Transcript

Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the Finance and Economic Overview and Scrutiny Committee. I'm Councillor Bridget Lane. We'll be chairing the meeting today. To my right is our Democratic Services Officer, Amy Pride, and to my left is Gareth Knight, the new Vice-Chair. Welcome, Gareth, to the post. It would be appreciated if your mobile phones could be switched to silent, please. There is no scheduled fire drill today, so if we hear the alarm, please make your way to the nearest exit to the assembly point at the front of the building. If you wish to ask a question, please raise your hand. Amy, do we have any public speakers today? Thank you, Madam Chairman. We haven't got any public speakers today. Thank you, and do we have any apologies? We haven't received any apologies for absence. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you. Next is the declarations of interest. I would like to disclose that I am actually an RAF veteran, so for the part that comes about the veterans' paperwork, I understand from - can I ask you, Mr Watts, advice on that, please, and I think also for Councillor Harrison. Is that correct? Yes. Thank you, Chairman. Yes, so just in relation to that particular item, I think it's about an issue of proportionality, so if you or your partner you feel would benefit from the criteria of the scheme that's proposed that's concluded within the report, then it may be necessary for you to remove yourself from the meeting. If you don't believe that you or your partner will benefit from the criteria that's set out in the report, then I think you're okay to continue to take part in the meeting. I hope that clarifies things, Chairman. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I can state that as the report stands at the moment, I will not benefit from it, so I will be staying at present. Councillor Harrison? Yeah, I'd like to say the same. I wouldn't benefit from it in any way. Councillor Sawyer? No. Councillor Steptoe? Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, it's not a personal declaration of any kind, but I think I'm within my rights to say that any group that's within the Council that's been whipped on this matter should declare it beforehand. Okay, thank you. Is that the case? Does anybody have any declarations of that kind? No? Well, if anybody thinks that they need to declare any at all during this meeting, then please do so at the relevant point. Okay, thank you. So next is the minutes from the previous meeting. Does anybody have any issues or comments to make on those? Councillor Sawyer? Thank you, Chairman. A couple of matters arising. I did raise a question about the Cecil Family Trust, which is in the minutes. I'm interested to know to what degree we are involved with it over the St. Martin's Park development. It seems a somewhat mysterious trust in that it's not listed on the charity commissioners website, whereas the Burley House Preservation Trust is. I've got a couple of other things. Some time ago, I did ask for a breakdown of the costs of the waste depot. I might be interested in looking at them. That is the individual parts of it. I think it may be two, possibly three months ago. I've had nothing about that. And I fear I must raise again my concern about the electricity standing charge. When we've been paying it for six years, that would be a million pounds for the privilege of not using electricity. I understand the argument about the loss of the facility and the cost of reconnection. Again, I've asked for some figures just to back that up. Nothing's ever been forthcoming. And one more, again, related to the minutes. Cost of the waste depot, is it 8.8 million or is it 7.9 million, as indicated on page 54? This may well come up later. So any information on any of those would be very welcome. Thank you, Councillor Sawyer. We have an update on the waste depot, so if you would mind asking your questions again at that point, because we have that discussion, you can ask those questions then. With regards to the Cecil Trust, I believe that Councillor Cleaver would like to come back on that. Yes, really just a point of information on the Cecil Estate Family Trust. The Cecil Estate Family Trust is not a registered charity, which is why it doesn't appear on the charity's commission website. It's not involved in any way, shape or form with the Planning Commission or the St. Martin's Park development, that is the Burley House Preservation Trust and the Burley House Preservation Trust alone. Anybody else have any comments on the meeting minutes from the meeting? No? Can I have a proposer to accept those minutes, please? Councillor Harrison and Councillor Sawyer for second. And then can we, all those in favour, please? Any against? Any abstentions? Okay, we had one update from the previous meeting, which was the maintenance strategy, which was, a copy of that was sent out to members and nothing has come back on those, so I presume that everybody is okay. Okay, so we will move forward. Announcements or updates from the Leader of the Council? Thank you, Chair. You'll hear enough from me during this meeting. I think I don't have anything that isn't on the agenda to add. Thank you. Any Cabinet members or Head of Pay Service that want to give us any updates? Nope? Okay. Okay, we move on to Item 7, which is the Council Tax Support Scheme, which Councillor Baxter is moving forward to give us some update on this. Thank you, Chair. This has been well talked about for a while and apologies, Chair, for not, I can't, I can't look in both directions at the same time. So, yeah, we've been talking about this for a long time. We were, obviously, the offices were asked after the last iteration of this report, which I think was two meetings ago, or three meetings ago, to do a feasibility into the possibility of a scheme to offer veterans a discount on council tax. The specific scheme that was requested was a scheme that would be an eligibility of people who live in a band A property, so the smallest banded rating of a property, and also people who were employed. The offices have spent a lot of time, and I'm very grateful to Richard Wiles and Claire Moses and all the other people that have spent an awful lot of time looking at this and trying to find a way to find a scheme which makes sense, which is affordable, accessible, equitable for veterans within our district. As you know, we're gold members of the Armed Forces Covenant. There is an appendix to the report on page 27, which outlines for support for veterans that is offered on mental health, housing, health, and so on. But if you look at the actual report under reasons for the recommendations is where I'd like to start the introduction to this report, you will see the recommendation following the study of feasibility of this scheme. Having done the feasibility study and looked at the options and the costs and the affordability and so on, the recommendation that is being put before you is to note the contents of the report, provide feedback on the modelling undertaken, but also to ask you to request that no further work is undertaken on the development of the council tax support scheme for veterans. We have looked at this, we have looked at it again, and looked at it again, and for the following reasons, it isn't feasible. So the reason for the recommendations are that first of all, the scheme would be inequitable, because it would apply to some veterans and not all veterans. We are saying that a veteran who is employed potentially on a high wage or a high pension or high income living in a Band A property would have access to the scheme, but a veteran who was employed or unemployed with or without a family living in a Band B property or a Band H property or any other property would not be eligible for the scheme. So you could have two people that had identical military service coming to the council saying is there a discount available, and one person would get the discount and one person wouldn't get the discount, and the factors that influence that would be a) how big their house was, and b) whether or not they were in employment. Which leads on to the second, one of the second problems of the scheme in that employment is something that changes. Some people are employed seasonally, some people are employed long term, employment circumstances change, always have done but particularly in this world people have first jobs and second jobs, and so finding a useful definition of employment has been a challenge. One of the things that we found along the way, and we did meet with Councillor Dixon Warren and Councillor Gill and Councillor Green along the way, was about defining a veteran. I think we've solved that. A veteran is as defined by the government as somebody who has served at least one day in the armed forces, but finding proof of that became a challenge but Councillor Dixon Warren helpfully provided a way through that which was to ensure that people claiming on such a scheme, if there were one, to produce a veteran's, I think it's called a veteran's service card. So that, defining a veteran is not a problem, but defining employment is a different thing because it can change week on week, year on year, and it would be something that our officers would need to keep up with in order that people weren't claiming a discount that they weren't entitled to. The scheme would also be inequitable as I've said because people on high wages would potentially be eligible and people on low wages would not be eligible. I don't think that the council should be taking money from people who have got lots of money and giving it to, sorry, we shouldn't be taking money from people whether it's veterans or otherwise, taking resources away from people who are not well off and giving it to people who are far more well off. That's 5.3. The scheme would give a financial benefit to some veterans on higher incomes but would be denied to some veterans on lower incomes. The administration of a scheme, and this is detailed quite thoroughly within the report, would cause a significant cost and resource issue to the council. In fact, the cost of administering the scheme would be several full-time equivalents and it would actually be more expensive to run than the likely take-up or payout to the veterans who would claim. Can't remember the paragraph on that. It's in paragraphs 2.37 and 2.38. We would need an additional three members of staff in order to undertake all the activities and recovery action for problems with administering the scheme and that would be a salary cost of £90,000. If there's another iteration of the scheme under there, I'm sure you've already the report and are familiar with the figure work. Going back to paragraph 5.5, yes, the scheme would be complex, convoluted and confusing to many people, including veterans. People living next door to each other would be in different eligibility statuses. People living with the same income would be in different circumstances according to the size of the house where they live. And then finally, we have had indication, which has been shared with this committee before, that the other precepting authorities, namely the Police and Crime Commissioner's Office and the County Council, are extremely unlikely to welcome the scheme because we are a relatively small amount of the precept. The bigger financial burden will be on those precepting authorities, including the County Council. I'm sure Mr Wiles will put me right on the figures, but for something like every pound that we lose to a council tax discount for veterans or anyone else, the County lose seven or eight. So that would come back through the consultation. Therefore, I don't think it's a good idea to do, to add this to the consultation. It's not the same as special constables. Special constables, we know that there are only probably less than a dozen people eligible across the authority. In this case, we've got potentially hundreds of people that would be eligible for the scheme. And the rules, as have been put forward by the committee, as have been recommended by the committee, that it be based on employment status and size of house is a complicated thing to administer and not the right way to do the scheme. I'm not saying that I've found a better way to do the scheme, believe me, I've looked, but I can't find a way to do this. What I can say is that aside from the other things that we do for veterans, which under the Armed Forces Covenant we are determined that no veteran will be worse off because of military service. Apart from those things, we also have schemes for council tax discount for people who are in financial need or special circumstances. So we do have consideration of people's income and people who are in difficult financial circumstances do get a discount on their council tax. So that's what I would ask you to consider. I would recommend that you request no further work because the staff have put in an awful lot of work into doing the sums, trying to find how the eligibility would work if there were such a scheme. They've put an awful lot of time and effort into it and in my opinion, the scheme doesn't work. Thank you, Councillor Baxter. Claire Moses, would you like to come in or Carol Drury, would either of you have anything to say to aid that at all? Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Councillor Baxter. The only thing I would like to add is to draw the Committee's attention to the information within the Equality and Diversity section of the report. As Councillor Baxter has advised, there is an inequality to a degree with regards to the eligibility. So we are saying that the veteran has to be employed and they have to be in a Band-Aid property. The requirement of them being employed can mean that there are certain veterans such as those that are retired and those that are disabled that may not have the employment status and that does account for over 50% of the veteran figures and I think it's important that that is highlighted to the Committee. Thank you. Okay, whilst we don't want to spend hours and hours on this report, obviously I know there's people that will want to say some things, I am aware that Councillor Dickson-Warren has to go by 5 to 3. I know he's not part of the Committee but I will keep an eye on the time to make sure that he will be able to have his say if that's okay with everybody. Councillor Whittington. Yes, I'll press both of them, if I'm on state then. Madam Chairman, I've got an amendment to the recommendations which I shall read out and I then have a paper copy to give to you. I formally propose including the following questions in the upcoming consultation about the localised Council Tax Support Scheme for 2025-26, question A or question 1. Do you support providing targeted Council tax relief for employed veterans in Band-Aid properties, yes or no? Question B or 2, whichever will come, if yes, should the relief for employed veterans in Band-Aid properties be 5% or 10% off their annual Council Tax Bill? In effect this would then nullify and replace recommendation 2 that no further work is undertaken on the other end of a Council Tax Support Scheme for veterans. I'll pop it up to you Madam Chairman so you've got a copy if that's okay. Thank you, Councillor Whittington. Councillor Baxter, did you want to come back? Yes please Chair, do any of the officers happen to have the content of last year's consultation on the Council Tax Discount? It's my recollection that we did ask questions last year about whether or not people supported a discount for veterans although I don't think it was as clear as do we support a discount for veterans in Band-Aid properties who are employed. That at least is more specific and then if yes 5% or 10% that would need to be in the context of having, I think in order to ask people that question they would need to know how much it was likely to cost and we cannot give that information because as it's contained within the report the cost is based on an awful lot of consumptions about take-up and other factors. So I would not support going to the consultation process to ask pretty much the same question which is do we support veterans? Yes of course we support veterans. Would we support a Council Tax Discount for veterans who live in a Band-Aid property and who are employed? The answer is not going to make it any clearer from this Authority's point of view or from the County's point of view as to whether that is either affordable and nor does it explain the nuances of why such a scheme would not be fair or equitable. Councillor Whittington. Yes thanks Madam Chair and I believe I've put forward an amendment I just want to know if there's a seconder for my amendment. Thank you. So Tim I know you want to speak but do any of the officers have any detail to the answer of what Councillor Baxter asked please. Thank you. Thank you Chairman. So the question that was posed at the as part of the consultation for last year's Council Tax Support Scheme was whether or not the consultees would support the introduction of a Council Tax Discount for veterans. Most respondents said that they did and 360 respondents sorry 260 out of 370 respondents and respondents were then asked what level of discount they thought veterans should be entitled to. Eight of the 260 said 5% and 42 of 260 said 10% and the rest were a variable of between 15 and 25%. Thank you. Gloria I know you seconded this but I just want to see what Councillor Harrison says and then we'll discuss that further is that okay. Councillor Harrison. Thank you Chair. Are we discussing this proposal or are we just going to go straight to a vote on it. Yeah we're discussing the amendment at the moment. Do you have anything to say to that? I personally hate these loaded questions. If you ask anybody you go anywhere. Do you want to help a veteran? Yeah of course you do. But explain the nuances of that to them and the answer will change. And this is what happens with all these surveys that we get across the board. They're tailored to get the answer that the person wants to get. If you sit there and put the proper question to as we have done and I personally have done veterans meetings that I meet with them every week. We have a lot of them come to the mental health group and I've put it to them and told them exactly what it would mean and to a man the veterans have gone no not interested. So it's how if you're going to do this sort of question you've got to put all the nuances into the question and not just go do you want to help veterans. Yeah everybody does. Councillor Steptoe? Yeah thanks I totally agree with what Councillor Harrison has