Transcript

Good morning Councillors and Officers. Welcome to the Corporate Performance and Resources Scrutiny Committee meeting. There is no fire alarm test planned today. If anyone is joining from a Council building, should the alarm sound, it will not be a test and you should follow the appropriate fire exit signs. Before proceeding today I should remind everyone present that the proceedings of today's meetings are being broadcast live and may be kept on the Council's internet site as an archive record of the meeting. The images and sound recording may also be used for training purposes within the Council. All Members should have already checked their headphones, microphones and IT kit before the meeting commenced. All Councillors who wish to receive simultaneous translation from Welsh to English should click on the interpreter symbol at the bottom of the page and then click English. If remote Members lose connection during the live meeting, please make every attempt to reconnect, however the meeting will continue as long as the meeting is quorummed. Can I ask Members and Officers present in the meeting today to introduce themselves before you speak. Furthermore, could I remind the Committee Members who are in attendance remotely to have their cameras on for the duration of the meeting and not just when speaking. Moving on then to the agenda item, apologies for absence. Apologies have been received from Councillor Darren Price and Councillor Aline Laney. And also we continue to send our best wishes to our Democratic Services Officer Kelly Evans, who is still unwell, so we wish her the best. Two decorations of personal interest, including any party whips issued in relation to any agenda item. You all have a responsibility under the Code of Conduct to verbally declare any personal interests you may have in relation to any item appearing on the agenda today. Please ensure that you clearly indicate which agenda item you have a personal interest in and the specific nature of the interest to be disclosed. You'll also need to repeat your declaration of personal interest at the commencement of the relevant agenda item and indicate whether or not you will be withdrawing from the meeting during consideration of that item. I must also remind Members that party whips are not allowed at scrutiny. If there is one in operation it must be declared and Members subject to the whip will not be allowed to vote on any issues subject to a whip. Members, please use the raise your hand function if you wish to declare an interest or if a party whip has been issued in relation to any agenda item before you today. Alex. Sorry. Thank you Chair, Councillor Alexander for speaking. I need to declare a personal interest for the budget margin report. My mother works in the Democratic Services Unit so if discussion goes into detail on our particular budget heading I need to declare a prejudicial interest and leave the meeting at that point. Thank you. Okay, thank you Alex. Anyone else? Okay, moving on then. Three public questions. I can confirm that no public questions have been received. Moving on to agenda. Sorry, did you raise your hand? No. I generate a full revenue and capital budget monitoring report 2324 starting in page 5 of OPAC. This is our standard quarterly item which allows Members to undertake their monitoring role of the revenue and capital budgets. I will now call on Councillor Philip Hughes, Cabinet Member for Organizational Workforce to present the report. I can ask you to turn on your microphone and present the report. Sorry, I've been given the dodgy script. Chair, if it's all right I was in touch with Councillor Alan Lenny and happy to present the report to committee today. So the report provides Members with an update on our latest budget monitoring and this is from April 23 up to February 2024, then just extrapolated for that final month of the year. So our assessment based on those figures was a part of some 4.4 million into consideration. As with all local authorities, the finances have been under pressure within command and share with the main contributors, largely unchanged since Councillor Lenny last reported to the committee. Increased demand and complexity of cases, particularly around learning disabilities, mental health and children's services. Inflation levels over the course of last the last financial year which didn't and the pay award for April 23 in respect of NJC and teachers in September, which was in excess of the existing budgets. At a departmental report committee that the variance has has dropped a little bit from 10.2 million down to 8.4 with some reductions in the level of overspend across communities, education and children's as well as place and infrastructure. As Councillor Lenny reported to the committee in April, cabinet agreed to allocate 800,000 from corporate contingency to provide schools with the additional cost of the NJC pay award and you can see that schools are now forecasting a reduced draw on reserves of some 6.1. The capital financing under spend has increased by half a million to 3.5 million and that provides an increased offset against that. Members of the committee will be familiar with you can see a detailed breakdown of Appendix A with future assumptions provided in the commentary. The department's within this committee's remit. Chief Exec's forecast has increased slightly to 778,000 the reasons as being outlined in the previous committees. The one slight change is an increased under spend within the design service and corporate services under spend has increased also very, very slightly to 999,000. We're just shy of the million against the variances very similar to again the previous budget monitoring. Appendix F then provides members with the forecast how to turn savings positions for Chief Exec's and corporate savings. The same for savings proposals totalling to 27,000 currently showing as being off target and we'll in line with the way we run this, we will continue to monitor those into the next financial year to implement. And then finally, Appendices C to E provide an appraisal of capital position indicating a forecast budget of 200 regeneration schemes, including Swansea Bay City Region projects that come out of the hub and the balance of under spends due to reprofiling of capital maintenance schemes, including education, the Terry Valley path and fleet replacement vehicles for waste transformation. As reported, these under spends will be slipped to the next financial year. Thank you. I welcome any questions from the committee. OK. Thank you all. First of all, it was a little bit rude of me. Can I welcome Steve Williams, not only to this committee, but to the council. So I hope you find your stay on corporate performance and resources as exciting as we do. OK, so we move on then to these reports. So Appendix C starts at page 11 to 31 just for the benefit of Stephen. Appendix C is an overarching view of the revenue status of the whole council. Appendix B really is where our areas come into play, corporate services and whatever. So unless there's any burning questions, sort of council wide on Appendix C, which I'm happy to allow, then really we focus on Appendix B, but I'll go through them page by page. Anyway, seems you've got a bit of time. So if we start off then on page 11, Appendix C. Page 12. Page 13. On page 11, the overall on Appendix A. Two officers anticipate any significant change at all between the 29th of February and year end. Thank you. The honest answer is I was a month away from the year end position. I'm always hopeful, but I haven't I haven't got any figures that even I can draw figures that I can concretely look at across the council at this point. So I don't offer any kind of your honor at this point. Sorry. Okay. Okay. We're on page 14, page 15. 16. 17. 18. Sorry, I have my hand up. Yes. On page 17, there's talk of a pilot to commence in April. I mean, we've discussed the issue with agency staff many times in this committee. So the question that I have is that has the pilot commenced and do we have any early indication of the impact? Oh, yeah. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Kim, for that question. The pilot has commenced in social care and basically we've got one of our future leaders called Steph Thomas, who works in resources. And we were anticipating the pilot would be for three months. The early indications are that it's working really, really well. So this is something that other authorities have done. So Steph has done. He's presented to the transformation board and to corporate management team. It is something that Wendy particularly is very keen on. But the pilot has commenced the early indications. It's positive. So it's a case of watch this space. But the work that Steph has done as a future leader has been commendable. It's something we need to do. You know, the spending agency, as we all know, is astronomical and fair. So we've got to try and address it. So, so far, so good, Chair. Thank you. OK, Kim. OK. OK, we're from page 17 and on to page 18. 