This meeting covered a range of topics, including regeneration schemes in North Paddington and on Oxford Street, the Seymour Leisure Centre and Abbey Community Centre, changes to the Council's Housing Solutions service and progress made against the Fairer Westminster strategy. It also included a review of the Council's finances, including revenue and capital expenditure and an update to the medium-term financial forecast.

North Paddington Programme

This report set out the next steps for the North Paddington Programme which was formally approved in February 2023. In year one, the programme aimed to build momentum and impact in collaboration with strategic stakeholders. It focused on tackling social, economic, and health inequalities in the northwest of the borough, including the wards of Harrow Road, Queen’s Park, and Westbourne, where communities experience the highest levels of deprivation. The report recommended the approval of a further £9.994m capital budget and £1.572m revenue budget for projects from years two to four. The indicative programme of works to be delivered during these years was included for approval, which would require further feasibility and scoping work to assess the optimum delivery method and value for money. Projects in the indicative programme of works included:

• A £4.5m community grant fund to support Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations in North Paddington
• The creation of two community hubs
• Investment in the Harrow Road shopfront improvement scheme
• Maida Hill Market activation
• Creation of a North Paddington nature reserve
• A collaborative post to help develop collaborative ways of working between the Council and Registered Housing Providers

The report also recommended delegating authority to the Executive Director for Regeneration, Economy, and Planning to initiate and deliver these projects.

The report also included a summary of the year one review conducted by the consultancy RealWorth. Their key finding was summarised as follows:

Despite its brief duration, the North Paddington Programme has effectively initiated capacity building within local organisations, facilitating skill transfers and fostering collaboration. This collaborative approach has already shown early-stage benefits in service delivery and has significantly strengthened community connections, including ties with the Westminster City Council (WCC). However, continued efforts are needed to build trust, optimise resource use, avoid duplication, and develop monitoring mechanisms that grant more autonomy to organisations. Capacity building remains crucial to ensure the Programme's benefits extend beyond its four-year lifespan.

Reshaping of Housing Solutions Service

This report sought approval to implement a new hybrid delivery model for the Council's Housing Solutions service.

The report highlighted the increasing demand for housing support faced by the Council, noting that one in 50 Londoners is currently homeless, and that demand for temporary accommodation (TA) in Westminster had risen rapidly from 2,526 households TA in 2017/18 to 3,494 households in March 2024. The report also noted that the Council's Housing Solutions Service (HSS) had been outsourced to Places for People and its subsidiary Residential Management Group (RMG) for over 20 years, and that the current contract was last procured in 2017.

In 2017/18, HSS received 729 homelessness applications with 443 main duty acceptances. This compares to 3,019 applications and 993 acceptances in 2023/24. This represents a 302% increase in applications and a 126% increase in main duty acceptances from the start of the contract.

The report stated that the Council's HSS is currently delivered as four separate services:

• Lot 1 - Frontline Housing Advice, Homeless Prevention and Support Services (delivered by RMG in partnership with Shelter)
• Lot 2 - Single Person Homeless Service (delivered by RMG in partnership with The Passage)
• Lot 3 - Families Pathway and Assessment, Allocations and Nominations
• Lot 4 - Management of Council owned Temporary Accommodation

The report explained that the Council had conducted an options appraisal to assess three different service delivery options, which were:

1. Full recommissioning
2. Full insourcing
3. Partial insourcing (hybrid model)

The report recommended that the Council pursue a hybrid delivery model whereby Lots 1 and 3 would be brought in-house and delivered directly by the Council by April 2025, while Lots 2 and 4 would continue to be delivered by RMG. It also recommended insourcing back office functions like the contact centre, complaint management, and finance functions, and moving them into existing teams across the Council. The report stated that this model would provide a phased and measured approach to managing the change and ensure the continuity of vital services.

