Transcript

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to this, the first ever meeting of the strategy and resources policy committee. I'm going to start initially with some welcome introductions and safety information. So safety information first of all, we're not expecting any alarms but in the event of an alarm sounding, please leave the room calmly via the lobby area and then through the main front door of city hall, turn right and walk down the ramp towards the cathedral, the assembly point is in front of the cathedral. Also before I welcome the members of the committee to introduce themselves, I'm going to mention that this meeting is being webcast, so just be aware you are live. So introductions, my name is Councillor Tony Dyer and I'm the chair of the strategy and resources policy committee, I'm going to hand over to Councillor Caroline Goots to introduce herself and any other Councillors. Sorry, I'm Caroline Goots, vice chair of circuits and human resources. Hello, Councillor Heather Mack. >> Councillor Emma Edwards and I'm serving for Councillor Abdul Malik today. >> Councillor Annie Stafford-Townsend. Councillor John Galandra, Stoke Bishop. >> Councillor Tim Renard. Councillor Tim Ripington. >> Paul, would you like to introduce yourself? Thank you, chair. My name is Paul Martin, I'm the interim chief executive of the city council. >> And I'll ask our officers to introduce themselves as and when they make their reports, if that's OK. Agenda item number two, apologies for absence and substitutions. Ian. >> Yes, chair, apologies for Councillor Abdul Malik and Councillor Emma Edwards is substituting. >> I think Councillor King is on her way. Thank you. Agenda item number three, declarations of interests. Can I ask if any committee members if they have any interest declaring relation to the terms of business on the agenda. Thank you. Agenda item number four is chair's announcements. I think it would be remiss of me to refer to this being the first policy committee meeting taking place under the new committee governance system. I also want to add that we add a committee working work programme session quite recently and that will be about members of the various committees looking at what's going to be on the work programme going forward for the next six months and we anticipate that the policy forward plans will be populated with this detail within the next few weeks. Agenda item number five is public forum. No public forum has been submitted for this meeting. I move then on to agenda item number six which is the first substantive report. Before I do so I'll just remind committee members that for some of these reports, for those of you more familiar with scrutiny, in some of these reports when they come forward we'll be making key decisions and I'll record the vote when we come to making those key decisions. Agenda item number six is the strategy and resources policy committee annual business report. There are no decisions to be taken on this report. This is for information. There are, however, several recommendations. I'll reread the recommendations after Ian has briefly outlined the report. Thank you, Chair. This is the strategy and resources policy committee annual business report which is essentially for information. The report sets out the membership of the committee for the year ahead and asks you to note the appointment of Councillor Dyer as Chair and Councillor Gooch as Vice Chair. The terms of reference of the committee are set out for reference, as are the meeting dates. The report also sets out the membership and the terms of reference and the arrangements for the meetings of the finance subcommittee. The final point to our Chair, following the setting workshop a couple of weeks ago, the committee has decided to have two task groups, one relating to corporate property estate and another on culture strategy. Obviously the details of that are to be worked up, but those are the two working groups identified this year. Thank you, Ian. So, can I ask if there are any questions or comments on this item from any members? Okay, thank you. Can I now ask for members to note the membership of the strategy and resources policy committee for 24/25, the appointment of myself, Councillor Tony Dyer as the Chair of the strategy and resources policy committee for 24/25, the appointment of Councillor Caroline Gooch as the Vice Chair of the strategy and resources policy committee for 24/25, to note the terms of reference of the strategy and resources policy committee, to note the strategy and resources policy committee's meeting dates for 24/25, and to note the establishment membership and terms of reference of the finance subcommittee and the respective appointments of Councillor Abdul Malik and Councillor Jonathan Ucke as Chair and Vice Chair of the subcommittee and the arrangements in place for establishing task groups. Can I ask members to duly note that? Thank you. We now move on to agenda item number 7. Agenda item number 7 is another item for noting. It's the performance framework for 2024/25 and the business plan 2024/25. This report presents the Councillor's business plan, setting out how the Council will progress its key commitments as per the corporate strategy 2022/27 for the next financial year. The report also presents the performance framework, setting out how the Council manages and reports performance progress against the business plan targets and actions to members and to the public, as well as explaining the corporate performance reporting processes. I'll read out the report recommendations following the discussion. For the time being, I'll invite Tim Borrett to introduce himself and his colleagues and outline the report. Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, members. I'm Tim Borrett. I'm Director of Policy, Strategy and Digital for the Council. I'm joined by colleagues I'll introduce as we go. We'll take the items today in reverse. I'll start briefly introducing the annual business plan to you, and we'll then follow up around the performance framework. So some of you will be familiar with the business plan I know, others less so. This is an annual product which is used to complete the next level of detail down from the Council's very high-level five-year corporate strategy. So we run a process in the Council each year, starting in the autumn, where we ask heads of departments across the Council to make their service plans at a departmental level for next year, so there are well over 100 of those. And we ask directors, equivalent to myself, around the Council to review their service plans with executive directors to summarise those and pick out key priorities, previously with Cabinet members and in future will be with policy committees. The central policy team then pulls together this single document, the business plan for the year ahead, which should in theory, if everything has worked, articulate the top priorities coming forward from officers and members in the Council for the year ahead. Of course that does have some challenges. The nature of planning quite a way in advance is that we don't always know what we're planning for, and the environment can move very quickly. So of course we had the Council's own change of governance, the timing of the general election, and of course details of our own financial downturn and some of the savings challenges that the Council has. A lot of work in progress or some understanding may have been present at the time of making the plans, but of course in reality we do have to adapt and deliver things throughout the year being quite dynamic and adapting to the situation around us. So the document today will set out everybody's best estimate of what the year should look like, but it's absolutely not binding. So there is an opportunity to revisit priorities in the year as needs arises or to put particular points of emphasis on actions within the business plan. Something I would flag up is there is quite a lot of risk being carried into this year within the plan. It's sometimes hard to draw out some of these nicely designed, nicely written documents, but sometimes even one sentence or one single action in the plan can have some really important and serious implications for the business. So just to draw out some examples of those, on page 75 of your pack you'll see the effective development organization theme of the business plan. That sets out a lot of the back office work in the Council. I've picked that theme because that will be most relevant to this committee throughout the year and you'll see Strategy and Resources Committee against many actions within there. And on page 81 of your packs we have the overarching corporate strategy commitment to good governance and you'll see actions within there around embedding the committee model. That's one action for the year. Improving the long-term sustainability and effectiveness of services by delivering transformation programs is another action. But if you think about the size and scale of the multi-million-pound transformation programs, the risk and the savings attached to them, there's clearly an awful lot implicit within that action and the same and more so perhaps for the action below in how we manage and oversee the Council's finances. So whilst we do keep these actions at a high level, it is always worth bearing in mind the detail that will sit beneath them. The document itself is approved. It's approved annually via our corporate leadership board and so this does form the current plan for the Council. But as I say, it's something that we're always open to live feedback on and we can iterate as needs be. Sitting alongside the Business Plan is the Performance Framework that is closely connected to both the corporate strategy and the Business Plan and is something that again we review every year as part of that process. So at this point I'll introduce my colleagues and ask them to take you through the details of the Performance Framework, starting on my right with Rebecca Baldwin-Cantello. Hi, I'm Rebecca. I'm the head of Equality, Data and Performance. I will hand over to Nick shortly to talk you through the three main components of this new Performance Framework. But just to note that this is obviously different to what was there before and we've tried to match it to the new committee system but we'll need to review that as we go along and we're keen to hear your comments about how that's working for you, particularly the split between this committee and the other committees, and how the performance reporting relates between the two of them. So we're looking forward to your feedback on that. I will hand over to Nick. Thank you. I'm Nick Smith, the Council's Strategic Intelligence and Performance Manager. Just a few brief points on the Performance Framework. These are for reference, they're on the bottom of page 13 in the pack, bullet point 3. They're just a few points that we thought we'd highlight regarding changes to the Performance Framework. The first is actually not a change, it's just a clarification that we're still reporting primarily against the seven corporate strategy themes. And of course the business plan is still based on the corporate strategy as Tony outlined previously. But those seven themes, they are very similar to the structure that the eight committees are based on but they're not exactly the same. So there are times when the committee remits and the themes don't align, which is part of the detail that Rebecca was just noting that we'll be continuing to review that over the next few months to know how we report. The performance dashboard is the second point, which is clarifying that as we go through the performance reporting, same has been the case for the last year, the key information will all be in a online Power BI dashboard. That will be linked as an appendix to the papers. There will be headlines pulled out in PDF reports that highlight what the key overarching headlines are, but the details against the comments and the RAG rating against each of the metrics and actions will be in the dashboard. And there'll be some member training on that at the beginning of September to align with when the quarter one dashboard comes out. And the third point is the performance metrics city outcomes, and that's noting that there's been a more explicit recognition of the difference between the performance metrics that the council has control over and the city outcomes, which are the parts of the corporate strategy and business plan, which are obviously important to the city and that the council is a key player in, but are not measures of corporate performance improvement processes. Therefore, for the city outcomes, we've removed targets. So they're going to be measured against whether they're better or worse than they were last year, rather than against the target, which to some extent is an arbitrary figure that we have no control over, whether they'll be better or not. Yeah, so they were the key points, and a link to that, just linking very much to the point Rebecca just made, is as we take this forward through the performance reporting over the year, they said we'll be looking at more detail, but currently