just said. You might as well ask should we be nice to small children? His motherhood and apple pie a nice thing etc. All this does and I say this with the greatest of respect to the people putting it forward but all this does is attempt to kick this further down the road. It's been incoherent from day one. It's been ill thought through from day one. There has been no real concrete evidence that this is widely welcomed in the veterans community from day one and this is just an attempt to prolong matters. After the officers have put in hours and hours and hours of work on this and made their recommendations. We should help and aid financially aid veterans. The armed forces covenants not in place to offer the benefits to veterans. In fact it's to ensure that they are treated with fairness and respect in the community economy and society and that they face no disadvantage compared to other citizens in provision of the public and commercial services. So we are not obliged to do what we're being told we were obliged to do to to keep in with the armed forces comment. We're actually going against it slightly because we're we're disadvantaging the citizens to the effect of the veterans. Thank you. Mr. Wiles. Yeah I mean the points been made by council Baxter but paragraphs 1.2 to 1.8 in the report are still relevant in the in the discussion around the amendment in terms of the equality and diversity inclusion and equality act implications. The other the other point just wanted to reference was as Mr. Moses said this was in last year's consultation and the the biggest precepting authority the county council raised concerns and objections against the introduction of a veteran scheme and just revisiting the letter they put which is they're basically they're not supportive of it because it's not a pan-linkage proposal and it could be discriminatory. So the the major precepting authority picks up 75% of any of the of any of the schemes that would be taken forward is not supportive of it and I would imagine the same response would come back if we if we proceeded. Thank you. Thank you for all your comments. Graham can I just ask you because we haven't actually agreed that we will go forward to consultation yet but this amendment has been put in. Is this the now the time that we vote on this amendment with the we've had we have the proposal from Councillor Whittington and seconded by Councillor Johnson. Could you just give me some advice on that please? Sorry so what you're asking is the amendments been put forward to include something for consultation but you haven't actually discussed whether or not to go to consultation so I'm assuming that Councillor Whittington is proposing that that we do go to consultation and that that be part of the the consultation document that's sent out if I'm correct if not then you may wish to seek a proposal to agree to go into consultation further to which the amendment would stand in relation to adding that to the consultation document. Either way would would work. Thank you. Thank you for that. Oh Councillor Whittington. My understanding is we go out of consultation on this every year. This is a standard thing that we do regarding council tax so I don't think we're actually asking it to be something that's new in every year the council tax discount scheme goes out of public consultation so all this amendment does is that when we do go out to that annual consultation that this amendment is part of it. It's two of the questions that are on that consultation so I don't think I'm asking for anything that's not been done for all the years I've been on this council which is an annual council tax discount schemes consultation. Thank you. Okay Mr. Wiles. Yeah absolutely right so Councillor Whittington is correct so every year as part of the statutory requirements we'll go out to consultation on the proposed scheme for 25/26. It's on your agenda for the July meeting so as officers what we'll do is present to you at your next meeting the framework of the council tax support scheme for the following financial year and from that meeting we will seek consultation and we'll bring their findings back to a later meeting. But the proposal is basically to add further questions on the consultation that include questions around the veterans scheme that Councillor Whittington has put forward so that's a perfectly reasonable request and if it's supported that's what we'll do as part of the consultation but I would revisit we have done this previously here and the findings of those we've fed back to the committee today. Thank you. Councillor Whittington. Madam Chair I think the all the I think we're all probably on this committee all very much aware of the arguments around this and without going through a rehash of them would it might be possible that we could just go straight to the vote on this unless anybody else has got anything they wish to contribute and get it out of the way. Thank you. Amendment. Does anybody else have anything to say on the amendment at the present time? Councillor Turner. Thank you. I'd just like to quote the first letter in sentence in paragraph 1.7 whether in unintended or not to discriminate is unlawful so if we follow this following the County Council's guidance then we'll be committing an unlawful act so I don't think we should take it further so I just thought I'd put that in the public question. Sorry Councillor Whittington did you want to say something? I'm not entirely sure what's unlawful about asking the public a question perhaps some legal advice might be useful at this point. Mr Watts. I mean to be clear there's nothing wrong with asking the questions the point we're trying to make is the response if it's supportive takes down a different problem because therefore if the response says yes we think that's a good idea we're saying to you as officers that it could become discriminatory and therefore unlawful and we couldn't then recommend it so reputationally the council puts itself in a difficult position because it's asking a question that he can't then deliver on. Councillor Whittington. Yeah but there's no actual statute in place this would be a civil matter not a criminal matter if anybody thought they've been discriminated against it wouldn't be a criminal matter it'd be a civil matter and anybody can take a civil case to court if they think if they think they've got just cause so so there's nothing in the criminal law about this it would it would appear to be a civil matter I think that's the important thing here so it wouldn't per se it wouldn't be say be unlawful unless a judge before a court says it said it was a civil matter. Thank you. Councillor Baxter. Just one moment sorry Councillor Sawyer asked. Thank you Jen if we are going to vote on the amendment could it be read out again for absolute clarity so we know precisely what we're voting on before we forget. Of course just wait one moment Councillor Baxter. Thank you so this amendment is talking about asking the public whether or not they would support a discount scheme for veterans who are employed and live in a band A property we can ask that and I dare say there'll be people who support it but then we get the the results of the consultation and and the consultation will will come on back and we we we look at that in context of all the other information and decide whether to go forward with that scheme when we are deciding whether to go forward with that scheme we have to bear in mind all the consultation responses including the other preceptors including the County Council it is possible at that so if if we were to decide at that stage to to go ahead with the scheme whether or not the consultation said we wanted to whether or not the consultation said that more than 50% wanted to go thought it was a good idea to do the scheme regardless of that if we if if we the council decided we wanted to go ahead with the scheme we would then be opening ourselves up potentially to a judicial review of the decision either by veterans who lived in a band B to H property or veterans who weren't employed and felt discriminated against or that that seems less likely because of the cost of a judicial review however the other precepting authorities like the County Council they also might think crumbs we are potentially losing losing hundreds of thousands of pounds of revenue here revenue that we could spend on other other parts of expenditure whether it's roads or children or adults or libraries or schools or whatever else we and they might think that a judicial review was suitable and at that point both the county and the district would enter into a a a legal battle which we know are expensive do we want to go down that road is it is so going back to the beginning why are we consulting why would we want to consult on an issue when we've not when it doesn't make any sense when it's potentially unlawful just one moment Mr. Councillor Whittington there's two other people that want to speak so Councillor Whittington could you just wait please Claire Moses please thank you madam chairman actually Councillor Baxter has said very succinctly what I was going to say with regards to the judicial review but if I am able to just if Carol is able to update on the equality side to the comment that Councillor Whittington made by all means thank you please thank you chair and just for clarity under the Equality Act 2010 and under the Armed Forces Act 2021 yeah 2021 if we were to discriminate or disadvantage that would be a lawful matter so so actually we could be challenged in court as to whether the decision that was taken was discriminatory and I just also like to say to you that regardless of the consultation if we were to take this forward we would need robust evidence to show the reasoning behind the criteria proposed and ask ourselves the question as of whether we would should we introduce it in its proposed form actually be disadvantaging the service people that don't fall into the criteria and therefore not benefit from the scheme so as Councillor Baxter has said it could go to judicial review we could be challenged based on on this criteria without having evidence behind why we chose it thank you Councillor Whittington did you want to say something yeah I mean all we've heard with with an awful lot of ifs buts maybes you know things things might happen nobody can nobody can pre-judge the future although although it appears that attempts have been made here this afternoon to pre-judge the future all this is is a simple amendment as I say what I believe all we're doing is merely rehashing the arguments Madam Chairman and I would like us to go straight to the vote now please thank you thank you for that Councillor Green yes just very briefly so it's not really about what I've got to say I think everybody knows where I stand on this it's about turning this back to the public and what they've got to say we asked a question that was similar although distinctly different from this last year without any sort of the back and forth of experience this afternoon I think all we're proposing to do is to ask a slightly different question on the same theme again that's it let's hear what the public have got to say thank you and let's go to the vote thank you Councillor Green so we have a proposal which I will now read out I formally propose including the following questions in the upcoming consultation about the localised council tax support scheme for 2025/6 do you support providing targeted council tax relief for employed veterans in band a properties yes or no if yes should the relief for employed veterans in band a properties be five percent or ten percent of their annual council tax bill recommendation two of the report before us that no further work is undertaken on the development of a council tax support scheme for veterans would be nullified okay so we have a proposer which is Councillor Whittington we have a seconder which is Councillor Johnson is that still correct okay so can we have a raise of hands for all those people that are in support of this please those against that's five and there's no abstentions at all because that is all of them I'm sorry that's fallen what I would like to do now is bring in Councillor Dixon Warren if everybody's okay with that because he is the armed forces champion and we need to listen to what he has to tell us if that's okay thank you I'm grateful madam chair and I sense that I am swimming against the current now I am SKDC's armed forces champion I am also the chair of the Lincolnshire armed forces community covenant board and I will be briefing that board on this discussion and its decision when the board next meets I wrote to members of this committee on the 18th of July 2023 I said that I was delighted that the proposal to extend the local council tax support scheme to veterans had been approved I thought the proposal showed fine initiative and that the vote reflected SKDC's commitment to honour the armed forces covenant and support the armed forces community and to advocate that support as it is required to do I noted the exhaustive and meticulous consultation process that would take place and the anticipated and I anticipated that potential costs would be explored in detail I expressed the view that this decision reflected well on the committee I think the consultation was indeed exhaustive and meticulous and potential costs have been explored in detail the proposal has been adapted and refined and costs are now far better understood now than they were this was concurrent with a visceral resistance to the proposal in meetings on in emails and in social media exchanges resistance that disregarded the fact that 70.3 percent of those who responded to the consultation agreed with the introduction of a veterans council tax discount against 17.5 percent who did not resistance that ignored the fact that it is the views of those who respond to surveys that count however many or few not those who do not resistance that looked for ways to implement the proposal as it was developed rather than ways to make it work resistance that included comments about discounts for retired brigadiers as the independent review of the UK government welfare services of veterans in July 2023 noted the veteran welfare system is a complex ecosystem built up over the last century with services bolted on over time it is difficult to understand the full scope of the system and its connections and interfaces and it can feel almost impenetrable for those outside the system seeking support therefore in seeking to provide an additional and targeted element of support to a specific group of veterans complexity is a given the comprehensive report before the committee acknowledges this complexity and I agree with the leader's comments and echo his thanks in that respect I was deeply dismayed by the recommendation that no further work is undertaken on the development of a council tax support scheme for veterans it would not be the only scheme that applies to some people and not others nor would it be the first to be complex convoluted and difficult to understand MND's armed forces covenant team said it was excellent that we were considering other ways to support the armed forces community and the chair of the East Midlands veterans advisory and pensions committee said that this was a laudable proposal that might provide a concrete example of the covenant not being a ceiling but actually a flaw for improvements in outcomes for those who have served a practical offer to address in-work poverty within the veteran community approval would send a very strong signal about how important the veteran community is perceived to be in the district stifling the scheme now would I suspect send an equally strong signal thank you thank you for that and would you be happy to actually give us a copy of that to go out with the minutes thank you okay so we've come to the point now where we need to have somebody to propose that this is accepted the report as it is and a seconder and we need to go to the vote so Councillor Steptoe very happy to propose thank you do we have a seconder Councillor Harrison all those in favour that there is no further work is undertaken on the development of the council tax support scheme for veterans can we have a raise of hands please so those against so okay oh sorry Councillor Harrison did you want to say something thank you yeah if I could just ask that excuse me just just one moment thank you uh Councillor Dickson Warren for attending thank you very much if I could just ask that maybe we get reported to hear what this has cost us up to date all the work that's gone into this what it's cost us up to date thank you is that something that we can uh have provided please yeah I can email out some information to members thank you very oops Councillor Sawyer thank you Jim Richard referred to veterans suffering in work poverty could I ask or even is it a suggestion are we doing as much as we can to make veterans aware of all the help that is available to them not only from ourselves but from outside organizations and Richard said the um the help the charities it's very complex could we perhaps come up with a way of drawing it all together so if a veteran approaches us we can say right here are the options that may help you if you are in poverty I think perhaps we could do a lot more thank you and I'm going to bring in Carol Drury okay thank you chair just to reassure members there is comprehensive information already on the council's website relating to the support that's available to armed forces veterans and their families not only the support that we give for example veterans are eligible for council tax support scheme but all the other benefits that they're eligible for and also from support from other organizations we're also collectively across the county working on a directory of all of the support that is available to veterans we work very closely with the department for work and pensions who have a comprehensive list of support that is available to veterans and all of that will go into the directory and will be available to veterans not only on our website but we have close contact with veterans clubs across the districts as well max could you put your microphone on please yeah some of these organizations are very small very specialized and we're looking at the whole range excellent thank you through you chair yeah everything from national schemes like up prosper etc right through to the very small charities and local groups that support our veterans yeah thank you council green yes I think we've heard some very powerful words from the armed forces champion