The report set out the advantages of implementing a hybrid model, which included:

• Allowing early intervention and prevention services to be provided in a greater variety of community settings across the borough, making them more accessible to residents
• Providing opportunities to develop a more consistent and integrated pathway of support for single people
• Enabling the Council to deliver a more person-centred service to families
• Giving the Council closer control over allocations and the management of the housing register
• Allowing the Council to directly manage the assessment and placement process for temporary accommodation
• Giving the Council opportunities to maximise value from the market when commissioning the management of Council-owned temporary accommodation

The report acknowledged that a change to a hybrid model would have to result in better services for users and stated that experts by experience and communities would be included in the design of future services, in line with the developing Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy. It also stated that external facilitation would be used to ensure meaningful engagement with service users, with the aim of creating a more person-centred service.

Neighbourhood CIL High Value Allocations

This report recommended approving two applications for Neighbourhood Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) funding.

Seymour Centre

This recommendation sought approval for the allocation of £1m of Neighbourhood CIL from the Marylebone Neighbourhood Area to support the transformation of the Seymour Leisure Centre into a multi-purpose community facility.

The report explained that the Council had committed to redeveloping the existing leisure centre into a multi-purpose, mixed-use community facility, with a more inviting atmosphere and improved physical access, including a sports hall, cafe, library and space for other ancillary uses. The ground floor would house the sports hall, swimming pool and the relocated Marylebone Library, while the lower ground floor would include fitness and leisure facilities and spa. The first floor would include the retained gallery seating overlooking the sports hall, as well as the upper library level and office space. The report explained that the project has a total budget of £41.25m and that the £1m of Neighbourhood CIL requested represented 2.5% of that figure. The application was made by the Council.

The project relates directly to development and more broadly supports the growth of Westminster. There is a growing need for such social infrastructure provision across Westminster. The cost-of-living crisis has driven an increased need for low-cost and free activities such as those provided by the library and the leisure centre, as highlighted by the Council’s Cost of Living Strategy (2022) and Update (2024). There is a growing need for affordable meeting spaces in this area and the new spaces at Seymour will be able to be used by multiple clubs and community groups.

The report stated that the Marylebone Neighbourhood Forum had been consulted on the project and had voted in favour of the allocation.

Abbey Centre

The second recommendation sought approval for the allocation of £424,435 of Neighbourhood CIL to support the restoration of the Abbey Centre. This funding would be drawn from the Outside Designated Neighbourhood Areas pot.

The report explained that the Abbey Centre is a community centre run by the Abbey Community Association, which provides a variety of free and low-cost classes and community activities for residents of South Westminster. The report stated that during the 2022/23 financial year the centre supported 7,391 unique registered service users who visited the building 25,787 times.

The centre operates from a building owned by Westminster City Council and leased to the Abbey Community Association to be operated as a community facility. The Grade II listed building is a former public baths originally built in 1847 and converted to its current use in 1991, which was the last major update. As a result, key facilities and plant are well beyond their natural life, suffering from inefficiencies and poor performance.

The application was made by the Abbey Community Association. The report stated that the project is being undertaken within the centre's Carbon Management Programme and highlighted the building's poor energy efficiency, which the works aim to improve.

The report stated that the project had received supportive comments from the Victoria Neighbourhood Forum, the Victoria Westminster Business Improvement District and the Northbank Business Improvement District.

2023/24 Fairer Westminster Annual Progress Overview

This report set out the Council’s progress at year-end (2023/24) towards the ambitions set out in the Fairer Westminster Strategy. The Fairer Westminster strategy outlines the Council's four year vision to improve outcomes for residents, businesses and visitors across five themes. The five themes are:

• Fairer Communities
• Fairer Environment
• Fairer Housing
• Fairer Economy
• Fairer Council

The report noted that the Council had made good overall progress in realising Fairer Westminster outcomes and stated that in the first year of its 2023/24 Delivery Plan, the Council set out 106 priority actions, with 85% either completed for annual actions or on track for multi-year efforts by year-end. It added that while the remaining 12% of actions experienced some slippage, they are being monitored through performance reporting.