what we'll be looking at is an overarching report which looks at the business plan in the round coming here, plus there is a measure of the EDO, the effective development plan. That theme would also come here, and we'll be looking through the details as to how we link with the other committees. All right, any questions then? Thank you, Nick. Before I, you know, just give members a chance to think up any questions, I think the comment I'll make is that obviously this document, and the business plan in particular, is designed to be a very positive and aspirational document, but as is highlighted on page 4 of the business plan, page 24 of the PACS, we are working against a backdrop of a worsening outlook for local government finance, and I think we need to bear that in mind, that even through our strong aspirations in this business plan, we've had a lot of contribution from members from across all parties towards open to greater, nevertheless, we are facing a surreal financial constraints for the local authority, and I think it's only right for me to point that out as we go forward. Any questions from any members? Councillor Marwick. Not so much questions, as this is obviously too, note, but just some comments, I guess, how interacting with this in the future, so, you know, thank you. It's great to look through and see the tangible, what are we measuring, what are our actions. Obviously, this is something that has been developed for an amount of time, but mostly prior to the new governance system and the new government charge, so, I guess, noting and acknowledging that, that it's not yet been a collaborative process of new people, and so I'm really looking forward to, I guess, being more involved and shaping this more in the future, and I'm also really looking forward to committees looking closely at those performance points and considering what's best, you know, when we might want to change some of the metrics, but also acknowledging that we want to be able to track performance year on year, so everything that we change, that makes, it is complicated. There are a number of areas where we have actions that don't directly link to metrics, and I understand that that's, sometimes it can be really complicated, so it's just the only thing that, you know, I was looking at the intergenerational equality and it's, you know, we're tracking whether the actions are done and not the metrics, and obviously it's always great to really clearly have those metrics and something else that, you know, will change as the year goes on. We've got points about the inclusions in schools and, as yet, doesn't have things around our actions with the safety valve, which obviously will be happening and being delivered elsewhere, but obviously much of this, I guess, will be shaped throughout the year. I think it's a good starting point to be looking at what we're doing throughout the year, and I know that in the governance, how this will feed into the other committees, I'm quite confident. I've seen the structures there and I think it's going to be really good to have that in the forefront of a lot of members' minds now, sitting in a committee and seeing, yeah, looking at metrics every month, every two months. I think that's going to be really helpful. So, thank you. Yeah, thank you, Councillor, and just to clarify a couple of points. Certainly, in terms of the metrics, they are part of that review process each year, so there will be an opportunity to revisit what metrics there are, why they are, and how they're measured when we come to that process this year. A small point of clarity on how they link, and I'm not sure we've ever resolved this to anyone's satisfaction, mine included. The metrics tend to link to the corporate strategy priorities, the priorities at the top of the page that the metrics align to for that longer term view. The actions in the business plan tend to be picked up by milestone tracking of those actions, but completely understand that is something that foxes us a lot of the time. So, that's something, again, when we come to that review, we'd be very happy to look at. Thank you, Tim. Any other comments or questions? Councillor Stafford- 245. Thanks. Yes, as a more of a comment/suggestion on the report, it's great. I love how accessible it is to read, and so I'm hyper-aware that this isn't papers just for us on the committee, but for the whole city. There's a couple of points where a little bit of additional inclusion could be quite handy. So, thinking to page 19, figure 1, which is the corporate performance reporting cycle, it has lots of abbreviations in it, and I know that in the previous paragraphs it explains what a DMT is and EDS, but when you're looking at this, you're like, okay, and then you have to go back to look. Those sorts of diagrams just had a little key at the bottom to explain what all the abbreviations were. It will just make it much more accessible for anybody trying to look at this document and understand what's going on. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Very welcome feedback. We, I think, get acronym blindness at times, so that's very helpful and we'll make sure we do that. Councillor Whipperton. Thank you, Chair. Just looking at the business plan. The business plan includes reference to the safety valve in CYP 3, and this was something that the last administration made it clear that the new administration would be able to decide whether we proceed with that. Do you have any plans at the moment to discontinue the safety valve arrangement? Or how would that decision be made? Well, that decision will be made in the fullness of time. At the moment, we are getting information back from the S151 officer. As you may know, we're also required to report back to the DFE about our progress. There will be a report coming to a future edition of this committee, which will talk about the financial situation in more detail, and also obviously children and young people policy committee will also have a view going forward as well. But at the moment, no decision is made either way, until we have more information, both from our own financial reports, but also in terms of feedback from whatever may be a new government coming in. You may have a different approach to how they approach the problems with the safety valve and what it's designed to solve. Thanks, Chair. Can I just ask a supplementary on that? The finance is quite heavily frontloaded on that, so I imagine there is some urgency if we were going to not take the finance associated with the safety valve to make that decision sooner rather than later. We've already received the first payment, which is $21 million, and that I'm sure will be pointed out when Tony does this update later on. We do have a later item which looks at the Council's finances. In terms of how money is paid over, it's depending on us, it's in the number of targets, and then it's done on a regular basis. As far as we know, once those payments are made, we're not aware of any process whereby those payments can be asked to be returned, but we'll establish confirmation on that. But at the moment, the first 21 million pound was paid over as part of the deficit reduction program. I think that actually happened before the election. Thank you. It's a really, really clear report, and I especially like the way it's been done in the themes. I was looking at the transport theme a bit closer, because that's the committee I sit on. For the outcomes, this is a question I have about the indicators for transport and connectivity. The last point it says road safety reduced the number of people killed and seriously injured in road traffic accidents. But I couldn't find an action on that. I know last year we passed a motion on Vision Zero as another aspirational idea for the Council to follow. Is there any scope for that to be added into this report and to be reviewed and to look at those metrics in the future? Thank you, Councillor. Yes, I'm very happy to review that. The nature of this document being something which has sort of aggregated a lot of plans is we sometimes unfortunately do lose some of those actions on the way, not to say they're not happening. They may be in a departmental plan, but not quite have made that top level for the business plan for any given reason. Sometimes that might be quite a significant piece of work that's been ongoing for quite a while or part of what someone perceives as business as usual. So what we can do is go and review the transport service plan for you, make sure that that detail is within there, and then certainly in future iterations or reporting to the committee, we can make sure that's passed to those officers to make sure you have sight of it. Great, thank you very much. Councillor Bernard. Thank you for this. Obviously relatively familiar with this and the process and being involved in the cabinet. I just want to commend the work and the amount of time and hours that would have been put in by officers and others across the Council to pull this together. I think it's a really accessible document, clearly links to UN's sustainable development goals as well, which I think is really important thinking about those bigger challenges that we're facing internationally. And we'll continue to support this move forward. And I think there is a broader point around the motions that go through the full Council process and how do we integrate them. And I can see, for example, that Maintain Nurseries is referenced, which was a motion that Labour took through on the caring economy most recently. So it's really good to see that reflected and that might be something to think about as you go through that kind of annual process to make sure that those are fully integrated. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor, and that would be appreciated. I know a lot of staff hours do go into the documents. We are very happy to pick up tracky motions and we'll pick up the democratic services as to how we do that and keep a clear eye on them. Thank you. Paul, do you want to comment? Well, thank you, Chair, and that's an interesting discussion. I think what I would say is just linked back to your initial introductory remarks on the report, that to emphasise, indeed, it's clear to members in the later report on the financial control report, item 11, that the City Council is under, you know, significant pressure in terms of its budgets. The Director of Finance no doubt will say more about that shortly. So, you know, we are like other major local authorities, like other core cities, under significant financial pressure. It's obviously not clear if that will change, whether it will change in the coming years, but we're struggling to provide the services to the quality that you would wish within the resources available to us. And I think that's a fair statement of fact. And what that means in practice, which the business plan reflects, I would want to give a little bit more profile to, which is our need to change and transform, to reduce our costs wherever we can, to understand demand management. And in many of these services, demand is rising at alarming rates. And to find new and innovative ways to meet our responsibilities and statutory requirements within the resources that we have, and in a nutshell that requires transformation, as I know members appreciate. So we're not talking really about a stable state for the organization. You know, this isn't business as usual. That's not the era that we're living through at the moment or the period that I've been appointed to be your chief executive. And I think you should expect that as the year unfolds that we need to quicken the pace and rigor of change and transformation so that we can continue to provide the services and the ambitions, meet the ambitions and aspirations that are so well-described here within the resources available to us, Chair. Thank you. Any more questions or comments? Ellie. Thanks, Chair. I'd like to echo some of the comments that Councillor Renard said about commending the work that's been going, and also, Tim, what you were saying about this adhering to the corporate strategy and reflecting some of the other strategies that have also been written that are designed to steer our direction of travel in the coming years. I think it's really important to note, for example, the Parks and Green Space strategy is reflected in there. And what you were saying as well, Paul, about how in the current climate that we're in, we need to prioritize. And so when we see that strategy written from the perspective of accessibility and inclusion in our parks and green spaces, for example, that that should be where we are focusing our efforts. And it's the same with a lot of the other strategies that have come in and accepting that we cannot do everything that we want. So it's a case of prioritizing. And so to see that reflected in here as well is really positive. And yeah, I really encourage it. But thank you very much for your work on this. Okay, any more comments or questions? Okay, I'd like to thank Tim, Rebecca, and Nick. Thank you and please pass on our thanks to your team. So this report, Agenda Item No. 7, is to note and the two notes are, is to