Transcript

The chat function must not be used to have conversations with other participants or to provide personal information. All chat is recorded as this is a formal meeting. Please only use the chat function to alert me that you wish to speak, to raise points of order or to report tech problems. Officers will assist you. This is a formal meeting of Hackney Council. Please note the press may be in attendance. The rights of the press and public to record and film the meeting will apply. So currently we are quarantined. I'm just going to go through apologies. So we have received apologies from Councillor Ozen and Councillor Tinas. We have received apologies for lateness from Caroline Selman. Are there any other apologies for absences? Okay. So some commission members will be joining us virtually. So joining us online this evening, we have Councillor Sumata and we have Councillor Selman who will be joining us online. But as I said, she'll be joining us lately. So agenda item two, urgent items and order of business. So are there any urgent items? Agenda item three, declaration of interests. Are there any declarations of interests? Small declaration of interest that I also act as Green Infrastructure Champion. So I have a bit of an interest in these letters. Thank you, Councillor Young. So agenda item four. So it's an update on the Green Infrastructure Strategy, Local Nature Recovery Plan and Urban Forests Plan. So the commission is keen to receive an update on the council's progress against the delivery of the Green Infrastructure Strategy and Local Nature Recovery Plan. We see this as timely with both documents having been adopted by cabinet a little over a year ago in June 2023. Members are also keen to receive an update on future plans to develop an Urban Forests Plan, which will be another key document which will feed into the Green Infrastructure Strategy alongside the Local Nature Recovery Plan and Parks and Green Spaces Strategy. So attending from climate sustainability and environments, we have Mayor Woodley, the Mayor of Hackney, in person. We've got Gita, sorry if I miss it. So I'll try it on. Subramanyam Muni, Director of Environment and Climate Change in person. We've got Sam Kirk, Assistant Director of Climate, Sustainability and Environmental Services, also in person. And then we've got Matthew Carrington, Strategic Corporate Lead, Climate Emergency, also attending in person. I'd like to welcome you all to the meeting. I'd now like to invite Mayor Woodley and Matthew Carrington to begin their presentation with supplements, which supplements the report included in the agenda and papers. Thanks very much. I am really proud to present the update on our Green Infrastructure Strategy. We have not held back. We've worked very hard to get to work with Greening the Gray and we've been able to do that in partnership with many volunteers, many experts in the field, and collaboration across all Council services. So I'm going to hand straight over to Matthew to run you through it and I'm here to take questions. I might just sit at the back to charge up my laptop before it dies. Can everybody hear me clearly in terms of talking? Thanks very much. So as the first item, the sort presentation will cover sort three main areas. So there's a little bit of the overview of various strategies and plans that have been referred to just to sort of get members into a place where they can understand how they relate to each other and what the key components of them are. I'll give some certain high level examples of progress projects, and then some challenges and next steps for members of the Committee to consider. What I would say is that the presentations that followed from Sam Parian Parks and Paul Fournette do pick up some of the issues within those specific spaces. So that will give some more depth to some of the things that I'm going to say today. So if we move on to the next slide. I thought it was useful to sort of just define what we mean by green infrastructure because lots of people say different things about it. Just to provide the setting, Hackney's quite fortunate. It's one of the greenest in the city boroughs, with more than 40% of its land classified as green cover, and 19% of the borough's publicly accessible green space. And we've also got quite substantial trees and woodlands covered about through 23% of the borough. So in terms of green infrastructure, lots of these will be things that you will recognise, such as parks and housing and emergency spaces, which touches on future presentations. Then there's sort of street trees and woodland. And then there's the sort of blue element which works with green infrastructure. So there's the rivers, reservoirs, canals and wetlands. And as we know, because we're in East London, and because of the industrial heritage of this area, we're quite substantially well provided for with blue assets, which within the borough and on its cartridges. And then just on the other side of it, there's the private gardens, there's quite a large number of private gardens within Hackney as part of people's own homes. And then there's also railway sidings and things like that. Just in terms of sort of new developments, but also in terms of when people retrofit, there's things like green roofs, and I'll cover a little bit on that. And then also sustainable urban drainage, which whether it be on the street or whether it be larger systems. So perhaps we might move on to the next slide. So the next slide sort of sets the green infrastructure strategy within the rest of the strategies and plans that sit around it. So obviously, as we said, we've adopted local nature recovery plan, arts and space strategy was adopted before that in 2021 to 2031. And then there's the elements of local urban forest plan, which I'll give you a little bit of a detail in terms of what that might be as it evolves and develops. But I think also the other important links to it are the local plan, because that's one of the key levers to be able to achieve change with new developments and small developments in whatever way they come in, but also the transport strategy as well. So there's other plans such as the surface water management plan, and there's other things like the air quality action plan. So what you can see is there's actually a system that sits around this. And so the most effective way, although I think the borough's got quite a good green infrastructure strategy, I developed it with others, so it's a rather selfish statement. But ultimately, it's about how we embed that in the wider system that actually makes the real difference. So it's about the wider authority, but also stakeholders that own space outside of us. So we move on. So I thought it'd just be worth just saying very quickly what is the green infrastructure strategy. So it touches on this system-based point that I made. It's a strategic approach to create a network of green infrastructure that looks across physical boundaries, land ownership, and policy objectives. It seems to ensure some of the critical things which we plan and design and manage it to meet some of those future requirements around the impacts of climate change or health which already exists, but also biodiversity loss. So it touches on the climate and ecological impacts. In terms of the third point, what it tries to do is identify a sort of series of spatially, sort of geographically-located projects based on a high-level needs assessment that was done as part of developing the strategy, but also with in mind which ones are most likely to provide the greatest benefits. There's a lot of things that you can do, but it's trying to be relatively prioritised in terms of where can we make the biggest difference. And just aligning it with the council's own strategic plan, it's central to the vision for a greener and healthier Hackney. Here we go to the next slide. So one of the things that came out of it – this is what they call the Green Infrastructure Spatial Framework – and what it's done is sort of map the sites for housing, for parks, for housing estates, for regeneration areas, to try and come up with a framework that looks at where we can make these differences and how we might make them do that. You can probably, if you've got it on your own screens, you can see the detail of it. It has a wide variety of different spaces, but it also has things like green links, which are sort of greener active links for transport, linking green spaces and things like that. So that came out of needs assessment and that will lead on to a set of projects that some of them I'll talk about now. So we move to the next slide. So what are the key GI opportunities? So there were three areas that were identified within the Green Infrastructure Strategy. One was about modifying existing parks and amenities spaces. So that is about making changes to their design and management to address those existing and future needs. The other area was about transforming the streets and public realm, which picks on the mayor's point about greening the grey. And then there's also promoting urban greening, which is probably not all about new developments, but new developments do offer quite an ability to be able to make some impact on that. Perhaps we can move on to the next one, because I'm conscious of other people's presentations. So what I will cover is I'm not going to talk about the modifying parks and green spaces, because I think I'll leave that to the parks team and the housing teams that are here today. But I will pick up a point about transforming the public realm. So this is one of the examples that members will probably be aware of. It's at the early proposal stage. There has been some engagement. I think there was an event in July on the narrow way with residents and things like that. But this is a sort of visualisation in terms of what this could be. But I think it's appreciated that more work will need to be done on this before we get to a final scheme. So it's at the proposal stage, as I understand it. I'm not delivering the project, so my apologies if I'm making a statement that's slightly open to interpretation. There were other projects within the green infrastructure strategy, which this is a large strategic project. There was another one from Stokenington Gyratory, and this will touch on some of the challenges that I think Council and others have got around how do we fund these larger schemes. So in some respects, we've been quite lucky in terms of securing funding through the Levelling Up Fund for the scheme at Amherst Rose and Pembroke Corner. But that's not always the case. And quite often, we're dependent on other funders, like Prandtl for London, as part of their local implementation plan. And they've got their own financial constraints, so there's less money available to councils than there would have been historically. We move on to the next one. As another example of what's happening at the moment, there's been quite a lot of delivery in street scene on our streets in terms of delivering sort of smaller scale sustainable drainage schemes. This is one near Pembroke Corner, actually. And that partly involves depaving, but it partly also involves reducing surface runoff. So these spaces are permeable, so therefore they can absorb more surface water. Just to say that these are relatively small schemes. You've probably seen a number of them throughout the borough. But external funding has been secured for a couple of larger flood alleviation schemes, but that's still waiting approval with other partners. So there's a sort of few things, and then we move on to the next. So just on the final opportunities, promoting urban greening. So this is an image of Woodbury Downe Phase 1, and that's been quite successful in terms of its green roofs, and that shows what's there at the moment. There are future phases of that. I'm not close to that project, but I imagine there will be similar things being delivered for that. And just to sort of touch on where that meets with policy that the council and the mayor of London has got. So they have a thing called urban greening factor, which for major developments they have to demonstrate how they reach a point four. It's got a set of criteria and the way that it's organised and assessed, but ultimately the growth team manager in planning has said that our major developers are meeting that, and he feels we're doing fairly well with that. As I say, there were 4,700 metres of green roofs installed as part of that first phase. I think what's the benefit of green roofs? I mean, particularly because this is next to an actual space, provides habitat for local wildlife, it provides a connection to the adjacent reservoirs, the green roofs are also part of a water management system. There are new home schemes that have been delivered, and I think Paul's touching on some of the new green roofs on some of those developments, so I'll leave that one to him to talk about. But I think in your presentation I saw 4,000 square metres. Is that right? So there's another quite significant proportion of this coming forward. And what this does is it offers, although this is a location next to quite a green location in the south-west of the borough where it's much more urban and dense, these sort of major developments do offer you opportunities to be able to create green infrastructure where it might be quite challenging. Next slide. So I've just come on to this, what is the local nature recovery plan? It's a requirement of the Environment Act 2021. It's based on improving the borough's ecological health to conserve nature and help wildlife flourish, and the sort of centre point, the key point of this, are the borough's sites of importance for nature conservation, which there are 24 existing sinks in the borough. As part of a review of sites of importance for nature conservation, those have been looked at again in terms of whether there might be slight adjustments to their boundaries and things like that, but there are also proposals for another six sites of importance for nature conservation. But the way that they get adopted, they have to go through the local plan process. So as part of the local plan review, which will be starting I think next year at the early stages, some of these things will be picked up then, but you can't actually get them into legislation before. So we'll move on to the next one. What I didn't say, it's based on sort of five key nature recovery areas and its intentions to sort of protect what is best. So that's the sites of importance for nature conservation. It's also about increasing connectivity between those very high quality habitats and also creating new