Transcript

Welcome to this meeting. My name is Councillor Crichard and I'm the Chair of the Finance Committee. Members of the Committee, I'm going to ask you to introduce yourselves briefly, starting on my left with the Deputy Chair. If you could switch your microphone on. Hello, Councillor Sean Lawless, Tooting Broadway Ward. Thank you. Good evening, Councillor Jeremy Ambash, West Putney Ward. Evening, Claire Fraser, South Ballum. Evening, Councillor Steve Worrall, Shaftesbury & Queenstown Ward. Okay. Good evening, Ali Richards-Jones, Conservative Councillor for Northcote Ward and Leader of the Opposition. Good evening, Councillor Lindsay Hedges of Ballum Ward. Thank you. Councillor Matt Corner of Nine Elms Ward. Peter Graham, Opposition Speaker and Councillor for Wandsworth Common. Thank you. Thank you. And just to say I haven't yet heard anything from Councillor Lee who... Oh, sorry, Councillor Akinola. I have apologies from Councillor Lee. Okay, right, thank you very much. Okay, everybody, the other thing is we have Councillor Akinola and Councillor Akinola at the end and Councillor Ireland in attendance as cabinet members. And we're expecting Councillor Henderson and Councillor Gasser and the Leader of the Council later in the meeting. We also have a number of officers present who will introduce themselves when they address the committee. Any officers participating virtually, please keep your cameras off and your microphones muted until we have come to your item and introduce yourself at that time. Okay, I'm going to first of all take the minutes of the previous meeting and then I'm going to... We've got two sets of minutes for approval from the 27th of February and from the 4th of April. Are these agreed? Agreed. Thank you very much. Then are there any declarations of interest of either pecuniary, other non-registable or registrable interests from anyone in the committee? Brilliant, thank you. I'm going to say that I've had a request from Councillor Peter Graham to take an urgent item to this committee. I've taken advice and I have considered this myself as well and my view is that although the request is important and needs a full response, and I will stress that, I definitely believe that, I don't think this is the place for it here because, Councillor Graham, and I will talk to the chair of General Purposes Committee about making sure this item is on the agenda for a future General Purposes Committee. Councillor Graham, I have said I'm not taking this agenda item just so you're clear, so may I... I don't wish to speak about the agenda item, I wish to speak about the basis for the decision not to include it, but very briefly, which is simply that what you've not said, and so the public will not be aware, is that the monitoring officer has advised that this is not something for this committee because it is within the remit of General Purposes. Now the law states that overview and scrutiny functions cannot be restricted in that way by another committee, that every aspect of the Council's functions must be open to scrutiny by an overview and scrutiny committee. This is the relevant committee. Now I appreciate you've been put in a very difficult position by the monitoring officer, suggesting a view of the law that frankly I regard as unlawful. It is not your place to determine the law, which is why I appreciate you're in a very difficult position, but we have extreme concerns about this when we have a situation where the official declaration of parliamentary election... Hang on, Councillor Graham, one moment. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me, Councillor Graham, I asked you not to tell me what the thing is. Right, I'm just going to say to you very clearly, Councillor Graham, you and I have worked together for a long time, longer than quite a few members of this committee and I have, and you should know that I am perfectly capable, I will take advice, but I could also come to my own view, which is my view about whether this item should have been considered for this committee. I hope you will respect that. I am saying that it is important and I am saying it needs a proper and full response. I do not think this is the time or place to do it. And that is my answer on that item. Given that the Executive has moved to restrict the ability of opposition Councillors to refer matters to special meetings without their approval, will we have an undertaking from the Executive that this will come to a committee and it will come to a committee soon? And which committee? Councillor Graham, what I said was I will talk to the Chair of the General Purposes Committee and I will also take advice and discuss with him as well what I think is the most appropriate time that we need to come to a conclusion when this is discussed. I know that is not the answer that you were hoping for, but is that an answer that... I respect your position as the Chair. As I say, I think you have been put in a very difficult position and I do not attribute any responsibility to you personally for this. Thank you, Councillors. Thank you, Councillor Graham. And I will try and get back to you and your colleagues reasonably quickly. Thank you. Now, what I am going to say as well is this particular committee is unusual for anybody who is watching because we have items that would normally have gone to other overview and scrutiny committees which were cancelled in order to satisfy the requirements of the period of heightened political sensitivity that led up to the general election. To allay any concerns over the nature of some of these items, all those included on this agenda fall within the remit of the Finance overview and scrutiny. Members should note that these items of business were not able to wait until the next committee round and nor was it appropriate to have the decisions made by other means. And I am also going to say as we may have to rearrange the order of the meeting depending on the availability of officers and of the leader because we have got a concurrent housing committee going on at the same time. Brilliant. And I would also remind you we have a lot of items to get through on the agenda so please keep your comments and questions clear and precise. Thank you very much everybody. Okay. So the first item on the agenda is about the London Borough of Culture which I just would say I think we are all really excited that we are going to be next year's London Borough of Culture. Councillor Acanola would you like to say a few words before we go to questions? Thank you Councillor Critchard. Yes we are all pleased about London Borough of Culture. It has been unfortunate that since it was announced we have had two elections so I am aware that some of the councillors around the table may not feel brief but that can't be helped really and I think Mr Evans will say a few words about that in a bit. But the paper essentially is that we need to get going and it is very key to the GLA that our processes are swift so that we can make good movement and so the paper is really asking to delegate responsibility of the budget envelope to the senior responsible officer and myself to deliver the bid and a year of art and culture and I feel that the committee members should have a lot of faith in this process as they have already and continue to deliver very successful ones with arts fringe events just like the one that just went. Thank you. Right thank you Councillor Acanola. OK yeah Councillor Hedges I will take you first because I know you also now have a brief on voluntary in community I understand. Thank you very much chair and I really appreciate that. Everyone has to leave their hands up for one minute so I can work out who has. Do you mind if I ask two questions. So the first one is about governance and that's paragraph 10. We talk about in terms of governance and the dedicated London Borough of Culture partnership board. The paragraph mentions key council reps, residents etc. So the first question is how will you source and who will you decide what is the process in deciding who goes on the board. And then the second one is to do with paragraph 18. We talk about extracting one hundred and thirty thousand pounds from the Wandsworth grant fund. So I'm also with my grants brief opposition spokesperson hat on and also it comes under paragraph 19 as well. Just wanted to understand what the proposals mean. Does this mean and mean that you'll take the one hundred and thirty thousand pounds from the Wandsworth grant fund and we won't allocate anything more in terms of those rounds that were due to be awarded towards the end of the year. Thank you. OK. Mr Evans. I think Mr Evans. Oh sorry. Just to say that last point. So when I when I mentioned the one hundred thirty thousand pounds being taken out the Wandsworth grant fund. I meant to say so that that some if it is taken out not used for grants that will be scrutinized at the grants committee. Does this mean that the one hundred thirty thousand pounds won't be scrutinized in the usual way. OK. Thank you Councillor Hedges. Mr Evans. Thank you Chair and John Evans Assistant Chief Executive and I'm here on behalf of Anna Pothici. Executive Director of Children's Services who is the senior responsible officer for taking forward an exciting London Borough of Culture 2025 in Wandsworth. So just picking up the governance point now obviously strong collaborative governance and partnership governance is absolutely key for delivering on this program. And we've been clear about that all along and that governance and partnership group is being established at the moment and it will comprise a key obviously chaired by Anna Pothici I've just mentioned key senior officers such as finance public health environments community services reflecting a real cross council effort. It will take to deliver on Elbok also our core delivery partners as well. Clearly some of the big wow moments will be delivered by some of our key partners such as Battersea Arts Centre and Royal College of Arts. And then we want to make sure the community voices is heard in there. So we're looking at making sure we've got community representatives such as Battersea Youth Alliance a youth council representative. And so we're looking at all of those different options at the moment. So you know that is underway by Anna but we are learning from the other London boroughs who have run boroughs of culture in the past really and making sure we take all of their learning about governance and engagement and partnership building on all of that taking the GLL advice and doing something we know will work for Wandsworth. So just picking up the second point on the Wandsworth grant fund. As you'll know council head is a chunk of the Wandsworth grant fund is actually sort of ring fenced for arts programs and the WAF the Wandsworth Arts Fringe anyway. So really this is just about saying we'll take that over a couple of periods spanning before and after during LBOC. Put that into a pot which can then feed into the wider decision making around LBOC to make sure that money goes to groups sort of aligned and meeting the priorities of LBOC. So it's to make sure we can deliver swiftly and without too much bureaucracy in effect to the groups who will be relying on that money and be supportive partners to our LBOC journey. That money won't therefore be allocated via the grants OSC will be delegated to Anna and the partnership board to do that but I'm sure reports back to this committee will give a good indication of who has been received that money for future scrutiny. Well it better be quick, sorry. Yeah no thank you for that Mr Evans. Just wanted to check because also there are a lot, quite a few number of pots now that we award at the grants committee. And I just wanted to make sure that there wouldn't be any overlap. How would we know that will we get a full breakdown and then we can compare to all the other grants that we've awarded. Just to make sure that there's not anything that there's not any doubling up or there's not anything unreasonable and unfair about the process in terms of who's getting what. Chair if I may. That's a fair question to reassure council edges that we have as she knows an excellent officer bid review and assessment team and grant assessment team in the council, and they are feeding actively into that process as well so there is good collaboration across that so the same people are doing a good chunk of that work so we can make sure there is no duplication and the right input to sort as we as we do that so I can provide that reassurance to council edges. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, cancer and bash. Chair, I wanted to say that becoming barrel culture will deliver huge benefits to the bar and our residents and the reports outlines and underlines the high ambition for the arts and culture over the year but also the fact that the bar is going to benefit from our more connectedness with communities, voluntary sector and businesses. I'm very pleased about the recommendations so the executive director Miss Popovici delivering the ambitious program in a very tight timescale through a more nimble process through this, the steering group, the 5.7 million is an ambitious total budgets. And I'm pleased to see in the appendix the strong monitoring both before the bar of culture during the year of the bar of culture and the year after, so that we learn. I'm hoping for a question. Yes. There are two questions I wanted to ask one because counselor hedges got to what are the prospects of achieving the 1.79 million fundraising and what were the implications be if we didn't quite reach that targets. It's ambitious target, and the second we're talking about having 1500 volunteers mentioned in power 15, could you outline what the possible roles are, it's a lot, and then the implications of having 1500 volunteers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you come through for the question, and thank you for the support on the paper, and we in preparing our bid for the bar culture we were very conscious of making sure what was put into that bid was was realistic and we we certainly use all of our connections to the boroughs to make sure that what we're putting in there was, was, was realistic, it doesn't mean say it's not challenging and we are going to make sure we saw part of the money we have got is to spend some money to invest into proper crowdsourcing capacity and expertise to make sure we can do that, and make sure we generate that that income in. Now of course, you know, I'm confident we will meet that target but if we don't then clearly we'll have to look at the program accordingly but at the moment we are confident that we'll be able to meet, or certainly get a good way towards that that that target, and anything members can do to help us would be much appreciated. And volunteers. Definitely at the heart of our bid and of course we want to make sure we reach all corners of the borough, I can't, I could probably come back to the committee with a fuller detail of what we would expect the volunteers to be engaged with but I think it will be all different levels of both delivery and artistic inputs and, and also so I think it's a whole spectrum and of course the council agree and all staff will be adequate two days volunteering is a real important part of that and we also look at make sure we've got the volunteer and infrastructure in place with the voluntary sector to make sure we can deliver on on that so it's really important, both in terms of ELBOT delivery and our legacy going forward. Okay, brilliant. A little bit more about the volunteering infrastructure because it's really important that volunteers... I think it's coming through the next paper actually Councillor Iambash. Is it, Mr Evans? Certainly the VCS paper talks about volunteering as part of infrastructure, but we're also looking at making sure we've got the capacity in these early stages now so we're working on that, we haven't got the full detail but we're working on it. Okay, brilliant. Thank you very much. Councillor Corner. Thank you chair and I'm really excited to see what the London Borough of Culture year brings to the borough so welcome some of the details, the details set out in this paper. Paragraphs 21 to 23 set out the fund rate funding for ELBOC, and in paragraph 23 we can see that there remains after the top slicing of the sill, a fundraising requirement of $1,790,000. Now if we turn to Annex B, it does set out some of the sources of funding but it isn't clear about the extent to which those sources can contribute to the $1,790,000 and also whether they, and indeed, many of them are already part of the initial budget so external to that fundraising requirement. What can offices do to reassure this committee that that amount of money can be fundraised in time for its requirements and what are the implications should there be a failure to fundraise? I just thought, I thought we just handled that question. I think we did, I'm sorry if you missed it very quick. I think you said that you were going, if I can reflect I think what counts. Sorry, excuse me Mr Evans, I'm about to elevate you. I think what Mr Evans said was that if we couldn't manage to raise the money we might have to review the programme, which obviously we clearly hope we won't have to do. Yeah, that correct wasn't it Mr Evans? Yeah, I mean clearly we have set out a programme to deliver using that budget and we are confident we've got realistic income generation targets in there and we will be seeking external expertise to make sure we can generate that money. Inevitably if we fall short of that then clearly we're going to have to look at the programme but that isn't what we're looking at at the moment. Councillor Richard Jones, I know it's a pain but I would like to get Councillor Fraser and I'm very conscious of the timings as well. Councillor Fraser next please. No, no, I keep my mic on. I have power, I can keep my mic on. Just to understand a bit more in paragraph 11 it says about the programme director. Has that person been brought on board yet or is that to come? Thank you. Yes, we've got the key programme director and programme manager in post and actually bring with us existing and huge experience and knowledge of the sector in Wandsworth so very pleased about that. Can I just add on that, I suspect that the committee would love to meet that person at some point if that's appropriate. Not necessarily now but at some stage. She would be here if she wasn't away and on leave at the moment but yes absolutely. Okay brilliant, thank you very much. Councillor Worrall. Thank you. Just one point and one question. As a point of reassurance I suppose for Councillor Hedges, myself and some other people on the Grants Committee, could I ask that maybe a formal link be established with Councillor Ambash around the expenditure of the money from the Grants Fund just so there is some feedback mechanism. It doesn't have to be a bureaucratic process but just to have some linkage in with that. I think that would give some reassurance to the members of that committee. I know one or two people might not be happy with that but I think that would be a good idea. The other aspect is in paragraph 16 you talk about the delivery partner. Excuse me, Councillor Worrall, could you also give us the page number as well as the paragraph? Sorry, page 8, paragraph 16 talks about a delivery partner delivering two supports and delivering elements. Could you just elaborate a bit more about that and how that might actually be chosen? So I think this paragraph reflects the fact, picking