note the performance framework for 24/25 and to note the business plan for 24/25. So can I ask members to please note those two reports? Thank you. We now move on to Agenda Item No. 8, which is the Equity and Inclusion Annual Progress Report, 2023/2024. This report presents the Equity and Inclusion Annual Progress Report, as you can probably tell by the title. There are no decisions to be taken on the report, this is for information therefore is to be noted. What I'm going to do is invite Rebecca again to introduce and outline the report and to welcome Grace as well. Thank you, Tony. And thank you, councillors, also for your previous comments on the last Agenda Item, which I think demonstrate our commitment to equality. And thank you for bringing out inclusion, accessibility, intergenerational inequity, and that is the reason why we have this overarching strategy to mainstream all of those things into everything that we do. So this is the compliance part and demonstrates that we're complying with our statutory obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty. It outlines how we are doing on our five quality objectives. Those are around leadership, a diverse workforce, council services, partnership working, and communities. This report reflects our programme approach to equity and inclusion, so we tried to include a lot more cross-organizational examples than we did in the previous year, and that included examples of good practice and case studies from around the council and from teams including human resources, the Gypsy Roma Traveler Team, policy and strategy, and strategic intelligence and performance. Just some key points to note for each of the themes under leadership, we've re-established our governance structure related to equity and inclusion, so that's now part of our Corporate Leadership Board Standing Agenda item, and we do that quarterly. We also report at our EDM which is our executive director meetings on a quarterly basis as well. On the diverse workforce, we're currently developing a new workforce strategy which should be going to HR Committee later this year, and a key piece of work has been setting up a Disabled Colleagues Project Board looking at their experience of working within the council and ensuring that we're updating our reasonable adjustment policy and processes. Under council services, so as part of that business planning process that was just outlined, in service planning, each area develops their own Equality Action Plan as well, and we report twice yearly on that, and we also carried out over 366 Equality Impact Assessments this year and 52 EQIAs, sorry, Equality Impact Assessments for the annual budget-setting process as well, and I think this was the third year that we provided a cumulative Equality Impact Assessment on our budget process as well. Under partnership, this was where we showed our strongest progress in the last year, and our Bristol Race Equality Strategic Leaders group set their new priorities for the coming year, ensuring the group connects the city through delivery of an open and free-to-all programme of events entitled Race in the City. This was the third iteration of Race in the City, and we also had a Employment Fair, Our City, Your Jobs event, which was for all public sector agencies. And then finally on communities, there was some great examples from our international team who've been supporting Bristol's African heritage community in relation to legacy and memorialisation of the trans-Atlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans. We also, part of our holistic approach to building communities was resourcing them via our grants programmes, and the Bristol Impact Fund, which I'm sure many of you are familiar with, continues to support community-led projects across the city. So a broad range of work which is covered within this report, which is why it's a rather long report as well, but we really wanted to make sure this year that we showed the work that was happening across the city, not just within my team, but across the entire council. And thanks also to Grace Bidolf, who's our delivery manager in the Equality and Inclusion team who authored the report. Thank you, Rebecca. Any questions or comments from members? And Councillor Renard. Again, thanks, and clearly a lot of data, and one thing I was reading through was the data tables around our workforce. At the end, I notice there's quite a lot that have not disclosed on some groups, so I just wondered if there's any work being done to try and encourage, obviously it's voluntary, isn't it, but is there anything work being done to encourage people to disclose against those different demographics? Obviously it's useful for us to know, because obviously it shows almost that we're lower than the Bristol population in some cases, like sexuality, for example, but that's unlikely to probably be the reality. Thank you. Disclosure is an issue in most organisations, to be honest, and one of the drivers is people not feeling that they're recognised appropriately in the categories on the form, so one of the things we do do is try and regularly re-evaluate that form and add new categories as necessary. The other, there's also a trust issue there as well, about what's the information going to be used for, can it be linked to me personally, is it anonymous, et cetera, et cetera. So we will take that point back to our colleagues in HR and ask them if there's any continuing work going on there about publicising exactly what the information is used for. We do try and outline that on the forms themselves, but I think there's always more that you can do to reinforce that message. So we'll take that back, thank you. Tom, do you want to follow up? Thank you. Just on a related topic, obviously this is looking back over the last year, but if we were looking forward, what would you see as like the top three priorities for the work going forward for the next 12 years? That's a great question. I think there's an opportunity with the new system, with the committee system. So what I was saying about us trying to get more examples from across the city, I think we're always trying to get that balance right of us setting a direction from the kind of corporate centre, but also there being continued leadership in different parts of the council. So I think there's, I mean, I'm really pleased to have taken on the data and insight performance and intelligence side of things as well, because I think that, so my personal priority is to make sure there's better join up in all of that performance reporting and making sure we're picking up on those indicators, like around intergenerational inequity or all of the other ones that relate to equity, so that we can get a bit more rigour behind how people are reporting on the progress they're making. Because I think, particularly on equity inclusion, it's easy to pick out some, to do something which sounds nice, but ultimately we don't know whether that ends up creating a step change in the problem that we're trying to address. So drawing those things together is my personal ambition. But I think also for the city, we are, the centres profiles have been really useful to give us a more accurate depiction of where we are as a city and seeing those trends. So I think, again, going back to the evidence of looking where are we starting to fall behind, where have we improved, where have we got bigger populations of particular demographics than we'd previously recognised, and then factoring that into the decisions we're making. And we try and pick all of that up through our quality impact assessments as well because we've got the evidence and data sets there to try and get people to reflect on the newest information. Does that answer your question? Okay. Councillor Stafford-Turnson. Hi, thank you. Yeah, just thinking about the three commissions, we touched on this a little bit when we did the sort of agenda setting for a plan, is we've got three different commissions and they've not all been sort of equally functional. So I was just wondering what sort of plans are in the works to make them more functional and sort of equally functional and what kind of equity of support we can give them to make them also be able to meet their sort of aimed objectives? Yeah, that's it. Another great question. Tony and I met on Friday actually to discuss some of this. And we're going to bring a paper with some different options to you, to the -- I've forgotten the name under the new WISI system, but where all of the different committee chairs meet in one place. Yes, in that meeting, to get views from across parties about the future direction for all of the equalities commissions. But in the interim, we have tried to ensure there's sustained support for them. So we have provided an interim budget for them to make sure they can keep, particularly the Disability Equality Commission can keep functioning. The Women's Commission is also still having meetings and going forward. So there will be more we can do to support them. We have got ideas about how to enhance what they do and how to integrate them into this new committee system as well. But we'll take our steer from Councillors as to which of those options you'd like to take forward. Also one of the things is that I know the Women's Commission has a democratic and members involved, and I've sat on it for a while myself. But I've noticed that the other two don't seem to have Councillors necessarily on them. I know the disability one doesn't. So will that, do you think, be something that's likely to be brought forward just to bring them up to the same kind of equity of democratic involvement? So we, as part of the existing model, it's for commissions to decide themselves how they would like to operate. But we can certainly bring you options for how that could exist in other ways. But we also think it's quite important that the commissions can have, can operate in a way that's most suitable for what they're trying to achieve. But yeah, we can bring options for that. It's also important for them to choose how they want to function as well. But they do, I think standardising some elements of how they operate would be really helpful for all of them so they know where they stand. And we can also make sure that we're giving them fair support as well. Yeah, because I think it's notable it's the Women's Commission, which is one that also has Councillors on it, is the one that's most active and meets most regularly. So it feels like the other two could really be a great value to those two commissions to have elected members to help assist with that kind of engagement with the Council as a whole in all the different parts of it. Yeah, so the Commission on Race Equity is not currently functioning because when the Chair stepped down, there wasn't a committee member who wanted to, sorry, a commission member who wanted to step forward into the Chair role. The Disability Equality Commission is meeting regularly as well. And their Chair, Alan Davies, also meets regularly with senior leadership and Councillors within and he's already met with Councillor Dyer as well. But yeah, I take your point that having, I think in general the approach we take to equity and inclusion and political involvement with that would be really helpful to discuss, because we had a lead Councillor for equalities before as well. So yeah, we'd be very happy to discuss that and take all the support that we can get. Thank you. Before I go to Councillor Reynolds, the other thing I just had is, as Rebecca notes, and we are going to bring a paper to Leaders and Chairs meeting, but beyond that, because not all the parties that are represented in that meeting will intend to bring it so that the other parties can have input into that as well. Councillor Reynolds. Thank you. I just reflect on this discussion. My background prior to being elected Councillor has been involved in setting up a user led mental health organisation that was acting on behalf of people who have experienced mental health problems. And I think there's a careful balance to be struck around political involvement. I think, to your point, if it ends up being imposed on equalities commissions, I think that could be quite damaging. And so I think we need to be very careful. I think we have a discussion by all means, but I think we need to be led by those organisations and those collections of people as to what they see as the best route to have that political input, because otherwise it can be quite damaging. We have to consider, you know, how power structures operate and how that can impact on people if suddenly that element's been imposed. So I think I just, a note of caution, I think for me in particular, as we approach this discussion, let's make sure we approach it in a well rounded way that has the support of the commissions, because otherwise it can end up doing quite a lot of damage and be quite unhelpful. Councillor Mack. Yeah, I just wanted to comment on the case studies running through. I think that's really great. I'm a numbers person, so I love the tables full of numbers, but a very clear, you know, different communication styles. And I think that's quite uncommon