Transcript

Thank you. Just before we start off, I think, Tracy, do you need to formally point me to the chair and then I can explain why. The first order of business is the appointment of chair for the scrutiny panel meeting. Please can I have a nomination for chair. I'd like to nominate Councillor Hayhurst to chair the meeting. Seconder. I'd like to second that please. Councillor Hayhurst is elected as chair of the scrutiny panel meeting tonight. I am grateful. Just to explain this and welcome everybody to the July scrutiny panel. Just to explain, obviously, Councillor Gordon is the chair of the scrutiny panel, but she has coded and so regretfully isn't here. She's put an awful lot of work into the meeting in terms of suggested questions for us and preparing it, which we are always very grateful and very much know. We all know if Margaret could be here, she would be. So, thank you, Margaret, for the work you've done. Can I then just do a few matters of formality. This is obviously a hybrid meeting. We have a number of people in the chamber, directorate heads, cabinet members and members of the commission. We've got a number of people online. You can see above me those online. Please do not start any conversations in the chat. Please keep your cameras on when is your item and please keep your microphones off unless speaking. Please be aware this is being broadcast, recorded and members of the press may be watching. The first item on the agenda is in terms of apologies for absence. I've had apologies from Councillor Patrick and Councillor Young, from Jacqueline Moylan, Councillor McKenzie, from Alice and Councillor Coburn. Are there any others I need to be notified of? The second item is I haven't been notified of any urgent items or order of business, although I would just say I know we've got a lot of cabinet members attending online and in person and I'm indeed the Mayor. You're not due to speak on any item but if you're able at an appropriate point to give pithy, concise interventions, that's always appreciated and Mayor Woodley may be at the end of the meeting with appropriate points. If you did want to say a few words or sum up the position of the budget, that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you to all the cabinet members that are here, it's appreciated your engagement. Declarations of interest, I haven't been notified of any. I'm looking around. Members, no. So with that then I'll go through to the main substantive item which is the Council budget. We've got a number of presentations here tonight from the directorate heads. If we had all the presentations in one go, I think that possibly might take up 15 minutes or an hour and then we wouldn't have the chance to ask any questions and it might get a bit staid. So my proposal is to go through the presentations in the order as per the slide deck but after each one I'm going to open it up for a couple of questions. Maybe not a whole round but just a few and then we'll go back to the next presentation just so it's a little bit more interactive but then hopefully that will leave about half an hour at the end for any wider questions that haven't got the chance to be asked. But members within that, please note I'll cut it off maybe only one or two questions after each presentation so if there are other questions please ask them later on. Just to give the overview of where we are, in the main agenda pack we've obviously got the OFT report, the financial report which deals with the budget position as it closed last year, 23 going into 24. The primary focus of today's meeting and the slide deck is to look at the current financial year position and where you are on those priorities, 24, 25 and obviously in the meetings we've got coming up in the next few weeks, I think they're private meetings with the scrutiny heads, we'll be looking forward to next year's savings, 25, 26. So the assumption is directors when you're talking about it, I'm assuming you're talking about this year 24, 25, if you are talking about another financial year please let us know, the assumption is we're talking about 24, 25 today and where we are in that regard. So having said all that I'm now going to kick off then please, I think as I understand it Deirdre and/or Rob we're going to start off with an overview, Deirdre we had a quick chat a minute ago and you were just going to give a very brief highlight as to where we are in the general budgetary position and then I was going to then maybe open it up for a few questions but then move on to Jackie in education and I also just flagged with Deirdre just some sort of understanding about what the reserve position was at the end of last year's budget and how much of our reserves we ended up using. I don't know whether in this time you're going to look that up Deirdre or whether you want to come back to it later on, either way is fine but can I hand over now to Deirdre and Rob for a brief introduction with respect to today and the main paper is in the supplemental pack, over to you. Thank you chair, obviously we're now beginning our processes for the 25/6 budget year and as you're up we've also just got the report in for the end of last year. I mean I think everyone is well aware that we remain in a very difficult financial position. The RFP report that you have on your agenda tonight for last year shows that we had a slight increase in the overspend at the end of the year, largely due to the pressures the council faces in the areas of adult and children's social care and increasingly homeless prevention are the biggest issues but there are others. The cost of living on inflation obviously bites while the inflation headline rate is going down, prices haven't. It's an increasingly difficult situation. Looking forward to the current year and the year going forward we're presenting some figures tonight which shows the medium term financial forecast looking for a 22 million pound reduction in spending for the 25/6 year look and 53 over the three year period which is without too much elaboration from us, you understand is a difficult situation. I regret to say that the pressures I've just talked about continue in the current year when I think the first year, first RFP report for this year has been published and showing we're heading for a considerably increased deficit in the current year and that will undoubtedly impact on figures going forward. So I start with doom and gloom to say the figures you've got here tonight are going to increase. So the very difficult challenges ahead and some very difficult decisions to make. From those of us who look at all this with a political perspective, we'll be hopeful there will be some relief from the new government. I would say as a Labour politician, if you'll forgive me, they cannot be anywhere. What we had to live through for the last 14 years has got to get better. We should at least have better certainty, we should at least have a fairer distribution system but what we can't really expect given the national economic situation is a huge increase in resources. So we have to get a balanced budget and we need to march forward on the basis that we will have to make some difficult decisions. I think the main purpose of tonight's meeting is to seem set and have presentations from Deirdre and the other officers here on what the financial position of the council overall, the particular pressures and special issues in each of the directorates to enable the scrutiny panel to have a good oversight of the background and also the opportunity to ask questions on the detail of some of the financial pressures. We'll then be moving I think very rapidly into a set of private scrutiny sessions where we'll be going through detailed proposals to balance the budget 25/6 and as I said, some of those are going to prove to be challenging decisions. Thank you very much, chair. Thank you and I should have just said for those watching online, you're the cabinet member of finance and Deirdre, you're our interim financial director of management. Deirdre, I just flag to you, I don't know if you've had a chance to look it up just in terms of the budget position that closed last year, which is on page 12 of the main agenda pack in the OFP financial report. Can you just, if you've had a chance to look it up, could you just explain in real terms how much was taken out of reserves during that financial year? So the question I asked you when we were speaking before is say, I know there are different elements of the reserve pot, but say at the start of that last financial year, say for example you had 150 million in reserves, at the end of it, what was that figure? How much in real terms were eaten to the reserves in the last financial year? Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah, in terms of the use of reserves, the draw on revenue reserves was, as you pointed out in that table, was a reduction of about £11 million, but as you appreciate, there are other reserves like capital reserves that get established as well. So overall, the level of earmarked reserves reduced by £4 million in that year. I will get a clearer answer to you on how it actually moved in revenue terms and in capital terms, because we do get capital receipts and capital reserves. That's very helpful to obviously, what we're concerned about seeing lots of other local authorities going over the cliff, is if it is sort of like more like the 9 or we even see 18 million reference here, if it is that, that's immediately very concerning, because it would indicate it's not very long, not much buffer, but obviously you've indicated it's 4 million, and the global overall reserve pot is around 150 million. I know it has different elements to it, but what is the… We're sitting on about, we're sitting on 126 million now. That's grateful. I'm grateful for that, in real terms, a 4 million reduction this year. Members, with that, are there any questions for either Rob or Deidre at this stage before we start drilling into the individual report? No, I can't see any hands. Well, in that case then, I see one from Councillor Gordon online. Yes, just a couple of… Thank you very much, Rob and Deidre, and thank you everyone for coming tonight. Just a couple of general questions from me, just sort of scene-setting ones, really. We had public engagement last year as part of the budget setting cycle. Are there any plans for that this year, and have you got any reflections from last year's engagement session? Secondly, in terms of the equality impact, the ongoing impact assessment, has there been any learning from the previous year's work on that? Where will the responsibility for this work lie this year? I know there has been some reorganisations. I just really want to be clear about how that's tied up to policy, the ongoing equality impact assessment of the budget. Thank you. I see some whispering going on. Who wants to take that? Councillor Chapman or Deidre? Deidre first, I think. I'll pick up the equalities impact assessment. I just had a meeting today on the handover of that work with the policy team, with Kieran's team, and we were talking about how that was going to be updated iterative, talking through the proposal templates, talking through the tools, and that at every point in the decision-making process, that communicative impact assessment would be updated, taking into account what's coming up from the proposal and talking to the heads of services and managers tasked with taking those proposals forward. As Sonia has said on a number of occasions, this is iterative. Every time plans are developed, the impact assessments is re-looked at, and we do plan to do that and build that into all of that process going forward. I don't know if Kieran wants to say anything else. His team. Kieran, you're the - just to introduce you - you're the Director of Corporate Strategy and Transformation. And also I think Margaret's first question was in relation to engagement as well. So on the equalities impact assessment, not too much to add to what Deirdre has said, but hopefully to provide that assurance to Councillor Gordon that although individuals will move on, the work will continue and we're still working as one team to make sure that happens. Thank you. In terms of public engagement, I think there was public engagement last year and we had an indication of what was important to residents. And I think we've got plans to do that sort of engagement again and maybe incorporate it into the resident survey. Yes, Cher. It was obviously a very big part of last year's budget and we'd obviously like to build on what we did last year as we go forward to continue with that work and have a comprehensive engagement and confidence programme that will go with the budget. I'm grateful. I'm going to move on now to the first directorate head, which is Jackie Burt, the Group Director for Children and Education. So Jackie, did you want to maybe give from your slide deck a brief 5 to 10 minute presentation? And I think a particular area that we are interested in is, as for all directorate heads, is where are you on the RAG rating of savings delivery and in particular those areas that aren't green? So over to you. