Transcript

Thank you chair, we're now live. Great, thank you very much indeed Vince. Okay, so welcome to the first strategy and resources committee meeting of this council year and a particular welcome to those new councillors who joined us after the elections in May, welcome to them but also of course to long standing councillors who were not on SNR last time but are this time and an apologies to that councillor who was on the SNR last time who I had forgotten and I apologize for that. A big thank you to UEFA of course because they kindly agreed with our request not to hold any football matches tonight so I thought that was very very good of them. So welcome to everybody and if we could kick off first of all Vince with the apologies for absence please. Thank you chair, we've won apology this evening from councillor Sherry and then councillor Black is substituting. Councillor Killick is a member of this committee but he is online so won't be able to vote, thank you. Okay thanks Vince. We then have the minutes of the meeting held on the 26th of March to confirm that as, oh I beg your pardon, are there any declarations of interest for anything we'll be talking about, doesn't look like it, no. In which case we'll move on to item number three which is, or are, the minutes of the meeting held on the 26th of March to confirm those as a true record. Do we have agreement for that? Thank you very much. And there was an important action that was noted on that March meeting which concerned recruitment which I think Mark's going to give us a quick update on because we do like to follow up on what we've agreed on in previous sessions. Thanks Mark. Thank you chair. So in terms of the action from the minutes of the last meeting, this fell into three parts which were to update the member reference group, update full council and then revert to this committee meeting on our progress in terms of improving the council's approach to recruitment. So the update to the member reference group was provided on the 17th of April and on the 18th of April councillor Langton updated full council on our progress, particularly drawing attention to the need to effectively advertise the factors that make Tandridge an attractive place to work, getting adverts out more quickly and offering vacant roles to good candidates more quickly and the use of joining incentives, advertising roles to reach a wider audience and using external support where necessary. So these actions are all underway and in the meantime we are considering recruitment as a critical operational area that needs attention. Recently we've been using external support and offering joining incentives for critical roles as well as early work to look at recruitment software providers to automate the process and make it much more straightforward and attractive for candidates. So officers are working to progress those immediate tactical improvements to the process. In terms of a formal update to this committee, we're building recruitment and retention as a key theme into the next phase of the future Tandridge program and this is referenced in the subsequent agenda item on the future Tandridge program, item 9 on page 94 of the agenda pack and we'll touch on that again when we introduce that item. So it's just to give committee some assurance that we are working very hard on recruitment in the background and it is going to be a key feature of the council's approach both immediately and as part of the future Tandridge program. Thank you chair. Thank you very much, Mark. So the next item is item number 4 which is the minutes of the very short meeting held on the 23rd of May

1. Do we agree to that minutes or single minute possibly? Thank you very much indeed. Item number 5 is to do with any questions submitted understanding order 30 and I don't think there were no questions. Oh sorry there was a recommendation on the investment subcommittee on the 14th of June 24 which is a recommendation for strategy and resources which just to remind you it's on page 3 but it's the surplus investment income of just over 700,000 will be added to the investment performance equalization reserve which we already had in place which will offset the risks to the market value of our assets in view of the fact that those risks are still in place pending the decision over the override. So do we accept that recommendation made investment subcommittee? I wanted to make a comment. You've got Councillor Kupfert as well. Chair. Okay yes. Councillor Ferri please yes. As a new member please forgive me for my understanding. I would like to understand why is it that we want to put this money in the performance equalization reserve to offset risks to the market value of the assets? Yes. I could probably answer but I'm sure you could answer it more. Thank you chair and thank you Councillor Chodai. So on page 19 of the agenda pack is a summary of the Council's investments and borrowing and the first four lines on that appendix are a set of financial investments that the council hold and our original investment our original investment in those assets was 12 million pounds. Those assets are subject to market value fluctuations so they can increase and they can decrease and that can be quite volatile over time. The current carrying value of those assets is 10.8 million so we're carrying a 1.2 million loss on those assets. At the moment we've just got just under half a million set aside in a reserve from last year to cover that loss. The government has in place what's known as a statutory override which prevents that loss affecting taxpayers so we don't have to account for that loss in the revenue budget. We don't have to charge council taxpayers for that loss. The general fund is protected from it but that override expires at the end of March 2026 and if government were to choose not to extend the override our general fund revenue budget would be charged with the 1.2 million pound loss and we would need to find appropriate savings to offset that loss. Whilst the value of those investments is low at the moment the annual return from those investments is quite high because of the interest rates being higher at the moment. We're earning a better return on them and the two are linked actually and at investment subcommittee we have advice from someone that knows much more about the kind of market forces that link those than I do through our professional subscription to the Arlen Close treasury management service. But as those investments decrease in value they tend to pay out more and as they increase in value they tend to pay out less but we should be looking at the total return on those assets. What we've been doing so far is banking all of the gain from them in year and ignoring the market values fluctuating from one year to the next. That's fine whilst the government's override has been in place. My concern is that we'll get to the end of March 2026 and have a 1.2 million pound problem to deal with through the general fund and that's linked back to the council tax payers funding of the council. The council's investments overall outperformed their budget by 700,000 this year and the recommendation is to add that 700,000 to the 447k that we've got in there at the moment so that our total investment performance equalisation reserve is 1.2 million
2. I'm rounding somewhat there - but 1.2 million to offset the 1.2 million loss. If the value of those investments recover or if the government extend the override then we could take a different decision about that amount in future but my advice is not to allow the general fund to carry that 1.2 million risk without having money set aside to cover it. Again, I ask for forgiveness as I said because I'm new in terms of understanding. So there is a guarantee until March 2026. Should I explain that point, that the guarantee itself, the statutory override expires on the 31st of March 2025. That means it covers us at the balance sheet date so the first financial year where we're not covered for that is the year that ends in March 2026. So by the end of March 2026 we have to have found 1.2 million unless the value of investments recover or unless the government extend the override. And so my question is that until March 2025 we are guaranteed basically for that money. So if I have established that and we've got this 700,000 could we withdraw that money out of that fund and if we do would we get that 12 million? If we withdrew the funding now we would be able to withdraw 10.8 million. No, I'm talking about March 2025. That's what I'm saying. Not now. Because if we do that you are absolutely right. We would only get 10. But at that point in time because we are not sure whether the government would extend that guarantee or not. But until that time we are guaranteed. Until yes, correct. For me that is a probability one. It's not a probability point two. So the risk is none. So if I took that money out at that point in time my question is if we get that 12 million back because the government has guaranteed that to us. 1.2. Sorry, I should have explained that better. They've not guaranteed the 1.2 million to us. What they've done is said that we can ignore that loss for the purpose of setting the general fund revenue budget. So we can ignore that loss for the current financial year but by March 2026 unless the government extend the override we'd have to budget for that loss. I see. So now I understand. Because that's the reason. What my suggestion was that if it is guaranteed then this 700 or whatever you're thinking of putting it into a fund should be used for the needs, the priorities that we have. But since you explain it that way and as I said I'm not a financial expert but if you explain it that way and if there is a risk and the probability of that risk is very high then I would understand what you're doing but otherwise that money needs to be spent for our council because that's what we are here for. Thank you very much. I'm sorry as I said I apologise. I didn't understand that. Please I apologise. I think the same question actually occurred at the investment subcommittee about 18 months ago just from memory but anyway. So I think it's Councillor Cooper followed by Councillor Purcell. Thank you Chairman. Yes it's again to do with the investment values. I mean it's a bit of going back here and saying I'd never understood why your predecessor decided to get out of the funding circle fund. We've been getting rid of those shares on a regular basis. I always thought we got better returns from them than we did from the other three but I'm quite interested by the funding circle values and asset values given that we're getting rid of assets and yet the net asset value for funding circle was 142,000 last year and this year it's 160,000. How come if we're getting rid of the shares that we've actually got an increased value? It seems we've made a real loss because if we'd held on to those shares they've gone up this much you know we could have made a lot more to cover our problems so I'm just curious why that's happened. Just to clarify it's a very good question. I don't have the exact answer to hand so I think I'd want to take that question away and report back to investment subcommittee and then those minutes would revert to strategy and resources. We haven't invested any more in funding circle and funding circle tended to be loans to businesses. I think what's likely happened there and I don't commit to an answer without checking with our treasury management team is that in the past we've made allowance for writing off amounts that we deemed unlikely to be repayable that have since been repaid and retrieved into the fund. But if you'll allow me chair to take an action to report that back to the next investment subcommittee we'll record that. Okay thank you. Thanks Councillor Cooper. Councillor Purcell please. Just a quick question and then a comment if I could. How much of the profit we make from this portfolio have we actually taken to use in the general fund? The general fund budget each year assumes a 1.5 million pound return from the totality of all of our investments and that has been supporting the general fund since those investments were in place. This year's performance against that 1.5 million budget is 2.2 million which is where the 700K surplus comes from. So 1.5 million of the return from those investments each year is assumed as supporting general fund services. So it's not as if it's just there and sterile? No. I can understand your wanting to insure us against the risk that you talked about and I think it's prudent. But I just wanted to make sure everybody knew that these investments are an important part of our income. Good thank you Councillor Persaud. Councillor Allen. Thank you Mr Chairman. I read nothing in the way you announced it no problem. I just want to go to the action Mr Chairman because I brought it up on the night and I need everyone to know that just like Councillor Chodai here I'm learning but we had a, our paper was two months out of date we agreed that. We had a presentation literally just a week before and the gentleman gave us a completely different set of figures again and during the presentation Mark also gave us a slightly different set of paperwork. So this action is very important that if we are going to make sensible decisions we have to have up to date information bang on at the time to make it. So if we could make sure this scope for presenting more timely treasury management is actually done. Thank you. Yeah of course you made the same point. Thanks Councillor Allen. You made the same point at the investment subcommittee which was taken seriously and noted and as will this be. Thank you very much. So can we agree to that recommendation over the 700,000? Thank you very much. So that concludes item six. And we now move to item seven which is the 23/24 financial out-turn which Mark is going to kick off for us with. Thank you. Thank you chair. So the report presents the financial out-turn position for the council for the financial year 2023/24. The main items set out in the report are as follows. So on the council's 11.9 million pound revenue budget the report shows 179k surplus which equates to a 1.5% underspend before the application of contingencies. And that is a strong overall position for the year. And it represents a 700k improvement from quarter three. So whilst it's a good overall position we do recognise that we've got more work to do to improve the forecasting position to reduce the change from one quarter to the next. Although I think as we've discussed previously at this committee that change largely represents a prudent approach by budget holders earlier in the year who are reluctant to flag opportunities or to really crystallise underspends until they're certain that they're achievable. As I say we have got more work to do there and it's part of the next phase of the council's improvement programme to look at how we strengthen budget management and the tools available to budget managers. That's not to say that we haven't come a long way in the last two or three years and actually a 1.5% variance is positive. This full explanation of the variance is set out on pages 28 to 32 of the agenda pack and also in appendix A. So I wasn't planning to go through those in any detail but I'm very happy to take questions on them. For the services, for the three other planning policy committees those planning policy committees have discussed their out term position earlier in the committee cycle. Just before I take questions the revenue out term position also includes 91% delivery of the £1.7 million savings target. This is referenced again in more detail in the future Tandridge programme report later on the committee's agenda. And then the report also sets out the total capital spend for the year and the reasons for each variance. This is on page 33 and appendix A. In terms of delivery of the capital programme, slippage in the capital programme is a feature of every council that I've worked for. Our performance for this year has 22% slippage, so 78% delivery. That's improved from 35% slippage at the equivalent point last year but delivery of the capital programme still requires some attention. Alongside the capital programme the report confirms full compliance with the council's prudential indicators for treasury management for 23/24. And on the capital programme in particular the report requests that unused capital amounts are carried forward into future years with a full reprofiling to be reported to the committee in September. So alongside documenting the out term position the report sets out a proposal to add the £179,000 surplus to the general fund reserve. And just for context for members there, after a reduction in that reserve up until financial year 2021 it has remained stable since then at £2.8 million. We did apply to DELUC to grow that reserve by £0.5 million through the use of our capital receipts from the Redstone building but DELUC refused that application and in doing so commended us for the progress in addressing our own financial situation and delivering the savings target. Just for further context there the council has the second lowest level of reserves of all statistically similar authorities and that's reported by CITFA and the newly set up Office for Local Government. Finally the report recommends that the £721,000 contingency that we had for 23/24 be retained to cover our risks as set out on page 26. In particular unpredictable costs relating to planning appeals and unpredictable costs relating to planning enforcement action particularly to ensure that we have sufficient funds set aside to take appropriate legal action as and when we need to do so. The report also flags variable levels of income in building control and in housing benefit. So whilst all those costs are very difficult to quantify there is anecdotal evidence from elsewhere from similar authorities that in particular appeals costs alone could present a significant risk to the medium term financial stability of the council and it's our recommendation to retain that £721,000 contingency to be able to deal with those risks. But I'm happy to take questions chair. Thank you very much indeed Mark. A number let's start with Councillor Bloch. Thank you chairman. I'd like to observe that the overall out turn on the revenue budget is a good step forward. That's not bad. However it conceals an appalling result on planning policy. An overspend of 404,000 which is over 30% of the budget. Now the budget was 1.38 I think and they actually spent 1.7. My understanding is this current year we've got a budget of 1.5 million so we're expecting to make a saving. Now in my view the key issue is the lack of resource on a permanent basis. We've already heard that there's a lot of short term consultants working in there and we've already heard that one of the actions is to look at recruitment. I think this is very, very, very urgent and I think planning policy, the recruitment issues there should be put at the top of the agenda and we should have an update on how that's going at every opportunity. Thank you chairman. Thanks, thanks council. Perhaps I could try to answer some of that and Marv if he wishes can chip in. I think we would completely concur with you about the performance but of course this to some extent gives you an idea of why we're proposing that the contingency is maintained if not strengthened because the risks are coming largely from the area of the planning policy. So we kind of recognise that performance. We've looked at existing trends and we don't see an improvement if not a deterioration in some of those trends particularly the pressure on appeals and on enforcement and that's part of the reason why we're so insistent that the contingency is actually built to withstand what we believe will be higher pressures. If I can also talk briefly about the recruitment. About a couple of weeks ago we had a meeting between the administration and a number of people on the officer side, particularly Ricky, Mark and David on purely really on what we call the firefighting and we'll talk a little bit about that maybe in the FTP a little bit later on but without sort of spoiling anything as you'll see later on there is a degree of enthusiasm and energy for the FTP but there are fires that are burning right now and one of those is in planning which is the reason why the costs have been as they are because we've tried to respond to a lack of recruitment by putting in temperates which obviously costs more but the meeting we had a couple of weeks ago was really to say we're very enthusiastic