habitat, stepping stones between those habitats to augment the existing good quality habitat and to strengthen connectivity. So this is one of the nature recovery areas. So it picks up the points I mentioned earlier that you can see the reservoirs, you can see Woodbury Down. The nature recovery areas don't spatially cover the whole of the borough, but they provide a focus for locations where it's considered the nature recovery interventions to make the most impact. As I say, there's the West Reservoir work, which I know the parks team have been working on. There's been improvements there in terms of replay of planting, which has been completed. I think we're getting quite positive feedback from people who swim there, because I'm on the West Reservoir app for that, for the swimmers. And also things that happen in Park Cemetery where work has been completed, I think. Would I be right in saying that recently? And also the Woodbury Down Estate, which is obviously a major ongoing regeneration program. There's also within that weave, there's housing estates and other smaller sites, but I just thought it was useful just to pick out the larger ones. And what we focused on is in terms of, from the council's point of view, and it's a bit like what's anchored in the climate action plan, it's about what we can control, spaces that we are directly responsible for, like the parks and the housing spaces, but also where we can influence. So it's about using planning levers and things like that to be able to get better outcomes from our major developments. This is, move to the next slide. Sorry, I'm dragging my head. This is Clissold Park, nice picture of it. It's also a site for nature conservation, but these are veteran trees. And what we mean by veteran trees, we mean by trees that have been there quite a long time. And so one of the things for parks we were talking about, you know, where is the new chances of tree planting coming from in parks? I can cover some of the other stuff in streets and other areas. But ultimately it's going to be about thinking about succession planting, which is obviously, we don't know when these large trees are going to come to the end of their natural line. It's a huge issue for London because we've got so many plane trees also within the borough, but also these veteran trees add a real sort of history in terms of, and context to those parks. And they're part of the original design. So if we move on to the next slide. So this is Woodbury Wetlands. This is also a site in importance for nature conservation. And as I said, the works of West Rose Wildlife will complement this, including recent planting of reef beds amongst others. So you can see the context of this, the new housing building relative to that area. Next slide. So what is an urban forest plan? So the urban forest plan, as it says on the image up here, it's sort of more in development. So it's not something that's been adopted. So you won't necessarily heard a great deal about it outside of this meeting today. So in terms of what is it, as I said, it's a wider component of the wider green infrastructure strategy. So it sort of operationalizes the objectives of the GIS in relation to the management of the biostock of trees, and one of those things I just mentioned about veteran trees. And so it sets out how the local authority will protect, manage and increase the canopy of trees on land which it owns and manage through its regulatory role. We have a regulatory role with trees through tree preservation orders and things like that, but also trees in the wider public realm. And so what we're thinking, because it's still at an early stage, it will probably have a suggestive focus on spatially specific actions and recommendations regarding trees, which help to meet the objectives of the GIS. So what's been going on with that today, there's been participation in the GLA, there's been quite a lot of energy in the GLA regarding events around green infrastructure and nature and biodiversity. So the agricultural officer attended the GLA event, which is looking at updating the Mayor of London's existing urban forest plan. We're also trying to gain insight from other local authorities, but not many people have done stuff about this, I think within London off the top of my head. And so I think we also recognize that particularly the urgency of the need for adaptation, which means if we could, we'd like to accelerate some of this, but obviously it has to be seen within the constraints that the council has got regarding funding both capital and revenue. And so again, it's the main opportunities probably with the council's control and influence, and probably also on the streets and housing amenity spaces because they've got trees on them as well, and as well as major new developments using the planning levers. It's not to say that private gardens don't form a role within that, but probably the way that it escalates with that is through conservation areas where all trees have a protection, or also individual tree preservation orders, which are either put forward by the council or by individuals outside of the council suggesting that they should be protected. So that one is evolving. I haven't got the full timeframes for the program of that, but it's basically a year two action within the council's climate implementation plan, and year two is what we're in until the end of March. So I'm hoping that we will be able to have a draft, I'm not the officer leading it by then. Moving on to the next slide. So just talking about urban forestry, and I sort of said a little bit about what it is. This is a picture of Wick Woodland, and this is what people think about when they think about the urban forest, but it's also important to remember that there's 11,000 street trees, there's what, there's 7,000 are they on housing sites, 7,500, and those in ownership of others like Network Rail, and things like that. So it's not, the whole picture is, it's not just about woodland and things like that, it's about all those different assets wherever they may be located. So just to sort of touch base on that, as members will know, there's been a significant street tree program that completed last year. That increased the canopy on street from 20 to 30%. And what we mean by that is when those trees are fully developed. If I need to move on, please tell me. So let's move on to the next slide. So just to sort of bring all this together, is how does this sort of tessellate with the work that the council's got within the Climate Action Plan? So obviously the themes of the Climate Action Plan are directly relevant to this work within green infrastructure, such as adaptation, some of the elements of transport, some environmental quality, and obviously buildings isn't on here, but we've loaded that in with adaptation around some of this. So as members will know, Hackney's Climate Action Plan adopted last year prior to the green infrastructure strategy and the local vector recovery plan. It's the first holistic borough-wide plan to address both climate and ecological crisis. So how does it join up with this? There's a Council Climate Implementation Plan for three years, which is about practical actions relative to those themes. And what we tried to do is capture some of the key actions out of these strategies and plans to be within that Council Climate Implementation Plan, so they're sort of embedded within it. We move on to the next slide. I'll just cover sort of governance and partnership that came out of the green infrastructure strategy. So one of the proposals within the GIS was what we call an internal green infrastructure taskforce, and that is to focus on activities where internal collaboration will have the most value. So that will be established in the autumn. It will be chaired by Geetha, who's here today, as the Director of Environment and Climate Change, in terms of reference and the purpose and everything will be developed to reflect that. But just as sort of an example of it, one of the topic areas is probably one of them could be ensuring consistency in our approaches where relevant to the management and maintenance of our green assets, particularly around certain areas, and also how we promote that sort of cross-departmental collaboration between us. And so in terms of some of the things that are coming up, there's been recruitment to the parks team of a biodiversity officer. There's also been an interview that's been happening this week for a senior biodiversity officer in planning to deal with biodiversity net gain. It's a strong field. They're going to find a difficult decision about who they're going to appoint. But there's new resources coming in, and so it will be one of the things for me to consider. How do we use those resources as a collective, because we haven't had them, to most deploy the greatest impact in terms of what we're doing. So I'll just touch on the external partnership for nature recovery. That came, there were proposals within the green infrastructure strategy which were not forum based, but actually what we got told in the consultation was something that focused more on the biodiversity elements of it. And so therefore we've been looking at some options, and we think that probably the direction of it is to line it with the local nature recovery plan. There's lots of great work going on with local volunteer groups, both in parks and housing and more widely, to be able to further catalyse that, further help and scale that. So again, it's about optimising collaboration working between external partners alongside securing external funding, which is sort of one of the critical issues in terms of being able to deliver this stuff. But we think by having a focus on that framework, the local nature recovery plan, that will probably be the best way to do it at the moment. Although that's, when I say that, there's still further consideration of it in terms of how that might be taken forward. So I'm winding up nearly. So just in terms of challenges, just I think the first point which we get, which comes up with all the climate works about addressing the urgency of action needed borough wide in respect to climate adaptation, and obviously green infrastructure has a key role. And I think what we've seen over the last two years, three years, is just the whole thing about overheating. It's just got so, so much more emphasis as it should do. And so adaptation has really gone up the ladder alongside net zero and mitigation. So it's about, you know, how do we move with that urgency within the funding constraints that we've got, and therefore we I think we have to be quite prioritised about where we can make those impacts. Again, sufficient funding, I probably said it 17 times, and it's not just about the capital. Sometimes we're quite good at getting external funding for capital, it's actually more about the long term aftercare, which comes with the new schemes and things like that. And then on the third point, it's about securing wider key landowner interest and engagement, where we have less influence. So people will be aware of the railway corridors, and things like that with network rail, and sometimes it's quite difficult to engage with them and their management mechanisms don't really fit in with perhaps what the borough wants. Then there's a final point, an ultimate point about balancing competing uses of existing green infrastructure. There's quite a lot of things that people want to do with green infrastructure, if you look at parks in terms of their leisure uses, all sorts of things. And so therefore, it's quite challenging sometimes to do all the things that you want to do within that envelope. And so parks are often constrained because of the need to provide a whole range of other co-benefits and services more widely. And then finally, it's about creating new publicly accessible green spaces in a dense urban environment. I'm not saying I've got the answers to that, but part of that is probably thinking about greening the grey, I would say, but again, within the limits of the funding that we have. So my last slide. This is just on next steps. So as I said before, there's alignment between these strategies and plans, the key elements of it. Not every project is within the council's climate implementation plan. It's a top look at some of those big strategic movers. And so part of that will be about assessing feasibility of some of the things that are in the green infrastructure structure around green leaks and things like that, but also delivering key EGI projects that have already been agreed, have the capital and funding and have already been agreed with their aftercare arrangements and things like that. So implementing the green infrastructure taskforce and agreed external part approach. I won't say any more about that because I think I sort of covered that. Bedding in new biodiversity staff resources, picked up that in terms of we think that's something that we'll need to be looking at. Developing the draft urban forest plan, it is because it's not been developed yet. And then I think optimising opportunities presented by the development of updated strategies and plans to support GI and biodiversity. So what do I mean by that? The local plan review coming next year, the transport strategy, which is in the sort of early stage in terms of that. And also in terms of housing strategy and things, that is also going to be coming forward to cabinet next year, as I understand it. So there's opportunities to better align this. And as I said when I opened the presentation, the best way that we can deliver this is by embedding it in policies and strategies across the teams, across the council, so therefore we can maximize impact. So I hope you felt that was useful. I think I'll probably wind up now, I don't think there's another slide. Thank you very much. Thank you for your presentation. So I would now like to invite commission members to ask any questions that they may have of our guests. Can I ask a sort of overarching question? There's such an enormous amount in there. Is there confidence that the priorities and actions identified a realistic and deliverable, bearing in mind the list of challenges that you just described? And also, are we focused on outcomes rather than outputs? I can probably start the answer, but then others might want to come in after me. I think it's recognized that the plans and strategies are aspirational. And I think what we've said when we produced them, that if you produce something within the cost envelope of what you got, then they lack ambition. But I think they have to be caveated with the point that you're making, is