today which I think we've all taken due note of as regards to this scheme in its future all I would say is that this is not the end and that this is not even the end of the beginning thank you okay let's not have any any other comments please thank you every everybody for this it's been it's been a long time and that we've been discussing it and it has been a lot of work and costly exercise for the staff and I know it is a very emotive project and then you brought to the committee in the first place so thank you for that sorry did somebody want to say something okay thank you chair in light of the discussion that took place today and Councillor Sawyer's raising his question I just spoke with Patrick and I'll speak with the team later as we're having the armed forces we've had quite a few armed forces events and flag raising this week and whatnot I think it would be quite timely to do a week's piece of information every day going out as to what supports available for veterans okay that's a suggestion that's been put forward I'm not sure who would be picking that up is that going to be the armed forces member of staff or Raya would you just like to repeat repeat that for Carol Drury please have you got it yes sorry somebody sent me an email I do apologize committee so yes we do we do a lot of awareness raising and and events that go around the district and and actually at the next rural and communities over the integrated committee there will be an overview of some of the work that's taken place to mark things like the 80th anniversary of D-Day and forthcoming events around the 80th anniversary of Arnhem plus all of the other support and and guidance that we provide advice that we give on a daily basis we are the only district council in Lincolnshire to have a dedicated armed forces officer so there's a lot of work that goes on in the background thank you Claire did you want to come back on that yes thank you madam chairman I think I do agree with Carol that if we could just hold this off until the 10th of July ruling communities committee because the committee will hear a lot of the work that is that has been undertaken and is coming up and I think we'd be able to tie that in with all of the all of that work as well and I think also it is a good idea to be able to promote the support that is available so we can look at that from the the revenues and benefits side and tie that in with the work that carol and our team are doing is that okay yeah okay uh council cleaver sorry just a technicality um could I just point out or could you just point out for the purposes of the of the webcast that uh council race side was actually captioned as Councillor Charmaine Morgan um when when she was speaking so could we could we just point out for the webcast that it was council race side who was speaking and that she is the cabinet member for people in communities thank you thank you I think because you've just said that council cleaver I don't really need to repeat it but thank you for pointing that out and Amy has changed it now so thank you very much okay so we'll now move on to the next agenda item which is eight and that's the corporate plan 2020 to 23 key performance indicators and this is uh Councillor Knowles thank you chair uh this is the uh district's performance against the corporate plan from 2020 to 2023 uh so it'll be the last number of key performance indicators we have for that former corporate plan clearly we had a new corporate plan that was agreed earlier this year which will take us through to 2027 this report is in two parts there's a report for q4 2023 24 but then there's also a retrospective loopback over the past four years now that we've reached the end of the former corporate plan in 2023 the former corporate plan listed 22 actions that fell within the remit of this committee these actions set the council's agenda for the life of the plan the first round of reporting was on in 2020 21 and it introduced a series of criteria for what successful delivery would look like this criteria has been used to measure and judge the council's overall performance against those stated actions out of 22 stated actions skdc achieved 18 fully the performance for q4 of this year nine of the actions are rated green two of the actions are rated amber and none of the actions are rated red a new kpr suite which was agreed in march by this committee the first report for that will present be presented in quarter three of this year thank you we ask you to review the numbers that are given to you now and to hold them in your plan going forward for the new corporate plan thank you thank you councillor knolls could you turn your microphone off please thank you okay so councillors do we have any queries on any of these kpis council harrison thank you chairman my first queries are on the 22 there's a lot of actions listed there that are achieved and they're not achieved quite clearly they're not achieved and i'm a bit disappointed that they are marked as achieved the regeneration of the town growth and town centre it's marked was achieved it's not still not now even now we've got two buildings that we've paid for and they've had the money they're still not done they had action building and the chemist building both had a lot of money spent on them the front of the chemist building was lovely done but since then it's still boarded out from within inside it looks like a derelict building so we need with that sort of thing needs chasing up the uh work with education providers i've asked now for a year i've been on the joseph clark apprentices foundation nobody's been in contact with nobody's done anything i don't know why i'm even on that i've got no remit i don't know what to do or anything and i've asked this is now the third time i've asked this question so you know that's not achieved either um the uh the people strategy i'd call that into question how many staff have left since uh we started in may 2023 particularly key staff as well so i think that needs more looking at you know there seems to be an issue there for that with me um the agreed strategies and plans for the commercial transformation i didn't really see any of that um the implementation of an it investment roadmap we're struggling with that we know we are we've got massive problems with the the it package that we've got our website is very poor to say the least um so at that and that's marked down as achieved um so there's there's quite a lot in there i could go through a few more things but it just worries me a lot of things we've marked down there is achieved but when you actually scratch under the surface i feel that they're not thank you uh oh council backstop um just one small point uh on the turnover of staff a report going to the forthcoming employment committee reveals that turnover in 2022 to 23 was 23 percent of staff and this has gone down to 14 percent in 23 24 so we're although obviously staff leave and the predominant reason for employees leaving is for career advancement and new opportunities and we don't want to hold people back but at the same time it's while it may appear that staff are leaving they're not leaving in the numbers that they were leaving in the previous year thank you uh councilor knolls are you able oh sorry counselor sorry no mr wild i do beg your pardon one day i just wanted to push back on the comment about the website the website's recently been upgraded it's one of the best examples in the east midlands and indeed we've worked across linkashire and other partners to bring that website up to date so it is actually uh a zinc plant website you'll see the characterization of it is it's similar to a lot of councils thank you can i come back can i come back on that you can yes okay yeah i mean it may well have been updated but the actual usage of it um and the the friendliness of it is very poor richard um you try and search for anything on there it's very difficult to find um you have to put specific terms in in specific places at times um the feedback i get from everybody across the board nobody comes in and goes wow you've got a great website there and i really like using it everyone says it's it's not and to be honest that's really helpful feedback if we do get uh users trying to find information using a certain name it's not coming up then we would welcome that feedback because we we map certain words against uh articles on the website so if it's not working as it should then please do let us know and we can we can uh reconfigure it thank you thank you for that richard yes thank you uh chair um the criteria that was set for the 2000 the old corporate plan up to 2023 was set in 2020 uh 2021 uh they were not set by us and the criteria are measured as per the where they were set i cannot comment on some of the uh evidence that may be there afterwards about whether those uh things were met satisfactorily or not but measuring against the criteria uh that's what charles has done and charles will uh it were appropriate set out the numbers which were uh for those criteria i would point out very strenuously that the criteria for the new corporate plan are all very measurable and very objective rather than subjective and the new corporate plan has a very different type of measurements set against them of which the vast vast majority are very specific very measurable and very uh objective so that you can actually see the measure there are a few that are woefully or subjective nature uh i'm sure charles will have some numbers uh to back up the the recording but this is just a recording of the criteria that was set in 2020-21 they are not in like the criteria that have been set and agreed by this committee not a few weeks ago for 23 24 to 27. Thank you. Thank you. Council Steptoe. Thank you madam chair i'm looking at the table on page 24 action maximize the value of the council's own spend by using local suppliers we have a practical success criteria procurement activity incorporating the council's approved contract procedure rules requirement of utilizing local supply chains where possible end of plan status achieved i'd genuinely like some more information on that if possible because there's well anecdotally i would suggest that that doesn't appear to be the case but i'm sure i'm sure i'm about to be proved very wrong on that i hope i am mr wiles could you come back on that store please yeah it's an interesting uh question because literally this morning we're having the same conversation about contract procedurals because contract procedurals and procurement law obviously rise priority over anything we may choose to do as a discretion here so clearly there are certain thresholds where we need to ensure value for money and we need to ensure we get the best price and the best product so the local supply chain is something we aspire to uh benefit from but clearly at the end of the day it's got to be the best price and the best product so that might take us outside of the local supply chain indeed the actual definition of what is a local supplier is a debate i think we'll probably need to have with members as well because is is it a postcode classification or does it need to be more regionally based so for example we use mkm as a supplier and they obviously are in the town but they're part of a national franchise so there's a kind of subjectivity about what local supplier actually means but it is an area of work that we're bringing forward to members in the next few weeks so we are trying to establish a minor works framework which will maximize the opportunities for local tradespeople to to benefit from work which will be relatively small value and that hopefully will be a north south classification probably more relevant in the hra world than it is in the general fund so that's about making sure the void properties are turned around in a more efficient manner and that may be using the local labour force to help us do that so we're very aware that politically it's a very important issue we are also aware of our legislative requirements to ensure value for money so it is something we need to work our way through that kind of works on on both fronts but it is something we are very mindful of and we are bringing some proposals forward thank you thank you very much very much welcome the the explanation and the rationale and honestly i'm not deliberately trying to be difficult in any way but could any examples of local small companies businesses that uh have been procured in the last three years uh obviously during the duration of this plan can any concrete examples be provided at the moment thank you yeah i'm happy to provide some information to members separately of where we've used the local suppliers to procure works and examples of what these works have included so yeah i'm happy to provide that thank you and i think the difficulty is is that you know it's saying that it's achieved actually it's probably still ongoing um but i take your point um council knows that you know this is looking backwards as well um but it is a little bit confusing when it says a lot of these things are achieved when we know things are still ongoing with with quite a few of these things uh so you know if people council has haven't been here that long and don't realize it's it's looking backwards it does make it um difficult for them to understand so uh sorry did you want to come back on that council knows well just i agree entirely um for the last couple of years of the last administration i was bleating on a regular basis uh that the uh the overview of the scrutiny looked at leisure uh for instance always recorded green and achieved even when the roof had fallen in at one of the four leisure centers we've got so i brought this up on many many occasions and the answer was that uh it only measured the the the centers that were open and not the one the center where the roof fallen in well we have tried very hard to go forward to make sure that the targets and you've been presented to your committee and they're presented here and to all the other committees are as specific and measurable as possible so that they will have less um worries about whether they meet the need but not only that we put in on every single one of them that it will be your duty as finance to look at the targets and where appropriate to alter them so that they do reflect current situation current legislation anything that changes so that they don't remain fixed and still there in four years when they may not be appropriate so the targets are able to be changed during the course of the four years uh and they are as measurable as we can so that they can be related to exactly what is happening uh so i would try to concentrate on that and going forward um rather than on some criteria that were set four years ago on a different corporate plan thank you thank you Councillor Sawyer then it's Councillor Baxter and then it's Councillor Johnson thank you Chairman i'm glad Richard mentioned voids i believe they're costing us about a million pounds a year in um in lost rent uh the excuse well excuse i'm sure the explanation given is there aren't the tradesmen out there to do the work but i know from personal experience recently having had our boiler serviced had a bit of electrical work done at home bit of carpentry the tradesmen are there because i make a point of saying would you be interested in doing some work for sk whether it's a small job or a large job yes we'd be happy to do it so where is the problem i think we're straying into the housing committee uh and i know that they are actually looking at doing um their own framework uh but mr wiles has much more detail that he can give to you max so just one moment yeah i think it's it's exactly the point i was trying to make is we are going to hold local trade fairs and we're going to invite local suppliers to to come along and to put forward obviously we need to ensure that they are compliant they're meeting all the health and safety requirements they're passing the right checks to ensure that if they go into properties they've got the right protections in place but ultimately there is a there is a threshold about the financial value of doing such a thing because if it goes to the same trades people on multiple occasions then we are straying into breaching our own contract procedure rules which are clearly defining how many quotes we should get on on work items as well so we need to we need to navigate through this in a careful way but i do recognize as a there's an urgency around using local trades people and we recognize that but we need to do it in a way that's keeping us compliant as well thank you thank you uh the next person uh council turn around i know you've got your hand up so just one moment uh is council baxter yeah thank you i don't want to go kind of agreeing with everybody else but i think that the challenging word in in this report which is a report about what's gone before this is a report to the end of 2023 financial year achieved i i think we're all agreeing that that achieved is a very final word and perhaps partly achieved or partly started or in progress or whatever else is a better reflection but we've now got a new corporate plan um i hope that that in future meetings we'll be looking at that and and measuring smartly uh as council knoll says on that charles is that something that we could be doing uh sorry debbie jolts which either of you oh thank you ma'am yes i certainly correct uh going forward just to uh clarify uh for the committee on the uh on the designation of certain actions uh has achieved and others has not i understand obviously by the nature of the support looking backwards as a retrospective going it was done by reviewing the past four years of the kpi reports and uh the measurements of achieved and not achieved was done against the criteria as council knoll's status set out in 2020-21 which for each one is looking at quite specific actions so for example taking the point of council Harrison made on say regeneration of a grant firm obviously saying the ambition to regenerate ground from has not been achieved however in say successfully accessing the action zone funds and future high street funds as set out in the actual criteria back in that time that has been achieved hence was marked like that same for people's strategy by documents was produced the it strategy was produced commercial the uh implementation service plans exception i understand that's quite a a technical and maybe um hair-splitting way of doing it i suppose you could say perhaps with marking our own homework to an extent maybe but uh that was the way it was done in this report i'm