about the FTP which you'll hear shortly but there are some fires that need fighting and most of those concerned the planning policy and most of those or many of those concern the level of recruitment and we've actually got a plan which Ricky and Tarim put together and David and Mark approved it which has got I think 19 individual actions which relate most of which relate to what are we going to do better about recruitment and we haven't quite confirmed everything there but we're actually got the first review of that probably on Monday where we'll get together with the officers to actually review how we're doing so there is huge concern. I know if Catherine were here she's on holiday this week but if Catherine were here I am sure she would wholeheartedly agree with you that this is something she's been talking about and putting pressure on for well years really but certainly very severely in the last few months and it's partly as a result of that that we decided to meet a couple of weeks ago to put together a specific plan which I will be reviewing with officers probably on a fortnightly basis starting on Monday so we concur with your with your concern over that Councillor Bloch. Mark do you want to add anything to that? Not to the recruitment aspects chair I think that everything you set out covers that just in terms of the budget for planning policy committee for 24/25 I think we when we set the budget in January the committee was forecasting a similar level of overspend for the year actually a slightly worse overspend for the year and the budget for planning policy committee for 24/25 has increased by 479,000 across a number of lines predominantly which 120k to increase the appeals budget for 24/25 but also 320k of additional investment in the planning service and that additional investment I know that the deputy chief executive and the leader of the council chair of planning policy committee are working on exact exactly how that budget will be deployed to best effect within planning policy in 24/25 and that will be reported back to that committee. Thanks Mark just just Councillor Bloch is there anything you want to say? I think that's fine for now. Okay thanks for the question. Councillor Perks has something Councillor Gray. I wanted to add to what Councillor Bloch has basically said which is why I was signalling because I wanted to actually come in on that that's alright. I think the problem is it's set aside for planning appeals and enforcement. On enforcement I think that would be quite a good idea is there any chance of us actually getting some because in my ward I'm not seeing any evidence of it and I think it's something else I've discussed with Tarrant and I know I've been party to various discussions about improving the planning policy and about improving enforcement but things keep we keep getting this it's all going to improve and it's a bit like Charlie Brown at the beginning of the football season where Lucy keeps saying I will hold the ball for you honestly and every year he kicks and she moves the ball. We've had this promised for years and years and years and it has to get to a point where residents start saying and they are saying why are we sticking more money in this money pit when it's not actually performing. It's one of those we have to as Councillors go to parish council meetings and meet our residents and apologise for our planning department time and time again and now we've got to do a new local plan and we don't know how much that's going to cost. I'm quite happy to approve this tonight but at some point it's got to stop. We've got to stop shovelling money and throwing money at it and actually do something to improve the planning department and it's not getting any better and as we all know we've just lost yet another head of planning. It's not looking good and all these ideas of we've got plans to do it. The clock is ticking. There's only a certain amount of time you've got on this. Yeah I mean I'm saying something on the hoof a little bit here but I personally would not have a problem in sharing what that plan we discussed two or three weeks ago is with you. I would not have a problem with that and I think when you look at it you'll see that I think we do understand what's going on and particularly if the Councillors say we're here I mean she's been in a similar position to you in the sense that she gets a lot of kickback from residents. She probably gets the same as you do but I would have no I wouldn't have a problem actually making that available to yourselves. I'd have to check with with Councillor Sayle on that but you know this is not secret. I think when you looked at it you would see a that we probably understand it which is along the lines that Councillor Lawton and b a lot of people put their heart and soul into figuring out what we actually need to do about it and I think Ricky when Ricky talks about FTP one of the elements will be about recruitment and retention. This is one of the fundamentals which I think on planning we've probably in the past we've not really got our head around but I won't steal any of Ricky's thunder on that but I would be happy to make that plan available to you but I'm that's me saying that I'd need to check whether we could do that. Certainly I'm happy to show it to you. I'd quite like that would be that would be great and obviously share it with or share it with my colleagues but yeah it's we do need as well as the plans which is great but we need to see the results and we need to see them quickly because people are getting really fed up of this. Absolutely they are and as I say the minutes unless something's changed the meeting was going to be planned for Tuesday it does need Councillor Farr to be there as well which we're not sure we can get but it will be next week because some of the due dates on those I can't remember exactly but around a third of the actions had due dates of tomorrow I think so next week we'll be figuring out whether or not they've been completed and most of the others have a due date and a fortnight's time so this is the time to review it and to figure out how we're doing but I think if Councillor say we she would wholeheartedly agree with you because she has been talking about this and trying to do a level best to move things along as you probably know for some months and she would probably say two or three years. Okay there were some other questions I think sorry Councillor Gray yeah sorry yeah. Thank you very much I mean first of all I just want to associate myself with the concerns that Robin and Jeremy have raised absolutely if people are just ready to move on to a slightly different thing I want to approach it from a slightly different angle and I want to just ask a question about revenue under spends capital slippage in commute say for example community services I mean if we had clean roads if we had fantastically well maintained play equipment if we had toilets that were always open if we had grass and vegetation on Tandridge land that seemed to be well managed according to a coherent plan then I think we'd be entitled to regard under spends as a bit of a win but that's not the position we're in all of those things I've described that I can tell you residents out there are not happy with so I think that means that we're entitled to just some thoughts and I don't know if you have any thoughts as to why it is that we're under spending we're not spending out our revenue budget and why we're having this massive massive capital slippages I mean it seems to me that we put ourselves under completely appropriate pressure in some respects I mean we say members must satisfy themselves that sufficient mechanisms are in place to ensure both that savings are delivered et cetera et cetera we were really strict totally appropriately so we're really strict on ourselves in that respect but we should be strict on ourselves in respect to variances both sides so that I think I would be interested to hear what you have to say about under spends revenue under spends and capital slippages in service in areas where the residents definitely don't think they're getting a good service thanks. Yes okay thank you thank you chair I think I mean this this relates to the discussion regarding planning as well but actually one of the significant challenges we face is with a finite and diminishing resource is both to deliver the transformation of this council without losing sight of the day-to-day operation of the council and affecting business as usual I think unfortunately we've seen that in relation to what's been happening in planning and I suspect that's been the case in some other areas that we've got the resource here is extremely stretched but it's incumbent upon us as officers to make sure in delivering future times programming else we are not losing sight of those day-to-day issues that most affect residents and you most hear about as councilors as well so I'm not going to defend the fact that there have been those under spends I'm not going to defend where we've got to with planning we need to get better and we need to work with you at making sure that our resources are targeted in the way they need to be to not lose sight of that of the day-to-day business of the council but what I will say is significant money has come out of the council we're still delivering or trying to deliver the same services into the same level and future tandras too can take a longer term view around how we improve our approach to all of that and we'll hear a bit more about that a bit later but there is a here and now in terms of what's affecting day-to-day delivery of services so I'm hearing what you're saying loud and clear I hear it in relation to planning there are all sorts of challenges in both of those areas we need to address and we just need to address them and I can assure you the administration in the conversations that the chair was referring to certainly quite rightly applying pressure on us as senior officers to make sure we are tackling those issues. And I know you're not a Justice Councillor Craig but there isn't you know something maybe thinking that the under spend is kind of deliberate you know yeah okay I was right there but as Mark knows because Mark and I have had a couple of discussions having an unforecast under spend although it sounds good news those of you that have worked in businesses elsewhere that's bad news because your cash flow forecasts were slightly wrong it doesn't show up your forecasting terribly well so we're not proud of the fact that we've under spent and Mark has explained the efforts that he's going to be making for our forecasting to better so that under spent is definitely not planned what we'd like to do is come in on budget but frankly having delivered what we should have done so there is no I have seen no evidence for a deliberate under spend oh thank god we sent we saved you know we saved a bit more money that's not the intention because at the end of the day the examples that you've given the residents are actually suffering and that's not in our interest to do that either because we'll get the same kickback as you do. Councillor Chotay. Just touching on that actually it's a right segue for my next question and that is that the budgeting that we've done and correct me if I'm wrong for 24-25 must have been under the assumption that Mr Sunak does not call the election as he has so in eight days time we're going to get a new government did you firstly you couldn't have known so you couldn't have you couldn't affect that in nobody knew about it and I didn't and by the way speculation on the general election and I'm sure nobody has bet here in terms of whether there's going to be the case my question to you is that will you now based upon I think the probability of a new government is is I would say six or seven again I'm not betting on it by the way so I don't want anybody to to do that but will you revise the budget and will will there be a need to do that again and come back again and say this is what we think I don't think that we've seen much detail in terms of either or any of the potential government's intent for local government at this point and so it's really hard for me to say what impact any change of administration nationally would have on the council's budget overall one thing it's likely to do perhaps is to delay some of the funding reform that we might have expected and when we get into the budget medium term financial strategy we've made an assumption that that that fundamental review of funding will be delayed by at least one financial year beyond that it's really difficult to speculate whether government policy would significantly impact the budget that there's a number of policy areas that might do particularly in terms of the local plan and planning policy in terms of the government's approach to affordable housing and therefore our kind of housing policies and so forth I think what we could commit to in response to that is obviously reviewing the budget keeping the budget under review as whichever government's policy becomes clear and then reporting that back to committee if it required any rethink on the budget itself I think with the contingency that's in the budget it has the resilience overall to deal with uncertainty such as that but in terms of the detail effect I couldn't tell you and a supplementary question and that is that listening to the manifestos and I think you know you can't ignore these because you know even if you ignore it maybe 20% or 30% will come true in terms of what they're thinking is I think we I see ourselves coming under intense pressure in defending some of these planning applications and and what have you based on as I said just listening to what I think with the the future government after 4th of July. Thank you for your comments Councillor Chotay. Councillor Cooper. Thank you Chairman yes we may or may not know but I've changed wards certainly the Hairstone ward is still getting a fair number of planning applications and obviously the comments that have been made earlier apply very clearly to them however the ward I'm now in doesn't quite have as many planning applications but I'm getting a lot of comments about the hedges grass cutting and all the rest of it and that's become for me anyway a more major issue than planning so it is a bit disappointing if we're not doing it I did raise something about a local cemetery and I have to admit that Councillor Sayer did get involved and it was resolved very quickly I'd rather it hadn't had to be resolved is the point because I did get quite a lot of comments on it so yeah to me we've got to make sure that we do keep up to keep doing what we should be doing as well as obviously dealing with the things on planning. Okay thank you for that do we have any other comments on the 22-24 out turn okay if that case we'll move to the recommendations which are on page 23 I won't go through them but as Mark has reiterated obviously it's to note the position but it's the use of the 721 unused contingency and the use of the 179 out turn surplus and also the bit on capital just over leaf so do we have approval to take those positions please thank you very much and thanks for for a good debate on that. Okay so we move on to item number eight which I think is the KPIs and Giuseppina is going to introduce that for us thanks Giuseppina. Thank you this report and its appendices contains data about the committee's key performance indicators for quarter four which covers January to March as well as the committee and corporate risk registers three KPIs did not meet their target for the quarter can you hear me now and these were SR1 percentage of council tax collected which is just off target, SR3 days taken to process housing benefits and council tax benefit new claims was also off target and SR10 percentage of calls answered within 60 seconds by customer services. We had a new telephone system installed in mid February and the fight but the final change over the system did not take place until May. Additional functionality in the new phone system which will be implemented during this year which should further improve response times. The overall average call handling time from ring central go live to the end of March was 3.45 minutes which includes waiting and resolution and it's been agreed with the implementation of the new phone system that the indicators will be reviewed and updated for quarter one 24/25 so next time this report comes back to committee the indicators will be have changed to reflect the new system and also to reflect the fact that those indicators have been in place for a very long time and are not really fit for purpose anymore. This report also contains details about two improving indicators which are SR5 which is the number of working days lost to sickness long and short term which was on target for the first time since 2019 and SR7 staff turnover which was on target at 9.6% for the third quarter in a row this is the lowest of staff turnover across Surrey districts and boroughs and has been and that's been the lowest for quite a while now. More details about the performance indicators are provided in Appendix A. Turning to the risk registers this report includes the red risks on the committee and corporate risk register. There's no red risks on the committee risk register and Appendix B has details of all the committee risks. There's one red risk on the corporate risk register and Appendix C has details of actions taken and being taken to mitigate against this risk as well as details about all the corporate risks. The risk registers are now in the new format set out in the risk management strategy approved by this committee in January. Following the recent risk training more work will take place to make further improvements to the presentation of the registers. Thank you. Happy to take any questions. Thanks, Jess Spina. Yeah, Councillor Black, please. Yeah, just a quick question on KPIs. I know we track how quickly we answer the calls but is there a KPI anywhere that looks at the different channels that the residents approach us on? Some call, some go on forms on the website, some walk into the office. Because what I'm trying to see is is there a change and a move over to more digital channels because we really should be tracking that because we're spending a lot of money on trying to get people to move to digital channels. So where are the KPIs to see that channel shift over the coming future as we implement fully? So there aren't at the moment but that's part of the work that's taking place as we implement more digital tools like the My Account and the Chatbot. I think Ricky can import on that if you like. Should we hand over to Ricky? Just briefly, sorry, I'm new on this business. I think it's a really good question. I think we don't have, we certainly recognise as part of the digital work we're doing that we need better ways of tracking that channel shift as you've described. And as Jess Spina said, we have some data on that but it's not good enough, it's not refined enough, it doesn't give us enough intelligence. Not just about that channel shift but also what people are contacting us about and how we can avoid repeat contacts or failure demands. So I think all of that is a critical part of what we're looking to do within FTP as set out. Okay, thanks Ricky, thanks Councillor Burke. I can see that we are tracking with the KPIs the process. Are we tracking the success rate? In other words, if I make a phone call, whether it's written or by phone, that's being tracked. But is it resolved, not resolved and followed up? Do we have KPIs on that? Because that interests me more than the process. So we don't have any KPIs around that at the moment but I think it will be part of what we're planning to do. Yeah, I feel like people are lobbing the ball up for me to hit at the moment so I absolutely agree with that. Fundamentally I'm used to first time fix being as important a measure even as time to answer quite often. You can trade off time to answer if you get the first time fix right. So doing things quickly and putting effort into that is not always the best thing to do. So I think we're absolutely alive to that and we don't yet have the metrics in place that we need. Oh gosh, right. Could I go to Councillor classic? Just a quick one on KPIs with respect to the phone system. So once again we're way off target in terms of calls being answered within 60 seconds with a target of 80% and we're not getting anywhere near that. As is pointed out in the report, this indicator has never been met in the last