19, page 20, page 21, page 22. Page 23. Gareth. Thank you, Chair. On page 23, the housing benefits admin. On the text there, it says there are 11 current vacant posts within the section. And just to ask, really, what impact do 11 vacant posts have on the operations of that particular unit? Chris. Thank you. Thank you, Gareth. The challenge with that service is obviously there is an element to transfer through to universal credit. But also it's an area where there is some significant turnover. So there is an impact in terms of workload, but it's being managed at the moment. So 11 does sound significant, but that's covering the housing benefit admin and the construct reduction. And some of the posts may not be full time. So it's being managed and we are trying to fill those posts. Paul. Just to add to what Chris is saying, I am aware from the work that we're doing in terms of apprenticeships, that I think there are two apprentices going to be joining that team from some of the vacant posts. Gareth, are you OK? Is there a question? Yeah. Kim. Thank you, Chair. Further down, it's showing at $114,000 overspend on bank charges due to an increase in the number of card payments in recent years. I know that we did some work on trying to negotiate with the bank. Can we have an update on that, please? This is over and above the main banking contract. This is a consequence of throughput of the promotion of the use of credit card and debit card. Excuse me. As things develop in terms of going more and more cashless, this is a consequence of that, that we're actually picking up the percentage charges. So we are we have negotiated the terms, but the terms are still what the terms are more competitive than what they were. The of throughput of transactions through credit and debit cards is just ever increasing. So you would expect it to increase. So the pressure that needs to be considered and brought dealt with in the budget process, actually. Because I would expect this to continually go up every online transaction that you do, every payment by credit card, every payment by debit card. There is a charge and this is an ever increasing issue. So it's more volume than anything else. But as far as we are renegotiating that at the moment. Can I come back on that? Because the percentage charge on the transactions is also something that's come down with other providers quite significantly and needs to be included within the discussions on any negotiations of contract. Yes, I agree. That is something that is being looked at, but it will never come down to the same level as the offset volume increase. In terms of the impact on the budget, if you see what I mean. Okay. Okay, but it all helps. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Okay, thank you Chris. We're on to page 24. 25. Thanks, Chair. I'm just wondering on the provision of free school meal, what work is being undertaken against the overspend on that? So I think there's kind of two things to say on that. The first is that we will benefit from the budget validation in terms of the inflation increase going into the new financial year. In terms of what we'll have on that is that exact details, but I know that the sum that we had in respect of each one of those has increased on a unit basis. I want to say, I'm not going to quote a figure because I can't remember it, but very happy to just check that out and report back to the committee. So the amount that we're recovering from Welsh government has increased for the next year. Okay. Sorry, what I would just add to that, I can't quite remember the figure, but the increase from the valuation process that went on in Welsh government was still not up to the level of the cost of the service. So they increased the unit price, but it didn't match the cost and it was somewhere between the two by what I could recall. Okay, could you come back to us with some clarification? Thank you. Moving off page 25 then to page 26. Page 27. Page 28. Page 29. Page 30. And finally, page 31 for Appendix C. Kim? Okay, I'm just going back to page 30 and the increase in the school transport costs. Now I understand the reasoning behind that, but will that be built into the budget for next year? Absolutely, it was a budget pressure that was approved by full County Council back in March, so that's been accommodated. Thank you. Okay, moving on then to Appendix B, which is a copy really of the first part of Appendix A, but we'll go through it. Starting on page 33. Gareth? Yeah, under the tech team, two aspects there. One, a progress report on the office down the side, you see? And the supplementary question really on some detail on the income efficiency target that hasn't actually been met. Thank you. Some detail on that. Thank you. Anybody? Tech side? John? In terms of the income efficiency target, I think that's probably related to the next item on the agenda, so perhaps we can pick that one up next. In terms of the office disposal, obviously a lot of work has gone on in terms of making use of hybrid working, more effective use of hybrid working, which allows us to look at the space occupied within our buildings. So a lot of work has gone on over the last few years to allow us to perhaps rationalise buildings, and that will potentially continue through the use of data in our buildings going forward. Right, Gareth? Yeah, thank you. So are we on schedule really, with regards to the time then, with regards to the downsizing programme, really is the question? I think the majority of the moves that are planned have been completed. I think there's a minor move still to be undertaken in relation to Randall's team from Park Debbie Sant, as far as I'm aware. But the majority of moves have taken place with the majority of staff from Park Debbie Sant being moved into Spillman Street and County Hall and some going to Park Mulvey. Paul? Yeah, just to add to what John has been saying generally, if you look at the property, if you look at Park Debbie Sant, we've now been relocated. So my team have now got 35, and that helps contribute then the biggest corporate picture in being able to dispose of places like Park Debbie Sant, which of course we have now damaged itself. Unfortunately, we lost a member of staff last year, but the configuration there, I think Chris, you've been involved in that. So the overspend is being regularised, so that's being managed properly. So just to give members the confidence that we are actually on top of it. Chris, do you want to come in? Yeah, I was just going to add, regarding the staffing from financial services, part of the reason they've been delayed due to the fact that the refurbishment work is going on in terms of wiring at County Hall meant that their space was not available in County Hall, or more to the point, to accommodate that. So it seemed sensible to keep the operation up there until the lower floor here has been completed so they can move straight into their office space once the wiring and the health and safety. There has been a restructuring report completed on the team and that will regularise the new structure and that's very much linked to the commercialisation strategy that's coming forward. Thank you. Okay guys, moving off page 33 then to page 34. Page 35, page 36 and finally page 37. Okay, that concludes appendix B then on the revenue side Gareth. Yes, sorry for that, on page 37 it's possible to have an update on the vacant header service post and the property division business unit. It's been on many budget monitoring reports now so I'm just wondering whether you have any progress or an update with regards to that particular comment. Thank you. Yes under the property division business unit and the spend of $136,000 and the text that vacant header service post awaiting further review of new divisional structure. Page 36, page 36 sorry. Well my colleagues are just looking at that, perhaps I can just take the opportunity to answer the earlier question in respect of the school meals charges. So the previous funding level from our government was £2.90 that has been increased to £3.20 so just very marginally above the 10%. I think as Chris said in terms of the level of funding increase, clearly that's 10% over a multi-year period when we've had pay awards for several years in double digits for the lower grades on our structure. So a lot of those catering staff have had upwards of 20% in terms of pay, you know recognising cost of living but the funding in respect of that and in respect of the inflation on food prices which we've all felt, all our citizens have felt in terms of those increases has far outstripped the level of that increase but at least it has gone up a bit. Ok, thank you Randall. Paul? Yeah, specifically in relation then to the vacant header service post, that of course is Jason