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. So in the slide deck you can see we've got our budget position, how much we have available to spend and how we are planning to spend it. So as you can see, we're responsible for children's social care. That includes early help, strategies, justice provision, as delivered by Young Hackney and also Hackney Education, which runs all of the education services in the borough and oversees the dedicated schools rent, which is about 286 million and that's passported straight out to schools. In terms of our budget analysis, you can see on this slide that we have corporate parenting is probably one of the biggest areas of our spend and that's the commissioning green line on there, it's on commissioning care placements for our children for whom are corporate parents. In terms of income, you can see where we get our grants from, so we get a social care grant from DLUC, we get an asylum seekers grant, which goes into the income for our corporate parenting as well. We have our MOJ Youth Justice Board allowance, which staffs our Youth Justice Service for us and we have recharged from public health and some clinical commissioning groups. So in terms of if I start with children and family spend analysis, as you can see corporate parenting is the biggest area of spend and this includes planning for future placements of children via fostering adoption and also supporting children to move back to their parents or members of their family wherever possible. But in terms of where children are looked after, we're fortunate in Hackney that we have 74% of our looked after children are foster carers, which is pretty high compared to a lot of other places. We've worked incredibly hard to, and we have a families first approach, so we always look at family members first to see if children can be claimed by any of their kinship groups and then foster care and then for a small number of children they will be looked after in residential care and that's generally because their needs are so high that they need a different level of care that their needs can't be met within families. And these placements are incredibly expensive, they can be on average £15,000 per week per child. You can see our family intervention support services where we are responsible for keeping children safe in the borough in terms of we have our front door where we assess all requests for support for children and where we undertake child protection investigations. The largest outgoing on that obviously is in terms of staffing. We've got a disabled children's service and we've got a statutory responsibility to meet the need of children in our area who are living with a disability so that service is vital to a vast number of families and again we commission an awful lot of support to enable families to look after their children safely at home and also to thrive. Young Hackney needs probably no introduction, everyone knows Young Hackney very well, it's our youth service but it also incorporates some work that we do via public health commissions as well as through youth centres, our prevention and diversion scheme and also our youth justice. I won't list all of them because you can see exactly from this where we spend some of our money, I'll just pull out on clinical services including edge of care so as part of us as our cameras commission we have an in-house clinical service and the value of that is it enables children to stay with foster carers because we support foster carers and children who are looked after by us in a way that prevents placement breakdown. It also helps us work intensely with families and that can prevent children from having to come into care as well so that's an invaluable service and it's also really great for some of our young people when they're transitioning to leave in care when they don't meet the threshold for adult services particularly for mental illness then we can support them there. I'm just going to move quickly on to education, you can see we've got our early years income and commissioning, we've got our high needs and school places budget, education ops, our school standards and performance so a significantly smaller budget, a lesser income from the dedicated schools grant. You can see the DSG is 255 million and that just kind of comes in and goes out, we don't take that. We've got the people premium, we've got six formal grants, we've got traded services, nursery fees and universal infant free school meals. You can see in terms of the spend analysis it's very clear there where in terms of our early years spend, our high needs and school places spend, the education operations spend, you'd be aware that the pressure on special education needs and disabilities budget is nationally one of great concern and thus far the overspend on that has been allowed to stay on the balance sheet but at some point that will have to end and the previous government didn't have a solution for that. We are working very hard with the DFE in terms of trying to reduce that spend as much as possible but Hackney's one of the highest issues of education, health and care plans for children with special education needs and disabilities. So I've already talked about the cost pressures in corporate parenting. The second bullet point says that another budget pressure is the number of over-established posts. Actually we do have over-established posts, that's because we were under-established and we have a situation in children's social care where our caseloads are reasonable. We have had offices for the last few weeks, our caseloads are reasonable and if we don't have reasonable caseloads we can't run a safe service. We are in the middle of a consultation regarding structure and staffing in children and family services and we will deliver savings on that but I'd want to be absolutely clear we're not over-staffed in terms of the work of children. What is meant by over-established posts? So I think before when we had the 2019 inspection the caseloads were too high and as a result of that some additional posts were put in to try and make the workflow easier. The children that my staff work with are very complex and they were never added to the base budget, it was always additional. So we are addressing the structure in children's social care but not in a way that will increase pressure on frontline practitioners and frontline social workers so that their caseloads become unmanageable because that means it's unsafe for children and we won't be able to hold on to our staff. As I've said the SEND continues to be a huge pressure for us and we are working with the DFE on a delivering better value programme and we've got a £1 million grant allocation that's to help us mitigate some of the high need budget pressures. As you can see our deficit balance is £19.1 million currently and the statutory override had been extended to March 2026 and the new government is very new so we don't know what the plans are for that. We are not alone as a council in this position at all and the size of the national deficit on every council if you aggregate it is quite staggering. In terms of savings, so the green is the staffing review. So we launched a consultation on that on the 4th of July and we made a deliberate decision that we launched it during when offset inspectors were in the building because we recognise how important it was for staff, we didn't want them to carry on with any uncertainty so that's currently underway. So commissioning, you see from the budget lines that children and education spend a lot of money commissioning external providers to give us children's placements, to support children with disabilities who are living at home and currently that is done by officers in different parts of either education, social care and some of the health commissioning. So we are in the middle of creating a new directorate so we can bring all of that commissioning together so we will have an integrated health education social care commissioning and an early review of our contracts register across health education social care shows that we are commissioning across the three parts of the service, same providers for similar things. Shaki, if I could ask you to focus on in terms of your answers to why the ones are AMBA that are AMBA and what are we doing to not get them out? So the AMBA one is we are just going out to recruit in terms of the commissioning function so that took longer than we anticipated getting job descriptions and it's an investor safe so getting that together and we also took the services of consultancy 3110 so getting the consultants in place to advise us on what the structure should be. So we're on track to go out to recruit now we've got a project manager in who is delivering that. The children's centres are AMBA and that is because it was part of a public consultation and the pre-election period also got in the way of us progressing that so that is as on track as it can be but within the timescale set by the statutory consultation and doing the cabinet responses etc. Young Hackney so that is AMBA because we can't restructure the whole of the service at any particular point so we are co-designing the Young Hackney structure with the services and we've been consulting with young people about that so we've met with youth parliament as well and that's next in train so say we've launched the children's social care the Young Hackney one is next so we're just finishing off the DPR on that and that will probably start that in September. Because it's time for a few questions is there anything else you wanted to say before I finish off? Any questions from members? I see Margaret O'Brien, Councillor Conway did you want to go as chair of CYD? Sure thank you thanks for that Jackie. I've got a few questions but Margaret may want to ask some of them so I'll come in with one that's got two parts to it. So the assumptions which underpin the mid-term financial plan are important as this sets out the budget envelope for this period in the extent of budget savings which are required to meet the projected budget shortfall. As projections and assumptions have all been developed pre-election and may be subject to change can you set out when assumptions will be updated and how and when scrutiny members will see how this impacts on projected deficit and required savings proposals? That's one part of that question and the other part is additional growth funding to meet growing service demands to the value of 39 million is included within the mid-term financial plan period 20, 25, 26, 27, 28 predominantly within adult and children's