Transcript

Well, good morning and welcome to this formal meeting of the Public Protection and Communities Scrutiny Committee. I'm Councillor Andrew Key, the new chairman of this committee. The Vice-Chairman, Councillor Paul Skinner is also in attendance with us. Can I remind you that the audio visual feed of this formal public meeting is being broadcasted live via the County Council's website and with this in mind, I'd like to welcome members of the public watching this live. As the meeting is being streamed in the usual way, I'd like to remind you all that your comments will remain accessible online and can be reported by the media. I'd like to begin with a health and safety announcement. There's no fire drill planned this morning. In the event of the fire alarm sounding, we need to leave the Council Chamber through the rear doors and leave the building through the reception into the front car park and wait there. Can I remind everyone to ensure their mobiles, laptops and iPads are on silent for the duration of this meeting, and also can I remind you that the hearing loop is now activated. Request to speak will be collated by the Vice-Chairman and when invited to speak, you should press your button on the microphone unit to make it live, then press again when you finish your contribution. So we'll now move on to the formal agenda. Item number 1, apologies for absence and replacement Councillors, Jess. Thank you Chairman. So today we've received apologies from Councillor LYLISNE and Councillor William Gray. Thank you. Thank you very much. Item number 2, declaration of Councillors' interest. Do any members wish to declare an interest? I have a pecuniary interest in item number 9, for which I will leave the Chamber. Item 3, minutes of the previous meeting of the public protection and community scrutiny committee held on 14 May 2024. This item is to approve and sign the minutes of the last meeting held on that date as a correct record. The minutes can be found on pages 5 to 12 of the agenda pack. Do I have a proposal please? Paul? Seconder? Councillor Danny? All those in favour, please raise your hands now. Anyone against? And any abstentions? We were all not here. I think that's probably why. So thank you. Those minutes have been agreed. So item 4, announcements by the Chairman, Executive Councillors and Lead Officers. I'd like to start by saying on behalf of the committee, I'd like to record our thanks to Councillor Nigel Pepper for being the committee's chairman since June 2017 and for all his dedication and support to this committee over the last seven years. On a personal note, I'd like to thank him for his wise council and I'm so pleased that he's still staying on the committee. You have very big shoes to fill Nigel and I'll do my best. Thank you. Thank you very much Chairman. That was very unexpected and very kind words. Thank you very much. It's a few words, but they mean a lot. Thank you. Looking ahead to our future meetings, the committee is currently due to meet on Tuesday the 14th of January next year. I know it's a long way off, but unfortunately I'm unavailable that day and I'm seeking your agreement to move the meeting to the week afterwards and hold it on Tuesday the 21st of January instead. So I know it's a long way off, but does anyone disagree with that change to the meeting date? Thank you very much. Thank you. So that's agreed. We have got a busy agenda and we will have for the next few months as a lot to squeeze in. Officers are reminded to take their reports as read by committee members and only summarise key points and what support and input is required by this committee. Members are also reminded of the importance of asking succinct questions and contributions. And then in my own words, that basically means I'd like the questions to be shorter than the answers, please. Thank you. And just to make you aware, we're having a 10-minute comfort break before item nine, assuming everything runs according to plan. So moving on, are there any executive councilor announcements, please. And I think we have a councilor Corrie online. No. No. Thank you. And any announcements from senior officers? We've got Mark and Martin here. No. Thank you. So move straight on to item five then. HM Senior Corinna Annual Report. This is on pages 13 to 18 of the agenda pack and sets out the annual report on the colonial service up to 31st December 2023. The annual report is in accordance with the requirement of his Majesty's Chief Corinna for England and Wales. The actions required by the committee are to review and comment on the contents of this report and consider the progress made by the colonial service over the past 12 months. The report will be presented by Paul Smith, his Majesty's Senior Corinna for greater Lincolnshire. We also have James Chappell, head of registration, celebratory and coroner's services and attendance to help answer any questions. So over to you, Paul. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Chairman. I appear for the first time this morning at the new Corinna for the new greater Lincolnshire area to report, ironically, for the last time on the former Coronial area of Lincolnshire, the area is of course having been subject to a merger on 1 April this year. I take note of the committee's guidance. I take the report as read and I will deal with the salient points arising from my report if I may. This time last year, Mr Chairman, the committee was advised of my appointment on a permanent basis as the Senior Coroner. I have been in post as acting Senior Corinna for some 30 months before then. Perhaps one of the biggest changes over the last year is the appointment in October of last year of a second full-time coroner, Jane Wilkes, as the area coroner. She has joined me in post full-time since the aid of the bill here this year. Have we sorted out what that was? I think it was perhaps just the angle at which I was speaking into my phone. It's sorry about that. Moving on from the appointment of Jane Wilkes, I note that we are now with a full-strength coroner team for the first time since August

1. In terms of the figures, Mr Chairman, I can take those fairly simply. As they appear in the report, the volume of referrals that my service received last year was down some 9 per cent. We are now almost exactly on par with the national average of reported deaths to the coroner. The post morton rate fell also down from 46 to 44 per cent, again exactly in accordance with the national average. Whilst the number of inquest opened was maintained at the almost identical level as the previous year against a fallen referrals, of course the net effect was the percentage rose slightly. Again there is nothing out of the ordinary in comparison with the national figure. In terms of conclusions, there are simply two matters I draw as the committee's attention. It's perhaps an annual observation that our number of road traffic collision deaths at 40 in the last calendar year is sadly the highest in the country. We have a road traffic collision rate of 6 per cent against the national average of 2 per cent. I am sure that the committee will wish to do everything it can to drive that figure down as far as possible. Secondly, it is a matter which was raised last year. The rate, the percentage of accident conclusions appears to remain high against the national average, 34 per cent against the national figure of 24 per cent. I can talk for a long time on why I think that may be the case but I hope the committee will accept that there is nothing untoward behind those figures, I think it arises out of the profile of the population. We have the number of elderly that we have in care homes and by large the fact that many elderly people die as a consequence of a combination of natural disease impacted by a traumatic event. In terms of these statistics themselves, the committee will note an increase in the number of completed in-quest last year, 446 in 2021 increasing to 523 last year, to 22 increasing to 616 last year. Again, a pattern which I suggest to be applauded. There has also been a significant reduction in the number of old cases, defined as cases taking more than 12 months to come to fruition. I talked to the committee at length about that last year. During the course of the early part of 2023, we reached a high-water mark of roughly 99 such cases. By the end of the year, Mr Chairman, I am delighted to report we could reduce that figure to just 27 cases. When one deducts from that figure, the number of cases which are stayed as a matter of law awaiting criminal process. Those which require a jury and the involvement of the health and safety executive, etc. I can advise the committee that we are comfortably within the threshold allowed or permitted by the chief coroner. In terms of timeliness to in-quest, it is inevitable perhaps that the processing of the number of old cases will have impacted on the timeliness figure. The figures are a little like a balance sheet when you move one figure. There is an equal and opposite impact elsewhere. Even so, having reduced the number of old cases from almost 100 to below 30, the committee will note the reduction in timeliness from 39 weeks to 37 weeks. The committee will note from the report that there is a huge national spread between 8 and 73 weeks. The average is now 31.5 weeks. But I can tell the committee that on the figures from 1 January this year to the end of March, I appreciate this falls outside the remit of the 2023 report. But to bring the committee up to date, to the point at which we merged, our timeliness in Lincolnshire had reduced to 27 weeks of figures significantly ahead of what I anticipate the national average will be published to be later in the year. Again, as in previous years, Mr Chairman, I take this address as an opportunity to pay credit to every member of my team, each one of whom has worked incredibly hard to achieve those figures. Mr Chairman, it is good to end this particular chapter of the Lincolnshire Current Service on that note. Looking ahead, there are very many challenges arising out of the merger which was confirmed in April of this year. I look ahead with confidence. We have a full strength current team. We have had the development of the Mild Cross site which gives us our permanent home for the first time. We have, of course, the merger, which, as I say, brings with it, a number of challenges which will need to be resolved. Very simply, at the time of the merger, we inherited a caseload of around 600 cases. It is a significant caseload. Far too many of those were over 12 months. I can tell the committee that in a few short months since the date of the merger, that figure has been reduced from 600 to around 120 already, although there is still a long way to go. There are, of course, a number of challenges still to remain, still to be addressed the rising from the merger, practical issues, the computer system, the staff, et cetera, et cetera, but I am confident that over time the enhanced area will achieve the same level of performance which the local area has achieved by the early part of this year. Mr Chairman, I leave my report there. If there are any matters of rising, I will, of course, deal with it. Thank you very much, Paul. Excellent report. I work in the funeral profession, so I am particularly interested to learn and pleased to learn that the time to inquest for those long, long outstanding cases is coming down because that does cause a lot of distress, as you know, to families. So that is very helpful. Thank you. Well, our first speaker is our former Chairman, Nigel. Thank you, Chairman. Paul, through you, Chairman. I am Rode 10. I don't know if maybe I am not quite as alert as when I was when I was chairman, but to Rode 10, Death reported Coronavon, just struggling with those figures, 2, 9, 5, 3. Well, it seems there is a word or two missing there somewhere. I just couldn't quite make it out. No, Councillor, that is the number of raw figures we have referred to as those are death referrals. So last year, we received 2,925 deaths referred to the service. So that is total deaths referred? To the Coronavon service. And just on that, the 1, 3, 7, 3, I think was post mortems, inquest opens 504. So the remainder is the difference between the total, yeah? It is not quite that simple. We had 2, 9, 2, 5 referrals. In relation to those cases, we conducted or arranged to be conducted 1,289 post mortems. A number of those cases will then have been dealt with within the Form B procedure because the natural cause of death was identified and no inquest was required. But the bottom line on Row 12 of that table shows that we opened 496 in quests, out of the 2, 925 deaths that were referred to it. 17%. OK. Looks like you might have a different table to me, because a man says 504, where he said 496. But anyway, I think that makes it a bit clearer. I think CouncillorPEPPA 504 was 2021. Yeah, sure, yeah. Councillor Mr Clark. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you for this report. I'm so pleased that the various changes made have made such a difference and going forward, I think, you know, the service can only get better. Thank you and your staff. Thank you. If I could just ask in relation to the merger of North Lincolnshire and Reimsby. It states on page 18 that the CACES management system for each of the former areas remained separate and distinct, but will be merged at a suitable point. Is the same case management system being used by all the areas and what time scales are we working to for merging them? Thank you. If I can come in, Chairman, on that one. So, at the moment, both coronal areas use the same system. We're in talks with the contractor around merging the system. We've got to make sure that when we merge it, it's right. So, we're not going to rush it, so no date has been agreed. But moving to a single platform across a greater Lincolnshire area is the preferred option. And that's what we'll be moving to. Thank you. Yeah, it's better to be safe and sorry when you start merging computer systems because I think you are, thank you. On page 15, it mentions that two additional Coronas officers have been recruited on a temporary contract. How long are they contracted for? And will there be an ongoing need for those additional posts once the temporary contracts have ended? Thank you. So, if I can come in again, Chairman, so those contracts will run until the end of March