up on Councillor Ambash's point, that volunteers are a key part of this and currently WANDSF doesn't have the volunteering infrastructure which is part of our journey on the VCS infrastructure papers later on the agenda. So that infrastructure will come into place during 2025 but we recognise there's probably going to be a bit of a gap and probably going to need to be enhanced as well. So we're looking at options about, there are organisations out there, third sector organisations that do volunteering infrastructure so we'll be looking at that. So certainly no decisions have been taken on that. We're in early stages on that to see how that might work. So it's really just filling that gap we know we've got. And just to also respond to the involvement of the grants committee, these processes haven't been set in stone yet. There's many different ways that we're thinking about actually delivering the grants and different people to involve in them. So we're happy to have those conversations with Jeremy, Councillor Ambash, as and when, okay? Thank you very much. Okay, so you're still with, sorry, Councillor Richard Jones, I know you said it was related to the other thing. Don't worry, sorry Mr Adams, I want to take you back to the question of the 1.79 million funding requirement. But I think you said in answer to a question from Councillor Corner that if the council fell short on any of those funding targets, the council would then go and revisit the programme. Would you also consider, though, if you fell short slightly or even significantly, but some of the things in the programme you thought delivered some real benefits, even long-term benefits, rather than revisiting the programme, would you perhaps seek more money either from ENSIL or the General Fund? I think that's a very difficult thing for me to answer at the moment because we're not in that place. I think we'd have to review it at the time. It's a very dynamic process as we go along and I don't think we're ruling out any options on that. I think that's the honest answer. Okay. Right. I'm very conscious of time, so every bit that we spend, Councillor Corner, is it an extra thing or can I move, can I sum up and move to a vote? It's really just to follow on from that discussion about the fundraising and I don't see any benchmarking with other councils who have delivered London Borough of Culture in this paper. I thought that was in the paper. Is the fundraising requirement similar to what other boroughs have done or have other boroughs that have been London Boroughs of Culture had more of their budget confirmed at this stage in the cycle? I did think it was in there. I think it's in paragraph 12. I think it's in there. Sorry. I'm doing it again. For Mr Evans to answer, you'll need to turn your microphone off. I think there was some detail in the last paper, but I sort of refer back to my previous answer really, which is we've been very clear and very careful to benchmark with other boroughs that have been more successful than others. We think we have learned a lesson from that, and certainly the GLA are very, very supportive and are offering advice and support in terms of fundraising to us. They awarded us our bid knowing what we'd put in there and what had gone before, so that sort of reality check I think had happened at that point as well. Okay. Thank you. Just to clarify, the benchmarking in the next paper isn't related. Okay. Right. Thank you very much, councillors. Now, I'm just going to do a brief summary. So we've talked about the governance of the project and how that's going to be managed. We've talked about dealing with the funding from the grant fund that's being applied to the project. And questions around the role of the volunteers and how they will be recruited, which hopefully we'll hear more about later. And several questions about the sponsorship income and how, if that isn't reached, what the alternatives will be. Okay. So given that's a summary of the discussion, councillors, can I ask you if we can deal with, agree the recommendations in paragraph three, which are delegating all the decisions to the relevant executive director in A and noting the overall funding envelope in B. Is that agreed? Agreed. Thank you very much, everyone. Okay. Right. We move to item four, which is the voluntary and community sector infrastructure paper. Again, sorry, could you, we're obviously trying a different arrangement and usually, could you put, yes, very quick introduction, please, about this paper. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Critchard. Well, this paper basically is the culmination of our promise to invest in the voluntary sector that was made in 2022. We've undertaken quite a lot of in-depth consultation with members of the voluntary sector. And this paper sets out our commitment to the VCS by way of commissioning a new service to support them. And later on, we will have developed a VCS strategy which sets out our long-term relationship with the sector and their relationship with us. So this basically is asking for the investment that we need, benchmarked with services offered in other councils and investment the sector has been asking for for a very long time. Okay. Thank you very much. Right. Let me have Councillor Worrall first and then Councillor Hedges. Thank you, Chair. First of all, this is an exciting paper and I'm glad to see so much work coming to fruition at last and our commitment to the voluntary sector. I want to refer to one part of this paper though, and that's our relationship with the ICB. So on page 18, paragraph 9 and on page 24, paragraph 40, there are references to commitments by the ICBs to continuation of funding. Please be, Councillor Worrall, for the benefit of anyone listening, could you just give the ICBs, it's the integrated care board. One of our health partners. Yes, one of our health, thank you. In my daytime job, I have experience of working with ICBs in other parts of London and know that even though they have made paper commitments, there are moves to actually cut some of the funding and actually back out some of their funding arrangements. And also, their primary focus is mainly around health commitments more than anything else. So I'm just wondering, in the light of what's happening with the integrated care boards, the confusion around commissioning with ICBs at the moment and transfer of power, what do you feel is the commitment moving past 2025 that we can expect from the ICBs and how will we encourage them to remain engaged with such a program moving forward? Chair, thank you. Mr Evans. Thank you, Chair and Councillor Worrall. We've certainly got the, we work very closely with them because they've been a partner in the current sort of infrastructure, the sort of services we've got and we have got the commitment for them in terms of ongoing funding. So I think that's been to their own board or whatever their governance is. I'm absolutely concerned about that. And clearly, their bit of the money is focused on the health side of things, but us investing more money into it allows us to deliver that wider infrastructure support, which I think is absolutely what the sector itself has demonstrated is needed. And we've worked very closely and very well with them, so the relationship is very good. So I'm sort of confident for the future on that. But if that changes, we'll have to take stock at that point. Certainly hopeful for the length of that commissioning exercise, certainly. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Councillor Hedges. Thank you, Chair. And I just wanted to agree with my fellow Councillor, Councillor Worrall, about the update and the progress. It's really great news that all of this work has gone into the voluntary sector. And also, I was particularly pleased with the point about highlighting the need for more practical support for smaller organisations, because that, too, has come up in the grants committee before for the smaller organisations that are unable to do the proper due diligence. My question really is around the point that you're asking us to approve point C, two points C on page 16, to approve the award of contract using the SO83A procedure. Could you please provide a bit more information around that and exactly what is we are expected to sign off on here, please? Chair, if I may, Councillor Hedges, thank you for the question. So as part of our procurement procedures and procurement regulations for many, many years now, routine contract awards have been awarded via the SO83, which is both for urgency and routine matters. And it means we don't have to wait for a committee, because sometimes a contract award, particularly if it starts in April or something like that, doesn't fall well with our committee and executive cycle. So that has been a procedure we've used for at least 10 years, I think, on there. The key thing for me is that the members' input, the scrutiny input, is at the earliest possible stage of that, and this is what this report here in front of members is, is set out what our commissioning intentions are, what we're proposing to commission, and the budget for it. And members' scrutiny, as you've given today, is really important input to that. At the point the contract is awarded, the legal procurement process has happened, and we are in a stage of a sort of binary choice of go/no-go, according to that procurement process. So it is perfectly normal for that to happen via a routine matter. And in fact, in most councils, that would be done by office of delegation anyway. Thank you. And I could add, Councillor Hedges, is I've had discussed this quite a lot with Paul Giuliani, who you know through audit. And one of his views is, of course, is once the tender is out there, I think this is correct, isn't it? Once the tender's out, of course, at that point, the decision has to be made almost within that special tender box. I think that's the correct thing to say. Councillor Ambash. Thank you very much for the paper. It's a really good follow-on to the paper we had last autumn from Rocket Science, which showed that we had not invested as much in the voluntary sector as other authorities in London. The paper talks about the benefits and also the synergy that this service might have for the voluntary sector in working with the council through the change programme. I'd particularly like officers to talk a bit more about the benefits from Para 28, page 21 of the infrastructure service. What will the benefits be to the voluntary sector and the community as outlined in that table? Can you just give us a bit more information on that? Thank you. Mr Evans. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councillor Ambash. I mean, what we've set out as sort of outcomes and benefits there is very much what we've worked with the sector and co-produced in terms of what they need and what they want from the investment. And, of course, this is about both how the council can support them but also how the sector can better partnership work across their own sector, the business and other agencies, including the council. So I think that's absolutely critical. I think clearly one of the objectives is, as Paragraph 19 says, is a stronger, more connected and resilient sector that can engage with other organisations and wider partners themselves in terms of looking for those synergies, looking where we can add value together in a full partnership, which is not what happens to the best of our abilities now. I think it's probably fair to say. And, of course, also financial resilience is absolutely key and good governance as well. So there's a whole range of outcomes that we hope to deliver and benefits to the sector. And I think the paper does a pretty good job of trying to sort of outline those as well. But just to be clear, we are also still engaging with the market, potential market as well, to identify and our VCS to refine that as well. So make sure our specification really is a co-produced specification. Okay. Thank you very much. Councillor Graham. Yes. So looking at the recommendation in 1(a), were the council to take that extension option for a further two years of an estimated annual value of £330,000, would that be a key decision? Is that something that we might need to come back on? You're going somewhere with this, Councillor Graham, aren't you? I know, exactly. I think perhaps it would be fair to elaborate on why you think you're going there and then that will help. The reason I'm going there is that this council has very deliberately chosen not to set a threshold for a key decision, saying it should instead be as low as possible. And indeed we have had things come through recently where we've had decisions classified as key decisions and being roughly around £100,000. That could be raised. It would be reasonable to raise it, but as we have deliberately said that everything should be a key decision that could be considered to be within the scope, it is reasonable that decisions of that scale are currently classified in that way. The problem is in relation to Mr Evans' answer about the routine use of SO83(a), because if something is a key decision, then it is not permitted to be used in that routine way, and the chair of the committee has to state that it is urgent and cannot reasonably be deferred. And the problem, therefore, is that given that the award of the contract is for a greater value than the extension of the contract, and therefore by definition, given that what else has been taken to be a key decision would be a key decision, it is not permitted to rely on the routine function, the chair would have to sign it off, and therefore we are in a position of a planned use of an urgent procedure which is unconstitutional. Councillor Graham, I hear what you say, but given that we have constitutional review going on at the moment, areas which are likely to come up will be office of delegation, I'm not sure that it's something that we can answer. Whether this approval will be legitimate to be used under the SO83(a) as routine, or whether it will have to be characterised as a key decision, is a very reasonable question for this committee right now. And in relation to the review, we have heard that the opposition will have no formal ability to be involved in that, except as the executive dictates, which means that we may have no participation at all. Mr Evans wanted to say something, and if so, Mr Choudry. I'll probably refer to Mr Choudry, but my view is that the key decision is the one you're taking, or effectively the executive's taking on the back of this decision, this paper tonight, and that is properly on notice on the forward plan, etc. So therefore the SO83 to award contract is not the key decision, it is just a routine decision. I'm sure Mr Choudry will give a view on that. That's entirely correct, I have nothing further to add. At the very least it's left ambiguous. Sorry, excuse me, councillors. I think it would be helpful to have some idea from officers of what they regard as the financial threshold for a key decision. I would say, Councillor Graham, that's probably something that maybe needed to be considered elsewhere. I don't think it's quite the question unless you're going to advise me differently. So the answer to Councillor Graham's initial question as to whether the approval in paragraph 2A is a key decision, that is right. In terms of whether or not we define a financial threshold, we do not. And there will likely be ongoing work to define that in future as we undertake the democracy review. I'm grateful for that answer, but I would point out again that we may have no ability to participate in that discussion. I hear, but okay. Right, can I have Councillor Worrall, was it Councillor Worrall again? I think it was, yes. You're fine, you're okay. And Councillor Richard Jones, you had, and hopefully this is going to be about the paper, or the content of the paper. No, sorry, it's about the constitution. No, just, can I put Councillor Graham's point just differently? Which is that, so recommendation 2C asks us to approve the award of the contract using the SO83A procedure. But as Councillor Graham has explained, and also as the Centre for Scrutiny and Governance explained, that's a procedure for urgent business. So you've had loads of these come before you, Chair, and it says, it asks you to verify that the decision is urgent and can't reasonably be deferred. That wouldn't be the case with this, this is just a question for the administration about the timeline they want to adopt for this decision. So really, isn't this just, paragraph C is basically, what it's really asking is just for officer delegation. So it's probably a question for the monitoring officer that it would just be less an abuse of SO83 to not rely on SO83, and instead just replace it with a delegation to the senior responsible officer that she can carry out this contract in accordance with the usual procurement rules. I agree. So, Councillor Rich Jones, that's not how it's drafted, although I can see the attraction of that approach. What I would say is that the use of SO83A procedures is not limited to urgent matters, it is also for routine matters. That is the terminology in the SO83A procedure. What you are being asked to do is to agree the overall estimated value, which is a key decision, and then decisions that fall beneath that are those that will be taken under the SO83A procedure. Could I just ask a factual follow-up, because I've never seen an SO83A form that didn't ask the chairman of the committee to verify that the matter was urgent and couldn't be reasonably deferred. Are you saying there's another performer out there somewhere that doesn't have that wording? Because if there isn't another performer, then this is about an urgent decision. So, Councillor Rich Jones, it's the same form. It's whether or not the box is ticked that the decision is urgent, that the consent from the chair is sought. Otherwise, it's a routine decision. Last point, and I'm not going to push it, but I am actually going to push an amendment to this, which is to strike out the words using the SO83A procedure and to replace it with using delegated authority to the SRO, because I don't want to stop this happening, and I want Councillor Acanola to be able to proceed with this in accordance with the timetable that she's chosen in paragraph 37. I just think we have to grasp this and just realise this is a bit of an abuse of the SO83A procedure, and we can cure it without Councillor Acanola or Mr Evans being in any way limited. I think you would need to say delegate the award, but yes, I agree with Councillor. Okay, first of all, okay, Councillors, thank you. First question is, before we move to looking at the amendment, do we have any further questions on the paper? And I would just caution Councillors to say a lot of the discussion about the mechanisms in running the paper obviously detract from us talking about the paper. So, everyone else, no further questions. Okay, right, Councillor Richard Jones, do you have a seconder for your amendment? I guess you're proposing it, and could you, Councillor Richard Jones, seconded by Councillor Hedges, and please could you read it out clearly for the benefit of the committee clerk, because we did not have this in advance. Yeah, so it's approve the, delegate the award of the contract to the SRO, so that replaces Recommendation C. Okay, right. Mr Choudry, do you have any thoughts on that one? For the benefit of the committee, it's entirely appropriate amendment, it works just as well as the existing Recommendation. Okay, Councillor