Transcript

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this first People and Health overview committee of the new elected council. We've got a lot of new people on the committee, and so what I would like to say is welcome, and I hope you'll enjoy the experience. And I don't think we've got any members of the public, but we've got quite a few, actually, officers and one or two other members of the council here, so welcome. And so we'll go forward. Can I just mention, if you've got any phones, can you put them on quiet silent, please? And I think you all know where the toilets and everything is, so I don't need to mention that. So I think what I will do, I'm Beryl Ezzard, I'm the chair of this meeting, and if I can ask all the committee to actually announce who they are and where their ward is, that would be great. So we've got Will as the vice chair here.

Thank you. My name is (inaudible) I'm Councillor (inaudible). Thank you. I'm Louise Bowne, I'm member for Radipole. >> I'm (inaudible) I'm member for Coalhill and Windborne East. >> Andrew Todd, Coalhill and Windborne East. John Orrell, Malcolm Regis. >> Carol Jones, Sturminster Newton. So we have apologies. George here to help me and help us. We've got apologies from, I think, Councillor Kathy Lubb, Councillor Steve Mercer and Councillor Stella Jones. I'm not switched on. So, yeah. No. So minutes of the previous meeting was on the 6th of March, and I think those that were at the meeting, has anyone got any comments or anything about that? We've got one or two on our committee that were there. No. Okay. We'll sign those after the meeting. And we've got no on item 4. We've got public participation. There's no public. So I don't think we've had any questions. Have we? No. George, thank you. And Councillor questions on item 5. No Councillor questions, I don't believe. No. That's right. And I think there is going on to item number 6, urgent items. There is no urgent items today. And now we go on to the committee's work programme and cabinet forward plan. So that is now, if you've all looked at that, I hope. And questions from Cara? Sorry. I was wondering whether it might be possible to put something on here, but I'm not quite sure exactly whether it's allowed or whatever. I'm particularly interested in the allocation of housing for people without cars who are put in very remote locations where they find it difficult to access employment, supermarkets and services. And I don't know whether it or not it's possible to look at whether we're able to form some sort of policy in that respect, or is that not quite right? And I look to the lovely gentleman over there to let me know whether it's something we can look at. Thank you, Carol. Yeah. Thank you for the question. In many ways, it depends answer, because we do look carefully at housing needs and suitability of homes whenever we're making a letting and working with the housing associations to make that work. So I think it's already looked at in that kind of detail. So if somebody literally cannot, it's impossible for them to live in a place that can't get them to school or get the children to school or to work, then that's taken into consideration. We'll find somewhere else. Short answer is, yes, we can explore whether there's more that can be done, but there is a reality. If there is, say, a house in a village which is available, people will apply for that through the choice-based letting system. So it's their choice to do that. And if they don't want to or it's not suitable for them, they won't apply. So I'm not quite sure that people aren't forced to take that particular route. So I'd need to look at the detail, Carol, if you don't mind. I bring this up really through the bail pantry, where we are having to go out and deliver to places like Bishops' Corndall. They're just in such remote locations, and these are often sort of single mums with a toddler. And it's just -- we're coming across more and more of these people, and I just find it frustrating when people like this are in -- they're just very isolated, and they become lonely. But I understand you're saying it's -- yeah. >> Briefly, I might -- I've probably slightly misunderstood the question. I thought you were talking about new homes, but existing tenants are isolated and struggling. They should talk to us about looking for a transfer to somewhere else. That's one possible option. Again, it needs that conversation with a housing officer at the front line. If they're struggling to live in a particular location, talk to us. We can set that up. >> I think that actually this is -- you know, this whole county problem -- and remember, we are working very hard to get more housing -- affordable and rented housing for people. Just as you say, people are marginalized. And I think it's a very good point that you make, Carol. And certainly outside the meeting, I think you need to talk perhaps with Andrew about that. But we will consider it and take it forward. We will talk about it again, okay? >> There's also -- because some of the properties are in attractive locations, there's a mutual exchange system, so people can sometimes apply to swap a property. That's often underused because people don't always know about it. So promoting other ways that they can get a swap to somewhere in -- perhaps in a town. Some people want to live in a location you described. >> So after our next -- we've got items on our committee work program for the next committee. But after the end of the next committee, we'll hold an informal work program in session to look at the work program more in-depth and decide what you want the committee's priorities to be over the next year or so or longer. Between now and the next committee, there's also directorate days and directorate sessions, particularly for adults, housing and education, and children's work was earlier in the week. And you'll be able to get -- see a lot more about what's going on in those services and find out some areas that you may want to focus on in those services that's already being done or not done, and some of the challenges and opportunities that there are in those services as well. >> Thank you, George. Yes, if you notice on there from the 24th of September, yeah, there is openings for such a -- as George is saying, we needed to have discussion with officers and lots of other counselors about what we've all had as briefings so that we can take any of the questions you've got forward to be perhaps topics in the future. So that's good. And any other questions at all? No, not on that. Sorry. It's going to be presented by David Webb. Hello, David. Thank you very much. So if we have that -- and can I just mention that if we do have questions, it will be the committee members that can ask the questions first and then any other person that actually is here, any other counselors that want to ask questions after the committee has asked questions, I will ask at that time. Thank you. >> Excuse me, Councillor. Could I introduce the report and then pass on to David? Okay. Thank you. My name is Paul Dempsey. I'm corporate director for care and protection in children's services. This report focuses on youth justice plan for 2024-25 and the recommendation at the top of the report that you can see is for the overview committee to endorse the youth justice plan so that cabinet can recommend its approval to full council. It is a statutory requirement under the crime and disorder act 1998 for local authority youth offending teams to publish an annual youth justice plan. The report that you've got summarizes the plan and the plan is attached as an appendix for information. Our youth justice service is a combined youth justice service and it works across both BCP and Dorset Council areas. The work of the service is governed by the combined youth justice board and that's chaired by Theresa Levy, our executive director of children's services in the council. The service was last inspected in December 2022 and the report published in January 2023 rated the service good. So we're very pleased with that. You'll see a number of priorities in the plan but I'll pass over to David now to speak to you about those in more detail. >> Thank you. So I'm David Webb. I'm the manager of the youth justice service. And as Paul says, we work across both Dorset Council and BCP Council areas. The youth justice plan is a statutory requirement and the youth justice board which governs youth justice work nationally sets out a lot of detailed guidance about what must be incorporated in the plan. So the document in the papers reflects the youth justice board guidance for youth justice plans this year. In the plan we talk about the way the service is resourced, its partnership arrangements and the fact that we are in line with the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, a multidisciplinary service. So what that means is the reasons for children sometimes committing offenses and coming into contact with the police and the justice system, there are often multiple reasons underlying that behavior and the ethos of the youth justice service is to try to identify the underlying causes of the behavior and do work to help the child make positive changes and sometimes to help services meet the needs of the child. So in our service we have, as well as people with a social work or probation background, health workers, nurses, psychologists, speech and language therapists, we have education specialists, restorative justice practitioners, parenting workers, and people who work with children to help them make amends for their offenses. In the plan we talk about the performance of the service and the national indicators for youth justice are in the process of being changed but the key indicators remain reducing the rate of first-time entrance. So the idea is as a partnership we try to avoid criminalizing children where possible so they don't enter the justice system, reducing the rate of reoffending for the children that do enter the justice system and minimizing the use of custodial offenses. In the youth justice plan you'll see that in the Dorset Council area we've maintained a low rate of first-time entrance if you look at the period over the last few years as a whole. We did have a drop in 2022-23 and then an apparent increase in 23-24 but a number of those children who entered the justice system in 23-24 had actually committed their offenses some time before but delays in the processing of those offenses, the investigations by the police, led to those offenses not being dealt with for some time. We do maintain low rates of first-time entrance and we have a number of initiatives in place to try to divert children if they do commit an offense as well as earlier interventions to prevent the chances of children getting into trouble. Our reoffending rate is in line with the national average. The rates fluctuate partly because of the counting methods and we've identified in the youth justice plan some of the groups of children that are more likely to reoffend if they do come into contact with the justice service and the numbers of children going into custody are very low which is good because we're very concerned about