about how deliverable they are. I think I've given examples of ones that were in there that perhaps when we put them in there, we weren't sure they were going to be deliverable. So the £19 million scheme and Hackney and Amherst Road and around Hackney Central. But I think the thing is to not have the schemes in there as an indication of what needs to be done is probably not the right approach. The issue is about how we take those plans and embed them into the delivery plans, such as the Council Climate Implementation Plan. So some of that, take some of those ones which are deliverable, brings them in and we focus on that, but also we keep our eye on the future in terms of what might come along. Because we don't know the change of government, things like that. Funding systems might change. They're probably not going to get massively better. But ultimately there are funding schemes from the Mayor of London and things like that. We've worked with others to secure that. And I imagine there's going to be more because adaptation particularly has got much more emphasis with the Mayor of London. And usually the way that that devolves quite beyond the status and plans is some form of funding programme, whether it's sufficient or not. I think we were all open to a comment on that. But I do think it provides opportunities that might, let's say, not have been there so clearly three years ago. Do you have any, do you have particular things that you sort of have your eye on really to drive that forward? So for example, do you have particular things for the review of the local plan that you're really kind of, you know, you've got your eye on to support that? And I can see the Mayor's got a hand up. The conversations that have been had with the growth team manager on planning is there probably are additional levers because actually it's what I said before, that if you get that right, then others are contributing to that. And so that enables us to scale some of the things that we might not be able to fund ourselves as with like external funding. So, but what the growth team manager said to me about it and said that when you make changes, let's say if you want to enhance this or increase that percentage or something like that, then basically you have to demonstrate the evidence. And that's the, that's the difficult bit within the local plan review is about demonstrating the evidence if you wanted to do something that's significantly beyond what would be the regulatory requirement. Now, there might be a special set of circumstances for inner London boroughs because as we know, this borough is one of the hottest in London and things like that. But at the same time, it has to have a clear evidence to be sure that it's upheld. Because I think then it's challenged by developers if they don't feel it robust. And I think the inspector also challenges it if you put forward things that they don't feel the evidence is sufficient enough to be able to make the agreements. Thank you. Do any of my colleagues? Oh, ma'am. I just want to bring in a note of optimism. That's why I get up in the morning. Often it's about being good ready. And I think we're in an extraordinary position in Hackney. You know, we had a really ambitious street tree planting programme that was incredibly successful considering the number of trees that planted in a short period. And I think in the first year, we had 40 degree heat that August. It's been a cooler spring and wetter spring this year, which I think has helped embed in. We've gone in year two, year three, those trees started to mature. But there is no denying that's a really successful programme. We've also looked at ways to make that relevant to residents through the street tree map, which is, well, the tree map, actually. It's in our parks and resources as well. So 40,000 trees logged on the map that people can engage with. And with signage that we're putting on the trees, they can look at and understand the species, the maturity of the trees and engage in a sort of educational way as well. We've had our first local nature recovery conference, which I think demonstrated, if nothing else, and I have to say to people that came from other boroughs, as well as from GLA, what a great relationship we have with volunteers and local experts and ecologists within Hackney. So where we've been able to focus our really small resources and our limited energy, that's been multiplied with people that have come on board and done really good things in areas that needed to make specific change. And we are monitoring, through partnership, whether it's Thames 21, looking at the quality of the lee, other partners around the river trust, and London Wildlife Trust, of course, different ways that we can progress from there. So not only that, we've got the new biodiversity officer in parts and also, of course, a senior officer within planning. So we can demonstrate that we have expertise in the council, as well as those out on the ground. And also the political will is there. It's a pledge of mine to, if anything, expand sites of importance of nature conservation. And that means that we will take advantage of every opportunity that comes up in political stem circles as well. So I have no doubt that we'll be able to build on the work that we've been doing. Matthew is rightly cautious. It's large scale. But we had a significant grant from GLA for the street tree program. I don't see why we wouldn't get that again if we want to increase our canopy cover and ensure that we're cooling Hackney in advance of extreme weather coming. Thank you, Mia. We've got a few more questions, but I just wanted to check whether there's any brief follow ups now. But we are pressed for time, so we can keep it succinct. Thanks for that presentation. It was really interesting and thanks for the papers. So just to keep it really brief, just I'm really interested in the impact that the biodiversity officers having. It's really exciting that that role is in place and there's going to be an extra one for planning. But I just wondered if you could speak to any specifics that they've influenced. The officer in part has only been imposed for four weeks or so. So, yeah, she's still getting her head around the job, but she's been out and about in the park already creating new habitats, engaging with volunteers. So she's hit the ground running. And I think it was mentioned that the interviews for the planning officer are happening at the moment this week. Thanks, Councillor Garba. Councillor Adijayi? Thank you. Mine's quite a quick one also. It's good that we are ambitious. It's glad Hackney's recognised as being hot, maybe possibly not in the best sense of the word, but also socially in terms of what we represent. So that's good. But it's just with regard to the planning levers which are being investigated at the moment. We know how long it takes to get stuff put in, adaptations of local plans take. I just want to get an idea of what manoeuvres or what discussions are taking place at the moment to ensure that this is firmly embedded in the directions which our developers will be instructed or will have to follow moving forwards. Is that a bit mumbled? No, is it clear? That's probably a difficult one for me to answer in a way. So it might be something we could take away in terms of saying that the local plan review has to start. And as part of that, part of the work that we've done will give it some of the evidence. But if they are looking at changing policies and things like that, as part of the local planning, they'll need to do some evidence work to see whether they're fundamentally strong enough to be able to take forward. But if we probably need another bit extra to you, I think we probably best take that away and actually get an answer from planning about it, because I think you'll get a better answer. That's fine. I'm happy to come in, Councillor, if that's okay as well. So the planning team are obviously very clear that this has got to be part of our thinking. And as Matthew's already articulated, we will be looking at the evidence. We'll be really trying to ensure it's embedded into the local plan. I think the state of where we are now, this has to be at the forefront of what we're progressing. So I don't think there's any doubt in our ambition for the local plan. I think we have lots of support from, obviously, City Hall as well. So I think that it isn't in question. I think it's now just trying to make sure we go through the process and ensure that it's embedded in what we're doing going forward. >> Thank you. Okay. So how will the strategies be driven forward through clearly defined political and corporate leadership and clarity around responsibilities and accountabilities, e.g. clear governance and partnership arrangements?

Thank you, Chair. I'll start if that's okay. So I think in some of the presentation, you probably saw there's quite a good infrastructure in place. We've got some really strong implementation plans and we've got the clear three-year program that we've set out. So there is a climate board that is corporate and makes sure that we are engaging all of our corporate colleagues in ensuring that they can deliver their aspects and their particular actions in that implementation plan. In terms of the partnership, I think it's right that we have a very strong influential role and we are influencing and working with key partners in the environment agenda. There's more to do there, I think that's fair to say, and we will be working really hard to try and see where we can leverage more of that influence with our partner agencies. But I think the governance, there is the operational grit and delivery, because it's not just talking about high-level strategies, it's actually delivery. And the operational group is constantly reviewing where we are with the action plan, are we on track and what else do we need to do. So I think I'm confident that we have the right governance in place. The kind of questions for us now is the pace. I think we always sort of consider whether we are able to deliver at the pace required and I think what we can show from our annual review so far and the work that we've done, that we are delivering what we set out. And that's notwithstanding of course that we are still ambitious and we're still looking for additional funding and we will still seek to look at areas that we haven't necessarily focused on to date. Again, as I said, it's kind of a moving feat with this agenda. So I hope that assists your question. Thank you. Although there's a bit that was unanswered, but it's probably because the question was a bit long. But we do have a follow up in regards to partnership arrangements. Did you want to ask? I think it was mostly covered in the presentation actually. I've got another sort of separate question on specifics. To where we really don't have much control in statutory terms, but we really do want to achieve kind of behaviour change. How are we pushing that and I'll give a small example, but there are others. So for example where people are paving over their front and back gardens and we really want to encourage them not to do that, but we have very limited statutory powers to do so. How are we pushing that behaviour change and how are we achieving educational progress I guess? I think, so we have a sort of a team of people who are looking at a range of things around behaviour change and obviously we work closely with our public health colleagues because of course a lot of the communications will shift in behaviour. We can learn a lot I think from our public health colleagues as well. So embedding those things together, I think it's about the example you give. I don't think it's straightforward and obviously as you rightly say we can't make people not do things, but I think there's sort of what are the benefits, what's the public value, what's the real kind of urgency of not doing the things that people are intending to do. I think there's more to consider about how we do try and implant more of that kind of education piece into all of our communities and our residents because I think if you're more educated in terms of the reasons and rationales then you're more likely to perhaps not take some of the damaging actions. But I think it's a fair question as to we probably need to look at that further and we are working as I said with a number of colleagues to help us understand that, but communications is quite key and critical in this area. Okay, thank you. Are there any further follow-ups? Which one? Is it in relation to? Okay, let's come to that after. Okay, all right. So, what are some of the key risks to successfully delivering the priorities and actions identified in the strategy and have any mitigating measures been considered or put in place e.g. economic and policy developments? I'm sure I'll hand straight over to you. I think it's building in that resilience, that future proofing I think is the real risk. I mean, we've already talked about trees coming into life. We've got very diverse planting across trees to be resistant to disease, but are they going to be resistant to changes in the weather? I think there is some research underway across housing as well as parks and other areas in terms of what kind of planting is resilient in terms of heavy rainfall, but also very, very dry weather. And we might be sort of experimenting a bit with that where we can to see what kind of actually works in Hackney. And I think the other thing is retaining that resident buy-in. I mean, you've touched on it in terms of the driveways where we can't stop people doing it and the kind of behaviour change, culture change we'd need to shift. But I think there's also a frustration in some of the great work that we're doing with our sustainable urban drainage schemes where we're planting across the borough and we don't have the resources really to put that aftercare in place. So, we're taking learnings on which of those suds are holding up well after a year, which ones are kind of looking good with plants that are kind of relatively low maintenance. There is no such thing as low maintenance. I'm often reminded by my colleagues when I say let's plant everywhere. But you know, that they're relative to perhaps some of the more sort of gardened areas unless they're adopted by local people. So, I think if residents start to see areas that we've invested into green to support crash flooding, there's plants dying off and it becoming kind of solid earths and not doing the job it's set out for them, there's a risk there. So, I think what we're trying to do with new schemes is ensure that we're building in the maintenance and the aftercare and