Jones' post. As with all vacant posts we are looking at whether it can be provided a different way or repeated like for like so that work is currently ongoing. So as and when that final decision is made I'll come back to the committee on it. Ok, thank you. Okie dokie, on Appendix C then, the overall capital programme summary. It's on page 39. Any questions on that sheet? Larry Derek? You're on mute. Thank you, Chair. I was just wondering if the Pentra hour project is on schedule and on budget, please? Chris? On schedule, there is a slight movement as a consequence of weather but it's the original contract will end mid-November and I think there's a drift couple of weeks from my last update. But we are on the program at the moment to clarify exactly the outcome position. Weather has caused some issues in the winter period. There has also been some issues in terms of, well, unknown dock walls actually under the ground that actually have to be dealt with. But it's within the con period in terms of the moment but there will be a slight variation but it's talking weeks really which is to be expected on a contract this size. As far as budget is concerned, yes, it is within budget at the moment monitored on a monthly basis. Thank you, Chris. That's great. Okay, thanks, Derek. Back to Appendix D then, page 40. Page 41. Page 42. And page 43. That includes Appendix D. Moving on to Appendix E. Regeneration for our areas. Starting on page 45. Page 46. Appendix E. Moving on then to the Appendix F. Copped services, started on page 49. Page 51. Sorry, Chair. On page 50, could I ask the people management division the reason for the variance? I don't think any of the alignments are taking place but to date the allocation of this proposal has not been provided against specific posts within the division. Could I ask what does that actually mean? I don't mean to be rude but I'm just intrigued really on what that actually means. Thank you. I was going to answer that. Yeah, the realignment. There's been a realignment within the division and the work on that Gareth is so we have been reallocating duties. It hasn't quite finished. But we are getting there. As I said, there's no intention of being rude at all, it's just out and around the posts. Okay. Thank you. Moving on then from page 52. On to page 53. And the final page, page 54. Okay, no questions then. If I can have a mover and a seconder, we're happy to accept the revenue and capital budget reports. Seconded by Gareth and if all members can raise their hands to show that we're happy to accept the report. That's unanimous. Thank you very much. Moving on then to agenda item five, commercialisation strategy starting in page 55 of the pack. The commercialisation strategy has been developed to provide a more strategic approach to the development and implementation of income generation activities across the council. Income generation commercialisation is one of the key priorities within the council's transformation strategy and can play a vital role in helping to mitigate the impact of the significant budget challenges that the council is likely to continue to face in the short to medium term. I don't know who's going to report who's going to take us through this. The council already operates in the commercial market in a range of diverse services, e.g. leisure services, theatres, car parks, garden waste and grounds maintenance. However, more and more councils are seeking to become more innovative and ambitious in their approach to commercialisation in search of new ways of generating income given the challenge that we are operating in. As an authority, we need to maximise any opportunity to generate income so that the service cuts that our trade unions colleagues refer to are minimised and thereby safeguarding jobs. An increasing number of local authorities in the UK are seeking to adopt a more commercial approach to the delivery of council services as a way of providing for a more sustainable approach to dealing with the ongoing challenges of shrinking budgets and increasing demands. The Orange Vale study on commercialisation in local government October 20 identified the local councils looking at different ways of making savings, safeguarding services and generating income. Commercialisation is consequently becoming more important for councils. John and the team have done some great work in relation to the integrating commercialisation into the culture of the organisation for reasons that I believe are self-evident. We have also been working with our current cohort of future leaders and this area of work has been the basis for a future leader project led by Ben Cuthrins as part of the Council Future Leaders Programme. Ben is here with us today to give us a presentation share. On a personal level it is an incredibly exciting project that will underpin the delivery of agreed actions contained in our transformation strategy, our digital strategy and our workforce strategy. Our approach to commercialisation is forward thinking and to quarter chief executive Wendy we need transformation on steroids if we are going to robustly respond to the challenging financial climate ahead of us. Commercialisation is integral to transformation. Those who were chair I commend the report. Thank you. Through the background why we need the strategy and then take you through the key features of the strategy. If I just share my screen. I am John Owen, transformation manager within people management. For a number of years it has been a key aim and aspiration to see whether we can help the authority generate more income. It really helped the authority mitigate the impact of the significant challenges we faced already in terms of the finances but also likely to face going forward. As Paul mentioned as well we are already doing this to a certain extent. What we are saying is we can do a lot more if it is a little bit more joined up and strategic. With that in mind we asked one of our future leaders. Ben is our flood defence and coastal protection manager who participated in the future leader development programme a year or so back. As part of that programme they were asked to lead on key strategic projects across the organisation. Ben kindly volunteered to take on commercialisation. His task was to go around to speak to key individuals across the authority. Directors, heads of service, chief executive, members, etc to test out what is the appetite for commercialisation with a view to generate more income. What would we need to do to get us there. Ben will take you through that this morning as part of the first part of the presentation. I will then take members through the actual features of what a commercial strategy means and what does it mean in practice for the authority. As John mentioned I picked up the commercialisation project as part of the future leaders. A lot of the work I did was speaking to the senior leaders and managers within the authority and understanding what their position was with regards to commercialisation and what was being done. The first slide paints the picture of where the conversation started with regards to this. A lot of the discussions initially were about what commercialisation was. As John mentioned it is being done across the authority at different levels but I think it is fair to say that different people had a different idea of what commercialisation was. There are a couple of examples on the slide there. The English Oxford Dictionary for example says that commercialisation is managing or running something for financial gain. Not really where we want to be as a public authority and the next definition down is an AI generated version of that which is the process of maximising commercial value of public assets to generate income. That is far more the space that we want to be in. It is about maximising what we have to achieve multiple goals not just the financial. It is fair to say that lots of people have different ideas on this which is why the definition and the work needed to be done. Where that conversation headed and ended up was commercialisation is more about charging the market rate for our services but providing value to the citizens, businesses and visitors. We then discussed what areas we would be happy to operate in and where our risk appetite lay. Where there are gaps in the services that the citizens' commands are needed we would happily step into those. Where commercialisation activities were for the benefit of our citizens, businesses and visitors we would want to move into that space. In addition to what their finding of commercialisation was, it was key to offer the opportunity for people to say what it wasn't or where they were less comfortable. That then brought to light the following points which were we didn't want to routinely compete against local SMEs. We did not want to go outside the boundary of command and we should focus within that and not diversify