitting in front of me whether that decision has actually been made or not. But perhaps he would like to either answer the question or bat it away until such a decision has been made. But it's been very clear from day one that car park charges at some of our coastal towns will be reduced as a commitment. Thank you, Councillor Clifford. Do I have any other questions? Councillor Perry. Thank you. I was a little bit surprised by some of the comments directed at the transformation programme. I was heavily involved in the transformation programme in the last administration, particularly in the area of children's services. The blueprint for change programme, which Councillor Clifford may not be aware of in its entirety, was set about creating a sustainable children's service that would dramatically, not only dramatically improve service, but ensure that our children's services budget deficits could be brought into some sort of line and ensure that we could achieve the balanced budget, which we were able to do as an administration throughout the five-year term that we were in the lead in the administration of Dorset Council. Could Councillor Clifford please confirm if the things like the blueprint for change and those efficiencies of children's services and indeed the adult services, the two big budgets, if you like, in the People's Directorate have actually delivered and are going to continue to deliver for the people of Dorset? Councillor Clifford was obviously referring to the Our Future Council programme, which when initially presented was £12 million, I believe, back in the end of December. And then we had a breezy bonus from the government beginning of January of circa £4 million. So it changed to £8 million. But I distinctly remember asking the question, I think, to Councillor Haynes, who is on the call, what was the plan? And the plan was we'd tell you at some point in the future. But I'll let Councillor Clifford to continue. I'd just like to add that I was at pains at the beginning of my introduction to point out the success of the adults and the children's demand-led services and how well they'd remained as much as possible within their budgets. I think it was a less than 3% overspend. Any other questions? Councillor Settle. Well, as it's my homework here marking, first of all, I don't envy the task because at every meeting I always said our problem is this council remains underfunded. It doesn't matter who is in central government. It's a decades-old problem. You talk about £50 million, that medium-term financial plan has shown more than that in the past. And we've been moving it along each year. We've already taken £100 million out of costs, which you're well aware of, and we would have continued to do that. Our future council programme is a necessity. You know what pressure. You're experiencing it now. Nothing has really changed. But other than the administration, you've inherited the same problems I had. I think it's unfair to criticise us because you're saying that we've left you in a poor condition. That's not true. We've left you in a robust position, and you have significant reserves, and you can move forward. Obviously, the way you move forward will be different from the way we would have moved forward, and I respect that. But it's not fair to say that we're leaving you a £50 million hole, because that hole has been in place ever since we started, and we have been trying to address that. If you listen to YouTube, which you will see that I have said, we are not trying to address the in-year problem as much as we are trying to address the medium-term financial plan and the projected profit. We have been well aware of this throughout. We've made huge savings. We've put in transformation in place. We've done our absolute utmost to ensure that that money is moved down the line. You will be no different. I hope in five years' time when I'm marking your homework, I will be able to say similar, but I hope I won't be able to because I want you to succeed. We all want you to succeed, and I believe that most people in this chamber wanted me to succeed because it was for the people of Dorset, not for party, not for politics, is to ensure the people of Dorset had a reduced council tax burden, which was almost impossible to do given the shortages that we were faced with each year, and a security of future for Dorset as a council. That was always our aim, and I know that it's your aim. I don't want to fall out with you, but don't talk to me like that. It could be fought again because it's just not fair, and you know it. Thank you. Thank you for your comments, Councillor Settle. Councillor Dickinson. Thank you very much, Eda. Could Councillor Clifford, another resident of mine, could he tell me whether or not he is to go ahead with the 15% reduction in executive pay? I'm not sure that's in the report in front of us. Councillor Clifford will answer, but there's no plan. I'd be happy to listen to a proposal if that was coming from Councillor Dickinson. I've not proposed it myself, and it's not in our report. I can absolutely guarantee I have never said the words 15% reduction in senior executive pay, but there you go. We're not getting into debate about who said what and what, Clifford. Thank you. Was there somebody next? Councillor Kimberl, and then Councillor Monks. Thank you, Chair. Paul Kimberl, Portland. Thank you for the report, and clearly we've really got to sit down and work through this to go forward. You certainly have my backing because obviously this is, and I'm not going to go down the road of a blame game. It's a fact that we're underfunded, and I think that's the way. But whatever I would say, please keep us updated as we go forward on this and how we go forward. I realise you've been left quite a problem. However, keep us updated. Thanks. Okay. I don't think there was a question there, Councillor Monks. It would be remiss of me to miss the opportunity to ask a question with regards to car parking charges. Taking note of the report and the suggestion by the portfolio holder that the parking charges for Weymouth will be reduced, how will that affect other market towns across Dorset? Because my impression of the report is that there's no opportunity to reduce parking elsewhere. Will some of that be offset against places like Bemidstor? And also, would this be, I'm sorry, Chair. I'm new to this. I'm also aware from the colleagues over there that this decision is imminent. Is there any form of consultation with residents on any changes? Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Monks. I will take the fact that you're new. As latitude, there is no question to answer here. We're talking about the out-turn report. So I'm not going to let that question go forward. Is there anybody else who isn't a cabinet member who wishes to say anything? Okay. Over to my cabinet colleagues. Anybody else want to say anything? Welcome here. Councillor Taylor. Thank you. I've got three questions I'd like to ask, please. If I can turn to page 174, Agenda Item 9.4. There's a comment here that says that the Council's budget is essentially fixed in cash terms and its ability to raise income is limited. I think I would like to challenge that, because raising income is one of the ways that we can have additional income to keep Council tax down. And I'd therefore like to challenge officers to come up with income generation ideas. This was something that was put forward in the budget café and also the budget scrutiny. And I would hope that officers will take this and have a serious think about it. So that is just a plea to officers. My other question is on page 195, if I can find it. For just a moment. 13.2. I wonder if I could have some sort of explanation, because this is talking about debt and outstanding debt. And the balance, it says that the balance outstanding was 56.3 million, which is an increase of 12 million on the quarter. That seems a heck of an increase in debt. And I wonder whether there's some sort of explanation as to why our debt has increased so much in one quarter. 12 million pounds is a lot. And I'll come to my third question or my third statement in a moment. If I could have an answer to that one. If I deal with those in reverse order. So the debt programme, yes, you've clearly been reading in great detail. So the figures have been shared with me as the cabinet member. And officers have provided assurance that this is a snapshot and these comments are accurate because of the time scale. At the time, this was effectively a pension provider paying out at a specific moment in time. So it is a matter of routine. It just happens to fall in that window. If I answer your first question, which was about income generation, I'm sure that directors here and cabinet members will be passing on those exact words, because I think it's quite right. I do agree with Councillor Suttle in one of the areas that we can raise more income by continued lobbying of government. And we will, of course, be doing that. Thank you. And if I can just come back to my third one. I have to say, I think it's an extremely bad taste discussing senior officers' pay in a public meeting when we have so many senior officers here. Our senior officers do a sterlingly good job. And I think that is not a discussion that should be in the public forum. Councillor Andrews. Thank you very much, Chair. I've just got one query on page 175, 10.2. Where did we get that £14.9 million underspend from? Where did that come out of? I just don't understand it. Thank you, Councillor Andrews. So it's fortunate we've got two of those extremely competent finance officers sitting behind us. My very simplified version of that is that this was a business rates provision that was no longer required due to the tight time scale of when it could be applied. But I'm more than happy for one of either Aidan or Sean to interrupt or clarify if I got that wrong. I'll endorse that. Yes, it was at business rates. Excuse me. Essentially, just in a little bit more detail, there's a business rates window. And during the-- as we collect business rates, we do take-- set aside some of the business rates in case there's an appeal by the business or any of the businesses that are paying those rates. Because if the appeal is successful, then they get essentially refunded the appeal amount. What we've done as we came to the end of last financial year, the window of the appeal period closed, which basically meant that we'd set aside money that was no longer needed to hedge that risk. So we wouldn't have to give the money back to those businesses because they hadn't appealed successfully. So therefore, we were able to put it back into the general fund. So essentially, this is the one-off fortunate amount that we were able to put against the-- some of the pressures that we experienced during the course of last year as Councillor Clifford described earlier. Thank you. Thank you, Aidan. Any other questions? No? Richard Biggs. Yes, I'm looking at page 176, 10.7. Children's Services is, as we know and has been talked about, done a fantastic job in many areas and transformed fantastically. I do note the overspend with external placements, 3.4 million pounds. And it is rightly pointed out in 10.9 that some of that has been offset by bringing in sort of in-house fostering and in-house residential homes, which I absolutely applaud, and that's something we should be doing more of. I think it's a scandal, some of the way that hedge funds are managing children's provision throughout the country. And I think it's to be applaud that they've reversed and bring many things back in-house but running them much better than the old-fashioned model. So anything more that can be done in that area, I think, is to be welcomed. So that's just really a comment, really. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Biggs. If there's no more questions, I will read the recommendations out because I don't think they were completely covered by Councillor Clifford's introduction. So there's three recommendations. The first is that the draft revenue and capital out-turn and the financial performance for the year ended 31 March 2024 be noted. The second recommendation is that the use of young ring-fence reserves to support the 2023-24 final out-turn in addition to increasing the general fund balance in line with the financial strategy document be approved. And finally, that a transfer of 4.4 million reserves to a ring-fence reserve to support the dedicated schools grant safety valve program, a realignment of existing earmark reserves as reported in section 11.6 of the report be approved. Does any cabinet member disagree with those recommendations? In which case, the recommendations are approved. Thank you. Agenda item 11 was going to be presented by Councillor Bartlett. Unfortunately, his car broke down. He's very upset not to be here. So I'm just going to briefly introduce it based on a very quick scan of the recommendations. So this is to do with BCP's local plan. BCP are far in advance of their local plan than we are, as we may know. We've had to respond as the neighbouring council and the responses are attached as appendices. I guess the bit I take away is we are, as a council, disinclined to accept BCP's housing need, potentially. That's probably what I took as the main point, which is probably good news for us because it means we don't need to build as many houses on the government's formula. Does anybody, I think Terry Sneller is going to speak about it. So if Terry will elaborate. Yeah. So the response to the consultation was made, sorry, the consultation ran during the pre-election period and hence an officer response was made to that consultation. And this is seeking endorsement from cabinet of that response that's already been made. There is also a supplementary response that was made to the community infrastructure levy consultation that ran at a similar time. We were obliged to engage with our neighbouring councils as they produce their local plans under the duty to cooperate. And that has been ongoing through the production of the BCP local plan. You mentioned the housing numbers within the local plan, the BCP local plan. The government standard methodology proposes or arrives at a much higher number than they are proposing within their plan. We jointly produced some evidence with BCP that looks at those numbers. And they've gone with the lower number as their suggestion within that plan. That will need to be assessed during the examination of their local plan as they submit that. If it's found that they cannot meet or they are not meeting their housing requirement, they will have to either look again at further sites or will be coming to us to ask us if we can meet some of that need under duty to cooperate. The detail is set out in the two appendices. I'm happy to take any questions if there are any on that, on the responses that have been submitted. Do we have any questions from non-cabinet members? Councillor Lacey Clark, apparently you wish to comment? Yes, thank you very much, Councillor Allen. Is my voice coming through okay this time? Because I understood there might be an issue last time. You can hear me? Thumbs up? Great. My question is, will I wholeheartedly support us not taking on a BCP's housing proportion because we have enough people in our own, you know, with Endorsing, looking for their own houses. Are we in a position to say that when one of the clear pledges that was made for the election was to double the rate at which we build new houses? It's likely there's a bit of a contradiction there. If we're doubling the rate of building new houses but don't want to take on their supply, does that undermine our argument slightly? Thank you. I think I can answer that. There's an echo somewhere. Yeah, we have pledged as the administration to build more affordable homes that people can afford. We will do that. That's not in any contradiction with taking houses from BCP. We will build them in the places where we want them to be built and that's our plan. I don't know if Mr Sneller wants to comment? I don't think he needs it, or Jan Britton? Only to say if Councillor Lacey Clark wants to pursue that conversation, we had great difficulty sitting here hearing exactly what he was saying. So it may be that he wants to get in touch after the meeting and we can perhaps elaborate on what you just said, Leader. Did you hear that, Councillor Lacey Clark? Yeah, okay, thumbs up. Councillor Jasperson? Can I just ask for clarification through the Chair? To what Mr Sneller just said, which is with regard to the BCP housing numbers, I think I heard you say that BCP were looking for a mechanism to reduce the housing numbers lower than the government standard methodology and that we, in our response, have supported them in that. And then I think I heard you say that the consequence of that might be that we have to pick up some of the, if they've gone for lower numbers and then those numbers are rejected by the government, we would have to pick up some of that. So why did we support them in that then, if the consequence of that could be that we have to pick up their housing numbers, which is the thing that we've been most assiduously trying to avoid? Yeah, so jointly with BCP, we produced some evidence which looked at the demographics that underlie the housing numbers using the standard methodology that