five years. I suspect it's never been met ever. And has basically demonstrably not achievable. We could have a discussion about why that is the case or whatever but I'm prepared on the basis of this evidence to accept that it is not achievable. So with the implementation of the new system now it's been suggested the indicator will these indicators are going to be reviewed. So I'm really just seeking clarification that that means we're going to drop this present target of the 60 second meeting and have a different one. Is that correct? Fundamentally Councillor Tomesic, yes, and Josephine and I had a conversation about whether we should include performance against this indicator at all for quarter 4 because we've had this exact conversation at quarter 3 and quarter 2. And actually at quarter 3 the performance was slightly improved at 63.6% and I think where we got to was that we had to report it to committee to give you that full position for the whole of the reporting year. But it is an indicator that obviously needs review. Whether we abandon that indicator altogether or reset the time that we'd expect for us to answer calls I think is a conversation that we need to have with members as well to get your views on that, part of leading up to the next set of KPIs. And as we say the total resolution time is 3.45 minutes which includes waiting and having the call answered and the call being completed which doesn't in itself seem like too long a time period. To my mind that's on average, obviously there will be variances on that. What we want to do is as Ricky said look at the full suite of indicators, picking up Councillor Black's points about the different channels and Councillor Chotai's points about the quality of the resolution and then bring back more indicators to this committee rather than just relying on that one quite ineffectual indicator to kind of indicate the performance. So yeah I think we will want to change that indicator whether we scrap it or not I think is a conversation we'd want to have with members in the lead up to the next committee. OK thanks. That's great but yours is a new point or is that on this? Well somewhat irritatingly Mark has already answered the point I was going to make which was primarily about the 3.5 minutes. I mean I've been on the wrong end of some horrendous wait times recently. I'd be delighted to just wait 3.45 minutes and that's to resolution so I don't think that's bad at all. Apologies chair at the risk of shooting myself in the foot I should emphasise that's the average and I imagine that some callers do find our phone system quite frustrating at the moment but we'll want to improve that as well. I'm going to go to Councillor Klein and then Councillor Peruzza for me. Yes thank you chair. I would just like to congratulate Giuseppino and the communications team. I think the digital output at the moment is quite incredible so a huge congratulations for that. I just wanted to go back on some of the KPIs and referring to page 72 SR11 where it says a number of complaints received data only. I see it's risen from January to March which is now 30. What does that specifically apply to? What the number 30? That's 30 complaints that we've received in that quarter. What with regards to is that the answering of the calls or is it general complaints? What is the 30 complaints? What are they about? Yes. So a report goes to audit and scrutiny which details all the complaints so they vary. They may be about housing, they may be about planning, it could be about any of our services but they're the ones that go through our corporate complaint system so we class complaints as one not just an inquiry because we need to have had the chance to have responded to it and dealt with it. But the full details are always provided in the audit and scrutiny report because that's where the complaints monitoring takes place. Okay so it's not a complaint about late answering of calls, it's actual general complaints on the public. Yes, yes sorry just general complaints. Thank you. Councillor Posthouse. Yeah I'm sorry I need to go back to the call answering. I will tell you now I want to see a KPI on call answering and the speed of call answering because it is important. It must be a sensible one because at the moment I don't think it is a sensible one, it must be a sensible one. But we need to keep an eye on this because we have been assured that while we are trying to encourage people down the track of doing more online and going with the chatbots and all this malarkey, that we have been informed and told time and time again that our calls, speaking to the public over the telephone, will remain an important communication method for those who want it. So I think to draw up the KPI altogether would give the wrong signal. Was there any intention to drop it? I think Mark was talking about a revision, am I right? Not a dropping so you're absolutely absolutely right, we will not. Sorry I misunderstood, I hope nobody else did. No it's alright, I'm glad you asked the question then we could clarify it. So Councillor Kupernechts maybe? Yes thank you for saying what you've just said because I'm to agree with Councillor Peircehouse, it is effectively measuring our performance with the public and to forget that would be totally wrong. I mean the fact that the call takes three and a half minutes to answer, well I chatted one of the officers the other day, I've no idea how long it took but I was chatting to the officer, so he was dealing with my problem. And I think if the public are going to respond, if they're actually talking about their problem, then I don't think they mind too much how long it goes on for. We might, but I don't think the public do because they'll understand that they're getting a response. So I think the initial when do they get that answer is quite critical and I wouldn't like to see it go too far out. But as you said, it needs a bit more discussion and I certainly support that. Okay that's great. Councillor Klein. Thank you, Chair. I'm led to believe we have quite a few members of staff front line that work from home three days a week, sorry two days a week and they work at Tandridge three days a week. So two days a week they would be working from home, maybe it's call centre staff. Do we measure them at all with any forms of KPI indicators working from home? I believe the new phone system will give us the ability to track the performance of individual call handlers. That's my understanding. I can check that and report to committee. But the new phone system, as with the old one actually, will allow anybody coming through to switchboard to be connected to an officer, whether they're working from home or whether they're working in the office. And actually a number of Councillors now have direct dial numbers that will get them at home as easily as they do in the office as well. So the new phone system has definitely improved that. I'll need to check in terms of the ability to measure productivity of individual call handlers. Councillor Blore. Thank you. It's moving on, I suppose moving back to staff on SR5 and SR7, both of which are above the target. So that's very, very good. My question is a technical one. Does that take into account the number of temporary consultant and interim staff we have? Do we include them in those numbers? No, I think that's just permanent members of staff, Councillor Blore. Might that be why our numbers are looking pretty good? We report in the out term position, in the previous agenda item on the total mix of permanent staff and temporary staff. That's in appendix A to the previous agenda item. It may have a slight impact on the turnover there. We've got currently 80% permanent staff or 15% temporary staff. Okay. As we close, I wouldn't mind a comment on those same, I think if I got it right, those two same KPIs, because for me at least, sickness and turnover are a good barometer on the health of an organisation and the fact that those are moving in the right direction is particularly encouraging, I believe is the case. And of course it's linked to your concern of about half an hour ago about retention within the planning department. This isn't as specific by department, I don't think, but at least if the overall turnover is reducing, then some of the things that Ricky will be talking about a bit later on are put on a slightly better footing than they were before. Okay. So can we perhaps move to the recommendations, which I think are simply to review and to note the KPIs? Can we do that straightforward? Yes. Okay. Grant, thank you very much indeed. So we now come to item number nine, which is the budget timetable and the future Tandridge programme update. And I think David is going to give us an introduction, followed by Mark predominantly on the timetable, followed by Ricky on the FTP. Thank you. Yes, thank you, Chair. Just very briefly from me, so yes, it's a budget timetable for 25/26 and future Tandridge programme update for the benefit of new Councillors on the committee. We report to every committee on progress made with the future Tandridge programme, which is the main transformation programme for the Council. So the report reviews progress on the future Tandridge programme and looks to the next steps we need to take, including some resourcing requirements to deliver the next stage, which Ricky will talk about. We also update on the service review delivery savings for 23/24, and Mark will provide financial context detailing the approach to the 25/26 budget setting process, which we'll now be looking to commence and how Councillors were engaged in that process. Just before handing over to Mark, just a couple of words on the future Tandridge programme. It was launched in 2022. Ricky has been around for a number of years in a different capacity here, but more laterally has joined us as the transformation programme director. And what he's been doing since he joined is working with us to review progress against the future Tandridge programme, look at what's being delivered, look at other areas that progressed and that can now become business as usual and starting to look at the next iteration of the future Tandridge programme. And Ricky will talk you through that and what's emerging in terms of the next phase of the programme, in particular looking at the role of the Council and three cross-cutting themes that are emerging which are really important and certainly look to address some of the issues you've already picked up or you've already raised earlier in the meeting, as well as talking about the resourcing requirements to take this forward. We'll continue to monitor the future Tandridge programme through this committee and we'll also be planning we will rearrange the workshop we planned on the future Tandridge programme and budget testing process shortly too. So Ricky will talk about the future Tandridge programme, but before we get onto that Mark will talk about the financial context and budget setting process for next year. Thanks David. Thanks chair. So the report sets out really very broad context in terms of the financial position from 25/26 onwards and at this stage it doesn't purport to be an accurate representation of what our budget will be for the next financial year. I think it's safe to say that we are too early in the process to be able to do that. What it does is provide context of how we've arrived at the 24/25 budget which is a net revenue budget for the general fund of 12.8 million and also give some context on how our thinking about the medium-term financial strategy has evolved since we last updated this committee in January. So on page 83 you can see a table in the middle of the report pack there that is a direct repeat of a table that was included in the January committee cycle and that was really setting out that we thought that there would be a 3 million pound budget gap over a two year period from 25/26 with 1.3 million in 25/26 itself and the remaining 1.7 million in 26/27. What we've been doing since then is refining that estimate really to set the context for the future savings required by the council as part of the context for the future Tandridge program. Moving on to page 84 I think one of the key determinants of the future budget will be the level of inflation. It affects a number of items throughout the budget particularly on the waste contract but other items as well and it's fair to say that inflation has dropped somewhat since we set the budget in January and you can see from the chart at the top there that it remains particularly volatile. However, alongside inflation there's also significant uncertainty about the level of funding that we might expect in future and when we set the medium-term financial strategy in January we expected funding to reduce by 400K in 26/27 and that 400K reduction contributed to the 3 million pound budget gap. What we found over the last probably five years now is that each year brings with it a subsequent year's delay to government fundamentally overhauling the funding system. It's an incredibly complex job and it's obviously quite a sensitive piece of work because for every winner in that overhaul there would be a loser as well and you'd lose, you'd start to lose a fairly significant amount of funding within that and particularly as a South East council. It may not feel like we have significant amounts of funding but by comparison to other councils our funding at the moment is not particularly low so I would say it could only go in one direction. The question would be when. So that delay to the funding and the general election will probably exacerbate that delay coupled with a reduction in inflation has really reduced the gap that we're expecting to cover from 3 million as reported in January to 2 million over two years as reported in June and I think it's safe to say that we are operating in a quite volatile and uncertain environment at the moment and so the degree of that change over a five month period is an indication of that volatility. Nevertheless at present we are building our budget plans and then medium term financial strategy around the requirement to deliver 2 million of savings over the next two years. In terms of the mechanism for building the budget that's set out on page 85 in terms of a timetable. The significance of the bold lines is those are the committee cycles so those are the milestones we'll hit in terms of reporting back to committee. Obviously the process starts off today with setting the timetable and setting the context and the full timetable is set out there and that culminates really in the January committee cycle. The January strategy and resources meeting which consolidates the overall budget position and then ultimately council in February and there's a huge amount of work to do over that six month period from now until the February or the January committee cycle. So really what that does is set the financial context for the future plans for the council and obviously future Tandridge program goes significantly beyond the financial context but that is the sort of budgetary position in which the savings plan and the budget will need to be set. So I think at that point it probably makes sense to hand over to Ricky to talk about the future Tandridge program itself. Thank you Mark. Thanks Mark, thanks chair. I'm delighted to be here. It's been three months since I joined Tandridge full time but as some colleagues know I worked with Tandridge on Sucoma from Surrey before so I'm delighted to finally be here full time. So we've done quite a lot of work over the last three months as David said looking at what FTP has achieved over roughly two years and then looking particularly at what the sort of challenges and priorities are going forward for us. I'm conscious that there's a lot of detail in the report and a lot of that would have been here before so I'm only just going to pull out some of the key points certainly on the backward look. I don't think we necessarily need to go over much of the content that's there. Essentially the report's in two parts. Section three looks backwards, what's been achieved over roughly two years and section four then looks forward into what the challenges are. I think in looking back over those two years as Mark said it's not just about savings but we can show and it's worth recording that some 3.2 million of savings have been achieved over the life of FTP so that's equivalent to 15% of the net budget of the Council so that's a significant achievement and I know has been due to a lot of hard work from colleagues within the Council and so on. We can also say that proportionally the Council's spending less on support services so the services that are overseen by this committee have gone from roughly 50% to 45% and the investment of the spending in frontline has increased proportionally from 45 to 55 so that offer sorry from 50 to 55 so that again that's a good result and I think overall the Council's financial position for those that have longer memories is now in a much stronger place than it's been certainly since I was first involved with the Council so three years or so ago. Within the report there are a series of tables under 3.3 that set out some of the other objectives of FTP what's been achieved and some of the next steps that I'm not going to go through those. The point I would make is that where it says under next steps BAU that's not saying those are not important issues so things like service plans appraisals are certainly important but they're things that the program is no longer going to focus on we think we've made enough progress for those to become business as usual. So moving on to section 4 of the report so that's more forward-looking into what some of the challenges are going forward. I think the first point I mean I've been on a bit of a journey since being here in understanding what those priorities are I think what has become clear certainly over the last month or so is that the importance of core service deliveries is paramount and you know a lot of the comments here today I think reinforce that and we recognize that we need to do more to build confidence in that area that's a critical part of how we if you like have permission to do some of the other important things that we need to do and we are working on that so we're working with Chris and members of the Residence Alliance to build a way of tracking performance we obviously can't look at everything we do but certainly for the key areas we can produce KPIs and other other ways of tracking ad delivery on those so that that's a really important part of what we need to do. However we also need to save two million pounds over the next two financial years so not 24/25 but looking ahead into the two years that follow that and that's the same level roughly 15% of the net budget as has already been delivered but clearly that will be more challenging going forward because we've taken some of the savings that were probably easier to achieve over that initial period so section 4.2 of the report looks at how we plan to tackle those issues going forward none of this is going to be easy you know there are this is not I think that the council's journey has been to move from financial challenge that was in some respects limited to Tandridge or and and something we need to tackle now into something that is true of all public sector organizations so the challenges we face are exactly the same across Surrey and across the country by and large so so we've got four themes that were set up theme one is looking at what the role of the council is going forward and recognizing that it's about what we what we're here to do and what we can afford to do and that will change going forward so a critical area that is looking at all of our discretionary spend across the council we're doing work to define what those discretionary spend areas are broadly speaking that accounts for 10 to 15 percent of the net budget of the council so even if you stop doing all of that you're still barely able to achieve the level of financial challenge and certainly we wouldn't want to stop doing all of that by any means but it gives you a sense of proportion for that so we need to do some more work to explore those areas and look at what we can do and what we want to do and we work with Chris and the residents Alliance and others to do that and themes two to four are much more about that the operating model of the council and how we can be more productive and efficient as an organization so that's more inward looking we've talked a lot about recruitment talent I prefer to call that talent attraction