Transcript

Please note that we are not expecting a fire alarm this evening, so if the alarm is sounded, please follow my instructions and evacuate the building. Please remember that this meeting is being broadcast live on the Council's website. Please turn your microphone on when speaking and remember to turn it off when you have finished. To make sure that you can be heard on the broadcast and in the Chamber, please speak clearly and directly into your microphone. I will now ask my fellow members and the officers to introduce themselves, starting on my right. Hello, I'm Councillor Gary Edd, I'm a Councillor in Finbury Park Ward and I'm also the Council's Recycling Champion. Claire Deaps, Councillor for Canterbury Ward. Councillor Ruth Hayes for Clerkenwell Ward. So we'll go to offices, starting with Eshaan. Thank you, Chair. I'm Karen Sullivan, I'm Director of Planning and Development. We've got a couple of people that are going to be doing a presentation later in the meeting, but you can introduce yourselves now if you'd like. I'm Chloe Kane, I'm Head of the Strategy and Engagement Team. And I'm Courtney Stevenson, I'm a Policy Officer in the Strategy and Engagement Team. Hi, I'm Emma, I'm Clerk of the Committee. And we've got apologies from Councillor Weeks and Councillor Graham and apologies for lateness from Councillor Boshman-Kwashi. And we've got a declaration of substitute members with Councillor Heather. Thank you. And any declarations of interest to declare? No. Minutes of the previous meeting. Can we agree with minutes of the previous meeting? Thank you. OK, my report, I've got a brief report that I'm going to make. And it was hoped that the Northland Waste Authority would be coming to this meeting, but they are to speak on the joint waste strategy. Unfortunately, they are delayed in their timeline and they will now attend in November. There's a deputation tonight on the council's policy approach to motorcycles with a specific focus on them as an active travel mode. So we'll take this item as that part of the agenda. At the last meeting, we agreed to invite Thames Water to attend this committee and talk about the water quality in London. And we're still working on that. Nature Neighbourhoods is a project, the project coordinator for Nature Neighbourhoods is Rosie Appley. And I think she might be a good witness for our scrutiny topic, which is, of course, which is, of course, greening the borough, greening our borough. And so I'll just give you, I'll remind you about the events coming up, which I mentioned in my last report. So they've got a community conversation on the 18th of September at the Hill Drop Community Centre at 5.30, talking about regulation and implementation. And then they've got a talk on food systems on Thursday, the 24th of October at 5.30 at the Whittington Park Community Centre. And then they've got an event on local access to nature on Saturday, the 23rd of November, 12th or 2.30 at the Hill Drop Community Centre. I'll just mention the Islington Food Partnership, which is a network of people and organisations working together to address key food issues across Islington, so they can be found on the website. So that's my brief report. So we'll move on to, just to say about public questions, we'll take public questions after each agenda item. OK, got that. So we'll move on to our SIS. Now, you've been, a scrutiny initiation document has been circulated, so we can discuss this now. Do people want to have a few minutes to look at it? There's copies here if you want a copy. OK, great. So I'll give you a couple of minutes to have a look and see what you think. We talked about it at the last meeting and Emma's kindly drawn up this, Sid, which I will talk about in a minute. We'll take three minutes to have a look. OK, so I think the thing to say is that we were talking about having cleaner, greener, safer streets, and that's been changed to inclusive streets, which I'm fine with. I think that's perfectly fine. So can I just take any comments that people have on this, on the, Sid? OK, yeah, so I see Councillor Hayes and Councillor Heather and Councillor Russell. Go ahead, Councillor Hayes. Thank you very much. Yeah, I mean, obviously we're going to hear the evidence in relation to the citizens and panel today. I'm quite keen that during, we're able to take on board people's actual experience of how things are and what could be better. My question was on the work plan, page three, which sets out the topics for meetings. At the bottom it says Kingdom Evidence, and I'm not quite sure what that refers to. Could that be clarified? It's actually the company that is working on the intelligence-based street cleaning. Thank you very much. [inaudible] Yeah, at the last meeting, I remember in terms of the evidence saying that we should invite residents to give evidence, but I don't think this actually calls for that. It talks about, right at the end, additional information talks about resident impacts identified by witnesses, but they don't appear, unless it means citizens panel and resident engagement at the top. I can't see where we're inviting any residents to come along. But obviously, what it is is that this isn't just about greening, this is about street cleansing. It's about that sort of stuff as well. And it's also about the way that impinges negatively on our areas and whatever. So I just think that we ought to have a bit in there where we're inviting some residents along to give their view on that. Thank you very much, Councillor Hill. It's a really good suggestion, and so we can work out. I think maybe the citizens panel could give us some advice on that. They've been working with residents, so when you come to your presentation, you can talk about that. But yes, there's other areas we could invite residents. We could make suggestions on that. Thank you. Councillor Russell. Working, yes. I think this all looks really interested, very interested to learn about the intelligence-led street cleaning approach, and some of the kind of detail around the sort of implementation of green infrastructure and pocket parks and everything, and how all of that work kind of relates to residents. So with the sort of pocket parks, the sort of bits of greening that are going on, kind of what kind of engagement processes are involved with residents. Are residents involved in ongoing maintenance, or is it all designed to be self-maintaining? And then the only sort of other query I've got is around the accessibility and inclusivity piece. I just think we will need to hear from people with lived experience. And also, I think many of the disability organisations like Transport for All and Inclusion London are talking about consultation fatigue, and so I think if we're hearing from people, they need to sort of understand what the outcomes are that come from giving evidence to us, and how that feeds back into council policy, and actually to see some change. So I think that's just something we need to be very alert to if we're asking people to come in. Thank you, Councillor Russell. Welcome, Councillor Bousman-Quashie. So we're just looking at the SID at the moment, and we've got a copy here. The green copy is... We're happy with this SID, then, with those additions of inviting residents. Oh, sorry, Councillor Jeeps. And there's stuff about the trees, but there's nothing about reporting back in the list of evidence. Who's going to be doing that? Is there someone... Oh, there's someone whose name I don't know. Matt Bonhomie. Is he going to report back on the tree stuff? Who's going to do that? I'll do it. You'll do it? All right. On the top. So, I mean, I've got a suggestion. I did mention in my report to invite Rosie Appellee. I think she'd be good. She's got this project in the nature neighbourhood. She works for octopus, so I think it would be good to have her. And she could perhaps bring a resident that she's been working with. That would be good. Okay, so with those points that have been raised, we agree with Sid. Thank you very much. Thanks. Councillor Buswell-Carshie, I'll just check with you if you want to go in. Agreed. Yeah, that's great. We move on to the Islington Climate Panel, and we've got Chloe Kane and Courtney Stevenson to present on this item. So over to you. Great. Thank you so much. So we've got some slides working. There we go. So thank you very much for having us today to talk about the climate panel. Courtney and I are both from the strategy and engagement team, and we sit at sort of at the centre of the council working to deliver projects to increase community involvement and community