Akinola and Mr Evans, what are your thoughts on this, given that you're the people, you, sorry. I suspect I've got an interest in those delegations to me, but I'll just... What I would say for the benefit of councillors is that using the SO82(a) procedure does mean that the decision is published, whereas if it's taken under Officer Delegation, it need not necessarily be published. That's the benefit of that process. Okay, sounds like we like it published. Okay, right, can we move to a vote on the amendment, please? All those in favour of the amendment, please raise their hands. Thank you. All those against the amendment, raise their hands. Sorry, what am I doing? I'd better vote this time. Okay, so the amendment falls and now we're looking at the substantive recommendations. Are we taking them in parts altogether? Take them all together. Okay, so we've been asked to approve the tendering for Voluntary Sector Capacity Building contract, approve a general fund variation and approve the award of the contract using SO83. So all those in favour, please raise their hands. Okay, that's five in favour. All those against and all those abstaining. Thank you very much. Okay, right, so that is carried and we've agreed the infrastructure plater. We're also running slightly later than I expected and yeah. Now, Councillor Gasser has come. Would you like, has joined us for her paper, which is the leisure services. I'm going to suggest we take the leisure strategy. Sorry, is that okay? Are we agreed that we can deal with the leisure strategy because Councillor Gasser has come to speak to us. Is that agreed? Yeah, brilliant. So we're now going to take what is now item seven, which is the Wandsworth Borough Council Leisure Strategy, paper 2480. And it is called Wandsworth Moves Together and it starts on page 71. And Councillor Gasser, for the benefit is, we're only after very, very short introductions. Please, key points. Oh, no, sorry. Excuse me. My committee cards just reminded me of something. Yeah, I'll read it off there. Okay. Sorry. What there's been a slight glitch in the way the papers have been put together. So just so we're clear that item B, we are being asked to approve the commitments contained within Appendix 1. But actually, that's pages 91 to 99 and Appendix 1A, which is pages 101 to 105. So that's what we're looking at when there's any questions and that will be how that is reported in the minutes. Yeah. Okay, Councillor Gasser. Okay. Welcome. We don't often see you here. Good evening. Thank you for having me and it's great to be here and I'm delighted to introduce this strategy. And I'll just be brief and then Mr Eady will be brief and then we'll open it for questions. So just I'm this has been the culmination of months and months and months of work and actually years of thinking, because when we were putting together our manifesto and thinking about what we'd like to do differently in Wandsworth, I mean, it was the time after COVID and we were also aware of health inequalities. And it was like we need to make sure that we give all of our residents every opportunity to be out there enjoying themselves, getting fit and healthy. And it's about physical well-being and mental well-being. And so this strategy has taken its time to talk to and listen to residents and try and find out what the barriers are for some people and try and address some of those barriers. And I'll ask Mr Eady just to say a little bit more and then please ask questions. But I'm delighted that we are doing this and I hope it's going to get many, many more Wandsworth people active. Okay. Thank you very much, Mr Eady. And as you said, two or three key points for us and then I'll take questions. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Councillor Gasser. First of all, I just wanted to say thank you to all the people that helped make this happen. So this is a real borough partnership strategy. This isn't just the councils, but it's multi-services across the council. But it's multi-partners from health, schools, education, the voluntary community sector, but also residents that have been involved in it as well. I'm really pleased that it's so ambitious for a borough that is already active. But as we know, the issues around lack of people doing physical activity, growing waiting lists, people that are inactive, health inequalities widening, it's even more important that we have a strategy that mobilises the whole community and the whole partnership to get people more active more often. And underpinning all that is access for all, where I think you're going to see a paper about that later, where the council is making a real strong commitment to reduce barriers for people that find it difficult to engage in physical activity. So I'm going to hold it there, and happy to answer any questions. Okey-doke. Okay, Councillor Cornard, would you like to kick off? Yes, thank you, Chair. And thank you to Councillor Gasser and our officers for putting this strategy together. I do have a couple of questions about some of the priorities that are outlined under the Active Environments workstream of this. And the two that I'm particularly interested in- Page number, please, Councillor. Sorry, page numbers are 104 and 105. Thank you. So under Active Environments, we can see that we are exploring a delivery of a new community facility in Nine Elms, Target Completion Day 2026. Could I just get some clarity about what that actually is? Is it related to the school site or is it a different site? And similarly, the aim to get a new kind of 3G artificial pitch in the borough, that is targeted for completion next year. I understand that's also meant to be in the Nine Elms area. Is that correct and is that still on track to be delivered? The bullet point at the end of the list on page 72 doesn't quite make the location clear. So appreciate clarity on those matters. Okay, thank you, Councillor Cornard. Mr. Eadie? Thank you for those questions and thank you for your thanks to the community and all the people involved. So the Nine Elms facility is, in fact, linked to the school, so we are really excited about that opportunity. And the 3G site is not yet defined because we are exploring a number of sites with Football Foundation. We are hopeful that we will get more than one in the next few years in response to our playing pitch strategy, which shows a deficit of those type of facilities. So we are not being really specific at this stage, but we are having very productive conversations with the Football Foundation and looking to fund 3G pitches in our borough. Okay, thank you. Councillor Worrall? Thank you. Once again, an exciting paper, especially for someone who actually does engage in physical activity in the Wandsworth, so there might be something in this for me as well. I think walking the dog counts. Okay. I just want to take you to page 77, paragraph 15, where you mentioned the community sports and physical activity network. I was just wondering, could you provide more detail on how this would actually work, especially as you say that this will hold the council to account and involve a number of various different groupings. I don't see how that mechanism actually works and in terms of the way it's outlined here and what that accountability actually looks like. So I suppose I would say in terms of accountability, they don't have any power, but it's a mobilisation of a group of key strategic leaders, you hope, within a borough that will hold not just the council, but the partnership to account to deliver the strategy, but also to support clubs, voluntary sector, schools, education, everyone to be more active. So they're an established model all over the country, where they're groups of volunteers from key parts of the system. So you have someone from health, you have someone from education, you have people from the council. We've got three councillors that were elected at the AGM to be members of the C-SPAN, because previously it was active Wandsworth, which you'd probably recognise. Now we would probably move it to a different name to align with our strategy. So it's really trying to use those influences of key strategic leads across the sector to advocate for support, external funding, but also challenge the council and other partners to be better, to go further, to deliver on what we've said we're going to deliver. In terms of do they have any power? No, but they have a voice. And if we've got people that are passionate and want to keep people active and reduce health inequalities, then I'm really keen to work with them. Thank you. Councillor Ambach? Thank you very much. Oh, sorry, Councillor Worrall, is that, follow on with what you, it's a different one, it's a different, it's a new hand, as they say. Was that a new hand, Councillor? Thank you very much for the strategy, Mr Reedy. Focus is a lot on young people, and that's really important with all of their lives ahead of them. But turning it round the other way, how much is in this strategy in terms of activities for older people and people with disabilities and people with health problems at the older end of life? Absolutely, it does feature all of those, and there is, it is not in the action plan necessarily, but it's littered through the strategy document. Older people supporting their independence, keeping them active is really critical. And there's some really, really great work already going, the Bing company are doing some fantastic work. Working with adults and children with disabilities or special education needs will be fundamental as well. So you will see in there, there is funding that we've gone for and secured now for the George Shearing School, increasing their sporting facilities and programmes there. So, you know, the strategy will touch all of those things, and we are also procuring a new leisure contractor, which you might be aware, there's a key action in there. We will be asking those bidders to come forward with ideas and best practice on how they engage those really important target groups to get people more active, because they will have the experience of the whole country of all the different things that they do. And we want to be best in class, more inclusive, more accessible. Okay, yep. I think I had Councillor, no, you're all right. Thank you. And this relates to the measures and KPIs on page 102 onwards. I think it's really positive to see we've got some kind of measurable targets here, which is excellent. What did strike me is that I don't think any of the KPIs actually talk about, to the point just raised about health inequalities, talk about wanting to see an improvement in measures. We have all the data from the council's data wand website, which shows us so many different through so many different lenses, the health inequalities and various other inequalities that exist in the borough. Should this, will this strategy be judged to be a success or not, based on changes to the health inequalities as observed through that data? Okay, thank you. I'm going to, I'm going to dodge that question a little bit because they're really hard to prove. They take a long time, you know, to be able to demonstrate those impacts. But it's something that the government is being lobbied very strongly around from lots of groups like UK active, you know, to include physical activity as the response to support the long waiting lists. You know, the health inequalities, the people not being working, long term sickness from work. There's some really good studies that are going on. I've been trying to enlist to get some pilots within Wandsworth and we're progressing with those. An example is in Manchester where they've seen significant investment by the ICB there to do pre-hab work for cancer patients and that's resulted in significantly quicker recoveries, less appointments as part of their recovery and better quality of life, much more quickly. So there is evidence there, but that is a three year study with lots of support, so absolutely we've been wanting to tackle those health inequalities and there will be instances where we can see measurable results. But for a blanket improvement on that quality, that would be really difficult to do over a short period of time. Thank you for that and I really do appreciate that it can be quite hard to understand how a strategy like this is impacting wider measures. But I do think the council could explore doing this a bit further. So for example, under the access for all goals on page 102, we want to get women and girls involved in sport, which I think everyone around this table and in this council and in the wider community would support. But the KPIs talk about establishing working groups, having a catalog of programs. Surely we can collect our own data to make sure that we are actually increasing the number of women and girls in the borough who are involved in sport. I understand you probably can't commit to this immediately on the spot, but it would be nice to see something on that in an update to this strategy at a later date. And presumably, Mr. Eady, and also perhaps that's something you'd like to also comment on, perhaps, Councillor Gasser, because it's, yeah. I'm happy to answer that one. So the women and girls group is we want to really understand what the challenges are at a local Wandsworth level from a real lived experience of women and girls. We are looking for 2025 to be a year where we really go hard at understanding and delivering for women and girls and change the narrative. If you look in the strategy, women are much less active than men in Wandsworth. That's not an acceptable position. So we want to use the pull of the European football championships for women, the Rugby World Cup, which is just across the border in Twickenham. So we're speaking to the RFU. How can we get role models from the RFU to encourage women and girls? How can we work with the Youth Force Trust and Schools to really support girls to be excited about PE and physical activity? So we just want to get that local knowledge and get people invested in it so we can really drive it forward in 2025 and absolutely move the participation rates forward. But also people not just participating, women and girls being volunteers, being employed in the culture and sport and physical activity sector as well. So please be assured I'm really ambitious in the area and I'll happily come back to Environment Committee and let them know how we're getting on. Okay, thank you. Councillor Worrall. It's just more of a comment really. Something that I feel is missing in here, I mean there's a lot in here, don't get me wrong, and it's very ambitious and I think has some really fantastic objectives. What I would be useful to see maybe is picking up what Councillor Ambach said about working with elderly and the disabled and also those who actually have poor health self-maintenance. So we talk a lot about expert patient programs, et cetera, within the NHS and other areas. It's a more explicit link to maybe the social prescribing process within the borough and also a more explicit link to our public health strategy. If we brought those together in a triangular way, I think this would strengthen this program a lot and include those particular groups who are on the margin of sport and exercise or who feel, for whatever reason, cut out from the process, no matter how much you encourage them. Sometimes it takes a little bit more of hand-holding to guide somebody in. I'm happy to undertake that and look again. There is elements to social prescribing and they're in strengthening health pathways. There's talks about buddies and things like that, which I've worked with in the past. But absolutely, I can commit to have another look, Councillor Gasser, to see if we can strengthen those areas. They are really important and we want to make sure that we move the dial for the people that are less likely to participate in physical activity. And walking the dog is physical activity. And if you get that doing it every day, that is helping you. Councillor Gasser wants to add something. Thank you for giving me permission. I haven't had a chance to tell Mr Reedy this, but I've just been at the AFC Wimbledon Foundation. I've been talking about exactly these things. And my day job, I work at St George's and I've been talking to them about how this can all come together. So St George's is obviously really keen to address health inequalities, all those groups. AFC Wimbledon, we are. So how do we work together with the whole system and every which way we can reach those people? So physiotherapists, occupational therapists, all of those people could be referring to us in AFC Wimbledon. So it is absolutely on our mind and we can work it in. Brilliant. Councillor Fraser. Thank you. And thank you for this evening. It's really great to see. Apologies if I've missed it in here. We just had quite a full agenda tonight. But just from in the past, I've sponsored grants that have gone through for local sports clubs. So thinking of one for Spencer Links who's particularly reached out to some of the communities across Wandsworth who are less likely to, and they did some research, so less likely to play sports like hockey specifically. I don't know how much you've looked at kind of linking up with the grants as well. Sorry if it's in there. We've missed it. But just as we are at finance tonight, I thought it would be a good point to just raise it. That is quite a nice link for some of the grants that sometimes come to us as counsellors to ask for endorsement. So it's not in there specifically about grants, but that might be the role of the C-SPAN to help support that. So enable provide grants already. There are arms length sports development and physical activity service. But I think it would be very sensible to review what all the potential grants that the council control, but also other opportunities within the funding environment. Because we want to get, that helps break down barriers, doesn't it, and helps them invest in the club infrastructure. That if we didn't have club infrastructure in any local authority, most the physical activity and sport would not be done. So they self-serve themselves. So we need to be there to support them and advocate for them. OK. Thank you very much, Councillors. Is that OK? Yeah. I'm just going to comment that the leading goal scorer for AFC Wimbledon was a woman, Ashley Hinks. I think she got over 100 goals in two seasons, just something. Or maybe she could come and talk to our girls. I'm declaring an interest. OK. We are being asked, and I was quite pleased to see that the England women have qualified for the Euros again. We are being asked to approve the new leisure strategy, to approve the commitments, approve the changes to Access For All, which is around extending the scheme to get more people in on lower incomes in, note the strategic needs assessment, support the work, the capital investment, which we see anyway at Finance, and the pilot for the Alton, which is being discussed at Housing at the moment. OK. Agreed? All agreed? Thank you very much, Councillors. And thank you, Mr Edy and Councillor Gasser, for coming to us, because we're here. Right. Let's go back to where we were, which is the school breakfasts. And it's Mr Hippel. And again, this is another paper for the benefit of anyone who is watching. This is something that normally would be discussed at Children's, but it's being discussed here because of the nature of the time. Mr Hippel, could you give us a couple of key points we need to think about with this paper? And then we'll go to questions. Thank