in council report. So, you know, thank you a lot for the different ways of communicating. And I guess, you know, that is so helpful and would speak to a lot of different people. And just, do you think that this is widely taken on board throughout the council? Is there more that we can do, I guess, so that more managers, more staff are seeing and engaging? Because I think there are so many aspects of the support that are quite engaging. Yeah, I think so. Thank you for that recognition because Grace really did a fantastic job of trying to access every part of the council to have them included in it, and we really wanted to champion their work to bring some more exposure to it. Again, there's always more that can be done to get more people feeding in, but also if you hear of examples that you think should be reflected in the annual report, we'd be really keen to hear those as well. And this was one of the first years that we got CLB to be suggesting case studies – sorry, our corporate leadership board to be suggesting case studies as well. And yeah, so we are really trying to sweep up as many as we can, but we – yeah, I think the link into the service planning is quite helpful of a quality action plan, so we're trying more when we're providing feedback and advice on those to also be asking people to think about if they have appropriate case studies to be sharing in this report as well. And I think – would you like to mention the corporate strategy? Well, just to say a line to that, obviously we have within the corporate strategy five what we call building blocks, which are cross-cutting principles that we ask all officers to apply to everything they do, of which quality and inclusion is one. So certainly from the theory of the system we're asking people to be proactive about quality and inclusion in every bit of their work, but as Rebecca says, there's always more to do and more checking that that is always the case, but that is the theory, so it's been a developmental journey I'd say for several years actually at the Council, and from my seat sort of having overview of these reports, it's been fascinating to see them grow over the last three or four years, and I think you see a lot more comprehensive practice now than you did, so it feels like a journey that's going in the right direction. I think my point about the case studies is – I'd say it's brilliant that they're coming in and from so many different people – I think my point was also about them going back out and sort of being engaged with, you know, how is that and maybe is it something about being bite-sized, but how many people are then getting and acknowledging and going through this report, because there are so many really emotive things to connect to. So you mean about external engagement with the report and how it's utilised by people outside of the Council? No, I think I'm actually most interested in how are we engaging everyone, so staff and managers, I guess mostly managers in the Council. I mean, obviously this will be shared, but if we acknowledge that something being shared doesn't mean that a lot of people will have read it, because it is brilliant, it is also long, and I think there are so many bits of it that are really useful and I'm just wondering like how do we break that down and make sure that lots of people are engaging with it? Yeah, we'll take that away and have a discussion with our colleagues in internal comms about if there's more engagement we can do internally to bring more exposure to it, and we'll try and do that in a piffy and concise way that is as accessible to as many people as possible. Yeah, and I think that was a conversation that Tim and I also had, so you may see Rebecca on her TikTok any time soon. Councillor Edwards. Thank you. Yeah, it leads on a little bit from what Councillor Mack's just said, it's such a great and comprehensive piece of work and you know, it's got everything in there and there's a lot of information which is great if you're reading it as a document. Similarly as we're now in the committee system, one of the objectives of the committee system I believe is more public engagement, you know, more people coming to meetings, more people engaging in the things that we're doing. Basically there are IQAs around the kind of interactions people have with the council, like when you fill in consultations and when you are in those public-facing situations, like when people go to Temple Street, I know that that is measured. I just wondered if there was any scope to take some of this to the different committees to see how they are able to connect with different communities. You often see it, you know, whether that's full council, maybe not full council, but certainly scrutiny committees, you get sort of the same people who are very, very engaged in this. Yet where there are going to be policies that affect a huge range of people, very diverse population of Bristol, geographically as well, we want to be able to reach and we want to hear from them and I just wonder if there's any scope of using this information and sort of again maybe doing a bit of a shorthand for policy chairs so that they can think about how they engage with different communities in Bristol and if they're noticing particular communities aren't engaging, they will then notice that and be able to then help. Would that be a way we could use this document? Thank you, yes. I think it is certainly a way that we can use this. We've got a few other tools at our disposal as well we can make sure that we share with chairs. One thing to say just broadly on that point of communication and engagement, we're due to revisit the council's communication strategy this year and we've been in discussion with the leader already and Deputy Leader about that aspiration to do more engagement and what that might look like so we'll certainly be turning our minds to that and how we put together a credible, costed plan but one that can sort of systematise some of that engagement without losing the richness of it. In terms of the tool sets, whilst static reports like this are certainly really helpful we do have a lot of interactive tools as well that Nick's team actually have a big hand in producing so we do a lot of work on our ward profile tools, on city-wide interactive mapping that can pick up all sorts of information about how different demographics and communities experience different parts of the city or different issues so we'll make sure that we share that amongst chairs and help familiarise everybody because as much as a report like this I think that will really help people understand where within the city and which communities are best to engage on any given topic. That's great, thank you. Ok I'm going to then Councillor King and then Councillor Stafford Townsend and if there's nobody else we'll probably then call it to a close. Thank you, it's interesting to note not a single member of the public here today unfortunately. I was just interested as well to, again it's fantastic work and a lot to celebrate there, in terms of the supporting international strategy stuff we've obviously, I feel like we've been very strong on that in the past eight years and longer and I'm just interested with things like the Mayor's Migration Council and all the fantastic work that goes through those kind of partnerships, what happens now with that work? How do we keep that on the top of the agenda? I guess that's a question to you guys as well but also to Councillor Dyer and yeah how do we keep our presence on an international stage and that voice for Bristol and for our international communities high on the agenda. Yes thank you it's certainly a point that's been on my mind obviously within my division that I have the international service as well so that's something that's an active conversation at the moment and it would be a lot of detail to go through. One of the things we've started to do is map all of our various international networks where we're represented, where that can continue under the new system or where there might be barriers and having discussions with those networks where that's the case. So Mayor's Migration Council is a good example, that even without a Mayor there's a level of participation that we can still engage within so we're doing that work at the moment to understand what that looks like and putting forward an updated program of work over the year so that will be an active conversation I'm sure with this committee, with Leidja and others as we move forward but it very much remains an aspiration to keep international networks alive and also thinking aside from all of the good networking and learning we get from that there's always been a good fiscal case for it, we do very well in international funding as a city and that's certainly something we want to keep on maximising. And I just came in and just added that as Tim said there is a piece of work being done, I think what I would say is we do have to recognise as was mentioned and everybody agreed with earlier on we are facing some very clear financial challenges so I think one of the things we want to make sure we do is that whatever engagement we do internationally that we are clear about what the benefits are and what are the alternative methods of realising those benefits however there is a piece of work that is being done by the international team which we hope will be put in the public main vote very shortly about the values of the international work that we've done including the monetary value about how much they brought into the city over the last 10 years or so of the international team being in place and I think what we're also hoping is there will be a couple of announcements coming quite soon about opportunities that have arisen out of the most recent visits as part of what the international services have been doing. Now I'll move on to Councillor Stafford Townsend, you were the last one. Thank you very much, it was about quality impact assessments and I see you've done 111 last year which was great, I was wondering if you have like a target amount of employees that you're trying to run that training with and if it would be possible if maybe because they are featuring in reports maybe we could do a training session with members and members understand sort of the way in which they're actually assessed and created so they can understand the full methodology of it? Yeah I think that figure was in relation to the training we rolled out rather than the amount of equality impact assessments we filled in, yeah we did two member induction sessions last week actually to go through our statutory commitments but we'd be very happy to do some bespoke training on how equality impact assessments are filled in and what we're looking for but also to obviously target it to members about what it's helpful to be picking out. So we do sign off all of them and actually a lot of the other core cities their equality and inclusion services don't sign them off, they ask the services to do that, but we do that as a kind of quality assurance process, however we're obviously not the experts in everything that the council does which is where it's really valuable to have member input into those equality impact assessments of any things that you pick out that you would expect to see there that aren't noted but yes in summary we'd be very happy to do that training. Brilliant, thank you. Okay, thank you, what I'm going to do now is ask members of the committee to note the report recommendation which is that the strategy and resources policy committee notes the equity inclusion annual progress report 2023/2024, can I take that as noted. Thank you all very much, thank you Tim, Rebecca, Nick and Grace. Okay, we now move on to agenda item number nine. This report seats approval of the household support fund policy up to the 5th of September 2024 and its proposed four million pound allocation including a change of budget to reflect this funding. This is a key decision as it involves spending more than 500,000 pound and has a significant impact on two or more wards in the city, I'll go through the report recommendations after I've invited Graham and Matt to introduce and outline the report, over to you Graham. Thank you Tony, Graham Clapp, Head of Revenues and Benefits. And I'm Matt Kendall, I'm the Benefits Technical Manager. Okay, let's go through the background then, following the Chancellor's budget announcement a fifth round of household support fund was announced for the period from April to September of 2024, across England that was 421 million pounds to support those in most need with the cost of food, energy, water bills, phone, broadband, clothing and in exceptional circumstances housing costs. The funding this time is only six months, you'll probably remember previous HSF's were 12 month awards, but we have an award at the moment which only lasts until September and as I'll mention later on some uncertainty as to what will follow. The monies have to be distributed and received by the recipients by the end of September and the Council had to provide initial delivery plans by May, we've done that. The funding to Council is on behalf of DWP and it's made