voice in the council's work. And we've been working really closely with the climate action team and with various other teams, including the green space team and the transport team to develop and deliver the panel that we're going to talk to you about today. We're going to go over some of the background for the panel, how it came about and how we designed and developed the panel and recruited residents to it. And we're going to talk a little bit about the sessions that we held and how they worked and what our next steps are for the panel. And so to just start with a bit of background on where the panel came out of, as everyone here knows, the council declared climate and ecological emergency in 2019, and then went on to develop the next zero strategy in response. And as part of that strategy, we committed to delivering a climate citizens panel to make sure that we were hearing from residents and getting their input on what we need to do in order to get to net zero and respond to the climate crisis. And so my team worked really closely with teams working directly to deliver the policy and the strategy, and the climate action team and green space and transport teams, as I mentioned. And we worked together to develop the scope of the panel and what we would focus on with residents as part of this, because we needed to narrow down the rather large question of figuring out the entire response. So we focused in on a particular question that would enable us to really hear from residents and really embed their feedback into the work that the council was going to do in a particular area as part of our climate strategy. So working together, we landed on focusing on climate resilience, so thinking about how we as a council and as borough adapt and respond to the changes that we expect to see in Islington in the coming years from climate change. And particularly within this we focus in on building community resilience in our response, and also how we should go about greening the borough. It's really important as part of the kind of consideration for why and how we designed the panel that we're thinking about why we needed resident involvement in this particular issue. And I think it's quite clear that it's a part of the council's work that will really impact all residents. And so what we were really seeking to do is to understand the range of circumstances that residents are living in, and what they're already experiencing as the climate is changing, and then working together to develop a community-wide response, as it's not something the council will be able to do on its own. Importantly, a key part of the approach that we took was to build in thinking about how we tackle inequality as we go about trying to respond to the climate crisis, as that is the key mission of the council. I'm going to hand over to Courtney now to talk through some of the details about how we developed the panel. Great. So, one of the things that we knew was going to be really important was to engage a kind of diverse and representative group of residents, so that we kind of got a really broad understanding of, as Chloe said, different kind of experiences and perspectives that really reflect the diversity of the borough. And to do this, we worked with the Sortition Foundation, who are an independent organization and they specialize in this kind of recruitment. So, through a process that's called Democratic Lottery, we ended up with a group of 34 Islington residents who engaged throughout the whole process, and there were some kind of key criteria. So, they had to be over 16 years of age, live at an address that received an invitation, not be elected or work at any level of government or political party, and also not be in a politically restricted role. So, there were some kind of restricting factors there, but otherwise, anybody that received a letter was able to sign up. And so, the group that we ended up with was, as we say, a diverse group that represents kind of broad range of people in the borough and statistically represents the borough along the lines of kind of age, gender, disability, socioeconomic status, and we benchmarked that against the 2021 census. One thing that we did do was over-represent non-white ethnic groups, because we know that they are typically under-represented in council engagement, and so we made that deliberate choice, and we have a kind of full rational document around recruitment as well. And then the other thing that we wanted to consider was making sure we had a broad range of views when it comes to climate change, so that it wasn't necessarily just a kind of group of people who were already really kind of engaged and active on this issue. We wanted a range of kind of levels of concern in particular, so a shared understanding that it's a problem, but a range of levels of concern. Once we'd recruited the group, we knew that kind of with such a diverse range of people, we would need to do kind of a range of different things to ensure that they were enabled to participate and that that was as easy as possible for them, so we did a few different things. So first of all, we worked with another independent organisation called Navigate, so they are experts in facilitation, facilitating potentially challenging conversations, and we had Paul from Navigate, who was our lead facilitator for the sessions, but he and his colleague also ran training. So for our engagement and policy colleagues, and also for other colleagues across the council, so we've kind of now up-skilled a group of people to be able to facilitate these kinds of conversations. And yeah, the kind of purpose of that was to ensure that everybody in the room was heard from and was able to kind of step forward and share their experiences and their ideas. Some other kind of practical things that we did to remove barriers to participation so that everybody could take part was we paid the residents the London living wage for their time, we provided food, so dinners for the evening sessions and lunch for the Saturdays and refreshments. We offered to pay for childcare for people who would need it to be able to participate, and we provided oyster cards for the sessions for people who also needed transport support. We offered to provide translation for anyone that needed it, and on the day, we provided a kind of quiet, reflective wellbeing space and made sure people knew that this was there, because we know that for some people sitting for long periods of time, kind of discussing things or listening to information can be more challenging, so we had that space that people could utilise, and we also had kind of allocated staff members in terms of safeguarding and wellbeing on the day, and we made kind of individual adjustments as we needed to. In terms of how the panel was run, in terms of the whole process, it was eight sessions, the kind of core, the first phase of the process was eight sessions between April and July, so we've just finished that phase, and it's split into, as you can see here, some kind of key chunks, key kind of segments. So, first of all, there were a number of sessions which were really focused on learning and providing context and making sure that everyone in the room had the kind of information and the understanding that they needed to really take part in the conversations in a fulfilling way and that they felt informed, so this was done in a range of ways, so we had external speakers come in and deliver sessions on climate science, adaptation and resilience, we had speakers from the GLA and other organisations like that, also thinking about kind of climate justice, and we also had a session where residents were able to meet with community partners, so businesses and VCS organisations from across the borough to understand the context of what's already happening in the borough and really get them thinking about, as Chloe says, that this is a kind of borough-wide challenge, not just a council challenge, and throughout those sessions they had the opportunity to discuss what they'd learnt. We then moved into a kind of visioning phase where they kind of worked together to consider the opportunities and challenges around creating more equal and resilient Islington, and they came up with a set of guiding principles together that would kind of underpin all of the following conversations and proposals that they came up with, and then we moved into kind of proposal formation and dialogue, which kind of went alongside one another. So this was separated into two key areas, so first of all kind of emergency planning focused on community resilience, so we had