you. Gary Hippel, Assistant Director, School Support Services. Councillors probably know that for the first time last year, we developed a school food strategy, which had bringing together a number of themes that the council and schools were working on to make sure we had joined up holistic food strategy and provision. And so four themes of food inclusion, sustainability, food education. And the fourth one, food provision, contains the new school meal service and pilot of a school breakfast program, which was a manifesto commitment of the administration. We had agreement to run a pilot breakfast program with 20 schools. And we partnered with a charity, Magic Breakfast, who are the UK's leading hunger focused school food charity. They worked with those schools to work out the best model of provision, and they've been doing that for the past year. The outcomes and the impact of that have been really positive. We are serving over 3,000 breakfasts each morning now. And the feedback, which is in the appendix to the paper, I would really recommend that counselors read that. It's incredibly positive from our school leaders, from our parents, from our children themselves. And the feedback on that's been fantastic. So we would like to request that that program is both continued for the existing schools and extended to others. We have been in discussion with schools who are not in the program to find out which ones we want to take part. And up to 20 schools have indicated that they would, depending on decisions here and executive. And it's also worth saying this is quite a live policy. And if you're aware of the King's speech today indicated that there would be an education bill coming forward, a children's bill coming forward in this parliament. Mr. Hippel, I'm just going to say to you, thank you very much for that introduction, but I think you might be anticipating some of the questions that may come up. Okay. If that's all right. Right. Councillor Graham. Well, that was very timely of you, because that is indeed anticipating my questions. I think you were the only person... Allow Mr. Hippel to expand on this immediately. You weren't the only person who I happen to know. I think there's been a lot of interest in what happened in the King's speech. But, yes, off you go. As there always is. So this is obviously something that, as the opposition, we supported. It was also something that was being funded out of the money that was provided by the last government, rather than out of the money that was provided locally. You're quite right that I've got the cabinet office briefing notes on the King's speech, and there's a proposed children's wellbeing bill, which would require free breakfast clubs in every primary school. Now, it is a longstanding part of parliamentary convention that legislation is not put forward without financial resolutions being put with it in order to pay for it. And local authorities are not expected, ordinarily, to meet requirements of this kind without central government providing the funding. So, although, obviously, that will not be done in time for September, and therefore the budget variation of £187,000 for the rest of this financial year seems perfectly reasonable, if we were to take the new government at its word, the £320,000 to £25,000, £26,000 would not be required. So should we be approving it at this stage, given that the government should really be paying for it itself? It's going to be hard for me to answer, isn't it? I suppose the commitment is obviously within the parliament. It depends on how readily that comes and the nature of that. And it's also worth, Councillors, knowing that even though you offer it, what we've found with our breakfast programme even, is that sometimes it doesn't suit individual schools. So there has been a national breakfast programme for a number of years now, and only few of our schools have taken advantage of it because of the requirements to either have a higher level of free school meal percentage within schools, because there's a fee to take part in that. So there have been some deterrents to schools taking part in school programmes. So I think in response to Council, it would be, we'd need to see the detail and look at when and how that could replace our programme, or we complement and integrate. Okay, thank you very much. Councillor Lawless. Thank you. So it's amazing to see Councillors across the table talk about the new Labour government and what's in their King's Speech. It's a joy to see and may it live on for many years. So one of the schools in here, Heathmere, had an uptake of just 30 kids, and I went to Heathmere as a kid. I was just wondering, I think West Hill Primary School was also the same. Page number, please. Sorry, page 47, 48 in the table. I'm just wondering, what can we do to ensure that more children in those schools are taking it up? And do we know any detail around maybe why those numbers are lower? Because what I wouldn't want is a child who doesn't get to school early enough or maybe children who are late to miss out. And then following on from Councillor Graham's point about the new Labour government and the King's Speech, there is an aim when the bill comes through for it to reach every child. So is there more that we can do to make sure that every child is taking it up? Cheers. Thank you. Good question. In terms of driving uptake, so one of the benefits of working with Magic Breakfast is, one, their experience in this area. And so they are able to advise schools on which model suits them best. Now, this isn't new to schools. Our schools have been running different models of breakfast clubs for a number of years. So one of the challenges of working with this is, how do we encourage them to, if someone's just got a paid breakfast club, for example, how do we encourage them to run a free model alongside that? And so it's working out what their current provision is alongside what's best. Now, I would love to say to you that all schools have wanted to take up the offer eagerly. They do, but sometimes there are barriers to doing that. And one of the benefits and one of the reasons for running the pilot project is that we've now got a wealth of knowledge of those 20 schools that we didn't have before. So we've been able, if you see in the appendix, the different models that we've been able to run in schools and the different and similar context of our schools. We're able to now pair our head teachers, our school business leaders, with other schools that might be in a similar position. So where some schools might have perceived there to be a barrier or a deterrent to their implementation, we've now got more evidence and expertise that schools can share with themselves. Okay, thank you. Councillor Hages. Thank you, Chair, and thank you very much for that presentation. I really do think it's a great idea. But having been a school governor, actually one of the schools that's listed on here, Smallwood Primary School, where I was actually chair of finance there. And they had a really good initiative called Chefs in Schools, which I think was great. But again, it was a very similar thing that's come up here. It's the percentage uptake. Now, it wasn't the fact that the children were hungry. It was just the fact that the children would rather have breakfast at home or bring in their own food. And this, I'm afraid, is a fact. So my concern just follows on from Councillor Lawless on the uptake. And how much research has gone into all these schools in terms of what's the real reason behind the children not eating. There are some schools that obviously we can drive, and uptake can be improved. You'll also see we have some schools with high numbers that have got very high percentage uptake. Penworthy, for example, is a really good example, one of our biggest schools where nearly everyone takes a breakfast. I think it's sharing the learning from those schools with schools that might be less successful. One of the most successful models is a classroom breakfast whereby at the start of the day, every child has breakfast together. That seems to be the most successful model that we've come across. And part of the learning that we've just explained is getting head teachers to come and visit those schools where it's run well. Because where it is run well, it's incredibly impressive, and it's a wonderful start to the school day. And the more we can roll out that, then the better uptake we will have going forward. And just the chefs in schools, yes, absolutely agree, a fantastic model. We modeled a lot of the new school food specification on. Okay, Councillor Fraser. Thank you, and slightly linked to the direction of travel, which is helpful. So just thinking about those schools, and I don't know in those schools whether it's potentially across all year groups or potential groupings within those schools, just how we're making sure that those children who need the breakfast are getting it. And I'm sure that this is something that you've learned across the trials that we've had so far. Because with things like free school meals, and I know certainly from when I was at school, my friends who were entitled, there was an element of shame or stigma attached to it, and they wouldn't do it because they felt that they were different somehow. So is there ways that, have you found that this has addressed that balance and taken that, what could potentially be a stigma away from it? Thank you, Councillor. So one of the main things doing is this is in school, it's a universal offer. And you've always got that discussion about universal versus targeted. But the research does suggest that universal is the way of reaching more of those children. Where we've had universal, or where we haven't had universal free school meals, we've seen less free school meal eligible children take up that offer. So universalism. Also one of the key things that our partner Magic Breakfast do is train the teachers in how to identify what the signs of hunger within children. So all those schools have had training in that and have been able to identify more children. And of course they know their children best, they know their community and their families best. So between the partners and the schools, we find a way of getting the food to those hungry children, yes. Thank you. Councillor Richard Jones, you had your hand up? Yes, Councillor Corner, I've noted you as well. Thanks, Chair. I also want to commend this piece of work, which I think is excellent. One of the things that piqued my interest was some of the barriers that schools would face in nevertheless providing a breakfast offer, despite this being in place. And it struck me that the diversity of models is great on one hand, because as you've explained, different schools have a different cohort and know what will work for them. But I did wonder if there might be some instances where a school was choosing a model, not because it thought it was the best model, but because that was the only one its resources would allow for. So, for example, it could be that a school would rather run a breakfast club, because that's more targeted and it doesn't eat into the academic day, but they don't have the teaching supervision resources to do that. So they end up running a classroom breakfast, which eats into the day. So I'd be really interested in your learnings, in terms of what other resource constraints schools had in running this, and whether you thought that impacted on them making the best decisions for them. Yeah, that's a good question. I think that's pretty accurate in some instances, because the biggest barrier to take up for those schools that did not want to participate is fear of is just financial constraint. You have to resource it. You've got to resource some of it with, for example, teaching assistants, support staff, typically support the breakfast in the morning, either preparing it or staffing it, looking after the children. And some schools have been unable to rearrange their resources in time to do that. But some of the learning from that is looking at those schools that have been able to do it. So some schools have what they call a soft start, where a classroom breakfast is a nice thing to do before the start of the first lesson. Other schools, as part of their ethos, don't have that and do not want to move to that. And so part of our work is working with school leaders to get heads, typically, to learn from each other, or to talk about priorities for the children. So one of our schools, if I take a very local school, they moved their TAs from supporting period one for 10, 15 minutes of reading. To use that time supporting the breakfast club, because they saw the priority for food and hunger was more important, and to make sure those children were ready to learn, ready to read first thing in the morning. So yes, we're absolutely learning on that, and it's about getting our head teachers together to talk about their similar context and the best way of doing it. Thank you very much. Councillor Corner, if we can make that final question. Thank you, and yes, really welcome this, and it's great to see that the trial has gone so well and received such positive feedback. I just wanted to ask a technical question about the contents of page 37. What is the actual difference between a traditional breakfast club and the breakfast club for all, which are both run by Magic Breakfast? So they're very free at the point of delivery, and they're both available to all children at the schools participating. So just wondered what the difference was there as my first point. Adding in activities like from a traditional breakfast club would have not just breakfast, but also some activities alongside it, whereas the other one, I think, is just coming along for food. Got it. Thank you. And it'd be good to see maybe a breakdown in future of how effective each of those are in terms of attendance and so on, but I won't press that point now. One of the other things that the council might want to consider, especially in light of potential future funding from the new government for breakfast at primary schools, is providing this for secondary school children. Now, when I was a teacher, the school I worked at provided free breakfast to all children at secondary school level, and it worked really well. And of course, the problem with hungry children and children not having enough energy to focus at school is not purely limited to primary school children, as we all know. So it might be worth, in future years, exploring that as a possible future intervention for the council. I think that's something that can be passed back to the Director of the Cabinet Member for Children's. Okay, thank you very much. I'm just going to add one small thing on this. For me, this seems absolutely fabulous and it seems like a very small investment in order to help children learn and learn well. And I hear what Councillor Graham has said about we might get further money, but perhaps what we can do is hopefully we will get it. And then our Director of Finance will be able to make a positive general fund variation on the funds in order to account for the money we get from government when it arrives. I would entirely concur with that approach. Thank you very much. Let us hope that our faith in the government is borne out by reality. Right, okay, Councillors, we've been asked to support the proposals to continue the breakfast clubs to include 40 schools and approve two general fund variations. Are we happy to agree that? Agreed. Agreed. Thank you very much, Councillors. Right, who's coming in the door? Right, no, wrong person, okay. I'm going to carry on. Can we now move back to item four? Oh, sorry, it's, hang on, six, which is the supported housing acquisition. Councillor Henderson has come along as well, he's the cabinet member. I'm going to remind Councillors it's now nine o'clock. We obviously have, that means we've got an hour and a half to get through the rest of the agenda. So obviously keep it focused, please. And just a couple of words from, is this, Miss, is this... Councillor Henderson or Rachel, is it Rachel Sunny there? Good evening. Hello, yes, okay. And this is another paper, would normally have gone to adults, is coming to finance. Okay, and when I say, not even a couple of minutes, a couple of key points we should pick up on this and then we'll go to questions. Because I'm going to comment, our members read our papers, don't we? Yes. Thank you, Chair. I'm Rachel Sunny, Director of Commissioning for Adult Social Care and Public Health. I'm really pleased to introduce this report from Adult Social Care in collaboration with our housing and regen colleagues. We are hoping and excited to enter into an agreement with London Square to acquire and develop 56 units of supported housing, a much needed provision for our residents who require our support in supported housing, as part of a wider development on the Springfield site. Happy to take questions, thank you. Thank you very much. Right, I'm just thinking, who went first last time? Councillor Warrell first, okay, and then Councillor Graham. Thank you, Chair. From reading through the paper, I think this looks like an exciting project. It's obviously an asset to the borough and it's in a good location. I suppose I have a couple of questions in relation to the project itself. First of all, do we actually need this capacity in terms of the acquisition? And why are we doing this and not another housing association or another organization doing this? And actually, will we fill the spaces, I suppose is the question at the end of the day, because it's a substantial acquisition that we are pledging ourselves towards. Yeah, Chair. Thank you, Councillor, for the question. Yes, we need a supported housing strategy and are working on a supported housing strategy for Wandsworth. We have significant supported housing provision that's no longer fit for purpose. So we do need to replace some of that and modernize our accommodation for people in need. Plus, we are placing people further and further away from their local network. And we are what's called spot purchasing, which is much more expensive, not as appropriate for people. People with mental health needs or a learning disability who need to be near their support network. So our aim and hope is that we can bring people back closer to home, therefore creating a revenue benefit as well as a health and well-being benefit for people and their families. We have significant need. We have a growing demand in adult social care. We have a projection that says we believe that growth will be at least an additional 50 placements required between now and 2030 just for learning disability and mental health, plus all the people that ideally we need to have replacement accommodation. If we're going to reduce care and support costs over time, we need modern, high-quality accommodation. Why us? There is an issue and a challenge in the supported housing market, and we do have a number of our registered landlords who are exiting the market. So we, again, are wanting to develop partnerships and do some things ourselves, but not everything ourselves. So this is one part of that strategy where we can -- we are probably better placed to create that strategic partnership between landlords, care and support providers, and us as the Council and having commissioning as a strategic partner. So we believe we will and can find those partners to deliver this and fill the unit over time for us and that we do have that demand. The key strategy is to reduce residential use. We have significant