apologizing in the report that wasn't clear enough but uh that was the way it was uh chosen to mark our progress obviously moving forward into the new plan i think we're going to have much more comprehensive uh set of kpi measures to assess our actions again so we don't have such a situation we're kind of like looking back over four years again trying to work out exactly we had uh done and not achieved about that that's clear thank you okay um councillor johnson i'd just like to point out that um the corporate plan over the previous four years was voted on and accepted and we went forward with it but we did have virtually two years of covid which killed a lot of the things that was uh hopefully going to be achieved but i will agree with councillor baxter let's move forward but don't forget the fact that we did have two years where we couldn't do a lot of the things that we wanted to do thank you thank you i think that's a very pertinent point for pointing out uh councillor turner um when i'm reading the the kpi from 2020 to 2023 has laid out in this it seems like we've asked the council to do something and make a plan to to make it happen and with regards to that the council has done it and that's why they feel that that that status is achieved so it's just a way that you interpret the report you interpret the report rather than the actual minutiae of it so i think that it still stands as achieved and i can see why people would think that it isn't but in terms of is the council ready to embed an agile approach to working by building on the cultural and technological changes for example well it is now it might not have been then so therefore it's achieved so i think it's all down to interpretation thank you there's been some really relevant questions i think today and people have been able to have their their say on this so i think we need now need to move forward we know that we're going to make some changes going forward with these and it's a living document so you know we can make changes and whatever as we wish okay in consultation with people of course so um so we've reviewed and scrutinized the performance against the corporate plan key performance indicators in relation to the delivery of the corporate plan 2020 to 23 priorities and outcomes and we're using this report to inform and support the ongoing work program of the committee so i think we can all agree that we can take that forward as it is okay so we will now move on to the next agenda item okay agenda item nine progress update in respect of the construction of the waste depot turnpike close grantham and this is council cleaver thank you chairman the fe osc was provided with an update on the newest depot project at their last meeting on the 8th of may it was agreed at that meeting that the committee will be provided with regular updates during the project delivery phase this report is the first in of the project updates that you will receive the report confirms the latest status of the project and provides details of the activities since the last update in order to assist members a dashboard has been developed that shows a high level summary of the project as can be seen from the dashboard value engineering has been developed has been undertaken in conjunction with linden's but within the parameters of the already approved planning permission of the development and we are now moving forward to the detailed design phase there has been some slippage on the program due to the value engineering phase having had to be undertaken the project team have taken this time to identify as areas of potential savings to the scheme which will not be to the detriment of the overall project quality and scope slippages within the project timelines are hoped to be drawn back via efficiencies in subsequent phases a contract has now been entered into with linden group to bring forward the detailed design of the project to enable the council to then enter into the main works contract within the project budget the members are invited to comment on the dashboard and make any suggestions or additional information they would like to see provided thank you thank you councillor cleaver councillor wittington yes thanks madam chairman uh my question i've got is around paragraph 2.3 the value engineering summary um we know with this project that the original budget was eight million pounds and then an additional 800 000 was agreed to to give a total of 8.8 the um the paragraph then tells at the top of page 54 the the results of the value engineering has been to find over 350 50 000 pounds worth of savings let's reduce the construction cost down to 7.9 million well if you take 8.8 and take hold 350 000 you don't get to 7.9 million so i'm just wondering if somebody could provide some clarity around the numbers because i believe they are given well i'm struggling to make sense of them so thank you mr wiles i think it's and it goes back to the question i think councillor soy asked in the updates in the previous meeting so basically there are two there's two elements of this there's a project cost which is delivering the project which is the 8.8 that's been agreed by council and there's the construction costs which is the direct cost incurred by linda incurred to linden's for the actual construction of the depot but clearly the project itself is wider than just building the facility because there's also the fitting out of it there's also the project management costs that we're incurring with the support of glee to deliver the project so the numbers are simply that 8.2 was the bid uh received by linden's that went to cabinet in april the value engineering is bringing the 8.2 down to around about 7.9 and therefore that creates a headroom of 900 000 between that cost of the construction and the overall budget of 8.8 and that difference is what we're using to fund the other costs associated with the delivery of this project thank you uh council wittington thank you for explaining that richard so on that basis then presumably you've got you've got budget items for the outfitting and for the and for enabling the depot to open and you're and you're anticipating that in total you won't exceed the 8.8 and potentially might come in under the 8.8 because of this of this construction cost because on basically what you've told me the budget for the fit out by deduction would be 600 000 pounds so potentially there may be you know so i think i think what i'm trying to what i'm what i'm what i'm trying to get together is is that budget 600 000 pounds sufficient or will you come in under or potentially you've now got a little bit of surplus just just to feel around that and it just what i'm trying to do is do is i'm really just trying to sit in my own mind just to quantify the the risks on the different elements of the entire project thank you so just to kind of be clear the budget is 8.8 and that's what officers are working within to deliver this project which is why we're driving down through the value engineering the construction cost to the minimum we can get it to accepting what council cleaver said about ensuring we don't compromise the integrity and quality of the finished product at the moment that's heading towards 7.9 which gives us 900 000 headroom between that construction budget and the overall project budget that 900 needs to be used to fund the project management any unforeseen costs the mobilization and the fit out that that is a pressure point so i'm definitely not going to go on record and say we'll deliver it below the budget but the 8.8 is the ceiling that we've been given and that's what we're going to deliver it within if we cannot do that then i'll be clear and transparent with this committee and ultimately with council but i'll also set out why we're unable to deliver it but as we sit here today 8.8 is the budget we've got and we're working within that so on that basis then 600 000 pounds was the original budget for fit out and other costs 8.2 plus 600 coming coming to 8.8 now that's what i'm trying to understand thank you not necessarily because when the 8.8 was agreed that was in february the bids didn't come in till after that date it was only at that point when the bids were arrived by two contractors as you know we only got two bids on the table neither of them were acceptable because the head room it created was only 600 hence why we've gone into our value engineering to create more headroom so if you say so do you do so have you got an idea as to what the the fit out and enabling costs are going to be because what i'm hearing now i've now got real concern and how the 8.8 being a being a realistic amount of budget to actually have because i would have presumed that when you were costing up your 8.8 million you would have done a detailed budget of all of all the items and said this is going to cost us we think roughly 8.8 million pounds so as part of that i would assume that you would have looked at the fit out costs and the other cost of bringing the depot into use and built them in on top of the construction costs and i'm just now i've got real concerns for what i'm hearing potentially 8.8 million might not be enough i don't think anyone needs to be concerned madam chairman hence why sorry to sound like i'm repeating myself hence why we've gone into value engineering because we know the figure we need we know the headroom we need between the 8.8 and the available budget to deliver the other aspects hence why the value engineering has continued to create the headroom of the 900 000 that we believe will be sufficient to deliver the overall project so that's the construction and everything that goes with it all i'm saying today i'm sure councilman appreciates that is we've not even started to work so there is a potential for unforeseen costs so still come along that we can't anticipate sat here today we've built in contingency for that so we we're comfortable as we sit here today there's headroom in the overall 8.8 million pound budget to deliver what we need to deliver all i'm saying is that obviously this is a year and a half away from finalization because it's an october 25 finish date they clearly and short council witness appreciates this they clearly could be costs that we don't foresee at the moment that could come along along the way so that's why i'm still saying the 8.8 is the absolute ceiling we've got but we there may be events that occur outside of eye control that take us beyond that thank you in some of the reports in the past we have had some breakdowns of some of the finances is it possible at all to include any of these financial figures in the dashboards to give us updates so that members feel more probably aware but confident in what's going on with the with the project as well is that too big a job or not possible or you tell me please sorry as i say we're coming to every meeting with this so this will be iterative and and as i think we said in the report this is our first dashboard to the committee the committee are more than entitled to feedback and say that's not quite sufficient that is more than sufficient whatever the feedback is we'll take it away and we'll come back with further information it's in nobody's interest to make this opaque and and try to mystify it we want to be as open and transparent as you can it's in a very sensitive part of the process because the value engineering is still finalizing itself and we're going into design phase so i'm sure the committee is sympathetic to the fact that some of this information is still moving in real time and and things will change but i'm hoping to give the committee the assurance that the governance is is strong on this indeed we have three cabinet members now we come to every board meeting we work as a team on a weekly basis there are monthly meetings and we're coming to this committee so there's full hopefully visibility on on this project and i'm not trying to mystify anybody with the numbers i'm just saying please be sympathetic to us that some of this is still playing out in real time but we're absolutely excited on the budget that's been allocated to us and it's in nobody's interest to not meet that budget ceiling that's been given thank you thank you is that a better explanation for you council wittington and is that something you'd like to see with the dashboard when it comes to the committee thanks much i'm not going to say anything else because i still have concerns but i'll be happy for any financial information because for me the financial information is key to all of this thank you and you're welcome to express your concerns you know we all need to work together on this and as mr wiles said there are lots of people that are meeting i think that three three cabinet members and i think originally we only said that we thought there would be one so any other suggestions that can go on the dashboard then you know please let us know or mr wiles know and then we can see how that can go forward councilor soya thank you chairman the discussion of the overall cost is i think in part somewhat moot i i predict now i i don't think we'll see any change out of 10 million and if it costs us 12 million i won't be surprised however i would like to see as i mentioned at the start a breakdown of costs of each part of the project levelling surfacing building plumbing electrical work i can look at it we all can we might think my goodness that's good value for money or we might think the opposite but i think we ought to have the chance of thinking something about it so again i repeat my request that i made weeks if not months ago could we have a breakdown of each each phase well richard has touched on i think he referred to 600 000 for fitting out that's only a small part of it so let's have the similar information about the rest and i think that's just what i was just saying is that you know if we can provide more detail in that on the dashboard for members so that they can have a look at it as long as it's you know what we need to have a look at and it's available and what they can provide us so mr wiles has just said he will you know do whatever he can to help us understand so absolutely yes absolutely okay are there any more questions okay uh council harrison and then council green thank you chair um i've seen that many figures on this now start to make my brain hurt that's probably because i'm one of the simpler ones on the committee but um for clarification the 8.9 million is that including the actual purchase price because when i first started on this the costs i was being told then included the purchase price of the land and the leveling of the land so is that 8.9 million including that now or is it not i'm i'm sort of getting lost a little bit but uh i don't pull him up on it but it's 8.8 million uh not 8.9 but i'll take the extra hundred if it's on the table uh no it doesn't include the acquisition this is from this is from the point of the project going forward to deliver a waste depot so it's from that point going forward not not the historical costs that the council incurred in acquiring the site in the first instance thank you so can i ask them that we you know we're obfuscating it a little bit because we're going the depo's costing this it's not actually costing that it's costing the other costs that we're not including in it you know it's it's obfuscating the figures a little bit i think we're not doing uh our uh customers if you like our constituents we're doing them a disservice by not giving them the full figures you know it should be stated here that it's cost from now on it's going to cost 8.8 million i haven't got a hundred thousand for you richard sorry um and um but it's also cost the the 2.4 i can't remember what it was now 4.5 uh procurement in the first place and leveling it's you know it's not a social figure is it i mean to be fair that the the uh the gender item is the construction of the depot so that's the budget 8.8 million the historical costs are part of a wider conversation about how we assembled the land in the first instance but to be fair as well the council acquired that land as an opportunity uh at that time because of its strategic importance it would there were discussions about the depot going on there but there are also discussions about disposing of it to two third parties indeed i met with amazon because it could have been a distribution hub so yes we did acquire that site with the intention of putting a depot on it but that was never progressed at that particular point and other options were made available for that disposal of that site so yes we can include it but it's not particularly relevant to the item on the agenda because the item on the agenda is about delivery of the project itself on that site thank you very much uh so the next person is councillor green and then it's councillor wittington yes thank you very much chair so um i mean i'm just wondering obviously the value engineering phase um has undergone um a lengthening in the originally envisaged time period it would take um 350 000 pounds worth of savings have so far been identified um i just wondered if anybody could speak to what that materially entails for the project and could they be of a sufficient magnitude to actually affect the planning application itself i mean i do notice on page 53 we've got a lengthening all the way across the board apart from actually the the construction phase which is now going to take apparently less time i mean i can't think of of any project um short of the Apollo project that was actually on time let alone before it has originally envisaged um is that overly optimistic thank you i think the report confirms in 2.2 that the value engineering items that have been secured do not conflict with the planning permission we were very mindful of making sure that didn't occur because of the time delay that would then uh relate to so we we tried a very careful path between the comments that councillor cleaver made which is about not compromising integrity and the efficiency of the site but also mindful that we didn't want to modify the planning permission to such an extent you would have to go back to the committee so that that was the very small kind of remit if you like of where we could take value engineering items out but in terms of timeline i think the comments we've made in the report are such because the two bids that were received one contractor said they could deliver the project in 36 weeks and the successful bidder has said it will require 51 weeks there's also a 10-week phase that we're currently in which is the design phase we believe that there is there's room for maneuverability on both