a heatwave scenario with our emergency planning team where they went through various stages of what would happen at heatwave and started to consider ideas for how we might respond better as a borough, and then the second phase of this was we had Andrew and other colleagues from Greenspace came in to talk to them about kind of greening the borough and adapting and the challenges that we faced there, and they started to come up with proposals around that, and as I said kind of underpinning this latter stage was ongoing dialogue with councillors and officers so we first of all had councillors and officers attend specific sessions where it wasn't just residents discussing their proposals, they were able to get input from officers and relevant teams and councillors, and then we also had kind of separate internal meetings with relevant officers and councillors to kind of talk them through the proposals and ideas that were coming out of the process, and we're continuing to do that now as we head into the kind of second phase of the process, which is a follow up session in November, where the panellists will have the opportunity to work again on their proposals with the kind of input that we've been able to come up with in the intervening period fed in, and then we'll have a kind of final kind of more celebratory event in January where we'll talk through all of the different outputs that are being or will have been produced which I think Chloe's going to talk about in more detail. Yeah, so this is just to finish on what the panel feedback will inform in terms of the council's work. So as Courtney said, at the moment we're in the process of kind of working through the proposals that panellists put to us, and considering how and where we can implement them, and what reasonable timelines will look like and how it fits with kind of wider work that we're doing. And, but we've kind of we've committed to the panellists that their work will feed into various different pieces of council work so firstly the council's climate action plan, which is being updated next year. And the panellists ideas and feedback will inform this work. And then we will also be feeding in panel members contributions into the green infrastructure strategy that is being developed, in particular, helping to shape the vision, goals and aspirations for our strategy in this space, and considering what a green nature rich and climate resilient borough looks and feels like. And finally, the panel feedback will also inform the council's approach to managing extreme weather events, including how we communicate with residents during those periods. And, but we're going to also be bringing this all together, all of the proposals and recommendations to the council in a report where we'll set out the discussions that they had in their ideas, which we will be publishing next year. And finally, as Connie said we're having ongoing kind of conversations with those panellists to test our ongoing approach with them, and make sure that we've understood what they are, they have recommended to us correctly, and informing them about how we're embedding their proposals, and whether there's any kind of further feedback that they have on that. And so yeah, we've got those two sessions coming up in autumn and winter, where we'll be working with them further. And we also hope to continue to work with this group beyond kind of set piece of this climate panel because we've got now got a really, really engaged group of residents with a really diverse background, who are really keen to work with the council on this and be part of the solution. So yeah. We can just put a picture at the end which shows the group of residents that we worked with, and the team that are involved as well, outside one of the community centres that we presented in. That was going to be my question, because that was eight sessions, and I got to the last two for Greening the Borough, and the energy in the room was really good. The people were, as you say, really engaged and really caring and thinking about this topic. And so you said you're going to carry on the work, so there won't be any more sessions as such, or how will you carry on the work? So there's two fixed sessions that we have committed to as part of the process, where it is going to be in the process working with this group of residents, one in November, and then one will be in winter next year. Beyond that, we are working closely with the group of residents to consider how they could feed back into other climate policy that the council is developing in other ways as well, because they're keen to continue to be involved. And as we said, it's a really diverse group of residents, so we're really keen to make the most of that and have a really strong ongoing relationship with them. Thank you. So yeah, I've got Councillor Russell, Councillor Heather, Councillor Hayes. So Councillor Russell. Thank you. This just sounds so completely and utterly wonderful, and the fact that everyone was paid living wage and you kind of dealt with all the issues like transport and kind of childcare and food, and it just sounds like absolutely tip-top best practice. So really, really good to hear that it's been happening. I think I'm just really interested to hear the kind of things that actually some of the detail of the kind of things that came out of the sessions, but presumably that's what will come in the report that you're going to publish. So do you know when exactly you're going to be publishing? I think we'll be publishing that in winter, but we will be kind of bringing together the set of proposals and taking them back to the resident, the panelists before then, and maybe able to kind of return to this session to discuss them further at some point before we publish the full report. And then in terms of those residents seeing their work being put into practice, what's the timescale before we start seeing that? I mean, I don't know what kind of things they've recommended, so it's hard to know, but I'm imagining it's going to be within the space of kind of rain gardens and in the streets and kind of change, you know, making streets more resilient with shade and places to. Yeah, there's a real range of ideas and kind of types of ideas and proposals in there as well. So some very practical things, some kind of more strategic things, some things that involve us working collaboratively with partners across the borough and across London. And so, yeah, I think that means that there's a real range of timelines as well. So it really does range from kind of shorter term to much longer. But the report will have some timelines in it for delivery, because I think that it's that piece about these people being engaged and then them seeing the delivery. It's really important that because we all know how projects get delayed and stuff, but that whole piece comes out. Definitely. And it's an added kind of accountability feature having this group of residents who really are invested in what we do with with their ideas. Thank you. Yeah, I'm a little bit confused because in the script initiation document we just looked at meeting further September, which is this evening that citizens pendant on resident engagement and that's fine. But is this in relation to just climate change or is it in relation to the scrutiny that we've just regrouped the SID to? That's the question and then I can make a comment if it is and I won't make a comment. It's definitely related to the subject. It's greening the boroughs part of that and resident engagement. Well, if it is, with respect, I haven't heard anything about intelligence led street clean and how we're going to engage residents on that. About accessible streets, it talks about littering, it talks about fines, it talks about all sorts of other stuff that I haven't heard anything about. Also Heather, this SID is to do with our scrutiny. We're getting a report from the climate panel on what they've been working on and so that will be included. We'll be able to have that as part of our... So in future the citizens panel on resident engagement will be engaging, making sure we're engaging residents on the issues that I've just mentioned that are in this SID that haven't been mentioned. That's a sort of question, it's just that, you know, I sort of said that earlier on, that was just an implication about how we're engaging residents on this scrutiny. Which isn't just about climate change, it isn't just about greening, it's also about some of the other things that are going on in our community, especially in town centres. Where we've got an absolutely