any child that ends up in custody. Most children from this area would be placed at Feltham on the outskirts of London or another youth secure establishment a long way from here and we have in the past year experienced some concerns about the safety of those regimes and the experiences of the children that are placed there. So we're pleased to say that very low numbers of Dorset children end up in custody and when they do we take a lot of care to safeguard their wellbeing. I don't think, I won't go on further but I'll wait to see if there are further questions. Thank you. I just, I've got a few questions about the background. I don't have a problem with the actual, the plan itself but I'm interested in, we've got an increase in Dorset Council of first time entrants whereas BCP has a decrease. Any ideas why that is or is it just that have we got a delay in processing these people which is showing an increase? I'm just wondering why there is that disparity. I've got others as well but I just wondered if you could just let me know on that please. On that specific point, I did more analysis because the numbers, I think it was 39 Dorset children in 22, 23 and 56 in 23, 24 but a number of those, but if you add those two together we get an average figure which is the same as the previous two or three years and the, a number of the children that, the way the first time entrants process works is that the data is taken when they receive their justice outcome which could be a caution or it could be they've gone to court and got a court outcome. There have been significant delays so some of the children that were dealt with in the last year had actually committed their offences some time before and we are still seeing that so some in the last month or so some children have been dealt with for offence, one child that the offence was two years old. So it's quite hard to say that we've got a current issue in terms of children's behaviour, it's more potentially a system issue about how long it takes to deal with that behaviour. And the other areas I was wondering about was that I know that we have more of a problem with those children if they're excluded from schools but are there specific schools that have too many exclusions as far as we're concerned and is that something we can address? And also the children with these issues I'm wondering how many if any are actually identified as being at an earlier stage, can we identify those children who are likely to offend and whether we could do a little bit more to actually put preventative measures in place perhaps mentors for some of these children. Yeah I've just wondered what your thoughts were on that so that if we could get in at an earlier stage with the preventative measures it's obviously a lot better and whether we can find ways of doing that more effectively. We've got the director for education is sitting behind me so I think she's gonna answer this. Thank you I mean you should go through the chair first so I know what's going on so thank you. Yes we have sorry I've forgotten your name. I think I think you've got me now is that okay chair to pick up the question. In terms of prevention of exclusion as a risk you're absolutely right it is a risk for our children. So there's lots of work we're undertaking in children's services with our schools and we record the we have data that tells us about suspensions and exclusions and of course when what we're doing is that bringing that ever earlier so at the point of say two suspensions we're working now with that data. As many people know we've enhanced our targeted youth offer with the Pathfinder work we're doing so really strengthening the number of targeted youth workers so that we can really have those conversations early with the school and say what can we put in place now to prevent further exclusions and further risk for those children. I hope that helps. Okay thank you. Yes I'm sorry I've forgotten your name. Terrible Claire. Claire yes I remembered. Yes Claire anyone anyone else from the committee got any questions first? Oh you were responding sorry sorry Claire. Yeah I'm responding to Councillor Jones. Part of your question was do we know where the greatest rates of exclusions are and the latest data that I've seen on that is I regret to say it's all four of Weymouth and Portland's secondary schools so that is clearly an area of significant focus for us as a team yeah thanks. Thank you Claire. If I could just follow up on the second part of your question was about prevention and earlier intervention and we recognise that although I'm proud of the work my service does children shouldn't need to commit an offence to get some of the help that my service can provide so we have identified some money from previous years underspend which we are using for two-year project which is about to start later this month for speech and language therapy support for children who are at risk of school exclusion so we're just defining the kind of criteria and the referral process for that but our intention is probably to work with children in key stage three who are perhaps receiving fixed-term exclusions or possibly severe absence from school so they're not attending kind of excluding themselves to some extent so children that are not engaged in school at that stage to identify their speech language and communication needs the rationale for that is that the speech language therapists in our service assess everyone and they identify that about 80% of the children we work with have got communication needs in about 30% that's severe communication need like developmental language disorder in almost all those cases those needs have not been identified until the child comes to our service and gets the specialist assessment and our therapist would say that the reason they assess everyone rather than getting a referral from colleagues in the Youth Justice Service is that in talking to a charge you wouldn't necessarily pick up the communication needs it needs this proper structured assessment then we can use that information to identify how that child communicates and the strategies that are going to make it easier for them to be included our aim with this project is to work with schools quite closely build good relationships so we can provide those assessments and support them with some of the strategies they might need in the hopes that that will keep children in school and reduce school exclusions as an immediate benefit and then a longer term benefit to prevent further future offending. Are there any strategies or tactics that you would choose to employ if you had longer timelines on budget commitments beyond a single year or further? I think the resourcing of our service is a constant pressure as all services are experiencing that and we do, you're right, operate in year to year budgets and this significant proportion about 30% of our budget contribution comes from the National Youth Justice Grant and we have seen in recent years a pattern of that grant allocation not being announced until several months into the financial year I wrote in the report which I drafted in April that we haven't been told the allocation we still haven't been told and the general elections delayed that so we've been told it will be late July at the earliest before we find our budget allocation and that does make it difficult and then we have also benefited from some short term funding for the turnaround program which I mentioned the Youth Justice Plan which has Ministry of Justice funding but that funding ends in March 2025 and there is also some other funding for serious violence duty and the Police and Crime Commissioner has got some funding from the Home Office for a scheme called Immediate Justice. All those budgets end in March 2025 so it does make longer term planning more difficult and I think the underlying principle of our service, the multidisciplinary response based on evidence about the kind of needs that children who have contact with the justice system have is right if we have more resources we could do more of that work. Thank you. I think we'll, no, sorry, yes Paul. Just to add to that whilst the budget and financial constraints are always a pressure and a concern we do know that through our Pathfinder funding of 4.9 million over 18 months we have been able to invest it significantly in extra capacity. Finally 14 additional targeted youth worker posts to work with our young people and to link with our schools to really strengthen the school offer to work with young people to divert and prevent them becoming involved with the Youth Justice Service and indeed for the last four or five years the service has been investing our resources into early intervention and prevention in a sort of holistic way so that we prevent crisis and we're spending our money wisely and the Pathfinder investment is indeed allowing us to provide additional resources for those, all age of children and young people but specifically in this case our young people that might otherwise be involved in the Youth Justice Service. Thank you Paul. Any more questions? Councillor Orell, Malcolm Regis, which is Weymouth. I'm interested in the plan and how it affects particularly with drugs. The plan overall I think is very sound, I wouldn't like to, don't think it needs changing but I wonder if the bit on drugs needs to be explicit. What I'm imagining is that there's a fair diversion of people found with simple drug possession into the health system rather than the criminal justice system. I noticed on page 54 that is the objective, you're trying not to get people into the criminal justice system but on page 56 there's still four children who are entering the criminal justice system. I fear that may be counterproductive because once someone has a criminal record or then they find it very difficult to pursue education or employment for the rest of their lives and perversely are more likely to enter a drug subculture, so an own goal from the point of view of society and the individual. Could it be more explicit that with simple drug possession we will use a health approach not a criminal justice approach? I imagine that's implicit in this plan, should it be explicit? Thank you. Thank you for raising that point because to some extent I think you're right that drug use is perhaps not as kind of clearly focused on as it might be. In terms of the way the justice system responds to children with possession of small amounts of cannabis, for example, and some of those have featured as first-time entrants, the initial response would be to divert the child, so to produce some kind of police outcome that is informal and doesn't involve them acquiring a criminal record for that behaviour. So if a child does enter the justice system for a drugs-related offence then it's likely to have been a repetition, so at some point those earlier diversion options are deemed not to have worked and a more formal response is needed. The police safer schools and communities team provide interventions along, so although that is a police service it does work in a kind of health-based way, providing that kind of public health type approach. In our own service we are looking