under Section 31 of the Local Government Act of 2003. We will administer the scheme and provide direct assistance to vulnerable households and families with children particularly affected by the cost of living. As I've said already this is a six monthly award and it only runs up until the end of September. We have received our portion of the 421 million which is just over four million pounds so £4,039,965 exactly and it's based on two MI returns, we have to do an initial return mid-July so not far off now and a final one towards the end of October which will show that we've spent the money, otherwise we won't get it all back. The eligibility criteria are as follows it can be used to assist households with the cost of food, gas, electricity, water, phone broadband, essential household items for instance white goods, beds, bedding, clothing, baby sanitary products and in the exceptional circumstances housing costs. Unlike one of the very first iterations there's no ring fence here so there is no proportion that has to be sent on a particular cohort of individuals, the money can be used to provide supplementary advice services to award recipients including debt advice and benefit advice, this is not meant to be the primary function however. Local authorities need to consider those groups who may not have benefited from any recent cost of living support but we do not need applicants to make an application in order to receive money so we can allocate directly. Every local authority however must have at least an application basis as part of this and we've got the local crisis prevention fund which I'll mention later which obviously manages to satisfy that criteria. It cannot be used for anything related to mortgage related costs and it must be adequately advertised. So there've been some minor additions to this very latest round of funding as follows, there is now funding for evaluation activities such as data collection, analysis and report writing. Any publicity material for the scheme must make it clear that the funding is being provided by the UK government and delivery plans must be signed off by your section 151 officer and responsible, it says cabinet member it's not cabinet member anymore it's committee member. So implementation of the fund, for existing schemes and other support which deliver the same outcomes and where the need is greatest but the need to be mindful for possible funding overlaps and this must be in addition to any amounts previously committed by the council to be provided in either cash vouchers and or advice by the distribution of grants while using the voluntary or third sector. We are allowed to use some of the administration but that must be kept to an absolute minimum. As I mentioned earlier there's a reporting structure and we have to make DWP aware of how we spend the money in order for them to satisfy it to release the funds. So just to very quickly go through the proposal, there's a targeted support of up to 2.043 million which is for free school meal and pupil premium recipients during the school holidays. So as Tony mentioned earlier we've already allocated that for the Easter and the May holidays retrospectively because this is award April to September and those holidays fell within that and from memory that means just over a million pounds of that money has already been committed, hence the fact there's about three million left. We're looking to spend just under 500,000 so 498,000 on the household support fund so that will help up to 3,000 low-income households in crisis with food, fuel, furniture, poverty 350K of that going to the fund, 140K of that going towards the admin of that fund. We're looking to add 150,000 pounds to our discretionary housing payment fund to assist up around 400 low-income households in additional need with their housing costs and the main ethos of DHP is to make sure that someone maintains and secures a tenancy. As we all know homelessness is incredibly expensive as well as morally wrong so from that point of view what we do therefore is use that money to make sure that anyone who needs support during that time has got some additional funds in addition to the DHP money we've already got from DWP. 120,000 pounds will go to support those with no recourse to public funds so that's predominantly asylum seekers, Syrian-Afghan refugees. We're making a 220K payment to care leavers and foster children that will assist around 100 care leavers, 450 foster children, vouchers around 400 pounds each to assist with their food and heating and that will be administered through the Children, Families and Safer Communities Directorate. 2,000 is going to the Bristol Old People's Forum for a quarterly newsletter which will help publicise support that's available to them during cost of living crisis. 25K to Bristol Age UK to provide additional emergency support to older people who are struggling financially due to the crisis. About half a million pounds will go to Feeding Bristol, as you know they do incredible work with all of Bristol's food banks so that will help them through fair share to support Bristol citizens who need food bank support. Up to 380K will go to the Centre of Sustainable Energy to support around 750 vulnerable households who are negatively impacted by the rising energy costs. Around 400,000 will go to the advice sector, as I mentioned earlier, to help people with support with debt advice and benefits advice. 10,000 pounds are going to disabled households and that will go via WeSail, Bristol Disability Equality Forum and Bristol Reclaiming Independent Living and we're taking 96,000 out of this for administration, which is only 2.5%. The standard usually is five but obviously we've got a very small amount of money so we're trying to do what we can. What you might notice, just in case you think the figures don't add up, is that that's total spend of 4.4 million and we've only got 4.039 million but we've got 368K back in credit from our voucher payment supplier, which is actually the next agenda item which I'll talk about later, H fault. That means we've been able to recycle that money and use it in this period of HSF. That was it. Thanks, Graham. So because this is a key decision and this is the first one we've done under the new committee model, I'm going to explain what the process is. So what I'm going to do now is read out the report recommendations. I am then going to move the report and the recommendations and ask for a seconder and then once that is done, I'm going to allow the opportunity for any comments or questions from members and for debate as necessary. So the recommendations are that the Strategy and Resources Policy Committee, one, approves the Household Support Fund Policy April 2024 to September 2024 and change the budget to reflect this funding. Two, authorizes the Chief Executive in consultation with the Chair of the Strategy and Resources Policy Committee to take all steps required to accept and spend, including procuring and awarding contracts over £500,000, the remaining £3 million of the extended allocation of the DWP Household Support Fund as outlined in Household Support Fund Policy April 2024 to September 2024 and up to the maximum budget envelope outlined in this report. I thereby move the report and the recommendations and set out. Can I ask for a seconder? Thank you, Caroline. You formally second it. Oh, I second that. Thank you. I now ask members if they have any comments or any questions. Councillor King. Thanks very much for the report, Graham. I just want to lament, for a start, that it's only six months worth of funding, not the 12 months, and the lateness in which it came in as well and the delay in the final grant award. It's not best practice, is it? So my concern moves to the amount of funding that we'll be able to give our children and young people in receipt of free school meals during the summer holidays, how that's only going to cover three of the six weeks. Bearing in mind, £15 a week is the absolute flat bare minimum of what we should be giving these kids anyway and the consequences of that if that's spread across a six-week provision. That's unacceptable for me from my perspective, so I just wanted to know what's the proposals for us to get these kids fed for the rest of the summer holiday period. I don't know what the breakdown of the fundings looked like in previous years as well. This is the first time I've seen this particular report, and I was just wondering, for example, with energy being supplied over the summer months, has it been reflected upon that it's the summer period, not the winter period? Is there room for some of that money to be diverted towards food if it's not needed in the same extent? I'm sure it is, but those kind of things, bearing in mind that food for hungry children needs to be a first priority, thank you. I'll pick up the first part of that, and that will pick up the energy bit because I think that will be the easiest way to do it. To answer the question with regard to previous awards, it is the case that the advantage of a 12-month award previously meant that we were able effectively to smooth the money out across the year. This has got a bit of a double whammy in that we've only got half the money, but we've also got the biggest school holiday to cover. That is definitely reflected in the award that we've been able to make. You're not the first person to raise what can we do. From our point of view, I've got two observations on that. First one is we don't know what the outcome of the general election will be with regard to what support might then come out of the woodwork with effect from October 1st. Certainly when I've been asked this question before, my thought is that if we do know there is going to be either an HSF part two or a replacement to HSF, possibly under a different government might be called something differently, obviously we would immediately use that to try and make up what we can. With regard to the what can we do for the fact that we've given 45 and in previous years we've given 90, the only safety net we've got is Local Crisis Prevention Fund. So obviously what we would be suggesting to those who find that they can't make the money last, and I absolutely appreciate that that might be the case, that they make representation to us for LCPR. Do you want to pick up the energy point? By all means. Yes the energy amount has been reflected, it's broadly just under half of what we gave last year, so I appreciate there could be an argument to say it could be reduced further because it's covering the spring and summer as opposed to obviously autumn, winter and all the year we're through. But some of the money as well is to do preventative stuff for the winter as well, so it's also retrofitting energy advice, etc. like that as well, so it's not just pure energy costs in terms of emergency need. I thought I'd just ask as well, sorry, add as well, is that if we were to go for example carry on doing the similar amount of support that we had done over previous summer monies that would come to a total of over 300 million pound just for free school meals children, so obviously that would leave only just under a million pounds left for all the other kind of deserving good causes, not to say that free school meal children obviously aren't, but then it obviously makes it quite hard to balance the books when we've got this very limited amount of money coming through. Do you have a follow-up, Elle, or? No thanks, Geoff. Councillor Murphy. You just said 300 million for school kids, but I think you meant three million, otherwise my ears were like, what? That's how much we've spent before, missed that one in the budget. It's worth noting that neither of the parties that could make up the government sadly have household support fund in the manifesto, so I guess we are at a point where we can't predict now what might be promised or pledged next month, so yeah, looking at this cut in half and the difficulties there, but I also acknowledge that we can't predict what might be coming in the next few months, unfortunately it's not been raised as a priority in the manifesto process. There is a comment more than a question, and I think it does note, but my feeling is that I can't see any incoming government not continuing with some form of this payment because it affects so many kids and so many people in such dire circumstances, I think it's worth remembering this isn't just money that goes to Bristol, it goes to most of the other cities, but all of the cities in the UK. Do you have any... Bernard? Thank you, I think just on the comment about manifestos, I'd probably politely point out that for about the last three years it's been Labour and the cooperative party that have argued for extension and renewal each year, and I've been one of the signatories to those calls and will obviously talk to hopefully an incoming Labour government to flag this as I'm sure others will do so as well, I think it's really that smoothing over that's the issue here, I don't know why it always isn't just extended for 12 months, and then we wouldn't be having this problem, but we are going to need to keep the KF alive because the local crisis