development management that's that's how it's viewed in the industry and I think that's really what it's about it's getting the right people here making them want to come here stay here build a career and contribute for the time they're here we can't keep them forever but the sort of people we want have those characteristics I think and it's evident from the conversations I've had with people that have joined that we have some unique characteristics and things that the council even being a small council can offer that breadth of exposure to challenges that you wouldn't get in a big organization necessarily is something that's really attracted to people that want to develop their career and so on so there are areas in which we can strengthen our position in the market it's not easy everybody's fishing in the same pond and paying more and more money to try and attract people in some key areas so we're not immune to that but it's looking at how we can do things differently themes three and again we've touched on this is about taking the initial work we're doing on digital and extending that into our whole customer contact strategy so the KPIs we have at the moment are very blunt instruments it's looking at how we round that into a broader set of KPIs what we look to do online what we look to do in customer services and on a high first time fix basis and what we need the the more specialist services to do so having a model for that that is consistent we understand we know what the standards are we can track performance is what that's essentially that is about the other aspect is looking inward at staff productivity I mean I I'm probably going to be unpopular in saying this but finding out that the last time we had a laptop refresh was six years ago is absolutely gobsmacking to me and and and is you know is absolutely something that that we have to address because it will inevitably affect performance looking at hybrid working I know there's different views on that as to whether people have to be in the office or they can work at home but having a model that we've reviewed that we're all we're all happy with and we optimize for when people are at home or when they're in the office is is a key part of that as well so that's theme three and then theme four is it's quite a complex one I know Chris and I have had discussions about her best to sort of explain this and land this probably the way the way I see it is for those of you that are familiar with David Browsford Dave Browsford I think Sir Dave Browsford and the work he did with British Cycling that's about marginal gains and lots of one percent improvement it's not about big leaps forward we're not an organization that has those opportunities I don't believe but I think it's creating our ability to make lots of incremental improvement build that into the way the organization works the way that it functions the way people think of it and you clearly have to have the right people here with that mindset to do that so we're trying to build the model that that brings that type of approach into the into the fabric and where we can achieve those marginal improvements and in theme four we set out five areas that we think can start to do that so it's strengthening our business management it's improving our change and improvement capability within the organization it's it's giving it's empowering frontline service to have more control and again some control is good and you need appropriate governance but we need to allow frontline services to deliver and have the freedom to do that it's improving how frontline and support services work together and then looking at how we can improve our processes and automate some of those so that's theme four and then a couple of final points from me so alongside this it's not it's not exactly aligned but we're looking at a range of errors in appendix five as to how we can achieve those productivity gains and the savings that the council needs to do that the targets that the areas there abroad at the moment the targets are high level they're not please don't take them as anything more than a very initial view of the sort of targets that we may need to achieve and where we'll be looking for them and I won't go through that in any more detail but obviously happy to take questions final thing for me is we're obviously asking for approval to the resources so and that's all within budgets it's looking at how we deploy that budget over the next period thanks chair thanks right you do Ricky right we have no number of questions whoa radio I will start with Pat's counselor great thank you I have to two comments my first is always get a bit jumpy when I hear about statutory non statutory service obviously there are services which are statutory and in a way that might be thought to be the end of the argument on that but obviously there are there is more than one way to deliver any given statutory service depending on the priority we deem it to have in our in our system and there are non statutory services like for example toilet provision that we believe our communities be very very keen to see maintained so I think that the argument about statutory and non statutory is a very nuanced and finessed finessed one I note that a couple of times now you in that in your comments you referred to conversations between the residents Alliance and officers it seems to be moving increasingly towards that so I just put you on notice that we are entitled to develop a view about the priorities that to decide decided upon and decide whether we think they reflect what we believe to be the priorities in the community so that's just what I wanted to say on that I have a second comment which is we seem to be have a bit of a size complex in this report and it's quite positive spin on it which is well done that's very good but you know we see town which is a small council but expected to deliver the same range of functions as other district councils and then elsewhere Tandridge is a small council and has achieved significant savings but but but and I just I feel that I detect in the mind of the author of this report a feeling that we're maybe not the of the optimum size to deliver a range of services and to do so in a financially efficient way so my second point to my and this is a question is what do you think our response to be should be to feeling that that we don't in all respects constitute the right size unit to on our own to deliver full range of services in a financially efficient manner on the first point I absolutely agree we're very the very early stages of looking at discretionary services there are there are significant nuances statutory services have discretionary elements to them and so on and we're certainly not saying we can't do better in statutory service you'll see in appendix five that's just one area that we're looking at is the discretion we we're also looking at a range of other things so I think that's the first thing to say in terms of the second thing I don't have a size complex as such but but I do I have worked at organisations of very different sizes I've worked in unitaries I've worked in counties I've worked in private industry so I've seen a range of different models and ways of doing things and it is more difficult particularly in support services when you're trying to to deal with a range of issues and you don't necessarily have the scale to do that you have to either make choices about what you do focus on or find other ways to increase your scale and and we are actively looking at that so we're looking at whether we can do that through shared services I bear the scars I know David does and others of trying to make that happen in the public sector it's very difficult takes a lot of time and effort a lot of trust not easy to do but that is definitely a a potential avenue and then it's attracting scale through working with outsourced partners and others that have the scale and you can attach yourself to that so you can start to so we're looking at all of those options as a way of increasing scale size does have some benefits being small does have some benefits that closeness to the public that sense of as I say that breadth that you get exposed to a lot of colleagues here this is their first job their first experience of that and that gives them something that's attractive so we can we can turn that into a positive I'm certain yeah thank you those responses to that second question were very much the responses that were in my mind so I was trying to put it in a different different way from the way I've put it about a million times before but I completely agree with the response so I look forward to seeing how we go down those lines just before I understand another question just want to respond just add a little bit to to the first point that you made I mean please correct if I'm wrong the reason the reason why the the residence associate has been involved alliance has been involved a lot in the upfront in the upfront is to do with the designing and the approval of the process when we actually come to use your example decide what we do about discretionary spend it will be done in the same way and it was done in previous years it has to be the involvement of everybody so the reason why there's been perhaps a little bit more involvement with ourselves is is in the design and of the process which which which Ricky has done but when it comes down to the detail so what specifically where specifically are we going to be looking at the savings that will be everybody it has to be because your resident is equivalent to my resident we're all that they're all users of the service thank you thank you very much I want to talk on a on a more meta level and what I wanted to say is that you know if I use the word savings it sends a perception of cutting something so I think when we are going through what we call a program of of of what I call change it's very important that we use the right terminology I think the terminology savings should be dropped and efficiencies should be used because the same thing the same thing you go and say to somebody saving it's immediately cutting and that's that's not we are not trying to do that but that's what we're trying trying to achieve the other question I had and I don't know whether it can be answered here or not we talk about I think the word was mentioned working from home I think the word is working remotely is the correct word rather than working from home these terminologies are very very important when you are trying to bring a change culture extremely important now if that's what's happening if we are working remotely then I would want to know if I am a CFO or or or or a director of the company what percentage of my people are working remotely and if that is the case do I need the offices which I have that brings efficiencies where that money could be spent in some of the things which are desperately needed those are the two comments I wanted to make thank you okay thanks Councillor which I say Councillor Purcell then Councillor Sir Nicholas yeah I'm not going to let you get away with the answer you gave to Councillor Gray a minute ago I spend quite a lot of my time as chairman of housing trying to build a consensus amongst all the parties and the way we go forward and I'm told by Councillor Cooper that makes me a member of the administration I don't know if I am or not I'm not a member of the residents alliance and your your representation that what you're doing is sort of molding these ideas to come forward is actually given the lie by page 94 when it talks about course service delivery the approach to tackling these issues is currently being managed through a steering group made up of senior members from the residents alliance and senior officers within the council now why is that there why are the rest of the parties who make up more than 50% of the votes on this council not being represented we have standing orders that allow for officers to make decisions quickly in consultation with other members and with the party leaders it should not be exclusively residence alliance should it can you point to that yeah 4.1 yeah core services paragraph one two three four the approach to tackling refers specifically to a steering group and it's it's made it's made me even more suspicious when we keep listening to we're working with the residents alliance more than 50% of this council is not residents alliance where are we in that in that process and what is this steering group I think the I'm looking slightly quizzical because I genuinely am I mean we have the the frequency has been reduced but we have an MRG do we not every I think it's every six weeks now isn't it and that for me is the steering it's the multi-party steering group which has been in the past responsible for bouncing ideas off the frequency has been reduced I believe if I may say that that's the MRG that's the members reference group yeah that is for officers to bounce ideas yeah this implies that this steering group is making decisions to ensure that action is taken quickly and the resources are allocated to tackling them on an urgency basis as required it sounds like in black and white here like there is a steering group to which we are not party gondo yeah I wonder whether steering group is slightly misleading term here this this relates specifically to those immediate actions and as you describe it those those fires that are burning so a few weeks ago and this is only a few weeks ago detailed discussions with the residents alliance around those burning fires that were causing particular concern and an action plan developed which was referenced at the beginning of the meeting that we are routinely going through to make sure that we are acting as officers on those immediate issues and what we agreed here is absolutely that action plan should be which should be shared with you it's not an exclusive thing it's not relating to the FTP more generally it's actually to do with those very specific hot issues around planning enforcement etc etc that are not being gripped and need to be gripped but as we are a no no overall control council then other groups should be involved in those discussions should they not well let me just answer the question that you were asking before and and I can say that I am not and I would be I think I am not a member or a party to any steering group that is looking at if you like the details of of the future Tandridge program I've been involved with Ricky and with others about the the process so giving views on what the process was for FTP but there is no scaring group which is saying well where should we take the savings from that David said that that may imply that but this relates to the firefighting now should should the firefighting issues have involved more parties possibly but on the other hand we wanted very very quick actions we wanted specific actions and as Councillor Sayer and Councillor Blackwell as the chair of the of the planning policy we're in a particularly good position we put that group together very very quickly and hopefully that will be reviewed extremely rapidly as well if you're saying to me that these issues are to do with planning policy and planning and the chair the two chairs should be heavily involved in it yes they should I'm quite happy with that but we are a none of overall control council and therefore other parties representatives should be consulted on those issues as well you can't do it all on your own you don't have the votes to do it at the end of the day and you need to work with other parties so Councillor Blore should be involved Councillor Gray should be involved so I mean it's it's saying that these are issues that need immediate decisions fair enough we have ways laid down in standing orders for doing that I do urgency decisions all the time with housing and Councillor Damasik and I work together on that it's not something that should be exclusively for a minority party minority control party I think I think if it comes down to where the saving is going to be through FTP fundamentally and this is the answer I gave to Councillor Gray fundamentally it has to be through the input of all the members because we all have residents when you've got a firefighting and I think most some of us in our careers have had to do that you've got to act very quickly and to pull a whole range of people together where I've got to be honest here where the the actions were dare I say it quite straightforward and quite difficult to difficult to implement but they weren't you didn't need a mega brain to actually work out what needed to be done it was necessary to put that together so and I do have to say if cancer say with that cancer sayer has put in a huge amount of work over the months on planning policy and she was certainly in the best position to actually pilot that through and that would be respected I'm sure by the other members of the parties but that isn't the point you're making a point about urgency yes well we have as I said before we have the the lines in our standing orders how to deal with urgency questions it's down to the officers to deal with in consultation with you're making expediency an excuse for doing the wrong thing okay well again I'm sorry I will come to you but both are particularly counsel Fox I'm counsel far was actually part of this session I've already said from a personal point of view I've been very very happy to share what those 19 actions are and I'll just go one step further but this would not be my decision because I'm not the leader of the council I would be happy for other groups to to play a part in that review whether it's next well it's going to be next week I can tell you that I have no problem with that what so what I would have a problem with as someone I'm sure like others who have fought fires in very difficult circumstances this is not a party political issue there are certain things that are being obvious and have to be done so um I would welcome a debate but this is not about arguing about well how should we do it because it all generally speaking it's very why mention why mention the name of the party why not say the chair and vice chair etc but at the moment the residence alliance is getting top billing okay okay okay I'd like to thank you I'd like to invite counsel far to to thank you chair member of this committee but I just thought there was something I could possibly add to all of this I'm not at all certain where this steering group comes from I'm not even certain of its existence I certainly have never been involved in any steering group which is not politically balanced in any manner or form I do wonder whether there is a misunderstanding and I'm only just putting it forward I've no real idea as to the meetings that oversee the chief exec and others hold with group leaders is in fact possibly being a little bit misconstrued in this report I I can certainly state that I'm not aware of any steering group which precludes or aims to restrict the membership of it at all thank you so I can I move to a slightly different subject in the forward plan and pick up on the commercial strategy I think when we saw original version of this certainly the idea of a commercial strategy and income earning opportunities which the council would seek was going to be potentially one of the critical ways we might seek to close at least part of this gap that has been opened up which is now being estimated at two million pounds within two years and there is reference in the milestones report to the development of the commercial strategy but I'm really I have a question as to whether or not things have worked out quite as this milestone report indicates or indeed is it's not somewhat off track and could I go to the bottom line of this is on page 93 there's a report there on activities undertaken under the development of a commercial strategy the draft strategy was in development earlier this year that there was supposedly member engagement in May and June and the aim of bringing a commercial strategy to committee in this month so unless I've missed something that hasn't happened and isn't happening otherwise in terms of then going forward in the in the forward plan the development and role of a commercial strategy and so forth doesn't really get well very much or indeed any of a mention until we get to I think it's in the one of the appendices where in a rather slightly misnumbered paragraph there is reference to this commercial strategy element so I suppose sorry in a rather long-winded way I'm asking yes it's on page 107 we're actually in a section