to develop our restorative responses, so we try to help children understand the impact of their behaviour on the victim if there is a direct victim or on the wider community because some offences such as possession of drugs don't have a direct victim but do involve harm to the community. So we're just looking, one of our objectives for this year is to strengthen our responses along those lines so that children who commit those offences do something to make amends in a way that helps them understand the harm not just to them but also to the community and drug use. Thank you Paul. Louise. Oh thank you Chair. So I've been a secondary school teacher for many years including being head of year, I then went on to do pastoral work in a pupil referral unit so I have worked directly with these young people. My firm opinion is that exclusion from school doesn't cause criminal behaviour but exclusion from school and criminal behaviour have a common cause. I wonder what, I wonder whether there's any recognition of that in the council. And we have a reply from David or Paul, Paul please. Yeah we do recognise that those two things are associated, we certainly want children to be in school and being educated and if they're not of course they have a lot of time to feel. So there is the simple fact that if people aren't in school they're doing something else and sometimes that might be crime but of course we understand the associated difficulties or needs of that young person contributes either to the crime or also the reasons why they might be excluded from school. You will see from the youth justice plan that at least two of the key priorities are about education as David has always already referred to, one about improving education outcome and the other one he talked about using speech and language therapy and speech and language assessments to support children at risk of exclusion from school, so certainly we do recognise that. This plan doesn't work in isolation, we have a number of other plans to address the needs of our children and our young people. So for example we have developed a new multi-agency extra familial harm strategy this year, extra familial harm being those harms and risks that are outside of risks that come from the family. So drugs would be one of those, coming back to the original question. So youth justice plan, our extra familial harm strategy, our general work with children on the edge of care, the work that Amanda's services does supporting our schools all contribute to protecting children and keeping them in school and addressing those needs that lead to both criminality and exclusion from school. Thank you Paul. Could I just, if I could just add something in that context, a couple of years ago we did some in-depth work talking to children who had ended up in custody, so that's not just from Dorset but also from BCP council. And one of the striking themes that was common amongst what they said to us was the point at which they were permanently excluded felt like a turning point to them. So looking at their behaviour that had led up to the permanent exclusion, it seemed a fairly inevitable outcome and I think they didn't necessarily disagree with that, but they still said it felt like a big step when they were told that they were no longer welcome in the mainstream school and that that kind of, to them, consolidated their journey in towards criminal behaviour and some of the other harms that Paul just mentioned. So we recognise that it's very difficult for schools when they're trying to manage difficult behaviour in a setting where they have high behaviour standards and their benefits and impact on all the other children have to be considered, but the impact on the child that's excluded is really significant. I'm just wondering, the impact not only on the pupils but on the families of exclusion is a big, big step and of course with parents, if you've got a young, sort of quite young, maybe 12, 13 year old that's excluded, how do the parents cope with them at home when they're obviously out and about and could be mixing with the criminal element? And I think that is what the possible thing is because then they start to mix with other people that are excluded and I wonder what do we do to prevent that? I noticed that in, here you would say working with families at 6.12, could you actually explain that or perhaps Amanda explain that a little bit more about what is being done to actually expand that work? Because if we've got an increased number of children, teenagers, young people that are excluded, do the families get involved in a big way because that's so important? Yes, happy to pick up that question. So as Paul described and David has described, it's a really wraparound effort, isn't it? It's certainly not a question of blaming any part of the system and children are part of the wider community, not only their school that needs to hold them steady and as you say, their family needs to be held steady too. So as part of our offer, we certainly have family support as well, directly to families and David might want to expand on how we work together with that but yes, there is a family offer and we do recognise that. In going back to the point about schools needing that kind of support as Paul described and the things we are doing, there are really effective national models of reducing permanent exclusions with really key support into schools so we're working with a particular individual who has a really high success rate of that work in a certain area of the country which is comparable to our own and he happens to be speaking at our national conference which is at the end, annual conference, sorry, education conference, the Dorset Education Conference in a couple of weeks so he'll sort of kickstart his work with us at that conference by kind of talking about his experiences but exactly as you described, this requires a kind of whole community approach, a community around the school and a community around families as well and we certainly have that kind of offer of wraparound from our services. Thank you Amanda. I mean, I think family hubs could help in this way and I think we've got to make sure there's that provision for that but can I ask and I've got no children, young or grandchildren, from the point of view, if children are excluded, does that mean it's permanent or would there a chance that they can go back after say the end of term and then resume or do they get moved to another school? It depends on the nature of the exclusion so there are fixed term suspensions that we've already heard probably mentioned so they are fixed term and they're usually for a short time which enables kind of pieces of restorative work in the best practice to enable that child to stay in their school community and stay in school but then there are permanent exclusions and to be fair, they usually offer quite serious adverse behaviors in a school setting. In that case, the local authority works with the school system to find an alternative place for the school, whether that's in an alternative provision learning center or in a neighboring school so that there's our endeavor always is to have continuity of education for that young person. Thank you and any more questions from the committee or anyone? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Can I stand up because I like to be able to see people rather than just talk to the back of your heads. I'm also much better standing up. If I sit down, I'm sort of like boring and this is not a boring subject. No offense to previous discussions. Neil Crowther of Social Care Futures says that we all want to live in a place that we call home with the people and the things that we love in communities where we look out for each other doing the things that matter to us and I am, well, I'm slightly scared, but I'm also really excited to be able to present and represent this paper today because it's about our future. What do we want for the older people in our community until 2039? How are we going to be doing it? And I must admit I've got some issues with the paper as it is. I've been able to feed in some stuff. It's a fantastically good piece of work, but as a committee, we all need your input to fine tune it. Last night, I'm going completely off script. Last night, we were in competition with all the other counties in the UK for the best county award. We missed out, this isn't being recorded, don't put all this verbatim in, we missed out to Great Yarmouth, probably a really great place. I've been to Great Yarmouth. They've got a very good Elvis impersonator, but I don't want to be in competition with Great Yarmouth when we're talking about the future of the old people in our county. I want to be in competition. I want to be leading the way. We know that our unique selling point is that we're 10 years ahead of the rest of the country in terms of demographics. Where we are now, they're not going to be for 10 years, so we need to just not be learning for what is good practice in Kent or Great Yarmouth or Hertfordshire. Good though they are, we need to be beacons for them to follow going to the future. We need to be learning from global initiatives, places like the Kawasaki community in Japan that has integrated communities, that they don't just put people when they get old into basically a rabbit hutch with a toilet next to it, but we create homes that people want to live in. Places like the Sun City areas, places like communities that age together, that see people integrated, and one of the things that I want to be pushing more is that people want to feel safe, secure, respected, and integrated into their communities, and the communities that integrate into them. In the Sun City developments in Japan, they have on the top floor, they have a two-storey restaurant, so the community come into the facility. They have a bar on the top floor. These are amazing, innovative creations that make older people part of the community while other than they used to be part of the community, and so I'm excited about this paper. The other thing that I want to address is the fact that I've been talking about the older people, when actually I should be talking about us. I've been talking about what we do for the older people, when actually the time frame for this strategy includes me as a potential customer. It includes many of the people in this room as a potential customer, and so as we have our conversation this morning, I would like us to be selfish and think about, Okay, this could be where I end up living. What do I want from it? What am I looking for? What are my relatives looking for? It's no longer in my career something about where would I want my mom and dad to live. This is about me. This is about my friends and my community, how I feel safe, included, respected, involved, being in control of the things that happened to me rather than just a piece of yesterday, so that's my passionate bit. My house in the middle of my street, as the song goes, so I'll sit down and hand over to Mark and the team, but I say I welcome this as part of the ongoing thing. It started back in June last year, I think, and we're moving forward with some practical opportunities for how we develop things in the future, up to you guys. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Robinson. That sets quite a dynamic, exciting context for what we're about to talk about, so we have a short slide deck. My name's Mark Tyson. I'm the Corporate Director for Commissioning for Adult Social Care. We have a short slide deck, which I'll deliver together with my colleague, Andrew Billinay, who's the Corporate Director for Housing, to give you a tour through the paper, and we're joined also by two of the architects of the work that we're discussing today, who is Adam Fitzgerald behind me, who's the Program Manager for the Accommodation with Support Program and a colleague, Sarah Sewell, who's the Head of Commissioning for Older People and Market Access. First, just wanted to talk about what is extra care housing. It's quite important that we make a few distinctions between what it is and what it isn't, and actually starting at the bottom of that list, that it's not a care home. I think Councillor Robinson's introduction has set very clearly the context for people feeling connected and included, independent, and in spaces that are their own home, effectively, so it's really important that we see these developments as groups of flats, people have their own front door. There are 24/7 care and support services on site. We're not pretending that people living in extra care housing don't have care and support needs. That's certainly what they are there to deliver, but they can deliver a whole wide range of care and support needs across the flats in the development, including up to quite complex care and end-of-life care. And also, although they are targeted at an older population, what we are also looking for is a care and support offer and an accommodation offer that can support people with disabilities, lifelong disabilities, as they age. We know that there's a very significant, it's very much a good news story, but we also need to make sure the right support is in place for it, but people, for example, with learning disabilities are now living into their 70s, 80s, and beyond, which is great news for the improvements in care and support and health care for people with learning disabilities, but obviously means that we need to adapt our support offer. And sometimes, for example, in extra care housing, the needs of that older group of people with learning disabilities become more about frail to them. They do become about supporting them with their learning disability. So people in these rooms have an individual tendency, and what we very much want, and again to Councillor Ferguson's introduction, a hub in the community. So the community, they're porous, so that the community comes in and out of them along, and obviously the residents, likewise, in the other direction. What do we have at the moment? Can we just see the next one? Yeah, so we've got a small map here, hopefully you can see. So we have five developments at the moment in the county, three of which we would consider to be to a modern kind of optimum standard for delivering a good, vibrant scheme, and there's another kind of Melrose Court in Dorchester, Trailway Court in Blandford, and St. Martin's House in Gillingham, which is just about to open. And we've had two further ones in the kind of Weymouth Portland area, which are a slightly older design. So that's our current provision. And if we look at why we need to do more, I think the paper sets out in the strategic statement really clearly the demographic trajectory that we're on. The graph there is not supposed to be kind of readable as a piece of information, more of an illustration, but we know the direction that the population is going in terms of growing numbers of older people, and particularly growing numbers of older people at the older end of older. And I think, again, I think as we've just heard, the important bit is recognizing that where aging starts and the journey, and an extra care scheme can support across that journey, and that's kind of the real value for them. So we've got the demographics. We know that we have benchmarks, and in terms of those demographics, we don't have as much extra care housing in the county as some other areas do or would have for a similar population. So part of the strategy is obviously to address that. Fundamentally, there's a double benefit for this. I mean, I think the important context is the better life that they offer to people as they age. There's a companion piece for us as a council, which is about providing care and support in the most efficient way, effective way possible for our finances. It allows us to avoid early entry into residential care. If we have a good range of provision across the county, then people who are self-funders and have that option to purchase their own care. We also want to do work to encourage fewer people to make that early choice to go into residential care, which we know also has a flip side when people run through the capital that they have and they come to us to ask us to arrange their care. Now, and sometimes that can be quite difficult if they're in a care home where it is significantly above the rates where you would normally expect to pay. So again, it plays into that better support for self-funding people in our community. So it has a whole range of benefits from a commissioning perspective, but I think, as I say, important thing to start with is the benefits for the individual. So if I've just sort of set a bit of the context about the why and where we've got at the moment and what it is, and if I can hand over to Andrew to talk a bit about the extra care strategic statement and where we're headed from here. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Introduce me already, but I'm Andrew Bellany, director of housing and community safety. I'll partly repeat that introduction because I think it's important to stress this is a very compelling words from Steve and Mark about why, the kind of division around this, but I wanted to add that this is very much a solution from a housing perspective as well as a care perspective. So it's got solutions around housing, health, care, and general well-being of people. So that connection is pretty evident. So the section I've got is really the what's in front of you to approve or certainly approve in terms of its journey towards cabinet. So it's to pick out a lot of detail in the paper, but it's to pick out particular aspects of that of what we're asking you to consider and approve today or pass on to cabinet with your comments. And that's the two strands of the paper we see as important, and the first one on this slide here is to stress why we're setting out a strategic statement around extra care housing, why we think it's important, because we're finding very much at the moment and Steve and Adam and colleagues and John Price were at a market day last week where we were talking to people who are interested in doing this for us or doing it with us, and they've been telling us for a while it's important for the council to state very clearly what it's for, what are we trying to achieve here. So the point of this slide and the paper that we're asking you to approve is to set our stall very clearly and the why and what we want people to join us with. So swiftly going through the five key themes to that, because you've heard already from Mark about making sure we're encouraging better practice, well-designed, fully accessible extra care homes across all tenures. So yes, we need this on the social and affordable side of the spectrum, but we also need the kind of housing for people with a higher income bracket as well, all income brackets to make sure that's of a good quality. So well-designed, fully accessible, fit for purpose, fit for the 21st century, frankly, and I'm probably going out of order, but going to the fifth box is a lot of our housing stock, and it's not just Dorset across the country, but housing stock for older people is often quite a tired, less popular model. So old-fashioned sheltered housing schemes, we've got a few of those. So this is a vision and a statement about over time, providing an offer which gives people their own front door, gives people their ability to live independently, whilst when they need care in the future, and not a small bed-sit in a 1960s sheltered housing scheme. We're deliberately not trying to diminish all of those, some of those are very effective and successful, but we feel this is a statement to do something that is fit for the future. Specifically for the, again, in the paper is about what can we do as a council, and that's to, some of the members who've been a member for a while will recall two sites that we have, one in Wareham and one in Bridport, is to, this is a statement and a paper to progress those, to move those forward into being, having extra care housing schemes at the centre of those sites, so as to progress what we currently got, which we've consulted with local residents and town councils, et cetera. So it's making progress on those two sites. But also, whilst because we need more, is to prioritise the development of two further commissioned extra care sites as well in other parts of the county area. And the fourth point on here as well, because it's important, we've obviously got Mark and Sarah whose job it is to commission appropriate services, is making sure we use our commissioning power to make sure that the services that people get within those extra care schemes are as effective as possible. So next slide, please, thank you. So this is the simple slide, because it's the headlines for the paper, is to set out our plan and our, it's a firmed up plan to develop four new affordable extra care housing schemes over the next 10 years, and that's pretty big, creating 240 new homes for people in the way we've described. Process wise, and then this needs, this is in the paper and will need further consideration by cabinet, and I'll stress that it's also got a high degree of involvement from our place and property and assets team, and their own line of accountability through members, is that we would procure and contract a strategic development partner to make sure all of those four projects are built out. That's what I referenced earlier, we're looking to test the appetite for such organisations to do this, and pleased to say we've followed up, we're following up with many people who came to that event. And third bullet really is about making, we recognise that this is a complex area, but it's important, and we've got good, well advised plans to improve that, and I say we're at a stage where we can lift off with some quite significant progress over the next months and years. Last slide please. Adam, I don't intend to go through this in vast detail because it's largely a repeat of the recommendations, but I think it's just to end our words by stressing there are some quite detailed recommendations in this report which we'd like you to consider and approve, and they are twofold in the main, is to consider and approve our direction of travel, our strategic intent, and also, secondly, to approve, to carry on with the use of land and resources