2. We feel that during that time should give us a sufficient time to be able to embed most of or if not all of the changes we want for greater Lincolnshire. But we're still in that development phase of what the new area is going to be looked like. So, that gives us enough time to look at the staff, look at the cohort and the needs and demands of the residents for the greater Lincolnshire. So, there may be opportunities to continue to develop the service even further, but there's still to be explored. Thank you, James. And finally, Paul, you did mention, I picked this up on the report, the percent of misadventure and accident figure, 10 percent more than the national average. You mentioned perhaps because of our elderly population. Is there anything further that you can add? Because this obviously came up last year as well. Thank you. Mr Chairman, I've looked at the national figures and the raw numbers that we have, the 209 cases, are not out of kilter with the returns from every area across the country. The difference between 24 percent and 34 percent is perhaps more stark as a percentage than it is in terms of actual figures. I suspect that if we were achieving an accident figure of 24 percent, we would probably be talking about reallocating 50 cases one a week. As I indicated, we have a large elderly population, we have a number of care homes. And sadly, it's a fact of life, as we all get older, we get a little more frail, a little more unsteady on our feet. And very many of the people that I see have had a fall and a fractured neck of femur or similar orthopaedic injury, which whilst itself may not be fatal, lays the ground for an infection or an illness or simply a lack of resilience. And there's probably an interplay in terms of the conclusions of accident, misadventure as against natural causes, as against a narrative conclusion, because how the individual facts play out, every case is different, every case is unique. And if you take the fact that every case is unique alongside the fact that every coroner has his or her own perception of how to express those particular circumstances, it may well be that our choice of a conclusion of accident or misadventure is mirrored by the corresponding reduction in the number of deaths from pure natural causes or indeed the number of narrative conclusions. It doesn't trouble me and I hope it won't trouble the committee. No, I understand. Thank you very much. Is that you, Paula? Thank you, Chairman. Just like to ask, with the merger of the two different areas, will that, and looking at the distribution of the inquest, they will have a different distribution? Does that bring further challenges to things or how are you going to go about, bring it all together? I'm not sure I understand the question, Councillor M. The distribution of the inquest across the various category areas for Lincolnshire will be different to the two other areas, because they are a lot more industrial. Will that bring further challenges with the type and scope of work you do? The area is undoubtedly more complex as a consequence of the merger. We've acquired the docks. We've acquired a motorway. We've acquired an additional area of coastline. We've noticed a difference in the presentation of people in the north. We're all different. In answer to your question, yes, it will create a challenge, but equally, it's only one of a number of challenges. I'm quite sure that if we get the resources right and we get the computer system right and we get the staffing right and we get the numbers down, everything else will fall into place. Is that everything? Thank you, everyone, for your questions and comments. Thank you, Paula, for such an excellent report. That concludes the discussion on this item. I propose that the Committee has reviewed the annual report and has been assured on the progress made by the Coronal Service over the previous 12 months and that we receive a further update in 12 months time. Can you please raise your hand if you agree? Yes, that's everyone. Thank you very much, that's agreed. Thank you, Paul. So moving on to item 6, the Voluntary Sector Annual Position Report. It's on pages 19-30 the Agenda Pack and provides an update from the Voluntary Centre Services and Linkin Use CVS about the work they complete to support the Voluntary Sector. The actions required by the Committee are to review and comment on the information contained within the report and highlight any further actions for consideration. The report will be presented by Ben Rollicks, Chief Executive of Voluntary Centre Services, and we also have, yes, just a minimally 30 field assistant director, corporate in attendance to help answer any questions. So thank you and over to you, Ben. Thank you, Mr Chairman. As you alluded to in the pack, there's a report in there, so I'm not going to go through any detail, but I will pick up some of the key points and then you've had questions at the end if that's okay. As you've also alluded to at the start and so if you all know, in Lincoln, we've also two organisations off for the past few years. We've had two organisations working in partnership across the county, form two centre services across the west and Lincoln just CVS across the south and the east. We've been through a process in the last year and we've now come together as a formal partnership and it'll be like a GP Federation, so we are coming together with myself as Chief Executive and a joint leadership and management team across the two organisations as well. So we're looking to increase consistency across the county as well as be really mindful of making sure that we can maintain our local presence and visibility within the communities that we serve as well. So I'm going to give a little bit of an overview on some of our services, focusing particularly on volunteering and support for community groups and organisations in Lincolnshire. Over the last year, we've supported 2,191 volunteers in Lincolnshire, people to access volunteering. That is an increase of 50% since the previous financial year. Two or three key reasons for that. The first one, the development of our new online volunteering platform that we've got now launched in the first of January. A significant increase of number of volunteers accessing volunteering and increased food, increased visibility we've got of the volunteering roles. We've also continued to work since the pandemic in making opportunities as accessible as possible, recognizing people want to volunteer in different ways. And we've continued a lot so that we've partnered particularly with the DWP to increase pathways to volunteers as well which we'll come on to when we look at some of the demographics. It is important to say that not all people that volunteer and all volunteering comes through as themselves as organisations and a key role for us as organisations and for volunteer centres is to support volunteering and to happen naturally locally as well so we're there to guide and support and help where it's needed, but for volunteering to work and really be sustained along term it does have to grow and evolve naturally as well. During the last year we've argued the impact of volunteering through social value, around £2m. That calculation has been worked out for utilising the social value engine which is a nationally approved and uses a range of financial metrics to attribute the social value of services as well. If anybody wants any more detail I'm happy to sort that through outside this meeting as well because there is quite a lot of information that goes alongside that one. In terms of the volunteer demographics this year we have seen a significant increase in the number of people that are unemployed that come to us, again directly correlating with the job centre and creating pathways for people that want to volunteer to gain new skills to move closer to work. Having said that it's not that other areas have reduced in terms of digital graphics, we just have seen more people that are unemployed that are looking to move into volunteering. We continue to have a broad split of volunteers spread across the county and that's something we've always been keen to maintain through our local volunteer centres. We do recognise particularly now that since a pandemic volunteers don't necessarily always come and find us, we have to go out and about into the community and engage locally as well which is a big part of what we do our community outreach. And this year in the demographics the reasons for people volunteering has changed slightly as well, we do have more people now that want to volunteer to gain new skills and improve chances of paid work which again does directly correlate with the pathway we've done as well. In terms of training for volunteers, we have an online training platform, 290 volunteers across Lincolnshire undertook training last year. A lot of the popular courses are those courses that you'll class in terms of a general induction that volunteers would need so health and safety, GDPR, quality and diversity, safeguarding are in there. But we do have some of the priority areas we have food hygiene and artism and awareness as well, what's a really really broad range of courses that are available. One thing we have been doing this year is trying to raise awareness of that and with those very small grassroots volunteering organisations they might not have the resources and skills in-house to be able to put volunteers through as much training as they need so we've got this package that will support and hopefully increase that consistency and accessibility training across the county. We have a couple of bits of face-to-face training we do primarily aimed at commuting volunteer organisations, we have volunteer management training which is aimed at organisations that host and support volunteers and we have a funding ready course which is all about supporting organisations to develop project ideas and to become a funding ready as organisations. One of the things we've been building into that this year is a longer term follow-up so we're doing six month and twelve month surveys with organisations to see if there's any additional support they need but really to look at the impact that training might have had on their organisations so has it helped their income generation? Has it helped them get new funding for projects? Has it helped them retain their volunteers and put their appropriate structure in place for supporting volunteers? So that's something that we've started this year and we're really keen to see some of the feedback there from organisations. In terms of the group support not surprisingly the most popular area is funding advice it has increased by roughly about 20% in the last year and we have supported organisations to bring in over £500,000 to the county for those small organisations. I think one thing to flag is the challenge groups have with securing core funds it's often easier to develop new projects and new services but actually those that are in place working well it's sometimes difficult for organisations to secure those core funds. We continue to coordinate the Lincolnshire funding advice network which is a multi partnership approach really to work in with funders both nationally and locally to highlight some of the issues and challenges affecting organisations in Lincolnshire and trying to look at how funders might target their funding longer term as well. Some of the partnership working we continue to be involved with we continue to do quite a lot with University of Lincoln in particularly the medical school. We support lots of volunteers that are undertaking medical studies to volunteer alongside the students as well. The University really keen those volunteering opportunities that they want to take aren't necessarily in areas that align with their studies so they can get more of a broad understanding of the opportunities in Lincolnshire and how they can support wider than just with some of their medical studies. We were doing lots of work in particular with Boston College. We got a step into volunteering programme that we work with Boston College that help some of their students to develop skills through volunteering as well. We've also got a youth leadership programme with Boston College where we're supporting young people into leadership roles across the county and we've got some good examples with some of the primary care networks and some of the other trustee roles that we've supported young people to access. Finally we continue our with NHS and health organisations and we've recently led on a partnership bid for Lincolnshire to NHS England as part of their volunteering for a health programme as well which would enable us to develop some of the volunteer instructors we have within the NHS as well. We're awaiting a decision on that one. Moving forward some of our priority areas for 2024 is to develop the Lincolnshire Vision for volunteering. There's lots of national work going on around a national vision for volunteering. We're really keen in Lincolnshire that we can feed into that and create a Lincolnshire Vision for volunteering so we're working locally to speak to lots of people that we wouldn't necessarily always engage with and sometimes it is difficult to engage with to make sure that their voices are heard going forward and particularly some of the host organisations as well, some of the small organisations that may have particular challenges around supporting volunteers, recruiting volunteers, retaining volunteers that we can feed those into the Lincolnshire Vision for volunteering. We had a conference two weeks ago in Lincolnshire. We had about 80 people that attended from Lincolnshire. We had some national speakers. Really pleasing for roles, about two thirds of those people that attended the Lincolnshire volunteering conference weren't organisations that regularly were part of our network so actually it was good that we could broaden the reach there and engage with new organisations that are, have a hosting volunteers or keen on hosting volunteers going forward. Finally, we are keen to continue our outreach and as we said earlier that visibility into local communities and another priority for those moving forward this year is the ongoing challenge we have with recruiting. Recruiting volunteers, particularly young volunteers to trusty boards across the Lincolnshire as well. We know that community and volunteer organisations do have challenges with governance and retaining trustees as well so we are working with partners to develop that further. Thank you very much. I will invite any questions. Thank you very much Ben. We have questions here, Councillor MR CLARK. Thank you Chairman. On page 23 you mentioned about the popular courses. Obviously there are some good results there. Do we know if people have obtained this qualification have they managed to gain employment from that? We don't actually know through the system itself. It gives us good insight into those courses that have been completed. It is something that we do get anecdotal feedback from volunteers that the support we have provided whether that is through the training or volunteering has helped them to go on to secure employment. We do have some data there. I think it is probably fair to say it is underrepresented. We know there is lots more people that have gone on to gain employment that we probably don't necessarily get to hear about people. They get a job and they don't necessarily come back and tell us so it is more anecdotal than through the volunteer training system itself. Thank you for that. On page 25, 26 and 27 it mentions the work that you are doing. I would like to congratulate you on providing so much support in this sector and not only to the volunteers but to the various organisations that we partner with. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Karen. Thanks Chair. Thanks for such a thorough report. There is a lot of information in there. It is really good. I would absolutely agree with your comment about going out to communities and engaging because sometimes people don't know how to get into things. Just to endorse the value as well. Not just for the organisations and people who benefit from the volunteers. My son was very awash here, still can't work but he started volunteering about two, three months ago now. This is not locally but he volunteered for a St Christopher shop. It started off one day a week and now he has been doing two days and he absolutely loves it. He doesn't want to be sat at home doing nothing but he can't work so this is something that he can do that gives him value. The added value is actually a two-way thing. I am very mindful about people not being exploited and taking paid jobs away. This is absolutely not doing that and it is giving something back to society and to the people that do it as well. Thank you. One thing we've done particularly since the pandemic is really ask those questions at the beginning of why are people volunteering? What are the motivations? It is really important for us to make sure people are getting what they want for volunteering and it is not just the organisations that are receiving the volunteers that benefit. That is something that we train when we are working with host organisations as well. They make sure they do recognise what their volunteers are looking to get from it as well. Thank you Ben. Can I just ask you about the training? That is really interesting on those courses that are offered and I know from what I do in the voluntary sector that people at village hall committees and things like that often struggle for this training. Is that something that a village hall committee could ask you for for their volunteers and how do they go about doing that? Thank you. Yes, absolutely. It is. They can register via the website or they can just give us a call directly and that is one thing we want to do. Just raise awareness, phone wide of it as well. The more people that can access it the better. We know that the course is a good quality course is that we have got the necessary requirements in there. I think for us the more volunteers across London can share that can access it the better. Thank you. If we can help get this message out, I think it will be very helpful because people do flounder sometimes. They are struggling for trustees as you have said. One of the reasons people do not want to volunteer is they do not feel they are capable of doing it. That is what I have found and this training would probably give them the confidence to do that. I think we need to get this message out more widely across the county because it is a fantastic thing we can offer. As Karen said, it is not taking paid jobs away from people. It is actually adding value and it does give you a lot of self satisfaction as well. Thank you. Next, Mrs Clark. Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you, Ben, for that brilliant report. I am so pleased to see all the success that you have in. Following on from my previous colleagues comments about creating awareness, I was looking at the, oh, I forgot what it was called now, and Joel Trink kinetic. Brilliant. It is absolutely brilliant. But like my previous colleagues have said and I want to say, it is about creating awareness and getting that information out there. People want to volunteer. I have lots of people who would like to volunteer. So is it possible? I know it is old hat. I know they can go via the website and we are living in a digital age. But sometimes it helps to have a little bit of printed material that we can take out because not only go to community centres and areas but businesses as well. It helps people to want to connect with that, learn about it and then get something from it themselves. That would be really useful if we could have something we can disseminate. That would be wonderful. Yeah, definitely. I think that is something we can look at in terms of those materials. We do say it is great for those people that want to access it online and search themselves but some people might not know what they are looking for. They might want a little bit of support. So again, we do have that. We have appointments of people, telephone appointments or face-to-face if they want to come in and discuss it. We can support them to access opportunities that are appropriate for them as well. But yeah, we will look at that and there are times of marketing for that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sploutwright. I am Tom. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and congratulations for your chairmanship. Well, I have very brief three questions. The first one is, do you follow up? Brief questions, I am Tom. Yes. Do you follow up when the individual finish their volunteer jobs? After that? The second – okay, answer me that. If I may go for the other two questions, thank you. Yeah, we have a three and six-month follow-up with volunteers. We follow up to see if they are volunteering with the organization that we match them up with. And again, it might be the case that they are not. And if not, we can invite them back in to have discussion and see if there is anything else we can help them with as well. So we do have that built in for volunteers. Thank you. My next question. Do you have a special or specific duration of the volunteering? Is there a time limit, basically? It all depends on the opportunity. Some organizations will want people to volunteer permanently or on a regular basis. Some opportunities we have are one-off, they could be an hour a week, they could be for a specific project or a specific piece of work. So that is one of the things that has changed significantly since COVID, that before people wanted volunteers regularly, they wanted them to come in the same day every week to get that consistency. We know volunteering has changed and lots of people can do it from home, they can do it digitally so. There is a complete range of opportunities, there are different durations. And my last question. Can we consider volunteering as an education where the volunteers can develop their careers and have probably safe future? Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I think that does link into some of the work we do with the colleges and universities around volunteering alongside studies as well. So something for us to continue to work on. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Right, Jackie. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you very much. Very interesting report. I particularly like the links, Chairman. I followed some of them through and the fine funding one, for instance, took about me 30 seconds to get right to my local office. So that is really good. Thank you. So two quick questions. Can I clarify? You help people to find funding, you don't provide funding. Is that right? No, we help them to develop their project ideas and identify appropriate funding streams and then bid for them. We do work with local funders and national funds, but we don't actually give out funding ourselves. Okay, that's lovely. Thank you. And just picking up on something the Chairman said about trusteeships. One of the things that I've come across in my local area is the problem of people being trustees because of the very heavy legal liabilities when they become trustees. And I'm not sure that people are always aware of that. Is there any support for some of that, please? Because I am certainly aware of some people who are trustees who in no way could cover the legal liabilities if those actually came into play. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I think there's two things there. One we're trying to do is dispel some of the myths around being a trustee and actually what those liabilities are. And I think the second one is working with organisations when they're set up to make sure they've got the right legal structures in place so that they can protect their trustees as well when they get them. So a couple of things that we want to build in there in terms of that wider communications and dispelling the myths of what the risks may be. Thank you. Regarding trustees, I'm a bit of a trustee for a few things. I know a lot of trustees. And one of the problems I've found is that sometimes in the constitutions it says they can only be a trustee for say two or three years. Then they have to step down. Then that leaves a gap. And I know that is a recommendation for obvious reasons why you don't want the same person there all the time. But it can cause problems with shortages. And that's why we need to keep encouraging new people, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. Thank you. Right, Alison, I think you're next. Thank you. I'm Chairman. Thank you for a very interesting report. Um, Ben. It's a really question. I just want to endorse the value of volunteering from the charity that I'm involved with. Well, one of them sent a point out, reach in Boston, where we've had the situation of a former client. Then become a volunteer at a different charity within the town. And from there, move into full time, or I don't know if it was full time to be fair, but to move into an employment. So that's somebody who could take himself from the full, you know, from rock bottom, if you like, to a stable lifestyle. And you know, this is one of the things that is so, so encouraging, isn't it? When volunteering goes right. Thank you. Yeah, lots of examples of that across Lincolnshire, but it's really, really powerful. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Can I just ask you about the conference on the 12th of June? Obviously, when you wrote the paper, you hadn't had it. Um, can you tell us a bit more about that? Who was invited and how you chose the people that came and, basically, what happened and just a bit more information, really. Thank you. Yeah, so Lincolnshire Volunteer and Conference aimed primarily at organisations across the sector that host volunteers and support volunteers. So it was about increasing best practice, awareness of how to support volunteers. We had a few workshops that looked to, um, explore some of the challenges that organisations are facing, whether that's, um, looking at how they can cover some of the, the challenging costs of volunteers that have to travel in rural areas, whether it's some of the challenges around support and supervising volunteers. And we've seen, um, lots of organisations that, actually, they're swamped to capacity with people accessing their services. They would like more volunteers, but they don't necessarily have the resources to manage and support those volunteers as well. So the conference is about exploring some of the challenges we've got locally, um, with a couple of national speakers looking at talking about how volunteering's changed, about in landscape, where we are for Lincolnshire. So, yeah, it was open to anybody that was interested in coming. It's held down at the YMCA. Is it going to be an annual thing? Possibly. I mean, I'm going to be, it's quite an undertaking to arrange the conference. So, something we will go back. I think it'd be nice if we can do it on an annual basis, um, if not maybe every two years. But I think sometimes if you do, helping every two years, you lose that momentum. So I think if we can, it would be nice to do it on an annual basis. And could it be something that's streamed so that people can watch it later? Yeah, that's good idea. Yeah. Any more questions? Oh, no. Oh, Anton, let you back in. Thank you, Mr Chairman. Thank you. Just, on page 22, if we go to, um, bar graph 2.9 and, you know, you talk about the demographic, and I can see that there is, um, the highest percentage there is unemployed people, 47%. So, have you ever get a, probably a rate on that base? How many of these people get a proper jobs and they're working? So, how successful you are in, you know, with the volunteers? Yeah, that's something we've, um, we, we don't necessarily have that as a target for ourselves, because what we don't want to do is, um, move into being a direct, um, sort of, um, employment support organization. But it was, so we, we are starting to record where people feed back that they have moved into a job. Um, so, and it'd be useful for us to be able to record that, a bit more accurately going forward so we can feed back on that as well. Okay. Thank you, Anton. Thank you, Ben. You're coming under a rat grilling. I was thinking Lee had got away lightly, but you want to say something Lee, purely to highlight that, um, Ben's referred to her at the DWP, uh, around volunteer and pathways. Um, it's worth recognizing that that is often to transport those furthest from the workplace to get nearer to the workplace. So, it isn't necessarily about finding a job. It's about building the confidence and the skills required to be confident in looking for a job and getting closer to, um, work environment. So, um, the, the target isn't, um, work placement. The target is around confidence. Social value is around that kind of engagement in society. Thank you, Lee. Have you ever carried, um, sort of, uh, an appraisal probably with people who does volunteer and see how successful and how they found the things and, and how they can go forward. I mean, just to express their, basically, their toads of what they're doing. Thank you. Yeah, we, we would always advise organizations that are hosting volunteers to do regular check-ins, um, and want to want to be volunteers again, just to make sure that, as I say, that the volunteers work in for both the individual volunteer and the organization themselves as well. Thank you, Paul. Yeah, just wondering whether it be valuing, doing a full member briefing. I mean, lots of people take volunteer, I volunteer, but to actually take and take it out and get another 60 plus volunteers for free. It might well be worth doing a member briefing. Thanks. Yeah, more than happy. Thank you. I think that'll be really good as part of the Councillor development program because, um, certainly to do with the training, I don't think people would perhaps all be aware that that free training is available when they have organizations that are struggling in their area. So if that could be taken forward, that would be helpful. Thank you. Well, I think that, uh, concludes the discussion of the item. Ben, thank you so much. I think the amount of questions shows how much people value what you do. So thank you very much. Um, I propose that the committee have reviewed the report and is satisfied with the work undertaken to support the voluntary sector and that we receive a further update in 12 months time. If you agree, can you please raise your hand now? And that's unanimous. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ben. Thank you, Lee. Right. We'll move on to item seven, registration and celebratory services annual report. It's on pages 31 to 34 of the agenda pack and provides an update on the services delivered by the registration and celebratory service. The action is required by the committee to review and comment on the progress and performance of the service and to consider time scales for further reports as required. It will be presented by James Chapel, head of registration celebratory and coroner's services and Laura Harvey, registration service manager, who I think is new to your post, Laura. So welcome and, uh, over to you. Thank you, Chairman. I'll summarize the key points to the report and then happy to take any questions. Registration services made progressive steps forward during last year in improving accessibility and making digital improvements was continuing to deliver all statutory registration functions. The total number of birth registrations fell slightly compared to 2223. This was down to a spike in births in the spring of 22, which was not replicated, but is now comparable to previous years and the timeliness of birth has been registered within 42 days, now exceeds the national target of 42%. As with births, we saw a slight decrease in the number of deaths registered. This was due to less deaths being registered during the winter months of this year. Death registrations continue to be prioritized and are a vital part of the death management process and availability for appointment remains high. Our ceremony offering continues to develop with the introduction of private citizenship ceremonies, an increased number of venues and the ability for couples now to book as far ahead as 2028. We've also introduced the ability for couples to pay for their ceremonies online, which has seen an excellent take-up rate of over 90%. We've been working with LCC Digital colleagues to create a new ceremony's website and working on further digital improvements which will see the introduction of online ceremony bookings later this year. Over 2,400 ceremonies were conducted last year. It's a slight decrease in the previous, but still above the level seen pre-pandemic. The service continues to develop its digital offering. At one appointment, bookings are now firmly embedded within the service. We've over 80% of all appointments now booked online. We've significantly increased our use of GovNotify with text communication to residents for appointments, reminders and introduced a new feedback mechanism via the council's Let's Talk platform for appointments and ceremonies. We've made better use of digital avenues for information and access, which has resulted in over 20,000 less registration calls being received by the contact centre last year. However, I would like to say that we still operate traditional methods of telephone and in-person to access all registration services. You'll be aware in recent communication the Lincoln Register Office will be moving into Orchard House B next year. Building work will soon be underway to create a more modern environment for registration activity to take place and an improved offering for ceremonies. In my last report, I highlighted a number of national legislative changes which were in progress which will change how registration services operate across the country. The first of these which will come into force is the statutory medical examiner scheme. This comes into play on the 9th of September and will provide greater scrutiny of the medical certificate of cause of deaths for all deaths that occur within Lincolnshire. The second is the Electronic Budgetal Assessment Registers and Telephone registrations. I know telephone registrations have been a topic of conversation since Covid. This is still working through the parliamentary process, but will provide residents with an option to undertake registration events either face to face or over the telephone. No date has been set by the general registrar office for this to come in, but this is likely to start with deaths first followed by birth registrations at a later date. The service is well placed to implement these changes and will continue to offer face-to-face appointments alongside telephones once they have been introduced. Happy to take any questions, Chairman. Thank you, James. Right. Over to you. Councillor Mr Clarke. Thank you, Chairman. On page 32, it really mentions payments in. As a matter of interest, are you in credit with your payments or is your overhead greater than your income? Thank you. No, so registration and service has developed its commercial offering and continued to do so. The service is delivering a balance service for the Council, so it is covered at no cost for the Council. Thank you, James. Could I – I was only talking to somebody yesterday, actually, who'd tried to register a death, and unfortunately their appointment was cancelled because I think a registrar was poorly, and they had to take another appointment to further away office and they don't drive, so they had to organise a lift and everything. And I said to her, Well, in due course, hopefully you wouldn't have had to do this because of this telephone death registration thing. So I'm really pleased to hear because in COVID, obviously you have to do it that way. But can I just check with you, about fraud with telephone registrations, is that an issue or not? Thank you. I think absolutely it's a question around registration fraud in its entirety. There are avenues to be exploited. The one thing that will not change is the questioning that the registrar will do with that informant at any registration. So the questioning and the checks and balances that are in place currently will still remain over telephone. I think probably the area for concern is around the accuracy. That's something that we will focus on, but in terms of fraud, checks and balances are in place for every type of registration, whether it be over the telephone or face-to-face. Thank you, James. I'll ask another question then. Could you tell us a bit more about the timeliness for death registrations, because obviously I always ask you about this every time you come here, because at the moment I think it's five days from the date of death is when the death is meant to be registered. It never is for a whole myriad of reasons. So could you just fill us in a bit more about what's likely to happen with that? Thank you. Yes, of course. I think it's worth understanding that this is a target which was set a long time ago. The national target, which is set, is when the death occurs, there is five days to complete the process to allow for burial cremation. This was set pre-refrigeration, and that was why the five days was imperative. Society has moved on, and we've developed from that, but the target still remains. So it's five days from the death to registration. What will be changing with the National Medical Examiner's scheme and these death certification reforms is that that target will move into a more modern and realistic and achievable one. So that will be changing. We believe from the night for September, however, the government is still to confirm exactly what that looks like from when the registration service receives the medical certificate of course of death to when we can register it. At the moment, the target encompasses that whole bereavement journey from the level of GP, whether it be a medical examiner, all the way through. The clock will start when it reaches us. So we will be able to really monitor our own timelessness against that profile. We don't know what the percentage target will be, and we don't know when it will be introduced, but we know it's changing. So I can't give any more than that, but hopefully that explains where it's moving to. Thank you, James. I'm Tom. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's just something attracted to my attention, which is it's very concerning for Lincolnshire, probably. You might be able probably to answer or not. I don't expect any answer from it. Just looking at the figures on page 32, I looked at the figures of the birds and the deaths. If you look at 21 until 24 for three years, we lost almost 25,000 people, but then the birds is just around 14,000. So if you look at the next few years, the population is decreasing massively, and that's worrying. I think it's not up to us, but something has to be done, and people has to be encouraged probably to produce more kids, because it's very worrying, really. In three years, it's half and half, 14,000 kids, 25,000 death. We have to replace who goes. We need to replace the working forces. We need to replace people. It is concerning. It is very concerning. I thought that would probably allow it out to everyone and to see where we stand with the production of a future generation. Thank you, and I'm sure it's not our job as a community to encourage people to have children. I know Mr Chairman, but this is a reality. I think we are in this committee. We have to put it forward to our citizens and residents if we need to sustain a development and economy for Lincolnshire. We need to have a sustainable growth of our population. If we cannot do that, it does affect us, and it will affect us. Thank you. Of course, those figures don't include movements into the county. Do they? James, do you want to add anything? I think I can hopefully answer some parts of that. Certainly, I can't answer some of them. I think what it is to really understand, actually, what this birth registration figure is. This is births which have occurred within our district boundary. What this doesn't account for is the total number of births that have happened in regards to Lincolnshire families and residents. These are only births that have taken place at home, or at a mapped unit provision within Lincolnshire. The total number of births and babies into Lincolnshire is greater than this, but they don't come under registration. If I give you an example, if you have someone who lives in market-deeping or Stanford, the nearest maternity provision for them is Peterborough. It could be 10-15 minutes down the road. That birth would take place in Peterborough and then would be a Peterborough registration event. Although they come back into the county of Lincolnshire, for the purposes of registration, that's outside of the Lincolnshire district boundary, so it would not appear on these figures. The figure is far greater than what I register here, but I don't have the total figure. That might be something you get from children's services, or the NHS, but this is solely. It's not just on the south of the county, you look at the areas of the North. If you've got South, you've got people who go that way, you can access the provision in Kingslyn and also in the other areas. So what we see is all four sides of the county. Burfs from our residents will take place outside of it and then come back in. Can I come back, Mr. Chairman? Go on then. If you don't mind, please, thank you. A very clever answer. Very good. But there is another thing to that one. There is a lot of people from the EU countries. They bring their wives here, they give birth here, they register for them, so then they have the child benefit and go back home. So I unfortunately can't answer to that side. We only deal with the registration. If a birth takes place of anybody within the district boundary here, where it's a hospital at home in transit, they will be registered. Above and beyond that, I can't comment. Yeah, I don't think that's for James to answer that question, Anton. Thank you. Karen, and then Martin, if that's it. I'm sorry I can't resist this one, Chair, with the greatest of respect, Councillor Dunning because you know that I like you. But how would we ever fit that into the council budget? Encouraging that. Just the mind boggles. There's never a door moment on this committee. I'm sure somebody will come up with a no idea. Martin and then, Alison. Yeah, thanks, Horace. So it is part of a national trend in terms of births dropping nationally, so it's not just an issue in Lincolnshire. Certainly conversations I've had with Derek Ward in relation to the whole of the health elements within Lincolnshire. So it is something that the kind of population and help management can look at and will look at and it's going to project what does our future cohort and numbers look like for Lincolnshire and then what does that mean for us as services. So there is some ongoing work taking place in relation to birth, reductions, death, numbers, just to see where we are in terms of what that might look like in five years as a population, what that might look like in ten years as a population, and what then are risks. It will affect everything, it will affect how many schools we need, it will affect how much social care we might need. So it does have a big impact. So it's a relevant question but it's part of a national trend. It's not just happening in Lincolnshire. It seems that society are having children far, far later on than they are and not so many. Costa Living is driving that as well. Children are not cheap to kind of bring up and support. So it's a national issue, not just want a link to you, but there are things being done around it. Thank you Martin. I assume James, the same applies for death registrations if someone died in a hospital outside the county. That would be registered in the other county, is that right? That's absolutely correct, yes. Lovely Alice, I'm sorry I catch you waiting. Oh it doesn't matter, I'm still alive. Right, seriously, two years ago when I was chairman of this council, I had the privilege and it was a privilege of witnessing and helping take part in a lot of citizenship ceremonies and I'd had no experience of these beforehand whatsoever. Now for 2023 to 24 you talk about 382 citizenship events but I wondered is there a trend for more citizenship? Ceremonies, I'm not first whether they're private or in the group situation and I was certainly very interested they really covered people originally from every conceivable continent or almost, I say, country but I wondered have the reasons for gaining citizenship changed? Are there more than there had been in previous years? You don't give any long term trend with these. We are relatively stable in terms of the numbers that we conduct each year. Obviously you go back a few years and they were disrupted due to COVID so we will always be somewhere around the 350 to 400 mark. We do not fluctuate too much. I cannot comment on the reasons why people are applying for citizenship but what I would say is that we continue to offer and we continue to develop that offer and we have seen a large take up of that private citizenship offer alongside the group. Thank you James, can I just ask another question and we have two more, very popular. The online payments for ceremonies, have you considered because of the cost of living problems that people have about couples paying an instalment for some of the ceremonies? Because obviously the enhanced ceremonies as I remember them when I must just declare if you didn't know, I used to be a marriage registrar years ago so I know exactly what used to go on then and things have changed. It has that been considered as an option for some of the more expensive ceremonies? Thank you. So what we will be doing when we launch the online booking tool which will allow couples to freedom and flexibility to look, browse and book in their homes or at a venue, at the point of booking there will be a deposit fee upon that. Depending on the ceremony type that will be probably between 15 and 25%. That is payable in a first instalment and then they have got the period of time to