outside the sectors that we are comfortable in as an authority. As John mentioned commercialisation is ongoing in other authorities especially in England and those rules are not always applied to other authorities and there are good and bad examples of that. So that's where we are for the moment. So after the conversations with approximately 30 senior leaders, heads of service, there was a lot of information gathered. I don't expect you to read what's on the screen word for word but there was a lot of information that came in so I put together a thematic analysis of that. From that derived a couple of key questions which I then fed back to the people I had interviewed just to boil down all the information that had come in. The first question quite simply was asking the people that I had interviewed and spoken to in their opinion what was needed to move forward with the commercialisation ambitions of the council. There were several options. There was a strategy trying to manage the bureaucracy, some legal clarity, KPIs and good practice. So what came back as the favoured option was the development of a strategy which would bring numerous things in with it which included the definition that I just discussed. It would pull together maybe some of the vision that the authority wants, the strategic vision as John mentioned, political clarity and legal clarity. So that's the slide that's on the screen there. So the strategy as we envisage it encompasses those key points which were what the senior managers wanted to see. The next point that was raised was more about how could we move into a commercial space when the barrier is the bureaucracy and the way we operate. So again it's taken on consideration that we would look to see if we could streamline the governance in some way to make it a more speedy and a more streamlined process. We could look at various options of maybe moving the governance, however the flip side of that coin is a lot of people view the governance process that we have in place as a positive and they view that in the fact that there's robust procedures in place and the decision making is robust and overseen by committees such as yourselves. So that was viewed as both a positive and a negative. The legal position, mine just saw clarity on that. As it happened Robert Edgecombe was very clear on what the position was as regards to commercialisation. Notes had been produced previously and I think there was probably some myths in circulation about what could and couldn't be done. So quite clearly that's purely a communication and maybe some training which I'll touch upon on the next slide. Support services were highlighted as being critical to supporting teams moving to the commercial areas and commercial space that we envisaged and they wanted to be in. There was positive and negative comments with regards to support services but I think the overriding feedback was that we cannot operate without them, that they are needed in order to support the operational teams and all teams move forward. Therefore the action from that was to understand and scale up or scale down as a coordinator the support services that are needed for each commercialisation venture. So lots of discussion on how we do that and that will probably come out in the fullness of time. Another thing that was raised was key performance indicators. I think they surprised me as much as anyone else. But many of the senior managers felt that in order to prioritise and to focus more on commercialisation it would be really useful to have KPIs, PIMs, whatever you want to call them in order to drive that priority focus forward. Some of the key feedback out from that was what then becomes the target. Commercialisation would tend to focus on financial and monetary value but that's not the situation, the space we're in. We have to look at maybe some value based metrics to go alongside that, customer satisfaction, consumer numbers etc. So as John mentioned, a lot of this work was a mechanism to share good practice and there's lots of good work going on in various teams and divisions around the authority. I think John will touch upon that the position we'd like to move to will help do this. A lot of the work I've done already has been linking people together just by having discussions with people and talking about what I've come across that is happening. Sort of organically by itself, people who might not have understood who's doing what now are more aware and I think that happens with various committees and meetings such as this. But there is an idea afoot maybe to have an ideas hub or a pool to look at best ways to share those things. Last slide or two, communication was key. As I just mentioned, people are doing work and they are doing really good things but in order to move that forward and to cement change it needs to be followed up with really positive communications and a really clear message as to why we're moving in this direction. The majority of our conversations that we had were positive but there are obviously negatives within that which have been discussed and some of my work was looking at how we manage those negatives by highlighting the positive rather than focusing on the negative. As I've put on the slide there, there's force field analysis and some swap and toes analysis which can go to back that up. And the final point is it was identified that training was needed. So as I mentioned, there's many teams that were doing really good work and are really steeped in moving forward with commercialization. But there's other senior managers, tier fours that are maybe not as skilled or as confident as others. So a key part of going forward is to bring some training into the organization to stress test where we are and to raise the awareness of commercialization and to make sure that all our senior managers and managers are skilled to move this forward. Thank you. So what I intend to do now chair is just take members through the strategy and really to outline how we've built on Ben's work to get where we are today in terms of having this first commercial strategy for the organization. But just to set the scene a little bit more in terms of what it means for a local council, commercialization is quite a general term, but what does it actually mean for the local council? And it's not new for us. We've been doing this for many years. A number of our services have been charging for those services for decades. You know, let's not forget that. We've also recently introduced new services. A lot of those services have become more commercial as well. If you look at leisure with the specific expertise that they developed in that area in the last couple of years. And as a result of that, the changes, the facilities, the income they generated proves the benefits that commercialization can bring in terms of generating income, but also helping the authority deliver on its wider strategic aims and objectives. It just in some areas, it means the authority just being a little bit more businesslike in terms of how it operates, just having a perhaps more better understanding of the relationship between costs and income and where we do have charges. For example, as a minimum, if we can make sure that we cover costs when we set those charges. So those are quite simple ways of becoming more commercial. But of course, we know that you can also be a little bit more adventurous. And of course, we understand the risks in this particular area. Now, we're not saying we are adopting what we call an English potentially style to commercialization, where a number of English authorities have perhaps come a cropper, particularly in terms of perhaps being too ambitious pre-COVID and then COVID hit and they really suffered as a result of that. And I think we're not saying we intend to adopt some of those practices. And that's why we are proposing we have robust governance arrangements to make sure that whatever we're proposing fits with the ambitions and appetite for commercialization across the authority. And of course, we're constrained by legislation anyway, which is different to England. There are a lot more freedoms in England for local authorities, a lot more commercial powers there. But with us, for certain services, they can't charge at all. OK, so the first step is, can you charge? And if you can charge, there are certain bits of legislation which determine what can make up that charge. Sometimes you're allowed to generate profit, sometimes you can only cover your costs. And the third element is, if you can charge and you can generate income, where can that income be used? And again, legislation dictates in some areas, such as parking, transport, we're constrained of how we can use that legislation, so funding. So, you know, there are certain parameters which we intend to work in, legislation being the first one, obvious one. But secondly, our own risk parameters in terms