those phases that will bring the project back so yes we've lost a bit of time through the value of engineering partly because of the small window of opportunity we had to secure the savings that we needed to but we were sitting here today more confident that we can recoup that lost time back on the subsequent phases i think the point i made in the pre-brief to yourself was the absolute target is april 26 which is when the food waste legislation requires us to incorporate additional rounds for the collection so we've absolutely got to be on site and operational by april 26 obviously we've worked back from that and given ourselves a comfortable window of time to be on site a lot sooner than that but there is still the deadline is the kind of self-imposed deadline i suppose is what i'm saying and so if it becomes december 25 which hopefully won't that doesn't really cause any operational upsets and ultimately the project needs to be delivered as a quality product so so if there are some movements in the timeline then then ultimately the council will look back and still say it's had a successful outcome i don't think it a few weeks here and there at the end of it makes a material change as long as we've got ourselves mobilized and operationally live by april 26 then then we're we're comfortable thank you that councillor green did you want to come yes thank you yeah that was helpful but let's contemplate doomsday here and actually think about this exceeding perhaps april 26 what would that actually mean for us thank you uh let's not think like that council green shall we shall we think positively and that we're going to finish before that time but mr wiles yeah i didn't think i'd be sitting here contemplating doomsday i mean the alternative scenario if that played out but it won't by the way but if it did then we would just have some off site i mean the issue is about the license of the existing site as everyone knows and the fact that we've got a real restriction on the amount of extra vehicles additional vehicles can be on that location the worst worst worst case is if we're not off that side by april 26 we'd have to mobilize an off-site storage area where those freighters could be housed operationally that'd be quite difficult because we'd have to maneuver the the workforce in two locations but you know at the end of the day that that would be the worst case scenario but operationally it would still work is it the same thing council green because of some other people yeah just a very brief point i mean if we're able to actually um operate from two sites it calls into question having one depot at all thank you it would be very inefficient madam chairman council wittington yeah thanks madam chairman i want to sort of address some questions now around the project planner um which is on page uh 55 uh you know the the actual uh dashboard um i'm looking at the pie chart in the bottom left hand corner which has got the budget allocation um and i'm sorry to go back to finance but we've got a total there which doesn't add up to 8.8 million it adds up to eight eight million three eight million six hundred and thirty eight thousand so if you take seven nine three three five hundred and two oh five of them together so so so there's something a bit wrong there but also it then refers in there to five hundred thousand pounds of professional fees well if we've now got professional fees and um fitting and other enabling costs it looks like we've we may only have the 205 that's given there sorts of different that pie chart is is indicating to me that that there's there's issues around that so so some social clarity around that will be useful then we can look at the risk uh table now i'm really pleased to see that the key risks are on there but the very first one there value engineering not achieved is now as a medium risk well if we if the value engineering has actually happened and we've got three hundred and of ninety thousand pounds worth of savings why is that still a medium risk because presumably now that risk is no longer a risk because we've actually achieved the value engineering the implication is that the engineering potentially is then ongoing so that's so i just need some clarity around that and also i then noticed looking looking at the the the the table above which which which gives the the dates we see the different phases um under the date column but what i really would like to say and what i really think is fundamentally important in any project planning dashboard is to is to put a line down where your key milestones are where you have to have all of that achieved before we can go on to the next phase and most project plans i've seen do have that sort of key milestones you know this is an important date because we have to have done a b and c before before we can do d and i can't see that on there so again just just just around those three items madam chairman thank you thank you is that something you can answer jiles or is that mr wiles that needs to answer i'll have a go at some of it and fill in the blanks i think i mean the budget allocation we've already committed to coming back and giving more transparency but uh that's supposed to give a diagram diagrammatical representation of how the budget's been allocated which you can see the line share of it is going on the construction of the depot itself but there are those other costs that adds up to 8.5 because the difference in 8.5 and 8.8 is where the mobilization and the fit out will fit in but we are still waiting for final uh confirmation of what those figures will be what we're trying to do at the moment is see where we can salvage and uh repurpose existing equipment in the current site and be repurposed it onto the new site and that works still ongoing so that will be a figure that might move in the future but we still don't repeat myself but we're still working in the overall budget itself at the time that this dashboard was produced which was the 6th of june we hadn't yet completed the value engineering exercise but i can confirm that that phase has now been completed and we've moved into the design phase so the next iteration of this which actually will only be probably in three weeks time that value engineering risk will be removed because that will now be a past event and that's that's been achieved so that that was a medium at the time because we hadn't completed it but with that things are moving at that sort of speed so hopefully i get some reassurance about the momentum behind this particular project i'll take the point about the critical path and the milestones but at the moment in times as we said in the report we're only at the design phase so actually there is a sequence in here that's being played out which is the contract being received sorry the bid being received the contract being awarded value engineering being undertaken and now we're in design after that point we'll go into construction phase so do expect this dashboard to change as we go forward and there may be different elements of information you want to see in the future that aren't relevant today i mean just to be fair this was our first attempt at trying to anticipate what the committee wanted to see and we thought the finances the risk and the overall project plan would probably be the areas that the committee want to focus on but as we move forward we will modify this and present different information at different points we are this is the kind of journey not sprint there are many meetings to go where this information will be presented and we will obviously adapt and adopt the information as the committee wishes but if jar just got anything more i want to say really it was just you have to reiterate what richard said there in terms of the milestones as well this was intended to be a snapshot for the current meeting in relation to obviously we were aware you're going to have these monthly updates so it was a short short timeline rather than a whole project timeline as the main events coming up and what the project's sort of facing imminently so we can take that point away in terms of the milestones going forward and if you'd like us to revise that timeline we can include those cancer swear action a simple point i think if the land is to be used for the depot then that land can't be used for anything else therefore should the cost of the land not be included in the overall cost of the project for reporting purposes you mean it has been in numerous reports where we have had details of how much it cost in the beginning and then how much going forward but that's a question i'll ask for mr wiles for you i don't i don't think it's any secrets about the acquisition it came to council for a decision so it's it's out in the public domain i don't i question the relevance of it in this which is about delivering a depot because it's historical cost is how far back we want to keep rehearsing what has gone before i mean i'm happy to send a link to council soya so you can familiarize yourself with the cost that we we incurred inquiring the site but i don't particularly see the value in presenting it as part of this because it's not relevant to the 8.8 million budget which is what the committee is is monastery itself against would you like to come back on that councilor soya um all i will say is um it's possible apparently you can build a house in the uk three bedroom house for 250 000 pounds if you ignore the cost of the land um i think i'm not going to use the word disingenuous i think you should be aware that the project is made up of the 8.8 million or more which i think it will be plus the cost of the land because the land was bought and is being used for the project so we talk of eight point million i don't think we should we should talk of that plus the land cost i think the difference is is that you know coming forward going forward we'll have different reports on um what's happened with the depot at the moment this is as it is and how it's going forward so at the present time they've got the 8.8 million to work with the other money has already been spent and the land has been sorted so that's something that i think we will see in reports in future that the land was acquired at this amount and we have this amount and this is what we've spent is is that correct uh mr wiles is that something that going forward we would have towards maybe the end of the project where we would be looking at um the finances and and agreeing that it all came within budget um yeah i'm not really sure the purpose of the conversation to be honest but the purpose of this report is to deliver the project against the 8.8 million so the historical cost of what we've incurred for me aren't relevant to the terms of reference of what this is trying to present to the members i'm more than happy at each of these meetings to present the hyperlink to the historical acquisition cost so members can see it but i don't i don't it certainly doesn't want to be in the dashboard because it's wholly irrelevant to that and i don't want to repeat every single item of the report reminding everybody of the cost that we incurred in acquiring the site i'm more than happy to familiarize perhaps the new members more to the site cost but i don't really see the relevance of saying it at every meeting no i didn't say it every meeting i said that the final report would probably be what we would say how much so that would then i think what you're talking you're thinking of is for people in the public domain to know what's been spent so okay council step two yeah madam chair i i note that on my diary on my laptop there's a further meeting of this committee on the 17th of july so that's pretty soon so we'll get a further update so with very respectfully i suggest that we move on please that was going to be my next point so um so this is the finance and economic overview and scrutiny committee is asked to note the current position with respect to the delivery of the new waste depot so we'll move forward now to agenda item 10 so this is progress update on the economic development strategy for council backster please okay um this is hopefully a brief item um committee will note the content of the report in respect of um the development of the economic development strategy which is in in the back agenda item 10 um we've agreed that we'll have a workshop for members a further workshop for members on the 15th of july um a welcome input from all sides of the chamber and all feedback is welcome this is post consultation so we had a consultation process um and that obviously puts the the timetable back for the economic development strategy um i recognize that this has been going on for for more than two years now but we want to get it right rather than just getting it done we want to we've come this far we want to do it properly the during consultation the offices wrote directly to stakeholders introducing the consultation process for the economic development strategy and asked them to visit the council's website to make representation the stakeholder group included over 250 public sector partners town councils parish councils business club representatives and ordinary members of the public who had expressed an interest at any point in planning economic or similar consultation exercises we have had over 50 responses an early review of the responses um have identified several themes um and this list is not exhausted connectivity around the district uh consideration to um commercial business premises to meet demand making sure that we've got the right kind of premises in the right place for emerging businesses and particularly for businesses that that wish to expand we want to the consultation revealed that we want to identify and develop key sectors the sectors which are most likely to drive our economy and further consideration should be given to local productivity drivers and inclusion of plans to address them for example economic activity rates the strategy should say how we're going to improve economic activity rates so there is a revised timetable within the in the plan um which is slightly amended and results in a recommendation to cabinet on the 8th of october 2024 happy to take any questions chair thank you i think the date we actually discussed counselor baxter was going to be the 17th of july at the pre-meet because we will be meeting for this meeting again and we felt that maybe the members could stay slightly afterwards to that sounds like a workshop that sounds like a good idea and um apologies if i've misspoke that's okay but we just need to ask members if they're all in agreement of doing that yeah just got one question um in view of the fact that this is now not going to cabinet until the 8th of october 2024 and the strategy is supposed to be 2024 or 28 wouldn't be better just to call it 2025 to 29 thank you well um thank you if if it's adopted in october 2024 and it would be in place from that point on and that's that there are three months left of of i mean it the the we are cracking on with developing the local economy um alongside developing a economic development strategy um if we adopt the plan in october 2024 then it is a plan for 2024 council green thank you chair i think 50 responses is disappointing and that's considering the extra publicity that we got off the back of the spelling mistakes having said that though i think council whitington is right i mean this was originally pitched and i remember it back in 2022 as a five-year plan so this was supposed to be 2023 to 2028 that's become on the face of it four years given the delay here with the introduction of that second workshop realistically we're now looking at what was a five-year plan being contracted down into a three and a half year plan if we don't opt for that moving forwards in time that council whitington is suggesting by going to 29. i don't think we need another workshop i think we've talked more than enough about this we've not had a strategy now for years let's get on with it it's embedded within the report here move straight to a redraft without a workshop i'd like to formally propose that we do exactly that and try and honor the the original dates outlined in table one let's crack on let's get it done i think businesses and our residents that's what they're calling for we should honor that we don't need to talk about it anymore certainly not in a workshop let's crack on with that hard graft of doing the redraft and move this forward thank you i spoke to nick hibbard on this and what he wanted was some input from the from the members on the replies that they got so he asked that the workshop would go ahead after the meeting for an hour which didn't seem an unreasonable request on the 17th of july which is three weeks away the finance meeting the next finance meeting which is three weeks away so i think we're the best one in the world i think the last thing that our residents want is is more dither and delay on this we need to move forward i i think we can strip that out i think nick nick can be liberated to work on the strategy rather than be supervising a workshop let's get on with it thank you thank you chair the i would hope that members would want the strategy to come back here before it goes to cabinet there is no chance that it is going to come back here on the 15th of july the the it will still be a work in progress a draft in progress there the the most you would save by what's been recommended is a month i recognize that that i think the original workshop that took place before the consultation was at the request of members of the coalition group none of the members of coalition group turned up to the first workshop that's that's fine it's not compulsory um if mem if the committee doesn't want to workshop i'll happily take the time back and i'm sure nick would too but that won't mean that the final economic development strategy arrives any sooner or if it does it will just be a month so it's your choice chair i don't mind uh emma can i just ask uh from your perspective um what do you feel uh on this uh discussion that's happening at the present time thank you thank you um chairman um i think that another workshop would be a useful and valuable tool i think um it helps to get by and it helps to help officers understand any concerns and um arrive at final decisions um i think in terms of getting on and drafting the final document obviously if that's the will of the committee we can absolutely do that but i think as councillor backs has already indicated um it's highly unlikely that we'll be able to bring a draft back to the july um finance committee so i don't think it's every time and i