pay. We are not able to bring in with the systems a regular sort of monthly payment plan but what we are able to is split that cost across those two payments so it is a more flexible approach than what we have currently got in place. Thank you. Right, Mike. Thank you, Chairman. You mentioned here about the relocation. I take it to be enough publicity either through the media or social media or newspapers etc to show the change and the date that it will actually take place. Yes, so public comments has already gone out, highlighting the new location. Anyone who has got a ceremony booked at the current location has already been contacted by a member of staff. We have not received any negative feedback around that. The one thing that this new venue will offer is a wider offering. It is a larger capacity room. We have got a much more modern and private space than we have currently got at Linden Road so the offering for everybody will develop but certainly we will be engaging through social media. We will be using the council's website, we will be using public comments in the run-up to that new venue and all of those changes will be made in line with the legal side of it with the home office and general register office as well. People who have noticed will have to give notice again if the venue is wrong or how do you sort that out? You can give notice 12 months in advance so what we will do is we will make sure that there is no crossover or overlap. We have got enough time and enough notice for those weddings to take place there. We are also going to be doing it in a staged approach. It is a big move, it is our largest office. So we are going to do it in stages with the staff, with the front-facing appointments and also the ceremonies as well. So people will not have to be able to give notice. We have planned that all in. Thank you, James. Nicola do we call you Nicola or Nikki? Well Nikki then. Thank you very much. Thank you, James, for the report, brilliant report. This is just an observation really from members comments. Going back to page 32 and the site distortion of figures where people are registered outside because it is close to two, would it be worth a little estrice foot note on it so you do not have to keep explaining it? We would not be here next year but you might be able to put that in just so people will know that that occurs because actually I had forgotten and completely forgotten about that. Of course it is. It is where you live and where it is nearest. So that might be worth just a little foot note there so you do not have to keep going over it. Thank you very much. I will put it on the next one. Thank you, Nikki. I think that is all the questions. I would just like to say as I say I used to be employed by the registration service and I know for everybody in the county they all come into contact with the roads which as councillors we have endless emails about but the other bit of the county council they all come into contact with at some time or another is your service and either on happy occasions or sad. So you really are the face of the council and I only hear good reports about you from people. So well done really for what you do because you represent us all and you provide in such a valuable service but that is not to say we will not scrutinise you and ask difficult questions. Thank you for everybody as well for your questions and I propose that the committee have reviewed the report and is satisfied with the work undertaken to support, also I am reading the wrong bit here, I have carried away. And satisfied with the progress and performance of the registration and celebratory service and that we receive a further update and approximately 12 months time. So could you please raise your hands if you agree? Yes, Jackie. Yes, everybody. Thank you very much. Thank you, James. Thank you, Laura. And item eight, the public protection and communities scrutiny committee work program. This is on pages 35 to 42 of the agenda pack and sets out the committee's work programme for 2024-25. The actions required by the committee are to review the work programme and highlight any additional scrutiny activity which could be included for consideration in it. The report will be presented by Tracy Johnson senior scrutiny officer. Tracy. Thank you, Chairman. I have one amendment to report to the public work programme, which I have seen this morning from Mark. This is in addition to the 30th of July agenda and it is for precision scrutiny in relation to a lease agreement for operational vehicles and this will be a council of quarry decision between the 5th and the 30th of August. This means we have eight items on the July agenda. It will be quite a heavy one but there is no option for deferring items to size the agenda as well in September and in October and November. I think the Chairman's agreement will leave it as being the eight items on that agenda. Otherwise, just in for members, thank you, Chairman. If I could just add, I'm very conscious that with the election next year we don't want to build up a backlog of items that we run out of time for or everything has to be squeezed in at the last minute. I'm not very keen on deferring things. I'd rather we get on with it and get them sorted out if that's okay in general but it might not always be possible of course but that's why this extra item has been added. So you'll need to bring a pack up next time, probably. Does anybody have anything to say? That concludes that then and I propose we approve the existing work program as detailed on pages 35 to 42 and then can I ask you to raise your hands if you agree? Yes, that's okay. So we're all agreed. Right, now then we are running quarter of an hour in front of where I thought it would be, so that's excellent. What do you want to do? Are you happy to have a 10-minute break or do you want to carry on? Break, if you want to break, put your hand up. Okay, I think we'll have a break. So we'll have a 10-minute comfort break and we'll restart at 25 past 11, please. We just need to wait for the fee to be turned off I think. And I'm going to, just before we turn the thing off, I do need to say I have a prejudicial interest in item 9 and I'll be leaving the meeting and return when you get to item 10 and the Vice-Chairman, Councillor Paul Skinner, will be in the chair for that item. Thank you. I'll leave it. 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We're now going to sit as the Crime and Disorder Scrutney Committee under section 19 of the Police and Justice Act of 2006 and move on to item 9, which is the Safer Linkenshire Partnership Annual Report 2324. This item can be found, on page 43 to 98 with the agenda back and provides the committee with an annual update of the work of the Safer Linkenshire Partnership for 202324. The actions of the committee are to review and comment on the Safer Linkenshire Partnership's Annual Report attached to Appendix A, including Subcendices as Appendix B to D. And two, request the Safer Linkenshire Partnership presents its Annual Report for 2425 in 12 months time. The report will be presented by Zoe Waters, Business Manager, Safer Linkenshire Partnership, and during this item, Tracy Johnson, signer Scrutney, and officer will be making a note for those who wish to speak over to you, Zoe. >> Thank you and good morning everybody. So as noted, I'm presenting the Annual Report for 202324 for Safer Linkenshire Partnership. As you'll note, it is a very long report. So as requested, I will be highlighting and summarizing the contents of the report. I am happy to take questions afterwards so I will proceed. We have a statutory duty to hold an annual general meeting every year. Our annual general meeting was held on the 30th of April and this is where we presented our annual report. Again, we have a statutory duty to produce an annual report. This report provides an update on our progress against our current strategy through the years of 2022 to 2025. Our current priority areas to address our antisocial behaviour reduce and reoffending serious violence, prevent crime and disorder and substance misuse. So there's a significant range of statutory duties that we're touching upon within this report. Page 5 of the annual report allows you to see a summary in the Executive Summary of the key achievements made. Again, I'm not going to go through each of these. The report provides assurances around finances, domestic abuse related death reviews, so it's important for the committee to note that the Safer Linkenshire Partnership holds a statutory duty to commission domestic abuse related death reviews. However, we delegate this duty to the Linkshire Domestic Abuse Partnership and we gain assurance from them on a six-month basis. We also have undertaken an increased amount of community engagement over the last 12 months and we are looking to develop a strategy around community engagement moving forwards. Again, we have a statutory duty to engage with the public. The report includes a summary around looking forwards for 2025-26. During the coming year, we will be undertaking a strategic needs assessment. We have a statutory duty to do this and this will be looking to inform our strategic priorities for 2025 onwards. We will also conclude our finance review to ensure proportionate split between partners and effective and appropriate spend for 2025-26 onwards. There's also within the Looking Forward Section, clear reference to the Stay Safe Partnership. They do an exceptional job. I know you've heard reports from in this committee before in terms of delivering preventative education across the county and they are our preventative education delivery arm around all topics for community safety. What you will see within the report, appendices are PowerPoint presentations from each of the core prior to groups to date with introduced a system where they will provide updates to strategy board around court delivery that they are undertaking. And again, this provides a bit more background information. I am going to pause there because it is a huge report, and I am open to any questions from the committee. Thank you. Thank you, Zoe. I would like to invite any members of the committee, like to speak. Council Mrs. Clerk, please. Thank you for the report, Zoe, and I have managed to get through it. There is an awful lot in there. It is an excellent report and it gives us a load of information of which I do have some questions, but I will be as quick as I possibly can. So on page 57, it is just an observation, really. It looks like a typing error. The RRO provided strategy board an update on women and girls strategy. And it says in September 2024, I think that might be 2023, so I just thought I better let you know so you can amend it. The next thing on page 78 was about the noxious odors procedure. I know it has only been recently launched, but it does look to me as though it might be a little bit drawn out. You know, we have to wait and wait and report it and report it before anything gets done, it kind of reads like that. So whether or not that isn't the case or whatever, I perhaps would like an explanation on that and actually how to action it because I think there might be several people I know who want to do that. And I'll go through these quickly so that you can kind of pick them up. And then the other thing I want to ask of course is women's rise. We attended the presentation which was put forward in January 24. I know that the strategy has been developed, everything's been worked up, but I would still like to know, have the people who originally signed up to the Concorde at have more people now committed to the pledge of it. If not, why not? And what are we doing to make these people stand by what they said because it's important that we have a women's centre in Lincoln. Because of the important work that we need to do to keep women and young girls as young as 10, I think in your important 13, out of the criminal justice system. It's highly important and it's really important work that we need. Now I did approach our property guy, I should say by name, but I don't want to because he's not in the meeting here, but I did approach them. We have property, is there any further movement on any property for a women's centre? How is that going? Because we need to look at that. So really it's a matter of urgency and then at the end of March 2025, when the whole strategy is pulled together, what happens then? So those are my questions, sorry that you've got them all at once, but I thought well it's quick, concise and you can go for it. Thank you. Absolutely, thank you very much Councillor. I will do my best to go through them, if I miss any of the points that you've raised, please do let me know. So in relation to the noxious odours policy, the information that's included within the report is findings from the pilot. So what the group has been asked to do is to continue to monitor that process and report that strategy board in 12 months. I know that they are looking at reviewing this policy and what I can do is feed into them around looking at the length it takes in terms of that reporting and ask them to consider that within their review process. In terms of reporting, reporting is via your local district council. If you go on to their websites, there is a page on there. The best way to get a direct link, I would suggest, is go on to the Safer Linkashere website and it gives you a direct link to the relevant pages on each district. All of the information provided on each of the district's websites is consistent. There should be absolute consistency and clarity of messaging around how to report anti-sociabavia, including noxious odours. So in terms of commitment to the pledge, what I can say is that we do have a significant amount of in-house services within women rise now and that's continuing to develop. So it may not always be a financial contribution, but in terms of adhering to the ethos of the strategy that is moving along. So there are sexual health dropping clinics within the centre. There's finance and benefits work that is being locked into, so reestablishing the links with the Department for Work and Pensions and they will be doing drop-in sessions. Links are being made now with Linkashere Partnership Foundation Trust. I'm trying not to use my acronyms there in relation to mental health support. I do know that each of the staffing in there have done mental health first aid training. The work is ongoing now that it's mobilised for the Linkashere Recovery Partnership, who've picked up the drug and alcohol treatment services from addiction to actually start delivering some in-house sessions from September onwards. They just needed to get out of mobilisation into delivery following the contract change. We have had money courses in there. There's baby bumps course as well, so providing that support for expectant mothers as well and new mothers. Legal aid drop-ins as well are being provided, a range of workshops, etc. What I can say, not necessarily directly linked to the Women's Centre itself, but as you rightly note, it's a Women and Girls strategy. So there's work in relationship established with Future for me, so that's working with the young