the government requires to use. There is provision within national policy that if local circumstances suggest that there is a reason to deviate from that, that through evidence that can be done, that will be examined at the examination of the BCP local plan. We're supporting that approach of reducing their housing numbers because the demographics and the joint evidence that we produced suggests that there is a reason to deviate from the standard methodology. However, if it is found that they should be using a higher housing number, then we will have to have, through the duty to cooperate, we will have to consider whether we can meet some of that need in Dorset. I think the answer was the higher number is making no difference to us. There is a duty to cooperate, so the lower number and yeah, okay. We are successful in persuading the government that the lower number is correct. That reduces the threat to Dorset of having to take further housing from BCP. So us collaborating with them to evidence the lower number is a good strategy from our point of view. Councillor Jasperson, do you wish to come back on that? Just very briefly and then I'd like to take this outside for further clarification, but can we, because we didn't go in the first draft of our local plan, we didn't make the case for the exceptional circumstances and reducing our housing numbers below the numbers given by the standard methodology. Do I understand what you're saying then is that going forward we intend to do that because unless we do that, we are not going to be taking advantage of the position. We're going to be disadvantaged by this. A yes or no will do and then I'll take it outside the meeting. We're going slightly off the topic of the report, but do you wish to answer that? I think it's probably easier if we take it outside the meeting. Councillor David Taylor I think was next then Councillor Arizard. No, you didn't. Okay fine. Councillor Arizard then. Thank you Chair. I would like to say that when I was reading this, it's quite complicated and difficult because each paragraph seems to counteract the other one. So in where I was reading it, it was saying the demographics for BCP seem on lead to the fact that the numbers of children are going down, yet we always seen in BCP that families are increasing. So I can't understand why the model that is being used has diminished the numbers and I would hate to think in years to come that we are going to be saddled with actually extra housing. The other question I want to ask is in 1.9 it says the allocation of site to help to meet the gypsies and travellers and supports delivery of the Stara Valley Park as a strategic part of the green infrastructure will serve both the residents of BCP Council and Dorset Council areas. I understood that we already had gypsy and travellers sites in BCP, no in Dorset Council and why are we in that case having to share a site with them for this reason? Thank you. Over to Mr Sneller. Yeah, I think the more detailed response in Appendix 1 sets out the two points differently. We support them. There is a need for gypsy and traveller pitches within the BCP Council area and we support them making provision to meet that need. We are not sharing that with them. I think the point about sharing relates back to or meeting the needs of both BCP and Dorset relates to the Stara Valley Park rather than gypsy and traveller. So they should be separated out and in the full detailed response that was made to the plan I think it makes that clear. You ok with that, Councillor Hasler? Well it was just that the first kind of question statement I made there was no response so what about how did you come to the demographics that BCP area is reducing in birth rate? Thank you. It's quite complicated. The standard methodology that we are required to use by government uses 2014 household projections. They have been reviewed by the Office for National Statistics and found that there are some discrepancies within those but the government still requires to use them. When you use more up to date or locally produced household projections you arrive at the lower number which we think is more representative of what's actually happening within the BCP area. Thank you for indulging me Chair. It really is a matter I speak on as a ward Councillor. My West Parley ward of course borders BCP as a number of Councillors in Dorset Council will be aware of. Those of us that do have that border place are constantly aware of the challenge that we have in trying to be good neighbours with our BCP authority. We often see planning applications on the edges of BCP that actually impact the Dorset Council area to a greater extent than does BCP. I'm very conscious that their local plans probably need a higher degree of scrutiny than perhaps we could afford in this forum and if I may indulge Chair, make a request to yourself, could we organise some sort of working part of your briefing, maybe all Councillors but particularly those of us who have wards that border the BCP area, could we really need to understand the technicalities of this? I think we can do a briefing is the words I'm hearing. I'll open it up to cabinet members now who wish to comment. So I should have said I propose it in the absence of Councillor Bartlett I guess and do I have a seconder? Councillor Andrews? Anybody disagree with the recommendations? In which case recommendations are approved. The next agenda item is urgent items and we don't have any and then the final one is exempt business and there is no exempt business. So at last I'll close the meeting at 7.57. Thank you very much for attending. I'll close the meeting at 7.57. Thank you very much. [Applause] Thank you very much, Mr Chair. Thank you very much, Mr Chair. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. .