prevention fund as you refer to is about 700k all in isn't it, and half that's for council tenants, ring fence, specifically obviously who we know can submit specific challenges, although there's a bit of extra funding there that we put in last year's budget, so I do worry, and I think keeping kids well fed is really important because it feeds into so many other things, and we know it can impact on a range of other issues in terms of their development, education, and all sorts, so I do worry, I do think we need to think through what other contingencies we are going to have in place beyond funding to make sure kids are supported, because the general election outcome will be known 5th of July in the early hours, we're into the school holidays two weeks later aren't we? Absolutely, I mean there is some education money as well isn't there that supports holiday hunger, I know, but you're absolutely right, the fundamental here is we're trying to squeeze a court out of a point pot or the other way around, whichever one you want to do, so from that point of view with this amount of funding, Matt and I have sort of racked our brains with every single permutation of that money in order to make, because between us the conversation we had with the deputy lead in the previous administration was that some seemed to think we had 45, and that doesn't mean it's good that we've got 45, but it is really difficult, and also because of the way that the holidays fall with this award makes it a real challenge. Any more comments or questions? Tim. Just for my own clarification really, you talked about the sort of element that you're going to spend on retrofitting and sort of improving insulation, that kind of thing, is that an element that has to be spent as part of this grant? I'm just wondering whether if we've done that in previous years, and how much take up that's actually had, whether it's all been used? So to answer the first question, no it doesn't it's discretionary with all of this body of work, so as long as it fits in with the eligibility criteria given by DWP as Graeme kind of outlined in the bullets earlier on, that's up to us in effect to decide. But saying that, last year they spent over, the Census of Sustainable Energy spent over £800,000 on this and emergency payments, and I also asked if they could have some additional monies because they ran out two months short of the deadline, so the need's there, but not to say, I do appreciate the need's probably in all of these areas in excess of what we're going to give them, but the need was definitely there and served in full. Just following up on Tim's question, and just to clarify, if any of these elements are not taken up, or if we very much suspect they will be, we can switch the money onto one of the other areas. Yes we can, the only thing I'd point out, if we tried to use the money in the way that we've used it previously, we'd be spending over 75% of it just on the free school meals part, that's not to say it's wrong. So we could, and what we claw back we will, but the amount that that will add is relatively always going to be small, because the other sums proportionately are considered, obviously one of the awards, even under this, is over 2 million of the 4 million. So yes is your answer to your question, but it's not going to be a like for like replacement for what we've had in previous years? Yeah, unfortunately. In fact we shouldn't be in the situation where we're relying on money like this having to come down to feed our kids anyway, but that's just my personal opinion. Any more comments or questions? Okay, in that case, I'm going to move to a vote. What I would do is I'll ask for all those who are in favour to raise their hands. So all those in favour, can you please raise your hands? Okay, that's unanimous. Oh, it raised my hand as well. Thank you, so I don't need to ask for the other votes because it's unanimous. Okay, thank you. That decision has now been passed as per the recommendations made in the report. And that moves us on to agenda item number 10, which is related, which is the procurement of payment vouchers. This report seeks approver to procure and award a corporate contract to provide food, supermarket and/or fuel gas electricity vouchers for a value of up to £5 million per year for three years to assist the distribution of financial assistance to low-income households. This is a key decision, as it involves spending more than £500,000. So I'll invite Graham and Matt to introduce an outliner report, and then as before I'll read out the recommendations and propose the motion and then ask for a re-enter. So Graham. Thank you, Tony. So as Tony said, it's to procure a contract to provide food and fuel vouchers up to £5 million per year for three years. The last one really does sort of neatly fit with this. The reason that the value is so high is we have to expect there's a possibility, whatever government we get, that household support fund will continue. If household support fund continues, we need a voucher system. And our current voucher system contract is up for renewal in October. And that covers not only household support fund, which we just talked about, but also as it says, a local crisis prevention fund, which was referenced in previous questions, as well as homelessness assistance. So the request is to spend up to £5 million a year for three years. Continuation of ASOSF is £4 million of that. The current contract is with a company called Hawk. Certainly our experience they've been really super responsive with regard to, as was referenced in one of the previous questions, the sort of challenging timeframes to find out that we have to do this sort of thing that they've been really good with. In addition to which, as was pointed out earlier, they've also been able to recycle funds that weren't spent or weren't used, that we can get back and we can reallocate again. So that's about as much as I think I need to say on that really. It's a lot shorter than the previous one. Okay. Thank you, Graham. So the report recommendations are that the Strategy and Resources Policy Committee (1) approves the spend and procurement of a contract to deliver payment vouchers to fulfill the council's need via a variety of services to assist low-income households as outlined in this report. And (2) authorises the Chief Executive in consultation with the Chair of the Strategy and Resources Committee to take all the steps required to procure and award a contract or contracts to provide emergency payment vouchers at an estimated value of up to £15 million from October 2024 to October 2027. I thereby move the report and I ask for a seconder. I second that. Thank you, Caroline. I'd like to move now for questions and comments and debates. Councillor Mack and then Councillor Kee. We've previously spoken about this and quizzed on where can they be spent and what's the value and how easy is it, you know, what the cards or the different methods of getting the money and spending the money. I'm kind of just saying I quizzed you before and there were lots of good answers about how they are easily spent in a lot of places on the things people need. You've done the work in terms of are they accessible in different parts of the city, can people access the money. So, thank you for providing that reassurance previously. My understanding is within a mile of a supermarket for everybody. Half a mile, sorry. Okay, thank you. Councillor King. Why supermarket food only? I think it's a balance between trying to get somebody who can contract through all of the places. So, we've got a whole variety of schemes to do. So, we've tried cash, we've tried debit card vouchers. So, effectively debit card vouchers could then be used universally to anybody who sets debit cards, et cetera. We think that this is probably the best value for money you get, because the most universal way is either cash or debit cards if you're being honest. But the thing with debit cards, especially when you're looking at small denominations going back to free school meals is they come with a cost per card and then a cost per transaction and a cost per cancellation and there's some other kind of hidden fees as well on top of that. So, therefore in terms of, you know, buying for your money, you don't get as much. This one is the easiest to access, we believe, for individuals in terms of being able to get a code that could be assisted or unassisted straight into your phone, or we can do it via paper, or whatever method that people want to do it. And it also comes with a 2.28% discount rate. So, that's the rationale for choosing this method, but what we haven't done at the moment is made a decision about what the procurement solution will be that will be still be subject to a full open tender process. So, it doesn't have to be to like just food and fuel, it could be other things if that's what people thought was a better use of money. I don't know how it compares to the Healthy Start Voucher, for example, which I think is able to be used in much more sort of diverse types of businesses that sell food, fruit, veg, etc. So, I don't know if that method has been compared just to see if there's anything that can be replicated there. I'm just thinking about, well, for many reasons, but not just to support our biggest, you know, food organisations in the city, but to a lot of the independent high streets that we've got in the city. Also, the cultural diversity of the offer of a lot of those high streets in the city that won't necessarily be where all our diverse communities shop, and have at their doorstep for ease of use as well. And also thinking about, you know, supporting local businesses and that, you know, sustainability of their, encouraging that diversity of shopping experience. So, I'd be pushing for that personally. Absolutely. And I understand that. I'm happy to have a look at the alternative. I haven't heard of that alternative. I'm being perfectly honest with you, but I'm happy, as part of the procurement exercise, that can be included. The only thing that I would add back to my previous answer is that when we looked at debit card take-ups, as in the percentage of spend versus award, it was kind of like about 92, 93% with these vouchers of 98%. So, there's actually monies often left on cards as well when we distribute them. So, it seems to get the best kind of, you know, return for the money that we give people, whereas previously, when it's been a debit card there, we have found like kind of relatively small denominations often left on debit cards as well. So, you know, in terms of propensity to spend from what we give them, this is the best one that we've found so far, noting that we also look at this as an alternative. Councillor Gillandris. Thanks, Chair. Obviously, Hawke provide a very good service, and you're very happy with that. I just want to press you on the discount rate. I mean, are there competitors out there that offer a better discount rate? So, we've been through this procurement exercise now I think probably four or five times, and each time, as you'd hopefully expect, it goes through a price and quality framework. Hawke have always been the best on both areas, but hence the reason why we're going out to OpenTender again, because you never know if someone has an improved market rate than they did last time, and/or maybe there's a new supplier in the market who could do even better than the existing ones. So, it's not like there were weds, particularly to the existing contractor, but, you know, we're have a look and I'm going to do that in full openness as we always do. Thanks. Councillor Stafford-Townsend. Thank you. And just picking up on the comment thread that Councillor King was on, it's only possible the ability of talking to some of the more independent retailers to be able to use these vouchers there? For example, Sweet Mart is much cheaper to buy food in bulk from Sweet Mart than it would be from the Tesco's. Could we talk to some independent shops like that and see if we could roll it out to them as well? I think it's absolutely a possibility again that we can do this through the tender process, yes. It depends, I think, also, I mean, like I said, it could be a contract or a contract, you know, and I think it depends obviously also in terms of how much money it would be to set up those and how much money you get in return to make it value for money as a whole procurement exercise to include any independent retailer or not. That's not safe to exclude them, but I think we just have to have a look at that and see how that works out. Because there's, I'm thinking, obviously not the same thing, but there's like a gift card that the free city centre bids are using independent businesses can sign up to as kind of the big corporations as well. Obviously, that's a gift card and that's not something we want to be advocating really, but something like that, that can be used by anybody who has a card machine. So, therefore, the same sort of logic would work for a gift voucher as well? Yeah, I think probably my answer, probably simply to the last one, I'd be more than happy to explore it. I think we'd have to just then see what kind of costs