terrible situation of littering, cycling on pavements, all sorts of things like that. Those are the sorts of things that are important in the environment as well. They're mentioned in this scrutiny initiation document, I just want to make sure that if we're going to have a citizens panel on resident engagement, that we're engaging residents on those things as well. Probably things that might be uncomfortable for some people to hear, but we need to hear them in the council. Thank you, Councillor, I'll just pass over to the engagement team and see if they've got any comments or thoughts about that. Because I know issues of street cleaning did come up in those groups, didn't they, and people wanted clean streets, for example. There were proposals that came up in relation to those, but definitely not a full engagement on those. I think that would be for future engagement projects from the relevant teams who I think colleagues here might be more able to comment. I think this particular citizens panel was very, very specific to essentially climate adaptation. What does a resilient Islington look like? Obviously, as Gary says, that could involve a number of things, but this was specifically about how do we change what we have now to make it resilient going forward. We talked about greening, but an important part of that is how the community changes and how it adapts. One of the really important pieces of work on this with the emergency planning team is how do you start keeping citizens safe. I completely accept what you're saying, Gary, that it's important, but that wasn't the focus of this citizens panel. I wouldn't mind making some comments afterwards, but perhaps I can come back at the end, if that's alright. Gary, can I come back? It's loud enough, so apologies. Just to respond to Councillor Heather's question, specifically around the SID. I think one of the areas of the SID, having listened to members' comments this evening that we certainly need to work on, is the session where we're actually going to ask residents to come in and talk about their direct experience of Islington streets. The way that we've set the scrutiny sessions up is that the very first evidence session that we're proposing to the committee is for, I think, a couple of local groups to come in and actually talk about their real life lived experience of our streets. Having listened to your comments and the other broader comments of the committee, I think we probably need to go back and revisit who we're inviting to that session. I think we were talking about living streets. I think living streets are quite regular visitors to this committee and I'm mindful of Councillor Russell's comment about consultation fatigue. We were also proposing to invite a local group who specifically campaign around accessibility in relation to the transport system. But I think, having listened to the comments on this discussion and the earlier comments, I think we need to go away and have a re-look at who we actually invite to that first session. We will absolutely do our best to ensure that the people that we do invite are able to speak to all three of the main topics of scrutiny, including street cleaning and enforcement. I think I'm really saying we need to go away and have another look at that bit of the SID. I actually was considering this as the first evidence session and the report that comes out in the winter, it would be really good to have that come back to this committee if that's possible. That would be really good and that can be added to our scrutiny. So I'll just take Councillor Hayes. Thank you very much, Chair. I've got a few questions, if that's all right. At the beginning you said you go to the different levels of concern that people already had about climate change. And I'm just interested in how that was done when the panel was being put together. Do you want me to run through all my questions in there? I was also interested because it's quite an intense piece of work and it's great that people are engaged, involved, wanting to continue that. I also appreciate the points that Councillor Russell has made about the ways in which people's time was valued and they were supported to continue to be involved. But was there a dropout and if so, were there any demographic factors that meant some voices were less heard? And then I know that you haven't yet done the report, but I'm interested in whether the panel came up with proposals that hadn't already been under consideration or whether it gave weight to ideas that were around, but perhaps helped prioritise or refine or improve those ideas. And then finally, a bit of a question about how this sits with the kind of formal decision making processes of the Council. And again, there was reference in the presentation to the budgetary constraints, but obviously often people have really great ideas that everyone would really love to do, but there isn't a budget for it. How engaged but local authority financing is very complicated and it's not always easy to explain that. And was there any thought about voluntary sector partners? So if there were proposals that perhaps the Council may not find it easy to deliver on or it's not likely to be a priority, but there might be another local agency that might be able to secure funding. And my final suggestion, Chair, was if there are relevant aspects of the report when it comes out, perhaps we can invite a panel member as part of our evidence giving. Thank you. I can take the ones on climate, like kind of their feelings on climate and dropout rate and VCS if you want to do the others. So in terms of how we gauge their kind of concern level of concern about climate change, that was done as part of the recruitment questionnaire that was sent out that they filled in when they signed up. And I don't know the exact question off the top of my head, but it was something like how concerned are you about the impacts of climate change in Islington? And they would have had to select and then we would have kind of made sure that we got a range from not really concerned to I'm actively very concerned about this. It's not exactly what we asked, but that's along the lines. And in terms of dropout rate, yes, we did get dropouts, but the way that sortition run their processes that they factor that in. So if you want a group of about thirty five, which is what we wanted, they will recruit forty five with the understanding that generally in these kinds of processes, a dropout rate of ten is pretty good. And some of that was people just didn't come to the first session, so they never engaged. And we kind of reached out and let them know that they wouldn't be able to participate to kind of people dropping out over the first few sessions. But in terms of how that impacted the demographics, I don't have the kind of stats, but I think generally no. I think we had a really kind of diverse group that kind of came all the way from beginning to end of the process. And so, yeah, that's the kind of benefit of working with sortition is that they recruit in a way that allows for that dropout so that it doesn't impact on the diversity of the group. And in terms of your question on VCS, yes, definitely will be wanting to continue to engage with both VCS and with businesses in the borough. So we we did that in the process as part of our community partner sessions. They're already aware of what we're doing and lots of them already have existing relationships with different parts of the council. But yeah, we'll certainly be wanting to engage with them kind of individually or in groups in relation to kind of specific proposals and thinking about how we can work together to deliver things or where it might be better suited for VCS or for businesses to take them forward themselves. Did you want to take the type of proposals? Yeah. So on the type of the proposals, we had a range of stuff. So some of it was stuff that the council is already doing. Some of it was things that we hadn't thought about yet. But a real benefit of the way that we designed it was that it enabled, we wanted to give residents the space to come up with their own ideas and whether they were kind of things we're already doing or not. We did give them information about some of the work we were doing before then, but we of course couldn't give like a fully detailed account of everything that we're doing. But the benefit that we had in our design of our processes that we then were able to have council officers, council officers to come along and kind of really focus in on if there were proposals where we were doing things already as