think that that workshop will be exceedingly valuable and i hope members would would agree to thank you okay i think what we need to do then is we need to take a vote on whether or not members would like for the workshop to go ahead on that day and if you choose not to attend then um then that would be entirely up to yourself and would anybody have a problem with that taking a vote on that so can i have a proposal that we take a vote on having a workshop on this so that's council soya council harrison but so those all in favor of having a workshop on the 17th that's one two three four five six those against one two three and an abstention one okay thank you moving forward we're on to um agenda item 11 uh so this is about the grantham high street heritage action zone completion report for us to review and endorse the report and it is councilor fever again thank you chairman so height street a heritage action zone in grantham this program was funded by historic england and skdc over four years beginning in may 2020 and completing on the 31st of march 2024 so we this is a this is a looking back um looking back celebrating our successes and looking at the lessons learned um the report outlines the successes challenges and lessons learned through the delivery of the program and the additional associated cultural program funded by historic england and the national lottery heritage fund which ran from 2021 to march 2024 further detail is provided in the appendices in the report however i'd like to draw the committee's attention to the following key points the program delivered successfully shopfront building regeneration projects to seven properties in addition it supported significant restoration works to westgate hall which of course is a grantham landmark which was facilitated by ongoing repair and restoration of the building to allow for its future use as a restaurant with that planned opening date of 2025 total grant received from historic england over the four-year program was 672 719 pounds and this was matched by 284 652 pounds in funding from skdc total private sector match funding directly leveraged by grant funding through the scheme was 307 000 pounds this was three times the value of the private sector match targeted in the original 2019 bid in additional in addition the recorded added value leveraged through or as a direct result of the scheme was over 370 000 pounds this includes the value of additional non-grant funded works carried on out out carried out on buildings which received a grant and works carried out to other buildings encouraged by the involvement in the scheme elsewhere but which had no direct grant involvement typically where building property owners wished to bring other buildings in their portfolio up to the same or similar standard to those which were granted properties it also includes additional grant funding received by skdc or partner organizations as the result of projects undertaken through the scheme this can be broken down as follows westgate hall fits out conservatively estimated at two to three two to two hundred two hundred fifty thousand pounds private sector investment to shop fronts commercial properties additional investment between 2020 and 2024 68 000 pounds private sector investments to shop fronts commercial properties additional investment forecast spend for 24 25 74 000 pounds arts grant fund to grant grant the museum reimagined project 18 600 and woodland trust grant skdc for street greening visibility study 10 000 pounds in addition to the capital projects the heritage action zone program also delivered community consultation and engagement facilities which included the creation of a digital heritage trail through the free trail tail app a top trump's style card game which highlighted 62 of grantham's historic buildings and the trigger library coloring book celebrating the artwork found within the library's collection further funding was secured from historic England and national heritage lottery fund national lottery heritage fund sorry to deliver an associated cultural program which included the festival of angels at St Wolfram's church costumed heritage tours community arts project and the creation of arts facilities in the town center as a result of the work undertaken through the heritage action locks heritage action zone and other town center reach regeneration programs in grantham the town received nominations for two national awards academy of urbanism great town and small city award for which we were a top three finalists and visa rising star award where grantham was also a top three finalist coming to the challenges the greatest challenges faced in the program was the historic England's restriction which prevented the rollover of underspend into following years of the program delivery this particularly impacted the capital delivery as works to the historic buildings rarely run completely to schedule and often factors which can significantly lengthen timelines are often not discovered until works begin understandably working on on old buildings in several instances this pushed project timelines back beyond the financial year end resulting in underspenders full grant could not be drawn down in the financial year as well as impacting the allocation of funding to other grants in the next financial year in 2022 historic England imposed further restrictions preventing any underspend being reallocated to new projects not included in the original program design which again severely limited our ability to make best use of any underspend moving on to lessons learned the heritage action zone provided many opportunities for learning however one of the most prominent was around how SKDC may structure future capital programs to support those less familiar or confident with this with this process following on from the successful shopfront grant scheme which ran from 2015 to 2020 the heritage action zone offered an open program with no deadlines which accepted applications until funding was fully allocated however this led to grants being awarded to eligible properties on a first come first serve basis in future it will be recommended that grants be processed in rounds with deadlines to allow projects to be compared more effectively against each other and to remove the advantage of those the first to apply so I commend the report to you and I'm happy with Emma to answer questions I believe we've got some slides to show you so you can actually visualize and see what was done thank you so so Councillor Sawyer very quickly chairman thank you Richard the most successful was the capital project least successful community engagement looking at the report yes well it's called most challenging the community I think the community engagement is always going to be something which is I think the community engagement is always challenging on something like this I think we know that as a council consulting with people getting people interested in answering questions which you know they weren't expecting from us is always is always difficult yeah yeah and I think there was a lot of value because we wanted to make people aware of what we were doing you know this is this is part of a wider scheme of improving the environment of our town centers which I think we all feel passionate about and you can't do that without engaging the public it isn't just about making a few buildings look prettier it's actually making people understand and feel they're participating in the town center becoming a better place to to live and work and visit and shop the part of this was of course you know converting converting houses converting upper floors of shops to be residential which is a constant theme of town center regeneration so yeah I mean I won't necessarily agree with community with you with your rather stark analysis but yes the general thrust of what you're saying I can see where you're coming from thank you thank you Emma thank you unfortunately you've not got Claire Saunders who's been the program lead and she's far more knowledgeable about these things and could probably talk more eloquently about the the sites but I'll just do a quick whip through of a few that I know she's particularly pleased with in terms of the the successes that we've had and I think it's really important to to celebrate that because it has been successful and there will always be things that we could have done better and learn from but we should recognize those those successes so in front of you is just a summary slide which Councillor Cleaver has already highlighted and it's covered in the the report if we could just have the next slide please so this is Westgate Hall which is probably one of the biggest projects one of the most challenging that we've had these are the four photos and you can see some of the internal photos of inside and some of the roof issues it's had a checkered history in terms of its uses and certainly has been used as a nightclub and you can see there's quite a lot of extensive damage and certainly I've been in that building when it was in this this condition and it was a lot of work that needed to be done it is a grade two list of building it's a very prominent and important building within the Westgate marketplace area but there was an awful lot of of difficulty in terms of the conservation deficit which basically means there's cost far more than the the value of the asset in very simple terms and historically there's been no clear plans for the future use if we could just next slide please you can see from this this is some of the after photos so the grant of 300,000 plus has been private sector investment it's helped address that conservation deficit it's allowed them to install some roof lights address some of the water ingress and it's building bringing that property back into use and obviously it's got a future opening date in the not too near near future which is really positive to see this is another site in in the marketplace area not a particularly sympathetic facial sign which well it is what it is and you can you can see that for yourselves and if we just go to the next slide you can see this is obviously the the end product and it's a much more aesthetically pleasing shop fund we've had some quite positive feedback on it as well both from employees but also customers thank you this is another property it's again it's an unsympathetic shop front and and facial signs not particularly appropriate to design of the building or the character of the area it was one of the feedback comments that we receive is it that was particularly putting off potential tenants and if we go to the next slide you can see the end result which i'm sure is a you'll appreciate is a much better um a much more attractive shop front and certainly much more traditional in its features which i think is um is what's in keeping with a number of the units down down there um it's had a tenant in place as well since 2020 which i think is is quite important and that's the end of the slides on this one thank you thank you has anybody got any further comments Councillor Harrison thank you chair yeah um in general great product project um have you seen there lots of nice improvements i'm pleased to see that Councillor cleaver said that lessons have been learned um i think it's in 2.3 um yeah 2.31 to 2.34 i have a concern that um we have professional bid writers that get in and get these um shop fronts um grants before independent traders can get them they don't understand them they don't understand so i'm pleased to see that we're looking to put something in place to to negate that and give the independent traders a bit more chance of getting in there as well so yeah all good thank you thank you um yeah i saw this um report for before culture and leisure last week um and what i found most interesting about it on the first glance was that high grantham has finally made meant something to me after driving up and down the high street for the last three or four years and googling it and never actually understanding what what that meant um as Councillor Harrison said about the large property owners it's it's an unfortunate shame i think that one of the biggest landowners in the country has ended up being the main beneficiary of the of the project but i i understand the arguments that that was a difficult and a difficult issue um just going on to page 91 of the final report there's a comment about the um george shopping center um i believe that the george shopping center the owners of that are actually the people that were previously praised earlier on in the report is that correct because we seem to be very keen to throw praise in one direction but we're not naming them when when we're casting shade on them um certainly i think that one of the biggest things that tends to come up online is people criticizing the the vacant units within the juror shopping center and people that have been around for 20 30 years tell me i mean tim tim is probably wanting to jump in now and tell me the history of the george george hotel but it was it is a major thing that always comes up um the only other point to make there's the final paragraph on on this page says the largest threat to the regeneration of the town center heritage ledger or otherwise is the continued reduction in resources and funding of local authorities and partner organizations which persists in undermining regeneration which could be achieved i couldn't disagree with that anymore if i tried i actually don't think that the biggest problem to the town center is a lack of public money being thrown at it i think the problem is getting poor people into the town to actually spend money and to actually stimulate business growth within the town so um i actually don't think that just throwing taxpayers money at something for the sake of it there's any point in i think one of the great things about this scheme actually has been that it has focused on bringing people in and making the the town more attractive um so i do completely disagree with that that's that's the biggest threat that's all thank you thanks chair i just wanted to clarify something with respect to a declaration of interest obviously i think people know that i work for the woodland trust and um there is an aspect to the urban greening there um i think that's already happened um any sort of clarity there on whether i need to sit this out or refrain from voting would be would be welcome um yeah i would say madam chairman if the work's already been completed you have declared that you do work for the woodland trust so i don't see any reason that it would benefit you in any way taking part no and i had zero to do with it i'll say i just wanted to also chip in on the george shopping center i mean yeah it's almost like a neutron bomb's gone off in there and just erased all of the people i mean we've now got tourists coming to grantham and not to see an attraction but an eyesore i mean i think people have seen the youtube videos where there are people wandering around what feels like quite a spooky empty shopping center that's not good for the town doesn't send the right message and how are we proactively engaging with the owners and what may we envisage to try and spur some further investment or some action i'm sure this is under being undergone in the background but any kind of flesh on the bone there would be of interest um you know particularly if it comes down to the fact that they potentially as the owners remain uncooperative or they don't invest you know what options are available to us as a district council to to spur some some positive development there for the good of the town thank you councillor cleaver can you come back on that at all please um thank you i mean to be fair i think we all and i'm sure that other district councils will say exactly the same thing have a frustration very often with our lack of legal powers to enforce land owners to do things we'd like them to do in the interests of our communities um that's a common problem i'm sorry i can't give you a positive answer um all i can do is is reflect your frustrations and the frustration of grant the people that that property is sitting being rather underutilized um it's probably the most positive thing i can say about it that's the polite version to say it's underutilized uh i think there are actually stronger words in the report on page 91 aren't there um yeah i i share your i share your frustration we have all the time we have it in planning regularly it is it is an issue and it's i'm sorry to shrug my shoulders but um there we go uh i've got councillor wittington councillor harrison and then emma that's okay yeah or did you want to come back first emma okay sorry mark can i just ask emma to reply thank you all i was going to add was um it's council previous i just said it is difficult for us but i'll ask the team to reach out and see if we can um at least start a conversation i'm sure those conversations are happening but i will ask them to reach out again and see if we can start something going thank you council wittington yes it might help some clarity with the question that councillor green asked about in working for the woodland trust and it being uh what had already been done i actually did raise this same issue with with graham watts because the uh the new tenant of westgate hall mr adeshina i actually do know him and i did ask graham and got the um confirmation back there because he relates to a past event i didn't have to declare it so i'm pretty sure that councillor green would be covered uh likewise so it's just really really for your information thank you thank you for that council harrison thank you chair um let's come back to council green yeah the um george shopping centre is vastly underused it can it could be revitalized within 10 months quite easily there's a number of simple things that could be done there to turn that around so you have to ask yourself why it's not being done and when you see the developments going on in the first floor and what will probably most likely come through on the ground floor you then get to the answer of why they're not working at turning it into a good central shopping centre thank you okay so if that's all the comments then um we just are reviewing and endorsing this report and we've made comments as we wish so i think we can move forward on this one too so agenda item 12 and it looks like councillor baxter is on for this because he's coming forward so over to you this is the grantham future high streets fund marketplace football activity thank you chair um thank you to all the grantham councillors that have drawn attention to