that that comes with the grants that come in. Thank you, Mayor Woodley. Let's go to that, which kind of goes back to that education and nudge piece. So, if we're using, if we're focusing on external partnerships for nature recovery, how are we using those external partnerships really to, you know, to deliver that education but also to find their way into areas of the community that we might not otherwise be able to gain access to? Thank you. So, I think there's a couple of things there that obviously we have the climate citizens jury which I think was an exceptional way of really considering a wide range of input and views and insights around this agenda and I think it's really trying to build on some of those aspects to think how might we do this going forward. But also, you know, I think the mayor has also touched on already our vast voluntary community and faith sector that we all have a kind of relationship with, not just around this agenda but with other agendas and it's thinking about, you know, how can we get information but also really trying to work with our colleagues in those sectors to try and get that education and information out. You know, I know Ian could talk more about, you know, the vast volunteering work that we have and how we can utilise some of those networks to improve the way in which we're talking about this particular area and how people can help us. So, again, I think it's, there's lots of evidence and lots of work we're doing. Often some of it, you know, we probably need to think, you know, if it's about getting a particular piece of information out how do we do that systematically, make sure the communication is clear and what our ask is, I suppose, so that we can make sure that our communities are really understanding why. So, there's more to do. There always is more to do, I think, on this particular area but I think we've got some good sort of ways in which we're doing it currently and really to build more on that, I would say, is probably our next steps. Thank you. Thank you. So, Councillor Garbit. Thank you. I know this has been touched on in parts and places but it would just be really good to have a specific response to the structure of ongoing review and analysis and understanding of performance across this and just making sure that we're building that in. I've got a particular interest in how we use conservation zones and TPOs just from experience of being a ward councillor and people getting, and this is about people's kind of personal trees in their gardens but sometimes I feel like we're not kind of reviewing what we're already using or that people don't know some of the protections that are already in place. So, I guess it's a broad question on what structure is there to review the strategy but also some of the specifics around some of the levers that we've already got. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. So, the strategy is reviewed through the Climate Action Board which is corporate and cross-cutting and that meets quarterly and we're going to have an annual review of the actual action plans so far that will be coming forward shortly. In terms of your second question, I'm probably going to ask Matthew to perhaps come in if that's okay. That's alright, I'm learning. In terms of tree preservation orders and things, I mean I live in Hackney and probably from my point of view as a resident, it would be good to be fully aware of trees because I think there's the education point that often people are sort of demonised for what they do with trees but actually sometimes they just don't realise actually that they're in a conservation area so every tree is protected and you have to apply for that. I think the challenge for the council is about how you resource all that communication with individuals to be able to do it appropriately to the level that we'd like to see. So, ultimately we're sort of slightly reliant on how we communicate in terms of what we've got on our website, what our policies and things are and actually within conservation areas do we need to do more specific communications? I'm not saying we do or we don't. In certain areas where we think actually we have got quite a lot of trees although they're all protected but actually they are ones that are significant. I mean the reason I give an example of this is in the garden next to me there's a plain tree in there that's probably 150 years old and god it's not in my garden in terms of the maintenance of it because it's really expensive but it's the most beautiful tree so I've got tree preservation orders put on that but actually for some people, how do we do that? I mean obviously I work at the council so I know a little bit about it. So it's about also about protecting but also about educating people who might do damaging things to trees but not necessarily in a deliberate way just because they don't know. You know it is a complex area. We all know what a conservation area is. I used to be on conservation area advisory committees but ultimately it is specialist knowledge and things like that. So I think we have to be clear in terms of what we tell people. They can see visual things that's very quickly enabled them to have an understanding that they live in an area where something is required to be able to be done so I hope that sort of gives you some confidence. Thank you. Mayor Woodley. I was only going to add, I don't know if you need to turn your one off Max. Sorry. So when I talked about the tree map earlier there was a TPO tree map as well so you do have that sort of digital use and there are quite a few organisations that are really interested in tree trails and tree walks and I think there's an opportunity isn't there to include some of the trees that are in people's gardens as sort of points of interest. Remember Paul Wood doing really nice tours around Hackney taking in some of the incredible sort of range of trees that we have and taking in gardens as well. There's a group called is it Natural Neighbours, something like that, who are trying to ask residents to monitor species that they have in their gardens and share information about what they've got growing so I think again working in partnership with other organisations who try to engage in live and the story about what we have, the kind of amazing assets that we have in Hackney. Yeah I think that's absolutely what it is because it's great having new things but you know preserving the trees that we've got, I know you were talking about the, what were they called, the veteran trees but yeah even if we could do a one off kind of awareness campaign or something about protecting our trees I think that would be really positive just because it's I think yeah getting it into people's knowledge. Thank you. Thank you. So are there any more, we are pressed for time but yep yep okay yep. Mine's more in respect of there are certain people who will always be more engaged with these processes and by virtue of that fact I'd just like to know moving forward what sort of action plans and ideas you have to kind of increase levels of engagement so people don't feel something is being done to them but there are active participants in terms of the greening agenda moving forward. Likewise in terms of prioritisation of certain areas for kind of regreening should we say and elements such as that. I mean what I would say is this and I think this is what we found with communicating about climate, not everybody wants to talk about net zero but they do want to talk about improved health, things like that and so I think it's actually about finding the right into people and obviously now we've got the overheating thing I think trees are getting a different understanding than perhaps they would have had three years ago and particularly those sort of trees, the ones that we most want to protect which are those veteran trees, those trees that are very large. I mean if you look at it technically they've got a huge carbon sequestration capacity but you know people don't really want to talk about that so much but actually there are other elements in terms of the co-benefits of that in terms of cooling and things like that. That actually we found with the citizens jury were much more immediate for people and actually when we did the consultation on the climate action plan obviously we did get quite a lot of feedback on net zero from specialist groups but actually the thing that people most engaged with was the adaptation and the immediate impacts, the overheating. Flooding is, I'm not going to say it's not an issue currently but it's less of an issue and let's say it would be for Hamilton and Fulham and things like that. So I think it's about recognising that the co-benefits are probably the way into this and so actually our communications need to be swept around that narrative rather than like you're saying you're doing something wrong, doing something else but how do you realise the benefits of maintaining this and not doing this are actually this and actually you would be a direct beneficiary from that potentially if it's in your garden and things like that but I know there are differing views about light and people taking light with trees and so it's not an easy one that some people have quite strong positions about but I do think it's about the wider value. That would be my, if I was looking to communicate about it and I think on the back of the citizens jury work there are recommendations there in terms of that will need to be picked up and so I think communications was quite central to that so I think that's probably where it's at. We're finding a lot, so much of it is about communications and engagement actually about making progress. Okay, thank you, so I'd like to thank all commission members for your questions and our guests for their responses, apologies we're pressed for time, we do have to move on. I understand there will be some questions we ask that we'll be getting written responses to because the information wasn't available to be provided. It's good to see I guess Hackney is ambitious with our plans and we aim to be a lead in London Borough when it comes to addressing climate change and just being proactive with how we're rewilding and protecting the environment and that's a positive thing to see and we just look forward to seeing how things continue to progress with our ambitions on climate action plan and things. So thank you, so after the meeting commission members will reflect on the evidence we've heard and the responses and make suggestions or recommendations for improvements for your consideration in regards to these plans. So we will now move on to agenda item five which is parks and green spaces strategy 2021 to 31. So the commission is keen to look at the council's progress against the delivery of the parks and green spaces strategy 2021 to 31 and how it works alongside with the climate action plan, green infrastructure strategy, local nature recovery plan and urban forest plan. So an important element of this strategy is the maintenance and development of housing green spaces and grouts. As part of the scrutiny process the commission will also be holding a focus group after the meeting with residents living in council managed homes to understand their experiences of working with the council to arrange these spaces so. Sorry I'm just going. So attending from parks and green spaces we have mayor Woodley, Gita Sabramani, sorry Sabramani Muni, Ian Holland and Sam Parry and attending from housing services we have Paul Fournette. Just to note that we have had apologies for the meeting from Councillor McKenzie, cabinet member of housing services and resident participation and Steve Webster and Zara Churavasi, resident liaison group co-chairs. I would like to welcome you all to the meeting so it's time for the presentation so I would now like to invite mayor Woodley and the park and green spaces team to begin their presentation which supplements the report included in the agenda papers. So this is a really exemplary strategy I think it really sets out an ambitious plan over a 10-year period and through the annual reports you're able to see in a very honest and transparent way which of the commitments that we made have been acted upon and realised and the team probably could spend their entire annual budget on just maintaining pathways. So I really want to commend them and recognise the ambition, the incredible patience they have to have in terms of trying to see some of the projects and ambitions through when it comes to again working with those partners on those rewarding projects, putting in those grants, constantly chasing funding and also dealing with a very changing situation when the strategy was written. There was a sense that we needed to do more to encourage people to come into our parks and make use of our 58 parks and green spaces. We had the pandemic period and in fact with the daily allowance scheme there was a lot of discovery I think of the spaces that we have. In fact some of our green spaces became a destination and were actually abused. The footfall was such that we saw a lot of compacting, you're talking about some of those trees coming to the end of life when you've got heavily compacted parks, that kind of increases that risk. But also we needed more amenities in terms of public toilets, people misusing the parks and social behaviour, all of that. So we can celebrate great successes like bringing in fantastic new toilets for example. We've got changing places toilets in Exeter Park, also Shoreditch by way of Britannia Leisure Centre. But then it can be that you see a lot of that work undermined by anti-social behaviour when you've fought to put 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 into a new immunity and then that's undone. That takes a lot of resilience from not only our senior staff who are making those decisions but our frontline staff who are out there living with the consequences of that. It is a joy for me though when I do get out the frontline staff they take absolute pride in our parks. They're even quite competitive, I mean everybody notices the wildflower meadows each summer there's a lot of work that goes in around those to experiment with ways to be wild. You'll hope you've noticed even in the long grass areas how pathways are mown through to welcome people to still use that open space because it's really important to have that open space whether it's community football on Shoreditch Park, whether it's organised tournaments on Hackney Marshes, whether it's some of the spaces where young people in Hackney actually feel they're allowed to be and to hang out and to belong in some of the play