cost in residential use, and that is a restrictive environment, and people want to have their own tenancy. Okay. Thank you very much. Councillor Graham. Yes. I should say up front that I'm not against the principle of what this paper is trying to do or against the location proposal. I actually think Springfield is a very good site for this kind of accommodation, and indeed, it's next to the mental health facilities that are there. So the local residents actually have greater understanding of people with those kinds of needs. So I think the site itself is good. What concerns me -- and this will have the three questions. The first is 17 registered providers have been approached by London Square to run this scheme, all of whom have rejected it. Now, I take the point that we're in a slightly different position and we can put people through, but nevertheless, on the grounds that we're currently making placements, spots purchased outside the borough, which we don't like to do, at increased cost, it seems odd that the registered providers don't think there would be the demand for them or the ability for them to run this facility profitably, but we think that it will cover costs for us. So could you just explain why it is that 17 providers have turned this scheme down, but we think it's suitable for us? I did think that was partly covered by the answer earlier, actually, but would you like to just sum up very quickly that point? I'll just examine briefly, Chair, shall I? So we do have -- there's increased regulation and registered providers are saying that they wish to concentrate on their existing stock. We have started a number of conversations where we believe that long-term relationship with the council is not necessarily there when a developer approaches a registered provider, plus the connection with the care and support provider that we can establish. We're already in conversations with providers where we believe we will find a partner to deliver this scheme for us and with us. Okay, thank you very much. That's helpful in part. I just have two other questions. Well, I did try to resolve this outside the committee, and in fact in the premium I was promised that someone would get back to me with more details on the contract, but that hasn't happened. So essentially what I would normally expect to see alongside this paper would be a gold paper going into the proposed terms. So obviously in paragraph 14 we can see that we're expected to make payments and installments, but we don't actually have in front of us anything on what the terms are for whether there are delays, whether there are changes to the design or scope of the project or build costs, what happens if the provider fails to deliver it, and what happens contractually, not just for the regular snagging issues but also if you discover subsequent problems. As I say, I would have expected to see a gold paper at least that set out those terms given they've already been negotiated. I did ask if I could have some information on that prior to the committee. I didn't have it. Is there some reason why we still don't have that information for councillors? Ms. Sonni, would you like, and I don't know if the cabinet member would like to say a couple of words as well on that one. I can provide a bit more detail on that now. Should you wish to have something further in writing, I'll absolutely take that away and provide that for the committee. So, yes, the payments will be staged. The council has a technical advisor, Calford Seeden, who will certificate each stage and ensure that the payments are delivered in stages appropriately. Very experienced, good track record of managing other developments for us in that way. And we will closely monitor the progress of the works with the same technical advisor and representatives of the council monitoring them very closely. Retention will be accrued during the course of the works and any damages can be levied in the events that they don't agree or complete on time. So we have got those backings and I understand the committee asking for some kind of assurance of that in writing. If we have problems with the provider or they go into insolvency, again, we can go to the parent company, guarantee for that. And if there are any defects or there's an issue with ceasing trading, then we're able to go to the main works warranty. So the same experience of other developments, we will call on that and believe that we have the correct protection in place around that. I did have a third question. Before we go to that, what I'd like to establish is would we like to, was that acceptable or do we still need to see a bit more about the contract as a response? As with all of these things, unfortunately, the devil can sometimes be in the detail. So it sounded acceptable, but without having it in more detail in writing, it's very difficult for us to judge. Which is why, I mean, currently, even though in principle we think this looks like quite a good scheme, we're leaning towards abstaining simply because we just don't have that assurance. It would be helpful, though, in paragraph 19, because I think this is a figure you may have. It says that the long-term income equates to a minimum of 430,000 pounds per annum. But the table then excludes ongoing management and maintenance costs. So what is our estimate of the ongoing annual management and maintenance costs? Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, Ms. Sunny. I don't know the exact figure of the ongoing, but we do know that that's covered, that will be fully covered by the rental income. It's my problem. That may well be the case, but we don't have the insurance in front of us. Okay. But so it sounds like we like a bit more information. Perhaps that would normally go to the adults. But this scheme will have to be agreed before the next adults committee, I guess. Yep. Councillor Henderson, Ms. Sunny, is that the case? Sorry. Councillor Henderson, the cabinet member for adults and social care and public health. One of the reasons why we brought this paper now is precisely because we can't expect the developer to hang on. So it is a matter of some urgency that we effectively take this fantastic offer. I've actually sort of characterised it as someone coming to you and saying we're prepared to sell our house at half price because that's essentially what we're getting. And clearly there are a few details that do need to be ironed out. Nonetheless, this is an excellent opportunity to provide a long term and much needed council asset in an excellent location for some of the most vulnerable people in our borough. Okay. Thank you, Councillor Henderson. I just want to come back on that because Councillor Henderson suggests these details are still to be ironed out. These are details that the council already has, but it has not provided us with. And if he doesn't know them either, then he's actually not in a position to know it's good value. Councillor Graham, I was just going to comment that I understand where this is going, that you have raised some concerns. Hopefully that Ms. Sunny and Councillor Henderson will be able to, even if it doesn't come back to us, be assured in their own minds that those things have been covered. Okay. Councillor Ambash. I want to congratulate Councillor Henderson and officers for getting this development planned in within the Springfield Village development. I believe, as Ms. Sunny said, we badly need local placements for people, particularly with mental health problems and disabilities, but including children leaving care here in Wandsworth rather than sending them some distance and being disconnected from their networks. Partly because it involves different client groups. The paper talks about older people, care leavers, learning disabled, people with mental health problems, and up to 56 units. How can we design the scale of groups of units, not in smaller quantities, so that people interact both with other vulnerable people but also with the local community within the Springfield Village development? Thank you. Ms. Sunny. Thank you, Chair. Yes, absolutely. This is a mixed use and we do have other examples around London of this type of scheme where we'll have people with learning disabilities, mental health, the use of temporary accommodation and care leavers. And we have worked really closely with the specialist OT in housing. We have a very high specification for supported housing and the design of the building and how the flow and the entrance and the use of outside space can mean that people have privacy and separation and security alongside integration with the rest of the fantastic development where they will be able to live alongside the community on the rest of the Springfield site. And the way that we arrange our care and support arrangements and contract and have adequate concierge and the support, that will all be designed and carefully arranged and contracted for so that we're maximizing people's freedom and flexibility and their care and support to support their vulnerabilities as well. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, Councillors, happy to move to vote on the recommendations, which are approve entry into an agreement, authorize the award of the contract and approve a positive general fund capital budget to pay for the building. Okay, taking them together. Yes. Okay, those in favor of this paper, please can you raise your hands. Okay, that's five in favor, those against and those abstaining. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Councillors. Okay. By giving us the details, Councillor Henderson. Excuse me. I would expect better of everybody, I expect good behavior in this committee from everybody. Now, we've now got, sorry, we were, we're now actually on item eight somewhat later than I had hoped, which is the access for all policy, and the lead of the council has is coming to introduce this paper before we move to questions. Okay, Councillor Hogg, welcome. Thanks for having me and sorry, I'm late. I was just in housing committee. I know it's all having to be on the same. You turned up a perfect moment when we were expecting, we've done everything else before yours. Oh, I'm really pleased to have a chance to say a few words about this great proposal is really important policy because we all know Wandsworth is a fantastic place to live, you know, incredible green spaces, outstanding schools, wonderful, vibrant cultural offer, and the lowest council tax in the country. But despite those advantages, we also know, you know, remains divided, not everyone has access to those fantastic opportunities that make Wandsworth so special. So first, we're going to create Britain's best concessionary offer to help those disparities in initially leisure in sports and culture to make Wandsworth a fairer borough for all without adding a penny to that council tax. With the same financial management and responsible spending rules, we've been able to create this 4.85 million pound access for all fund, which will boost opportunity, and it will boost fairness, because access rule will be a holistic step change in the approach that all council departments take to ensure that we remove those barriers, and that we increase access. Because we are a listening council, this has been informed by the Cost of Living Commission, I'm sorry, Councillor Acunola has just had to step out, which did fantastic work on that. So we've heard from residents, residents who we know fully 29% of our children now are on free school meals, more than 10,000 households having an income of less than 20,000 pounds a year. So I just draw your attention to three things in the paper. Key things, who benefits? So appendix one tells you the universe of people benefiting, those tens of thousands of people on universal credit, on other means tested benefits. Second thing is the deal. So in paragraph 15, in appendix number two, you'll see what the offer is for those things that you need, it will be free for that group of people. So you've got to register the birth of your child. If you are in the access rule cohort of people, you will no longer pay for that. For those things that you can choose to do, that will be 50% off. I think we're going to have some great discussions here and elsewhere about which concessions we need to go further on, how far we can go. There are things like a ball crawl on Saturday that was £3.50 to use on one of our most deprived estates and no one was using it. We've got to look at the costs there, equally bulky waste collections, I think we could have a really good discussion about those. And third and finally the money, which paragraphs 26 to 28, we are creating a fairer, more compassionate one's worth without adding a penny to that council tax. In this case, as I say, due to that, same financial management, high interest rates and smart use of our assets. So thanks for having me. Tonight's committee, I think is a brilliant showcase. It just highlights how we as a council are delivering that transformative social agenda underpinned by these access for all principles. Our leisure strategy will engage more communities and it will help residents live more active lifestyles. Next up, hopefully we'll un-ring fence that investment from Nine Elms to ensure all areas of the borough get the infrastructure improvements they need and recommitting our support to families and children by extending that magic breakfast program. So there you go, we're proving again what competent and compassionate local government looks like and standing on our own two feet in these difficult times to deliver for all our residents. Okay, thank you very much. Questions? Right, Councillor Worrall, Councillor Gray, oh gosh, hang on. Councillor Worrall, would you like to start? Everyone else leave their hands up please, so I can note you. Councillor Fraser, Councillor Worrall, off you go. Great, thank you. Once again, this is a great paper. I also recognise that this is a policy framework and actually not a full paper that's going to go into great detail around a lot of areas because there's work to be done and frameworks give us the road map and direction moving forward. I just want to take you to page 139, paragraph 37, where you talk about officer delegation and strong internal governance. I think some of my colleagues might be concerned about how a program like this is actually managed and governed and held together and it would be useful just to start off if you could just elaborate a bit more on that paragraph and give a bit more explanation around that, recognising that this is a policy framework and not a detailed paper. I'd be happy to. Would you like to introduce yourself? Claire O'Connor, Director of Policy, Climate Change and Communications. I always forget my job title, been here a while. So we've developed really strong governance around the cost of living programme. We have a programme manager in place who manages that and really strong processes in place. We are looking to mirror that process that we've already trialled and found to be robust and apply that for access for all. Thank you. Councillor Graham. Yes, so the leader of the council, and we're grateful to have him here at this committee to actually answer questions, he described this 4.85 million as coming from sound financial management and the executive's work. Page 345 of our agenda shows that the actual net figure is not the 4.85 million but is under £800,000. Sorry, Councillor Graham, if you're going off onto a different paper, it's going to make it slightly complicated. It's explicitly referenced and so the point is that this 4.85 is being taken as a windfall, which is recommendation 2C, has been taken as a windfall. And yet we know from the other papers in this pack that the relevant figure is under £800,000. And when it is considered, as indeed that paper goes on to say, that the deficit in the dedicated schools budget is due to come onto the council's balance sheet, in practice there's no real windfall at all. So there are two questions here. One is, what is it appropriate to spend in this area? And it may well be appropriate to spend some of these sums, but what actually seems to have happened is that you've alighted on a figure, then chosen to spend up to it, and that figure does not reflect the underlying financial information that we have before us. Thank you. Who would like? Well, the leader of the council, I mean, I appreciate you sent that to the leader of the council, but quite often one of the officers, I'm looking for Miss Merritt. When I asked in the pre-meet, I was told it was a political decision, so it was only the leader that could answer. Right. And I mean then, perhaps if we can get the financial background from Miss Burston, sorry, and you'll introduce yourself. Thank you, Chair. Catherine Burston, Director of Financial Management. The 4.85 is outlined in the table on the page that Councillor Graham has noted, which is prior to any use of reserves that were planned for the year, and as has been mentioned, that has been decided as being a figure to be set aside for the access rule fund. Okay. Anything further to add from? I'd be grateful if the leader could explain why he regards that as a windfall when the net position after reserves is under 800,000 pounds, and when considering that the SB, there's no windfall at all. As I say, it may be appropriate to spend this money, but what we have here is not a needs-based approach to determine the figure. The figure has been determined by what is being described as a windfall when it's no such thing. Could you explain why he thinks that's appropriate, given we were told that was his political decision? So I think the figure has been explained. You know, we set our budgets last year, a very difficult year for local government. As you'll be aware, not just housing colleagues because of the dreadful homelessness crisis, but also with adult social care, with children's, didn't get the parking income you might want. So a lot of departments were, you know, feeling pressure, requiring more money. Actually, more than 10 million pounds was put out into those departments. So everyone had all the money that they needed to run the council. We've been very fortunate in terms of actually strengthening services, not having to reduce them. And then we looked at all the money that we got in from the government, all the money that we planned to spend from our reserves, and so on. We were fortunate to have this money. Now, in previous years, the Conservatives have just put that straight into reserves or whatever they've done with it. We want to get that straight back to the front line, and that's what we're going to do. It's the people's money, and that's where it's going. The Conservatives will need to decide if they back this or if they don't back this. And we need to be absolutely clear, this is turning on its head their previous policy, which was to charge the legal maximum for services, and where you couldn't, to charge the market maximum for services. And you need to be honest that the market rate is often what two-earner households can afford or people with very good jobs can afford. And that is a political choice to price out tens of thousands of people in Wandsworth from being able to take part in those activities. So the proposal on the table is access for all. Okay, thank you very much. Do you want to respond to that, given the leader suggested we ought to respond? No, I think, excuse me? He said that the Conservative Council needs to respond. Councillor Graham, Councillor Graham, Councillor Graham. Right, you've asked your