are associated with that, and going back to the small denominations, then whether, obviously, it makes really financial sense toward that or do it by that mechanism or not. Thank you. Okay, and on the back of the comments by Councillor King and Councillor Stafford Townsend, when you bring the procurement exercise back to the Chief Executive and myself, can we include an option to look at some of the proposals that have just been mentioned in the debate? By means of course. Thank you. Any more comments or questions? Okay, in that case, I'm going to move that we go to the votes on it. Can I see a show of hands for all those in favour? It's unanimous again, so thank you very much. That's Agenda Item Number 10 completed and approved, as per the recommendations. Okay, final item, which I suspect will be by no ways the least, is Agenda Item Number 11 which is the 2023-2024 Period 12 Finance Provisional Outone Report. Now, this report presents the detail of the Council's financial performance for the 2023-2024 financial year against the approved budget, as well as highlighting the movement from the previous 23-24 Period 10 four-year forecast that was reported to the Cabinet on an inception basis on the 5th of March, 2024. This report also provides detail of the delivery of planned savings for 23-24, sets out the current outline reporting cycle for the 24-25 financial year, and includes key decisions and urgent key decisions for noting and authorising. For this report, there are 13 items to be noted and another further five to be voted on, unless there are any objections, I plan to take the 13 items noted as one block and the other five items to be voted on as another block, unless any member insists to take any of the items separately. If you let me know at the point, what I'm going to do now is invite Tony Kirkham to introduce and outline the report. Thank you, Chair. Tony Kirkham, Interim Director of Finance. So, as you said, Chair, the detail before you is the Council's outturn for 23-24, includes the General Fund housing revenue account and the capital programme, and this will be reported in detail to each of the policy committees at their next meeting. In addition to the outturn report, which you have here today, the more technical report, which is the City's actual accounts, were considered in draft form by the Audit Committee on 30 May, which was inside the regulated timeline, and are currently with our auditors for auditing, which will take us into the autumn before hopefully those counts are signed off. They are currently out for public inspection. So, in relation to the messages which are coming through from the outturn report, you will see that the Council did live within its means in relation to the activity of 23-24, that did require some call down on General Fund reserves and a significant call in relation to provisions for inflation, et cetera. The provisions were in a position with a one-off support which allowed us to balance overall. However, you will note from the report there are a number of items which are ongoing in nature and pressures which are moving through into the current financial year, including our response to homelessness, increased demand in children services, commissioning issues in adults, and in relation to asylum seekers. All of these areas unfortunately continue and are quite significant in the current financial year. You will also note that in relation to the savings delivery profile, although savings were mitigated with provisions in year, there was £12 million worth of savings which were delivered in full, and as a result they roll into the current financial year and again create an ongoing pressure for the Council which it needs to manage going forward. As the Chair said, there are a number of items here for you to note, including some of the key decisions which we have taken in order to meet the needs such as in relation to the households support fund, but the vast majority of the other items are more technical in nature, moving monies between various different reserves, carrying forward the capital programme and revising the financial reporting timeline. So, happy to answer any questions, Chair. Thank you, Tony. So what I'm going to do is read out the list of items for noting and then I will read out the items for voting on, and then I will move the report and recommendations and ask for a seconder and then open it up for debate. So bear with me while I get through the 13 items for noting. So the Committee notes the Council's general fund revenue out-term position in line with the revised budget, see Section 2 in Appendix A1a. The Council's out-term position of $2.2 million underspend within the housing revenue account to be transferred to the Housing Revenue Account General Reserve. The Council's out-term position of a net $18.9 million overspend in the dedicated SKRS grant and filed in the application of the DFE's 23-24 safety valve contribution of $21.5 million that a total of $37.1 million is to be carried forward in the DSG deficit reserve. Four, the breakeven position on public health services. Five, the Council's capital out-term position of $231.8 million, representing an underspend of $42.1 million against the revised capital programme budget. Six, the performance on delivery of savings. Seven, the annual collection levels for council tax and business rates as set out in the report. Eight, the liver of aid debt as of 31 March, 2024. Nine, use of reserves and draft closing reserve balances, and this includes the drawdown of $8 million of flexible use of capital receipts to support delivery of the top five transformation programmes in line with the approved strategy. Also to note, the urgent key decision of a direct award provided a dissident capacity for new CAO Act assessments at a cost of up to $0.7 million during 2024-25. Ten, the finance urgent key decision made 13 March, 2024 regarding household support fund 2024-free school meals vouchers for $681,000. Eleven, the urgent key decision made 20 March, 2024 to direct award to provide a dissident capacity for new CAO Act assessments at a cost of up to $0.7 million during 2024-25. Twelve, the key decision taken 10 April, 2024 regarding DFT funding of $0.606 million for traffic signals. Thirteen, the key decision made 19 March, 2024 regarding local authority housing fund round free grant allocation for $7.279 million capital and $0.057 revenue funding that the executive director for growth and regeneration in consultation with the cabinet member for housing, delivery and homes applies for, accepts and spends the grant funding. All those offered noting for voting on are the following. Fourteen, the committee approves, fourteen, a transfer to our drawdown from the general fund reserve as outlined in the report. The transfer of $2.2 million to the HRA general reserve. The re-profiling of up to $42.1 million off the capital programs, 23-24 underspend into future years. Seventeen, the release of $46.6 million corporate funds, that's $28.1 million for inflation, $11.3 million for pay awards and allocated to directorates and $7.2 million optimism bias savings contingency. As approved in the 23-24 budget but not necessarily allocated to directorates cast limits. And finally number 18, the revised financial reporting timetable for 24-25 as set out in appendix A8. I move the report as per those noted items and approvers. Can I ask for a seconder? I second that. >> Thank you, Caroline. I now move open for comment or questions. Councillor Lecce? It is more of a comment actually, and it concerns the out of authority placements and the very high figure we have got there, the revised budget $15.7 million, out turned $22.9 million. I know action is being taken, I know the situation is improving, but the previous resource is scrutiny. Put a lot of emphasis on this and said it was going to get higher and higher, this figure, unless we took some action, either to try and create more capacity locally, either in Bristol or to work with neighbouring authorities, we need to look at a place, have additional capacity in our own sort of managed homes. I know it is being looked at, but there is some urgency here because this figure is absolutely huge. It's a very big figure. I'm not sure there's much more we can do about it, but I think as a committee we need to note this figure and to keep our eyes on this one, because this is quite a major thorn in our side, if I can use that phrase. Thank you, Chair. I wholly agree. It is a difficult financial position for the Councillor, and this is a significant risk to be taken into account. There are a number of investors to save schemes in this space which have been commenced and will continue to commence throughout the following financial years. It does take some time in order to get registration in relation to residential homes, et cetera. So I think the department are looking at all of the options available, and obviously the same report will go to the policy committee and they will be able to raise issues or concerns as part of that process. A few observations. I think starting with that one, actually, the Council has raised is a really important one, because it is something about how we make sure the whole Council is geared towards those things that we need to prioritise to achieve those savings in terms of what procurement is spending its time on, what legal is spending its time on, what they believe departments are that all need to come together to make that particular thing happen on the right timelines. There was a lot of discussion through cabinet board over the course of several meetings last year where we looked at things like our housing delivery programme and went, well, you know, Gorham Homes is delivering significant numbers of new homes, local authority. We have got our own house building programme as well that is separate from that. Why don't we designate a few more of those houses being built as children's homes, for example, and we should be able to find the capital to be able to achieve that, because actually the savings, it is going to realise in terms of revenue, will be very quickly achieved and the payback period is very short when actually you think about some of the schemes that we are spending money on delivering homes for potentially 30, 40, 50 years as payback periods. So I think there is something for me about how we make sure that the whole Council is geared towards prioritising those things we need to get a grip of and have been doing a lot of work on. So I think that is my starting point. I think secondly it is good to see also though that the capital programme, although underspent, I think this is the highest it has been, isn't it, in terms of delivery of the capital programme. And I know particularly with the HRA, there is a 40.7 million increase in the spend on the capital programme this year, which is primarily from new Council homes being built. So for me there is something about making sure that under these new arrangements we keep Council House building on track, both in terms of the schemes to get into in terms of gore but also that we are linking in to those wider cross Council challenges that we are facing to make sure that we deal with those at the same time. And I think there is just something about needing to look at our capital programme and looking at what are we prioritising and what are we making sure we actually get done from those things we know may slip, what are we going to make sure absolutely does get achieved particularly in relation to the top four transformation programmes. Those are probably some of my initial observations. Thank you. So I just sent me an hour of top five. Well yeah but I think there is a question mark about the property programme, about selling off Council assets. We shouldn't be doing that, should we, when we've got things that we could be using those assets for to achieve over the savings. Thank you, Tom. Did you want to respond to that? Chair, just to say I wholly agree that the solution to some of the problems which are obviously coming through from the out turn is a one Council approach and beyond that a one City approach to some of the issues which we are facing. So that joined up nature will improve the outcomes for us. Councillor Mack? I think we need to look back a few months because we finished last year and we were like oh, balanced budget, great. But let's be really clear that actually a lot of what's been going on over the last year is there was a chunk of CAS money and these are savings that weren't realised last year that are not being realised this year. Back in February, Greens were you know we've seen on the budget we didn't support it and you could see these savings were incredibly optimistic. We had to make a plan but the plan was incredibly optimistic. We haven't been delivering a balanced budget plan because these savings, we are falling behind on these savings. So yeah, let's be really clear that these are ongoing problems we didn't fix last year and it's just looking worse and worse. I guess I hope that there's going to be a situation now of you know everyone in the relevant committees and the budgets of the committee and this committee