social care. Will there be any additional funding earmarked for preventative early help services which must be more effective in the long term and also noting that early help funding was reduced by 250,000 for this current year? Sorry. No thank you and Jackie before you come on I will take these questions in a group so Margaret, Councillor Gordon I saw you next. Yes thank you I think Deputy Mayor Bramble also wants to come in I don't know whether maybe at the end. If you go for your question then I'll bring it up. Yeah so yeah so just focusing on the savings delivery the commissioning savings sets out 700,000 of savings for this year 24, 25 and a further 250,000 of budget savings were agreed by cabinet in January. Can you provide any further detail as to how the 700,000 will be achieved this year outlining any sort of risks to that and is the 250,000 still achievable for 24, 25 and also in terms of children's centres you've already touched on this significant in-year savings the rear mark for children's centres this year 1.1 million. I mean you've acknowledged that this is being held up for various external reasons but given those uncertainties about the income for extended free child care in September 2024 how realistic are the assumptions in relation to those savings. Thank you. Thanks. Councillor Bramble if it's okay can I let Jackie come in and then bring you in at the end for an observation would that be okay? Not getting everybody so let's go to that's perfect thank you chair okay Jackie if you want to go for those four questions and then I'll go to Councillor Bramble. Chair could I just take the medium-term financial plan question that was first asked so we are in the process of updating the medium-term financial plan we always said we were going to do it when we had the first forecast of the year which we've just had and as Councillor Chapman said at the beginning that feeding that into our assumptions we're not expecting the medium-term financial plan gap to reduce it may get slightly worse we have we've we're updating all the assumptions around council tax collection non-domestic rates any other information we're getting from a wider local government and the government but we're not seeing any significant increase to our resources that can meet the growing pressures in service both across that social care children's and adults and homelessness services so we are doing at the moment and it'll be ready towards the end of the month and that is okay so the question but i think i heard it correctly about um rethinking our investment in early help is that right Councillor Conway um so we already invest uh quite significantly in early help and we do have an effective early help offer offer across the child and family hubs and in the supporting families teams that early help families in children's social care there is some uncertainty about what will happen with the supporting families grant because actually we fund a lot of help for our families with that and also not having any long-term plans thus far about what's going to happen next it makes it difficult for us to to make any concrete plans so we are committed to helping families early we can see the benefits of that and always i guess for me it's always important that we look at what we do anyway that we just never assume that what we're doing is the right thing to do we have to work out is it effective is it making a difference and we can see that the early help we are offering to families and how can it is making a difference so any opportunity i could have to invest in um in expanding that of course i would gladly do so but i don't think there's anything on the table that tells me at this point in time i can do anything differently and um in terms of the quantum of what what we do i think uh some of our figures around statutory work and numbers of children on child protection plans and numbers of children who are looked after given the level of need in hackney because of the early help offer i think we managed to mitigate a lot of that and keep those those levels within reasonable proportions very reasonable proportions given the level of need um and council gordon's response in terms of the children's centres and the achievability of some of the um spending target the savings targets so the children's centres with the free childcare so um the modeling is already we've already done that modeling and it's based on assumptions at this stage so i don't really feel that i'm able to say uh and i to be honest i didn't quite understand the question i didn't understand if the question was would we rethink what we're doing on children's centres or what council would you just be able to to go back to that question for me please i think in summary it's worth whether you've got any concerns with these savings going to be achieved because of the delay and um you know uncertainties about income um well i would be anxious if we don't uh progress with the proposals um for the children's centres as we've set out because we've already committed to make those levels of savings yes i would be um and it would then obviously i'd have to look at other parts of of children education to see how we could meet that that difference um thank you i think perhaps it was also her first part of her question was just in terms of the achievability of the i think it was the 700 000 additional okay so um in the first year that is going to be a bit of a stretch but we are looking to mitigate that against other areas of savings potentially in the in the directorate um we think that well when when i made the when we made the decision to create the commissioning service within children education it was as a result of having interviewed a number of directors of children's services from our outstanding authorities who had lower spend than we did and all of their best advice to me was sort out your commissioning then you'll be able to make some savings so as i said in terms of our first cut on our contracts register we can see that there are some um some areas that we think we can have some quick wins um so i've got a project manager in at the moment who is doing that work and we will be um starting to look at the contracts pretty much from september so i'm i'm confident we're going to have some quick wins in that area i'm grateful i'm going to move on at this stage i've certainly got some more questions to track in i think others may do a bit later i'll move on at this stage to keep things moving and then we'll have space at the end for further questions uh so next can i ask um helen woodland the group uh thank you very much uh deputy mayor bramble uh thank you thank you chair kelso chapman talked about the financial context and we have lost 60p in every pound and we welcome uh of course a new government for forming but eight eight ten days in power to mitigate 40 years of a challenging financial time it will take time for that local government to really feel the benefits of that uh political change in leadership so we're still gonna have to make some of these really difficult decisions uh jackie and her staff been engaging with the the unions and fortunately some of the changes don't affect uh permanent members of staff we intend to go back to engage with you parliament to give them um so they are really engaged with the process and i think pauline and i spent two hours with a q and a with them the last thing that i would say uh chair that i've been quite clear that i want us to reserve our early help offer as much because our referral rates have gone down and i think that's because we've got the investment in early help and we've improved our front door so basically when you phone up the council and you ask for help if you've got a concern we've improved how people can access that and how it's operated and i think that's helped with the reduction of our referrals thank you chair grateful thank you um moving on to um helen woodland uh the group director of adult health and integration um helen thanks for your um uh slide deck which starts at page it's 32 and again as with jackie more emphasis could be put upon the um savings delivery and particularly the uh amber item on there that would be appreciated thank you chair um so in the director of adults health and integration it's worth reminding people that it is adult social care but also our public health service and an often forgotten element that we deliver is also our service for refugees and asylum seekers so as well as the homes for ukraine program we also deliver the service that we provide to all of our refugees and asylum seekers um the budget within the directorate is quite significant we're about nudging 40 of the overall council budget and it's also worth reminding members that that in particular for adult social care goes to support less than two percent of the population so although we're a very big budget we actually have a very small number of people that we support and it is not a universal service so unlike our housing offer our children's offer you have to be eligible for adult social care and the threshold to meet that eligibility is really quite high the majority of the adult social care budget is commissioned so we buy in services and the majority of the care that we commission is home care and as you can see from the grant that's 26 nearly 27 million pounds that's actually a positive thing so our strategy in hakani as it is in most places is that we want people to receive care as close to home or as close to their own communities as possible and whenever possible we try and keep them within their own homes it's also worth noting that we do have a what we call a directly provided service so a significant amount of care is also provided in hakani by care staff that i directly employ so that's about 250 staff that provide care across 16 different sites the public health grant is again worth reminding people it is a grant it's a reference grant it's audited nationally and it can only be spent on public health so for outcomes that deliver an improvement in the health of our population that does not mean it all has to be spent within the public health team and actually at the moment the public health service contributes around seven million pounds to both posts and services that are delivered by wider parts of the council and that being said we can't make a kind of direct saving on the public health grant what we can do is look at areas where public health outcomes are being delivered where some of the money can be diverted but the grant itself these are in penster will remain in place the other point that i want to make that i often make when we're talking about adult social care is and this may well change with the new government but up till now the majority of my funding has been made up of short-term grants and when i say short-term that's one year so our certainty around planning and our ability to do long-term long-range planning is quite limited so even down to the social care grant we only know year on year what we're going to get within that grant and the majority of other grants that you can see listed on the slide on the screen actually we don't know where they're going to receive in the coming year we have been made aware that the incoming government is intending to move to longer term funding what they haven't as yet made any comment about is the short-term grants that we've received but they make up a substantial part of my budget so our ability to do that long-term planning is actually severely hampered by the number of short-term grants all of which come with specific conditions that we currently funded through i won't talk about the particular areas people can see all of the different areas that we spend money in i will talk a little bit about the cost pressures so whenever i talk about the adult social care budget i feel i have to draw people's attention to the