The report provided a summary of progress in each of the five Fairer Westminster themes, which included:

Fairer Communities

• Expansion of the Family Hubs Network, complemented by a new Family Information Hub co-developed with local families
• Delivery of a new School Health Service focused on emotional wellbeing support within schools
• A successful Holiday Activity and Food programme which provided activities and meals to over 1,400 children and young people during school breaks
• Achieving a 0% re-registration rate for children on protection plans within 2 years, indicating effective intervention strategies to safeguard children at risk
• Exceeding the target for Looked After Children placement stability, with 85% of children in care for more than 2.5 years remaining in the same placement for at least 2 years
• Exceeding the target for early years education uptake with 72% uptake of free early education placements for 2-year olds
• Maintaining a 100% completion rate for Education and Health Care plans within the 20 week timeframe, ensuring timely support for children with special educational needs
• Ofsted rating over 96% of Westminster schools as either outstanding or good, with primary schools outperforming national averages in reading, writing and maths and secondary schools exceeding national GCSE scores
• Awarding “Care Leaver” status as a protected characteristic
• Exceeding the target for housing care leavers, with 97.3% placed in suitable housing last year
• Taking a leading role in the 12 borough ‘Designated Family Judge Trailblazer Pilot’ representing 12 boroughs with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to reduce delays in the family justice system by standardising regional approaches and improving data sharing
• Making preparations for an anticipated full Inspection of Local Authority Children's Services (ILACS) inspection, having last received one in 2019

Fairer Housing

• Adding more than 3,000 social rent homes to the house-building programme, expanding truly affordable housing in Church Street with 1,120 homes and delivering 112 sustainable and affordable homes at 300 Harrow Road
• Reaching key milestones in other developments over the final quarter of 2023/24, including the Adpar development (which will deliver 20 new affordable Community Supportive Homes by Summer 2024), the approval of Mount Anvil as the Joint Venture Partner for Site A of the Church Street regeneration project (providing 429 homes, a new library, garden, and improved market infrastructure) and the Balmoral and Darwin House project (offering 33 Community Supportive Homes at social rent during winter 2024)
• Celebrating the breaking ground milestone at Westmead in March (with this 100% affordable scheme set to provide 31 intermediate rent and 34 social rent homes, alongside private amenity spaces and enhanced green areas for the broader community)
• Opening new Housing Service Centres, including on Bruckner Street in June 2023, Charlwood Street and Bayswater Children's Centre in February 2024 and an additional centre planned for Broadwick Street in Soho in late summer 2024, as well as hosting Housing Service surgeries at Westminster's estates, Citizens Advice Bureau offices and community supported housing blocks
• Introducing the monthly Residents Forum and task and finish groups to allow residents to shape policy and provide feedback on key services like repairs
• Undertaking a comprehensive public consultation in January 2024 to review policies for assessing priority and allocating social housing, receiving over 800 responses, over 40% of which were from individuals on the housing register
• Consulting on the Council's first Repairs Policy, which outlines service level expectations for residents, receiving over 1,300 responses
• Focusing the Customer Advocacy Team on providing tailored support to vulnerable residents with outstanding repairs
• Helping 690 households to remain in their homes over the past year through homelessness prevention work
• Establishing a £1m Rent Support Fund
• Developing a comprehensive Temporary Accommodation supply plan for 2024/25 to reduce reliance on high-cost accommodation
• Taking action to improve standards in the private rented sector by removing almost 400 serious hazards and taking 244 enforcement actions against landlords
• Increasing the number of accredited landlords operating in Westminster to 1,391 under the London Landlord Accreditation Scheme
• Retrofitted 246 of its least energy-efficient properties, resulting in substantial annual fuel savings estimated at over £50,000 and a reduction of nearly 200 tonnes of carbon emissions per year through a programme involving installing wall, floor and loft insulation, secondary glazing work, and in some cases, electric heating systems
• Proposing new planning policies requiring developers to explore retrofitting before demolition, accelerating the upgrade of commercial buildings to meet modern standards, reduce carbon emissions, and help Westminster achieve net-zero by 2040 as part of its City Plan Review