areas, multi-use games areas, chatty benches, all of those things that we've tried to do to make our spaces more welcoming and there is always much more to do. But the main point I think is to set out a strategy like this with really clear pledges, really clear commitments over that period and to report in such a transparent way I think is something that we can learn from across other council services as well so I'll hand over to the team. Thank you, Mayor. So yes, this is the Parks and Green Spaces strategy and following on from the earlier discussion, it's important to emphasise that a huge amount of work went into this strategy to engage with the local community. We spoke to 967 people in total and got 3,398 responses so it was a huge piece of work to create it in the first place. But we wanted it to be a short and accessible document. We wanted the public to be able to pick it up, understand it and see what we were committing to. And as Mayor Woodley said we report back to the public each year on progress towards our commitments. So we distilled all of that feedback into three main themes which you'll see on the next slide. These were working with communities, creating more welcoming spaces and being more environmentally sustainable and part of the reason for having such a short document is we wanted a real focus on the commitments, what we were actually going to deliver in our Parks and Green Spaces. So I'm going to take you through these three themes and take a look at some of those commitments and our progress towards them and then I'll end with what we're going to be focusing on next in Parks and Green Spaces. So if we go to the next slide, this gives you a summary of some of the commitments that we have already started work on and delivered. We go to the next slide. Working with communities, we do an awful lot of work working with young people and we've been doing a lot of this recently with the play area consultation and it's been quite an extensive programme of improving our play areas in Parks and Green Spaces and there's more to come. So in recent years we've been liaising with part user groups, tenant and resident associations, children's centres, the Hackney Play Bus and specific sessions with children from Queensbridge Primary School, Stormont House and have engaged with over 800 young people in total. But the slide that you can see on the screen is some engagement which was slightly more unusual. We worked with children from Jubilee and William Patton Primary School and people from Boiler House Community Centre to redesign the stained glass windows which have been inserted into Abney Park Chapel. So we worked with the artist Piotr Frak, a local artist, who did really good work with the kids to design four stained glass windows based on the four seasons. They're all installed now, now that the chapel's been refurbished and reopened. So if you haven't seen them, I do urge you to go and take a look at them. In the next slide, we also engaged with people about name changes of two of our parks and green spaces, which are now named Kit Crowley Gardens and Joe White Gardens, both named after local residents as part of the Review, Rename and Reclaim project. And we worked closely with local people to choose those new names for the sites. Next slide. One of the major park improvement projects that we have engaged with local people on in recent years is the Shoreditch Park refurbishment project. So we worked with children from Shoreditch Park Academy School, ELAC College, Hoxton Garden Primary School, Shoreditch Park Academy, Art and Design students. And the children that you can see in the slide here were part of the Ministry of Stories in Hoxton Street, and they were invited to provide words and poems to appear on the fence. We also worked with young people on the design of the Mooga, the multi-use games area, and also on plaques, which you will see around the park on various boulders as well. We really wanted local people to feel that they had had a say and that they could see the results of their input into the project. As Mayor Woodley mentioned, we also worked with a group of older people who co-designed Chatty Bench in the park to encourage conversation amongst those who use them in the new tree plaza. Next slide. We also engaged with a huge number of volunteers. So in 2023-24 alone, we had 4,200 hours of volunteering. And there were various different types of volunteering. So the slide here is showing our corporate volunteers, which are an important aspect of this. Local businesses pay for their employees to come into our parks and help us look after them on a regular basis. If you go to the next slide. We also engaged with the community directly. So in World Cleanup Day in 2022, we had six separate cleanup sessions across different green spaces and collected 47 bags of rubbish. And a little plug for the next one, which is on Friday the 20th in two weeks' time. So if anyone wants to come and help us litter pick in Hackney Marshes or Clissold Park, we've got more big community cleanup days coming up. And the slide here is another group that we are working with in Clapton Common, Yat Boza. This is a disabled Orthodox Jewish group who have been helping us clear the pond and litter pick in Clapton Common. Next slide, please. We've also worked with volunteers in a more in-depth way. So this slide shows some of the damage we've been experiencing on the River Lee recently, where we've had lots of people going into the river, become known as Hackney Beach. We had a big problem a few years ago with hundreds of people getting into the river and damaging the banks and in turn damaging the biodiversity. So we've been working with a local group called the Haggiston, sorry, the Gardeners of Haggiston. And next slide. We've been taking eroded areas of the bank and creating barriers to people getting into the water and getting onto the bank using local materials. Next slide, please. The volunteers have also been getting into the water, removing invasive species, and planting reed beds. Next slide. So you'll see here, sort of before and after picture, the reed beds are starting to really take. Those are helping the banks to establish. And in the next slide, you'll see that we're creating new habitats in the water. So we're trying to change the flow of the water to create a huge variety of different habitats, which attract different species. So this project is two-pronged. It's in the water itself to try and improve the habitat in there, but also to protect the banks and reduce the number of people getting into the water. And these projects were funded from the Mayor of London alongside another project in Hackney Marshes next to the North Marsh Pavilion, where we've been working with the same groups to introduce new habitats around the pavilion using waste materials. Next slide, please. We've been creating protected deadwood habitats. We've found in the past in the marshes, if you have piles of wood, then they get borrowed by local people. So we're creating these protected piles with really nice signage to explain to people that they are protected habitats. And what we're trying to do here is create habitats particularly for wood mice. The numbers of wood mice have fallen quite dramatically in recent years. We've got local volunteers who've been out and about counting them. But in the next slide, you'll see that we've got evidence that the wood mice are returning as a result of all the habitat improvement work that we've been doing on the marshes. Next slide. We've also been working with young people on tree planting initiatives. This photo is taken from a large-scale tree planting project that we did in 2021-22 at Millfields just behind the National Grid Depot. We planted 780 trees with children from Millfields Rushmore Primary School. So again, getting that buy-in from local people and the children can see their trees growing in the park and hopefully respect them as they return to the area. Next slide. This is one happy customer. Next slide. This is another project where we engage with local people in Hagerston Park. We had a temporary school here in Audrey Street for a number of years which has now been removed now that the new school has relocated to Shoreditch Park, next to Shoreditch Park. So this area was redesigned in collaboration with local people. And what people told us is they wanted a quiet space, again, with lots of biodiversity and habitat. So this has been created and the fencing is coming down I think this week or next week. So this will be open to the public for the first time in a few years. Next slide. Lastly, on the theme of engaging people, we had a commitment to increase the number of internships and volunteering opportunities for local people, particularly those with special needs. So we work with Project Search and we've hosted a number of interns in our park service to give people a taste of what it's like to work in parks and green spaces. So this is King here who is working with June in Springfield. We're getting really positive feedback from young people who we've been engaging with and we're looking to increase this programme in the next few years. Moving on to the next theme which is all about creating more welcoming spaces. Just want to start with some good news from this year. We've got our highest number of green flags ever, 31 green flags, which I think is fifth or sixth highest in the whole country. So a really good result for a borough this size. We've also won a number of other awards in recent years. We've got a Riva London Award. We've got New London Award Community Prize for Springfield Park. The Tandy Leisure Centre was awarded and the overall award of the 2022 New London Awards and Shoreditch Park Refurbishment won the SAPCA Large Sports All Play Project of the Year award in 2024. We also came second in the Good Parks for London report in 2022, which was the last time that was published. So overall in London we're judged to be the second best park service on that criteria. The photo in front of you is of Charles Square, which was completely refurbished over the last year and this opened earlier this year along with the new table tennis table. If we look at the next slide. We've also, as I mentioned earlier, been investing quite heavily in our play areas. So we've recently reopened brand new play areas in Butterfield Green, Clapton Square, Haggerston Park and Stoke Newton Common. We spent around £1 million on those refurbishments and we've got a few more starting in the next few weeks, which I'll come on to in a bit. Next slide, it's all about toilets, as Mayor Woodley mentioned. These are actually incredibly important to our park users. They mean that people can stay in our parks and green spaces for much longer. So in recent years we've refurbished the toilets in Clissel Park, Hackney Downs, London Fields, Millfields and Springfield Park. We've also introduced new toilets as part of the Britannia development, which are open to park users in Shoreditch Park. And the toilet block in Haggerston has been completely refurbished. This photo here shows the completely accessible Changing Places toilet for people with more severe disabilities. And a brand new public toilet was opened in Abney Park as part of the new cafe just a few months ago as well. Next slide. One of the other commitments we've got is to more kiosks serving food and drink in our parks. So in recent years we've opened the Pump House in Clissel Park. And here we've got Haggerston Kiosk, which opened a few years ago. They're both doing incredibly well. We've also opened the cafe again in Britannia Leisure Centre which serves park users at Shoreditch. And the new cafe in Abney Park as well. And in the past few months we've started introducing some more temporary catering options in Clissel Park and Hackney Downs. Those are mobile units just to get a sense of how well they will work, potentially hoping to get more permanent units in Hackney Downs in the future. This is an image here of the Abney Park cafe if we move on. Other improvements that we saw as part of the Shoreditch Park project which I mentioned are the new Sports Hub, which you can see here. Again, as I mentioned, this was designed with local people. We also introduced an outdoor gym for the first time, an improved beach volleyball court, and a range of fixed calisthenic equipment and cardio machines. There's also new social seating that I mentioned earlier and a drinking fountain as well. Abney Park, one of our projects we're really proud of and opened earlier this year. We received 4.7 million pounds from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to improve Abney Park. So, as I mentioned, there's a new cafe, a new community room. There's regular yoga sessions and community craft activity sessions in that room now. We've also introduced two new workshops which are occupied by local businesses. The chapel has been refurbished and a number of people have got married in there. But a big thrust of the project was to increase accessibility. So, at the other entrance on St. Newton Church Street we've introduced a ramp to make it easier for people with buggies and wheelchairs to access the space. We have noticed an increase in users going into Abney as a result of all the improvements that we've made. And moving on to the last slide in this theme. This is their child's garden, another radical transformation down in Shoreditch. What we wanted to do with this space was really open it up. We had experience from a lot of people saying they didn't realize they could access this space. It was a very narrow entrance. Not a lot of people tended to go in there. So, we completely refurbished the space, put a lot of new planting in there, a lot of biodiverse planting. And there's a new kiosk just tucked away in the back of that photo as well, which we will be opening up with another caterer in the next few months. So, we move on to the final theme, which is all about environmental sustainability. Want to spend a bit of time looking at carbon reduction, which is one of our commitments. Work towards being a carbon zero service. So, we commissioned a company called Bureau Happold to assess the current carbon footprint of our service, which you can see in the next slide. So, they did a thorough analysis of where all of our carbon was coming from. And as you can see there, the huge majority is coming from energy within our buildings. Lots of the boilers in our depots. And you can see a range of other uses, including vehicles and park lighting. So, we work with Bureau Happold, as you can see in the next slide, to come up with a bit of a plan to identify how we're