headed digital transformation 1.4 and an errant 1.3 suddenly pops up commercial activities which indicates activity going on in this area which should be reviewed further as part of ftp2 so I'm really just seeking I think will be useful to have some clarification on the situation with respect to the development of a commercial strategy that mark provide a response so I think you're right Councillor domestic that in the progress report where it talks about engaging with members on that in the lead up to this committee cycle and reporting in June that was original intent and I think that the way that's portrayed in that table obviously that's that's not where we've got to we've not brought the commit commercial strategy to this committee and we haven't done that engagement with members yet having said that it is still part of the forward-looking plans and in appendix a which is the the savings areas to be explored notwithstanding the points on terminology one of the significant lines within that is the commercial activity including revenue generation so that's on page 123 although the page numbers are slightly obscured it's appendix e and commercial strategy is definitely still part of our thinking going forward because if we can generate income that supports the general fund budget then that reduces the amount of savings that we need to make elsewhere and as we pointed out in one of the earlier items the the budget already is supported by 1.5 million of investment activity if you like having said that we brought in the transformation program director to help us make sure that we were heading in the right direction and that we were taking stock of our future plans and I think that we're fortunate to have Ricky in that role because Ricky's got doesn't mind me saying this but wealth of experience in terms of where we might go with commercial activity but also what the risks and what the pitfalls are there and and I wouldn't want to overplay how much commercial activity Tandridge is going to be able to rely on without having fully explored it and without having fully kind of understood what the challenges and the opportunities are there so it is a part of the plans going forward apologies that the report doesn't quite set out clearly what we have achieved today there we have got a draft of that but there is work still to do and the work still to do is more on establishing what the real opportunities are and how we develop those without compromising core service delivery we don't want to distract ourselves from what it is we're trying to do by pursuing commercial income but also to really engage with members all members on what our appetite is for risk around commercial activity as well and really kind of understanding that too because commercial activity would tend to come with a degree of risk depending on what it is that we're looking at I don't know whether Ricky wanted to come in there I think you've covered most of the ground Mark just one other final point so I think there's a lot of work that's been done on a commercial strategy I've seen that done elsewhere and then there's not much that gets delivered so what we've done is tried to balance the focus of where we think some of those opportunities are as well as developing the strategy and that's probably why we're slightly less ahead than we were in terms of bringing the strategy here but as Mark says it's still part of the plan I don't think it's I don't think either Mark or I think it's as big a part of the plan as maybe some of the original aspirations were and that's why we're trying to sort of temper it in the context of other things that we need to do okay I'm going to go to Councillor Sir Nicholas first and then Councillor Chodai and then Councillor Klein thank you chairman thank you I'm not a member of this committee but I wanted to raise a point about staff Covid is now a year behind us and that encouraged people to have to work from home now from my working experience over many many many years has been that to build good teams you need to have people together to grow their efficiency their communication spirit and to make life more effective and I do believe that the number of people working from home is perhaps too great and this council could probably improve its communications and team spirit more effectively by getting people into work okay thanks I think Ricky and then David would like to comment on it's a very interesting topic as somebody that spent 30 years traipsing up and down the motorways and and absolutely delighted in the new technology we've got available I think from my point of view it's making the best of a hybrid world and working remotely so when you're working remotely you're able to be productive you've got the tools you've got the things that you need to do that when you're in the office and and there does need to be some time in the office you actually spend that time doing things that the office can add value to so team meetings one-to-ones face-to-face and you get the balance between the two my concern is not in this council but more generally in the public sector it's becoming more of a register to say have you turned back up in the office today and I lived through those days and I don't think they were any more productive than than the new models going forward yes thank you chair Ricky's largely covered it I think that just like a couple of points really I think your point regarding so the bonding of teams is a good one and that's why we encourage a mix was why we encourage hybrid working rather than solely working working from home it's not fixed in terms of the two to three days the business needs to be delivered fundamentally so we need to make sure that the business of the council's being delivered in whatever best way that works a couple of other points increasingly it links to the earlier discussion regarding recruitment actually increasingly the mark out there is looking for flexibility around working so some roles may well be easily delivered remotely and we don't want to discourage those people may live in other less expensive parts of the country to be able to apply for those jobs so I think that's important too and the final point which was referenced earlier is around office space actually links into being being more commercial actually we let out more of our office space that puts constraints on the number of offices we can have in the building which lends itself to another reason why hybrid working is something that we should still be embracing like a chair if that's like you just had something very very briefly to that is that in in the meeting to which I alluded putting the trying to fight fight the fires there were the one or two examples where we felt that the problem may not have become quite so serious had there been more working within the office and I say that purely as a legitimate challenge not because it was a right statement or I was or people were right in making it but it just to emphasise the fact that that challenge is still being is still being made because it's although high hybrid working has got a lot going for it there are certain circumstances and Ricky's highlighted two or three examples where face-to-face working is fundamentally more effective it's recognising where it is more effective and making sure that it does take place and we had a couple of examples on the planning side where that would certainly we believe would certainly have helped. I would like to go back to what Councillor Peirce was saying and again we have to I bring you all to the meta level the devil is in detail when it is in black and white as it's written here it is a reality. This is not the first time where I have had an excuse well you know it wasn't that it's just a misunderstanding or what have you doesn't work that way with me because I was and this is not the first time I've been a counsellor for three years and I don't want to quote which committees it was you can find out yourself we've had wrong information put into the report oh but that shouldn't have been there who is looking over those reports before they go out and what I'm saying is I don't want an answer now this must change as of now that's what I'm saying. I need to make a comment on that I think that's a legitimate point the answer is those papers if I'm wrong anyone those papers are scrutinised by a number of people what has happened and one or two of us have been a bit a little bit critical of that is a late paper because a late paper then puts time pressure and you're kind of having to go through it quickly and the council the officers are well aware of that there were reasons why one or two papers were have been a little bit late but that I think it's not an excuse I'm just giving you a reason behind it but those papers generally are scrutinised but we have had a couple of late submissions and that has meant speed reading which hasn't always picked everything up and this is not the first time you know what I say is that you slip over a banana skin once if you sleep over a banana skin five times you need to go to spec savers. Thank you for that. Councillor Klein. Thank you Chairman well this is a great introduction for me to the council this is half a minute. I totally agree with that I mean that's that is the second time I've seen a report in in a week it's the second one that I've seen that has had inaccuracies or things that should not have been there I think our fact-checking for want of a better word needs to be more robust I think it's very very important especially as these are public documents I'll move on with what I was going to say with regards to hybrid working I think we do need a rethink because it's very very difficult to get key performance indicators as we as we spoke about earlier on and I know that some of these services have been put out to tender so to speak where there's been places like Mole Valley, Rygate and Bandstead where we're outsourcing how far do you go with outsourcing how many how many people do you put services out to tender to to get the most value for money is there is there a way that it's done or do we do we use someone that we used before or actually do we look at the cost savings or the efficiency what do we what do we look at? It very much depends on the circumstance in terms of whether you're looking to work in partnership with another public body or with a commercial supplier but that there is a process set out in the constitution under contract standing orders that sets thresholds for how many suppliers we need to approach what route we take to approaching them and and that's dictated largely depending on the value that's largely dictated by the procurement act and actually there's a report later on in the agenda about the procurement act and how that might change under a new government. In terms of service delivery and looking at whether we should be delivering it internally or externally in the first place or whether we should look to share that we tend to tackle that or the way we have tackled that over recent years is through a series of service reviews that start off with what we're trying to achieve from that service in terms of its impact on residents or the council's priorities overall and then look at whether we should be delivering that ourselves and what the benefits and risks are to that or whether we should look at delivering that through the market and I think the grounds maintenance service which was a kind of key part of the first phase of the future Tandridge program was an example of that where the ultimate decision there was that the housing revenue the housing side of that contract should be delivered internally and the general fund should be delivered externally so we don't have a hard and fast rule or ethos about how things should be delivered what we have is a methodology to follow for assessing what we're trying to do and how best to achieve it and then if we do decide to externalize it there's a set of procurement rules that we follow for it. Thank you Mark I'm anxious to move things on a little bit if you don't mind because this is a it's a good question it's a deco question on the procurement policy which is you know publicly available I think I'm going to have to limit things shortly but I do know that the Council Coop wants to be on a Councillor Black also wants to speak so can we take those two we'll finish with you Councillor Gray and I'm afraid this is a really important subject and I'm quite heartened that there's been a lot of debate because this is a complex subject extremely important and I'm pleased that there's lots of questions Councillor Cooper please. I've got two points Chairman the first one is to do with Councillor Pursehouse and I find it a bit dismaying that he feels he is a part of the administration as far as I'm concerned he's a Chairman that you effectively have elected and I would expect him to be involved in decisions general decisions that you are taking as an administration whether I agree or disagree with Councillor Pursehouse is neither here nor there he's part of the administration as far as I'm concerned and I think it's quite concerning that he feels he's not really been involved I think that is not a good idea given his position as a Chairman of a very important committee. So I'll leave that one there the point I wanted to make was in fact this table on page 84 and I know you've sort of looked at things in a very broad simple way but it does concern me that you know projected spending requirement has gone up by a million a year where does that come from? It's a guess I appreciate that but then projecting spending then funding apparently remains the same and I don't understand that because every year and I'm sure it will continue for the next few years this Council will put 4% if you like on terms of households and presumably there will be some new households as well maybe not the thousands but hundreds so therefore this funding will go up and I think that you know I'm not sure this table really appreciates that and I have a bigger problem and the bigger problem is this if you go back to the previous item page 79 talks about and it's a 16 this one lack of up-to-date adopted district-wide local plan it's very important that we get it totally agree now I was involved on this resources side when we talk about the original local plan that was put together and all I remember is the value the cost of it went up and up and up and this is not reflected here at all you can easily add a million to those figures coming along and that wouldn't surprise me to complete this local plan so I'm very concerned about the figures you've used here and how accurate they will be okay I mean maybe you'll need an extra million but that probably is just to deal with you developing a new local plan it's a very complex issue you've accepted it's very important that we achieve it and yet I don't really see any reflection of that in these figures and that I think is a concern for this committee for the resources committee are we really getting the right view of what we will truly need and I'm not sure 84 gives me that confidence I think at this early stage it it was designed to set a bar for the transformation program the savings that we need to deliver and it's one that we will absolutely need to refine as we go on throughout the year and in terms of funding that the 12.8 million there assumes effectively an increase as you set out related to council tax and our ability to grow our own resources it's usually capped at two point nine nine percent rather than four percent and a small increase in the tax base itself and government central government up until now has assumed that we will take that increase and has built our resource forecasting around an absolute assumption that we will make use of that increase that or the opportunity for that increase that's available to us we base our funding projections on advice from an organization called LG futures that they're an independent funding advisory body and their view it changes somewhat and as you've seen it's changed since January but their view is that funding the only real assumption that you can make at the moment is funding will stay flat because it's too pessimistic to assume it will reduce and it's anybody's guess whether it'll increase or not particularly with the general election imminent so I absolutely take your point on funding we need to keep that under review in terms of the pressures they that they're largely inflationary pressures with an allowance of 300k per year if memory serves for on as yet unidentified service pressures and the kind of past history bears out that something usually manifests itself that we need to build into the budget but again they're placeholders for now and we can't say with any degree of certainty until we get further into the budget process what those pressures might be and I think actually one of the lines in Appendix E is around cost avoidance and pressure management so one of the challenges to ourselves as officers is do we need the budget to accommodate that level of pressures or can we manage those pressures in a different way without having to deliver savings elsewhere so I'd absolutely take your point that they are indicative figures at this stage that's all they're intended to be and we'll keep those under review as well as everything else as we build the budget process what we've tended to do with member reference group is use a dashboard that sets out how the pressures are evolving how the savings evolving and how the funding is evolving so you have to look at all three together to set the budget and I think the intention is to use that dashboard at member reference group in future in terms of the point on the local plan that the budget as it stands includes 500k per year for all planning policy matters and a million pound in reserve to cover the local plan and planning policy matters as well and the chair of the planning policy committee and others on the planning policy committee will be absolutely involved in the detail of how we deliver a local plan within that level of resourcing and as you say that's that's one of the key financial concerns of the council and it's one that will need to build alongside the budget process so I think they're all absolute key parts of the budget process as it develops just one brief comment we overspent on planning by four hundred thousand this year and we haven't really started a local plan so given that size allowing for half a million for that area okay we've got a reserve of a million but I think you need to start saying actually we need to put a bit more of that reserve in now rather than leave and the the half a million that were overspend or we did overspend four hundred and four thousand in 23/24 the budget for planning policy committee was increased by just under half a million for 24/25 and that's already in the base budget and so the pressures will build on top of that if necessary but I'll take your point and the first point you made was kind of harking back to the point that about engaging in the wider group of members and and at that point about who we are engaging with and when I think the reference to a steering group is probably and this is Councillor Chodoh's point an unfortunate reference in the report rather than a conspiracy and to Councillor Pursehouse's point one of the actions in the action plan that Councillor Langton had discussed sharing you with you was around planning enforcement how we resource that in future and one of the actions in that plan is to consider whether an urgency decision is necessary to put more money into planning enforcement and the planning enforcement papers to last week's committee reference that so where though I just wanted to give assurance without reopening that debate that if decisions are necessary there are that go beyond the kind of day-to-day delegations to officers then they would absolutely follow the urgency procedure or come to committee so there's absolutely no intent to undermine that process. Okay. I don't feel that I have not been part of the decision-making process far from it I think I've been brought in and consulted on numerous occasions that wasn't the point I was making the point I was making is about having a steering group now I accept all the reassurances that there is no such thing as a steering group but the reason it went into this paper was officers or an officer who was writing this paper perceived that there was a steering group and I think we've got to be very careful about that. I think that and that's Councillor Chodoh's point okay