being really aware of these challenges that face us and I'm looking forward to I guess the more transparency and the more people in these committees focusing on these challenges that are across the whole council. Thank you, Chair. In relation to savings delivery, it is an ongoing issue for the council. We have had some internal audit work to look at the improvements we can make in relation to joining the process up and we will respond to those. They'd obviously be considered by the audit committee further down the line but yes I would absolutely stress that the policy committees are in a position to review and support the delivery in relation to the savings programme which in the current financial year once you take into account the roll forward position is some £47m and obviously that is very challenging. The earlier you start a process in relation to delivering savings, the more success you tend to get and you will note that obviously we've got the financial reporting timetable which we'll be bringing before you but we're also looking to bring forward the budget timetable in relation to delivering 25/6 and the ongoing MTFP. Paul, did you want to comment? Yeah, just to add, what I find encouraging is that initial discussion from members and the point that the councillor first started the conversation on and the way it's developed because in a large organisation like the City Council what we focus on and what we think is important is where we're most likely to make progress. So focusing on the right things that are urgent and require rigour and drive is the crucial thing really so it's very encouraging to me to hear what's already been said and although you're identifying a situation which is highly unsatisfactory and needs a lot of progress, it's certainly in my mind the right thing to be focusing on and in that one council way that you described. The thing I wanted to add, Chair, though, is of course other core cities are facing the same situation, Bristol isn't unique in this, and the other core cities are also considering what should our asks be of an incoming government, whatever that is, in the way in which we wish to work with the government and the priorities that we want to work on and this is precisely one of those priorities and the discussion that I was a party to last week with my colleague, chief executives was on exactly this area so that we try to align our asks of an incoming government in the areas that are causing us most stress and this most definitely would be one of them so I guess in summary what I'm saying is this needs to be a preoccupation for us within the organisation, supporting our colleagues in departments and their relevant committees and also externally indeed with the combined authority which could well end up having some kind of role in this area and with national government. Before I come to Tom, I just also add the fact that three weeks ago we had a meeting of the core cities cabinet and I think it illustrates the point about Bristol's not alone on this, I think pretty much every major city is facing similar problems, in some cases some of the other major cities are in a much worse situation, I mean Liverpool is just coming out of being placed into special measures, Birmingham is in a terrible situation for various reasons and the underlying cause of that is, we have to be honest, is a lack of funding for local government and at some point I will say there needs to be a review of how local government is funded, that may not necessarily just simply be handing more money but may also be some of the things that a potential incoming government might be looking at in terms of making it easier for us to access other forms of funding as well. In terms of the combined authority, I think, with all respect to John, I think we are all respecting a Labour government to be in power very shortly and I think in the Labour manifesto and made it very clear we are going to put a lot of emphasis on combined authority so I am very keen to ensure that we have a very positive relationship between the unitary authorities and our own mail combined authority and I have met with the Mayor of Norris to discuss that and going forward and I think we know we are in a difficult financial situation, we have been in a difficult financial situation for a while and it has required a lot of work and a lot of effort to ensure that we are not in a situation that some other local authorities find themselves in and as Tony is probably, along with Paul is probably the officer I have seen the most in the last couple of weeks and that will continue as we do need to carefully track how we spend money and what we spend it on. Tom you had your hand up. Yes, just two more observations and a question as well. I think temporary accommodation is actually a really good example. I think the average local authority is spending 5% of their core budget now on temporary accommodation. It is a cost that continues to balloon, it is a shared challenge for local authorities up and down the country, whether you are urban, whether you are a rural local authority and actually that is a good example of where actually the challenge is not just chuck more money at the problem, actually it is about how can we get more homes built at that social rent level in particular, that is a first thing. Secondly I think obviously going through the budget process this year will be interesting I think a lot of work was done by the last Labour Administration to set a balanced budget and that wasn't easy because as you have noted Tony it has been a significant challenge across the country and we need all parties to be offering up solutions to those challenges not just abstaining and not offering any alternatives. And then my question was just around delivery executives, obviously that was the body that previously used to meet to oversee the delivery of savings, will that be meeting again? And have you made any decisions around what the political representation on that body will be? Okay, to answer the last question, first the delivery executive has already met and will be meeting again. I have not made a finer decision about the delivery executive but Paul and I are planning to sit down and work out what would be the best approach for that. What I am very keen to ensure is that under the previous administration I think Councillor Chaney sat on the delivery executive. It is likely that if we do have political representation on that delivery executive it will probably be either myself or Councillor Mack but I haven't yet made that decision. That is subject to a further conversation with the Chief Executive about what would be the best approach to that. In terms of, as we move forward we are all going to, whether we like it or not, have to work together. I have stated this before and I am going to state it again, I am open to ideas and suggestions from all members regardless of their party affiliation and that will carry on into the future and I intend to stick by that. We do have a difficult situation and I think, hopefully, we will have, I think Tony didn't mention it but it was in an earlier report that we do have the finance subcommittee and that was part of the terms of reference of this group and I believe positive conversations have already taken place and that will be up and running and I hope that as a result that everybody will feel cross party that they are fully involved in the development of this budget going forward. I have a couple of things. One is just about the direct schools grant budget. That is quite heavily in deficit but I note that this is mainly from the safety valve but does this also include the sight of the roof at Montp everywhere high school because that might be a significant amount. The other thing is, going on, one of the things I noted was the loss of revenue from houses that have been lost right to buy. Given the situation that we have with housing crisis, what if we moved to not necessarily here but we could get the council to say that we are actually in a housing emergency and that might give us the power to actually suspend temporarily suspend right to buy. Would that actually make a difference to our budget to a significant amount and would it give us other powers or release other funding so that we could help to house some of the emergency situations that we have got? I think I can answer the second part. I think right to buy is an area where there is considerable political debate and I don't think all parties are on the same road about that. However, we don't have the ability to temporarily suspend it. That would need to be a decision made at central government level or through Tom's about to tell me that there is a way of doing it separately. I will let you speak in a minute. I don't know the details about the high school. It has been in deficit for quite a long time. The main reason for that in my opinion, and Tony may jump in and correct me as well, is there were reforms made in 2013/2014 which set higher standards for the level of education that was required, particularly in high needs education, but the additional funding needed to deliver that was not provided. As a result, councils like ourselves and I think two-thirds of councils across the country ended up in a situation where they ran a deficit and that is a considerably large amount. It would have been in the region of 50 to 60 million if they were in the safety route. It has come down to about 35 million off the top of my head. It is an ongoing problem. It is one that Tim asked the question earlier and it is one we do need to find a way of resolving. At the moment we are in the safety route to try and find a way to resolve that, whether that ends up being the ultimate solution may depend on what options are available from a future incoming government. If there is anything you want to add to that before I go to Tom? Just in relation to the D.S.G. deficit, obviously this has been building over a number of years and as the chair indicated and was set out in the report, if it was not for the safety valve contribution, then it would have significantly increased further. Now at the time when the council was considering entering the safety valve arrangement with the D.F.E., the trajectory in relation to the council's deficit on D.S.G. was basically in a number of years into hundreds of millions of pounds, which is not a financially sustainable position. There are dispensations in relation to the regulations currently in place until 2026, which means councils can continue to hold the deficit on their balance sheet without having to have sufficient other reserves to meet the deficit and therefore cancel it out. Should those regulations not be extended or adjusted and the council was not in a position where it was bringing that deficit down, then obviously that would have significant financial implications for the council and they would have to consider their overall financial sustainability at that stage. As the chair says, there are a number of local authorities who would be in that position at that time, so obviously it's something which we would anticipate that a new government would be looking at, but obviously what we don't know is what their policies would be in that space. OK, thanks Tony. Tom, I'm going to go to you for the last comment and then we're going to move to the vote. Yeah, I was going to briefly respond on the right-to-buy. I think it's worth perhaps the LGA's policy position statement being circulated around this policy committee that was signed off through thena between thespace and the relevant policy board earlier this year, which attempted to balance the range of political views that there are on this topic, because it's not as simple as scrapping it or keeping it. There's a range of other issues in that. There's an issue of questions of devolution and what you devolve down to local authorities to be able to take decisions for themselves, but also how do you help to protect things like having cost flaws and that to protect the costs of the money you've spent potentially building new council homes. But I think one of the biggest things we can do is just make sure we deliver on that Council House building programme, which whilst ambitious, you know, will transform lives and we should make sure we put the resources in place to continue to deliver that. Thank you. OK, thank you Tom. I'm now going to ask for a vote on the motion to note the - first of all let's do it one at a time. Alex, can I ask the committee to note recommendations 1 to 13 as set out? OK, and then can I ask the committee to vote on recommendations 14 to 18? All those in favour, please raise your hand. OK, that's unanimous. I keep forgetting to vote myself. So thank you for that. That concludes the first ever meeting of the Strategy and Resources Policy Committee and in fact the first ever meeting of any policy committee. Thank you for your contributions. Thank you to officers for their support and go! [Applause] [End of session] 1 Page 1 of 15 1 Page 2 of 15 1 Page 2 of 15 1 Page 2 of 15 1 Page 2 of 15 1 Page 2 of 15 1 Page 2 of 15 1 Page 2 of 15 1 Page 2 of 15 1 Page 2 of 15 1 Page 2 of 15 1 Page 2 of 15