going to reduce those emissions over the next ten years. If you look at the next slide. They came up with two options for us. One of which is a lot more radical. If we had unlimited resources. But they estimated that we could potentially get our carbon footprint down to 258 tons of carbon a year. Which would be an incredibly radical 125 tons of carbon. Going to the next slide. They've come up with a series of actions that we could potentially take to achieve this. So, one of the things we're looking at at the moment is our park depots. There's a program of refurbishment that's underway at the moment. And we're introducing all sorts of new technology in the refurbished depots to reduce our carbon output. Next slide. And this shows if we carry on on this trajectory, what we need to do to hit those ambitious targets by 2031. And the dotted line that you can see there aligns with the 1.5 degree pathway, which is what we need to achieve as a country. If you look at the next slide. Another example of a project that we've implemented recently, again at Abney Park, was to install ground source heat pumps. Which are now heating the cafe on site. So, these are all in the ground now and up and running. We've also installed water source heat pumps at West Reservoir and are looking at similar air source heat pumps for our depot refurbishments, as I mentioned. Next slide. We also committed to replacing all of our single use bins in parks with dual use recycling bins. So, this graph just shows you the progress we've made in the past few years. And in this year, we managed to hit 100%. So, every bin in our parks is now dual use for recycling. Next slide. We've also introduced some bins which have got inbuilt litter pickers. So, this enables volunteers in our parks to access litter pickers when we're not around and help keep our parks clean and tidy. Next slide. We've got another commitment which is all about reducing the amount of green waste that's taken off site from our parks and green spaces. So, as part of this commitment, we've introduced a number of new composters into our parks. So, we've got these Rhydand composters in Clishold Park, in Abbey Park, and Springfield. And these are being used by the cafes on site. So, we're turning all of the food waste into compost which can then go back into the park. Next slide. Another commitment on sustainability is all around green infrastructure and improving the connection between our parks and green spaces as part of our Connecting Green Spaces program. This is one example that we've implemented on Ufton Road, as this is what it used to look like. And if we look at the next slide, you can see the after picture. So, we've got funding, again, from the Mayor of London to implement a sustainable urban drainage system in the park. And this just helps connect the two halves of the park. This road is now closed to traffic. There's a little bee hotel and habitats and little stepping stones for kids to play in as well. Next slide, please. Another project which we opened probably just a month ago was the creation of a new entrance into St. Thomas Long Burial Ground. So, if you know the site's just off Well Street, there was no access into this space from the road. So, we created a brand new entrance and a path going through it. Because we want to encourage people to use parks and green spaces as active travel, we want people to use these to connect their journeys and get away from the busy roads and get away from the air pollution, create more pleasant routes for people to walk and cycle through. Next slide. Another really important part of sustainability is training our Parks and Green Spaces staff. A lot of them were trained a long time ago and there's been a lot of change in recent years, particularly around this push for increased biodiversity. So, we worked with Core Landscapes to deliver a series of training to our gardeners earlier this year, all around pruning, planting design and biodiversity. And the gardeners really love this training so much that we're actually going to be rolling this out to park user groups in the next few weeks. Those are all sold out and we really want to encourage local people to kind of get the same skills that we've been giving to our parks and green space gardeners as well. Next slide. Finally, moving on to some of the projects that we've got coming up. This photo is taken in West Reservoir when the Mayor of London visited us a few months ago to see progress on this site. This is a project where we are opening the reservoir up to the public for the first time so people will be able to walk around the edge of the reservoir. We're planting trees, we're putting reed beds into the water, as well as making improvements to the West Reservoir Centre as well to the changing facilities to encourage more people to come and use the water itself for sport and physical activity. So, we are out to tender at the moment for a contractor to deliver this project. That should be complete within a year or so. As I mentioned, the Audrey Street area of Hagedon Park will be open to the public by next week. The Kiosk and Fairchilds garden is due to open in autumn of this year. We're also looking at improvements to the toilet block in Clissold Park. This is the last toilet block that we need to properly refurbish. So, we're researching options with the park user group at the moment and we're out to advert for a new cafe operator in Clissold Park at the moment as well. We're also making further improvements to Dorbony Fields as part of the Kings Park Moving Together project. So, we've opened up the main entrances to make them less cluttered but we're also going to be installing new pathways and an outdoor gym over the next year. And as I mentioned, we're opening up West Reservoir. So, that's the end of my piece. I'm going to hand over to my colleague Paul to talk about housing green space. Thank you for your presentation. So, I'd now like to invite Paul Fonneti to begin your presentation which supplements the report included in the agenda. Okay, thanks. So, what I'm going to talk about. So, obviously I'm from Housing Grounds Maintenance. I'm going to talk about the three main themes. I'm going to talk fairly briefly over the first two because there's colleagues that were unable to make it here today but I can talk on their behalf about various different things. But what I really want to speak about quite in more detail is the third one about being more environmentally sustainable. So, the first one, so working with the various different community groups. We work with the resident participation team and the communal works team and various others to try and increase resident participation within the estate. So, the top example there is on the top left is a grow your own area that is within one of our estates. We have 55 of these with an ambition of trying to increase it by five each year. Some of them are very large so that's a very successful one on trouble in the state. But we have some very successful ones on large estates like the Beauvoir but there's also very small ones. So, they serve as a sort of a community hub, an area of social cohesion where people can meet, grow vegetables, share experiences, share ideas and in terms of us and my team, we support them in terms of building them and we often sort of logistical help as well, moving soil around and things like that. But they're often disused hard standing areas, so drying areas and car parks, so they're a good use. The slide below or the picture image below is some of the community gardeners that we have. So, these are some news on Whiston Estate, they're doing some planting. Again, working with the resident participation and the community works team to try and establish these. So, with these people, we try and help them logistically trying to find places because obviously space is premium now and we try and find spaces where we can get them to help them store their equipment. So, moving over to creating more welcome spaces. Obviously, on a very reactive basis, we work with the ASB team to try and help the residents use their spaces but use them in the way that we want them and tend them to or how the majority of the residents intend to use the spaces. But then in a very more proactive way, we work with the regeneration team to help design new spaces, to help design the outdoor area and the green roofs of these new spaces. So, some very, some certain things like making sure there's the right ratio of green space and shrub bed and so on, but also some very practical things like a lot of green roofs. So, we, there are three different kinds of green roofs, two mainly, one where we can access it via man safe systems, all connected to man safe systems, our staff are trained at that. And then there's another one where you have a wall, which is just over a metre high, which means that you can walk quite freely around that space. So, move on to the next slide, please. Do we obviously prefer the next version? So, talking about us, so my team, we're the, I'm the service manager of the grounds maintenance team, so we're 40 staff, 35 operatives and then five officers, so we're responsible for the grounds maintenance of 240 plus estates. That figure changes from time to time, depending on TMOs and maintenance requirements. So, what has changed recently and what have we done to combat that or in response to that? Obviously, the climate emergency 2019 is something that we've all recognised and in 2021 we stopped using glyphosate for a period of one year on a trial basis. So, it's the right thing to do, obviously, but as a result of that what we can see is a lot more things like on the left there, a rose bed that is now full, it's been mulched, but it's now had weeds growing through it. Central images of hedges covered in vine weed. So, these are the sort of things that we're now having to look at. These are a consequence of us not using the chemical that we previously used. But on the positive side, it's an opportunity. So, on the far right-hand side is an image of some rose beds that we've planted pictorial meadow seed within so that the weed layer is now something that looks a bit more desirable and they're edged up with logs so that there's a habitat for beetles and other invertebrate. Next slide, please. Another thing that we're doing is we're doing mass bulb planting. So, bulbs obviously provide a habitat and some nectar for various bees and so on in a period of time when there's not a lot of rich nectar around so end of winter, beginning of spring, early summer. So, we get this machine in every year and it literally lifts up the soil, the turf, pours the bulbs in and then runs back over and flattens the turf with the bulbs intact. So, picture on the left is the end result of that. Obviously, there is a little bit of scarring, but that soon grows through and then the two pictures on the right are the result of the bulbs coming out. So, second to the right is Trelawny Estate opposite Tesco's on Morning Lane, so that's early spring. And then the far right-hand side is Regents Estate on Queensbridge Road, which is early summer. So, there's a period of time where we have a quite rich element. Obviously, this is the time when all the other shrubs are coming out to flower as well. So, we have over 3,200 square metres of these across the borough and we're increasing this year on year. Next slide, please. So, something else that we're doing, which is obviously not unique to us, Parks are doing it as well and various other organisations across the country, is that we're planting Pictorial Meadow and Relaxed Grass areas. So, there is an argument that we potentially will be introducing species that wouldn't naturally occur here, which is a valid point. So, we've now got to deal with Emma's Gate that we're only going to be planting or sowing seeds that wouldn't actually occur in the south of England, so things like poppies, cornflowers and so on. But the picture on the left is previously areas that we would have trimmed or potentially used glyphosate to save time. So, this is an area that we're now sowing with, or this is a general practice now, that we're sowing along edges of estates. This is on the Becker's Central one is an area where previously a rose bed, but now we had an arrangement with the residents there that we would trial removing the rose beds and putting in Pictorial Meadows and then treating them in the same way, and then the same goes for the right. And then the bottom left is that was taken by one of the residents, so that's an aerial view of Joseph Court in the north of the borough. So, it shows that there is some buy-in from the residents as well. Next slide, please. Something else that's going on, obviously, we are able to take advantage of our climatic change situation. So, on the right-hand side is a Persian silk tree. So, it's about adapting trees. It was mentioned earlier on about trees adapting to heat, but also on the left is a species that is very good for prolonged areas of heat, but also prolonged areas of wetness as well. So, that's a Wolloomine pine, once considered to be extinct. So, we have a program, along with a lot of other borrowers, of planting these out to try and, as a part of the conservation efforts, try and get more of these trees within the borough. Below is a swamp cypress. So, the relevance of that is that in the 1950s it was considered that they were going to be extinct as well. So, there was a big conservation effort to push to grow these. And there are examples of these across the borough. London Fields cricket, just on the outside London Fields cricket pitch would be a good example, but all across many parks, Hatton Downs, and many of our housing estates as well. In the centre is a - sorry, if you go back, sorry, thank you. Cheers, Craig. If you go back to the centre slide there, that is a bug hotel. So, we have - that's on Nightingale Estate, but we have a member of staff who is in for two days a week. His sole purpose for those two days is to construct these hotels on a little production line, and then, on request, we install them on various estates. Next, please, Craig. We spoke about green roofs. So, we have a lot of these, 4,000 plus metres of green roofs across the borough. Obviously, all new build development sites now have an obligation to install a green roof. There's a lot of work that can be done here in terms of the substrate, but on a very basic level, what we have on the left is a cedar roof that our staff actually laid that. And on that exact roof, so a bit like what I was talking about earlier on about easy access, on that roof, you can't maybe not quite see it there, but