thank you very much so I'd like to go to Councillor Black and then I think Councillor Gray and I'm going to close it there please. It's a very light-hearted one but I think it says in 4.4 of the report it talks about cross-cutting I didn't understand that I'm wondering is it a typo it's not no it's it it's something I've never seen before better than I am sure but it is a reasonably well-established phrase. Yeah it basically means cutting across multiple services across the council so rather than within an individual service it's looking across the council's aisle. But that's a really good question because if there are others that didn't understand that that's quite fundamental so thank thank you for that question. Is yours as humorous? Nothing like us. Oh dear right. But it's very brief it's very brief I probably barely need to make this point based it on the argument on the argument which I'm trying to ratchet down now I probably accept you know Dino's interpretation Perry's interpretation what Mark said that it's an element of cock-up rather than anything else. I don't know if Robin and Jeremy agree with this approach I just wonder whether we just he those two and I need an early just an early communication just either confirming that it doesn't exist or if it does exist just explaining you know who's in it what its terms of reference are when it meets what it discusses just or it doesn't exist you know. As stated there it does not exist but what does exist is the as David referred to is the is the firefighting group which was put there in emergency essentially that certainly does exist and we're happy or I'm happy unless I'm told not to is that to actually distribute that so you can have visibility of what has already been agreed but the steering group as it as it as it's written there and suggests that the decisions have been made about FTP about where there should be costs and so on that does not exist no. Can you can you underline that for me or as the FTP. Sorry Chairman it's the firefighting group that we're concerned about. Yes I know you are I know you are that's what I'm saying. But you're saying that exists. Yeah yeah yeah I've just said that no. But so who's in it what's its terms of reference. Why is it not being used. I'm going to I'm happy and unless I'm told it's out of order to to distribute those actions and I'm happy that it's summarised why that group was put together it's a bit like you know it's a slightly different. Is it going to carry on. Until those actions are complete but the last dates there's a couple of TBCs the last dates are the something like the 12th of July. So you know we're a fortnight away from that. It's a very short term firefighting emergency plan and thank goodness we have it because it's you and I think others have said these planning things have been rolling on for some time and we've we've basically had enough. Yeah I'm happy that the chairman of planning policy is going forward in this because I've got a great deal of respect for what she's doing. But it's the problem is this is not part of our standing orders. This is anti-democratic. Okay you're breaking when the aircraft is on fire in my particular case. Sorry when the aircraft is on fire you you put the plug out rather than get everyone to go and say what's your view about it. It's that desperate I think as Councillor Blore and Councillor Cooper have said in planning that the actions need to be taken. But I'm happy that I don't know who would do it but we summarise what what has happened in that group. But we're going to share with you what the actions are and and I think my own view would be but my leaders not here is that the next time that is reviewed which is due to be next week other other groups will be extremely welcome to join. My contention is that doing it the right way would not have slowed it down. Okay fine okay okay I'm going to cut back. I just have to make this point because it's about democracy. We you know the question that has been raised is about democracy and we keep on talking about that we needed we needed a firefighting. You can't compare a plane on fire to a democracy. Sorry so because we are sitting in a council chamber. Please I beg you I beg you clarify that and involve the other people because it's not just one group. That's all I want to say. Please take it back please sir. >> Thank you very much. Are we in agreement with those even though my microphone was off. You could all hear me. Thank you. I just wish to add just one final thing. I think the presentation that Ricky gave I'm really pleased with the number of questions because I think even though many of us have got you know other jobs and other activities it's really important that we understand what's going on in the next phase of the FTP. It's highly it is quite complicated but this is this is how we're going to be able to balance things in future years and some of the fundamental changes need to be understood and without underlining the point that Councillor Piershouse and others have made it does require the involvement the interest and the energy of all the people in the chamber to actually get the best result because that didn't happen perhaps in past years. Okay that's all I'll say on that. Thank you very much Ricky. So can we move on quite swiftly to the corporate plan item number ten which Dave is going to introduce for us. Thank you. >> Yes thank you chair. The council's existing strategic plan expires this year so in order to set out the strategic direction for the council over the next four years a new draft plan has been developed. That draft plan is appended to this report page 133. In terms of the process for developing the draft corporate plan through the course of last year and earlier this year we've run a number of stakeholder workshops bringing external partners together, others and staff as well also informed by residents survey and earlier this year there was further consultation on that draft plan undertaken and you'll see on page 129 the feedback from that consultation where broadly there was support for the emerging priorities that are set out in the plan. The vision for the plan is protecting the environment, delivering affordable housing, putting residents at the heart of what we do and encouraging economic growth which is quite common for local authorities. The plan then explains how we'll do that in terms of making best use of the resources we have. And there are six priorities which reflect that vision and a number of objectives to support those particular priorities. Just some specific points from me before opening up to any debate. Firstly having a corporate plan is an important cornerstone of our transformation and very clear expression of our priorities as a council over the four years and the objectives to deliver them is extremely important. The plan is fairly high level. It is very easy for corporate planners to sit on shelves and this very much needs to be a living document that guides a lot of the work that we do. So we're proposing that the plan is reviewed annually and that comes here in terms of actions being delivered and looking ahead in terms of actions in terms of future years. Internally it works really importantly because it informs our service planning and feeds right the way through to appraisals in terms of setting objectives for individual staff too. As with any plan it's an aspirational plan. I think that's really important. But what's also important to stress and it's covered in bullet point I think it's bullet point 7 in the report that obviously it's an aspirational plan but given the uncertainty regarding funding going forward and in a fast changing world that annual review is really important. But it's also important to tie in that annual review to the annual budget setting process which is what we plan to do so that on that annual basis we can reflect on the resources that are available to the council for the coming year and where those resources are directed to deliver aspects of the corporate plan. Just a final comment from me which has been made to me several times is that vision around economic growth, affordable housing, protecting the environment there is an inbuilt contradiction in those in terms of you want to protect the environment you want economic growth and affordable housing. Nobody's going to probably argue against those as kind of priorities for the council and lots of councils have exactly those as the priorities. There's not anything particularly unique about this. What's really important is when it comes to any decision making is that we have to reflect upon the relative balance in making any decisions around affordable housing for example against impact on the environment. But it's there as a framework, they are there as principles that we absolutely hold to. So that's all I wanted to say. What's being asked of you tonight is to approve the draft corporate plan and recommend it's approval to full council. Thank you, chair. Thanks, David. And just before I invite Councillor Peirce to say something, I think it's worth adding this has not been a terribly easy, an easy journey. There's been lots of inputs and some changes and some quite robust views have been exchanged. So I just want you to know this is the end product of some considerable amounts of work. Councillor Peirce, else? Yes. I wonder where you got that last bit from, David. I've got to say it, though, on the introduction, point one, protect the environment, deliver affordable housing and boost the local economy. I'm sure that all of us had some version of that in our election leaflets. But it is contradictory. It's an impossible circle to square. If you can do that, I'd want to know where you bought your magic wand. I think my main point is this is a public document. This is the aspiration, as you say, that we're going out to the public with to represent this is where we're going with it. And to actually have something as nakedly contradictory as that in the first bullet point in the introduction seems to be a bit unnecessary. I think I referred to opposing unnecessary development or inappropriate development. We can't just protect the environment, deliver affordable housing and boost the local economy because the only way to deliver affordable housing is we're probably going to discover at the housing seminar on the 23rd of July is that we have to work with developers to provide to allow houses so that we can get them to provide us with affordable houses. So it's something that's going to be telling people we can knit fog and we can't. And I just think it's unfortunate that we smack them in the face with something that is so nakedly contradictory. I don't know where to start with this report, if this is quite accurate. I mean, I don't know when this report was put together, but if you are talking about delivering services and you're talking about thriving high streets, then you only have to look. And I know they're watching this evening. There's a lot of shopkeepers in Caterham Valley at the moment that are distraught. And the reason being is because the work that this council along with, sorry, along with Surrey County Council, the Caterham bid and others included are going to decimate Caterham Valley because the work that's taking place there is taking so long. Most of the shopkeepers as I've previously said in a private meeting to one or two of you before have said that they will not survive beyond this summer because the work, it's not a disaster. It's actually very good work, but it's the time that it's taking. Most of those shopkeepers in Caterham Valley will not be able to survive to the end of the summer. Most of their takings are down 75 to 80%. And I think that someone within TDC needs to go down and speak to see what we can do to keep these shops in Caterham Valley in business. The point you make is extremely valid, but I just wondered, no, can I just say the relationship between that and what we're discussing, which is the corporate plan, what's the point you're making on the corporate plan? If we need to have five in communities, we need to involve a lot of the shopkeepers and people in general around our town centres more. The point I was going to make was, when was this report done? It's being developed, as I said in the introduction, Councillor Klein, over the period of probably about a year now. I'd hope that in terms of the objectives relating to economic growth and thriving town centres, that that's something that would be supported as a principle and as an objective. I think one of the key aspects of the development of the plan has actually been around our engagement with local businesses to help shape this. Certainly, I can't speak for all the businesses in Caterham, but certainly the Caterham bid, for example, would have been involved in discussions regarding this. What we need to do next, not losing sight of the immediate issues you've just identified regarding the regeneration in Caterham, is look to how we can work more effectively with partners such as the Caterham bid to deliver some of the objectives that are in here. Thanks, David. Councillor Cooper. Thank you, Chairman. I've got two points, really. Do I disagree with 89 per cent for health, safe and healthy care and community? Eighty-eight per cent for protecting and enhancing our environment? This is like mum's apple pie, really. I'm not quite sure anyone's ever going to disagree with it. I'm not sure the value of it. 181 responses. It's very good, but there are 60,000 residents out there and we're quoting 181. Clearly, getting all 60,000 involved is going to be impossible, but 181, it's almost totally irrelevant. I don't disagree with what you said, but I'm not sure it has any real validity. Certainly, if you were doing polling, as all these companies are at the moment, I think that number would be so small as to be just disregarded. But I move on to where I do get concerned because apparently we're going to stop builders building private houses. Nowhere in this does it say anything about local developers building private houses. All you're talking about is delivering affordable housing. You've already noted in here 75 per cent of the homes in Tandridge are owner occupied. What we need to do is look at not just affordable housing, but providing opportunities for housing. I think this continued push in of affordable, it says to me, and I think it will say to other people, oh, so we're going to stop developers building other homes. We're only going to concentrate on affordable houses. Now, you know we can't do that and I know we can't do that. So it concerns me that you've used this affordable on pay page 129, page 130, it comes in a document, page 137, priority two, just delivering affordable housing. We should be thinking about delivering housing for local people, not this limitation, it's got to be affordable. Otherwise, the developers won't develop anything because they can't work on the basis if it's all affordable. You know that, I know that, this committee knows that. So my view very simply is that that term affordable needs to be taken out of this completely. We are looking to deliver, and I will totally support, the delivery of housing for local people. That is what this Council must be about, not limiting it to one sort of housing. Thank you. Yeah, I think as you are the Councillor who has nagged me as Chairman of Housing to get the waiting list down, to reduce our waiting list, and to get more affordable housing online, I think it's a difficult point for you to sustain. As far as I know, there is no difficulty in getting houses built that are going to make developers large amounts of money. Our job as a Council is not to encourage that. Our job as a Council is to encourage them to help us provide affordable housing, because without the developers, and we have to work with developers, without the developers, we can't provide the amount of affordable housing we would like. We can do 40 a year if we can work with the developers, we can treble that. So it is an important part to get commercial development so that developers can make their money so they can help us provide the affordable housing. But I would be totally opposed to removing the words affordable from this document. Yeah, I think my understanding is this, in common with other points in the report, is that it states what would tend to be our priorities. I don't think it says we're only going to build affordable and we're not going to build anything else. It's not an exclusion. But it's right to point out that the priority would be on affordable housing. That's the message that comes out clearly to me. And I think, as you say, Councillor Perks, that is the most important thing. But I don't think it says, and we're not going to allow developers to build, but we do say affordable because that is the priority because of the housing list, which I've heard you complain about quite rightly, Councillor Cooper. I would like to move on because I don't want to get involved in party stuff at this point. Are there any other points? I just want to make one point. Go on. And Councillor Purcell has made it for me. You need the developers to develop housing to get the affordable housing. No, I understand, yes. And therefore, just concentrating on that, because remember, this is for the whole council. This relates to the planning committee, the planning policy committee. And therefore, reading this, oh, no, we won't allow private housing, we're just going to do affordable. But Councillor Perks' house has made very clear we need developers to develop housing. And that's what we're really looking for. Not just affordable. I may be being arrogant here. I think that is certainly understood by us. I would have thought the majority of people know that there's much less money in affordable per se. It's where the priority lies. But I do take the point that you've made. Have we got any new points on the corporate plan? Okay. I'd like to move forward, then, and propose the let me check the exact wording of it. But that we agree with the does it go to full council? It does. So it's the proposal that we accept the corporate plan and it goes forward recommending it to full council for adoption. Sorry, Chairman, but the chief exec didn't come back on my question about the wording in that first bullet point. What about the general nature to motherhood stuff? I think Councillor Kiwi's point was motherhood and apple pie. Your point was regarding the contradiction. I'll pick up both those points. And in terms of the engagement in it, it's genuinely hard to excite local residents about a corporate plan. I accept that in the way that local residents are far more engaged and interested in a local plan. Nevertheless, it's important we go through that process and seek to get views to shape what the corporate plan says. And I believe we've made our best efforts to do that. A lot of the feedback will have been from the stakeholders, partner agencies as well. So we're confident that it reflects those particular priorities. In terms of the contradiction, I will just repeat what I said earlier. You will find hundreds of these corporate plans down the country that say exactly the same. It's part of the challenge in the public sector. It will be the same at government level which will have net zero targets. It's implicit in what we do that there's a contradiction. And yes, it's boldly expressed in here. I admit that. But it will be boldly expressed in other plans as well. But very few people will disagree with those particular points. What's really important is when it comes to making decisions and when we relate those decisions to the corporate plan, inevitably that contradiction needs to be managed through the narrative around how you balance that out. But you're not going to say we're not going to build any affordable housing because we want to protect our environment. That's obviously crazy. But this is quite a common approach. It will be in the narrative to support any decisions that relate to the environment and/or affordable housing and/or economic growth. Okay. Thanks, David. In that case I'm definitely going to move to the recommendation which is to approve the corporate plan and to recommend it to full council for adoption. I'm going to take the vote. So do we have agreement for that? I wish to personally abstain. That can be down, can't it? Thanks, Councillor Cooper. Okay. We'll move on to Item 11 which is the revised Council Tax Reduction Scheme. And having discussed it with Alan and with Mark, I'll just give a very, very brief introduction because