Fairer Economy

• Launching the Fairer Economy Plan in June 2023 to support small businesses, revitalise local high streets, and increase job opportunities
• Helping over 7,000 residents to gain job skills through the Westminster Adult Education Service
• Facilitating over 2,000 hospitality and leisure placements through Westminster Works, as well as helping to fill 487 vacancies and support 407 businesses
• Broadening career aspirations for 1,000 teenagers through the City Lions scheme
• Creating 100 youth employment opportunities through the Kickstart scheme
• Enabling twenty local youth in North Paddington to work with global tech mentors to build digital products addressing local challenges through the Digital Dash programme
• Establishing an Education, Employment and Skills Board
• Expanding the My Skills Zone e-learning platform to include over 2,000 courses
• Providing guidance and assistance to over 20,000 small businesses through the Westminster Business Unit
• Awarding around 50% of council contracts to small or voluntary organisations through the Social Value Programme
• Providing hundreds of small businesses with support to become successful council bidders through the Supplier Readiness Programme
• Offering rent-free shops on Oxford Street to small businesses through the “Meanwhile On” scheme launched in July 2023 in partnership with New West End Company (NWEC)
• Launching the Sustainable City Charter

Fairer Environment

• Declaring an Ecological Emergency in 2023/24
• Committing to protecting wildlife and biodiversity by banning glyphosate use, becoming a ‘Pesticide Free Council’, participating in No Mow May and developing a new Nature/Urban Greening Strategy
• Investing £35m in improving active travel infrastructure and safety
• Investing £20m in zero-emission waste trucks to cut noise and air pollution from the Council’s fleet
• Electrifying 50% of its large waste fleet vehicles
• Expanding the food waste recycling programme
• Deploying City Inspectors to identify and resolve waste issues
• Increasing the household recycling rate by nearly 2%
• Diverting over 1,150 tonnes of waste from landfill and incinerators during the year
• Designing and launching a new AI-powered online tool and chat assistant to allow residents to report waste, fly-tipping, graffiti and animal fouling occurrences in around one minute
• Reducing the Council’s emissions by 4% over the past year through the installation of solar panels, renewable energy systems, LED lighting retrofits, and improved insulation across nearly 250 council properties
• Reforming parking policies and expanding the Council's EV charging infrastructure to include 2,462 charging points
• Implementing City-wide Emissions-Based Charging Schemes
• Launching the Pay-to-Park scheme on 8 April 2024, with Resident Permit scheme changes following on 8 June 2024
• Creating new bookable EV loading bays in Victoria Street and Covent Garden to allow EV LGV and HGV drivers to pre-book up to 90 minutes for loading/unloading
• Embedding sustainability into planning processes through a Retrofit First policy, raising carbon offset prices, creating platforms for sustainable construction and establishing a Sustainability Team
• Engaging residents on environmental issues through the Citizens' Climate Assembly, which where residents collaborated with the Council to propose solutions for achieving net-zero emissions

Fairer Council

• Maintaining a balanced budget
• Keeping Council tax the lowest nationally
• Implementing the Responsible Procurement & Commissioning Strategy
• Launching the 'Dirty Money' campaign to crack down on money laundering
• Raising £1m for community-led environmental projects through the Westminster Green Fund
• Strengthening governance processes through the implementation of recommendations from the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny
• Increasing resident satisfaction with Council communications to 72%
• Introducing public speaking at Full Council meetings and increasing public participation in policy and scrutiny meetings
• Hosting interactive community events, resident panels and Citizen Assemblies
• Launching the Common Place digital consultation platform, which attracting over 7,000 visitors and 4,000 responses across different proposals in 2023/24
• Refreshing the Report It service using AI to streamline reporting
• Establishing a new Research and Design function
• Launching a Smart City open data platform
• Establishing an independent Design Review Panel
• Launching a Planning Statement tool
• Achieving Level 3 Disability Confident employer status
• Conducting an organisation-wide anti-racism review
• Supporting fair wages through the Fair Tax Pledge, Ethical Care Charter and investing £1m to increase the hourly rate for home care workers

Medium-Term Financial Planning 2025/26 - 2027/28

This report presented an update to the Council's medium-term financial planning forecast.