it has a 110 centimetre rail all around the outside, which means that people can walk around there freely. So, on that particular roof, there's an arrangement with the residents that they have a beehive, or two beehives on there now, and the residents of that estate can benefit from the yield of that honey. On the right-hand side is a brown roof, so one that, where you leave it to its own devices and see what would naturally occur up there. That is one, that is the different style roof I was talking about, so that's the one that's connected to a man-safe system. So, obviously, that's a system that's really good, but it's a lot more time consuming, but on that roof, there's not a great deal occurring up there, so we've had an agreement with the residents on Colville Estate that we are looking at trying to sow some meadow seed across the top of that, so if you can imagine that with a hue of redy blue all over, that's probably what it's going to look like next summer. Next slide, please. We hold an annual away day with our staff, so we get all the staff together, have something nice to eat, and have a theme. Last year was about how we could better integrate within building maintenance. This year's theme was about our impacts, looking into the green spacing strategy, but also looking into how we can respond to the fact that we're not using glyphosate anymore, so what we think that we need is a planting strategy for housing sites, so areas that we can look at, because we have a huge amount of shrub beds on housing sites, and they are now looking quite different to what they were a few years ago, and they're quite weedy, but like I said, it's quite, it's an opportunity, so we looked at pioneers, we looked at four different pioneers of planting, so we looked at Pierre Oudolf, Bert Griffin, both Dutch pioneers, and then Beth Chatto and St Nigel Dunnett, two English people, so we looked at them, we looked at their different planting styles, so drought tolerant styles, mass planting styles, so you bunch all the plants together rather than, so rather than the traditional four plant per square metre, you're putting in eight or nine, so that there's not a lot of room there for weeds to grow, drought tolerant planting, and then the upshot of this, and we decided that as a caveat, we would then take a visit after the summer period, we would take a visit to one of these gardens, and the idea is that we hopefully roll this out, so the next slide please, we visited, oh sorry, next one, we visited Beth Chatto's garden last week, we had two visits with the staff, and we looked at the drought tolerant style of planting, and just the right plant for the right purpose, sort of theme that she has going on, so yeah, we had a great day out, it was really good, it served its purpose, so we looked more detail into Beth Chatto's style of planting, but it also served as a day out, but also helped our staff reignite their passion for horticulture, actually, so yeah, it was great, thank you, any questions please? So, thank you, I would now like to invite Commission members to ask any questions they may have for our guests. Thank you, and thank you for that really thorough overview, with all the pictures, and just thanks from me to the team and all the volunteers, you do a great job. I was going to ask about the interconnection between the different strategies, but I think we got a lot of that from the green infrastructure bit at the beginning, and you did really touch on the climate action, there were two specific bits about climate action, and another one about resident engagement, so the climate action ones are specifically about opportunities around car parking, you know, developing car park areas in the green infrastructure and green space, which is mentioned at like 55 metres squared or something in the report, and I just wondered if there was an aim to increase that, and the other ones I'm glad for sake, because we did pass a motion at full council, and I just wondered if those, in February, I just wondered if those actions have been taken on more broadly by the team, those are my two climate ones, and I have one on residents. To whoever can answer them. Can you clarify the car park question, you mentioned 55 square metres. It was in one of the reports, it was in the briefing notes of the Parks and Green Strategy, it said 55 square metres of road space has been converted into brand new rain garden, oh the rain garden stuff, with 201 new plants, so I just was like, as a percentage of our road space, you know, Lapis has got a 25% target, and I just wondered if we had a target, obviously that was a good start, but I didn't know if we had a target of how much space we're going to aim to convert into like rain garden or greenings. I see, no it's kind of dependent on where we can actually close these roads, it's difficult for us as a park service to set something like that out, Upton Gardens is a project we worked in partnership with Street Scene colleagues, so we identified that we wanted to try and connect those two halves together, and were able to achieve that with Street Scene because it was not a kind of busy through route, so they were able to close it, we've identified another one at Clapton Common, so the road has been closed there next to the new cafe, that's going to be incorporated into the park as well. So we're constantly on the lookout for other opportunities, but we'd be largely reliant on Street Scene colleagues providing us the space to potentially create more green infrastructure. Then on glyphosate, so as Paul mentioned, they no longer use glyphosate on housing, we barely use it at all, the only instance we use glyphosate now in parks and green spaces is on invasive species, and that's targeted injection, we no longer use it, by default anywhere else in parks and green spaces. Then I can come in on the rest of the use of glyphosate, so since 2016 on street level we've actually reduced glyphosate use by about 78%, we've reduced that by reducing the amount of glyphosate use, but also about the number of weed sprays as well. I've met with, following it going to full council, I've since met with PAM UK, they're actually quite impressed with what we've done, especially on housing and in parks, and what we've done with streets as well, because we've also got quite different uses of reducing glyphosate, different methods, not all of them work, but the other thing that we've done is got three areas where there is no weed spraying at all, we've been monitoring that. This year's been a particularly wet year, so anybody that's been out and about in Hackney will see the weeds are actually quite big, so there is a weed management plan that we need to actually put in place on the back of that, going to full council, which we've spoken to PAM UK about, but along with that, and they recognise that, one, you can't eliminate it completely because of what Sam's just spoken about, but it would take years for us to actually get to a position because you still need weed control, and that could be in the areas where we haven't got weed spraying, you can see that we do actually need to control the weeds once they start turning into shrubs, because it's difficult to cleanse the street, and it also causes problems for highway maintenance, but yes, it's on our to-do list to put together that action plan with a tactic. Brilliant, that's really helpful, and I'll just do the other part, and then I'll pass back, but the other part was on, and I know Paul, we've done some work in the past on estates, and I've been really impressed with how the team has responded to residents, but I just had a question about how the team in doing the estates work, works with all residents, kind of a diverse selection of residents who live in those estates, to create a kind of vision for that space, because I know in some spaces there's been a bit of a conflict in different people's kind of visions for the space, and how different people perceive kind of wild growing, and so just wondering if you've got any experience of how you kind of engage with everyone to keep you yet? That is a difficult one, I mean traditionally we go to the TRA route, but obviously we recognise that there's other people and very specific needs, and often gardening groups are not necessarily associated with the main TRA for the estate, so there is a bit of a balance in that, so I have to say, and there's also, it's about expectations as well from certain gardening groups as well, so it's difficult to say really, I mean traditionally we're still going down the TRA route for consultation and for speaking to people, but we do recognise that there are other groups outside of that, and people that don't necessarily want to be a part of the main framework of the TRA, and we're still speaking to them, but it's very difficult to get a holistic view of what people want on estates, I mean as you well know it is tough, you know things like degrees are very controversial subjects on housing estates, whereas on other areas there's something that's spoken about quite happily, so yeah we, TRA predominantly, but obviously we are dealing with other groups, and there's other groups a bit like the Haggis and Gardeners that are having an involvement on our estates as well which is a positive thing. Thanks that's really good to understand, is it the same with the parks groups, do you manage to kind of connect in with a representative group of people through the parks groups? Yeah we've got probably around 20 different park user groups in the borough that we engage with quite regularly, we've also got Hackney Parks Forum which is the umbrella body for all of those park user groups which meets quarterly, one of the commitments within the strategy was to undertake a review of Hackney Parks Forum to make sure that it was effective and also the park user groups were representing their local communities, so we've been working with Hackney Parks Forum to make a number of improvements to that body, one of the main things that they were asking for was training, and as I mentioned earlier in the next few weeks we're going to be running a series of training sessions for our user groups, we're starting out with sessions focused on biodiversity, we're going to be moving on to health and safety and first aid, because those are the things that local people are particularly asked for, but yeah we regularly involve our park user groups any time we're looking to change or improve our parks and green spaces alongside the wider consultation. Thank you, so I've got a follow up here and then I'll come to Councillor Adejari's question. Just to follow up, I've just had the opportunity recently to meet some of the park user groups and also some of the estate community gardening groups, and which really supports what you say that we've got a fantastic collection, very very broad and huge number of volunteers. Just wondered, it's brilliant to hear that Core Landscape's going to be offering training, it seemed, and I can't say I've done a representative survey at all, but it seemed that some of the community gardening groups would really benefit from a variety of different types of training, and I wondered whether there had been any moves towards sort of setting down in writing what the offer is to those groups to be clear about this is what we can offer you, this is what we might be able to offer you, and this is what's really outside our resources, and whether some of that training, some people want training on gardening, and some people want training on organisational development and maybe how to manage a really tricky set of veg boxes for example, or how to manage how people use them, or how to get water, so I just wondered what sort of work's been done on that with those community gardening groups, maybe not the parks groups, probably more the estate-based organisations. I mean I can't speak fully on their behalf, I know the resident participation team have this high up on their agenda because we have been working with the resident participation team on various gardening groups, and exactly what you say, there is a different level of expectation, a different level of support that could be offered not only by my team, but more so from the resident participation team, so that is something that they're looking into, I know that, because it's something that we've experienced. As the resident participation team has grown, and the interest has grown, and they've reached out to more groups, it's been very apparent that there needs to be some sort of order in what can be offered, and exactly what you're saying, I mean sorry I can't really answer it fully because obviously I'm not able to, but I know that it is something that the resident participation team are looking into quite, at the forefront really because it's something that's come to the attention, the more these groups are growing, the more demand that there is. Thank you. So just to add to that, I wondered if it was possible to reach out to some of the other organisations in the borough, so lots of organisations that we're already partnering with, to see what their particular offer could be, so as to establish really a kind of set offer, I guess. Thank you. Councillor Andrew Jarry. Thank you very much, mine are kind of two questions, but they're centred around the same kind of theme, I mean firstly for me, we've spoken today about social cohesion, how green spaces help create communities, and also planning levers and involvement in regeneration processes, it's a shame Councillor McKenzie isn't here, but I'm hoping somebody can help with these questions. Firstly, this relates to the team, the department's involvement in regeneration processes in terms of green spaces, and I think particularly in ensuring an egalitarian approach to these spaces so that they are in fact, although they hack the own, there is wider access to it, and we were seeing excellent examples on Woodbury Down, I would say I grew up in the original Woodbury Down and there was masses of green space where loads of people came in, loads of children came in and accessed it, and that's been replicated now in the newer developments, however there's been other newer developments where it's not been replicated, which I find incredibly problematic, particularly for children, I claim an interest in this, my daughter is one of these children, but children who live opposite the state that's just been redeveloped, where the green spaces are kind of sealed off and exclusive to what turns out to be certain types of children. So for me that's incredibly problematic, is there anything within the levers that we've been talking about