current mismatch we have between our demand the cost of our services and the budget we have available to meet that demand so we are a statutory service and what that means is anyone who is eligible for care who comes to us and asks for care will receive it because legally we have to provide it we are therefore a demand-led budget and since 1920 the overall percentage of people receiving care has increased by 40 percent my budget has decreased by 25 percent it is more pronounced in certain areas so actually if you look at the number of people receiving clean care that's increased by 73 percent so demand for services is increasing exponentially and in part that's because we are an aging population and in part it is the impact of covid but for whatever reason more people are going to need care we also have been impacted significantly by the cost of living crisis and by inflation so we are particularly subject to costs of the care market and the cost of providing care i.e. the unit cost the amount we pay per hour or per week for care has increased significantly and it's worth being clear that a huge amount of work has been done around that to mitigate that but it is in large part because the costs of our providers have increased dramatically so i wouldn't say this is necessarily the market being taking a chance to get more money things like the cost of energy has increased dramatically therefore the cost to our providers has increased dramatically so if i look at the savings proposals that we have for this year and as focusing on the amber opportunity as requested so one of the things that we have been doing this year is looking at our day services so we commission a range of day services for people most often delivered actually outside of the borough so people take minibuses to places like barnet or edgware or various places across london even out of london to access day opportunities we do however have an in-house day center within the borough which is our Oswald street provision and our plan is to redesign that service so that it can work with some of our extremely complex adults with autism because they tend to be our highest cost placements and at the moment there isn't much provision for them within the borough so we are doing work to undertake that remodel so that Oswald street can work with those individuals it has been delayed slightly because as a result of covid we found that the center itself needed a new ventilation system so what we have been delayed by is the capital works to complete that ventilation system and that is now agreed and is underway so we believe we're on track to deliver that in the meantime what we have done is really procure our day opportunities framework for care that we buy so that we have standardized those prices and actually brought the costs down that way as well now i'll stop there for any questions thanks helen as the um scrutiny chair if i just um start off on that one so i mean i think we're very grateful osmald street is a fantastic resource i mean i visited it twice now and the commission the health commission visited it not too recently at that point i think your one of your directors georgia was just about to sign up on ventilation work i think this was that was around christmas time so when are we expecting that to be completed and are you then um ready to go to achieve those i think i appreciate it's comparatively small compared to some of the other cost savings on that on that rag rating but do we still think by end of financial year um that's achievable so we actually think we'll deliver the cost savings through the recommissioning of the framework um but the works are due to be completed we hope in october so what we would hope is that by christmas we have that service live and we'll start to have more people in the borough accessing services within the borough my other question at this stage is these um savings delivery for this year are comparatively light compared to the future years because of the newton transformation program and what they're hoping to achieve and obviously um you and uh those people from newton came to health scrutiny last uh week and from a financial perspective it seemed the trial periods were looking quite promising but if those um if the savings generated by the trial group can be replicated elsewhere i think i got the understanding that that would meet go long way to meeting next year in the year after seven to 11 million pounds saving but we still am i right in saying that even if that is achieved we've still got a significant structural problem because of the growth so that helps us keep standstill if if achieved but we've still got this issue you've highlighted with in terms of ongoing growth is that a fair summary of the situation we're in yeah that's exactly it yes just to assist on the members there with the difficulty that um helen's facing um even if we undertake this radical change there's still significant growth pressures any anyone else now at this stage with respect to the um health any any any health questions uh council lynch oh hi thank you chair um and thank you both helen and jackie for those presentations um i'm obviously here in position as chair of audit but also i um really pleased to just join to health and we had a much more in-depth sort of um presentation around the the newton new work that's happening i think it's it's more of an observation and it's just something that i um uh i wonder for those watching online and for our residents is um whether or not we need to really emphasize how some of this sort of transformation work it is ultimately because of the the funding uh change challenges but also there are new ways of new ways to do things isn't there which you know is is always going to be focused on better outcomes for our residents and it was just an observation of whether or not we as as leads to that um those services that that you that i think you get across the absolute risk that your services have but also there are opportunities to do things differently and i think jackie you absolutely eloquently described that around the fact of actually just getting your commissioners all in one place so that you can actually do that really quick fire you know you've got one one place for for practitioners to go to and you know again the work about essentially validating what your commissioner at the moment is is is is is really welcomed but yeah thank you chair and thank you again jackie and helen thank you and and maybe if we just dovetail on that council lynch's point there on then on on on health helen what work are you doing with the team obviously there's looking at this through a cost prism but the other as you started off your presentation saying that it's actually it's better people's life expectancy is better if they are cared for close to home but obviously that can be a significant persuasion operation culturally within institutions and with family members who might otherwise wish their relatives to have residential or care what what sort of efforts are you doing in terms of trying to change culture and educate not just on the newton side but also in terms of the the family members as well thank you jay it's a good point um so we have a transformation program that is largely largely focused on culture workforce and training and that works with every single member of our staff it also works with our partners because actually one of the more significant barriers to supporting families to be comfortable with care closer to home can often be with when a health practitioner has told them that mum definitely needs residential care so i think once a doctor said that or a nurse has said that it can be really quite hard then to convince a family of the benefits of caring for someone closer to home so we are aiming to be a really fully integrated system as jackie's mentioned some of that comes with integrated commissioning so we are developing an integrated commissioning team across health public health and adult social care and the health commissioners actually are moving into the hsc next month so they will be co-located in the first instance and we're aiming for them to be fully integrated within the next six to nine months or so so being able to i think approach the whole system and how we work and how we give messaging and reassurance to families and more importantly to our service users as a system is something we're very focused on i'm grateful i'm gonna leave health and adult social care there for a moment and move on to the next presentation from ricardo hyatt who's the group director for climate homes in economy your presentation ricardo starts page 41 and again as with the other presenters the amber and also we know the in particular the quite significant in terms of financial element the one red area in your director as well so again if you could put more focus on on those and why and when they will be achieved thank you thank you chair so by way of an overview in regards to spend priorities the services within the directorate provided and to the benefit of everyone who lives visits or works in hackney so all of the universal services pretty much fall into my directorate alongside housing and or the public realm services in terms of the budget so the good thing but also challenging thing about the directorate is there are some high spend areas but equally high levels of income but in a market downturn where there's a cost of living crisis and economic difficulty there are huge pressures on our income projections and i'll come on to that a bit later on but as you can see from the next slide down there is the highest budgets in the directorate and relate to housing needs and climate sustainability and environmental services effectively the waste and recycling services and then the highest level of income into the organization from service at the parking and markets and street trading service in in the directorate in terms of how the budget and shakes out so one key thing to highlight for members is as of the 1st of june the benefits and homeless prevention service moved across to my directorate on finance and corporate resources and the biggest budget line by far making up the overall budget for the directorate is that of budget line related to the works and pensions related to benefits that come in and effectively are paid out to to recipients waiting for roughly 69% of the budget then there are rents associated with homelessness service parking which i've already touched on and and quite a few others others so some large budgets there but i think overall a key point to make is the net cost of all of the services in the directorate to not sure why i'm chipping out can you hear me okay so the net cost to the general fund of all of the services in the directorate is about 43 million pounds which is about eleven and a half percent of the general fund budget so as i said earlier lots of income but in current times that that becomes very challenging to maintain lots of services and budget lines here so i'll try to pick out some of the key ones so one of our highest one of the highest net budgets in the directorate is that associated with climate sustainability and environmental services so that is our predominantly waste and recycling services a lot of the work that we do around climate action and climate change policy development perspective sits in that sits in that service housing needs i've touched on huge pressures in relation to temporary accommodation which council chairman alluded to earlier and ongoing work there to mitigate those pressures but the budget there is 4.14.4 million moving down there are there's a cluster of the public realm services so leisure parks and green spaces and being a key one community safety enforcement and business regulation another key service there with a net budget of 5.7 million pounds street scene a budget heavily or