in some, well, land and time from our team to build up those, build through those four sites as described. I think I'll stop because we've talked for a while, but I'm certainly happy to go and dive into some of this detail later, but the last slide is in the paper. Thank you, Andrew and Mark. Yes, just sorry, Chair, I'm conscious of the point that I think was made in the pre-briefing about a piece of ambiguity in the report, to clarify, so 6.3.3 on page 106 talks about, sorry, 6.3.2, sorry, talks about affordable end products for end users, setting a minimum proportion of properties to be provided as affordable, and the clarification was to make sure everybody understands that as that's all setting a minimum level below which we wouldn't have any affordable, you know, the absolute minimum that we would need from a scheme to be affordable. It's not about as trying to minimize the number of affordable, so I just wanted to be clear about that, we would want, absolutely, to have a good level of affordable properties within the schemes and that, yeah. Just don't want to prolong too long, but that's just protecting what we would need from a commercial relationship with a developer, so we will get what we need and the developer is free to come back with suggestions about making best use of the site, so that's meant to protect and deliver what we need as a Council. Well I know this has been a huge, huge piece of work that especially Adam, who's here, has worked on, especially from my point of view, over the years, and it has been going on for some time, so I'm really glad to see this paper come forward, and yes, as Steve said, you know, we're all getting into that realm where, you know, we are going to be included in this, so we want to make sure it's fit for purpose, and certainly the timeline next 10 years means that, yes, it's critical. I notice that you're saying 240 new properties, so that would be even out as four sites of about 60 perhaps each site, or maybe some 80 and some 50 or whatever, but I think I mentioned, are they going to be all rented or are they sort of affordable to buy, and you said that possibly that is the case, either or, and I'm not sure where these sites would be or whether it's on particular sites, I'd like that answered, but the viability of the affordable, especially as you explained Mark, to get, you know, as much and as many as possible that people can afford if they can buy, if they wish to buy, but, and to obviously get the best that we can, but to have the quality as well, and to make sure that we are thinking of actually putting in all the sort of climate change necessities as well that we can, energy saving, et cetera, et cetera. So yes, I'm glad to see this paper brought forward, and now anyone else that's got questions, but if you could answer that for the first, for the minute. Yeah, if it's okay for me to come in on that one. The core that we'd be looking for is a rented affordable product, but what we aren't doing is ruling out the potential for other tenures to also be included in development, so in a lot of the cases we're looking at, there is, there's potential on the site for more than 60 units, and really that 240 is a kind of a minimum number, but in a lot of cases that could be higher. What we want to do is through the partnership give our partner the ability to work with us to understand what's required in a particular area, what is the demographic need, is there a demand for affordable purchase or for market purchase that can all be in the round alongside that affordable rented product? Couple of questions, really. I'm always unsure what affordable housing means, and can we just sort of clarify what that is? Also, where would the sites be? I know you've mentioned a few places, but are we looking at Brownfield sites, Greenfield sites? And how are we going to hold the contractor to account in regards to, if they've said they're going to produce this amount of affordable housing, can we make sure they are? Because there's a lot of projects around where I live which is supposed to be affordable, supposed to have X, Y, Z attached to the building projects, and it doesn't exist, so can we just check how are we going to make sure they're accountable and we're going to press them and make sure they're doing the things they said they're going to do? What do we mean by affordable? And what sort of sites are we building on, please? Thank you. Thank you. Three questions, anyone. I'll deal with that in the order of-- I mean, affordable housing is a matter of-- it's debated across the country, because that the affordable is a general term which is used for something that's affordable by somebody who's on the housing register. So it's-- and it's often, usually, it's only in our area, something that housing associations are offering. And that can be up to 80% of the market in rent, so it's lower than the market rent, but sometimes relatively high. So there is a debate about whether affordable rent actually is affordable in some instances, but without going too far down the route. That's why we use that term, because it means around having-- bringing in the rent set for those properties that are in the range of people who are on the register. Contractor-- that's, again, the detail, and there is some detail in the report. That's the point of having a strategic development partnership, that they're tied into delivery. So that would be-- there'd be less risk around non-delivery, in that sense, around-- I think some of your points are around when a contractor is a private developer who may argue with us about affordable housing requirements. This isn't the same as that. This is about us going into a strategic development partnership, contractual relationship with a developer to deliver that. And the question of Brownfield-Greenfield, we're not-- there wouldn't be any Greenbelt development here, but we've got two sites already earmarked, and they would be-- we're looking at, in the first instance, about council-owned land. And again, they would have to go through their own process of planning, consideration through here in cabinet, so all of that can be worked through when we get those two additional sites identified. But the two addition-- the two sites in Wareham and Bridport are generally described as Brownfield sites. Thank you, Andrew. That's a really good question. Thank you. Thank you very much. I've got a few questions, and I wonder whether you want me to take them one by one or just throw them all in the mix. Let's just give it a go. I saw on your first slide that you've got a site in Gillingham and one in Blandford, and the four units, Bridport, Wareham, Weymouth, East Dorset, doesn't take into account North Dorset at all, whereas your figures for North Dorset show that actually we're going to have the highest population by 2036. Are you assuming that North Dorset is actually well served with those two units? Because I'm just concerned that they're not on your list, and that leads me on to, are we being driven by assets and where they are, rather than by need? And then I still will come back, but do you want to take that first? Thank you. Go on, Matthew. I mean, I think the first point on the kind of locations of North Dorset, because there are some parts of North Dorset already covered by some of it, so kind of Gillingham and so on. So it's about kind of going to some of the areas where we've not got some of the provision yet in place now. I think also there's a point about once we've got the strategic development partner, we might have those four to start with, but this is the start of a longer program. So it's not the be all and end all for the next 10 years. I think we're iterating our commissioning strategies as we go to work out how we follow need best. Just to stress, it's certainly not, it's not asset led, we've done a lot of work around this being led by where the need is, and you'll spot the location is, we take the point about North Dorset, but there's a spread between Bridport, Weymouth, the Wareham site, and we haven't yet established where that would have ferned down area. So it's about getting a spread across Dorset, but that's done because we've done the work around commission need, where there are gaps in the market. And we've said, I know the North spreads a large geographical area in itself, but the Gillingham extra care scheme, for example, is coming on site fairly soon, and that's quite a large extra care scheme being built by Magna. So there are other schemes out there that we're trying to balance. Thank you. I think Steve wanted to mention something. Is that pertaining to what this question, thank you. Yes, it should be borne in mind that this is not supposed to be the answer to the issues that we face. We're doing this to trial, test the market, but also in a way that hopefully will stimulate other providers as well. So it's not just the council trying to be the solution to everything. We're trying to develop and innovate new ways and new strategies so that others will follow to meet the increasing demand in coming years. And then I wanted to just sort of drill down a little bit as to how it actually works in terms of our assets. Are we looking, will the assets still remain in Dorset Council? I mean, I'm just looking at where that all stands in terms of our balance sheets. Who's going to own the assets? And there was some discussion about as to whether people will individually be able to purchase outright their units, and I don't think that is the case, is it? Because realistically, if they're in there for maybe a few years, we want that unit to be continually available for older people to come into each unit, I guess. But I'm just trying to work out what we're actually going to work with in terms of our assets. Who's going to build? Who's going to actually own the asset? And then the contractor commissioned, is it right that one contractor deals with the whole four sites, or do we want to look at perhaps four different contractors, and how long are they going to be contracted for? And are we putting all our eggs in one basket if we have one contractor doing four sites and perhaps there are issues that, sorry, that's a lot there to unpick, but I'm trying to actually work out, if we've got an asset, who's actually going to build it? Who's paying for the building, and how long is their contract going to be? And I'm trying to untangle it all, so can we just drill all the way down into that, please? If I start on the asset side of things, no firm decisions have been made, because what we want to be able to do is look at this on a project-by-project basis with the strategic development partner. Our expectation is that the land will transfer to the development partner, and so there will be a land arrangement that sits underneath that strategic partnership, and we would have a development agreement with that partner for each of those projects that very clearly sets the expectations and the contractual terms out as they've been agreed. That doesn't mean that we are insisting on that, and if the right person, the right organization comes to us with a model around leasing arrangements or something like that, then