this, again, there's been a lot of discussion on this one. And we actually have a set of revised recommendations which I'll go through with you briefly. The key issue which one or two of us on reading the paper were concerned about is the fact that we can, it's perfectly reasonable and understood why the changes are actually proposed because we are trying to, or the team are trying to simplify the system and thereby reduce our costs and make the administration a lot simpler. But the issue is that cannot be at the expense of, unreasonable expense of the people that live in and pay the council tax. And therefore we need some kind of a balance. So I'd like to, I'd just like to read you out what the revised recommendation is. And I'll read as follows. So the benefits, number one, the benefits team will be authorised to... Sorry, Chairman, have we got this in front of us? No, I'm going to read it, if that's okay. Well, it would be nice if we actually had the, you know, photocopied it, if we can still photocopy it, to actually have it in front of us rather than... Well, it would be nice, but we simply didn't have the time to do that. Because these things occurred quite late on, but they were important enough that we made a stand and that's why the discussion has been had. So you're putting forward a revision, an amendment to... I'm moving an amendment to the recommendations, yes. Without any kind of wording in front of us? Yes, if you like. I'm sure if you'd thrown it to Vince, he would have managed to come up with at least the number of... I think I've heard other recommendations moved, I believe, but still, yes. Not necessarily from the chair, though. It's okay. Possibly not. Would you permit me to read it? So the benefits team be authorised to commence consultation whilst simultaneously modelling the scheme to minimise the impact on any individual claimant. So the issue here was that because there was concern that we could be putting something to consultation without actually understanding what the impact might be on individual residents, the view was that the recommendation will be modified so that we do put things forward to consultation, but at the same time and in parallel, we actually model the scheme. And what that will mean is actually looking at the proposed, and we'll talk about this in a moment, the proposed revised banding, seeing what the impact would be, and if necessary, modifying those bands in order to minimise, hopefully remove, but minimise any negative impact to residents. So they would be carried out simultaneously. Had we gone with the original recommendation, the implication might have been that we go forward to consultation without any knowledge of whether the impact would be detrimental and to how many people it might be. The recommendation here says that we would do that in parallel. Do you want to add anything to that, Mark? I probably didn't do that as well as I could have done. No, thank you, Chair, and to Jeremy's point about changing the recommendations late in the day, I think this came out of conversations with the Chair in particular about the impact that the proposals would have on residents, that recommendations were to go out to consultation and to bring the results of that consultation along with detailed modelling back to the September committee cycle. I think if the Chair doesn't mind me putting words into his mouth by way of explanation, was concerned that a recommendation as it stood without clarifying that our aim in doing this was to minimise the impact on individual residents might cause undue concern amongst benefit recipients and councillors that the overall aim of this was to save money. The overall aim of it is to simplify the scheme with minimal impact to existing claimants from the scheme. When Alan introduces the detailed changes, he can set out some of what we might do to minimise the impact on additional residents. It may have sounded from the off that Councillor Langton was planning to make significant changes to the recommendations. It was more a tweet to recommendation A to reflect the fact that it will be modelled to minimise the impact, and a new recommendation C - apologies, Chair, I'm not sure if you got to that point - but a new recommendation C to note that in parallel with modelling the impact to minimise that, we will look at how we mitigate any residents that - mitigate the impact on any residents that are affected. And that late change is entirely my responsibility in a conversation that I had with the Chair almost immediately before the meeting that we felt that the recommendations as I drafted them didn't make it clear enough what the intent of the consultation process and the changes to the scheme were. So apologies to members of the committee for that late change. And we thought it best to pick those up as changes up front to give context to the debate. We'll do the introduction that we'd always planned to do, and then come the end, we can reread those proposed changes to the recommendations and members can consider those kind of with the full context of the report. So let me just read the recommendations quickly. So recommendation A becomes the benefits team be authorised to commence consultation while simultaneously modelling the scheme to minimise the impact on individuals. B stays the same. C to note that officers will bring back proposals to use the discretionary payment scheme and a corporate cost of living contingency to offset any remaining effect. Would anyone like to second that? Thank you, Councillor Crain. So those are the revised recommendations. I apologise for them being verbal. Before Councillor Cooper, I think you wanted to speak anyway, Councillor. I did, yes. I can't believe it's beyond the wit of man to get copies of that round to us tonight, even if it was just before the meeting. And when you're making amendments, a lot of the time, members will, as a courtesy, produce a copy for the clerk and for other members. So I think it's a shame that that didn't happen that way, and I still haven't really got it in my head, even though you've read it out, and I'd like you to read it out again later. As far as I'm concerned on this, if I remember rightly, the history of this is that the Government basically said, we don't want to play with this any more. Over to you, but we're only going to give you a proportion of the money. And we, as a Council, decide – Well, yes, that was what the Government said at the time, and we said some time ago when this happened, we would like to continue to give our residents 100 per cent, unlike many councils who went down to 80 or 90 per cent. And I think we were very proud of that fact, and it was cross-party supported. So are you saying that while I was reading – when I read this paper initially, I was thinking, we're really looking at trying to smooth out the administration of it, rather than pull money away from people. And if that is what the upshot of what your amendments are, I'm happy to support that. You summarised it, perhaps, better than I did, but yes. Yes. I think it's probably worth us kind of summarising the report in the way that we'd always intended to do. I can only apologise again, Councillor Persour, for not distributing those changes first. They are effectively officer changes that have come out of a discussion with the chair, albeit very late ones, and it is only the intent to clarify around the impact on residents. So I'll let Alan introduce the detail of the report, because Alan is clearly the expert on this. Just to say that four years ago, a very similar, if not identical, paper was brought to this committee and members approved us going out to consultation on a similar basis. That was in the summer of 2020, and COVID intervened almost immediately afterwards. Internally, we had a systems change that had a fairly severe impact on the revenues and benefits service. And since then, we've been working through the government's household support grants and cost of living schemes. So if there's a sense of deja vu with this paper, it's because it has been to committee previously. We wanted to bring it back to committee. So much water has gone under the bridge in the meantime. We wanted to recheck that committee were happy with the principles. And so I suppose without further ado, I'll let Alan introduce some of the detail to it. Good evening, everyone. Just wanted to reinforce the point that the report isn't designed to reduce people's benefit. It is exactly what was pointed out by the Councillor. We're trying to minimise the administration of the scheme rather than reduce people's benefit. And we are able to benefit from the experience of other local authorities since the change in 2013 and see what they've done to improve their system and their scheme without having a negative impact on people wishing to claim. And also, we've benefited from improvements to the actual system itself which we use to assess people's claims and the modelling tool which we can use to make sure that there's as minimal impact on people as possible. What the intention of the modelling tool is, is to keep tweaking what the bans are so that people moving from the current scheme to the proposed banning scheme don't really notice a change because when the changes are applied, they'll be applied when the new Councillor tax bill comes in so they won't know what their current payments will be. They'll just base it on the previous year. And if we can use the tool to minimise the impact on those people, what will happen is when they get the new bill, the difference between their previous bill and their current bill will be – hopefully, they won't notice the difference in terms of there won't be a significant reduction in what they receive. So, I'll go through the seven proposed changes which we'd like to go out for consultation. And as I stated, this is just a consultation to get the public's opinion on the changes with which to propose. But also, we include landlords and other third parties in the consultation as well because some social housing landlords include a council tax element within their schemes and within their rent. And there are other third parties that obviously would be Surrey County Council and the police and fire brigade and things like that. So, the first of the seven proposed changes is the income banning scheme. So, currently, what the scheme we have at the moment is if someone has even a small change in their income, it can affect what council tax support they receive. So, it could be anywhere between £1 upwards that could affect what benefit they receive. And as council tax support is based for that year, if someone has a change in April, that is going to change their council tax award for the rest of the year, and then have another proposed change, they cannot budget their money as well as under the banded scheme. So, with the banded scheme, someone would have to have a significant change in their income to move up or down a band. So, it's easier for someone to budget what money they have and make sure their direct debits are correct and they don't have any sort of significant changes in their household income and what they can have. And I take on board the point raised earlier about the wording. Perhaps savings isn't the right word to use because savings might indicate that we're trying to reduce people's benefit. I think the greatest benefit or advantage of going to a banded scheme is what it actually provides to us and the customer in terms of the administration. So, currently, the most significant change we've had recently in benefits is universal credit introduction. And someone that is in receipt of universal credit has monthly changes in their benefit. So, every time their income goes up or down, no matter how high, they will have a change in universal credit award each month, potentially, unless they are on a static earnings. And what that's happening is that we are then getting those changes directly from the DWP and having to apply those changes to someone's claim. So, they can have up to 13 changes a year because we do an end of year letter as well. So, if you could imagine yourself receiving 13 letters, 13 bills from us. And, obviously, that takes us time to administrate that. But you also have a knock-on effect of someone then calling about their bill or about their payments and things like that. So, part of the telephone project which was raised earlier was what type of calls we got. And part of the calls we got were how much do I have to pay my accounts tax, how do I change direct debit, what's my benefit award. And if there was a more static band-aid scheme where unless someone has a significant change, their benefit remains the same, it will reduce those types of calls and allow the benefits team and revenues team to deal with other calls that are not related directly to bills or how much someone needs to pay. Also, one of the feedback we've got from customers in terms of barriers to apply for benefits is they are not aware of what they might be entitled to. And we do have a benefits calculator on our Changeage website which people can use to try and calculate their benefit. But not everyone's technically savvy with the calculator and we often get calls related to that. So, if you knew your income was a certain amount and there was a band-aid scheme, you would know which band you fell into and what percentage you may get off your accounts tax. So, it reduces the barriers of people applying. It makes it easier for people to understand what they may or may not be entitled to. So, in terms of the letters going out to customers, just for an example for a quiet week, the information files we get from a DWP about just universal credit, we can have between 25 and 40 a day on a quiet day. And that would mean we get between 125 and 200 plus letters or bills and bills going out to the claimants in reference to changes to their claims. Not all of those people will call or contact us, but by introducing a band-aid scheme, you're reducing the amount of customer contact we have in regards to what someone has to pay and what their direct debit may be, or there's the knock-on effect of if there's a change where they're not able to afford it, revenues having to take various actions to get that money off that person. So, if there's not a significant change to their income, their benefit would remain the same. So, the next point would be self-employed earnings and the minimum income floor. So, the DWP and HMRC already implement this, and basically it's only implemented after the first year of someone making a claim or the first year of their self-employed business. So, it gives them some protection in terms of getting their business up and going, or if they're already an existing business but they've had significant reduction in their earnings and they needed support through benefits, it protects that person for the first year and enables them time and gives them the benefit of the support from the benefit that they'd be receiving. The minimum income floor would then be linked to the national minimum wage and dependent on the amount of hours they worked. So, if a self-employed person said they worked 16 hours but they were earning below minimum wage, after a year we would apply the minimum wage. This is to bring us in line with the DWP and HMRC, but what I would like to reiterate is the DWP are making an extensive move towards getting people on what we call legacy benefits on to universal credit. So, if we didn't implement this as part of our scheme, as and when the person moved to universal credit, they would come under those rules. The next point is non-dependent deductions. So, currently under the current scheme, anyone that's classed as a non-dependent has to contribute towards the household. So, a non-dependent would be someone as an adult child that's not dependent on a parent or brother or sister or uncle or aunt that's living in the property. And currently as part of the counter-tax regulations, you have to apply a non-dependent deduction. So, that is already in place. What we would like to do is doing a similar thing in terms of the bandit scheme for a household's income and basically apply that to non-dependence. So, now a non-dependent deduction would depend on their income, so it could go up and down depending on a small change, whereas if it was in a bandit way, so someone would earn a certain amount of money, if they only had a certain non-dependent deduction, it makes it easier for someone to understand. And non-debt deductions are one of the most undeclared changes that people have because people don't like asking those children or relatives that are living with them what their income is, so we often don't get told updates or anything like that. So, by proposing a bandit scheme, even if that person had an increase in their wages, they were more than likely not going to fall outside of the current band that they were in. The next point was removal of second adult rebate. So, at the moment, someone can get second adult rebate. We only have 22 claims for working-age claimants, and what second adult rebate allows that person to do is have a reduction off of their council tax for someone else living with them that isn't a partner. And it allows them to have some discount off of their council tax. Again, this is one of the ones that is most changes that's not declared, so we often get second adults leaving properties or second adults earning a lot more money. People don't understand second adult rebate, so we get people applying for it when they actually want single persons discount, even though the wording on the website is quite clear about what it is. You often get queries about it when they actually mean single persons discount, as it only currently affects 22 working-age claimants, and we would be looking at removing that. Each of these seven proposed changes are independent from each other, so the public consultation would look at each point, and, obviously, yourselves would be able to look at each point that's been proposed, and if there's any further detail or queries about that, that would be given to you in the full report. That would be included in the consultation and the modelling. Thank you, Alan. Do we have questions? Councillor Gray, then Councillor Klein. By the time I got to this, I must admit I was looking for kind of shortcuts. So I thought, what is it I really care about here? So I did an unusual thing, and I jumped straight to the equality assessment at the end, and I read the equalities impact assessment for the proposals will be drawn up alongside detailed modelling to take place concurrently with the consultation, and I thought, why isn't that then in the recommendation? And I think that's pretty much what you're talking about. You're absolutely right. Absolutely. Thank you for pointing that out. Thank you, Councillor Klein. Thank you, Chair. On your very last point, you spoke about only 22 people making that claim. Now I have a resident who is one of those 22. Can you tell me why you're going to phase that out? Part of the points we were going to propose in the full report as part of concerns to this may be that those 22 people, I was going to, once I'd gone through all points, say that people that are currently claiming could have a protection. Often when the DWP or HMRC make a change to a relevant benefit, they have either transitional protection or that benefit remains in place until that person no longer needs it or has a significant change which would make them move on to another benefit. An example would have been if people could remember there was a benefit called capacity benefit. When that was phased out, anyone currently on capacity benefit kept it, but those that moved on to the new benefit that was brought into replacing capacity benefit, any new claimants would have that. Even though it was only 22, potentially if there was concerns around that and people having a strong view against that, it could be that it was brought in for any new claimants, so current claimants would then continue to receive that benefit and then they wouldn't be under that change and it would only apply to new residents or they could potentially have a transitional protection where we would contribute what they currently receive to ensure that they weren't missing out for a period of time. So you're not just going to cut it off, you will engage with the customers? Yes, that's partly what the consultation is for. The gentleman that's doing the public consultation has done it at several other councils and he's got years of benefits experience having worked at multiple