today in regeneration that's been looked at in terms of that? Should I go to my second one, or you'd like to come in now? Okay. The second one is just with regard to responsibility for housing in green spaces hasn't been moved over from housing as yet, I was just trying to see whether you're able to kind of advise as to why that is, that's my last question, thank you. Sorry, what was the second part, the last part you said? It's just responsibility for housing in green spaces hasn't been transferred from housing services as yet, is that now off completely, are you able to share the reasons for that at all? I think it is off but I'm not able to build on that. I'll come in on that, there was a review done and it was determined because of the particular circumstances around housing green space that it was best leaving housing grounds maintenance with the housing service where they had direct control of that and integration within the wider projects within housing, for example, like regeneration schemes, so it's being parked now, it's not something that will be moving forward in the short term. Mayor Woodley? There was a question earlier also around planning and I think there was, as you know, the Child Friendly Places of Friendship Planning document which I think now has been consolidated through the biodiversity net gain legislation where it's really important that there is a connection with nature, doorstep play along the way and at the destination as well. So there is a commitment within planning to have that and the Connecting Green Spaces strategy that we were talking about as part of the Green Infrastructure Strategy is all about opening up those spaces, so certainly on some of these states in my former ward you will have people coming in and using the kind of amenities, the parks and players as well as the green space to come and relax in and I think that's something we want to build upon. If Councillor McKenzie was here, he would simply say he wants resident buy-in on that, whether there's a TRA, whether there's a gardening group, whether there's any sort of representative group that the council goes to with any proposals that he'd want to make sure that they had a sort of an opportunity to say to what extent they'd be willing to plant up a space or change the nature of the space and the resident liaison group is one of the areas where that can be debated and discussed. So I think he's still upholding that principle but there is a wider strategy that is deliberately opening up green space so that children across the borough and older people and everyone can benefit, I mean that is our main objective. Thank you Mayor Woodley, I've got two questions which are somewhat interlinked, so first one is what are some of the key risks to successfully delivering the priorities and actions identified in the strategy? Chair, I'm not sure if you felt that you're, did you still have part of your question to be answered? Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, through the chair please. Are you satisfied with the response? No, I do think it needs more of a foundational response but I know you can't do that because it is Councillor McKenzie's area of responsibility because the whole kind of concept of it being down to TRAs and residence liaison groups decide as to how and who can utilise a space on their estate for me is a bit kalingen given I grew up in an area where that wasn't something that happened or occurred. So yeah, can we refer it back to Councillor McKenzie? Yes, we can do that but Councillor Garbo will come to your follow-up question but I do want to get these questions in please. So I'll ask my question again, what are some of the key risks to successfully delivering the priorities and actions identified in the strategy and have any mitigating measures being considered or put in place, e.g. economic and policy developments, that's the first one and the second one is what level of funding and resources exist to support the implementation of the strategy across both parks and green spaces and housing services? I would say that you've touched on one of the risks in the second part of the question there, which is financial, but when we wrote the strategy we did it in a way that we were fairly confident we could deliver. We didn't want to commit to lots of multi-million pound park improvement projects that we didn't know that we could deliver at the time. Obviously we still need resources to deliver some of the elements within the strategy and lots of the projects that I showed you earlier have been delivered using external funding. So our service is relatively good at drawing in funding from the lottery from the Mayor of London and that has realised lots of the park improvement projects that you saw. I think the other risk with lots of these projects is community buy-in, park projects by their very nature can be controversial and parks are places for the entire community to use and what that means is you quite often get people with different views on how those green spaces should be managed and what sort of functions you should prioritise and the way we mitigate that is working with the community. So we never go in and just do what we want to do. We will work with the community to identify what they want to see in a park, what they want to prioritise and how they want to see that park used and where we do that we manage to reduce those risks and bring the community on side when we make those improvements. Thank you. So does that respond to both of those questions in one or does somebody else want to come back on any of those? It does largely. I haven't commented on housing. I don't know if you want that touched on as well. Yeah, at the lower level our housing funding is funded through our existing budget but also within the reef so that the resident empowerment or improvement fund and there's an understanding, there's an amount within there that will be added towards or contributed towards the initiatives that we're doing. In terms of the high level stuff obviously resident participation of their own funding and there are much bigger questions to be answered about engagement and who uses what and who's able to use green spaces on housing estates but in terms of the funding for the ground work, the actual labour work that we're doing and the initiatives that we're carrying out that I mentioned in my presentation, they're contained within existing budgets. Thank you. Do I have any brief follow-ups? I just wonder whether we should ask Councillor Adjara's question to the cabinet member for planning because this is quite a live issue in some of our regeneration estates and they're not all council estates. Okay and then a final one from me and please correct me if I'm mistaken but I believe in Hackney there's sort of high demand for allotments and I think it's like oversubscribed and there's like waiting lists but how are we exploring further opportunities to release capacity or create more allotment spaces to fill this sort of waiting list and get the community more active in sort of urban planting and farming and things like that? Yeah there is a commitment in the strategy to introduce three new food growing projects on estates every year so that has been met and I think exceeded every year since the strategy was introduced so there's a dedicated team within housing working with communities to create these new community food growing spaces. We're not looking at creating new food growing spaces within parks because we've got limited green space in our parks and green spaces and they need to be publicly accessible for all so the focus up until this point has been very much on housing stakes. Thank you. We are pressed, is it brief? It's brief, so we saw earlier today an article in Hackney citizen about rising anti-social behaviour in Hackney Downs, I don't know if you've seen it, but that just raised a wider question about anti-social behaviour in parks in general and whether there are strategies in terms of our park management, our planting, the way that we run our parks that help to deal with that anti-social behaviour. So we had a bit on toilets for example, are there other strategies that we're using? There is a commitment in the strategy to look at data from the police as to where these incidents are happening. The key message to anyone that experiences anti-social behaviour is please report it because our enforcement colleagues do collate all of that data so they can identify where hot spots are and where we are experiencing surges in ASB, our enforcement colleagues do visit those sites, they do increase their patrols, they work closely with the police and take action where it's needed. So we had a particular issue with drug dealing in Hagerston Park a few months ago, the enforcement colleagues worked with the police to do targeted raids in Hagerston Park, they made a number of arrests and we've seen incidents of ASB in that park reduce. So yes, it's an ongoing battle but we work with our colleagues to tackle it. Thank you. So we're really pressed, we really are pressed for time, we have to push ahead. I just want to make sure that we also put a compassionate view in the room that obviously some people who are considered anti-social are often homeless or drug users so it would be good to just know, I know the enforcement team do a lot to refer those people into help but just making sure we capture that. No need to respond now, if we can get a written response on that, that would be appreciated. I'd like to thank all commission members for their questions and our guests for your responses. It is unfortunate we didn't have a relevant cabinet member here to respond to the questions we asked but we would appreciate written responses there. Like mentioned before, it's good to see our ambition and what we're really trying to do in Hackney but I think what needs to be incorporated into that is that the sort of access to these things are open to all and that we don't really have this disparity of rich versus poor and stuff like that in regards to access to these green spaces but after this meeting, commission members will reflect on the evidence and we may make suggestions or recommendations for improvement for your considerations. Thank you. The next item is agenda item six. You're all free to go. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Sam. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. So I can go on to the next item and then we can go to the next item. So I can go on. Thank you. So agenda item six, scrutiny report, letter and responses. So this new agenda item has been included as a rolling item which gives us a space to note and discuss our report and letters and any responses to our work. We have now received a response to our suggestions for improvement around the arts and cultural sector in Hackney from the cabinet member for health, adult social care, voluntary sector and culture. This is included within the agenda papers. We will look to receive a further update on progress across the key areas highlighted in our suggestions at the appropriate juncture. Most likely in the next municipal year. It's worth noting also that we will be looking at Hackney's carnival in February 2025 which will give us an opportunity to look at future plans and ask questions of the cabinet member key officers and stakeholders. I'd like to invite commission members to raise any questions or comments around the response if you have any at this stage. Okay. Thank you. So yeah, I ask members to note the executive response and next steps. Agenda item seven, work program 2024 to 2025. This item is for the commission members to agree the final work program for the 2024 slash 2025 municipal year. This has now been discussed with relevant cabinet members and key officers and all dates have been provisionally agreed. The planned items on the community safety partnership plan in December have now been sculpt out in more detail. We will be looking at two strategic priorities included in the plan, trust and confidence and local policing, serious violence and gang crime. You may also notice that inclusion of an additional item in February 2025 around advice services for housing and homelessness where we plan to look at the effectiveness grant funded slash non-grant advice services in the borough. Do commission members have any comments on the work program as it stands? Question and comment. Thank you for that. It's really great work program. Just in November we've got the domestic waste and recycle collections and I'm just confirming that it will include the garden waste collections which I'm sure all councilors have received comments about. I've been asked specifically if it will include an investigation which presumably I think us giving it scrutiny will be an investigation. Presumably they will bring how it's been going, how many people signed up, et cetera, et cetera. And the other impacts that might have caused, like I've heard of some dumping and people using black bags for green waste. So just checking and if the resident can contact you as the chair to just share some feedback to be incorporated. So my understanding is that's a yes. Okay. Councillor Young. Through the February meeting, just to slightly amend the kind of description of it, I think the aim is not to investigate the effectiveness of advice services in the borough, which will be a much, much bigger piece of work, but just to look at the interaction between the advice services in the borough and our housing needs service. So it's a very narrow area to gather evidence from advice services about their interactions with housing needs and in fact vice versa. Okay. So do we need to reword that or it's clarified? Okay. All right. Thank you. So please can I now invite commission members to agree to the work programme 2024/25. Agreed. Thank you. So next item, agenda item 8, minutes of the meeting. The draft minutes of the previous meeting held on the 8th of July 2024 are included within the agenda pack for members to note and agree. Do members agree to the minutes? Agreed. Okay. Agenda item 9. Any other business? Please can I now remind commission members that a joint meeting with children and young people scrutiny is being held on Wednesday to discuss two topics of joint interest. Safer school partnership, response to joint scrutiny recommendations around housing support for care leavers. Myself and the vice chair will be attending and we would also encourage as many of you to attend as possible for these two important discussions. Are there any other business? Okay. So as there's no other business, I formally declare the meeting closed. [BLANK_AUDIO]