a service heavily reliant on external income from tfl and permits and licenses from requested closures of the highway um so lots of on that budget what was it okay is that nickel yep okay um so yeah so um beyond that um then there's uh regeneration and economic development which is a small budget of a net budget of 2.3 million so that service is responsible for a lot of the work that we do in regards to inclusive economy economic development and also the work that we do around our town centers working with businesses etc etc and then planning and building control which is a statutory statutory service employment and skills which is almost wholly externally funded via the adult education budget and other external parts of funding so um i touched on parking and mark parking markets and street trading and i'll just come back to that because that's one of the red rated um savings uh at targets so in terms of cost pressures um increasing pressure on um the homelessness prevention service um specifically around um temporary accommodation or the lack thereof and us having to place huge numbers of clients into a nightly paid accommodation and costs ever increasing in that space there's also pressure on our penalty uh pcn uh income um associated with uh vandalism to our cctv systems and also uh increased levels of driver compliance which is ultimately is what we'd like to see but that does have an impact on the income that comes in via that service um delays in achieving the our savings associated with the commercial waste company um largely due to operational pressures and external facts not external factors but um increases in our overheads such as the cost of maintaining vehicles um we've got some challenges around um agency staff that we've had to bring in to keep services going um following um our uh throughout the recovery from from the cyber attack and having to get systems in place to help us to to keep the service going um in terms of uh the savings delivery um proposals so i'll try and get through this these as quickly as possible there's quite a few of them so um charging for garden waste um we've done relatively well in achieving um our target um for that uh this year um amber for next year um but so far so good um there we're going to be taking lots of learning from the implementation um of that charge this year to ensure that we're able to follow through in 26 27. um the community safety intelligence hub um saving so this is in relation to this is amber um because of the risks associated following delays in taking forward um the restructure um required for that but we are looking at how we can mitigate this by looking at costs across the piece um in regards to that service um in terms of enforcement um some similar challenges there as to why um that's amber um but again um we are looking at um how we can um uh uh review fees um uh associated with um that uh that form part of this savings uh target that we that we'd plan for this year ricotta just just to stop you when you say uh delays in redundancy results what does that mean does that mean less people not as many people willing wanting to take redundancy as you had predicted or what's it been something else no so um what this means is the process um that restructure process we've had a delay in starting that um so um there are uh people or members of staff at risk of redundancy um which are trying to mitigate by finding alternative roles for them in accordance with the organizations while organizational change process um but because of the delay in moving that forward it's meant that the savings that we've set aside may not come forward in its entirety this year so that's that's the risk associated with that um in terms of um parking which is rated red so i've touched on some of this before but part of the risks we've seen flow through from 23 24 is associated with um reductions in parking income because of vandalism to our cctv systems but also an increase or improvement in driver compliance um there's always a challenge around um pcn um income because um when you introduce schemes um uh to act as a as a deterrent um initially um income from those schemes are pretty high but as um drivers and you know road users get used to it um that intends to plateau and then and then decrease over time um we are working away at additional and new schemes to bring forward but actually what we're having to do is to really think about the cost of the service and thinking about how we can operate as efficiently as possible to help offset some of the risks associated with the loss of income but to also review existing schemes so for example scheme in london fields landsdown road we review the operating hours of that and have changed the operating hours i think in the last um month or so um to extend it and and have have um uh have um longer operating hours for the scheme but it's still early days so we'll have to see how that progresses but we are trying to do all we can to to sort of claw back and mitigate the risks associated with this this income target or this savings target rather um the only other amber on here um well on the next page um relates to regeneration and economic development um so again um there have been some challenges in uh due to timing uh issues and constraints in progressing the restructure as quickly as we'd like and the figures that we're talking about here aren't as large as some of the others but in terms of mitigation the regeneration economic development service is one that is pretty good at securing external sources of funding and income and grants and so on so throughout the year we will be seeking opportunities to see where we can offset costs from drawing from external sources of funding but ultimately what it means is because of the savings and target that we have here um there's less flexibility um for the service to go beyond the work that it's already planned to take forward particularly within our town centers um for the year ahead um but again ultimately you know we have to look at the cost of the service to see where we can be as efficient as possible to claw claw back um uh or to deliver the savings that we've put forward um I think those are all of the amber ones no um thank you if it stopped you there then I'll just open it up for um a few questions captain of the morning it's your area you want to ask and you got any questions to start with for ricardo I I can go while you're no I mean one was struck me just in terms of when you were speaking about the parking I mean I would be interested in a sort of breakdown as the extent you're able as to how much of that 2.5 million risk is down to the um vandalism of the hammers I mean because I know that's a reason but is that a majority reason for majority money or is that a much smaller part of it but the others are to do with the um um the the income decreasing and also just I suppose just to challenge you about the risks of the council reputation because I mean if it's the case that we're extending hours not because the health and safety requires it or road use need it but as an income generating potential um I mean that's where we're at risk of losing um popular support as a council because we just seem to be there to raising money rather than doing it for an actual need and how we balance that off or is it just the assumptions not through your fault are just wrong here and we need to go back to did we have others and just say this has to change because it's not a realistic assumption going forward yeah so so I'll answer that second question first and thank you for challenging me because ultimately you know we don't put these schemes in to raise money in fact we're not allowed to do that um it is about a deterrent it is about road safety um but in the context of the discussion that we're having here I thought it would be relevant for me to raise that so just to clarify you know the the measures that road safety measures that we put in and and you know new schemes that we put in you know it's not about generating them but we do that because um it's a deterrent um it's it's the practice you know common practice across across local authorities and other authorities such as TfL and others um in terms of the split of the 2.5 million um the bulk of it is in relation to projections um and us taking a forecast based on previous years and that hasn't quite panned out um well um the bulk of it is related to the change in um that but also the change in um or the increase or improvement in driver compliance um I would say it's probably about a third maybe less than a third um slightly between a quarter and a third which relates to vandalism but that is an ongoing issue for us that accumulates over time. Thank you very much for your presentation Riccardo and you know the sort of clear and helpful way that it's been um we've received this information this evening um I've just got a couple of questions really about um I mean obviously housing need um you know is a really critical area of spend um and I was just wondering whether there's anything you can tell me about possibilities for capital investment whether um solely in Hackney or jointly with other local authorities whether that's something that you know you are exploring really um in order to alleviate those pressures um and if I can have a second question if I may um we've been informed this evening obviously about the um the challenges um in relation to um our um housing stock and that the housing services um have self-reported to the housing regulator I mean obviously that's a matter for another day and for the um for the relevant scrutiny commission but I just wondered whether um you can tell us whether you anticipate that or other issues having any impact on your projections. Thank you. So um in terms of your first question um so there are we are exploring all avenues um including opportunities to acquire units acquire blocks work with you know other providers to increase the supply of um temporary accommodation um to offset the pressures and the cost of uh nightly paid um so that's an ongoing exercise that we're doing anyway um we are also thinking that into the future about how we can improve housing pathways um but what we are dealing with here and we're no different to any other local authority are significant pressures and those presenting as homeless because of wider challenges um so you know we're not out of um we're not an outlier in that respect um but as well as you know procuring supply and stock and units to be able to house people um we are also looking at incentives but also you know working with colleagues in other services across the organization to see how much more efficient we can be with housing stock that we do have so with um benefits and homeless prevention moving over to climate homes and economy there are huge potential synergies there between that service and the housing service so the social landlord um looking at our protocols how we work um so it's still early days but that's definitely something that I'm looking at and you know speaking to um Councillor McKenzie and Councillor Ette about um in regards to your second question so this this the presentation that I've just given relates specifically to the general fund so which is separate to the housing service which is funded by the or financed by the HRA so nothing that I've just said has any impact or bearing on that but I know we're going to get on to the general to the HRA at some point but no real impacts immediately or that that I would anticipate in regards to the self-referral because the income or how we fund the service predominantly comes from rents and that we receive so not not really expecting expecting um any challenge or impact on our income or our savings targets but we may come back to that when we get to the HRA. Thank you um I'll take uh one more now and then do you want to come in as well