Transcript

Good evening, Councillors. May I welcome you all to part two of our Annual Meeting, which we refer to as the Selection Council Meeting. May I ask my chaplain, Revan Ruth Brothwell, to say a prayer. Thank you, Madam Mayor. A moment silence. We come together tonight as a group of extraordinary people to seek inhumanity, the best for our borough, for its town and its villages. We seek wisdom in our decision-making. We seek gentleness in our deliberations and exchanges with one another. We seek the strength to lead. We seek compassion for each other. In looking for the greater good, we recognize that we are small. We bring ourselves before a higher power. As at the start of this new session, we pray for our mayor. We pray for our council leader. We pray for our chief executive. For all those who govern, making day-to-day decisions. And we pray for ourselves on this night and throughout the coming year. Amen. Thank you. Before we begin, I have a few housekeeping comments to make. First of all, may I ask that you switch your mobile devices to silent for the duration of the meeting. If the fire alarm sounds at any time during the meeting, we are not expecting it to go off. Everyone in the chamber should leave immediately through the nearest fire exits. Please proceed calmly to the assembly point, which is in Millmeade on the paved area adjacent to the river as you exit the site. I would like to remind everyone present that this meeting is being webcastied live to the internet and will be capable of repeated viewing. If you are seated in the council chamber, it is likely that the cameras will capture your image. You are deemed to be consenting to this and to the use of those images and sound recordings for webcasting and/or training purposes. If you are speaking at this meeting, your contribution will be recorded and broadcast. In addition, the public gallery area is being monitored by CCTV for safety purposes. Agenda item one apologies for absence. May I ask the democratic services and elections manager to report apologies for absence. Thank you very much. Madam Mayor, apologies this evening from Councillors Jeff Davis, Richard Lucas and Sue Wythe Price, and also I can understand from Councillor Matt Furness. Also from honoree Alderman, Catherine Cobbley, Jane Marks, Tony Phillips, Linda Strudwick and David Wright. Thank you. Agenda item two, declarations of interest. May I remind Councillors who have a discloseable pecuniary interest in any matter to be considered this evening to declare the interest now and withdraw from the meeting when we get to the relevant item of business. Are there any discloseable pecuniary interests? May I also ask in the interest of transparency whether any Councillor wishes to declare a non-pecuniary interest which may be relevant to any matter on tonight's agenda and to confirm that it will not affect their objectivity in relation to that matter. Are there any non-pecuniary interests? Agenda item three, minutes. Is the Council happy to confirm the minutes of the budget meeting of the Council held on the 7th of February and the extraordinary meetings held on the 21st of February and the 16th of April as a correct record? Thank you. Agenda item four, Mayors communications. I thought I would start this meeting without lining how I like to chair meetings and how Howard would do so in my absence. We both believe in running meetings in a respectful, fair, firm and inclusive way and like to create an environment in which people feel comfortable in speaking and contributing to the debate. So we can have as wide a range of views informing our decisions as possible. I would also like to encourage more people to engage in our debates and I want everybody to leave here feeling that they have spent their evening productively. Under our new procedure rules being introduced tonight, before I ask the proposal of a motion to speak, I shall be inviting Councillors to ask the proposal whether they require any clarification in relation of any aspect of the motion and I would encourage you all to take up this opportunity. I will ensure that this part of the meeting is for questions of clarity on the motion only and will not allow questions on wider issues. This approach should allow us to move into the debate following the proposal and seconding of any motion, during which time it cannot be a question and answer session. In return for managing the meetings in this way, I would ask you to keep your contribution focused on the topic under discussion and remember we are here to debate issues relevant to topics on the agenda. Try not to repeat comments that have already been made and please do not disparage any other member of the Council for their views and treat each other with respect at all times regardless of our differing political views. As a final reminder, the Council's code of conduct and the Nolan principles should be underpinning our behaviours and actions in these meetings. Each and every one of us has a legal duty to promote and maintain high standards of conduct and we should demonstrate this obligation in the business conducted at Council meetings. So in summary, I have the gavel and will not be afraid to use it. Finally, I would like to thank everyone who attended part one of the annual meeting last Wednesday and the civic service yesterday. It was lovely to see so many of you at both events and thank you for your support. Agenda item five, announcements from the statutory officers. I have received no notification from any of the statutory officers that they wish to make any announcements. Thank you. Agenda item six, public participation. You will see on page five of