of our appetite for commercialization as an authority. So in terms of the strategy, yes, what we'd like to do is generate income, reduce our costs, make better use of our assets to become more financially sustainable. But we'd like to do that in a way that safeguards and enhances our wider strategic aims and objectives. Because let's not forget, and the bottom point there emphasizes that, we are not a private sector organization. We are a public sector organization who may want to adopt private sector type practices, which will serve the residents of Comarnature better. So the key aims of the strategy would, one, become a more commercially focused organization. And this is changing the culture and mindset of the organization of managers and members to allow us to be a little bit more open to, perhaps, income generating initiatives to allow us to sustain our services moving forward from a financial perspective and also allow us to achieve wider strategic objectives as well. The second bit is about optimizing our commercial performance, and I will run through what that means in terms of what type of activity we could adopt to optimize our commercial performance. And then the third bit, which is probably the most important bit, is having appropriate governance and oversight arrangements in place to make sure whatever we do fits the appetite, risk appetite and ambition for the authority, and we don't overextend ourselves. So in terms of the first theme, first objective, this would be to roll out a comprehensive learning development program for all our heads of service, directors heads of service, third tier, fourth tier managers potentially, and including elected members as well possibly. So they are aware of how perhaps to better identify commercial opportunities and how to develop and implement those and monitor those to make sure that they're delivering on what they intended to deliver on. So hopefully this will be rolled out through the course of the remainder of this year. This will help us develop, as I say, more of a commercial mindset and culture and hopefully will allow colleagues across the authority to share ideas in good practice. Something that's used in transport, could we adopt something similar in other services, for example. So just to take members through what it actually means in practice and what we're proposing. So the first bit would be about what I mentioned previously about just being more businesslike about how we set our fees and charges. So our current income and charging policy, which has been in place for a few years now, already states that yes, fees and charges should go up by inflation, but it also states that as a minimum we should be looking to cover our costs where we can. Now in some areas we know that's not going to be possible. For example, if we look to cover all our charges in relation to swimming fees, we would be charging, say, £15 a swim. That's not feasible, we understand that. So we have to be sensible about how we adopt this, but in other areas it's quite clear from the work we've done so far that perhaps lack of knowledge out in services, because the majority of fees and charges have just had an inflation increase year on year, and perhaps there's a lack of proper understanding where those actually cover the costs of delivering those services. So we've started a program of work where we're working with services at the moment, and we've been into about four or five services and working with those, and in one area we've already identified perhaps potential for over a £80,000 to £100,000 increase in income generated from fees and charges just by applying a cost recovery approach. The second area there would be about expanding and introducing new services. So firstly would be can we expand our existing provision to generate more income, and the other bit would be could we enter new areas of work to generate more income as well. And we've got some examples there where members of staff told us, well, you know, we currently externalise this service to external contractors, could we do it ourselves. And hopefully through the training program that we have with managers across the organisation, we'll identify more and more of these type of opportunities. Selling services to other authorities, we already do this in quite a few areas. Occupational health is one, our minerals and waste services is another. So this is where other authorities who have struggled to recruit staff over the years have come to us and saying, look, you're perhaps deemed as a bit of a centre of excellence in this area, can you provide a service on behalf of us. So we're not saying in these areas we actually go and bid for work, and sometimes we will, but in most cases, for the examples there I've identified, it's about people coming to us and saying can you provide the service on our behalf. And we've identified there may be other opportunities for us to do this as well in those areas identified there, ecology, valuation, translation, for example. We're only spending quite a bit of money, as Paul mentioned, on agency, but consultants is another area that we spend money on. In some cases, we may only want a bit of expertise on a short-term basis, so it may be right to do that. But when we're spending money long-term in an area, is there a potential that we could actually insource that function into a cheaper in-house. So that would be another opportunity we'll explore as part of the implementation of the strategy. Assets and land, we're already very commercial in terms of how we use our industrial assets, our retail property and agricultural portfolio. But is there an opportunity we could perhaps be a lot more commercial again perhaps by joining this up with a commercial strategy and have another look at what we can do in this area. Net zero carbon, of course we've heard about other authorities who've perhaps gone down what we would say are quite big initiatives in this area, perhaps risky initiatives in terms of adopting renewable energy initiatives potentially using the private sector. What we highlight in there is just flagging it. We're not saying that's what we intend to do. We say, look, we need to look at all options, but do this in quite a safe way, which, as I say, fits with our risk appetite. Advertising and sponsorship, we're just about to launch the advertising on random ground schemes. So this is where we plan to allow external companies to advertise on our roundabouts. So we've got plans for about currently about 20 roundabouts. We're just about to launch it for the first two. But this will allow us to offer a package of opportunities to companies who come to us and say, look, not only can you perhaps advertise on our roundabouts, you can also perhaps advertise in Pembroke, Country Park or leisure centres. And we see this as a big opportunity to generate more income via that wider package. There's also the opportunity to perhaps introduce these gateway signs. I know Gloucester, for example, introduced it for their city where they've got Gloucester as the sign and it's sponsored by Cheltenham and Gloucester underneath. So there is an opportunity for some of our key towns to adopt that approach as well where it's appropriate, of course, and we will be developing a policy to underpin that. Contract management, people obviously see contract as about spending money rather than income, but contract management is a key part of commercialisation as well. Just making sure that we're getting value for money for the money that we spend with external providers. So what we plan to do over the course of the next year via the commercial strategy is do a health check across our top 25 contracts, just making sure that there are proper contract monitoring arrangements in place and that we hold in those suppliers to account for what they said they would deliver for us in terms of the quality and the cost, etc. And there's a potential to achieve better value for money from that work. And the final element there is about work that's already commenced, you know, for a number of years now. We've adopted a far more robust approach to our debt recovery processes and we've invested additional resources in this area initially back in 2016. More recently, a year or so ago back, and this has allowed us to recover far more debt than we would have previously at a far quicker pace then. Just by introducing two members of staff, well, I think one member of staff, I think, Chris, into one of your debt recovery teams, just by picking up the phone and speaking to people just before it becomes a formal exercise has allowed us to recover 1.8 million in nine months. So that is significant and we think we can do a lot more in that particular area by adopting perhaps a more strategic and joined up approach via the strategy. So the last element, Chair, is about, as I mentioned, perhaps the most important bit is making sure that whatever