I'll take Councillor Potter now and then um uh we'll move on to uh Kieran's um area um thank you chair um I'm just asking a very brief question about the amber on regeneration um and economic development which you flagged um you talked about the service running on the minimal budget now I know this is relatively small compared to some of the other amounts we're talking about but I just wondered what risks or impacts this is going to have on some of our ambitions about you know the inclusive economy developing the economic development strategy some of our work around community wealth building and supporting businesses with social value etc. So um in short it won't have a major impact if any at all on the work that we're doing to develop the economic development plan or inclusive economy plan that's a priority piece of work that we will you know focus on and continue to deliver I think the challenge that we have here with this savings target is it restricts the services ability to undertake you know bits of consultancy or work associated with the work that we do in town centres by way of area regeneration um we are going to continue we've got a rich amount of sort of intel that we've had from various consultation exercises that we've done in Dalston in happy central um that will take us forward a lot of the priority projects that sit within the service you know like the work that we're doing or considering internally at the moment around 55 morning lane will continue and are funded slightly separately but I think this is more about staffing and thinking about how we can deliver the work that we need to deliver with within the resources that we have. I'm grateful um we're battling against the rain here aren't we to be heard um I'm gonna move on now to um Kieran Reid the director of corporate strategy and transformation um for um your your presentation which starts at um page uh 53 you've got fairly limited um in terms of um savings delivery Kieran but I would be interested more broadly in your work on the transformation sphere um because I know you're leading on that I know in terms of the adult social care elements in terms of that but if you could also just give some overview of in that role as transformation other than the adult social care Newton savings what other areas and what sort of how much money you're looking at in those other areas are you also looking at? Yeah thank you uh chair so I'm presenting on behalf of Dawn and other um directors and chief execs directorate just obviously following a few sort of reorganizations changes it with senior managers chief execs directorate covers HR and OD uh also incorporating comms uh legal governance and elections business intelligence and performance a procurement function uh and then under myself policy and strategic delivery incorporating our corporate volunteer sector grants program and transformation and as you can see out here the directorate is mostly not exclusively enabling support services primarily sort of focused on um setting the priorities to the organization translating political vision uh embedding that kind of golden thread throughout the organization supporting our workforce and our workforce development through to the HR function and then obviously the legal governance uh functions around ensuring we're a well-run protected organization. Just moving on to budget the gross budget's about 28 million pounds that comes down to about 17 and a half on a net basis and on the the next slide you can see the breakdown if you're ever able to to move forward um picking up your steer I won't go through the description of what each service does on those slides and as you've noted in the presentation we um as a directorate aren't reporting significant pressures that's largely because unlike some of the other areas um we're not demand-led in that you know the services are given an envelope primarily but not exclusively for the staffing provision and need to live within it it doesn't mean there aren't significant pressures and prioritizations within those resources but in terms of operating within the budget we've been set uh perhaps easier to do that a simpler position than colleagues for managing demand-led uh budget so the savings uh that we've got are are quite modest they're both in relation to the communications function one of senior management post one a reduction to love hackney and as you can see they're they're green um in terms of your sort of broader question uh on sort of transformation and members will know we've got the transformation strategy going to cabinet uh shortly so that sets out the approach we're taking which is first and foremost to try and work with and support the work that's already happening across the council so programs in in adults in children's in housing and to wrap around that the sort of corporate program management office approach also work underway on a cross-cutting basis in relation to establishing corporate landlord function and also increasing uh sort of commercial income to the council in an appropriate way we've identified three additional kind of priority areas where we'll be doing work with colleagues to try and explore new proposals that sort of meet those objectives of delivering for residents supporting the workforce and contributing to the the financial gap and their work around resident experience work around um demand management and prevention in areas where we're not currently profiling savings that temporary accommodation will probably be a good example of that and a number of measures around uh driving kind of efficiency um and how we can organize ourselves worth saying i don't think we expect those proposals to you know on their own anything like close the budget gap but it's one part of our kind of integrated strategy to make sure exploring every avenue uh to do that so in terms of the details i think we've got um sessions coming up with a private budget scrutiny sessions to sort of talk through the early thinking on some of those proposals and stay they emerge thank you just an observation for me it would just help me to sort of conceptualize where your focus is because i roughly know what the newton savings are between that 7 11 million but just from your perspective you'll obviously know where your main pots are you're looking to seek savings from so just in a crude sense what are your priorities not maybe not for now but what what are your priority areas within that because then that helps understand and challenge you in terms of what you're looking at and we get a greater understanding as well if that makes any sense um members any um any questions for um kiran at this stage no online uh council gordon yeah um thank you kiran and um yeah i mean i appreciate this this works at um an early stage but we obviously we've got some really long-standing um cost pressures but these are all you know very um important services which are dealing um with you know some of our most vulnerable residents i'm um you know particularly thinking um obviously about children's social care um adult social care and homelessness prevention um i mean all these every everyone on this panel knows that all these services um have been subject to escalating cost pressures um i mean particularly i think because of competition between um local authorities um for you know relevant resources um but you know again they are you know these are um the people and you know families um that we're dealing you know and their families are dealing with here are some of our most vulnerable um residents have you got um any sort of further thoughts really about how to um you know make sure that these um you know that um i mean i'm sure this is going to be in your forefront of your thinking all the time but make sure that our um services still um you know do manage to give you know these people the support that they need to um you know to live their you know best and richest lives and also how we can collaborate with other local authorities where there are relevant resource savings thank you thank you councillor so i think two sort of brief points to to make in response to your sort of question the first is that um in in most of those sort of demand-led areas um we would want to meet those responsibilities to residents but we also have no choice they are statutory requirements uh on the authority uh that is driving that that sort of cost to us the cost of meeting those responsibilities and we're absolutely clear that we must do that the transformation strategy that's been been published in which cabinet will consider is i think sort of open and transparent that you know given the rising demand and and sort of fixed or reduced funding position that the local government um experiences that the logic which we have seen and expect to continue to see is that that doing that in a responsible way whilst we will do everything we can to maximize independence to influence suppliers to um drive process efficiency in the way we deliver those responsibilities you know is likely that the cost of meeting those responsibilities will continue to consume a growing percentage of our budget and that has implications for those services but also for the other areas of the council which aren't as prescribed in what we have to deliver and we will need to think how we realize the vision and the aspirations in the strategic plan by kind of working with communities by influencing by by working with partners um but i think it's really important to be clear that we're you know the purpose of uh sort of transformation and the work we're doing whether it's in service programs or on a cross-council basis is not to try and undermine those statutory responsibilities we obviously want to to meet those uh and need to continue to do so um for the reasons you set out on behalf of our residents and just and just building from that i mean within the so i haven't studied it within the sort of the framework to what extent are you monitoring the knock-on impact so for example if you take the adult social care which i know more more of obviously what you don't want to be doing is shunting onto other areas of the nhs which is why you look at hospital admissions i was possibly suggesting you also look at gb women's etc but in terms of when you're doing this in terms of other areas how are you how are you monitoring in a tangible sense the consequences of the transformation that it may well be you would rightly say we've got no choice because if we don't need balance we lose your financial independence this is the least we're stopping fine understand that and i agree with it um but i think we also want to know what are the consequences of this in real terms to the residents of acne even if you don't like it and even if it's very hard to swallow and understand so i suppose to what it's just a challenge i suppose to what extent are you being honest with us in the process as to what are the downsides might be hard to swallow politically at times but i would do want to know i think i think we've got a duty to know and understand if not to make representations elsewhere um yeah thank you chair um so i think it's perhaps to give an example so i mentioned one of the themes being um resident experience and we think uh from the work we've done with colleagues and with members we think there is a sort of genuine opportunity to improve the experience of residents sort of transacting with the council to um you know get more things right first time to make our processes the website etc easier to access and there is some real genuine opportunity for that to be something which is in the kind of win-win space of delivering better and enabling us to operate more efficiently more modernly more in keeping with the expectations of our residents um but it's worth acknowledging and i think we we have done in the drafted qualities assessment and we will continue to do