councils. What the consultation and the modelling tool is designed to do is minimise that. Obviously, some schemes that other councils have proposed have literally just made wild scale changes to reduce people's benefit, but that has a knock-on effect of then you have to recover that money. You may think you're saving money by reducing people's council tax reduction, but you are then incurring additional costs to recover that money to employ bailiffs if it went to extreme measures and also it can impact negatively on the council's reputation. So the consultation and the modelling tool is designed to make sure that doesn't happen. Okay, thank you. Councillor Blaw. Thank you, Chairman. I'm in the same boat really as Councillor Gray. I was getting a bit fogged with all the information when I got as far as this, but it strikes me, why are we going to do a consultation before we know what the impact is going to be? Why can't we just do the modelling and sort out the impact on our residents and customers, then when we're sure what we're doing, go out and do the consultation? I think the modelling tool is only based on current levels of benefit. So if we were to have done the modelling beforehand, that data may be out of date near the time of the changes. And also if you go out to consultation and some public or one of yourselves was strongly opposed to a point, then we could remove that from the modelling. The actual modelling process itself, even though it has been simplified through the years of system changes from 2013, is quite an extensive piece of work. So given the limited resources we currently have within the benefits department, I didn't want to begin the modelling before we'd been allowed to go out to consultation because it might possibly not have been of use. I'd just add to that that the banded scheme, the move to the banded scheme is really the key element for the team and for residents. It's the simplification and that's the straightforward bit. The other changes in there really, I think it comes down to the committee's view on whether they should go ahead or not. And you obviously need the modelling and you need the results of the public consultation and the equalities impact assessment to make that judgement. And one of the conversations we were having with the chair was whether we could restructure the recommendation to do the modelling first, then come back and then do the consultation. Timing wise, because of the minimum time period for the consultation and then a minimum notice period before the scheme's implemented, that would push the implementation back to April 2026. And we're already working, we're already kicking this off sort of nine months ahead of the implementation date itself. So it is a very good question and it's part of what led to officers suggesting a change to the recommendation to make it clear what the intent of the modelling was in terms of limiting the impact. And the point that Alan made about being able to apply some of these changes prospectively as into new claimants rather than existing claimants I think is one that we wanted to make sure that came through in the introduction to the report. I don't have any problem with what you're trying to achieve and I think reading this I thought that was, you know, you're saving the council costs but you're still making sure that the people who need the money get it. I've got no problem with that. What struck me though was the banding. So £5, so a non-worker would pay £250 a year and then someone on less than £23,000 pays £500 a year and then suddenly there's this big jump because you go then to, you know, you're earning an extra pound a year and suddenly you need to find £1,500 a year. So in other words you've really got to be earning over £24,000, not £23,000, to actually end up better off because there's a big jump. I'm just wondering whether maybe there should be another band or two in there to reduce it because £250 to £500, that's not really a problem. £500 to £1500, that I think is a bit of a problem. So that's my only concern that perhaps there needs to be another band in there which makes the jump less of an impact. Thank you, Councillor Cooper. The modelling tool will help us do that. So basically the modelling tool basically ensures that anyone that is on passported benefits still receives 100% accounts tax support and someone that's on a low income that currently receives 100% still gets 100%. With the non-dependent deductions we can use the modelling tool to adjust the amounts that people would have to pay towards their accounts tax. We wouldn't necessarily reduce them below what the current scheme is because that is the default scheme. So to do that would be increasing the amount of accounts tax support we had whereas the default scheme only applies those amounts. So I'd imagine that we want to use the modelling tool in the best ways that anyone that's currently receiving a non-dependent deduction wouldn't necessarily know that there had to be a change and that those changes meant that that non-dependent had to pay more. So it is the same with the household income. We want to make the transition from the current scheme to the new scheme so that people aren't going, Well, why is this happening? Why am I receiving less benefit? Because, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of the benefits that we get from this, I think perhaps on the front of the report I used the word savings. The savings are actually gained through a less admin, the better customer service we can provide and people being able to better manage their money. Okay. So happy to support that for that reason. Right. Okay, thank you. And finally, Councillor Demasi, and then we'll move to recommendations. My apologies. There's no deja vu for me with this as I'm coming to it new. So I would like to just fundamentally understand. When it says on page 160, item 421, that we currently pay 5.2 million in council tax reduction, what does that mean when you say we pay? Is that 5.2 million of council tax, actually council tax that we don't collect from people who are ... Yes. So everybody has council tax liability. Yes. And that's based on what council tax reduction award they would receive. Right. So that figure is how much we've paid out in council tax reduction towards people's liability. So that is money that is being used to pay someone's council tax. So instead of the person paying the council tax, it would be covered by council tax reduction. Right. So basically where does that come from then? Is the council financing this? I think I'd jump in there. The district council, Tandridge District Council collects council tax on behalf of the major preceptors as well. So Surrey County Council and Surrey Police and Crime Commissioner. So we keep about 10% of all council tax we collect, and the other 90% goes on to the county and the police. So of that figure, 10% is effectively a cost to us and the other 90% is a cost to the county and the police. And I believe we are required to consult with the county and the police as part of any changes to our scheme. The other thing to say is that when government, and this is back to Jeremy's point at the start, this was a scheme that was administered and funded by government. They passed it over to us to administer locally, and they gave us an amount of money that would have been equivalent to the 500,000, our 10% of that 5 million, and the county and the police would have got an amount equivalent to their share of it, the lion's share of it. I think they cut that down to 90% at the time. So they gave us 100% responsibility for the scheme and 90% of the funding. In the meantime, that's all been rolled into our government funding and the business rates retention scheme. So we're no longer able to tell you how much money government has given us for that scheme, because it's lost in the wider funding proposal. But yes, fundamentally, 5 million of which 500K nominally relates to us and 4.5 million to the police and the county. Okay, well, I'm going to just add to that. So as part of this obviously very detailed and extensive modeling that's going to be undertaken of the impact of the changes, I assume that will also include then a calculation of any difference that this change will make to the cost of the scheme. I mean, we're looking -- you're focusing on impacts on individuals, but are we actually setting a requirement that it should be a cost-neutral exercise in terms of -- from the Council's point of view? Yes. So we want to minimize the impact on the claimants in terms of what they receive and that the actual benefits or efficiencies rather than savings would come from how we administrate that and what involves -- how we collect the cap stacks and what other costs we have in terms of customer contact and calls. The overall cost of the cap stacks reduction from the modeling will be able to determine how much we may or may not be able to save through the changes that are being proposed. But what we want to do is ensure that the modeling tool reduces that to a minimum. So the modeling tool, when you first put in figures, would give you X amount of people would be affected in a negative or positive way, and then you would adjust that until you've got a near enough mirrored image of the current scheme. So the savings or benefits of it are made through other means rather than reducing the amount of cash support someone receives. And by minimizing any impact on individuals, we're also minimizing any impact on the Council's own finances and the overall collection fund, but that will be a kind of result of the modeling, so you'll be able to see that in September. Okay. I'd like to move to the verbal recommendation. You wanted me to read them out again, didn't you? So hopefully they'll make more sense because of the explanations that Mark and have given. So the recommendation A, the benefits team be authorized to commence consultation while simultaneously modeling the scheme in order to minimize the impact on any individual claimant. B, stays the same, and C, to note that officers will be bringing back proposals to use the discretionary payment scheme and a corporate cost of living contingency to offset any remaining effect. Do we have agreement to those provisions, those recommendations? Okay. Thank you. And I also apologize the fact you haven't got it written in front of you. Sorry, Chairman. You've now agreed the amendment, so we now need to agree the substantive. I don't understand that. You proposed an amendment to the recommendations, which we have now agreed to, so that then becomes a substantive recommendation. So we now have to approve that. I see. Okay. Okay. Is that agreed? Sorry. Thank you, Councillor Purcell. I clearly need to look at the processes in a little bit more detail. Right. Thank you. So we've still got two items. I'm conscious of the security issue on the building. I don't want to stifle debate, but on the other hand, it's getting late. Do we have a preference? Should we try and go for both? I think we can cover both, Councillor Plankton, but I'll endeavour to introduce them briefly. Okay. So we'll start with procurement then, and then it's Mark again, please. So this report is an update on various aspects of procurement. Primarily, it provides a high-level update on the potential or expected changes to the Procurement Act. I have to say, when I started writing the report with procurement colleagues, they were going to be the changes to the Procurement Act, and then the general election was called. And when the general election was called, a flurry of the workshops that we were expecting to attend were cancelled, so there's a degree of proviso to these updates. I'll take all of that as read, except to say that officers are working hard across the council, finance, legal, procurement, and with our partners, so Reigate and Banstead and other Surrey authorities, to gear up for the implementation of the Procurement Act. And we'll be reporting back to council, to committee, and ultimately council, on any changes that are necessary to the contract's standing orders. So that's the bulk of the report by volume. The report then goes on to cover performance against KPIs. In common theme with some of the other reports tonight, we're committing to reviewing the KPIs, because our current procurement advice is that there are perhaps better ways to show those, and it calls out the examples of savings delivered as a result of procurement activity as an example of where we might want to review those in future. But the performance is set out there. I'm very happy to take questions on it. And then lastly, the report sets out the CSO waivers approved for calendar year 2023, and they're in Appendix A. And the reason for bringing the KPIs and the list of waivers was as a result of an internal audit report that suggested that Strategy and Resources Committee quite rightly should have an overview of procurement performance and where we are agreeing waivers to the contract standing orders. The number of waivers is pretty much consistent with 2022 calendar year. The value's somewhat higher. But the reason for that increase in value is linked to a very small number, half a dozen of quite significant items that committee or various committees will be aware of. So as an example, the extension to the Nick Dance grounds maintenance contract whilst we went out to tender for the new grounds maintenance contract. An extension to our contract with MRI, which is our housing management system, responsible for coordinating 17 million pounds worth of income each year, and we wanted to maintain the current system whilst we reviewed options. And our payroll system, which is Midland HR, MHR, which we extended to align the expiry dates with Rygate and Bannestead Borough Council so that we could potentially look to go out to tender together. I think mindful of the chairman's point about the late hour and the other report that has recommendations to agree rather than note, I think I'll leave it there and take questions. So the committee notes the update to the procurement as a result of the Procurement Act performance against the KPIs and the points that Mark raised about the CSO waivers. Do we have agreement to note those, please? Okay, so we'll move on to the final thing, which is the S&R Committee Scheme of Delegation and Contract Standing Orders, because I'm sure there will be a couple of questions on this. Mark? Thank you, Chairman. So this report in aggregate makes two changes or two proposed changes to the Council's constitution for recommendation to Council, ultimately for approval. The first part of the report is to recommend that this committee takes on responsibility for approving the Council's Annual Pay Award to officers, provided that that is within the Council's budget envelope for pay and where it isn't to recommend that on to full council. That's currently a delegation to the chief executive, but officers recommend that that should be changed in the constitution to be a committee decision. And that's to ensure really that a potentially significant financial decision is given proper committee oversight alongside the budget process. So that's part one of the report, really. Part two of the report refers back to procurement and some of the points that were raised earlier about what are our limits for spend and where do we get approval internally for those. At the moment, any spend over 5K is approved through Corporate Procurement Board, and the report sets out the membership of that, but it's effectively the senior officers from across the Council, so including either David or the deputy chief exec, myself, and either the monitoring officer or one of her deputies, along with some heads of service. As I say, at the moment, all spend above 5K goes to that for approval. That limit was set a number of years ago, and 5K in inflated terms would equate to about 6.5K now. So we're not talking about a material change now. I can't really blame inflation for what I'm trying to do. It's set to say that a number of the procurements that were just below 5K are now just over 5K, and so the workload has increased significantly. What we're finding is that, and I'd like to have been able to quantify this, but time didn't allow. What we're finding is that the Corporate Procurement Board's time is spent on looking at requests to procure things predominantly for asset-related purposes, so the construction program, the Council House Building Program, health and safety matters, adaptions under the disabled facilities grants, and so forth. And to a large extent, well, universally, those items have been approved either as part of the Council's revenue budget or as part of the Council's capital program. So we're not questioning whether they should go ahead, and we think, frankly, that our time is better spent on other matters and more value-added matters. So the report is suggesting that that limit for those particular items be raised to £10,000. Below that limit, officers would still have to follow the requirement for three written quotations. They'd still need to follow contract standing orders, but they wouldn't need Corporate Procurement Board sign-off. And above the 10K limit, they would. And for all other types of activity, for example, consultancy work, training providers, and so forth, the 5K limit would still apply to make sure we were adding value to whether that spend should go ahead, not just that it should and the process there. That's probably all I was going to say by way of introduction, Chair, but I'm happy to take questions on it. Okay. Do we have any questions on those? Councillor Cooper. Very simple. I'm confused. You've got proposed amendments to contract standing orders, yes? It should be contract, I think, rather than contact, but anyway. And then you've got threshold below 5,000. I've still got the impression you were turning this to 10,000. Or have I got that wrong? This is page 179. Apologies, Councillor Cooper. Did you say page 179? Yeah. So page 179, item 16.2 sets out the rules for threshold 2, and threshold 2 is any procurements between 5,000 and 24,990. So that remains the same? So threshold 2 remains the same, but 16.2.3 is a new clause that sets out that the appropriate EMT member can authorize it below 10,000 for construction, council house building, asset maintenance, assets health and safety, and corporate procurement board has to approve it for anything above 10,000 for those items or anything above 5,000. So 16.1, what's the below what? 16.1 is below 5,000. So it remains 5,000? Yes. 5 to 25. Okay. That's what I didn't understand. Okay. Thank you very much. And you're quite right. It should say contract standing orders. I dread to think what contract standing orders would be. Councillor Hall. Thanks very much, chair. Just in terms of the fact that obviously we don't want to be rewriting and opening up the constitution all the time, the increase from 5 to 10 is that on the understanding that inflation will continue to go up, and so by putting the limit at now 10, we shouldn't in theory need to raise it again or affect it for a number of years? And the chair and I had that exact conversation, and we did debate whether it should be raised to the next threshold up, which is 24,999. Where we got to is that raising it to 10,000 will solve an immediate operational issue and allow corporate procurement board to focus on more significant items. I think as part of the Procurement Act, we'll probably have to rewrite fairly large elements of contract standing orders in any case, obviously with committee approval and with council approval. So this is a tactical change to address a problem quickly rather than future proofing standing orders for the next few years or so. Okay. Okay. Let's take the recommendations then, which I think are written on page 174. So it's A, the amendment to the contract standing orders, which revolve around the thresholds that Mark's just explained to us, and B is 2, that the committee's terms of reference and scheme of delegation be amended in order that staff pay awards can be referred to either this committee or to the full council, depending on whether it's within the budget or outside the budget. Do we have agreement to those two? Good. Thank you very much indeed, and thank you all for your patience and ability to stay awake, have a safe journey back. And again, I know I say this every time, but it is heartfelt. I think that the quality of the debate on some of the more difficult issues was good, and I appreciate that and people's openness and candor. Thank you. Have a safe journey.