people. They're looking at case studies to look at what can be done in terms of building a preventative pathway for young girls. There has been funding provided from the High Sheriff's Office and the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner to look at developing a mentoring programme for young girls at risk of entering the criminal justice system. I don't have a start date for that yet, but it is something that is being looked at. We continue to see really high engagement at each of the delivery groups and I'll cover that in the next bit. Again, if you're happy, I will cover the bits around sustainability future funding in the next section, but I've made a note. Thank you. Thank you, that's quite a question. Council Mr Mike Klum. Sorry, I just wanted to address the specific element around the housing and the property question, so I have pulled together the connections between the strategically within women's dry centre and our corporate property services. We've also had, whilst we now start to look at the recommission of our safe accommodation facilities across the county, the conversations are now being had and how we incorporate and ensure that we incorporate the complexities that some of the women are coming through the women's dry centre, that might not necessarily fit into where we have got traditional locations that we can put through. All of the complexities are being written into and reviewed as part of our offering around safe accommodation for women and girls and also specifically the connection between what does LCC have as buildings that might not be used that actually the women's dry centre may be able to get access to. So those conversations are taking place and we are considering what our best kind of way forward is to make sure that we maximize the opportunities for women within the county, and not just necessary specifically to Lincoln, but yes so we're doing that. Sorry. Yeah, I'd just like to build on that as well. Thank you Martin. So what I can say is that we do have hobs within we have a hub in Gigormphum, we have a hub in the Spalding area, there is a pop up outside HMP Lincoln as well, just thinking about the relationships between women and those whom they may have relationships with, and also this direct conversations ongoing now with West Lindsay District Council in terms of Gainesborough as well. So we really are trying to mobilise and have that hub and spoke model in terms of service delivery and the navigators, the key workers, they travel countywide and as we know it's a rural county, they travel vast distances but there is that model to try and make sure it isn't in concentric which is sometimes a criticism of services that are established. Thank you. Thank you, Mike then. Thank you very much for that. I'm pleased that we are now making some progress on a women's centre because I think that would be a very positive addition and would really help the situation. Regarding antisocial behaviour, I'll ask the question, do we have a link system whereby all the active parties are aware of what others are doing so that we can highlight a particular area or a house or individual and it's not just one organisation dealing with that particular issue. And then if I could go on to public engagement, I was pleased to read that there's now a regular slot on BBC Radio Lincolnshire, which is obviously a very good bit of progress, and I'm wondering whether we could obtain another slot on Lynx FM to broaden the publication, as if we're all the notification of what's going on. And regarding advice letters, I saw the six months and then the six months, and if you're alluded to it already, that it's under review, but I do feel that maybe for the neighbours suffering the issue, six months and six months, it may be too long for them to suffer a particular issue. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. I'll pick up the antisocial behaviour system and how that works, and then I'll leave Zoe to pick up the engagement element stuff on the answer. LCC Commission, a partnership case management system called ESINS, now that's a case management system that all kind of statutory bodies who are involved in the reduction of antisocial behaviour have access to and populate a certain set of cases, normally those kind of the complex high risk, vulnerable people where there is a multi-agency response required. So, LCC currently commissioned that, and that again, that has used everything, we're just currently developing a spec to go out to commission that system because that system ends in terms of its contract in March 2025. So, we're currently just building on what a new system might look like, but all partners are committed to having a single source system where they can operate a kind of a multi-response to antisocial behaviour in a single place, and we as the County Council take ownership for commissioning that and ensuring the kind of quality standards and the standard operations procedures around it. Thank you very much, that's very reassuring. Thank you Anton, please. Thank you Mr. Chairman. I have three points I want to touch on, and I think according to my humble opinion I think they are very important. I hope that Zoe will give us the right answer or will expand on the answer. Can I go one by one? Is that right? OK, the first thing which I want to touch on, it comes from an experience which has happened this Sunday, this past Sunday. The police basically stopped a car where it was a family of four people without seat belts. And when they went to issue the fine for the seat belt, they found out that the car didn't have any insurance. So, it went further, the driver, which is the father, didn't have a driver license. So, talking about safer Lincolnshire, is there any pressure that you can put on the police to monitor people driving around Lincolnshire more often. Because I do believe there is a lot of people driving with the wrong driver license. Thank you. Yeah, I think I'll take that. So I think this is one for the safer roads partnership that would normally present there in your report. It's not something that sits within our sphere. We can certainly speak with them and liaise with them and say it's been raised within the committee for sure. But they do come and have their annual report here with us. So, it's either one to hold for a question and then direct, but we can certainly say that it was raised. Yeah. Thank you. If you say it was raised, that would be appreciated. My second thing, because being in Boston six days a week from six o'clock in the morning to four, as you know, as running a small coffee shop in the town center, there is few people with mental sicknesses, and they're every day shouting at people, six o'clock in the morning, seven o'clock in the morning. I have notified the police and they know about them. However, the answer from the police, it was that when they don't take their medication and drink alcohol, then they become very dangerous, and I say, why you don't take them out of the streets? So the answer of the police was that that's down to the social services. One of these people goes to savers, for example, when they open nine o'clock in the morning, they will grab a bottle of alcohol and they will just drink it in the shop and walk away. So this intimidation is, I think, posing a lot of risk to the resident. Is there anything you can say Zoe or James, I think? Yeah, so there are intervention opportunities in relation to the antisocial behaviour law that can kind of not only the fact that they are committing thefts, and they are kind of openly intimidating thing. I think there's been lots of news reports around how shop theft has become more of a violent and intimidating space. And I've no doubt that Linkeshia police will kind of pick up a response plan in relation to that and deal that, and that's something that can be maybe asked of the police and crime panel to kind of focus on. So there's a kind of a root for scrutiny there. In terms of the antisocial behaviour elements that fall out of that, what I would say is that people must continue to report what they see, because that then built up the powers and enables policing and also district councils to be able to use the interventions and behaviour orders that would fall out of that type of behaviour. So that kind of noise in the street nuisance, social drinking in the street nuisance, there are legislative powers within the antisocial behaviour act that both districts and policing can take elements of that to court. And we've seen it used successfully elsewhere. So part of that kind of place-based person centric targeting can happen, but it does mean that people continually need to report in and continually to kind of make those phone calls, otherwise the police don't have the true picture around it. So it's one of perseverance. Thank you, James. I can assure you that I keep reporting whatever I've seen, which is antisocial behaviour, anything. So I try to do my job as a resident as well. So the third thing, which I think is very important for me, and I think being a Mediterranean, probably it sounds normal in some places. You know, if you are in Italy and you pass through a group of men, they will say, Key Fabulusa, what's beautiful. You know, this is normal. But I think it's happening now in Boston, and a lot of young girls are very intimidated because it's come to my attention. Some of the young girls now they prefer not to work on West Street or places where there is a gathering of young men in front of betting shops, so there is a harassment, a verbal harassment now going on all the time. Is there anything that you can do, or probably open a line, to talk to these young girls, because they're going to keep it to themselves, and I think it will lead them to be probably more depressed or more anxious to do things. And I think it shouldn't be like that. I think they should be free, they should be feeling comfortable, they should be feeling that they belong to our community, they should be able to go to school without harassment. And as I say, the young girls are complaining. Some of them did raise the issue with the police. However, they say it didn't go anywhere, so we just give up on it. From myself, I mean I have two boys, but I have a family with girls. I wouldn't like my daughter to go through that harassment on daily basis. I would like her to be safe, and I would like to be assured that she's comfortable about what she's doing and where she goes with her friends. Thank you. Yeah, again, I think a really, really good question. So we have under the serious violence duty, and also under the linkage domestic abuse partnership, done a, created a violence against women and girls voices group, and this is very much around, bringing in those voices of those people who have experienced abuse as victims, as survivors, to kind of inform us on a multiple of elements. We've also done the violence against women and girls and serious violence survey where exactly what Councillor Denny was kind of saying, it kind of, some of the elements of that verbal abuse out on the street to young girls and the intimidation of how they kind of felt as a result of that, is all caught up in that survey. So what we're currently doing is just with all the partnerships that sit within the linkage domestic abuse partnership and the serious violence, is look about, well what is it that we can actually do to intervene and build on the confidence of those young girls that are seeing that, and make sure we target that behaviour. So we've almost done the engagement element, we've got an understand the picture that's there within the county, is now about okay, so let's have a look at what we can do and how we can intervene, and then go back to the public that informed us in relation to that, to say this is what we've done as a result of what you've said. So it is a piece of focus that the partnership is looking at through both the domestic partnership abuse and the serious violence group, utilising the experience of the violence against women and girls voices group. -Indeed. -Just to James, do you work with schools? Because I do believe that there is a lot of EU citizens who, their kids goes to schools and they understand English perfectly well, so they can deliver this message to their families, their brothers, their whoever, their cousins, their uncles and I think probably then we can get that message clear out to everyone. -Yeah, so we do a considerable amount of work in schools. I think this year to date we've interacted with over a hundred and twenty thousand children within both secondary and primary schools, which is a phenomenal amount, and healthy relationships, understanding healthy relationships, the violence against women and girls, we've employed specific individuals to go into schools specifically around the women and girls agenda. -Thank you very much. -Thank you very much. Of course the PSPO applies to Boston as well and there are various other tools. -Oh, sorry Steve, I didn't see you up there. -Hello, sir. Just a bit of answer back for Councilor Danny. I actually attended one of the stay safe days that was presented to the Sar village of going around and listening to some of them and it was really first class. I spoke to the teachers afterwards who said that they felt that it was very good and well worth while. They also do one for the senior pupils and apparently that's a lot more hard hitting, but I've missed that one and I'll have to try and get to see that one. I also attended last week, I went to the Sleefford police station where they've got the happening event, which is the anti-knife program where they've been getting two levels of pupils in, eight at a time and they go around an old cell, they get presentations about all the different aspects of knife crime. It really is first class. The good thing of course is the knife crime, certainly in my area is not a major issue, but the presentation was really first class and the schools are getting involved in that. So Councilor Danny, we really go for the kids. Thank you. -Thank you for that, Steve. Sorry, I didn't see you. -Thank you. -Jackie, please, sorry to keep you wasted. -No problem at all. Thank you, Jim, and it's very interesting. -Thank you for this report. I mean, it's a huge piece of work versus, and it's very, very educative. There are so many small, nuanced areas, each with a different need that is actually quite shocking when you read it for the first time. A couple of things, one request I'd like to make, then a comment and then a question, please, if I may, would it be possible in a future report to include a couple of live links? When you've made some comments, there are occasions where I would like to have dug in. For instance, if you go into the appendices after the noxious fume bits, you got some very useful slides about prevention of victimization and things. A live link there, there is an email address so I can get there, but it's just that ease of getting in there quickly and digging through, not essential at all, just a request. With regard to the noxious odours, this is more important than it might seem at first. There are two areas in my division which suffer on a