so as we develop that that program that we will need to be quite sensitive and careful in that process because whilst most people might wish to translate transact this efficiently online most of the time that won't be true for everybody all of the time and so how we mitigate how we identify people who it's not the case for how we build on the work that the customer service colleagues and others do already to to mitigate that to provide enhanced support uh to you know either to the migration of those processes or to service requests as they come in it's probably quite a good practical example i aid attention we will have to navigate and there is a you know financial incentive for us to move things online to be efficient and but we don't we mustn't kind of overplay that in the areas of the program which are live so for example the presentation now you've had on helen's area recently i think is easier to describe what that's doing some of this newer work i think i'm i'm describing to you our intention to consider those issues actively and the work we reference around the qualities impact assessment will be important in doing that i would appreciate your honesty when it's not a real to use your terminology it's not necessarily a real win but that just to fully understand the ramifications i think we then have to come at that with the maturity to understand we're in a no choice situation that we have to do this but at least we're informed and educated as to what the consequences are and i think that honesty um breeds trust and helps us as well um um in advocating and understanding the position um councilor gordon wants to come back and then i'm going to move on deidre to the final um uh presentations so councilor gordon yeah um apologies that um in relation to the second half of my question um in relation to collaboration with other local authorities i mean as i understand it one of the issues common issues in in relation to these um service areas is um you know councils competing for um commissioning scarce resources and therefore the um the costs are driven up um and also um you know and a possible solution to that is councils um you know uh collaborating on um capital expenditure i just wonder whether there are how those um possible activities fit in with the transformation program whether those things are being explored as well sorry i think we'd we'd rather expanded this into transformation in relation to the main areas of spend you know um in relation to adult social care children's social care and homelessness prevention so i think we'd i think the chair had already expanded the envelope of this set of questioning into broader transformation if that's okay yeah no absolutely fine so i just want to make sure i was answering your your question um accurately so um colleagues in the row in front of me will probably be sort of better placed to talk through a whole range of arrangements i know are in place across london for things like competing on cost of agency workers prices for placements um etc um so not necessarily being developed but here in hackney but there are a number of those um those sorts of measures um i think it's something we could consider um it's not necessarily a super active part of the work um that we're doing at the moment in terms of setting a capital program with other local authorities um thank you karen i'm gonna leave it there um for the uh time being and thank you um for that it's one of our first opportunities i think to sort of quiz you more widely about transformation work um so we'll take that opportunity um can i then move on to the final presentation back to um deidre for um presentations presentations in relation to financial and corporate resources um which starts at page 61 of the agenda um and there's one amber rating at 68 um quite a large one in terms of estates for over 1 million and then the hra account and i note deidre in terms of bad debt reduction again that's 2.6 million on a red rating so if you could do those two areas but particularly with the focus on those the amber on estates and the bad debt at uh 2.6 million please okay so um i'm attending for jackie so if i just whisk through uh finance and corporate resources i'm seeing we have a mixture of front-facing services and support services we're one of the key support services in the council driving medium-term financial planning ensuring robust budget monitoring and um and ensuring a financially sustainable council so an awful lot of the papers you see here that we produce to to get to get to scrutiny and we're leading that that charge we also uh collect all the council tax and non-domestic rates that we need to support our services we operate the council's portfolio of properties and we have a significant significant commercial property portfolio and we do provide and manage our ict networks for on behalf of the council um there's just the bar charts there the key thing to note is we have expenditure it's 68 million but our net budget is 37 and a half million um there this slide sorry could we go to the next slide sorry um i see um yeah so you can see the income that we collected you can see we've got 11.3 million that we get from our commercial rents we get some money from charging the hra for our services um we have some contributions some service use three and a half million and we get cool income there so we're showing 28.9 million of income which is 95 percent of our total income budget we're ignoring anything under half a million pounds um i'm not going to go through all these services but you can see um the services that we deliver um some of it um you know some of its significant costs ict is a cost it's quite significant across the council and our customer services service there is is delivered on behalf of all all of the council so just move on from there the cost pressures that the council is facing that the finance and forward resources is facing we have uh cost pressures in fleet maintenance we provide a in-house fleet maintenance service for the council and the demand for repairs and rising inflation on the actual cost of materials of labour is driving an increase in costs there there are pressures in ict and workplace we've got agency premiums that we're delivering for some key roles but we still have some legacy cyber impacts and forecasts shortfall in income from traded services with schools in revenue debt recovery costs are slightly higher than budget at the moment just due to an increase of increased contact calls coming into the contact centre but it is we are actually seeing improved income collection so though it is overspending we are getting more income from council tax and non-domestic rates which is a good thing and as Jackie's said there we are holding all our directors to account and we do everything we can do to bring our these pressures or mitigate those pressures within the budget envelope we have but lots of work to do in terms of the estates we only add the amber rated saving that is related to the income budget the Christopher Addison house is not yet let there is a risk of a shortfall in 24 25 and we knew this when we when we were setting the budget for 24 25 late in late in the year because of the delay but we we are drawing on reserves of overachievement of income in 22 23 to smooth that we're not able to smooth it all but we're smoothing a significant amount of that and plans are in place to to market and get a tenant into that property as soon as possible just just on that one what what's been the delay in it's not that no one's taking it it's just it's not marketing what why the delay in marketing I think I think I'd have to go back to Chris and get the exact detail but I think it's we had I think it's it's it's the the the lessee the lessee dropping out or delaying taking possession of of the property but I would get you I think Councillor Chapman may know more oh yeah I mean it's it's finding a suitable tenant basically I think the the service is doing everything it can to market just the economic conditions and but we we still anticipate being able to let it as planned although as Deirdre just reported there is a slight delay okay right yeah just obviously this might be a double act service related is Ricardo but if we just pop pop straight to you know the spend priorities are set out in slide 62 slide 62 I don't know what it is on in your pack in terms I think the key point to make about housing revenue account is all of the pressures all of the capital investment comes from the income generated from council rents and service charges to our tenants and leaseholder charges to our lease holders there is no grant there is no any subsidy from anywhere it is all income from our residents so there you can see we've got 140 million pounds worth 141 million rental income and leaseholder charges count 15 million and we've got a 17 million non-dwelling rents that's our garages and commercial property portfolio there I won't go through the services and that analysis but we've got the cost pressures and this is actually linked to that amber rated savings so you know we've got direct labour organization there's pressures on salary costs and increased level of repairs and also there's inflationary pressures on material costs so the inflationary pressures those CPI may be may be falling and coming down to 2% construction related expenditure and expenditure relating to fleet they are all in excess of that legal disrepair there's a continued upturn in that activity there and you know we've got the alternative dispute resolution that's the saving that was approved last year and it's just taking a bit longer to go around or we're just getting more cases coming through building maintenance we do need we've got additional staff and building safety officers to manage that dampen mould issues as well as responsive repairs which is still very high lifts repairs and maintenance there has been more reactive repairs in that area as we're waiting for that procurement and I understand this procurement is on track to deliver and we'll get that in the third quarter of this year and also again we've got the plan for the pay award at 3% current offer on the table is 4% so therefore we've got to make up that different from council rent so that is another issue that we need to address in terms of saving delivery when we finalize the accounts for 23/24 the pressure on repairs was significant and we had to in order to balance the HRA we had to use a saving that we proposed for 24/25 which was releasing that bad debt provision which we could do because the rent collection and it went collection had improved and the way we calculated bad debt provision meant that we could release 2.3 million but because of the increase in reactive repairs we needed that fund to balance the HRA for 23/24 so Steve and his team are looking for alternative savings to deliver on that 2.6 so that's why that's red it was an accounting it's partly to do with an accounting mechanism in how you used it for 23/24 as to why it's appearing now huge pressures in reactive repairs significant in the last quarter of the year so therefore when we did the out turn the pressure we had a I don't remember the overspend but it was significant it was a 4 million shift I think in the last quarter of the year so we needed the resource so we didn't so that we didn't draw on reserves 23/24 but Steve is working on delivering on that one in terms of the housing disrepair on amber and disrepair line item amber for nearly 700,000 as mentioned in the pressures we've got the alternative dispute resolution there is a there is a delay because we need to invest and deal with the ADR process and then you make the savings further down the line so on reviewing the progress in the second half 23/24 we we we Steve made the decision to reface it because it wouldn't all be delivered accordingly but I think Ricardo may