the agenda that prior to the adoption by the Council of its new Council procedure rules on 16 April 2024. A number of inquiries regarding public speaking were made and the members of the public concerned were informed that this meeting of the Council would be the next opportunity for them to address the Council on general matters either related to the powers, duties or functions of the Council or matters which affect the borough. The new procedure rules do not provide for public participation at the annual meeting of which this meeting is the second part following the mayor making meeting on the 8th of May. In these circumstances, I therefore propose that the Council agrees to suspend Council procedure rule 2.2 business at the annual meeting in order to receive questions and statements from the public on this occasion. Please may I have a seconder. Thank you, Councillor Potter. Is that all agreed? Thank you. We have three public speakers and three questions from the public this evening. May I first ask our first public speaker, who is Monica Lilly, to come forward to the public speaker's chair to make her statement. Ms Lilly, you are very welcome and you have three minutes which will begin when you start speaking. I didn't press hard enough, sorry about that. Good evening, Councillors. So I am Monica Lilly and myself and Liz Willis at the back here, my friend and colleague, we are representing and we are volunteers for the plant based treaty campaign and animal rising which is one and the same as amalgamation. So to pitch straight in, we're in a climate emergency and it's almost five years since the Council declared a climate emergency and committed to carbon neutrality. During this time, the Council has taken a number of steps especially as relates to transport and the build environment and this is to be commended. However, one notable absence from the Council's extensive planning around climate change is the issue of food. Globally, agriculture accounts for about one quarter of carbon emissions. In the UK, the figure is about 12%. Overwhelmingly, these emissions occur in the production of food. Food miles are a tiny fraction of the overall impact and the evidence is clear. Animal products have a vastly greater climate impact than plant based foods. As the BBC phrased it in a recent report, the very worst plant based food, i.e. the most heavily processed, is better than the very best in inverted commerce animal products. Raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world's vehicles combined. That's from a United Nations report, Livestock's Long Shadow 2006 and that still stands. Climate research conducted at the University of Oxford states that a plant based diet has only one quarter, the environmental impact of a diet containing an average amount of animal products. It is clear, therefore, that combating climate change must involve a shift towards a plant based food system and the government at all levels must play a part in encouraging this shift. If Guilford Council is committed to reducing the climate impact of both its own services and all activity in the district, then it must work to enable this transition. This is about the council promoting a shift in how people eat. The beacon is always plant based. There are many ways this can be achieved. I don't think internal catering applies, does it? You don't have that. If not, the council can promote plant based menu options across all spaces in which it has influence. For example, schools, public cafes, leisure centres, hospitals, etc. It can also use its voice to inform residents of the district. Thank you, Mr. Liv. Your three minutes is up. I have it just quickly. I have a list here of councils that produce plant based motions. Do you want to leave it here and then we'll look later? May I? Yes, you may. Thank you very much. And also, may I leave vegan starter kits? Yes. Please do. Thank you very much. May I now ask our second speaker, Gavin Morgan, to come forward to the public speaker's chair to make his statement? Oh, sorry. Sorry. Sorry, everybody. May I ask the leader or Councillor Potter whether he wishes to make a response? Thank you. Sorry. I don't know if the question is going to be of the leader who is responding. So, I've caught on the hop. Apologies. Thank you, Mr. Liv, for your comments. You can be correct to identify that trying to promote more plant based diets is certainly part of how we can try to achieve the shift towards decarbonisation and mitigating the impacts of the climate emergency. As you've identified, we don't have any active interrogating at the council with the exception, of course, when we have civic events. So, it may potentially be something that the mayor's office may wish to consider whether there might be worth considering some changes to the catering for various civic events. Beyond that, as you do in time, we do have a potential influence over many options in, for instance, leisure centres or community buildings where the council is involved in its management. However, the extent to which it might be possible to make those changes is like to require some investigation on our part. It occurs to me that it might potentially be something that, if they were interested in potentially one of the over-in-scooting committees, might be interested in taking a look at it to explore this option, further to see what tools we might have at our disposal for influencing the most of the more plant based eating at these various venues. If not, then I'm sure we can try to take away as an executive, but I suggest that might be the best first port of call. Thank you. Mr Morgan, thank you. You two are very welcome, and