we do, it doesn't break the law and it also fits with our… Chris is so happy about that. Always happy with that statement. Well, it really fits, as I said, with what we want to do as an authority in terms of we are a public sector organization, we're not private sector. What we intend to do should help us support in delivering services to our residents in a better way as well as generating income, so that's ideally what we'd like to do. And in that sense, then, we would develop appropriate governance arrangements via a commercial board, so senior officers would have oversight of high-level business cases where services want to introduce new commercial initiatives. They would be required to go through a stage process where they may initially come along with an idea, they'd be expected to go away and firm up that with developing like a more detailed business case, but the final element would be a fully costed business case to demonstrate this was the right thing to do for Commandership Council. So the next steps, Chair, hopefully in the next few months, once this hopefully goes through the political process, we'll adopt a commercial strategy. Feeding on from that will be a delivery plan, which will allow us to actually implement some of the initiatives that have identified within the presentation. And then we will also make sure we've got the governance arrangements set up via a commercial board in the next few months or various discussions with Chris on what that could look like. And Paul has mentioned, we've already started realigning our capacity with the transformation team to make sure we can support on this challenging agenda with one we think can really deliver benefits for the Council. Chair, I'd just like to come in and say that this piece of work, which is a consequence of the Future Leaders course and the work that Ben kicked off, I think it sort of highlighted the need for this commercialization strategy. As much as we've, over the years, we've actually had an income charging policy and we've got a lot, as John has said, we've got a lot of charging taking place in various areas, industrial states, service level agreements, leisure, etc. This commercialization strategy gives us more of a bedrock to work on in future in terms of taking forward policies and widening the thinking. And this needs to be, in my mind, needs to be sort of implanted across all departments as something to bear in mind. There will be times when we will have to consider where the risks come against the rewards because we are a local authority and we've got to keep that in mind and we've got to make sure that actually it's not a case of implementing a commercialization strategy just to charge wherever possible and run over any of the electorate or any of the policies. And there are times when there's a balance between providing a free service as opposed to charging. But I think this will form a good basis for moving forward in the future. And I would like to thank certainly John and Ben for the work that they've put in to sort of develop in this and working this up link to the income commercialization work stream that we've got in the authority to get to this point. And it would be useful to take any comments on board in finalizing the strategy really to take forward which will go forward then to cabinet for further consideration. Thank you, Chair. I'll try and be sort of diplomatic on this one. But I think Chris and Randall have been crystal clear in terms of the expectations of the authority and the challenges, the financial challenges in front of us. If we don't transform, we're not going to survive bluntly. So I think this element of the commercialization strategy forms an integral part of the transformation strategy. It also aligns itself to the digital strategy, the AI strategy and ultimately the workforce strategy. But this is an exciting agenda and I think what this strategy does is give the authority clarity in terms of what it can do and what it can't do. You know, we're not risk averse but as John has said, you know, we're not going to be reckless far from it. So we are going to be, you know, the research work that's been done and I will say we are now seeing the benefits of the Future Leaders Program because you recall what I said earlier, we had Steph Thomas in Chris' area in Revenues who's done a really good piece of work in terms of agency. Ben, in terms of the work he's been doing now is, you know, it's superlative work and that's what we're trying to inculcate into the culture of the organization. We've got to be more commercial, otherwise we're not going to survive. So I'm really happy with the work that's been ongoing, Chair. Thank you. Councillor Hughes? Yeah, just to echo the sentiments, really what Chris and Paul have said, really. And mainly to thank the officers for the hard work they've done in this strategy, really, both Ben and John, really. It's everybody, if they've pulled together quite a good piece of work here and I think it's important that we look at it and try to do it to the best of our ability. John. Okay, thank you. I think we've had a fairly comprehensive introduction there. So before I open it up to members, just to pick up on what Chris said to reinforce, we're not here to receive this today. We're here to potentially make amendments as well, okay, because this is a pre-Cabinet report, so just to make members aware of that. So if there's any burning changes, anywhere you think should be needed, then they'll be taken on board and we can recommend the Cabinet that that be done. Okay, I can see some members already. Jean? Thank you very much, Chair. I'll just turn to Welsh. I would like to say thank you very much for the presentation. It looks to be an exciting presentation and an exciting strategy and I think the strategy that offers services and additional income is something that we welcome. We realize, of course, that we need to be competitive, but also I did like the fact that you said it's more similar to businesses in the way that we provide services and that is to be welcomed also. So thank you very much and I'm looking forward to seeing what will develop over the next few months. Okay, thank you, Jean. Terry? First off, my apologies, I've had internet problems and I've told a lot of the presentation, so I may be asking a daft question here. Does this mean we'll be in a position to capitalize on a venture in the private sector for commercial gain? So my apologies for not being in the meeting right through, but I've had major problems recently and I've lost you again. Did you manage to catch that? Yep, John? I think I got the question, Chair, but forgive me if I need to come back in if the Councillor wants to emphasise again. In terms of adopting private sector practices, I think yes, we will do that where appropriate. We are dictated by legislation in a great deal of our services whether we can charge at all, but also what we can charge in terms of can we just charge to cover our costs. But there is legislation for some services and they are in the minority, which allows them to generate a profit. For other services which are not allowed to do that, of course we have the option of introducing what we call standalone company to allow them to have more freedom to adopt a more commercial approach in terms of generating profit. We got one in terms of delta wellbeing, which is proving to be very successful, so that's an example of where we are perhaps adopting private sector practices, which allows us to generate income, but also allows us to support our wider health and wellbeing objectives as well. If I hear Terry correctly, he asked about capitalising on a commercial venture. I think the answer is to some extent, yes, we can do it, but it will need to be balanced. This won't give us any more powers over and above what the powers are in the legislation, and the powers in the legislation is you can't make profits on some services, but bear in mind then we do have done in the past and we will in the future. We do look at regeneration schemes and we do capitalise on those type of schemes in terms of forward planning, in terms of potentially buying properties, if we think that they are in the right place for regeneration. It's a little bit balanced, if I understand your question correctly, and as John mentioned, we have got a class in delta, which is one, but the other one where we will be looking at a certain amount of commercialisation around waste, etc., is the com-environmental as well. But yes, it will be, but it will be balanced, linked to risks and challenges. Okay, thank you, Chris. Tony, did you want to come back in? Yes, please. I'm thinking more on the leisure side of our sector, if we could capitalise on that and then go out for profit on certain activities and, I'm saying, give you an example, Wales hasn't got a caravan show in it, England has about 10 all successful. Wales has