a council. Council officers working on that were able to kind of share that information and ask residents for feedback on if there were things that they would like to improve about those existing projects or how they'd like us to go about approaching some of the challenges that we've come across in delivering the work that we're already doing already. So that was a kind of really useful element and meant that was kind of like no wasted time in terms of residents just proposing stuff that we were already doing. So yeah, we had a real range there. And then just to touch on the kind of point of council resources as well, I think residents were kind of considering what their proposals were in the kind of context of how the council is operating. They obviously don't have a kind of really detailed assessment of the council's budget, but they were kind of very measured in considering the different types of considerations that the council would have to make and wanted to balance often what really wanted to balance all sorts of considerations when they were developing their proposals as well. Was there anything else that we didn't touch on that? Okay, great. Thanks chair. Well done for your great work. I just want to just ask in terms of going forward, because you've mentioned two more sessions. Have you looked at other councils and maybe some of their kind of work in terms of how we don't have any holes if they've had holes before we don't because we're quite good here, and it's quite innovative what you're doing, and it's great. And I just want to make sure that with any of the short sessions that we have that we get the fruit of it all so just congratulations again so yeah. Thanks. Yes, so I'm kind of two parts this I guess so, in terms of when we were designing the process and kind of researching part of that was looking at other comparable boroughs in places that have done processes like this before and trying to learn involved kind of desk based research conversations with colleagues and other councils, and I think hackney and definitely we would have had conversations with because they're doing a very similar and looking at very similar topic. And then we've also been partnering with UCL, and they've been kind of independently evaluating the process for us but we're also working with them to kind of engage with some other councils on this so I think we'll be attending a round table with them and with some other representatives from other boroughs who have run similar processes so that we can share best practice with them and learn from what they've done as well and kind of embed that as we continue but also if we were to do similar work like this in the future as well. And just one more adding it comes off of Councillor Hayes his point is that if we do have dropouts going forward so therefore because things happen. And are we looking at maybe devices that might, you know, not devices but maybe something that gets sent out to them like a questionnaire again that can tell them in or maybe zooms have we been kind of like hybrid kind of approach to how we're engaging with residents as well. Thank you. I don't know if Councillor champion, it looks like you wanted to come in as well on that previous point. Okay, cool. And in terms of our plan is to do all of the remaining two sessions in person. And we are going to put in place those kind of measures again to try and support them to take part, if we did find will be, we kind of have ongoing contact with them will be doing will be calling them a lot and kind of make sure that they come along again. And if we do find that we're facing significant dropout or dropout from particular demographics, then we will at that point definitely consider what we can do to make sure that we're hearing from the range of voices that we want to continue to be embedding in the works. Okay. I think it's probably tell you the the the level of discussion was really quite intense and I think it'd be quite difficult to do that over zoom. And I do note on one occasion, particularly when the residents couldn't turn up and actually have to have an individual conversation with that person to make sure that views were taken into account and that and they were moving forward. But I just want to just very quickly, if you just let me just to say thank you very, very much to the team is a very new team. And it's incredibly impressive, the way they conducted it, and I know we got has some help from outside facilitator, but the level of skill, just watching what they were doing. So most of the time, it was pre election period, and I was allowed to go and observe but seriously observe because it was a pre election period. And then as soon as it's over, Tricia came as well, didn't you and you came to those sessions. But again, you're still observers rather than participants in that way. I think what I just like to say is that when we're talking about it, what we were trying to get from the from the residents from the people who took part and I think really came over, it wasn't just about we talked about greening, for example, but it wasn't just about greening. We know that we can go put greening in the streets, and that will make Islington more resilient going forward. But it's more about actually, how does how does what we do with our environment going forward to make it more sustainable impact on them? How they engage with what difference does it make to them if we do x? And I think that was really quite interesting because we were telling from people who are already suffering from heat conditions, and they were telling us how they manage those heat conditions. So it was very much people focused. And I think the other thing that was a really important part of it, and I know Andrew is going to find it very useful going forward, but the really important part of it was the emergency planning team. And it's about how you keep people safe. It's finding out where people are and getting their suggestions on how we make sure that these messages get communicated, because it can't just be the council, and it has to very much be things like the VCS organisations, those things that people trust. But it's also about how you use Islington to build a massively resilient community going forward, because we know that there will be 80 year old people who can't get out of their house when it's really hot. How do we have a street that's safe for them to come down just to sit? How do we have a street that there's a community within that street who knows that person might be in trouble? So it's much, much more than just do we put a lot of trees up, do we put greening? It's how do you build a resilient community that means that people won't die when there are heatwaves? If there is going to be potential flooding of people's basements, they know what to do. And I think that's what this process is really important about, and ultimately it's about saving people's lives going forward. But I just wanted to say thank you very much to all the work that went into it. I think the other thing is some really impressive materials came out of it, including some very specific details about what would happen if, for example, the heatwave and the power failed and someone was on medication. And I think, Chloe, you're going to put together, aren't you, something that we're going to be able to use the councillors as a sort of pack so that they can see some of this material going forward. But just thank you very much, and also thank you very much to the officers who all came along and participated as well. Yeah, well thank you very much for me, and it would be really good to have you back with the report, and maybe in 25, early 25, and a couple of panel members if they want to come, that would be so good. Yeah, we can definitely invite them along. I'm sure there will be a few of them that would be keen to take part as well. Thank you very much. Great, thank you very much. Thank you to Councillor Champion and the other officers as well. Thanks. OK, so now we're moving on to item B3 of the Scrutiny Report, Active Travel Scrutiny Review, and I'll take the deputation at this point. You've sat through, you've waited a long time, so do you want to come to the front and talk to us here? You've got five minutes to talk, and then we'll have ten minutes for questions. Thanks. OK, that's great. If you introduce yourselves, and then go ahead. I'm Rachel, I'm a representative of the Motorcycle Action Group. Do I need to have this on? Is it helpful? OK. And I am an Islington resident. And I'm Ben, I'm the founder of a group called Safe London Motorcycling, and