questions, you've had things. I had to get an answer though, did I? Councillor Fraser, I think, is next. Thank you, Chair. And thank you for this direction this evening. I've been pleased to see the uptake at Tutu and Bet Lido for this so far and across the board. I just wondered, you might not be able to say at this point, but just thinking about the future, are there ongoing conversations about where this is going in the future, about organisations we might be working with and with my transport chair and obviously, and through the Cost of Living Commission, we know that transport costs are a big barrier to many people. Is there any work potentially in that area that we can use to help people who may not be able to afford a car or for whom transport costs are a barrier? Oh, right, sorry. Who would like to deal with that one? Yeah? Councillor Hogg? Happy to, Chair. Thanks very much for the question. Yeah, I mean, I think, as Councillor Warrell said, these are early days, this is the framework. And I think, rather as we have to with the living wage and other things, you put your own house in order first and then you go out and advocate and talk to other people. And I think once we've got our leisure offer in, once we're then looking at births and deaths and marriages, we're looking across all of the things that the Council does, we're then going out to partners. And not just fantastic partners like Wimbledon Foundation, you know, hundreds of tickets for refugees to go to Wimbledon, and partners such as Enable, but you're actually going across the road to the cinema and saying, well, look, it's Wednesday afternoon, your screening is 90% empty, how about you let these people in for a pound of time? Or, you know, you're doing that with cafes and restaurants, we're very lucky to have fantastic businesses like Apple, Penguin Random House and so on in the borough. So I want to be clear, this is a whole philosophy. And it goes well beyond just Council services and it goes well beyond just that universe of people. You can imagine there'd be discounts at a certain level for everyone, you know, through your Wandsworth card, which would become your Wandsworth app, but then we want to be absolutely clear for this group of people, the very most, lowest income, most deprived people, it will be Britain's best concessionary offer. Okay, thank you very much. Councillor Corner. Thank you, Chair, and I really do appreciate the leader coming to the committee to answer our questions. There are still unanswered questions about how this is going to be paid for. It still isn't clear to us from page 345 how the numbers add up. But I do appreciate that this is about a policy framework and it's about setting out an ambition. And it is a very big ambition to deliver the UK's best concessionary framework. On what basis will we know that's been achieved? Because a lot of the initiatives set out in this paper have already been delivered by other boroughs in London. And I wanted to know how we would measure our success on that claim. Thank you, Councillor Corner. Yes, great question. And I think sometimes you start with the vision, you start with the aspiration. And I think what you'll see is when each individual bid comes into the fund, it will have its own target. So I'm sorry for not responding more directly to Councillor Fraser. But for instance, in the realm of active travel, you might say, can we subsidise car sharing or can we subsidise e-bike usage? So you'd bid into the Access for All fund and say if we would subsidise those companies by this much, 20,000 low-income people would be able to make 80,000 journeys or whatever it might be. And I guess I would encourage you to help us challenge officers that if you saw something more generous happening in Southwark or Havering or whatever it is that was really driving outcomes, particularly for groups that have been marginalised in the past, challenge us, let's challenge ourselves to make it the most generous, the most compassionate offer in London. Okay, thank you very much. Councillor Ambush. Wanting to follow Councillor Corner's question in a way and refer back to the debate we had about health inequalities around the leisure strategy with Mr Eady was one of the questions is how we measure the effect of tackling inequalities so that this will have some bearing on that. And I was wondering if, because it's a new initiative, whether Mr Connor had anything to say about is the measure of success going to be related to our tackling inequalities, whether it's leisure inequalities or education or health inequalities, this should have an effect in that area to make it more equal for all to participate. Will we be able to measure that at the end of the year? Ms O'Connor, I don't know if you were actually here when... No, I was here, don't worry. I was here for the leisure paper. So also this paper obviously refers to health inequalities that were also cross-referenced in the leisure paper. I would follow up Matthew's response with, we need to measure things in the short term. So we need to, as Councillor Hogg has said, measure those uptake, measure the impact in those ways. That gives us an insight as to whether the program is working, whether it's having immediate impact. We also obviously need to look at it from the different groups as well to make sure that we're engaging all the groups equally and where we're not able to target outreach and so on to be able to bring those in and make sure they benefit. Then longer term, we'll look at the health inequalities, the impact on the health inequalities, employment, access to opportunities. So a wider framework, but just to reassure you, in the short term we'll be looking at detailed measures as well. Okay, thank you very much. Councillor Lawless. Thank you, Chair. So it's really interesting to hear the people talking about the funding of it. And I'm sure Councillor Hogg will remember the last administration, to fund their things they sold off school playgrounds and charged kids to use playgrounds in Battersea Park. So looking at paragraph five, you've already outlined some of the things that we have done already, running up to this, but could you tell us a bit more about the impact that previous administration decisions have had and the things that we've announced and done in paragraph five have had as well? Cheers. You've been asked a direct question. Yes, off you go. It sounded like a pretty politically loaded question, I guess. Just a bit. I won't run back through the greatest hits. I have contrasted the approach. You either want to run a small state council that has a super free market, let's make the most money we can out of our leisure centres, let's profit from our parks, let's hammer that as hard as we can, let's charge children £2.50 to use a playground. Or you can turn it round, as I say, and say these are the people's assets, these are the people's money, we have a responsibility to widen participation and lift up everybody. Hugely proud of the launch we had at Tutingbeck Lido. There's hundreds of families there. Just have a look at some of the testimonials. These families have never been to the Lido before. That's what access for all means, but they have a fantastic day there. I think we're tens of thousands now, maybe 30,000 people on gym and swim. Absolutely crucial. We were just in a meeting about the Alton regeneration and not just the ball crawl, which I don't think we should be charging £3.50 for, but they were saying many of the children on that state had never been in Richmond Park. It is about accessing Battersea Park, feeling it's a place for you. I play football every week, but I've never played football or cricket in the borough, because there aren't the pitches available at the right price. If I, as leader of the council, can't do that, what's a kid on the Doddington estate, what chance has he got? Those are some of the contrasts and some of the stories, and I think also talks about how if we're sitting here in a year's time, we might be able to measure success as well. Thank you very much. Council Corner. You had another question. Yes, I did. With appendix 1, did I hear the leader correctly when he said that people who fall into those groups... On the page 140. Page 140, the people who fall into those categories would get the services listed in appendix 2 for free. Is that correct? So not all of those services will be for free. So if you refer to, I'll just scoot through. Paragraphs 15. The principles are, whereas service is one which residents need to access, it will be offered free to all residents in the identified group. So those are the groups in appendix 1. Whereas service is one which all residents can choose to access, it is a 50% concession should be offered. I would also highlight that the approach set out in this paper is that we will engage with residents who are in those groups to test that those are the concessions that will make the most difference to them. Thank you. Right. Council Graham. Thank you. So Council Lourd has referred to the schemes in paragraph 5. Of that 15 million cost of living program, the amount that has actually been spent, the vast majority of it has been funded by the government. And that's because the approach this council took and this administration took of putting an arbitrary figure forward from reserves to spend has meant that it hasn't actually been able to find the schemes to cover the money that it allocated and it's all been rolled forward. And that's the problem that we're now seeing again on this. Council Hogg put the challenge across to us. Is there a question? But in response to the challenges, bring forward schemes, individual schemes, and we'll tell you if we support them. But instead of bringing forward schemes, you've brought forward a misleading and arbitrary figure, which is put forward here without any reference to what the underlying need may or may not be. Can you at least accept that unless you show us what you want to spend the money on, we shouldn't be voting for it? Right. Okay. Thank you. Council Graham. Councillor Hogg didn't respond. I sort of really don't, I'm not entirely sure that what you've said actually needs a response unless Councillor Hogg feels- I'd be delighted for him to respond unless he feels he's not able to. I'm not confident enough to do so. No. Councillor Graham, I think what you did there was state what you thought your, what your position is. Obviously you are entitled to state your position and say what you think and that's your prerogative. I didn't quite- Over in his shoes I'd want to respond. Get this up to him. Councillor Graham, I really don't like being interrupted however strongly you might feel, okay? So it would be great if you didn't. I'd just say as I took that very much as a comment of your position, which is perfectly, it's your position and that is how it is. I'm just going to say is given the time, I would- Can I- Sorry, no. I'm going to say this is I'm given the time and where we are, I think we've had a good discussion on this. I'd like to move to the vote, please. And we're being asked to agree the policy, agree the roadmap which is in actually in paragraph 31 and agree the creation of the funding. So taking them all together or take- Can you take them together? Yes, take them together, okay. So those in favour of the recommendations in paragraph two, please could you raise their hands? That's probably going to be five, I guess. Excellent. Thank you very much. Those against the recommendations in paragraph two, could you raise your hands, please? Okay. And those abstaining. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, councillors. Thank you very much for Councillor Hogg. Okay, but I think you're going to be staying for the next item, which is the borough wide infrastructure paper. Paper number 24182, which starts on page, I'm sorry. 171. Thank you, 171. Okay. Councillor Hogg, would you like to say a couple of words about this one, please, before we go into- Again, thanks for having me. I'll just say a very few words because I know you've got a lot to get through the packed agenda. Just say, I think this is a hugely important proposal. I think it's a wonderful proposal to free up tens of millions of pounds to be spent across the entire borough with resources following need, all wards on a level playing field. I mean, we know growth is positive. It provides jobs, better public buildings, new homes, but it's got to be done in balance. And people said to us very clearly, they said to all of us at the election, the era of just Dubai on Thames, building luxury flats for overseas investors is over. What local people want is genuinely affordable homes for them and their families. So as Nine Elms reaches maturity, we know we'll still need new school, new road, new GP surgeries. It will have all the facilities it needs, but it's clear that there is excess value there. We, as I say, will free that on an even basis to fund a decade of renewal across the borough. It's wonderful to see the early fruits of that, doubling investments in roads and pavements. You'll see projects coming forward in every ward. So I know it's quite technical and we've got fantastic officers who've been living and breathing this. But having already looked at neighborhood sill, this is now looking at the strategic sill. And as I say, I just believe very, very strongly this is the right thing to do. OK, thank you very much. Questions on this, please. OK, Councillor Corner, you're the one with your hands up. Thank you to the leader for outlining this approach. What discussion, the Nine Elms regeneration is obviously a partnership between Wandsworth and Lambeth Council, who are working in partnership to improve the Vauxhall-Nine Elms Battersea opportunity area. What discussions has he had with the council leadership in Lambeth about this? Because the effect of this paper is to potentially take away millions of pounds worth of infrastructure from the Nine Elms opportunity area, which would benefit communities in Vauxhall as well as within the Wandsworth part of the opportunity area. OK, thank you very much. Is that a question for you, Councillor, or actually for the team? I think part of it, to be fair, is for me, but I'll give a brief answer, which is I was actually with Councillor Holland earlier today, and the answer is that I've had confidential discussions with the leadership of Lambeth on this. But I hand over to officers who will be able to explain more about the consultation and the process they've gone through. OK, could you introduce yourself, please? Hi, my name is Steve Richards. I'm the head of programme delivery for Nine Elms. I think there was potentially a question also around the Nine Elms Strategy Board. We had a meeting scheduled for June 20th, but due to the election, it's been postponed until September 26th. So it hasn't been discussed at Strategy Board, but certainly at a senior officer level, there's been open discussions around this as a potential outcome. Before we move on from that, can I just add something, is I think we're talking about the sill is payable within the borough, even if it's within the Nine Elms opportunity area, isn't it? So you get sill according to where the building is. But infrastructure that would have been delivered by Wandsworth Sill would clearly have benefits for bops or communities because they live in the same locality. All right, no, OK, I understand that. OK, Councillor Lawless. Thank you. So just today, I had an email from a local constituent who was questioning why Tooting isn't getting its fair share, despite the fact that we've announced three and a half million pounds in investment, which people are very excited about. Question around what percentage of residents live in Nine Elms? Because I've noticed that it's getting 46 percent of the funding and Tooting residents do want their fair share. And a previous question that was answered showed that for every one pound spent in Tooting town centre, five was spent in Putney High Street and Cap'n Junction. So what is the message for Tooting residents following this? Yep, Councillor Hogg. I'm afraid I don't know the population figures for Nine Elms. Maybe Councillor Corner does. And equally, if it's all right, I'll return in writing to some of the other questions Councillor Lawless raises. I think the principle I can say is that all communities across the borough are looked at on the basis of need. All of the investment opportunities are judged properly. It's highly regrettable if communities can turn around and say, we feel like for decades we've been under invested in, our bins are worse, our housing's worse, our pavements are worse. And where we find that, you must draw it to attention, where we find that we will correct it. Okay, thank you very much. Councillor Graham. Yes, well it's good to have a paper in front of us on developer contributions and levies. Obviously, in Councillor Hogg's manifesto, he promised to raise one million a year in levies on developers to fund Wandsworth housing hardship payments. And he further promised to put more law enforcement officers on the streets, double domestic violence support, install more CCTV and fund youth workers, all paid for by levies on property developers. Can he confirm that currently his administration has raised nothing from property developers to fund those things? And can he tell us when he expects to raise the first penny? Are you happy to go with that one? I mean, it seems slightly outside the scope of this paper, but... No, I'll have a go. Yeah, I mean, we have doubled support for victims of domestic abuse. We have doubled the town hall community safety officers. We just committed to hire another one for the Alton estate this evening as well. Super bizarre that you could read a paper that talks about up to 100 million pounds being freed for investment across the borough and think that that hasn't happened. We've been very clear about how the extra investment in roads and pavements is being paid for. You will see projects rolling out in all 22 wards. That's my answer. The question was not whether you spent money on those things, but whether you've actually raised it from developers, as you promised, or whether you're taking it out of other funding that the council has. You promised this to be paid for by developers, and residents wouldn't have to pay for it, and it wouldn't come from reserves. That hasn't been the case, has it? Sorry, Chair. This is bizarre, and it's just rude bully boy politics, shouting over the Chair. This is not the sort of respect we look to see in the town hall. We will be reviewing our democracy. We will be changing the way this works. We've got people's children and grandchildren watching this evening. We are not living up to the standards of Wandsworth Council this evening. I just would say- We'll see you avoiding every single question you're asked and now pledging to make sure you'll never ask questions in future. Councillor Graham, may I suggest you also have the opportunity of Councillor questions and perhaps that will be an appropriate route. How long? Right. Councillor Graham, I've asked about besides anymore. You know where the door is. Councillor Corner. Thank you. I know from the previous answer to my question that the leader said he had had confidential discussions with leadership in Lambeth. But that doesn't really speak well to his commitment to run a genuinely listening council that engages with communities and is happy to share information. So we do expect plans for the Nine Elms opportunity area to not take place through