The report stated that the Council is facing an indicative budget gap of £15.312m in 2025/26, rising to £54.8m by 2027/28. It noted that this represents a 9% increase in the Council's adjusted gross budget over the three years, and a £6.8m increase on the projected budget gap presented in March 2024.

This year’s MTFP refresh has been undertaken earlier to identify the updated savings requirement and give Directorates more time to start the process of identifying savings proposals. It is proposed to adopt a similar approach to last year with internal Cabinet Member review meetings and a ‘zero based’ approach looking at all service budgets. There will also be a focus on using available comparative benchmarking data as part of that review process.

The report highlighted several risks and pressures facing the Council, including:

• Local Government Finance:
  • The ongoing impact of the Fair Funding Review and updating of population data from the 2021 Census
  • Central government's spending plans for local authorities
• Service pressures:
  • The ongoing cost pressures from temporary accommodation
  • The costs of partially insourcing the Housing Solutions service
  • Ongoing cost pressures from both adult and children's social care

Revenue and Capital Outturn 2023/24 and Statement of Accounts

This report set out the Council’s 2023/24 year-end financial position for both revenue and capital.

The report noted that the General Fund (GF) outturn position is a net overspend of £0.69m against an approved budget of £193.6m, representing an overspend of 0.4%. It stated that this position represents an improvement on the £2.67m overspend forecast at quarter 3. The report explained that this improvement is due to additional income from some services within Environment, Climate & Public Protection, additional property income and interest on cash balances offset by additional inflationary costs and a reduction in funding from the NHS for children’s services costs. The report stated that this overspend would decrease the Council’s General Reserve balance by 0.1% to £59.7m.

The Council’s general reserves are held as risk mitigation and allow the management of any unforeseen circumstances and economic volatility. The current level of general fund reserves is considered a sufficiently robust level to manage any in-year pressures that may arise from either cost inflation or reduced income or funding levels below those factored into the 2024/25 budget. It can also help manage the positive delivery of savings over the medium-term and cover one-off shortfalls in the annual budget setting process.

The report stated that the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) outturn position is a deficit of £1.705m which is an improvement of £0.264m on quarter 3 reporting.

The report set out a number of variances in capital expenditure from the approved 2023/24 budget, and provided explanations for them. The report requested approval to reprofile these variances into future years. The report stated that for General Fund, this represents expenditure reprofiling from 2023/24 to future years of £73.348m and income reprofiling from 2023/24 to future years of £13.922m. For HRA, this represents expenditure reprofiling of £15.585m from 2023/24 to future years.

The report included an analysis of the Council's treasury management position. In particular it noted that the Council's investment portfolio had decreased by £61.2m to £776.6m over the year and that its total borrowing had increased from £400.1m to £599.5m. It stated that this was due to a significant housing development and regeneration programme that relies on GLA grant and capital receipts from private sales to help subsidise the affordable housing elements.

The report stated that the background papers to this report include a link to the draft statement of accounts for the year ended 31 March 2024 that are being considered by the Audit and Performance Committee on 18 July.

Oxford Street Programme

This report outlined the proposed stage 3 designs for the Oxford Street scheme.

This report seeks approval for the Stage 3 designs of the Oxford Street District public realm enhancements that will transform Oxford Street into a world class, sustainable, and inclusive destination, delivering on the commitments in the Council’s Oxford Street Programme.

The report explained that the project aims to:

• Make Oxford Street cleaner, greener and safer
• Improve the pedestrian experience by widening footways and introducing new crossings
• Reduce traffic on Oxford Street to improve air quality
• Introduce new greening and public art

The report stated that the project has a total budget of £150m, of which £70m is being funded through the Mayor of London’s Greater London Authority (GLA) Good Growth Fund.

The report explained that the project will be delivered in two phases, with phase one covering the section of Oxford Street between Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street, and phase two covering the section between Bond Street and Marble Arch. It also noted that the project is being developed in collaboration with NWEC and Transport for London (TfL), and that it has been subject to extensive public consultation.