I'm also an Islington resident. Is it Safer London Motorcycling? Save London Motorcycling. Good evening, councillors. I'm here as an Islington resident to ask the committee to recommend that the council draw up an evidence-based proportionate policy approach to motorcycles. Currently, Islington doesn't have a specific policy approach to motorcycles. The council's transport strategy doesn't consider us. But in real-world policy, we're lumped in with general traffic and treated as a form of car. This is clearly irrational and counterproductive. We see this in particular in the residents' parking permits for motorcycles. The charges are half that of cars, but bikes aren't half of a car. We're a different mode with different impacts. And there's no justification for charging electric motorcycles at all under the terms of the policy. So in talking to the council, what have they told us about their approach to motorcycles? So they claim that the charges, in particular, are based on emissions. But the evidence shows that electric motorcycles have similar emissions impacts to e-cargo bicycles, which the council is of course promoting. The council say, You're not a priority mode in our transport strategy. But the transport strategy only talks about cars. Motorcycles aren't considered specifically. And then we hear, Ah, but you're not active travel. Well, actually, riding a motorcycle burns around 300 calories an hour, similar to walking or riding an e-bicycle. Not everybody can ride an unassisted bicycle. We heard a lot just now about the need to be accessible in combating climate change. So motorcycles, like e-bicycles, are an accessible motorized form of sustainable and active travel, for those in particular who have disabilities or impairments. This is something that you'd think that the council would want to embrace. And what's the council's answer to this when we've come to them with this point? Well, we'll have to agree to disagree, is what we've heard. Does this sound to you like a rational approach? Does this sound like the council is being led by the evidence? Electric motorcycles are by any definition a sustainable mode, and motorcycles as a whole are a form of active travel. If riding one burns the same calories as riding an e-bicycle or walking, how can they not be? Now, why wouldn't the council want to listen to this evidence to embrace a sustainable, active travel mode, instantly increasing the amount of trips taken by sustainable or active modes in Islington without really doing anything? We thought maybe it's about making money. Well, we did an FOI, and the total raised from electric motorcycle residence permits was £170 last year. So if it's about making money, it's not working. Perhaps it's simply that nobody has come to you in particular and put this to you before. I think that's probably true. Well, we're here now, and we're presenting you with the evidence, and there is no rational reason not to accept it. A rational and evidence-based policy approach to motorcycles would help you to meet your active and sustainable transport goals. Motorcycles are an active travel alternative for people reluctant to give up their cars or unable to walk, cycle or take public transport. Electric motorcycles will be part of future urban transport. We should be encouraging people to downsize wherever they can and to be active however they can be. What we're asking for here is not a radical change. All you need to do is to update your policy approach to reflect reality, essentially. And why wouldn't you want to do this? What is the downside? You wouldn't be alone either. Other progressive forward-thinking councils such as Oxford and more recently the City of London have changed their policy approach to motorcycles to reflect the advantages we can bring. Islington could easily do the same, and in doing this would show what a progressive forward-thinking council you can be. Thank you. Thanks a lot. So we've got ten minutes of questions. I mean, I'll just say when I've experienced delivery drivers on electric motorbikes, it's so much quieter than ordinary motorbikes. Could you clarify exactly what you're asking for? Is it about not having to pay parking? What is it actually you're asking for? So it's broader than that. I think one of the issues we come across against when we're trying to influence individual areas of policy is that everything comes down to the transport strategy. This is in the transport strategy and everything flows out from that, so what we need is change there at that basic level. So there are lots of different ways that you could do this. So for example, we're talking about categorising motorcycles as active travel. You could also categorise electric motorcycles as a sustainable mode. Both of these things are true. At the very least, you should be recognising that we are distinct from cars, that we are a distinct category from cars. Any questions? And I've got a Councillor champion. I'm going to bring the committee in and then I'll bring you in. Is that okay? So I've got Councillor Heather, Councillor Hayes and Councillor Russell. Councillor Heather. I agree with you about motorcycles being part of the transport strategy of the Council and it would be a rational approach. But I think that you've explained some all positive things, but there would be some negative considerations as well. So I would support it for both reasons. I mean, I believe in an evidence-based approach, but the Chair has just referred to delivery drivers. So my experience in my area, I'm a Councillor of injury park wall, is that we had enormous problems with most delivery drivers at the McDonald's. We had a licence review and they actually changed that they only use electric vehicles. It is a case, though, that when you're in a borough like Islington and you've got a highly populated area with people alongside businesses cheek by bell, there are lots of negative impacts that come from motorised delivery drivers and drivers as well. I mean, sometimes I lay in my bed at night and I hear people breaking the world record going up Seven Sisters Road like I did last night. So I actually, if it's not part of the Council's transport strategy, it should be. And I would want to be positive about it, but I would also say that the reason we need that is because I've been an advocate for trying to get regulation, specifically of motorised delivery drivers and stuff like that. So I think that's enough. Can I come in on that a little bit? I think the thing with the delivery riders is that the sector is extremely badly regulated. As you know, with a lot of the delivery companies, they basically just wash their hands of the whole thing. They're not employed. They don't know who these people are. They don't provide any support to them as well. In terms of the kind of the negative impacts, I suppose a question from me to you is, do you think that if they were on e-bikes or bicycles, you wouldn't also have sort of negative impacts as well? Well, my experience is that that was the solution of McDonald's in Seven Sisters Road. They moved away. McDonald's in Seven Sisters Road agreed to move away from motorised delivery drivers because of the horrendous problems motorised delivery drivers were calling for residents. You see, the thing about Islington is that it's not the place it was 20, 30 years ago. A lot of a lot of spaces that were sort of like industrial have been converted into residential. So you've got people living in something about Hercules Place and Bowman's Mews and they're quite well-heeled. And they don't want that sort of aggravation going on all the time. So you've asked me a question. I mean, I'm actually here to ask questions, but I don't mind answering questions. I'm a bit like that. But what I'm saying is, is that I would, you know, I've just said, I mean, I think that it is rational, I think, that it should be in our transport strategy. What I'm saying is, if I had an input on that, I would be looking for things to be in there as of just that line. And it's not that I'm against I'm against motorbike drivers. I am, however, against motor, because I've been I've lived in the Nags Head for 45 years. It's called the racetrack Seven Sisters Road in Islington. Fortunately, we've had C50 cycle route. It's been slowed down, absolutely horrendous, virtually every night, bombing up Seven Sisters Road, bombing down Islington Road on big bikes. So, you know, we can't ignore these things. These are the things that upset people. Yeah. So what I'm saying is, is that I've been open and honest and said that whether you like it or not, you know, it isn't, you know, it's up to you. But what I'm saying is, is there's two sides of this. OK, I'm going to just take the committee and then you can come back in. OK, so Councillor Hayes. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for coming and for raising the point. I did have some questions following on from your presentation. So I was interested and I, you know, I fully understand that the nature of people's disabilities vary and, you know, what works for some people won't work for others. But do you have any idea of what the percentage of disabled motorcyclists is? You know, you may not know. If I run through, I've got three questions, if that's all right. And I think you said the £170, the council received £170 income last year from e-motorcycles was from residence permits. Electric. Yeah, electric. So that sounds like it's a very low number. So I'm I'm kind of appreciate that you're raising some some important theoretical points. But how many isn't? And again, obviously, you're not going to know all of this. But of the groups that you are involved with, how many electric motorcycle owners are there? And then I've got a final question, which I suspect possibly is more for officers, which is how active travel. Is there some commonly used definition of what active travel is and what are the criteria that are used in determining it? Because I take the point that you're suggesting it burns as much human energy as some other forms of transport that are considered active travel. But I just didn't know whether there was an external policy context that affected that. Thank you. Do you want to come in on that question of the definition of active travel? Well, actually. Put your mic on, please. Hopefully there's not going to be feedback. Thank you. It seems to be OK. I think we take the lead from the mayor's transport strategy and the definition that's set out there, which predominantly focuses on walking and cycling and our transport strategy and the policy that we implement needs to be consistent with the mayor's transport strategy under the legislation. So we we take it from that. I hope that's helpful. Thank you. It's helpful. And Council Russell. Yes, I was going to raise the mayor's transport strategy and also to say that the mayor has particular policy goals in the transport strategy, which is Vision Zero, where they're aiming to reduce the numbers of people killed and seriously injured on the roads. And I can't remember which date they're working to for that one. And then also they want 80 percent of trips to be made by walking, cycling or public transport by 2041. And although inner London boroughs are approaching that or even above it, in order to get the whole of London to about 80 percent, you need inner London boroughs like Islington to be performing well above average. So I think that I was actually also just looking up the Green Group's budget amendment last year, and we actually had proposed that the electric motorbike parking charges were removed on the grounds that you proposed. That it's electric motorbikes are not producing emissions. They tend to be not great, big, powerful vehicles. They tend to be sort of, you know, they're less damaging than a car. And so it seemed weird that they were being being charged. But I think in the transport hierarchy, it goes from walking to cycling to motorbikes, then cars. And then you get the sort of commercial vans and lorries and buses. So that's the kind of transport hierarchy that Transport for London works to in the Mayor's Transport Strategy. I'm pretty sure that's what you work to in the Islington Transport Strategy. So I think, you know, a motorbike, because it's got a motor, is more powerful and therefore could cause more harm, potentially, than an e-bike, which could potentially cause more harm than a pedal cycle. So it's like the whole point of the incentives in transport policy are about reducing harm, about enabling the most active, least polluting ways of getting around. So absolutely motorbikes sit in there. But I think Councillor Heather raised the issue of speed. And there are, like there are some people who drive cars anti-socially, there are people who ride bikes anti-socially, and there are people who ride motorbikes anti-socially and they kind of, you know, will weave between traffic going inappropriately fast. So there's kind of, the kind of policy piece needs to manage the whole picture. Thank you very much, that was very good. I'm just going to go over to Councillor Champion now. Thank you. Can I say, I don't think, I mean I think you've been to full council before as well, so you've been before the Councillors here. I mean obviously I've had conversations with you, Dermot's had conversations with you. The parking team, including the head of parking, has also had conversations with you, we've had a very, very large number of emails. And I think we've explained that for us we have a very rational, what we believe is a very rational basis for what we're charging. But could I just point out there's a very big difference between what we charge for cars and what we charge for motorbikes, particularly e-motorcycles. So for a car for the minimum it's about 100 I think, but for a motorcycle it's about 60, I think it's about 65 or something. But for an e-motorcycle we recognise the fact that an electric motorcycle is less damaging than a petrol powered one. So we have a half price, so it's about £32.50 or something a year for a residents permit for an e-motorbike. And I think if you're parking it, it's 50p a day, and if you take out an annual pay as you go it's something like, I think it's about half of what we charge for a motorcycle. Which I think is just over £50 now I think, for an e-motorcycle a year. So we've made a lot of concessions on the basis that motorcycles are not cars and they are environmentally less damaging. However they are not the same as an e-bike, which I know is something that you have said, e-bikes are governed down to 15mph which brings with it certain safety limitations. And whilst some of the e-motorcycles are small, some of them aren't. They are motorcycles but they are powered in a different way. So we absolutely accept the fact that there should be a separate category when we come to looking at parking for motorcycles. And we reflect that and we reflect that both in terms of motorcycles themselves, the fact that an electric motorcycle is powered differently and therefore has different emissions from a petrol one. I mean we're also looking at things like whole life, so actually some large electric motorcycles also have quite a lot of carbon emissions attached to that. But I think what both them and I have explained is although you may not agree with our rationale, we absolutely think, we've tested it with officers, we've talked among ourselves, that what we have is a rational basis for charging. Now I don't know whether Eshwin thinks we could have a look at a paragraph in the transport strategy to deal with motorcycles separately if we haven't. I'm happy to do that but as far as I'm concerned the way we treat motorcycles at the moment and e-motorcycles is very rational and I can promise you we've had a number of discussions about it. We thought about it very carefully and we've come up with, as I say, the charging structure that we have at the moment. Thank you. Can I just talk with Eshwin about that suggestion about having a paragraph in the transport strategy. What do you think about that? Thank you, Chair. We can take it away and have a look at it. My initial view is quite a nuanced piece. We don't currently have any kind of hierarchy within the transport strategy that was just being discussed. And now increasingly what I'm seeing in different transport strategies is hierarchies within hierarchies in terms of different types of bicycle, how they're powered. I think it's quite a complicated area and would need quite a bit of thought and possibly resource as well so we can have a look at it but I hesitate to say that it would be a new part of the transport strategy at this point. Appreciate that. Thank you. That is the time up for the deputation. You can have a minute just to summarise. Disabled motorcyclists. We don't have a list of it. We don't have that but there are disabled motorcyclist organisations that may be able to so I can get back to you on that point. On the low number of electric motorcycles, yes, they are a low number because it's an emerging technology and what we need to be doing is encouraging people to switch and what you don't have at the moment are any of those levers to encourage