the the marketplace particularly the board members councillor harrison and councillor matt bailey and we had a good uh exchange of views at the full council about the ongoing works in the marketplace and not so much how we got here but but how do we how do we make things better as as it goes forward so this report has been put together by uh nick hibbard and his team to whom i'm grateful the most interesting thing i think is possibly the the footfall but i'll i'll come to that in it in a bit the scheme started on the 7th of may and it concludes hopefully it concludes on the 19th of august or or earlier i think 19th of august is the likely date um notwithstanding neutron bombs whatever the uh some of the contractors the contractors have mobilized and obviously it's caused some uh consternation among uh shopkeepers who feel that the works are having a detrimental effect certainly for the for the period of the works i think it's reasonable to to expect that there will be a detrimental effect on the businesses um for whom we have some sympathy however the reports of reduced footfall are potentially overstated as will be seen from a graph in a minute i don't know who i need to ask to to put together a graph thank you uh the so this report puts together some of the thoughts around mitigation and action to be taken when during the works and as time goes on the mitigations are listed within the report particularly looking at two paragraphs 2.9 onwards which talk about enhanced communications social media improving signage developing an events program and monitoring footfall data and then we have a list in paragraph 2.22 in fact a table on paragraph 2.22 of indicative budget for future activity which could be delivered so these are options available the first one is an extended events program to deliver further events within the town centre between january and may next year a mixture of midweek and weekend events and i think this also ties in with work that we're doing with belton house and uh colleagues at national trust who are at the same time working on a scheme to bring forward a national trust destination within the town centre uh close to some orphanage church belton house gets something like i think a third of a million or a half a million visitors each year and some of those will come into grampton we want more of those to come into grampton because the kind of people that go to look at belton house at a weekend would also be interested i'm sure in some orphans church and many of the other things in the town centre the second proposal is a voucher or a loyalty scheme which would be a a physical card based scheme i did ask a question about the possibility of an app like you might get at greg's or costa or wherever um the that such a scheme would be prohibitively expensive uh and also it would mean that the each of the individual trail it is but wanted to sign up would would have to get the kit and the training and everything else so an old-fashioned punchy card type scheme is is what's being proposed uh in advance of this meeting i had some conversations with council cleaver and others about the replicability of that scheme so if it works in grampton town centre uh then if we can we can do it we can see the success we can learn the lessons and and that is replicable across the district for the rest of grampton but also in in the towns we have the towns um and we'd really like to work with people like shop stanford and love deepings and their partner organizations to make that work but let's walk before we start trying to run the longer term promotional activity to highlight grantham as a destination um goes on and i think that ties into the previous conversation about getting the the stakeholders in grantham particularly the so people like the owners of the george centre uh the to to recognize what an asset they have and what an opportunity they have in the centre of grampton and also you mentioned buckminster and i oh i don't know did you mention you didn't mention by name yes um i i i think you were alluding to buckminster and and and and let's face it buckminster do they are part of our town community and they have benefited from various schemes for shopfront improvements they have had hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money to improve their their property and they also are responsible for the land which is due to be a garden village announced over 10 years ago where we have yet to lay a single brick so we are having discussions with buckminster and i encourage those discussions to become more frequent and tangible and i won't ask i know that our planners are talking to them as well we want to lay lots of bricks in the in the garden village in a way which is sustainable and so on so if anyone from buckminster is listening please continue to talk to us about the town centre and elsewhere the final proposal under paragraph 2.2 is to talk about the the parking arrangements and the financial incentives for new market traders there is a different conversation going on within the council about improving markets one thing i would say is that grantham is not stanford and stanford is not grantham and i think the people of grantham and the people of stanford are probably happy with that but we do need to treat them as two separate kind of sub economies of south east even which are are linked but not not they are not identical and yeah so i think i've said enough on that except for the footfall so let's have a look at this this picture i don't know if people who are watching the meeting can can see it the way the the numbers for footfall have been derived has been consistent so the numbers for last year were were found by the same methodology as the numbers for this year you might be forgiven for thinking it's somebody standing with a clipboard uh every other day marking things off but no this is much more big brother than than that this is this is kind of deep state intelligence uh you the the picture shows a geo fence and a geo fence around the grantham town center so the the footfall which is pretty much the marketplace and westgate we want to know how many people are going there so show us the next the next slide the the orange line shows last year's footfall 2023 for the month of may and the blue line shows the footfall this year for the merry month of may you will see that in the first half of the month uh in both cases visit there's a spiky line um sorry that's a technical technical economist a spiky line and if you look at the on the right hand side of the graph you'll see the second half of may and you'll see that the footfall on most days is higher this year than it was last year and the footfall the spikes are explained by tuesdays which are the most common day for people to to come into work uh if you're working remotely or whatever tuesdays the day when most people are likely to land in the office and the other spike is saturday which as we know in grantham is market day turnout uh footfall in grantham town center on market day is much higher so i was halfway through explaining the geo fence uh when you walk through the town center with your smartphone if it's location enabled or you've got apps working on it to tell you the weather or to tell you where you are or whatever else it will send a ping to the the mast and that will be sent off to somewhere else which will gather your data and that data will be used to inform this kind of graph we can go deeper if we want to and i think we do want to and once we've got a kind of handle on the data that is available we want to do that because it can tell you of those people that pinged how many of them have come from grantham how many from deping how many from newark lester out of mongolia uh so that's interesting intelligence if we choose to to use it um so going on to the next one which is the town center more generally there's a that shows you the geo fence for the town center uh and show us the graph please you can see that it's more similar to the previous year although slightly up if you look at the look at the figures in the pack the number of people who were pinging the towers using their location based gps phones is up from last year this is a new technology to to me i'm glad we do it don't ask for too much technical detail from myself and emma but we will do our best with that i would say are there any questions on the report thank you councillor harrison and then councillor turner thank you first question is that pedestrian specific or does it pick up the people in vehicles as well i am told that the the the pings are based on phones which are traveling at less than four miles an hour which you kind of presume is pedestrians but if you are stuck at traffic lights or you are waiting for whatever so it's it's as scientific as it can get it can't say whether a phone is in in driving mode or pedestrian mode but it is aimed at pedestrians sorry the second question is are you really telling me that the whole population of grantham some walk through grantham town center every day because 1.58 1.5 well 1.6 million people going through grantham in the month of march equates to sort of 56 000 people going through the town center of grantham every day now i don't know if you've ever been to a football match and watched them come out of the football match 50 000 60 000 people's a lot of people um i just i struggle with believing that figure the marketplace the narrow west gate i can probably agree with that but those going through grantham town center i really struggle with that the population of grantham 48 000 and we're doing 56 000 a day going through the town center seven days a week emma do you want to come back on that thank you um i should probably add that we're using a company um which is um visitor insights and the platform's terrain and we've got some licenses we will be exploring and doing some three further deep dives into the type of data we can get it's not just grantham specific either so we can look at other areas um i've had a look at this morning it's actually quite exciting um in terms of the level of information that we can get both for these sorts of projects but also to inform the visitor economy and work that we will also be doing in terms of tourism and how that will link into the the wider Lincolnshire work that we're signed up to in terms of the point about the vehicle movements i've had subsequent confirmation whilst we've been in the meeting that um if you are in a vehicle and you stop at a traffic light so your journey is less than four miles an hour the data is technology is clever enough to then pick up that you've then moved again at speeds and therefore your journey is discounted so it can't guarantee it's excluding every car user but it should be excluding majority of them i would have thought we can and i can't show it right now but we can also see where people are coming from and the maps in that regard actually show quite a wide base it's not just the grantham area i mean if we look around this room for example probably most of us have not come from within grantham we've come from outside of grantham so we are counted within those those 50 odd thousand um every every sort of week or day um so we can drill down into that data we can see where people are coming from i've also seen some data that tells us when people are coming um again i can't quite show it because it's sort of emerging as we're trying to look through what it is but i can tell you that from that data i can see that most people are coming in the daytime and they're coming at sort of that mid-morning to mid-afternoon so we can drill down into hours for those visits as well so it is really sophisticated um but i think it is it is as accurate it's more detailed than other councils are collecting on their platform so it is quite an exciting tool and i do think you can take some confidence in in the data um that you're being presented with in terms of those that are coming into and around the grantham area thank you yeah don't get me wrong i love the technology i just question those those figures actually i i sit and walk around here and i'm in town on a sunday and i see how many people are there that's saying over 55,000 56,000 a day every day um i'd love to drill down in that if i could get a daily one um to give me a sort of better idea if i could say that that'd be great are we just discussing that at the minute or we're going on the rest of this report sorry uh have you got many more questions at the moment tim because there's quite a few people waiting it's just one ashley was saying about the plans for mitigation and that in the marketplace and the the raffles i think one of the best things would be one that i ran were very simple cheap to do um that i ran with the tappet on it everybody who went in and bought a drink was entered into a raffle so you could do something for every business you could fence in that certain area every business in that area if you spend money in that business you send your receipt into the council and at the end of the month one of those receipts is drawn out for a raffle prize for a cash prize or talking to nick hibbert and nick hibbert said one of those i was saying that some of them may be a thousand pound rather than these ten thousand pounds that are being banded about and nick said maybe a weekend in new york or something like that you know a nice prize but it's not costing you anywhere near ten thousand pounds i've got quite a few people so uh counselor turner was the next one having installed some of this technology um in the past i'd say the figures are incredibly accurate and it's quite easy to detect what we're doing with it i think i think what we're trying to do is drive footfall into town and whether by design because obviously in large parts of south kistev and there aren't any facilities people have to come to grantham or other large towns so um i'd say that it's probably fairly accurate counselor green yes thank you chair i think purely and simply as far as i understand all this is registering are slow moving phones triggering that fence um so firstly what comes to mind is what if you've got one person with multiple phones dare i say one of those could be a burner i'm not casting any aspersions etc but that that is a theoretically possible scenario i mean we can't assign the ownership there um as i say it's only about the phones it's not then about what the owners of the phones are actually doing once they're in that zone you know what shops are they going to what money are they spending what activities are they are they partaking of and i think the you know the other anomaly that comes to mind is obviously we've got this very defined area here the geo fence you know what if someone was literally on that border putting their left leg in taking their left leg out you know shaking it all about doing the hokey cokey and turning around now i think that very rapidly could boost the figures um obviously i'm hoping that um certainly nobody from the administration's side is caught doing a dance on the perimeter to boost the figures but you see what i mean i mean i think there are there are issues with this i think um council turn unfortunately is off base i think there are numerous aspects of this doubtless there are more that mean that this could be highly distorted and i think should be um taken with um not a pinch of salt but certainly with considerable caution understanding those uh i have a few before you actually actually but was that to come back on what uh councilor green was saying okay fine uh so councilor soya thank you one for emma i think um emma is it possible to reduce um moving averages on the grass which will make the trends a little more obvious i'll tell you which way the wall can even come perhaps not leave it leave it with you to think about i've had a demo i am definitely not an expert in the software but i will ask the question um i know we can drill down into which streets are here getting the hot spots we can do comparisons between ourselves and other areas it's it's really really powerful so i think probably the best thing to do is is to have a little bit of a further explore maybe have a conversation with the software providers and then um i might then be able to answer your question okay councilor baxter and then uh councilor bailey okay a few a few things the the the voucher scheme we're we want a scheme which works uh i think that if you just said getting one receipt from one purchase in the town center um i i think if somebody won on the basis of just one purchase in one place at one time that that would be yeah i know it's it it's a lottery we want a system which works and which has the effect of encouraging people to come back to the town center i think we're all agreed on that and i think we're also all agreed i hope we're all agreed that the purpose of this whole thing is to drive the economy via footfall so we can't sorry councilor green we cannot measure exactly how much each individual spends in each individual shop we can't do that from speaking to the shops we can't do that from speaking to the consumers we can't do that from mobile phones although you can now because i've got the app where i buy stuff so they're probably monitoring me with big brother but so the next best thing is to monitor footfall and as i don't understand the expression off base i don't think you're off base councilor turner even if i didn't know what it meant i'm sure it wouldn't apply to you um the so the technology is the best available uh as emma whitaker has said it's better than other methods uh councilor green if you have a more reliable method of collecting footfall data for the town center then please tell us what it is because i i think if there were we're talking about tens of thousands of visits to the town center if somebody was trying to organize some kind of collective hokey cokey then then it would be probably spotted i don't know if the yeah cctv we've got cctv to monitor all kinds of things in the town center so um so i don't think it's a an issue i don't think there's sufficient hokey cokey to to corrupt the data but the data is fascinating it is being looked at alongside the data that we get from the steam uh the tourism data which is in itself really really detailed about where people come from how much they spend how long they stay in grantham how long and so on and that that data is is robust and this data is robust but data as i often say data is like drug addiction the more data we give you the more data you will want you will crave so if i give you daily data you'll want hourly data and i think in