confidential discussions and to be subject to scrutiny just like everything else in this town hall should be. He also mentioned that we need to spend money in areas to support all communities. I would remind him that there is tremendous deprivation within the Vauxhall Nine Elms opportunity area that is very severe. And community infrastructure levy can go towards addressing some of those inequalities. Simply raiding the sale that's been gathered and collected from developers in Nine Elms to spend elsewhere means that these communities may not be as supported as they otherwise would have been under the original plan set out under the previous administration. On page 177... Right, so is that question or comment? I'm waiting for the question. So are you asking is that going to... Well, that's that's one of the points you have to make. But there's also... Sorry, Councillor Fraser, I appreciate... You just don't... Councillors, right? It's obviously got to that time of night in this committee where it all gets a bit tricky. Let's take this slowly. Councillor Corner, I think if I can understand your question is given the move, will the... May I sum up your question first, please? Thank you. Lovely. Let me make it clear. I think your question is if the money is moved away, there are people who are in the Nine Elms opportunity area who may be disadvantaged. What will be done to avoid that? Is that pretty much the substance of it? And the second question, but let's make it a question because... Thank you. And thank you for not talking over me too much. We don't want to see that behaviour in the town hall. On page 177, it does say in the table that there's £8 million shortfall in the community infrastructure levy. Could the leader confirm that that's £8 million worth of investment into Nine Elms that now otherwise won't happen? And finally, page 173, paragraph 8 states that whilst ring fencing will be removed for the Nine Elms community infrastructure levy, the wider ones worth sill will not be. So there's essentially a double standard there where the rest of the borough can raid the Nine Elms pot of sill. But the rest of the borough has a ring fence provision. Did you... That wasn't how I read the paper. Councillor Hogg. I'll help as much as I can be. I may have to follow up by email. I mean, plainly council leaders have confidential discussions with each other, as friends do, as council officers do. I don't think that's a sensible point. I didn't catch the point about the £8 million or £9 million, so if we can pick that up separately. But in terms of there being deprived communities near to Nine Elms, I think this is an absolutely crucial point. And we do need to heal those divides. We do need to stitch those communities together. And I would love, Chair, if we could just hear a very little bit from Mr. Riches, who's here, about, for instance, the work in the Thessaly Oasis, the investment on Patmore, Savona and Cary Gardens estates, because I think Councillor Corner's right. There is a really important point there. Councillor Corner, is that something you're happy to hear very quickly? Yeah. And actually, may I just check when the next... We normally used to have the Nine Elms opportunity, the report from the board would come to this committee. Could you just let us know when the next one's due? I'm assuming it's still coming here, if there is... Yeah. Yes, thank you, Chair. Yes, there is still the intention to bring a paper on the Nine Elms program that would happen in the September cycle, ideally. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Councillor Hogg. Yes, recently we've been working on the Oasis site, which is at the top of Thessaly Road next to the Yvonne Carr Centre. We have been conducting an engagement process that's got three parts to it, that also included the Happy Streets Festival that just happened recently. So, at the moment, we're listening to the community, trying to understand what they want to have happen for this disused green space. And come September, we expect to be developing project proposals for that space. So, I think, as a team, we are still looking for opportunities for investment and improvement for the local community, particularly in those deprived areas within Nine Elms. Okay, thank you very much. Councillor Ambach. Chair, I just wanted to say I think a borough-wide approach to strategic skill makes fairness, sense and access for all. Just to quote the last paper, particularly people in West Hill, West Putney and Roehampton feel that they haven't had strategic investments. And, obviously, if there are strong needs in Nine Elms, if we have a borough-wide approach, those communities will be able to bid for infrastructure. But this is just about opening up to us all, dealing with bids in relation to deprivation and merit. Isn't that just a pretty sensible thing to do? So, I support the paper. Okay, thank you very much. Councillor Richard Jones, you had your hand up. Thank you, Chair. Question to Councillor Hogg, if he knows the answer. Paragraph 9 on page 173 talks about the sill allocated in Nine Elms and its use to date. Can you give us an update on the Northern Line Extension Study? Oh, what do you mean for the... Sorry, the Clapham Junction one or the... Okay. We'll... I think we... Sorry. Did you mean the bit to Clapham Junction? Is that right? Yes, yes. This is the Northern Line Extension Study, the Clapham Junction. If we could get an update on that. Chair, would it be easier if we called it the Northern Line Extension Extension? Would that share with that board? So, I happen not to have that to hand. You'll be aware we funded the initial feasibility study. I'm sort of looking at officers who aren't looking back at me at the moment, but if it's all right, if we can reply in writing on that one. Perhaps we can reply in writing on that one and hopefully that will be something that comes to one of our committees. Oh, sorry. Councillor Fraser. It's included later on in the transport indicators. Oh, right. Thank you very much. Yes, no, sorry. The leader's given a fair answer, but the question was that this was a much... You know, it was announced with much fanfare by the new administration, the prospect of the Northern Line Extension coming to Clapham Junction. Since the initial feasibility study, we've heard nothing more from it, and the indicators that Councillor Fraser refers to don't really shed much light on that. But the leader's given a fair answer, which is he doesn't know tonight, but he can follow up in writing, and I'm very grateful. Brilliant. Okay, thank you very much. Right, so the matter before us at the moment is to... Excuse me, sorry, I've managed to look at the wrong paper. Yes, the correct one. Okay, we've been asked to consider recommendations in 2A and 2B involving the borough-wide infrastructure approach for strategic sill. All those in favour, please raise their hands. Thank you. Okay, five. All those against, please raise their hands. All those abstaining. Right, thank you very much, councillors. Thank you, Councillor Hogg. Are you going to stay or are you going to go? You want to go? Okay. Thank you very much for coming. I hope that you haven't been put off for the future. Okay, and I'd now say it's three minutes to ten. We're now on paper 24183, which is about the neighbourhood community infrastructure level, the end sill, and the neighbourhood renewal fund. Now, really very swift introduction, three key points, Mr Evans, and then we'll go straight to questions. I'd be happy to skip debate on this one. I don't think there's a lot we can pull out of the debate. Well, I just need to check whether we have any questions from our side, yes. Is that a not, sorry. We're all happy to agree that one then. Okay. Thank you very much. I think there was unanimous support for that paper. Okay, we're now onto paper 24184, which is the paper on the viability assessments. And Ms Turner, I think, is going to, we also have Paul, where's he gone? Paul Moore's here, Mr Moore and Ms Turner. If you could draw attention to two or three key points on this paper that we need to think about, and then we can move to discussing it. Lovely, thank you. Yes, my name's Debbie Turner. I'm a senior planning officer in the spatial planning and design team and the housing and viability section. So the development, viability and planning guidance for Wandsworth has been produced to provide clear direction to applicants on what the council expects in relation to affordable housing and associated viability assessments when submitted, when submitting major applications. The premise of the guidance is to ensure that at an early stage applicants understand the key priorities the council expects in relation to affordable housing delivery within the borough. This includes the prioritization of social rented housing, delivering affordable housing on site, the inclusion of intermediate rented products in place of other intermediate products such as shared ownership and first homes, and promoting the delivery of family sized social rented homes within the housing mix provided on site. Producing this guidance now will allow officers from the point of publishing this document to direct applicants to this guidance, which will inevitably allow applicants to understand what the council requires, and with the view of reducing lengthy viability discussions at a later stage in the application process. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Councillor Anne Bache and then Councillor Graham. Thank you, Chair. I've always been interested in understanding the complexities of financial viability assessments in planning applications. Could the officer please explain to me what's new within the new financial viability guidance? Yes, of course. The main premise is to provide clear direction, which is not currently within any other guidance that the council has. So essentially, the supplementary planning document, which is part of the planning obligations SPD, that supported the existing local plan, and that was previously published in October 2020. So obviously, the viability landscape has changed considerably since that point. Assumptions have changed, and obviously, the council's requirements have changed. So it provides more direction, and it provides what priorities the council are looking for, which at the moment, our current guidance doesn't do. Okay. Councillor Graham. Yes, I think Councillor Anne Bache raised that point. I think Councillor Anne Bache raised a relevant point, which just leads to me more as a consolidation exercise rather than anything else. Not that there's anything wrong with consolidating and systemizing what we're doing. That's a good thing to do. Can officers point to anything in this guidance that makes it more likely that we will secure more of the affordable homes that the executive says they wish to achieve? Yes. Are you happy to pick on that, and maybe Mr Moore, possibly as well, if you could join us just in case. Thank you. Of course, obviously with viability, quicker decisions make a significant impact to a lot of developers. Obviously, quicker decisions mean lower risk. So for example, at the moment where we are in a slightly more turbulent economic time, for a lot of developers having a quicker decision from the local planning authority, which obviously developers, if they provide us with a better application initially, which results in less lengthy viability discussions. For example, if they submit an application from the outset that prioritizes social rented, that prioritizes a good mix of family sized units, that means that that reduces the level of negotiation significantly, which in turn allows them to increase the amount of affordable housing on site. As obviously for many developers, those lengthy discussions can result in them needing to put more money into the scheme at a later date. In which case, could somebody from the executive tell us whether if under the viability assessments that they are now endorsing, a scheme is still shown to be unviable if it were to meet their desired criteria, whether they will then allow it to pass on the basis of viability assessment with a lower level of affordable or Section 106 or whatever else. Are you actually going to honour these viability assessments if you vote to put this through? I think that we haven't got anyone from the executive able. There's no one on your side able to respond to that question. Sorry, not here, Councillor Graham. There's plenty of people able to respond. The Deputy Leader is still here. She's a member of the executive. Excuse me, Councillor Graham. Enough. Thank you. I think the Chief Exec's happy to respond. Clearly I'm not a member of the executive. Everyone would have spotted that. I was just going to point out that of course those decisions are a planning function, not one for the executive. Thank you, because that was what I would have said as well, having been on planning committees. That was a planning decision, and you know that, and I'm afraid your colleague… I can respond to that, by the way. Right. Thank you. Any other questions on this one? Right. Excellent. Thank you very much, Ms Turner. I'm sorry you had to wait for such a long time. Okay, so we're moving to… The recommendations are to adopt this guidance and allow the Director to publish it and further updates if necessary. Those Councillors in favour of this, please raise their hands. Right. How many have we got? One, two, three, four, five in favour. Those against. Any abstentions? Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Councillors. On a point of order, and this is often in good spirit. We are quite keen to discuss the Council's financial results, and that report, which we think is quite important. We're not downplaying the importance of the bonds as corporate plan actions and KPIs, but there are an awful lot of those, and I fear that if we take the agenda items into current order, we will get no opportunity to discuss the Council's financial results. It would be possible to alter the agenda order slightly just to accommodate that. Well, what I'd quite like to do is stick with the agenda items, but I absolutely understand what you've said. I'd like to stick with the order we've got. With the aim, I will let everyone know when we have gone… We'll give it 15 minutes and see at maximum, and then we'll be able to start on the Council's financial… Okay. Is that all right with everyone? Okay. We're going to look at the KPIs. I think we have Claire O'Connor here. And what the suggestion has been, the way I'm going to take this is… I think, Ms O'Connor, we discussed that we just go straight through for the paper, wasn't it? Yeah, I think we discussed we would group the pages, I think it was, Chair, and then I will draw in any officers if it's a question. So we do have officers able to deal with this. Okay, so we are… The first bit covers the indicators themselves. That's up to page 239. I'd now like questions on pages 241 onwards on the health committee indicators. If there are any questions on these, please can you raise your hand? None at all. Okeydoke. Right. Next up, and the other thing I'd also comment for anyone watching is, of course, many of these indicators would normally go to the relevant committee. We've got them here because it is important that we look at these. Okay. Next up is children's committee indicators starting on page 250. Any questions or comments on those, Councillors? Very brief one. It's outside of our normal remit, so it may have been dealt with in the education committee. But I noticed that the percentage of 16 to 17-year-olds… Page, please. Page 274. Obviously, we're not quite on track on the target for those who are NEETs, not in education, employment or training. What action is being taken to address that? That's obviously a very important thing to minimize. Did you catch that question? I did. Right. The question was, the indicator is page 274, and it's the percentage of 16 to 17-year-olds who are NEET, and we're lower than we would wish for that. Higher. Sorry, higher. That's something we would wish to reduce. So, if you could introduce yourself and tell us about what the plans are to improve that. Yes, of course. My name is Rishi Pendry. I'm the Director of Children's Social Care. We're doing everything we can to obviously have our young people in education, employment and training. We're developing apprenticeship offers. We're developing offers particularly for care leavers, care experience young people. And we're supporting through our lifelong learning partnership arrangements. That's clearly something that we need to address, but there is a degree of complexities with our young people, particularly those kind of coming out of COVID, and their ability and confidence and the challenges of mental health that often prevent an easy route into education, employment and training without quite a deal of support. Can I just, for myself, could you just elaborate a bit about the COVID? Because that was a question that I had when I saw the indicator, how much the fallout from COVID is still affecting these young people who would have been, what, 12, 13 when in lockdown? Yeah, it's clearly a critical period in adolescent development in terms of developing the confidence, the abilities to be able to engage in learning, to be able to engage in training, to develop those skills that you would have to join the workforce. A lot of our young people have been very challenged in those areas alongside having developed quite severe anxiety and depression, and that tends to affect those in our more marginalized communities. So really it's about supporting them with bespoke packages to get them into education, employment and training as they face those challenges alongside the cost of living challenges, poverty, so on and so forth. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, so that on children's, we'll now look at, I'm hoping I've got the right ones. I think the next one, excuse me, we should, sorry, environment, which, thank you, which starts on page 278, thank you. Councillor Lawless. Thank you. On page 287, the very last target shows that the number of fly-tipping enforcements is lower this year than it was last year, and political spin might suggest that we're doing less, but is that because fly-tipping instances are actually reducing because of some of the schemes we're doing? Good evening, Councillors. Paul Charrick, Executive Director of Environment and Community Services. Yeah, this data has been collected in the same way for many years. It's been collected by, many of you will know, Mrs. Sharon Wright, her team remain as zealous as ever in their actions on enforcement. Her team remain of the same scale. So, in my view, our instinct is that this decrease in actions is explained all by there actually being less fly-tipping, and that's in part, at least in our view, because of our additional work on mega-skips and our roll-out of even more mega-skips across the Council. Can I add something to that as well? It's occurred to me as you were talking. Those figures there, obviously that's borough-wide, but there could have been changes in different areas. How easy would it be to provide the figures on award basis, because obviously when the fly-tip is cleared, you know where the location is. And I just wonder if that's something that might be considered for just this piece of extra information. Yes, I can take that to Mrs. Wright. I'm pretty confident that our data is captured on an addressed basis, and that we can therefore break it out into detail in different ways. So, I'm pretty confident that can be done. Sorry. Yeah, OK, thank you. Just quickly on that, is that also true of FPNs and PNCs, because those are issued on an addressed basis. So, if I wanted to know, for example, how many FPNs or PCNs have been issued on a wall-by-wall basis. Sorry, Councillor Richard Jones, as there may be people watching, could you elaborate what a PCN and an FCN is, please? Pure all night. So, broadly fines people get for presenting their waste early. There's a statutory difference between whether it's an FPN or a PCN that people disagree about. But presumably we could get all that information on a ward level, couldn't we? There should be no reason in principle why we couldn't do that. No reason in principle. I agree if it's based on an address. Not all FPNs and PCNs are, but yeah, those that are, we should be able to break that out. I'm slightly hesitant, but I can feel Mrs Wright somewhere in the ether, sort of worrying about how she's going to get this data together. But in principle, yes, how long it would take us to break it back in that way, I'm not sure. But I'm pretty confident that where we've got an address, we should be able to break it out. Mr Chadwick, perhaps then, oh, sorry, I'm... Thank you. Just one final thing. The patrols that NSL, the contractor do, are those decided sort of operationally, you know, in collaboration with the Directorate, or have they got a pretty free hand in where they go in the borough looking for flight tipping? Not with the Director, but yes, within the Directorate. There are discussions on a regular basis to where they ought to target. But obviously we use their intelligence as well. It's a cooperative discussion, partnership-based discussion. Right, Councillor Hedges. Thank you for the report, and thank you, Chair. Just wanted to ask a quick question about the overall crime rate, which is on page 248. Apologies if you mentioned it whilst I briefly popped out. It shows that it's the lowest crime rate in a London. Now, the figures are quite outdated, and also doesn't tally up with what we're seeing, certainly in my ward in Ballum. There's been an uptick in crime. Appreciate some of the crimes that are committed aren't always reported. But could you just explain this figure to me, because this seems very positive and doesn't seem to me to be reflective of what actually is currently going on. Thank you. 248 was health, wasn't it? Community, yes, but it was under the health committee. Mr Evans. Thank you for the question. I can give the indicators based on a long-standing, top-line, met, collected measure. It's the same measure that's used to standardise across all VCUs and police areas across the country. It is the overall crime rate. As you said, the figures still remain the lowest in inner London, so that's a positive. We do measure a wider suite of crime types and PIs as part of the dashboard for the community safety partnership, which is a statutory partnership of all the different partners, including the council, obviously, in the borough. As part of that, we do see cycles of some crime types increasing, some decreasing, and we obviously use that mechanism to ensure we've got adequate plans in place from the police and in partnership with our community safety team to tackle that. So it's hard to go into any real specifics on that, but if you've got any, you know, examples that you would like me to have a look at, Councillor Hedges, I'm happy to do that. Okay, thank you. Right, I'm conscious of the time. We're now at just about quarter past 10. We're on to finance, starting at page 293, Councillor Corner. Thank you, Chair, and this relates to the KPI related to telephone service levels. It seems that this has got significantly worse in the last year, and the reasons for that do not seem to raise more questions than answers. Those reasons are around staff retention and call volume peaks through the year. Given the timing, shall we just ask for the response from the officers? Well, hang on. Every year has bank holidays, so I don't see why that's the reason. Secondly, there's so much technology available now that we can use, for example, app-based chats, bots, and AI can be used to deliver better, more efficient customer service. So I don't see why this is getting worse than it was last year. What is the council doing to urgently improve this and find different ways of delivering effective customer service to residents? I'll try and cover that. The officer who was here to answer that question has unfortunately had to leave. So we are looking at the customer journey as part of the change program, which she'll be receiving a paper on in September. And Sam Olsen, our change executive director, is responsible for customer services, so she'll be here to be able to answer your questions. I know that the service explores all options. I know that it is not alone in facing staffing challenges. That is a challenge faced by customer centres across London. OK. Councillor Corner, thank you. Thank you for raising that, because it's of concern for, I think, everyone who has residence who can't get through, and hopefully will get the paper in October. OK. Right. Thank you for the transport. Any questions on the transport section of the KPIs? Councillor Fraser. Thank you. I'll just take a liberty as Transport Chair being here this evening to raise a couple of points. I know, hopefully, I'll act as a delegate for my committee. A couple of the points raised in here are about, and it's something I've experienced in my ward, about some delays to EV charging points because of low voltage in some of the land columns. I know that those investigations have completed. Is that now resolved to allow that to progress forward? And just whether, I know we're rolling over the indicator on street cycling storage, so whether that's, is there a reason why we didn't quite meet that target this year? I'm going to have to bring in Mr Moore on that, and if, as it's a transport area, alternatively, we can get an email with those responses back to you, Councillor Fraser, if that's quicker. I mean, given the timing, I think, are you happy with an email response? Sorry, yeah. I was just trying to come in, but it was limited. Yeah, email is fine. Just wanted to make sure that I was doing my due diligence as opposed to raising it. OK. Moving to page 303 on the, I think that's the actions from the health. Wait, come on over. Yes. Right. Are there any more questions, Councillor Graham, any more questions on what's left? I appreciate this is a bit of a whistle-stop tool. I'm trying to talk myself out of the next item, but I did, there was one point that I wanted to raise, because it's very important, and I won't raise anything else on this item at all. On page 309, it describes a shift away from an overall figure for domestic violence to a percentage of positive outcomes for domestic abuse and sexual violence. I completely understand the reasoning given for that, but can we have an assurance that we will also be given the underlying numbers? Because it's important to know not just whether the percentage is being dealt with successfully, but whether the actual numbers are going up or down, and there's a danger with this shift that that will be masked. Thank you, Councillor Graham. Obviously, the changing indicators about trying to be more victim-centric and outcome-focused, and it partially reflects in the fact that raw numbers aren't a very good measure of our success on domestic violence because of things like campaigns to increase reporting, et cetera. But to reassure, the raw numbers, I think, do come through the CSP, the Community Safety Partnership, and are monitored on an operational basis, and I think that is, and these KPIs focus on the outcomes that we put here. I accept both are relevant, but it would be helpful to have them combined for this. Otherwise, it's very difficult to read it in isolation. Given that those KPIs have been reported to a different committee, could you discuss that with the relevant people on the relevant committee and including the cabinet member? Okay. Anyone, any more questions on the KPIs? Ms O'Connor? It's not a question. It's just an amendment on page 324. We have a target of 11,000, which is for visits to our leisure centres and swimming pools. That target should read 14,000, so that's a strengthened target. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. Given that, we've been asked to note the content and approve the new corporate plan, and I'm going to comment this. I think the new KPIs and targets have been set out on page 303 to 340, and not on page 169 to 106 is obviously a typo. Just to help, we're happy to note the overall results, but we will abstain on the changes to the corporate plan. Okay. Do we need to abstain on B, approving, which is approving the, and then will you note the relevant bits of the page? Okay. And also, obviously, the content of the report pages will be different as well. Okay. Excellent. Thank you very much. Okay. Right. We now move to the council's financial, excuse me, returns 23 to 24, paper 186. Miss Mary, lovely to see you as you hide, as having had a trip round to housing as well, I guess. Is there anything you'd like to say on this before we go to questions? Thank you, Chair. So I think probably with the time, maybe not. I think you've all read the paper, so straight to questions if that's okay. Okay. Right. Hang on. I've got to make notes. On the back of the label, group discipline procedures, Councillor Ambash first, and then Councillor Graham. Thank you for the report, Mrs. Mary. I'd like to congratulate you and officers and Councillor of Ireland for making sure that last year's budgets, different budgets, we came in overall in credit and they've been very positively managed. I wanted to ask a question about table two on page 345. It shows quite a few unders and overs. And the question is, are we getting better at forecasting budgets across different departments and committees year on year? And it's great that we've come in with a surplus overall of nearly five million, but there are quite a lot of variations in what we forecasted. So how are we doing in improving our forecasting? Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor. So I don't think we're getting better or worse. I think what we're seeing is a much more volatile environment over the past few years in particular. There are so many service areas where there is volatility of demand. There's also complexity of need and there is effectively market strain around some of our statutory provision. So we're doing all we can to forecast as accurately as we can. One of the things we've recognised in this paper that we'll bring to the relevant service committees in September is the latest in-year forecast because we've started the year effectively knowing that some of the budgets that we've set won't be enough and we'll reflect that as soon as we can in the forecast. Okay. Thank you. Councillor Graham. Yes, it's a two-part question on what's going on with the dedicated schools' budget. First of all, I did raise briefly in the pre-meet the fact that the new governance policy is to charge VAT and business rates on the independent sector, which will include the third of special school places that are independent and obviously have knock-on consequences for their costs. Now, Mrs. Murray previously indicated that we might be able to recover the VAT element of that. However, clearly, where independent special needs providers are having to charge 20% more to their remaining pupils in fees and where they're having to pay additional business rates on top, this is likely to affect what the council has to pay even if our own placements are made exempt. So could we know if there's been any estimate made of the likely implications in cost given that we've already got an overspend that's increasing when it's supposed to be on a path to being removed? Okay. Thank you, Councillor. So two separate issues there that will impact on the council in different ways. So you mentioned VAT being charged on school fees. As you know, the council is able to reclaim all VAT and we've checked the headroom within our calculation and we've checked the latest guidance from HMRC and that's okay, we've got enough headroom, so that's one issue. The second issue around the impact of charitable status or the impact that might have, that will come out in an increase effectively, I think, in base fees and that's the bit that we just don't know at the moment. We don't know what that impact will be. So we'll be able to do some modelling around business rates because obviously that's something that we've got some knowledge of, but beyond that and other increases in placement costs, we'll have to model as we go through. I'm just wondering if there's any willingness on the part of the executive and the cabinet members to lobby the government to exempt the independent special needs sector because this is going to result in taxpayers spending more and potentially those places being lost. Sorry, I can't quite see you, Councillor, are you happy to make a comment on that, Ms. Murray or Councillor? I can just address the point, it's slightly wider. We are doing lots of lobbying around the DSB overall position in the deficit position because Wandsworth's position is starting to kind of creak at the seams, which other councils have already reached a critical position. So as part of that lobbying, it will be about the increased costs within the DSB, of which, as you've quite rightly said, this is a definite risk that we need to flag. So we can include it in our lobbying on that, yeah. But are you able to include formally that opposition to placing these additional costs on special needs schools in the independent sector because that would surely require political approval? I would hope that's something that the executive members could back, but I'm not sure it's something you could do without their support. Can I just comment at this point? Obviously, this is one of those situations where we haven't got the relevant cabinet member here and I think that perhaps the best thing, it's our, yeah, it might be our paper, but I think it would be something the cabinet member would have to take away. And I think a fair comment is to feed, we can feed Mrs. Merrion, presumably Councillor Ireland, can pass that concern on, which is clearly very understandable. Can I have, it's a different question, but very related to this, so just be helpful. I'll just comment that the deficit recovery plan is due to be discussed at committee in September and that will include provision for that. At this committee or at the children's committee? Children's committee, yes. That's very helpful and just one thing that is relevant for Councillor Ireland. Obviously, if it's possible to get that deficit recovery plan back on track, this doesn't become relevant, but otherwise, as paragraph 29 notes, the statutory override is due to expire and that deficit would come onto the council's balance sheet. Now, even if that statutory override is extended, nevertheless, with the current trajectory, it will at some point end up on the council's balance sheet. And I was hoping she could give a commitment that we would include that potential within the next budget setting process so that we're not setting a budget that looks balanced when actually, when this eventually hits us, as it undoubtedly will, we end up paying for it. Mrs Mary? Yes, so just to clarify, the impact of the override ending effectively is on our reserves. It isn't on our revenue budget, so of course we'll reflect that. Actually, that gets picked up in the medium-term financial strategy and we can obviously look at how we present that when we set the budget next year as well. Okay, thank you. Have we got further questions on the paper? Councillor Graham? Yes, sorry, I was expecting somebody else to get a shot, but that's fine. So obviously the out-turn figures, as shown on pages 344, 345, are rather different to those expected when we were looking at the out-turn back in February and March. There is clearly going to be a significant impact on the budget for 2024-25, which we've set. It could quite well be a positive impact, but the point is there will be significant impact from lower than expected inflation, from the pay settlement being lower than thought, from potentially the pay settlement that relates coming forward being lower, and from the higher treasury income. So will we get a revised position on this year's budget and when can we expect to see it? Right, excuse me, before Mrs Mary answers, I'm just going to say it's now half past ten and the guillotine has fallen. So we will consider the remainder of the agenda as follows. We will continue our debate on the council's financial, on this paper, for a further ten minutes. So until, maximum of ten minutes, until 2040. And then we'll vote without debate on the remaining items for recommendation to the executive and any proposed amendments. Okay, and if there's any, if either the relevant director, the section 151 officer, the head of paid service, or the monitoring officer, or their representatives, are of the view that the committee must receive advice before the committee votes, then they may address the committee with my permission. Members may ask questions for clarification, but only on any advice given by officers but not debated. Any other matters will be formally noted, we will now continue. And Mrs Mary, could you, hopefully you haven't forgotten the question in the middle of all this. Yes, thank you. So there's reference in paragraph 33 to the current year's position, which as Councillor Ambrash has rightly highlighted is often difficult to predict. But we're reflecting already the out-term position in our forecast and we'll bring more detail to committee in September. We can expect to see that information in September, setting it out in its full context. I'm happy with that, thank you. Okay, right, thank you very much. No more questions? Wow, okay. Right, so we have been asked to note the content of the report, approve the general fund variation in Appendix A, note the reserve balances in Appendix G. Okay, take it all together or in parts. Perhaps. Sorry? Perhaps agree with it. All agreed, everyone agreed, thank you very much councillors. Okay, the items, excuse me, the remaining two items, and I get to them. Sorry, thank you very much. It's getting late. Okay, we have a report about the revision to the Wandsworth Disposals Policy on our houses that we own. Are there any amendments to this paper? Okay, let's move to a vote then on items 3A, 3B. It's actually a change to 3C, so if we could move to a vote on this, please. Those in favor of recommendations to the executive, please raise your hands. That's going to be five, is it? Looks like it. Anybody against those recommendations? Okay, thank you very much. That carried five votes to four. The final paper is the revised figures. Yes, I managed to miss that. Just so you note, there is revised budget papers, so paper 2488, which is the budget variations. There was a revised copy because there'd been a slight change of what has gone to housing already. Okay, everyone seen that revised copy? Excellent. Okay, so can we vote on the general fund variations agreed detailed in paragraph three, please? Everyone in favor of those? Raise their hands. Thank you, that's five. Those against those variations? Nobody? Those abstaining? Right, okay. Okay, right, I think that brings us to the end of the meeting. Thank you, councillors, for your ongoing input.