never had the caravan show and the opportunity there is huge for Pembroke Country Park. That sort of venture, I'm thinking of. Open, coming through, clear. Yes, very clear, and I think the scope is for those type of things. Leisure would look at those, I would say yes. Brilliant, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Okay, thank you, Terry. Okay, Kim. Okay, thank you, Chair. Yes, the strategy here is very high level, so the nitty-gritty is where actually the scrutiny needs to come in. We do need to be more agile in some of the decision making, which can take a very, very long time to get through currently. So, the concern that I do have is around the governance to ensure that it is still there and is still effective, but without hindering decision making to an extent. Because we've all had examples of within sort of the past 10 years where commercialisation has been attempted and has cost councils a large amount of money. I think any of those risks around that should be picked up by the Commercialisation Board, which is part of the governance structure that John referred to. And it shouldn't get through to members as a proposal if there are any risks that are actually Kim has mentioned in there, I would say. Yes, I tend to agree with that. And also, I mean, this report is a very high level report, which is quite right in terms of the scrutiny. In terms of scrutiny, there's not a lot here for us to do much with today, other than to either agree or disagree with the proposal of commercialisation, really. Gareth? Would it be accurate to state that you'd have more scope with discretionary services rather than statutory services? Would that be a very accurate assumption? Yes, I would have thought that's a reasonable assumption, Gareth. Thank you. Because when it comes to leisure, for instance, which has been quoted several times, obviously that's discretionary and there's loads of scope there. But when you get social care, which is far more descriptive, or provision of education, for instance, obviously that would be a different argument. If I go back to Ben's opening screen, actually, I think the issue in my mind here is a definitional issue. The very first slide had the Oxford Dictionary definition. And I think on a presentation point of view, we have to have the essential that we get that definition absolutely right, whatever definition we come up with. And I think as a general statement, perhaps a question at this stage, would be it brings a lot of things together, even though it's called commercialisation. In the same breath, income generation, the innovation strategy, the efficiency programme, the transformation strategy is all basically mentioned in the same breath. And we're doing all this already. And certainly in the communities department, leisure, I would argue, already operates on a commercial basis. Pembroke country park is a good example, which is used to cross subsidise in many ways, a lot of services that the council will never be able to make a profit on, particularly on museums and libraries. So a lot of this is going on. And in fairness and credit to the authority, that same department are already purchasing and establishing their own private children's homes and in fact a potential nursing home as well. So they're operating, they moved into basically trying to address a broken national market for the provision of services to very vulnerable children. So I think in credit to the authority, we're already way down the path with Delta as well and an arm's length waste disposal company. So the question I'm really asking is, what does this bring to the table that we're actually not undertaking at the moment? With a specific question, a supplementary question of, are we satisfied that we already have the processes and the culture in place to capture all our operational and managerial staff's ideas of how to eliminate waste and inefficiency and basically provide what we all strive to do, which is very efficient and productive services. So a lot of questions are there, so I'd be really interested in some of the responses. Thank you, Gareth. John? In terms of what this brings to the table, I think what it does do, it just pulls everything together in a far more joined up way. And the next step from this will be the development of a delivery plan. So it's translating that document into actual delivery of particular projects, initiatives, which we can take forward over the next year or so. But going back to Councillor John's point about how we can get these initiatives in the first place, these ideas, you know, this is the key focus going forward in the next couple of months will be developing a training program for managers across the organisation, but also us going out and speaking to people as a service managers further more than we've done already because we've already done this and we've already got a list of 50, 60 potential ideas, which we could translate into some kind of further development of actual initiatives. So there's a lot of work already done in terms of identifying potential areas. But what we're hoping is that once managers have gone through the training program, it will develop a bit of a spark in terms of, oh, I didn't realise I could do that. This is something we can do. And that will spark even more interest and ideas coming forward. So that will build on what we've already got to date. OK, thanks. Welcome back then. So have we got mechanisms in place to capture your teams, the operational staff's ideas? Because in my experience, people who operate the system tend to know where the inefficiencies are. So how are those, everyone has a view, obviously, you know, there's been some ideas better than others, but are we satisfied that we've got that flow of ideas that obviously are essential in feeding into this sort of process? Yeah, one of the examples we highlighted there of things we could potentially insource a little bit more was ASHDAI back. And that came from, I think, discussion that Chris had with the trade unions and operatives, where they said, well, why are we spending money perhaps on external providers? Could we do this ourselves? So on the back of that, Chris suggested, I think perhaps we need a lot more engagement with the frontline as part of ideas, not just for commercialisation, for efficiencies transformation in general. So we've held some corporate staff roadshows in areas like depots in the course of the autumn and spring. And what we're planning to do is part of the transformation programme is go specifically to teams within depots as part of what we call layer two box talks on a weekly or monthly basis to actually get more specific ideas of what could be done in this area and other areas of transformation. So yes, it is definitely an area we're looking to tap into. Excellent. Thank you, John. Sorry, Jay, if I'm hogging this. To get back to the definitional issue, have we got the right definition? I suppose no definition is right or wrong really. It's what we do in terms of becoming more commercial. If members got suggestions of how we think we can develop something that's most succinct and appropriate to command and share as a strapline, we're welcome to receive that. But ultimately, we've set out a series of aims and objectives of what we look to achieve. And hopefully, the work is undertaken over the next year or so will actually deliver on that. And my final question, I promise. There's no mention of AI in this document whatsoever. I would have thought that AI, for instance, would be absolutely centering in driving any efficiency programme. So I assume that it will tie into the AI strategy. Thank you. So just before John comes in, Paul, you indicated you wanted to come in. Yeah, I was going back to one of the questions Gareth asked in terms of what's the purpose of the strategy. The examples that Gareth cited in terms of where we are being commercial, what the strategy is going to do is actually widen it. So it becomes almost a mindset because we've got examples corporately of good practice. It just needs to be expanded. So that's one of the purposes of the strategy is giving that clarity on, I think, in terms of the flow of ideas. Yeah, it starts with corporate management team that heads a service and it should put it down on paper. And I'd also mention, I think it was John was talking about the trade unions. We have engaged with them on this and they have come up with some ideas themselves where we've got officers who are trained to do X, Y and Z. Why don't we use them? So we're trying to engage widely and as John has said, we do have these toolbox topics. And it's not just the manager saying, it's the people, Gareth, who are delivering at the sharp end, which to my mind makes sense. Gareth Jones, Chief Digital Officer. Just on Gareth's question around AI. So AI absolutely is part of our transformation strategy and it's part of our digital strategy. We