regular basis from noxious odours, in one case from another district, and in one case from some industry. And the one got so serious that people couldn't open their windows in the summer, and this went on for several years, and not only that, but the area that was generating the noxious smell actually named it after the area that was suffering to try and divert people from it, and it was actually causing difficulty selling houses as well in the particular area. I can give you detail about that later, it was really nasty. So the work that you're doing, and of course, a lot of these noxious odours actually carry unhealthy particulates anyway. So I think that is a kind of priority area for me. My last thing, Chairman, if that's alright is a question, and I've moved away from my page, I think it's 60. Your definition of serious violence was very educative. It was much broader than I had in my own mind, but I wonder if I might ask a question from the area of achievements, page 62nd bullet point. It talked about project bidding taking place, and the Serious Violence Core Priority Group have approved 21 projects. So who does this bidding, under what guidance, and is the Serious Violence Core Priority Group a council group or is it, I know you have to report to the home office. So could you just give me a bit of clarity on that please? Thank you. Yes, absolutely. So in terms of the Serious Violence Core Priority Group, the membership is determined by the statutory duty. So you have responsible partners, and that will include integrated care board, local authorities, police, et cetera, et cetera. It is those bodies that are able to vote on bids which come in. So the bids are partnership bids where they propose a project that they would like to deliver to meet the objectives of the strategy. So what we ask them to do is say how will your project reduce serious violence or prevent serious violence? What evidence will you provide us that it has had that impact, and they are required to provide quarterly home office reporting? The group itself is a partnership group, so it falls under the governance to say for Linkenshire Partnership, so it isn't a pure Linkenshire County Council meeting. And there are in terms of reference in relation to how that bidding works around quarantine voting, who has the right to vote, et cetera, et cetera. So it is really, really regimented in terms of how that's done. Martin, I'm not sure if there's anything you would like to add in addition to that. Yeah, there's some of the examples of what the projects that have been delivered that were just on the slightly below the points there. So some of the money went towards the Happening Project, which is the ninth crime element. Some of the money went towards reducing violence within the summertime policing plan that policing put together Boston Borough Council with policing put together a kind of a bid to reduce or increase the kind of the town centre area in terms of its look and feel. I don't want to say beautify, but beautify more Boston town centre because we know if a town centre looks nice, then that's the reduction in crime kind of reduces. So those elements like that, so it's an ongoing process. It's all come from either funding that the PCC allotted to serious violence or funding that the home office got as part of serious violence being a new duty. And then that collaborative group who have got a statutory duty to reduce serious violence of which there's 5 or 6 named within the duty, kind of then come together. But it's very much a collective group to decide on the project. So it's very collaborative. Thank you. You're welcome. It's a good point that, about architecture and layout, you can actually discourage bad behaviour by spending a little bit of forethought before you start. Indeed, it's nuclear. Sorry. Yes, it was just briefly to come back to Councillor MR CLARK in relation to the radio and engagement. So what we can do is we can work with the Councillor COM human engagement team in terms of opening up some pathways to get that in place so we could potentially look at Lynx FM. They've got one slot. That's a local slot. We do have links with BBC Radio Lincoln's here already. We do have a number of programs on there. But what I would suggest is that we look at our mapping, our evidence base, in terms of which specific items would be best placed to be promoted and information given on the radio program so that we're really targeted and reaching the audiences that we'd like to reach. Thank you, Zoe. Is there anything else on that? She just answered the question I was about to ask again. Thank you. That's absolutely fantastic. Yes, she's brilliant. Mind-reader. Yeah, Nicola. Oh, no. Thank you, Chair. Sorry, I forgot one. And I just need to quickly ask about this. It's probably for you, Martin. But on page 58 we talk about Lincolnshire Prisoner release housing protocol. I know evaluation was conducted and completed by Lincoln University and they've produced key recommendations and I wanted to know if we could probably have sight of that. And the reason I asked for that is because Lincoln Prison actually sits on the edge of my division and I have visited it. It's absolutely fabulous the work that goes on in there. The staff and the team are absolutely passionate about making sure that people who have offended, men who have offended, do not go on to re-offend. And there's all sorts of wonderful programs that go on. And they do actually have a media page as well where you can see what's going on. It's fabulous. And I was so impressed, really impressed with that. And if anybody wants to visit Lincoln Prison, I do know that the Governor will try to accommodate that and they will show you around. It's safe as long as there's not too many people there. But yes, they can do that. The thing is, one of the problems that they did have and that they spoke to me about was that when people have done their time and when they are ready to leave and they're ready to go back out into the world and they're ready to take on work that's been well prepared and trained and gone through educational systems and all sorts of things. There isn't the housing to support them. So the housing need for people who have been in prison, especially in Lincoln, it needs to be there. So I just wanted to have sight of that report really because that would be interesting to me just to back up all the things that I have spoken about with them. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Fortunately Zoe was really involved in the housing protocols part of the reducing reoffending elements so I think Zoe would probably be the best one to talk through it because she had a very big footprint in that. Okay, thank you. So yes, absolutely. We can share that report and I'm also happy to share the action plan as well that sits underneath that. I'm pleased to say that next week we're holding a meeting with the task and finish group in relation to signing off that action plan. The action plan itself has some quite operational elements within them in terms of that system working in the background, meetings, consistency of the application of the homelessness duty across each of the local operators. For example, local connection consistently comes up in various pieces of work. There's also some system elements as well, and that is being picked up by the Linkyshire Housing Partnership. So we have a good mechanism in there because actually some of the recommendations aren't for the governance of the safe Linkyshire Partnership. Therefore, the governance of that arena. So we make sure that we've got that work in relationship. In terms of housing, we work in great works really closely with the regional leads from probation who have that oversight around accommodation for prison leavers. And there's a program called CASFRI. I won't go into a huge amount of detail, but that is in relation to the provision of housing for those leaving custody. What else was I going to say? I think that's it in summary, but absolutely we can share it. I just get it signed off by the group first, before I do share it. I'll switch myself off. Sorry. Any further questions? Okay. I've got a couple then. On page 50, the report states that looking forward to the Safe Linkyshire Partnership partnership needs assessment, it will be completed and utilised to inform strategic priorities for 2025 to 2028. When is this assessment due to be completed? And are you anticipating any changes to the five core priorities? So it's got to be completed in time for us to kind of set the new strategy. So there's a sort of working group around it. Because our statutory duty kind of sits within crime and reduction, reducing reoffending, substance misuse, serious violence and prevent. So our statutory duty is to do something around those elements. So whilst the sort of as I call them, the buckets may not change. What we actually look at within those buckets may change. So it might be that the moment so under crime and disorder we're focusing on financial abuse. And we're focusing on those fraud elements within financial abuse. What we look for in the future will come under assessment. So actually, what does the hate crime profile look like in the county? What does modern slavery, human trafficking look like in the county? And where does that current risk sit for an SLP to take a lead in the priority on? So that's the type of element that we look at. Similar to the antisocial behaviours at the moment, it's household antisocial behaviour that sits as a priority. So again, what does that look like? The serious violence duties kind of already had its strategic needs assessment. That's one of the new duties and that was published January this year. So that's already been kind of completed. Also the substance misuse also kind of duplicates as the national drug and alcohol combating drug partnership. So they already have a national strategy to work with. So they're already kind of pretty much set in stone, but we'll still have a kind of review. So it's ongoing now. It will be kind of agreed as a partnership and published in time for us to go live in the 2025 March 2025. So we'll hopefully bring back something to this committee to say this is where we are with it later on this year. Thank you very much for that. Obviously things change quite regularly and sometimes quicker than we really like. Well, thank you for your questions and comments. This now concludes the discussion of this item. So the proposal is I propose that the committee endorses the Safer Linkature Partnerships annual report and requests that the Safer Linkature Partnership presents its annual report for 2024/2025 in 12 months time. Can members raise their hands if they agree? That's everybody. Thanks very much. We'll call in the proper chair. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you Paul for looking after that. I think it helped having a break. You must have had a good discussion. We'll move on to item 10 now. The work of the Safer Linkature Partnerships Linkenship Women's Strategy, supporting women and girls at risk of entering the criminal justice system. This item is on pages 99 to 106 of the agenda pack and provides the committee with an overview and update of the actions undertaken by the Safer Linkenship Partnership to support women and girls at risk of entering the criminal justice system. The actions required by the committee are to review and comment on the contents of the report and consider the progress made by the Safer Linkenship Partnership to support women and girls at risk of entering the criminal justice system and suggest how we may be able to assist with promoting and supporting this work stream in our areas. The report will be presented by Zoe Walters, business manager of the Safer Linkenship Partnership. So Zoe, over to you. Thank you. Thank you Chairman. So again I will be summarizing the key points from this report. I will take it as read and as usual I'm very much open to questions, comments, requests from the committee. So in summary we have a strategy ongoing, there are supporting delivery groups in reference to this. So we have a strategic delivery group which looks at strategic actions, very much the system element around the women and girls strategy and then we have an operational delivery group that sits underneath this. So that's really about the nuts and bolts of how are we going to make the women's centre work and feed enough any escalations for any barriers and blockers. And noted earlier we still see very good attendance from Concordat Signatories and also they are very much engaged in those meetings. In terms of the Women's Centre, it has a name now in comparison to last year. So it is called Women Rise and I've provided a website link to the women's centre. So hopefully you've had a chance to look at that and see the varied support that can be offered to women. Recruitment is completed at present and what I can say in addition to the report that was provided for you is that a worker has been recruited to cover the Boston area as well. They just need to cover induction and then there will be operational from September onwards. As noted earlier by Councillor Nicola Clark the launch for Women's Rise was in January 2024. So thank you for attending and to any other committee members who did attend. I'm not going to repeat myself necessarily so we do have a centre in Lincoln and we have various hubs around the county. As at May 2024 we had received 84 referrals into Women Rise. Two of these were declined however those were reasons that were legitimate. So one was out of area and out of area referral and one was not suitable for the service however we do not just leave women in need of support. We made sure that appropriate onwards referrals were made. I'm using the Royal Wee, it's linking to your action trust that delivered the service. What I can say is that there's some very high level data being produced at the minute to actually track the impact and output of the women's centre. The data is in the process of being refined, it is going to be developed over time. It will feed into the evaluation but crucially as per the question asked earlier, we need that data to inform a business case for funding bids, funding business cases in relation to securing funding for 2025 onwards. So there is a meeting that is being pulled together. It starts in September, that's the earliest, we could get diaries aligned to actually combine this and get them on the shelf as such paper pulled together with all of our evidence so that when we're scouting and there is work ongoing at the minute to look at funding that's available we've got something on the shelf tweak it and then submit it so that we're in a good position rather than trying to work to a five day turn around as these funding bids often are. We need to put ourselves in a really strong position. A lot of workers referenced by Martin earlier is ongoing in relation to co-commissioning. So if we're looking at sustainability and a system approach to preventing women and girls from entering the criminal justice system, we need to get smarter with our commissioning. We're really promoting this, so in partnership with Linkeshard