that's something that we will consider, and we're essentially trying to keep enough flexibility to be able to look at all the different ways of doing this and take the most appropriate one for each project. When it comes to the question about tenure, there are extra care housing models that have affordable shared ownership or outright purchase, so it is a decision that older people choose to make as a homeowner, thinking about downsizing from family accommodation and that kind of thing. So, essentially, options do exist for people, and I don't think we would want to specifically preclude that from being an offer on the table if there is a market for it. But like I said, our core need is it will be around making sure each scheme has enough affordable rented accommodation for us as a social care and housing commissioning authority to use and to make sure that we can offer to people. I'll briefly come back on the point about sold flats in development. I mean, they would still have to have a requirement of, say, the shared ownership model, they would still have the requirements to be used for this purpose, always, there would be restrictions on there to make sure they're always used for a person who needs it. So, I think that, in some respects, that makes it no different to a rented property in terms of the empty, when they become empty. We will, I mean, we've tried to put it across in the papers with lots of detail, but the very good points you're making about the risks and benefits of this model, that's something we will consider and pull out and make sure we're presenting that in absolute detail for the Cabinet as well, because getting that right is key, isn't it? There's always the balance of risks and benefits for any kind of development proposal, but that's the, we will take that forward. We think it does strike that right balance between getting what we need as a local authority and getting something built, that's what we're looking to develop. If I can add in as well, one of the advantages of using our own assets to develop this is that development costs are therefore lower, which means that the rents that are going to be charged by the developer to the resident, the client, is therefore going to be much more affordable. So, that's one of the main strategies of using your own properties. You mentioned as well, why use one developer instead of four or six or seven? We did try using on an individual basis, I understand last year, the first time we trialled this and it didn't get a lot of, it didn't get any attention at all. And so, what we're trying to do is build something up that is more appealing to a developer through economies of scale and also will help us build a relationship. The third thing was the average length of stay, I understand in one of our traditional care homes is about two years. These extra care properties are about staying there much longer. These are lifelong homes rather than end of life care or they can adapt their places in which we age together. And so, therefore, rather than weekly rental costs, which is traditional of a care home, we don't want to do that, we might be looking, rather than sale, we might be looking at long-term leaseholds which could revert back, so we don't actually lose ownership of the ultimate asset, but we still give assurance of tenancy or residency to the resident, again, to give them feeling of control over their property rather than they're just living in a slot. Sorry, thank you, Chair, can I just come back on one thing? I just, unless I've read this, I've got this wrong, I just feel a little bit uncomfortable with possibly handing over a valuable capital asset to somebody who could take it freehold and we're out of the picture completely. I just, have I got that wrong? Because I am worried about the capital. To be completely clear, it's not the same as a land transaction where we sell the land and they have no control over what's done with it. The development agreements would be structured with specifics around what is actually being done and step-in rights and contractual compliance measures if the Council comes to the conclusion that the contract isn't being delivered, so it does give us control over making sure that what they've said they will do gets done to the best of our ability. The point of the partnership is to be able to sit down with them and work through what that looks like up front so that we're all on the same page about it and so we're not just handing over the responsibility to someone else to say this is what it looks like, but it recognizes the fact that a lot of these organizations have a lot of expertise and experience in doing this and have far more expertise than we do in the development side of this. You did also have a question around the length of contract, so there's a few pieces to this. The first is the procurement is for the strategic partnership and we see that as being a 10-year arrangement during which time these projects will be brought forward. Each project itself will have its own development agreement and the timeline for that will be set out in accordance with what's needed for that project. Beyond that, there is a long-term relationship that we would have with the housing management that's provided there, the RP, because we will have nomination rights into these services on a long-term basis. So we will have a decades-long relationship with that housing provider. So there's a few pieces to it, but that's how it will work. One very quick point, Chair, because I think on 6.6 in the paper there's another quite key point, which is that when we agree with the strategic development partner, our plan, each of the sites that we talk about will have a separate governance arrangement to determine how the site and how our investment in it, through the land and other means, kind of gets our benefits and a whole arrangement and an agreement on a case-by-case basis. So it's not like making the decision here and now and then for the 10 years on all four sites. So if that gives a bit of reassurance. Oh, sorry. Sorry to prolong, Beryl, but I mean, it's like anything, it's a trade and it's getting a return on our land is the key part of this. We've said it already, but it's certainly not giving away land for free. It's the considerable benefits we get from the work we're trying to describe. I've just got a couple of things from the Chair that follow along from that. I mean, I've been dealing with the wear-on-one for a long, long time, 10 years I think, and we've been looking for some end product. And so, yeah, having obviously economies of scale, having one contractor, but I have had some worries about the fact that we're handing over stuff to partners, even if it's a partner arrangement. But also what I want to go on from that is to say if we've got this adult social care specifically for older people, what happens when the leasehold is then finished by that person? Could they hand it on to a relative or somebody younger, or is there an age at which you say, well, really, you can only have one of these if you're, say, out of the air 55 or 60? Is there going to be that limit? Because you could find in the future, if these are beautiful apartments, that you get younger people move in because of that arrangement, because it looks like a wonderful thing to do, and they're more affordable. But how does that work, and will the affordable thing be carried on if that's the case? If that's the case, and also the other thing is what about, we're talking about adult social care, what about people with disabilities? Is that going to cover younger people with disabilities, these properties, because we know that we've got 18 units in Wareham at the moment for people with disabilities, and some of them are younger. So what happens, because I understand that some of those are telling me that when this new complex is built, we are going to be able to have one of these apartments, and some of them aren't of an age yet to be older, let's put it that way. So can you answer those few things for me? Thank you. Well, we'll do a double act. Just to stress the point around generally the leasehold purchased flats, if somebody dies, the value of that property would still be within the family, but it's not. They wouldn't be able to move their 25-year-old son into it, so there'll be restrictions around the future use of that particular property. In shared ownership, for example, in some schemes, you'd have to sell on to another person within certain categories, so it would still be continually used for people who would fit the criteria. Mark can answer the question about the younger client groups with needs. I think the answer to that question is in the individual's needs, and so the extra care housing scheme is not a supported living scheme. So it's not going to be equipped for the kind of complex care needs that will often come with people with lifelong disability. As people with lifelong disability age and start to develop frailty and needs around kind of frailty, dementia, and the conditions of aging, then we can start to consider whether or not extra care housing is an appropriate space for them. But often what we're talking about when we're looking at personalized care and support for people of working age with disabilities, people will be looking for a different kind of life experience, different peer group to be around, much as we all might do in different parts of our lives. So it can't be hard and fast, but absolutely, supported living and extra care housing are not merged as just two sides of the same coin, they're different products. So I think I appreciate that, it probably doesn't sound like it's a very clear, hard and fast assurance, but I think we would, and always, I think if we're care and support planning with somebody, we'd be thinking as well in these schemes about how anybody's would kind of live alongside other people in the scheme. So that will always be a consideration, the wider scheme and whether or not somebody comes with the kind of need for support that means that it's viable to provide it in the extra care scheme. So it's a sort of complex set of questions, but very much individually. And then just briefly, I hesitate to go too much into detail about individual schemes, but I think the Red Oak Court, which is a scheme for people with low disabilities, we'd look to re-provide in other parts of the site, it wouldn't be necessary to move them into the extra care scheme, so we don't want to confuse those two points. And if we're expecting it's likely on, as we get going with the, if we get larger sites, there will be other forms of housing or GP surgeries and other things that are possible on a site, and that sort of the learning disability scheme you're talking about would be re-provided somewhere else, sorry, re-provided in addition to the extra care scheme. Thank you. We have got several people still lined up, so I think John Orrell was the next one actually waiting. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Chair, I'd say John Orrell, Malcolm. My question is on 6.2, which is page 105. I've completely agreed with the whole notion of the scheme, the idea of providing these extra care places makes perfect sense, the demographics makes it very necessary. I'd like to really challenge, though, on 6.2, it seems like we're waving a white flag there on the Council, getting a bit more stuck in in provision, which I think is a mistake. It occurs to me that if we're going down this model which the country has pursued for the last 30, 40 years of relying on the private or registered provider sector, we risk unnecessary costs. There's the cost of the commissioning, putting out the contracts, judging the contracts, then that's a dead cost. There's the monitoring of the contracts, which you said you're going to have to do, that's a dead cost. There's the profit that the provider would require, the registered provider's probably less than a private one, but the registered providers are encouraged to act in a commercial manner, so they'll want -- there's just costs that disappear from the system which could be going into lower rents for our residents, so we're -- we think we could do better, and the reason I think we do is because of our experience with the children's services, where we've seen them providing their own school, and also rather than relying on more expensive, privatized schools nationally, and also with children's homes, where a children's home has been opened in my ward in Weymouth, which is going to make -- it results in significant savings for the Council, other than relying on privatized, commercialized children's homes. So, with that challenge in mind that comes from the children's services, which proves it can successfully be done -- can we go back to 6.2 -- I notice we lack the expertise, experience capacity. That is true, but it's only because we've chosen to lack that experience and expertise. There's no reason why we can't go out and put out job habits and get these people back. A lot of them would have left councils in previous decades. We can get these people back and provide this ourselves, and that way we can have control of the scheme and make sure it is fit for purpose and stays fit for purpose. Taking Councillor Atwill's point, we've seen so many times affordable isn't really affordable. We've seen developers slip -- things slip -- we give permission and then things slip through our fingers on grounds of viability, and we don't get what we wanted. We get shortchanged, so we can -- if we have control, we can make sure we deliver for our residents. Councillor Jones' point about losing control of our valuable assets in the land and -- and kind of rights to buy, we -- again, if we control these sites, then we can make sure that forever they are used for what we intend. So, I -- I really challenge 6.2, and I'd like if we go for the recommendation to Cabinet -- to kind of tease it out, that we kind of recommend the whole report apart from the bit about definitely going for registered provider. I'd like the Cabinet to make that decision, and -- and that decision be served up to them so they have -- so it's obvious so that we have -- recommend the paper, but we have an option for them of a registered provider or direct provision, because I think with this new political complexion, the Cabinet may have more an appetite, what I hope, to deliver services directly. Thank you. Can I just ask myself -- yeah, really good question. What I wanted -- I have got it -- yeah, what -- really good question, because this is one of the things that I've been wondering, and also, I think we've got the Councillor, Jill Taylor, who's a portfolio holder for housing online, I'm not sure if she's -- she's actually there at the moment, but I'm not sure if she would like to comment on your comment or take it out the meeting, but certainly, yes, I think Steve wants to answer that one as well. Thank you. Phenomenally appropriate and good questions. There are issues, obviously, around expenditure of assets, and I, too, have issues about are we just selling off the silver for short-term benefit. One mid-way solution is something that I know that we are considering, but have not yet reached a decision on, is whether we form our own registered provider as a Council and bring the whole thing inside. That does not necessarily mean that this registered provider will get favoured status in the same way that Dorset Care does not necessarily get favoured status, but as an internal provider, it benefits from being able to demonstrate cost efficiencies and the savings. So that decision has not been made, but taking your comments -- and having been in the social housing sector myself for 20 years, I wouldn't want to touch it with a barge pole, personally, but lots of people do get excited about it, and I think it's something we should consider as part of the overall process. Oh, sorry, Andrew. Sorry. Just in terms of process, I mean, we certainly -- when we take this forward to cabinet, we can flesh out the points you're making, Councillor Orr, about the compare-and-contrast approaches, so certainly the big points around investment, about capital investment, that's going to be the big question, including the wider conversation about what we do about housing, is if we intervene directly with our own capital and assets, clearly there's an amount of money attached to that. So we can certainly draw that out as a compare-and-contrast approach, and to not have a clear guess you say cabinet shall decide, so we can do that. Just to add as well on the separating the idea of the build and housing operation from the care delivery, so obviously when it comes to the care delivery, so Care Dorset are providing extra care support into our St. Martin's, the new St. Martin's scheme, and we would -- similarly, they are our local authority trading company, we have to go through some appropriate procurement rules, of course, but our first thought would be to open up a dialogue with them about whether they would provide it, and of course we created that local authority trading company so that we'd get the commercial benefits of an independent company with a low profit motive and a relationship to the council. So I think that's what we'd be looking for in terms of the delivery of the care and support model into the housing schemes. Equally, there may be a legitimate reason why going to a wider market is sensible in that one, like we do with other care arrangements, but that's our first thinking, if that helps. Thank you. Did you want to come back? No? Well, I just wanted to say it's one of my pet things that I would like to see a trading company of our own housing company in some way, shape or form. It may not be the right time to do it, but in the future it may be a way that we can actually hurry things along and really get what we want, and therefore we tie up our assets in that. It may be a big capital spend, but it's something I'd like to see in the future, and it's a big ask, but I think it's something that I'm very much for, and I think that cabinet will perhaps tease us out, like we say, a little bit more. Anyway, we've got other questions, so we'll go on to those. Cindy, yeah, next. Thank you. So forgive my ignorance of this, and I'm going to go back to the question about home ownership in this project. I think the rental idea is fantastic, and if we keep it like that, that would be my ideal. If somebody has bought one of these properties, and you were saying therefore it's part of their family assets, and the only other viable person to live in it is a 25-year-old, but they don't want to sell it, what happens? Is this property going to sit empty until they're of an age where they can use it? What leverage do we have to say, actually, this is a privately owned home. You have not got a viable person to be moving into it. Could it be sitting empty? Thank you. Yeah, if I can come in on that one. It would be a lease arrangement, so they would buy the lease, and the freehold would be wrapped up around the wider building. And what would exist in situations where this is done elsewhere, the terms of that lease dictate ultimately who can occupy. So this is something that happens in sort of retirement living, things like McCarthy and Stone schemes. They're for purchase, but they remain older people's communities. And if someone does pass away, then it essentially is for the family to sell that on. What happens in a lot of cases is the company owning the freehold would buy that back and then re-market it. So there are sort of ways of doing it. Are you happy with that? Yeah, thank you. Thank you. My experience of this market is that it's a buyer's market in those sorts of circumstances. Whichever family member is selling it on will inevitably take a haircut on the value of that. Is there anything that the council can do in terms of ownership or restrictions that can ensure that asset value can be protected? I think, to be perfectly honest, we'd have to explore that in sort of the finer detail of each scheme. And if we were looking at a mixed tenure, then we need to look at what those different models and options are. There are sort of affordable purchase-in-perpetuity-type models where the reduction that the first buyer pays is applied upon resale and things like that. And like I said, there's other ways that those properties kind of come back into ownership that are still used. I don't have a complete answer to that because it's probably going to depend on each scheme as we look at it. Can just make a simple point. The majority would still be affordable rents as well. I know it's important to get the point around sale bottomed out, but it's just a stress that quite a large majority would be for rentals for people who need it. You OK with that, Andrew? Yes. Thank you. Questions, anyone? My concern is that when you've got people that are bi, and they're elderly or older, and then they think this is an asset of mine when I die for my children to decide, like I've downsized to a bungalow, and then my children, I've got two. So obviously, they probably sell it, so they split it. But with this sort of thing, with the housing crisis we've got, with so many people-- and like Ginger was saying, so many people on the housing ladder-- it's so easy for someone to slip in there to say, become the carer, and then just keep on living there. I mean, how are you going to get them out? I mean, I know it sounds awful, but how are you going to evict that person when they're sitting on it if they're doing probate, or they're selling the flat? I mean, it's going to be extremely difficult. And I know I'm going into probably lots of realms that we shouldn't, but it's going to be extremely difficult to do that. I mean, it would be better if we had just across the board where they're just affordable rent rather than have anything where you could lease. I mean, wouldn't it be easier to do that? Shall I do that? I mean, I manage a lot of extra care schemes in my time, and that is very, very rare, what you described. And that's either for ownership or rental. I mean, they're not the type of properties which will have a living son or daughter, living carer, in order to do what you've just described. So again, we'll consider that, but it's highly unlikely that that would be the case, whether or not, whether it's rental