will in the summer be developing a dedicated AI strategy as well. All of those strategies and all of our plans align to what John's presented this morning. They support and underpin each other. There's a synergy there between them all. Just broadly, a point around digital and commercialization. So the industry for us, if I provide some context in terms of how this helps us as a digital service, the industry has evolved over recent years, as I'm sure you'll understand. We used to build and host lots of technical solutions internally. We've had to evolve along with the digital industry of the UK and the world really. Where we now build slightly less internally, software, systems, infrastructure and we now procure at least monthly and annually lots of our products and services. We've had to evolve our workforce to become less technical in some areas and more commercially minded. We've successfully done that but there's a long, long way to go. Whilst there is an income generation there, directly there isn't, we do need to work with John. We need to align to this strategy. We welcome all of the support and governance and frameworks that come with it because it helps us continue to deliver value for money through the leasing and contract management of digital services. There's inevitably efficiency and value for money there for the taxpayers and the manager. Okay, thank you guys. Derek? Thank you Giles and thank you very much for the report. It's an excellent report. I think that obviously TIC's been looking at process for a long time. I seem to remember quite a few years ago that we actually saved seven days on voice just by changing the process of actually letting someone know from a letter to a text. And actually saved seven days and that was seven days rent which is a huge amount of money across the board. But those processes I think sometimes tend to fall back into what people are comfortable with rather than what they should be doing and that is a concern to me. However, this particular report, I do believe that this has to be transformative. I don't think we should just be looking at just replacing the systems. I think we need to literally evolve the systems, evolve across units, evolve across silos. We are terribly siloed. We do a lot of duplication. We always have done and that has to be looked at as well. So there's some sort of basics up there that really has to be looked at. So for instance, there are areas where we probably need care workers across education and social health which we haven't got but we're still employing commercially. So should those people be brought in house? Should we have a bank in house? And that wouldn't just go over one department, it would go over more than one department. So I think that is really, really important. With Delta what we did find, it started off down one route to actually perform a service, to replace a service but actually evolved and evolved quite quickly into doing other things as well. So I think the actual analysis of this has to be looked forward. So it's actually going through that. I do see also this going across departments very much is part of AI and what AI should be doing. That information, as we've said time and time again, we're data rich but information poor. We're not putting it all together and that's all we have to do. And I believe that this should be a method of doing that. Can you assure me that these are the sorts of things that you are looking at within this but it's not actually sort of in the report itself? Thank you. Yeah, a lot of the things that Councillor Cundey referred to there may not be in the strategy here but certainly a part of the wider transformation programme. We've got eight work streams which virtually covers every service and authority. So just to reassure that yes, the work is ongoing and more importantly it's all joined up to make sure that we limit the potential for duplication, particularly in the areas of work that we do in support in services. Yeah, just adding again to what John was saying. You will recall from what Ben said in his presentation, you know, you were specific in terms of the ability to monitor progress using relevant KPIs etc. But on top of that also, this is going to be sort of fed back to the transformation board and all the directors are part of that. But I think wherever we do, we have to be very clear and I do agree with what Derek is saying that we've got lots of data, but we are perhaps information poor. There's a change and I think this has happened over the last six months in terms of corporately where we are. We are being far more analytical and rightly so. So in terms of an assurance Derek, I can give you that, that there is a refocusing just so we are careful and clear about what the outcomes are for us. Otherwise we're wasting our time. Can I just quickly come back Charles? Thank you. I do think this is actually a golden opportunity. I totally agree. It is that point that we need to look more into the future than just on replacing systems. That's what I'm trying to say. We need to be doing something extra because it's only by doing extra that we're going to change things. Just replacing it by whatever means of trying to commercialise it isn't necessarily going to give us down track that sustainability that we were absolutely desperate for. We need to be ahead of other councils on things like this moving forward. I'm not a great believer in saying all other councils are affected by this. Yes, they are. But that's really not my concern. My concern is making this one better. But I think we can and I have total faith and look forward to it. Thanks. Okay. Thank you, Derek. I can't see any other councils with their hands up. Just to say as well, from my point of view, this is something that's obviously the future so we've got to embrace it and go with it. But in terms of, I've not been parochial, but I've had two examples recently where contractors have turned up to schools and done things that they shouldn't have done and then put in bills which are inflated. So we need to make sure that we look after what we've got as well. They were challenged and in one instance there was an argument between a caretaker and a contractor's manager over why the work had been done and just decided to have been done off somebody's whim. So we've got to look after what we've got as well. But that's nothing to do with this strategy. So in terms of, we haven't made any amendments to it, so can I have a proposal and a seconder that we're happy for this commercialization strategy to go back to cabinet as is? Derek, seconded by Jean and then if all members can raise their hands to show that we're in favor of doing that, sending it back to cabinet as is. Okay, I think that's unanimous. Thank you very much. Moving on then to agenda item six. Starting in page 71 of the pack, article 6.2 of the county council's constitution requires all scrutiny committees to develop and publish annual forward plans that identify issues and reports to be considered during the course of the next year. This report has been compiled following the committee's recent informal session and sets up the forward plan up to April 2025. So unless there are any comments, I know there are some new members who weren't part of that, but we had an informal session where we've agreed a few things. We've also got a task and finish going on at the minute into the contact center, which will maybe be slightly delayed because of our colleague being unwell and we understand the pressures on the DSU unit. But that standing is everybody happy with the forward work program as it stands, and if so, can I have a proposer and a seconder that will be happy to accept the forward work program. Kim, seconded by Gareth, and if all members can raise their hands. Okay, thank you. That's unanimous. Moving on then to agenda item 7. Moving on to agenda item 7 then. To silence the correct record of the minutes of the meeting of the committee. Fourth coming items. No. Sorry, so my agenda item 7 or my script is wrong. Okay, so forthcoming items. Members have had a chance to look at the forthcoming items coming up for July the ninth. Starting on page 91, everybody's had a chance to look at it. Is everybody happy to receive the forthcoming items report? Can I have a mover and a seconder if we are? Kim, seconded by Dot, and if all members can raise their hands. Show their favor of receiving them. Thank you. And then moving on to the final agenda item. The minutes. Yes. So signs the correct record the minutes of the meeting held on the 17th of April, 2024. So, unless anybody's got any amendments, can I have a mover and a seconder? Dot, and if all members can raise their hands, show they're happy with those minutes. Okay, thank you. That's unanimous. If there be no other business, I declare the meeting closed. Thank you, councillors and officers. Enjoy the rest of your day. [BLANK_AUDIO]