response to councilor harrison's question about um are there 50 000 people in the town center if you break that down into hours and then by the number of entry points then it is it's plausible it's plausible if we've got 10 different uh so councilor bailey is is uh saying no if if you're convinced that it's not plausible i still say that that the methodology we used last year is the same as the methodology we use this year so if we're counting it wrong then we're counting it consistently at least and you can see an uptick so if it's out by a thousand percent it'll be the the the level of change will be the same so uh yeah i welcome anyone that's got a better idea for for measuring footfall because it's footfall that is the absolute measure of our success councilor bailey and then uh councilor knolls and then yourself councilor wittington thank you chair um just two paragraphs on on the overall report and then i will talk about football um so 2.22 outlines some of the new potential initiative schemes as the chairman knows i submitted these to officers for evaluation and feasibility after the decision of full council these are both my ideas as one of the counselors for st wolfram's and more importantly the ideas from the businesses of the marketplace that i engage with let's not dither and delay let's get these businesses some support we have as shown in 2.27 you know 210 000 pounds of unallocated funds this is our opportunity to accelerate the deployment of those funds let's be agile let's be bold let's commit to looking at these ideas and vote today for option three now i totally disagree with one element of this report and we've just been talking about it that the footfall data which reveals there's been no significant decrease in the number of visits to the area anyone who has visited marketplace and spoken to the businesses will get the real picture and i'm sure every business would disagree with this report as well i have spoken before about accuracy of data when i spoke about survey monkey and once again i'm looking at the data in the table of 2.9 with more questions than answers to echo counselor harrison it states 1.5 million as how many visits we get into grantham per month and he's as he correctly said that's around was it 56 000 per day or more than the entire population of of grantham and now i'm struggling it just doesn't sound right um so therefore you know you start doubting the validity of any of the data at all if i don't believe or if counselors here don't believe that it's accurate and correct um so we saw we saw the two geofence areas on on the screen earlier on and i was actually quite surprised that the definition or by geofence of grantham town center includes both sainsbury's and asda as well as the entire residential section between the train station and the a52 that to me doesn't sound like grantham town center that sounds like grantham as a town and so if we're looking at this data trying to track footfall of the town center i think that geofence probably needs redoing and addressing in terms of the other geofence the definition of narrow westgate and grantham market it actually doesn't include the marketplace itself tap and tonic is not actually included in its boundary so if we're trying to monitor kind of the impact of the disruption to marketplace and the businesses there surely the geofence should cover the area that we're trying to look at so i think that the geofences in particular need obviously looking at and finally even if we take the data at face value which i've said i'm questioning have we actually seen a reduction and this is where data you can spin it whichever way you want to spin it as a percentage looking monthly the data actually does show a reduction in may so comparing the raw numbers of 2023 to 24 i don't believe is actually you know relevant here because you know every year things change the economy changes people have more money people visit here than everywhere but i think the actual real kind of numbers here to look at is more percentage kind of changes not raw numbers because they're very very misleading depending obviously on on the economy and other things that are happening so in terms of these reports i would personally always ask for more detail like echo kind of counselor backs around one of these people that loves data i love to dive in and really get to the nitty-gritty of of what we can find out and pull from it so we can actually as counselors make decisions on the facts and the true facts that are in front of us rather than maybe a bit of guesswork and some you know kind of questionable information if i'm being bold there but that being said like i said it's a good report obviously i would like to explore the options in option three these new kind of schemes as quickly as we possibly can and get some support for the businesses of the marketplace thank you jen thank you councilor knows very very briefly chair if there is to be some sort of competition make the prize spends in grantham so it brings people back so rather than a week in new york maybe a week in grantham or you know spends in grantham my idea was to give them back michigan yeah it's coming back to the data now i've lived the vast majority of my life in grantham as i know council harrison has as well and i try to struggle with with the numbers um i appreciate that the the gfn area includes as the savings business presumably morrisons as well so so we're picking up those people who are driving in and then walking from their cars to the supermarkets and back out and i appreciate that in the morning and in the afternoon we have an awful lot of the school children who come from from the grantham schools and tend to come into the center of grantham and then maybe go out from there if they're all walking towards the station so but i'm still struggling with 56 000 per day so would it be a useful thing if we act if we can actually see some of these numbers breaking broken down two areas so if if if the gfn area does include as to say or saying we could then say oh well well of that 56 000 x thousand of people in sainsbury's just to just to get some understanding of it because 56 000 as a number there's going to be different parts of grantham and at different times when there's going to be more people in there so possibly if we have a drill down the data we may be able to say oh well there's a big spike in the town center between three thirty and four o'clock that's probably the school children you know because i know i know that they all come down from from all the schools into grantham a lot to go off and i just think that would be really really useful to see that and possibly uh madam chairman maybe if if if because i know that when we whenever brought in the whole bit but we was you know it was never it was the um when when we were doing the grass cutty contract we actually brought the software in and allowed members of the committee to actually see how the software works so maybe something like that might just be useful for us just so we can see how it works how it's broken down to then try make some sense because at the moment we've just got one figure raw data we don't know how that raw data is comprised thank you is that something emma you would be able to do and actually you know maybe you'd like to bring it back to the economic strategy workshop where we could all have a look at it thank you chairman um it might be easier in the workshop strategy i won't offer to do the demo myself there are others that are more able than i um we can ask them to change the geo fences so we could have multiple we could we could deal with that i should clarify these are visits not necessarily people and therefore if you separate off and look at the um geo fence for example for say asters and one for sainsbury's one for morrisons or any other good supermarkets as i'm sure there are many um you can't guarantee that you're not also catching the same person moving around but at least but what you are looking at is you're looking consistently at the same day to day in day out it will not be perfect no data collection will be unless you're stood at each of the locations and checking where everybody's gone to and we unfortunately don't have the resources for that but there is definitely a lot more we can we can do and the workshop would be perhaps a good idea so we could perhaps do a demo there of where we're at thank you thank you uh councillor turner and then councillor baxter just just a few little points on on technology so um school children a lot of them don't have smartphones and if they do they're limited by use um burner phones are probably likely to be pay-as-you-go phones and therefore not smartphones that will be picked up by the survey um and thirdly sainsbury's and all the other big supermarkets because i've installed them i've got people counters within all their front entrances so they could separately if we applied to ask for that information supply it but they've been doing it for years and this technology has only recently been taken on by councils thank you thank you uh councillor baxter yeah thank you very the more i think about this data the more convinced that it is it is accurate um if you look at uh morrisons so if you if you pop into morrisons uh generally it doesn't take you a minute to get through the till uh they've probably if you look at the the self-service tools and the other tills we've probably got 30 tills uh if we get 30 people for a minute and there's 60 minutes in an hour that's 1500 people an hour that's just morrisons so if you add on aldi and sainsbury's then you pretty soon get to the 5 000 an hour 10 hours in a day there's your 50 000 um we're told narrow westgate and we were told town centre and we haven't got a supermarket in the town centre or narrow westgate you've got morrisons up here that's it asda and those don't come in our town as they're in sainsbury's don't come in our town centre call from that sorry i've got i've gone backwards and forwards obviously initially i i thought this was way too big and that's i was thinking oh actually yeah you include asda include sainsbury's people nipping in i could i could see it but even then there's this council which isn't said i still can't get up to 56 000 and i'm thinking possibly you know are people coming through on the east coast main line triggering an extra few thousand on there for example on the on the wider town because it goes right up to the um you know right up to the railway line but i think the other the other question is what we define as a visitor because by this definition all of us in this room does that cover us yeah so all of us in here are visiting and i don't consider myself to be visiting the south centre at the moment i consider myself to be in a meeting that's going on for three hours that i hope to be over an hour ago but um yeah it's i don't think we're visitors so i don't think that counts i don't think when i nip to asda i'm visiting the town centre um i don't think when i go get my hair well i suppose when i get the haircut i am doing so once every every three to four weeks maybe but yeah that's i think our definition of visitor is possibly very different to the data but i can't see this as 56 000 no way uh right councillor cleaver and then councillor baxter we've got 10 minutes because i ate a minute finish this meeting by five o'clock i'm afraid otherwise we have to extend and i really would prefer not to so just a couple of points trying to be helpful here um obviously the town centre includes the railway station so anyone walking to the railway station the car park would be counted in which then makes the thing a little bit more understandable so you've got all you've got more all your morning commuters and your evening commuters are going to get counted in into that footfall so that's the point on that one on the narrow westgate grantham market 152 000 that works out at under 5 000 a day which if you take 10 hours a day is under 500 an hour which isn't actually that outlandish to be fair is it so i don't think and the other thing then to make the point is obviously there's comparative figures with previous year so amplify what ashley said the fact is the thing that we should be concentrating on is the fact that whatever the measure is there is an increase in that measure and a quite substantial one which we should should be putting a smile on our faces frankly the other thing i just want to pick up on is the voucher scheme the loyalty scheme i know how good shop stanford is in stanford how well organized group of retailers they are um how they they talk to us they produce a fabulous booklet at no expense to the council um and they are good representatives of the town they promote the town as well as they promote their own businesses so i kind of take that as a good model so when it comes to doing a voucher scheme i wouldn't like it i would be hesitant if it's a a top down from us to them i would much prefer it if there is a partnership and if the retailers feel that they they have a group that's talking to us on an equal footing i think that'd be much more preferable than us doing something on a top down top down basis but um you know i think that's something we'd all want to explore uh going forward because obviously that we still have the town team to be formed and to be on the agenda as well and that that could be a precursor to doing that thank you emma thank you so the graph up here is the narrow westgate gia fence and you can see that just for may but you can see that on every single day and you can see that there's peaks at eight on the 18th of may which is when we had the first event in the marketplace on the saturday um you've got the 21st which is a tuesday which apparently is the day we all go into the office when we're working at home you've then got another saturday and you've got another tuesday so you can start to see those those peaks but they're the um they're the actual data for the day each day rather and as i think it's council cleaver said that that probably equates about 500 an hour which is um i don't think unbelievable if i'm honest um in terms of the voucher scheme just as a thought we do have a town manager role that we are recruiting to we hope to have somebody imposed by the end of july and part of that role will be to have a town engagement team build a town engagement program with the shopkeepers business owners so that might be something that certainly we'd have future discussions with through that forum thank you last question then councilman whitington yeah i mean what i'm getting is everybody saying oh the data's fine but why but so if the data is fine why can't we see it let's see it i can't see i can't see the problem with that me me neither i i don't it's anonymized so uh we're happy to dig deeper into the into the data um just to conclude this item if if you like uh counselor like um counselor knight if you weren't visiting grantham town centre today where were you okay so uh we consider the contents of this report uh provide feedback on the proposed additional mitigation measures and recommends a budget for this activity chair i welcome the feedback that's been given um as you've heard uh emma whitaker and her colleagues will will take on board the comments that have been made uh particularly the uh comment that council bailey made about the content of the strategy we recognize that so we we realize this data is dead interesting isn't it and there's some deeper digging to do if only for sort of academic research purposes um or to identify dancing in the town centre but um really welcome the discussion and the positive feedback thanks can i ask what the budget is that's been recommended for this then please within the report in paragraph 2.22 the indicative budgets are in the column within that table but there's mention in there of uk shared prosperity fund there there may be uh projects we can which can be funded under the uk shared prosperity fund which makes the figures a little bit wobbly in terms of how much we need to put forward from the kind of general fund and how much would come from the uk shared prosperity fund um we want to promote prosperity and grants and so it would seem reasonable to ask for a shared prosperity fund to fund some of it thank you so we move forward to the work plan for the next work program so that on the 17th of july we'll have the out turn report is that right mr wiles uh the depot update uh again the budget monitoring report period two is going to move down to september and the localized council tax support scheme will not will be on there not be on there will be on there okay and the only other one that i've asked for for an update on is saint martins park we need to keep an eye on or we need to hear what's going on there so that's something that needs to go on one of the work programs in future so whether or not that's july or september we can sort out september probably better let's say september but i'll speak to debbie roberts and see if we can pull something together i'll let you know great thank you very much if you know oh emma okay sorry if i could just take you back to the previous item on the footfall i think it'd be helpful for officers if we could have a bit of a steer over perhaps which of the options the committee would like us to to follow so we've we've got the do nothing which is currently do what we're currently doing which has got the program in place that we've put in for the events that's the the events we're doing at the moment whilst the works are going on this is some events the launch event and then the cycle of event programming for next year will continue and that's where that some of that 210 000 will be committed we've got option two which we can continue with that but we can look at um something like the loyalty voucher scheme um or we could do option three which we can go to full feasibility on all of those other options and bring something back yes thank you chair i'd like to wholeheartedly endorse option three even propose it i think that's the right way ahead obviously taking notice of what council bailey as my esteemed colleague representing the area affected has said about that i think that seems sensible it should be the right way to proceed thank you so councillor green has um put that one forward we have a seconder so councillor wittington um all those in favor one two three five four against well we're voting option three at the present time so against no abstentions that's it thank you if nobody's got anything further we will close the meeting at five o'clock thank you very much pardon sorry yes carried