people to switch. So, yeah, we do need to get more and more people onto electric motorcycles. Ben, I don't know if you wanted to come in some of the stuff about emissions? Just on the parking issue. I recognise what Councillor Champion says but I think the problem that Rachel was really illustrating is that when motorcycles are considered, the starting point is that they're a car and Councillor Champion was saying we charge half as much as cars but motorcycles don't take up anywhere near half as much space as a car. Why not start from the position that they're a completely different type of transport rather than taking the car policy and trying to adjust it? So I don't think it's just about a single paragraph in the transport strategy. I think it runs throughout the strategy and any policy really needs to consider fundamentally but you can't just take a car policy, tweak it a bit and make it apply to motorcycles. We're going to wind up now and Eshwin has agreed to take it away so I really, really appreciate you coming tonight and bringing this issue into our committee and we're going to take it further. So how do we go about that then? Because yes, something has come out of this meeting which is fantastic. I'm really pleased with that. We're going to let Eshwin take it away and then he can come back to us with any thoughts. Can we come back to the committee to speak on this again? Come back to the committee any time you like and ask a question, any time, any meeting. Right, we will definitely do that then. Just very quickly, could I ask that we have a commitment that officers will follow up and discuss with us the kind of details around how exactly we see the transport strategy? I think that, you know, as I said, we can leave it with Eshwin now at the moment and then, as I said, you can ask questions any time. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much for coming. Yes, I think I will email you, so I actually did have, I have been working on this for some time and I did have a communication going with an officer about five years ago and he did actually commit to looking at motorcycles position in the transport strategy and then he just stopped responding to me. So yes, I would very much like to take this forward with you over email. Thank you. On to, oh so the report is before us, this really good report that was drawn up by Emma from our scrutiny, last year's scrutiny, which is really, really just need to agree it tonight. I'll draw your attention to page ten where the recommendations are and so if you just, what I'll do is I'll just go through the recommendations. Can we agree on these recommendations? Recommendation one, has everyone got that page ten? Because we went through it in detail, didn't we? Yes, we've agreed these recommendations, so we just need to agree the report as a whole. Can we agree the report as a whole? Agreed, thank you very much everyone. So now I just want to go to the work plan because, what the work plan? Is it in the agenda? No. So the thing, I just wanted to raise, because we've agreed the SID, we've agreed the draft, the document for the last year's scrutiny on active travel and we did have ideas for one-off topics and I've got a list of them here, one-off reports. I've mentioned Thames Water, I've mentioned the, we did have the SPD, a report on the presentation on the SPD at the last committee, and Sakeba is going to come back to us on that. We're invited to write to Sakeba with any additions we want to make to the SPD on the environment, because that's an ongoing document. And then we've got Leisure, and so, did we agree that we're going to have one-off reports on those three topics? Yeah, we agreed that last time. Okay, so that's really good, so we've got those. SPD are coming back in October. They're coming back, yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, there was something, Chair, that came up last night at the training that we had, hang on, sorry, I've got it all written down, ready to raise it. Yeah, we had training from the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny on scrutiny in committees. And one of the things that came up was that the scrutiny committees should be looking at anything where there is a significant variance and looking into some of the detail behind it. So, parking came up as one of the areas where the variance is about one and a half million, and I just wondered if we should just have a short session with officers so that we've done our duty in terms of scrutiny in relation to the budget, to just understand exactly how that variance, that one and a half million variance in parking. I'm sure there are probably very clear reasons behind it, but one and a half million is a significant variance and the trainer suggested that it was the kind of thing that we ought to be covering in the appropriate scrutiny committee. So, I just wondered if we could find a slot at some point in the year to have a brief update on how that pans out. I mean, I think the question is the appropriate scrutiny committee, so I think it's probably corporate resources, probably. So, I'll just go over to Council Champion, she wants to come in. Can you just turn your mic off? I think that was my point. I think it may go to audit, so maybe just take it away because I think it is definitely looked at. So, perhaps you could take it away and maybe discuss that. We had the chair of audit and the chair of corporate resources there last night in this conversation, but please do go and talk to those two chairs. Basically, the parking variance needed to be looked at, being suggested by this committee, but you could discuss it with them. I mean, isn't that a matter for, isn't it in Council to decide though? I hear you've been to some kind of scrutiny meeting last night, but we have actually got, so my understanding of legislation is just that Councils have to have a scrutiny committee, one scrutiny committee, and what we've done, we've created other ones. So, I think it would be for the Resources Committee maybe to decide where this best sits, so I agree with Council Champion about that, but I've not got a close mind on it. I don't think we need to be, they can say in a training session that it's got to be your environment committee that deals with that. It was the compulsory financial scrutiny training that we were all invited to. The chair of the Resources Committee was there, as was the chair of audit, and this point was made. So, you can take it up with them outside this meeting, but so I'm just bringing it because I attended the training and it is one of the things that we are meant to be doing. So, but please take it to the chair of audit and the chair of the Resources Committee and they'll recognise the conversation. Thank you. Point taken. So, Councillor Hayes. Yeah, I was just going to say, I think there is a conversation that is likely to be being had by the chair of audit with the chairs of scrutiny committees to try and look at, as part of the scrutiny committee review, how there's consistency and a clear understanding about which topic sits with which area and how you don't duplicate, but how each scrutiny committee has an understanding of the implications. Thank you. I mean, also, we ought to be looking at this sort of thing. This environment should look at the budget and how it is worked out within our own section every year. We should have a sort of financial report somehow coming here where we can see what things look like. I mean, it was suggested last night that every committee area, like health or whatever, they look at their own things and we should as well. So in a way, I do agree with Caroline. The guy was brilliant. I mean, you should have been there last night. He was great. Very, very good training and Jacqueline. I'm not disagreeing with Caroline. I'm just taking the point away to talk to those chairs and ascertain which committee should deal with that specific topic. It could be a report back within the usual stuff that we get rather than having a separate meeting that talks about it, because we should have more detail about, particularly if it's an area where, for instance, like parking, if the budget variance is so out, we need to talk about that we are members, we are responsible and we shouldn't just bounce it down to either whoever. We've all got to take responsibility for this. Thank you. Gosh. I think that we haven't got the work plan to agree, but we'll agree that the next, you'll send that out and we can agree at the next meeting. So I think that's it then for this tonight's meeting. Thank you very much, everybody.