as you know, you will have up to three minutes, which will start when you start speaking. Thank you. My name is Gavin Morgan. I was one of the organisers of last year's Heritage Open Days, and I want to talk about the castle. Now, when it comes to heritage, the council has a problem. It owns the most important sites, collections and artworks relating to the town's history, but for 20 years has struggled to do much with them. There is no money to develop heritage, and it's hard to get grants, but the council can't get rid of heritage either. No one is selling the castle or the Guildhall, and people have to be paid to maintain all those museum and art collections. So, what's the answer? Well, perhaps to succeed in the future, the town needs to do something now that will capture the imagination of grant bodies, tourists and sponsors in the future. And the castle seems the key. It's there already. It has great stories to tell about medieval monarchs, Magna Carter and King Arthur. Of all our heritage, it's the one most likely to attract tourists. The displays could be improved for little cost, and there is potential to increase footfall. And we know we can use community groups, reenactors and musicians to stage events and promote the castle. But most significantly, the castle could become a focus for bringing the community and the heritage service together, and it's that community value that grant bodies and sponsors are looking for. So, if that sounds like a good idea, we should talk further. The good news is that we demonstrated that last year's heritage open days, we have the resources, experience and people to do this, and it's a low cost, low risk, low effort idea. The concern is that if the council does not do something like this, people may lose interest, pressure will build to sell off things like your foot house, and the council will still end up paying for buildings like the castle and the guild hall that perhaps few visit and collections no one sees. It's up to you to decide what to do, but with heritage, we either get on and use it, or we may lose it. Thank you. May I ask the lead Councillor for commercial services, Councillor Cutharine Houston, whether she wishes to respond to Mr Morgan's statement? Thank you Madam Mayor, and thank you Mr Morgan for coming along and speaking to us tonight. You are right in that we have a borough, not just a town, but a borough that is rich in culture and heritage, which brings a lot of community value. I thank you for all the work you do with organising the heritage open day weekend, which is really enjoyed by many across the borough. As it happens, I have been speaking with our leader about setting up a working group to report within the overview and scrutiny set up, obviously been waiting for what's happening tonight so that we can actually have the services overview and scrutiny and to look at the whole heritage service with hopefully input from interested parties like yourself, if you were interested and we'd very much appreciate your knowledge and background in this area, which goes back many years. So we're getting a lot of ideas coming from both inside and outside the Council, and it would be really good to harness all this goodwill so that we do have a plan for the future. So thank you very much for coming along this evening and sharing your thoughts on that. Thank you. Thank you. May I now ask our third speaker, Dale, ask you to come forward to the public speaker's chair to make his statement. Thank you, Madam Mayor. You're very welcome, Mr Askew. You will have three minutes, up to three minutes, which will begin when you start speaking. Good evening, Councillors. I'm Dale Askew and I speak as Secretary of the Woodhouse Place Residence Association. We know you'll be looking at the Solis Housing Governance Report in detail and the 70-plus recommendations. We want you to hear the details of how we have been affected as tenants and leaseholders in your borough. Housing is a service that hasn't worked for residents over many years, something which took this forward investigation to be recognised. As a Council, you haven't listened to us when we have repeatedly reported problems with our homes. You haven't listened to us when we have questioned works sprung upon us, which we were told were urgent for safety. You haven't listened to our dedicated Council, Madi Redpath, who has repeatedly escalated issues to officers and the executive. The Lee Council for Housing has continually assured us resident safety and wellbeing are its priority. We know compliance and safety standards were not being adhered to within our block. This is not just a case of financial mismanagement. It is safety standards neglected, residents being exposed financially to questionable works and regulatory standards set for the sector by central governments flagrantly ignored. In all of this, the people living in the Council's homes appear not to have mattered and have suffered. We welcome the recommendations as an opportunity to now move forward, but before this happens, reparations need to be made. Woodhouse Place Electrical and Fire Safety Works are still waiting to be finished. When can we expect a timescale for completion? Can we have assurance that lease holders will not be charged whether there was no evidence for the necessity of the works? Our guttering is defective in many parts of the building. It overflows and floods and simply does not work. We now have excessive bright lights, burning 24 hours a day in our corridors, bringing unwelcome light pollution into homes and racking up our electric bill. Leaks to the roof, water seeping into residents homes, contractors