be able to get more than that I think could you yes so this is a budget line or a savings line that we're constantly looking at I guess the first thing to say is you know we are doing all we can to reduce the number of legal disrepair cases and you know we are tentatively I'll say it here starting to see a reduction in the level and the number of the rate at which the number of legal disrepair cases are coming in but also you know did you mention the overspend on repairs because they're actually going out and trying to complete more works and to befriend us getting into a situation where we've got huge numbers of legal disrepair but the ADR practice is quite a challenging one because it's predicated on negotiations with individual tenants so you know where we have been able to agree alternative dispute resolution routes with tenants we've managed to complete the works more quickly but also made savings that we otherwise wouldn't have made had we gone all the way through the legal disrepair process but it's for it's for those reasons because of those variables why this is ample but across the three three-year period we are looking at a profile you know that we are able to deliver but in order to make it happen and we are putting a lot of additional resources into this by way of you know additional operatives and so on thank you thank you I'll draw your those two presentations to a close and I'm bringing the Mayor in a moment but before I do is there any other questions for Deirdre on those two areas? No I'm looking around no I had a few further questions just in terms of wider for actually Jackie but Mayor Woodley do you want to just come and give your overview thoughts in terms of this where we are yeah I mean just picking up some of the comments just to give assurance I suppose around proactive nature of collaboration with other local authorities has already been a paper brought together around housing I think I've mentioned at previous meetings around retrofit and have that one-shot window approach around green skills we all recognize the precious and absolutely homelessness also quite creative work around the local economy so the new government and access to Jim McMahon I think Georgia Gould has now got some cabinet related role Sue Gray understands that we want that sort of continuity of ministers and budget plans and not that kind of short term thinking that we've had to deal with in recent years so just to bring a bit of optimism I think maybe into a tough evening like this I do I do feel that we're going to be working with people that get it whereas for the last year I frankly felt that we've been in a position of drift and that's been really hard for our officers in terms of looking to support from central government and feeling that actually the kind of urgency wasn't being felt so I think we will see some change there and I do want to thank staff our senior officers here but also across the board often actually from the ground up as well for their creativity and flexibility you know we've had to have a lot of adaptation to challenges not only in terms of how we push ahead with tough proposals and meet the campaign challenge that comes back to us often with very kind of interesting challenge which can kind of give us new insight on situations and how we're going to impact on the ground but flexing also to meet some of the moving goalposts we've had from regulators and inspectors you know if they're suddenly asking for a new set of targets by a set date and we're rushing to kind of meet those targets and sometimes failing to meet those targets that can be very demoralising for staff but actually they're really persistent very transparent and pushing ahead so I do want to say a big you know please pass that on to the teams and and feel it for yourselves thank you for that work I think there are a lot of kind of lines in the report tonight that we're going to have to have a real watching brief fund so particularly pressures such as the pay award with every percentage that's what is it 2.1 million or something that goes up in terms of our our budget pressure that we have to think about what we can predict but also what we can't predict and whether we have the contingency there to kind of manage change in that in that respect so you know we really appreciate scrutiny support on that as we try and continue to flex and move we want every proposal to make sense in terms of prioritisation in terms of impact on our residents and on our staff and the running of this council and primarily on the sustainability of our services we want to continue to make progress particularly with insourcing to have some of these flagship moments with partnership where we really need partnership to come in and support us where we have challenges for example around the voluntary community sector and to apply a lot of momentum behind the responsible business charge and see what kind of progress that can bring in as well and finally I just want to say really appreciate the time and scrutiny I know you know we've got a much more intense schedule now in terms of kind of liaising with you about what we're doing we really really value the time that you put into this it's a lot of information and we're having to rattle through it at speed and I think it would be really helpful if on the back of tonight you do go away and sort of think about whether you got the information you really needed whether the rec rating approach works whether the way it's broken down is clear because you know we want to get it right because frankly you know you are a litmus test for what we will get as we go out and onward and sort of trying to implement some of these changes so please give us your feedback thank you very much thank you mayor we've got a few minutes left are there any other questions on any area I had one I was going to ask Jackie but I didn't don't want to jump ahead well I'll ask Jackie if anyone else we've got a few minutes left Jackie in terms of the I know often a lot of the schools budget is then past ported through but I know a number of primary schools that may be running deficits right now how does that who's holding those deficits so if a primary school has half a million pounds worth of deficit where's that sitting I don't fully understand who's carrying it you'll be fully aware of the pressures on primary schools particularly at the moment because of fall in school roles so that's why we've got a very comprehensive school estate strategy the school improvement team work very closely with schools regarding the management of their deficits and help them to make plans to reduce that which is very often through student staff and restructure through looking at their senior leadership to looking at how they can share leadership teams across federations of schools so ultimately the I mean the schools have the school budget but if it's in a deficit then the council has to work with them to work out how how we meet that and it could fall on us as a council if we don't work effectively with schools to manage this then but then where is say x primary school has is four or five hundred thousand pounds in in deficit now where is it I don't understand is that coming it are we seeing that in a line item in the general fund or is it is there a separate pot that it's it's it's it's again I don't understand where it sits on what we've seen tonight or on which line item at how what is the total deficit in our primary schools or in our if you include Stoke Newton in our schools right now what is the total deficit on our on our schools and where is it which line items it's just on I think Deirdre might I don't have that information to handle in my head at the moment but it's information I can get to you if Deirdre doesn't have it I don't know that the I don't know the actual value of the deficits but what I do know is that audit committee did a deep dive on school balances and and the processes around that and it may be useful to share that with members of the scrutiny the scrutiny panel so you can see and it sets out it sets out what those balances are and what happens when a school is in deficit and how the schools improvement team support I think it would because I just don't I it's it's quite surprising that we don't have a grip on because you know if I I know without naming it I know of a primary school that's nearly four or five hundred thousand pounds if you multiply that across all the primary schools that's another twenty or twenty-five million pounds of deficit where how are we accounting for it did you might want to correct me but my understanding is that overall the whole piece we're not in deficit overall while individual schools are have different levels of challenge others are in surplus so we're not yet in the position where we've we've gone into an overall deficit so we're not in that place yet if I could yeah it would be useful maybe just to have that assurance overall if that's the position then fine but I think yeah it would be useful just to get a grip on an understanding of that and then the the other the other position is with the 19 million pound now on the send as I understand that that is sitting off account as it were we just allowed to carry that deficit at the moment and it's not appearing any of the deficit accounts because of an accounting plan process and we're hoping at some stage government's either going to write it off or cover it or whatever but we're not seeing that in the current in the current objections that's right okay thank you any other members for questions well then that nicely brings us to ten to nine so to close that item if I can I thank you all the director heads I know you're working very hard in this and also you've got further meetings in the next week to engage with us on the next round of savings so thank you very much everyone please feel free to go it's just going to be formal business for the last ten minutes of the of the Commission so thank you everybody and to the cabinet members who attended as well that we appreciate your engagement members then we're bringing that item to a close and then for noting we've got the minutes of the I think I'm I'm getting some feedback sorry Councillor Chapman got it okay okay minutes of the last meeting can I have them agreed please any corrections you can send to the officers have them agreed I'm grateful and also we have to note the scrutiny report on last year's budget which is in the agenda pack and thanks to the officers for doing all the work on that so can I also have that noted please the next item on the agenda is just a work program grateful to Tracy and all the officers of sending out a public consultation there's been 78 responses to that which is welcome and though they are going to all the different scrutiny heads for you to work out with your Commission's the different work program there's a draft scrutiny work program on the agenda at pages 177 to 179 and so my suggestion is if you've got any particular suggestions or recommendations for scrutiny panel work program please let Margaret or Tracy know and then I think each of us as Commission chairs will be taking back the suggestions that we've had from those 78 to see how we can work them in to our own work programs and so unless there's anything else I haven't been notified of any other business I can't see Gordon just wishes to come in council Gordon Margaret your mute but a council Gordon, can you hear me? You're on you're on we can't hear you Margaret I'm afraid. Margaret shaking her head. So I think there's been a technical glitch at the last minute but I think we can circulate by email if Margaret's got any further observations in terms of the scrutiny program and then with that I haven't been notified of any other business and then it's home in the rain so I'll close the meeting. Thank you Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]