or sale. But we'd have lease arrangements, tenancy agreements in place to make sure that didn't happen. So it did happen, and you would be able to act on it pretty sharpishly. I don't know if anybody else can call it, I've never come across it, I will say that much. Yes. I think the point you're referring to is more general needs housing, where you have somebody living in an ordinary flat or a house, and there's a dispute over inheritance of that, of succession to that tenancy. It's not the same arrangement. Sorry, Chair, should we include in the recommendations the consideration, as Councillor Orell stated, of actually considering our own? And I wondered, is Care Dorset actually set up legally to take on such a project, should they want to bid, or is that outside of their terms of reference? I would welcome that recommendation, going forward to cabinet. I think it's part of the information portfolio. And that's what this committee is for. The second question has gone for me. Care Dorset. Care Dorset. Yeah, I'm on the shareholder committee for Care Dorset, need to declare that. I believe that it is set up to deliver in that particular way with CQC. Just so there's no confusion about the recommendation, we are a registered provider already, as a local authority, just to state that for your accuracy. So in terms of development of schemes, if that option was pursued, we already exist as a registered provider. The point I'd make, so we're clear about the recommendation, what I'd suggest from an officer point of view is to just plot out the options as they stand, because if the option was taken to do this ourselves, that would bring about considerable delay in terms of working up that approach. But we can plot that out as a set, so that's what I meant by compare and contrast. There's an option we could take, but I think it would be to plot that out as an either/or set of options. A mixed portfolio is a possibility, isn't it? I think we'd have to do a bit of work around making sure we decided whether it would be to reject this proposal as it stands, to start to work up another one, providing that in-house. We could take that as an action to work up that comparison. I just wanted to make sure we're clear in terms of the recommendation of what we're saying with that. We're quite keen to get approval for this to go forward as an approach, and we can take that 6.2, the point that Councillor Orell has said about 6.2, we can expand that to give a choice between approaches. I hope that makes sense. Perhaps that was clumsy words, what he said. Thank you all for your contribution. I just see that Jonathan Fry's executive director, Brett Elton Housing, and his colleague just appeared, so I don't know if he's got the gist of what we're talking about and whether you've got a comment at all? Hi. Trust me to sit at the back with no microphones. So yeah, I came in right at the very end of that, but it sounds like a very good debate and input to consider within the cabinet report, so probably need to catch up with Andrew and Mark more fully on what was discussed before I could comment, but thank you, and I'm sorry I'm late. Unfortunately, we didn't win as well, so we did get in the top five. We came second. We came second. Thank you. Thank you, Jonathan. I think that we can adjust the recommendation. Can I just check that, so the proposal from John Orrall is your proposal next, and is there somebody who would second that? Yes, Ginny Apple. So what you're essentially recommending is a choice to cabinet through the compare and contrast, and there will be a compare and contrast for cabinet between the two options, and it can be for them to decide whether they go down one route or they implement the recommendations as set out in this report, so you're giving them the choice between the two, and that will be reflected in the report to cabinet. Yeah. Jonathan, I mean, just can I check, George, first, which of the recommendations are we talking about, can we, that we're going to change or we'll take? So none would be changed, and you'd be recommending recommendations one to six if cabinet want to implement this approach, but if they want to compare and contrast and go down a different approach, then that will be for them to consider how they go forwards with that. Right. John, sorry, is it, oh, sorry. I think, George, just, I think you're nearly there, George, I think it's just, again, if you don't mind presumptuous of me saying, I think it's about getting, I think it's a question of whether the cabinet would accept the report as stands or reject it in favor of doing the three, four, five and six, or if it's rejected in favor of doing a council-owned, it's a procurement route, it's a two-stage consideration, isn't it? I think it's more or less what you're saying, George, it's a two-stage recommendation as in accept the report as it stands or reject it for further work on a second. Is that what's been proposed? Yes, right. We have an option of going down three as exists or the other choice is internally provided or dorset care, so a choice there for the cabinet. Sorry, if I may, the proposal is accepted and recommended, but that the cabinet also consider the option of alternative forms such as formation of a registered provider. I think that's basically what we're talking about, because what we don't want to do is to slow the process up for another meeting cycle and still be here in a year's time, so if we can progress as according to the proposals, but also to potentially have the cabinet to consider delivery through an alternative provider as a part of the overall process. You're looking at me in a dodgy way. You're just going to normally say, Why don't you use our status as a registered provider? Yes. Yes. Whom am I confused dot com? I think I understand that one and two stands, yes, of the recommendation, but the three to six does not. No? They will stand. They will stand. They will stand. They will stand. They will stand. They will stand. They will stand. That just... It's not my... Sorry. I mean, it's not my... So I'm recommending numbers one to six, and then additionally also recommending that consideration of a registered provider by the council to deliver this work. Yeah. Okay. Can I have a proposal for that then, please? No, no. There has to be something. John has proposed it and Jindi seconded it. Yeah. Fine. Thank you. So are we all agreed then? Committee? Are we... Can you just have a show of hands? Thank you. Yep. Great. Well, as long as you understand what the former words are, and it's additionally consideration of a... What was it? You've got the words. Okay. Well, I just wanted it to be spelled out again, so it's now... So we provide our own... Yeah. Sorry, John. Yeah. Thank you. So obviously, coming in late, I'm not sure how much detail you discussed on the implications of that change of approach. From what I've heard, that would almost be us redeveloping a different approach to what's been proposed, and that would require quite a bit of time to do, so I'd suspect going out on a limb without all the facts that it could be a three-month lead time to develop that other option. So absolutely, we can do that, but I think we need to be clear in the recommendation that that would be the implication, and that would effectively mean we'd come back with another cabinet report, I think. I'm looking for Andrew to confirm that. So it's just to be clear on that recommendation. I think it's a consideration that we're putting forward as an option, whether it will be carried out or not. Well, after it's been discussed by the cabinet and really thoroughly gone through, then it may or may not be thrown out. So I think that it's this option that we need to have to challenge what's in the report at the moment and to give that some consideration. I think that's really the way we must go, and I agree with the recommendation. We've all agreed with that, but we take on board what you're saying, John, because there's a lot of extra. We do realize there's a fantastic amount of energy and effort that's been put into this paper over the years and how it's been developed. So we do appreciate that, so I really think that this extra strand that we want to actually explore would be a good thing. Thank you. I understand what Andrew, John is saying. Is it not feasible that Care Dorset could be classified as a possible strategic partner and if they want to bid and put it together and actually be part of the bidding process, is that not – then in which case we haven't got to worry about changing any recommendations because Care Dorset is just another strategic partner to be considered? I mean, Mark can probably – better place to say it because I'm declaring interest on a board member of Care Dorset, but I'll just speak from a housing perspective. They're not an experienced developer of sites and housing. They're not a developer. They're a care provider, so that's been their – that's their earmarked role in this. Potentially, yes, but that's not been their – we still need either ourselves built up with built-in capacity or an organization who've got that experience of developing out a site such as this. The point of clarification, Care Dorset is a registered care provider. It's not a registered housing provider and in the sector, there's two different RPs and the language gets confused, so Care Dorset would not be able to apply to be a housing developer. It can apply to develop CQC accredited care within the premises once there. I take on board what John has said about a delay. It may be that if we phrase the words right, because again, none of us want to see this delayed unnecessarily. If we phrase the words of the decision correctly and we'll leave that to the people who know how to phrase words correctly, certainly not me, that we may leave the room today and Aidan will come to us and say, Oh, no, you can't do that, because of specific rules or requirements. So I don't want to close the door on moving quickly as possible, but I also think that the whole role of this committee is to raise points such as that and that if we don't, as a cabinet, listen to that, then we're doing you a disservice. So I'm quite keen to take that and run with it, but not at the point of falling overweight and having to delay for months on end. Does that seem a fair response? Absolutely happy with that and where we're going with that. Thank you to the committee for all the questions and actually very good answers from the officers. I know it's made your life a bit more difficult and perhaps will delay things, but I think we do need to explore this option. Thank you very much and congratulate John and his team and Theresa, who's not here, of course, but thank you, and well, well done, and yep, that's onwards and upwards, yeah. Well done. So I think we've come to the end of our program. Did we take it all the way? Yeah, yeah, everyone's agreed on that. Sorry. Yeah. Okay, and so there is no exempt business because no one asked about Appendix 4, thank goodness, and so we have finished, that's good, within the two hours of meeting, which is good news. Just to say that in the future, we may be able to have this meeting actually in the