repeatedly attending to the same areas of the roof, costs mounting up for us as lease holders, windows that continually fail and need repairing, incurring residents thousands of pounds in repairs annually, residents reporting damp and mould, being told that it is fine. Would you be happy with this situation in your homes? If the Council can afford to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on reports, investigations and lawyers, then why can it not repair and fix the homes we pay for? 30 seconds. To a decent standard. We are happy to have met Julian and Pedro, which was a good start to putting things right. We need officers and Councillors to have all the information and be on the same page. We ask for Councillor's commitment that the issues at Woodhouse Place will finally be put right with decent repairs and resident involvement. Many of our issues have been ongoing for 20 years. Actions, not words, are now needed. Thank you. Thank you. May I now ask the Leader of the Council whether she wishes to respond to Mr Askew's statements? Thank you, Mr Askew, Dale. Thank you for the commitment and the contributions that you've made to the Tenants Engagement Group, which I've obviously been in attendance at over a period of time. I absolutely acknowledge and appreciate that, you know, what's happened is not okay and I'm devastated about what's happened and sorry for what's happened and I appreciate that trust has been broken and that it's very important that we work incredibly hard with the information and the recommendations that we've got in the report and through our Action Plan to rebuild that trust and to listen and act accordingly. And I'm very pleased that Pedro and Julian came to Woodhouse. Thank you for showing them round. And I understand that they will be going back on a further visit to talk to you and to listen to you again and to provide you with more information about, I think there'll be a single point of contact for Tenants and lease holders at Woodhouse Place. And obviously as part of our overall journey to make improvements for all Tenants, obviously we have over 5,000 homes across our borough. It's absolutely important to us that we make all the improvements that are necessary to be able to provide Tenants with an excellent service so that everybody has a safe and comfortable home to live in because that has always been our priority. But clearly there have been issues that we now are fully aware of along the way that have prevented that from happening. So I'm absolutely committed to making sure that working with officers and Councillors that we absolutely do that for residents at Woodhouse and for residents across the borough. Thank you for coming, thank you. Thank you. We will now move on to the questions submitted by three residents. First may I ask Mr David Allison to come forward to the public speaker's chair. When you're ready. Oh, I'm grateful to Councillor Wight and the legal team for explaining the detail. Sorry, sorry. Do you need to read out? Yes, I did work. I'll get there, my first meeting. You will have seen the written response to your question from the lead Councillor for planning as set out in the supplementing agenda pack. Are you happy to take that as read and move on to the supplementary question you may have? I am. Thank you. Thank you. So I am grateful to Councillor Wight and the legal team for explaining the detail of the deemed discharge process and confirming that residents needed to take on the cost and risk of a judicial review in order to rectify a simple statutory error. It is a little disappointing to see the Council response fall back on a fine interpretation of its own wording around publication made in settlement. Words that local residents have had to take in good faith since last July. However, setting this aside and preferring to focus on positive statements of intent for greater transparency made by the head of planning, would the Councillor agree that deemed discharge in any planning application is unsatisfactory, let alone going through unnoticed. So the planning department should be given every resource and support to implement processes, data management and appropriate publication of documents for public interaction in order to avoid this happening again for any application. May I ask the lead Councillor for planning? Councillor Fiona Wight, whether she wishes to respond to Mr. Allison's supplementary question. Thank you very much, Madam Mayor. Thank you Mr. Allison for your original question and the supplementary. I can't agree with you that deemed discharge is always unsatisfactory. It has its place in the process. Whether this was the right place and the right process is another question and I think there has been acceptance that things didn't go the way that we would all have wanted them to in the way that this was handled. Nevertheless, I think the response to your question shows that some new processes have been put in place for this particular application. I must stress that this is for this particular application and not a blanket change for all situations. So I think accepting that we didn't actually follow the process in the way that we should have in the first place, I think everything possible has been done now to rectify the situation and we will as a council endeavour to communicate better with your residents in future. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you. We will now move on to question two and may I invite Catherine Atkinson to come forward to the public speaker's chair. Welcome. You will have seen the written response to your question from the lead Councillor for planning as set out in the supplementary agenda pack. Are you happy to take that as read and move on to any supplementary question that you may have? Thank you. I am. In her response, Councillor White clarifies that the case officer only became aware that a deemed discharge had taken effect eight weeks previously when enforcement colleagues were asked by residents to investigate substantial works taking place on the unfilled site. So there is still an explanation required as to how a deemed discharge notice from the developer went unseen by the planning department for two months. I am grateful to Councillor White for clearing up one mystery for us. If no one in the planning department was aware a deemed discharge had been sought by the developer, we must conclude that the person who emailed us to alert us to it and who fraudulently used a resident's home address in that email had nothing to do with the planning process in Guildford. Nonetheless, the fact that a deemed discharge was able to take place without any awareness on the part of the planning department represents a critical hole in the planning review process. And if it is not fixed, may lead to other developers taking advantage of the enormous pressure that the planning department is under. They could use this little understood mechanism to speed up the developments and avoid the scrutiny that our built and natural environment needs and deserves. And that should be of concern to Councillors, officers and residents. We are all stewards of the Surrey Hills. But since last December, public bodies have a strengthened responsibility towards national landscapes through the Leveling Up and Regeneration Act. All public bodies, making decisions related to national landscapes, which are still known in law as areas of outstanding natural beauty, must now seek to further the conservation and enhancement of the area's natural beauty. The Anfield is within the Surrey Hills National Landscape, and so the new duty applies to all council decisions affecting the site and its surrounds. The risks exposed by the failures in this planning process apply much more widely, however, than simply to the national landscape or our rural environment. As residents, we need to be able to have full confidence in our planning service. It affects all of us and we want it to work. Please, can Councillor Wight indicate what the planning department will do as a matter of urgency to ensure the areas made here are not repeated in any future applications. And what we as residents can do to support that improvement process. Thank you. Thank you. May I ask the lead Councillor for planning, Councillor Fiona Wight, whether she wishes to respond to the supplementary question? Thank you again, Madam Mayor. And again, thank you for your original question and the supplementary question. I think it's important for all of us to remember that this is a situation where, on appeal, planning permission was granted for this development, and therefore it is likely that the development will take place. So, while I acknowledge, as I did in response to the earlier question, that the processes that were followed were not as they should have been. And certainly, I have asked the head of planning to have a look at the process and see what we can do to tighten things up and improve them. Nevertheless, I think that this is important to understand that this is a development that does have consent and we are talking about conditions and the compliance with conditions. And although I fully understand that, you know, the dean consent notice, et cetera, were not apparent to the officer who dealt with Councillor Schor's question. Nevertheless, Surrey Wildlife Trust had confirmed that the work could carry on, and therefore, there was no reason not to discharge the condition in this case. Thank you, Madam Mayor. We will now move on to the third and final question, which is from Keith Melbourne, who is unable to attend this evening, but I understand, does not wish to ask a supplementary question. That being the case, we will now move on to item seven and thank you to all our public speakers tonight. Item seven, appointments to committees 2024 to 2025 and other appointments. May I draw the council's attention to the update set out on pages 7 to 11 of the supplementary agenda pack together with the notes on page 11 regarding the changes to the rules of debate following the approval of the new Council procedure rules last month, to which I referred to in my communications earlier. With that in mind, and before I ask the Leader of the Council to propose the motion in respect of this matter, may I ask where the Councillors have any questions to ask of the Leader, which must relate directly to matters of clarity in respect of the motion. Are there any questions? Councillor BRIAN. Madam Mayor, thank you. Just to say, obviously, there's a bit of confusion about the overview and scrutiny situation with the nomination from the Leader of the Opposition Group. We were under the assumption that it would also count for vice-chairs, so we didn't submit a potential nomination for Councillor Wyeth Price to be vice-chair of the resources overview and scrutiny committee. I appreciate it may be too late, but I was wondering whether we could have a contested election for that for Councillor Wyeth Price at this stage. That is totally on me, because I didn't read papers and I apologise. Just going back to my early point, I'll come back to your point in a minute, but the point at this meeting now is, is there any clarifications on the motions being put forward? The wording of the motion, and I will come on to what you've just spoken about in a minute. I apologise. It's the first time we've done it. I thought the proposal was the names in the table. Sorry. The whole wording of the motion. Fair enough. We'll get there. I apologise again. Any questions on the wording of the motion? Right. Okay. So, I understand that the RGV4 group wish to nominate Councillor Sue Wyeth Price as vice-chair of overview and scrutiny resources, which means that then that the appointment is now contested with Councillor Williams being the other nominee. We shall therefore deal with the election of the vice-chair of ONS Resources after we have dealt with Councillor McShane's motion. May I now ask the leader of the Council, Councillor Julian McShane, to move the adoption of the motion set out on pages 11 to 13 of the supplementary agenda pack. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm glad we could still laugh together. Okay. I'm pleased to propose this motion as set out in the supplementary agenda pack. We all want our committees to work, and we recognise that the role of backbenchers is very important. This is especially important with overview and scrutiny, and I'm particularly pleased that we now have two committees, one for resources and one for services. Overview and scrutiny acts both as a critical friend and in helping to shape policy. It's important to have the right people who will carry out that role in a positive way to improve the Council and the services that we provide, and not simply to oppose. The executive remain committed to the process and to making sure that overview and scrutiny works well, and makes meaningful and positive improvements to our Council. I'm sure that all Councillors are committed to doing the same on whichever committees they are members. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you. May I ask the deputy leader, Councillor Tom Hunt, to formally second the adoption of the motion? I have received no notification of any comments in respect of the motion. Are there any? We shall now move to the vote of the motion. Is the motion agreed? I agree. Thank you. So we will now take the vote on the ONS Chair. Vice Chair, sorry. Yes. All those in favour of Councillor Williams, please raise your hands. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. Thank you. So Councillor Williams will be the deputy chair of overview and scrutiny. Resources. We will now deal with the election of the vice chair. We will now move on to the contested appointments of Councillor Champions for 24 to 25. Councillor Onabrookka has withdrawn from the position of the older persons championship. Councillor Dukotard has withdrawn from the historic environment and design champion and I have withdrawn from the Armed Forces champion. So that means we do not have to have any votes. So is everybody in favour of the three remaining names we have put forward? Thank you very much. So we are now moving on to agenda item 8, wayside urban village development. May I draw the Councillor's attention to the update set out on page 14 of the supplementary agenda pack. Before I ask the deputy leader to propose the motion in respect of this matter, may I ask whether Councillors have any questions relating to matters of clarity in respect of the motion? If any questions relate to information on any of the four exempt appendices attached to the report, we will have to move into a closed session. Are there any questions on the motion? And if there are, could you please indicate first whether they relate to any of the exempt appendices? May I now ask the deputy leader of the Councillor Councillor Tom Hunt to move the adoption of the motion set out on page 14 of the supplementary agenda pack? Thank you. So I am sure everyone in the Chamber knows that wayside urban village is a major 41 hectare brownfield regeneration scheme that the council anticipates could deliver in the order of 1,500 homes across a range of 10 years as well as 2,000 square metres of community space and 6,500 metres of employment space. The council has been working for over 15 years to de-risk the infrastructure delivery and site assembly process. Over 44% of the site is currently within council ownership and 100% will be achieved on completion of land transfers with Thames water. The contract with Thames water to relocate the treatment works was signed on 25 April 2019 and construction commenced in August last year. So housing is obviously of a great significance to the borough and forms a major theme in the local plan. At its meeting on 7 January 2020, the executive authorised the managing director in consultation with the leader of the council to sign and complete a grant agreement with Holmes England to implement the infrastructure works and to draw down the grant expenditure. This agreement was completed on 29 July 2020 and a significant tranche has already been drawn down. I am also at the 7 January 2020 meeting. The executive agreed that the wayside urban village project team would report the financial position of the program on an annual basis. The report for you tonight sets out the financial forecast to the end of the programme ahead of a further paper being presented to the executive and council outlining proposed mitigation plans to address the potential financial deficit that has arisen as a result of several macroeconomic factors. On 16 January 2023, full council approved a provisional capital budget of just over £359 million to enable the infrastructure phase of the weighted urban village project to be carried out. And I therefore, this evening, I am asking you to pass the resolutions made in the agenda in the agenda pack, specifically acknowledging the current financial position of the weighted urban village programme as set out in the report and to recommend to the council the transfer of further sums as set out in the agenda. Thank you. May I ask the leader of the council, Councillor Julian McShane, to formally second the adoption of the motion. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I so second and reserve my right. Thank you. I have received no notification of any comments in respect of the motion. Are there any? Councillor WUSH and Councillor BROOKA. Thank you, Madam Mayor. This is obviously the biggest important capital project being on the soap on the council and the risks and rewards reflect that. A lot of money has gone into the first stages of the programme for a lot more to come. But the end result will be transformative, a new modern water treatment plant, 1,500 new homes with a 40% affordable and a new circuit focused in the middle of the site linking old homes with new homes and a rejuvenated canal side. In addition, the new development and transport configuration on and around the site will be greener and hopefully more sustainable. So in many respects, the wobb scheme is very much a glowing beacon for the future, which should all go a new era where we see more quality homes being built, more homes that are sustainable, an integrated transport plan and new community facilities for all. Fine, I just want to thank Mike Lee Dixon, the Edwards, Abby Lewis and the team that are working so hard on this. It's been a long, long process and it's a long way to go yet, but their work has been much appreciated. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you. Councillor BROOKA. Thank you, Mayor. Now, we ask to approve the transfer of some 70 million pounds from the provisional capital program to the approved capital program. I would be surprised if anyone would argue that this wasn't necessary to continue with the project. In reviewing the report, which seems to me to be thorough and comprehensive for which I thank the officers involved, but I can only include that we are where we are. It's a pity that the overall project, instead of being zero cost to the Council, is originally anticipated, is now forecast to be 68 million over budget to be funded by this Council at this stage in long-term borrowing. As Councillor Hunt and both Councillors of Hunt and Waters have just noted, the benefits of the scheme listed in Powerwell 16.1 are impressive, and if all these can be achieved within the current budget, then it has my support. Although, frankly, I can't see what I'll say we can do at this stage. I would, however, like to raise a couple of concerns affecting both benefits and costs, firstly, the provision of 40% affordable housing, of course, must be under some doubt, particularly as this is being reviewed by Brad's Sporthouse Cooper and is noted in paragraph 712 as a mitigation option. I would hope that this would only be considered if all other mitigation measures are exhausted. And secondly, the 10 major risks set out in Appendix 3, my view pose a significant threat. I have met with a project team this afternoon, and it seems to me that they recognise this, and they are, and have been, monitoring them at regular intervals. However, I do believe that one or other of the risks occurring, or perhaps the future financial crisis, is more probable than not. Councillor BROOKER, can I just remind you that we're not meant to be mentioning to any information in the exempt penises? If you want to do that, we're going to private session. Well, I'll probably just finish now. Thank you. May I ask the - oh, sorry, very well. Councillor McShane, as seconder, would you know - oh, sorry, Councillor Bukemore. No problem. May I just ask when we might expect the mitigation report, because that's obviously a key document for us all to get our hands on, because obviously, the numbers are all volatile. But I think we need that kind of list of potential mitigations as soon as possible, so I was wondering what the time scale in that was. Councillor HUFF. Sorry. I had understood that we would receive a draft report. Councillor interjecting. Anybody else wish to speak? Councillor WHITE. Councillor WHITE, sorry. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I wonder if I might just be allowed to make one point that when I re-joined this Council in 2019, the deficit that was forecast for this particular development was, I think, 1.67 million or something of that nature. In the intervening period, of course, we've had a number of fairly major things that have happened that have affected building costs all over the country, and unfortunately, this is one of those major schemes that's also been affected by them. For instance, the Ukraine War, which has had a devastating effect on quite a lot of things in this country, and of course, there was the trust, quasi-quoting administration where, for whatever reason, we saw interest rates and other costs rise substantially. So I absolutely take Councillor BROOKER's comments that costs have, of course, increased over that period of time. But I do think it's quite reasonable to say that, to a large extent, those increased costs were due to factors that were well outside this Council's control. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Oven. Well, the Act was let out of the bag by indicating the proposed deficit. I'm not going to repeat the figure, but I think it does beg this question. Are the Council and the officers satisfied that we can really inform the wayside urban village? It seems to me that we're in a situation where we're damned if we're doing, we're damned if we don't. If we pull out of it, it's going to cost us a huge amount of money in order to repay tense water to whom we appear to be contractually indebted. And I'd be interested to hear, I understand that we're paying for the whole of that, or Guilford Borough Council is paying for the whole of the water treatment works. Why is that? Because clearly, a new water treatment work was going to be needed in any event with or without the wayside urban village. Councillor Potter. Thank you, Madam Mayor, just two brief comments. I think the first of which is I can clearly understand the desire for the Cloud in some of these points. It does have occurred to me that perhaps there might be a little less uncertainty if some of those awesome questions were to have attended the recent executive meeting where this report was discussed. And I think there is actually information on the forward plan at the moment in terms of when this will next be coming back for further discussion on issues like mitigation, or I'm sure the lead member will be answering that himself in more detail. The other point I wanted to make is I do completely agree with what Councillor Oven has said about the fact that we, of course, funding the substantial part of the cost of new sewage treatment works. This does not, in my view, represent good value for money for taxpayers. It is worth, we should be aware of that this is something which this project has been on the card since I think around circa 2005. When this project received, so it's worth noting that, of course, that decision effectively for by the Council should foot the bill for new sewage treatment works, even though the existing one was in need of upgrading by Thames water, was a decision made prior to 2019. And, of course, as with many of these, as many of the decisions that have shaped this project, decisions get made quite early on of the process and it is impossible to unpick them once you've gone a few years down the line. And, of course, that is unfortunately where we are. In my view on this is that whilst it's very easy to say, well, if we could go back with a magic wand, we'd do this, this, and this differently. The reality is we are where we are. And at this point, going ahead with the project and delivering the huge benefits this will bring is infinitely preferable to trying to jeopardise the entire project. And with a huge cost that would come with that, if we're to try now to unpick it or to cancel it part way through, we are ultimately committed to this. There is no option other than to go forwards. Going back is no longer financially viable option. Thank you. Does anybody else wish to speak? Does anybody wish to go into the exempt session to continue the debate? Councillor McShane, the seconder, would you now like to exercise your reserve right to speak? No, I have nothing to add to thank you. Councillor Hunt, do you wish to exercise your right of reply to the debate on your motion? I would, thank you. I'd like to thank Councillors for their comments. Good debate. Councillor Warsh, thank you for your enthusiasm. Yes, I agree. It's a really important program for the Council. Councillor Brooke, we are indeed where we are. And let me take your points in reverse order. The major risks, of course they pose a significant risk to the program. That's why they're major risks. But the program team looks at these regularly, considers mitigations and seeks to value engineer. And I can give you an example, which I won't do because we're in part one, but I won't give you the detail of it. But one example we've recently concluded is a cost saving in the routing of a high voltage cable across the river, which saves a significant amount of money and willed onto the team for that. I'll come back to your point about the PWC report and Joss. I had hoped we would have the draft report last week. It's not with us yet. Any day is the answer to the draft, but we'll certainly have it by June because we're debating it at full Council on the 17th of that month. So watch this space. Councillor Warsh, yes, the deficit has grown and you pointed out a few of the macroeconomic factors I alluded to in my introduction. The war in Ukraine, I think COVID still casts a long shadow and the calamitous midi budget of 2022, which increased inflation and interest rates, wasn't helpful to many, many people, not just the council. Councillor Oven, I think Councillor Potter has addressed your comment about the need to carry on, but I would urge everyone to take a really close look at the mitigation report when it arrives. And let's have a really robust debate about that in June, because it is super important that we get that decision right. Councillor Potter, I agree. And Councillor Booker, just come back to your point about the 40% of affordable housing. It's absolutely one of the levers we can pull around value engineering this program. It's absolutely one I don't want to pull. It's really important that we deliver what we set out to, but it will be remiss of us not to not to include that as an option in the mitigations paper. Thank you. Thank you. We shall now move to the vote on the motion. Is the motion agreed? Thank you. We shall now move on to agenda item nine. The minutes of the executive. The council is asked to receive and note the minutes of the meetings of the executive held on the 25th of January, the 22nd of February, and the 18th of April 2024, which are attached to the council agenda. I have received no notification of any comments on these minutes. Are there any? Is the council happy to formally receive and note the executive minutes? Thank you. And as there are no other items of business, I am closing the meeting and asked that the webcast is ended. Good night.