Domestic Abuse Partnership and Public Health there are various commissioning elements that are being undertaken in relation to safe accommodation and also supported living is being looked at so that wrap around support when somebody is in accommodation. There's also been discussions with public health in relation to their sexual health services when that was re-commissioned and also there is note within there around the women's needs when we're looking at Link's recovery partnership as well for drug and alcohol. So when I think about sustainability, absolutely we need funding, but to be truly sustainable, you've got to look at that system approach and something that can be built into that system to keep it going. The properties that we have at present in terms of that PUB and those spokes, there have been no indications that those properties will be withdrawn. External funding that we'll be looking for is more than likely going to be for the key workers in terms of that navigator role. That's where the core need is because we have the buy-in already as noted earlier in relation to Concordat Signatories providing that in-house service provision and there's no indication that that is going to be withdrawn. We have to monitor it. So hopefully that helps with that question there around sustainability and funding. Equally, we don't know, we have elections coming up as we know, there may well be changes in funding timescales, perhaps a new government would look at extending funding available for women girls. We don't know and the landscape is changing as we're going on, but we will be keeping our ear to the ground with that. What I think would be incredibly, incredibly useful for committee members and again, it's only become available since completing this report is it makes reference to individual journeys of women and their self-reported outcomes and how the Women's Centre has helped them. So I do have some case studies that are available. I've been anonymised, so I'm more than happy to circulate these to committee members to actually bring this to life for you. Unfortunately, I didn't have them to hand at the time of producing this report. I've already covered the in-house services and the other critical element is we need to workforce development. So we did mention there around trauma informed training. We've taken learning from an evaluated model in Scotland and the first phase we are looking at is e-learning, that would be hosted on the Lynxias safeguarding children partnership. I've been trying not to stay in my acronyms. Training platform, so again, that's demonstrating that partnership working across the boards. And we're looking at hosting that on there and it's targeting from front door all the way through to caseworkers so that everybody that a woman or a girl has contact with is work within a control room for a manner. And we're just looking at finalising the module. And I'll pause there for questions and I'm sure there's bits I've missed summarising but I'd rather take questions than summarise more. Right, thank you. So we do have some questions. Thank you, Zoe. Who's first Paul? Anton first. It's not a question for change, not for questions. I just express myself. I think women, they are very precious to our communities. And I think they are a balance for a good community. And I do sympathise with you guys. You are doing a lot of work and we always have to fund that brick wall is the funding. We need the money, we need to gather the data. It's a hard job to just provide certain services to the women in our country in general. And I will just share with you some experience. I remember my wife, she didn't go to work. She was graduated as a bachelor in computer science but she told me, I want to stay home with my kids. I say, Fair enough, I'm going to do the job. So while she was staying at home with the kids, she used to go, we lived in the east of London. So she used to go to these women's groups and basically what they do, they take the kids with them. There is women who look after the kids and in the meantime they used to study and do some training. And I tell you my wife, she came with some certificates and trainings and all sorts of things with kids. Disabled kids, mentally ill kids, things with disabilities is very hard to deal with down syndrome. So she was very qualified and certain things and I think this is a good part for women. They have some time with each other, they learn, the kids are somewhere else for an hour or two, it gives you a break, and it was very successful because she made so many friends in that area that they were so happy. They even learn cooking, knitting, anything comes on. And it was working very, very good. So like I said, they take the kids, they learn, they chat, and that's a relief in itself. And like I said, it's a very fine balance when you have fit women and delivering to you fit generation. I tell you, we can be proud of that. And I hope that you will get what you want and you will get your funds. And I hope that the next government will give you more to sustain this kind of progress because we need it. We can't turn our backs on it and I will support you in anything, whatever you do. Thank you very much Mr Chairman. Thank you Anton. Okay, we'll carry on with Nick. I've been told to call Nick, by the way. Yeah, that's all right, that's all right. We're sorry to be told. Yes, that's lovely. Thank you, Zoe. Thank you Chair. The one thing that I wanted to ask about again was keeping women out of the criminal justice system, but the custodial sentences which creates so much havoc, the short custodial sentences that can literally destroy a family unit because you've got childcare issues, you've got costs, not to mention the costs. I know we should maybe shouldn't say that, but the cost to tax pay for short custodial sentences around women, it's nonsense. And so that's why this is also so important to develop it because there is so much that can be done without that short custodial sentence. So I was just wondering if you just a little bit of expand on that again for us please. Thank you. Yes, absolutely. So I think there's two elements there. So it is very much around looking at the referrals that are coming in and making sure that they are upstream and that women can self-refer. So there is a self-referral mechanism in there. So that's that upstream element and that preventative element. And what we need to look at is our cards of engagement, which is next on our list in terms of promotion. The other element in terms of courts, we have to be really, really careful with our engagement with the courts that we're not seen to try and influence the judiciary. You know, it's not the dumb thing. However, what I can say is that I've linked in Lincolnshire Action Trust the lead for women rise with a court representative and she's going to be making contact so she can deliver some informative briefings to the local judiciary. Around women rise but equally the impact of those short-term custodial sentences. What we're also looking at, and this is new, again, because I couldn't cover it in the report and because it came after, is that Lincolnshire police are looking at setting up a mechanism for signposting women to women rise if they're on bail or they're released no fixed abode as well, with the theory being that the woman engages with this wraparound support but then that information could be fed into a pre-sentence report. For example, to demonstrate to the judiciary, you know, that there is additional support available in the community for the women when they're looking at sentencing. But again, we have to be so careful in terms of how we frame things to the judiciary. I hope that helps. Yes, that's brilliant. So there's been some progress made around that because when we spoke about that before, that was kind of a bit of an issue, wasn't it? Can I just also ask very briefly now Zoe, because I've had a long time on this, about women who are coming into, we spoke about this before, coming into Lincoln, London into Lincoln, needing support and they've come from another district or another area like Peterborough, there might be Yorkshire, Quebec and the London here, literally with everything that they own, possibly a child into where to go, what to do and the help and support they need. Now that was also a problem because there were all sorts of domestic abuse issues, there were also other issues where they could have been arrested and then released and they're here for safety. So what kind of progress has been made on that? Can you enlighten us? Thank you. I think, again, some of this is where now we've got women rise established in terms of opening. This is something that I'm wanting to progress further under that comms and engagement element, but not the public in terms of those operational staff. So you're housing officers within districts, you benefit officers within the Department of Work and Pensions, actually, designing a briefing so that they can say, you know, have it on their desk. I don't know, we're quite reference guide in terms of if a woman presents new in the area, limited support, that signposting and communication with women rise. The model that women rise prefer is that consent is gained from the woman for the woman's details to be passed on to women rise and women rise then contact the woman because actually it's a huge step to make that contact yourself if you're in a particularly vulnerable situation in a new environment. And I think that is it, so it's a line in that along with that training element that I was discussing earlier as well. So in essence, it's still a work in progress. Thank you, Zoe. Thank you, Nick. Can I just, one of the things that seems to keep coming up today is communications and getting the message out? And that's, I think, what you've just said to the right people. Can I just ask you about the capacity of the services and whether there is capacity, if we do get more people coming forward, that you have got the capacity to deal with that and that we're not obviously going to be overwhelmed? Thank you. Absolutely, so again, this is something that's going to be raised at a meeting tomorrow, actually, with the strategic leads. So what I'm proposing is we look at mobilizing around comes and engagement, but actually being clear around how we're going to manage that in terms of capacity, because it is a small team within women rise. I don't have the answer for you with that right now. I'm afraid, and that is something that is being, I can assure you, it's being addressed in the meeting tomorrow with the strategic leads, because, again, it's that difficult balance. The public often think that we have a big department behind everybody, and it's often not the case in a lot of services. It's probably just one or two people, so I just thought it would be worth asking that. Jackie, did you have your hand up? Thank you, Chairman, again, thank you for the report, and I really like the links in this one. I like to follow them through while I'm actually reading the report, they're great. I particularly like something that you've done at the end, in your conclusion, you invite us into the work in a way that's different from normal, and those things that you've given for Facebook and Twitter are using, those that go into my village report. So I think that's a really good way of going forward. The other thing, I'm very interested in these lower than six months prison sentence. Now, there's an issue at the moment around the world, as we know, where women's rights are being eroded, and women are being criminalized for things such as the abortion argument in America and with the Taliban, various areas of the world that we all know about. So criminalization of women is coming in in all sorts of diverse areas and countries, and it's very worrying. I was thinking about these six month sentences, and I did wonder, could they be protective if a woman is in a domestic violence situation. But overall, I'm not sure what is the use of putting a woman or a man, actually. You know, we're talking about women here, but I hope in the future we'll have a report about keeping men and boys away from the criminal justice system as well, you know, for balance. But today, we're talking about women, and I wonder what use are these sentences. Do we have any data on this? Are you able to expand on that for me, please? I don't have the data to hand. I will be entirely honest with you. However, what I can say is that there is a whole host of evaluations and research, which very explicitly says short-term custodial sentences do not improve outcomes for women. They're not effective, and actually they can decrease outcomes for women. Good sources of information of the prison and reform trust. I can also provide some links after the meeting as well if that would be beneficial. In terms of some further information, I cannot possibly remember them all off of the top of my head, but I can provide those. So, in essence, and that's to question all of the research days, not effective. In terms of males, what I can say is that under the reducing/reaffending core priority group, so this work sits under the governance of reducing/reoffending. And what we do also have is wider strategic priority areas in terms of diversion from the criminal justice system, particularly focusing on 18 to 25-year-olds in terms of priority as well as women. So, there is that side that is covered as well. Thank you. Thank you, and I think, in view of the news this week that the prisons are full, then that really just backs up what Jackie has just said. Thank you. Well, I think that concludes all the questions. Thank you. Oh, Nick. I just wanted to make one comment, actually. I thought it was a really rather beautiful thing that Councilor Danny said about our women, that our women and our girls are precious. And so, if anything, take that away. They're precious, and they've been talked about with preciousness today. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. There's nothing I can add to that, so we'll move on. So, thank you for your questions. So, thank you for doing them. Fantastic work. It's really vital work. So, thank you very much. And I propose that the committee's reviewed the report and has been assured on the progress made by the Safer Linkenshire Partnership to support women and girls at risk of entering the criminal justice system. And that our comments and suggestions will be recorded and taken into consideration by the officers. So, members, can you please raise your hands if you agree? And that's unanimous. Thank you. Well, almost at the end of the meeting, I can just remind members that there is a training session here at one o'clock. So, we have got time for a quick break before that, if you're attending that session. And that does now conclude the business of this meeting. Thank you, everyone, for your attendance and you may now leave the Council Chamber. Thank you. And could I just thank the officers as well for their supporting me first meeting because they've been amazing. Thank you. Oh, yeah. That will come out. The change of date in January. Yep. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [BLANKAUDIO]