Good evening and welcome to tonight's overview and the committee meeting. My name is Councillor Ms. Thagharath and I will be chairing this meeting. First item this evening was going to be a spotlight on the mayor, unfortunately due to a bereavement, family bereavement, the mayor has given his apologies. We will aim to rearrange the spotlight subject to the variability or take this at our next scheduled ONS in May 2024. The mayor was to be supported by the chief executive for this item. As this item will now not be considered the chief executive senses apologies. Agenda therefore will focus on the progress of the LGA corporate PR challenge action plan. Understand plans for insourcing our leisure provision, hold a spotlight on parking and review of findings and recommendations from our markets challenge session. Before we proceed can I remind all that this meeting is being filmed for the council's website for public viewing those participating in the meeting will be included in the footage. Thomas do you have any apologies? Good evening chair. We have two apologies this evening. We have Councillor I'm a Councillor Conne. >> Thank you Thomas. Members declarations of interest. Thank you. Moving on to the minutes our meetings on 25th of March have been circulated. Can you confirm as the minutes are through an accurate reflection of our last meeting? Thank you. Before we move on to our substantive items we need to agree appointments of co-opted members of our subcommittees. Can I ask Thomas to please provide further details of this matter? Yes chair. As the report kind of mentions we have been pointing in the co-optie as you see from our committee we have two very good co-opties so we are hoping to finish that for the subcommittees as well. As over the scrutiny committee is the main committee and the scrutiny sub-report to you it's for you to note and agree. Thank you. Thank you Thomas. Our members happy to agree on the appointment of the position of parent-governor representative on the children and education scrutiny sub committee until April 2026. Approved. Our members happy to agree the appointment of Jessica to the position of health watch representative on the health and adults as scrutiny subcommittees until April 2026. Great. Thank you. That's my one. Our next item which is substantive item is LGA corporate peer review action plan which will focus on the progress of our LGA corporate peer review action plan. We have Robin Beatty acting director strategy and improvement in attendance to update us. The plan was published in December and the chief executive committed to ensure the plan came back to this committee to discuss how it is being delivered. I would like to thank Robin for attending and open up for your presentation. You have 10 minutes and then we will open up for questions. >> Thank you chair. I will be brief. As you have already pointed out the organization was subject to an LGA corporate peer challenge review in September 2023. They reported in December and published their plan in December. They published a report in December and that report made 18 core recommendations. It's these 18 core recommendations plus around about 70 other suggestions for improvement or recommendations of areas where we might wish to review what we are doing. That form the actions that have gone into the action plan which the council published on the same day that the LGA published their report. We did have potentially up to another three months in order to publish the report but the chief executive felt that it was very important for this organization to demonstrate quickly how important we took the recommendations and the suggestions of the LGA and how seriously we took them and how important it was for us to move on them as swiftly as possible. For this reason we published the action plan early. Now it's important to stress that the action plan itself is a live document. That means that it can be added to at any given point in time and as the document moves forward there will be elements of that plan that will change. All political groups and single representatives of the political parties have been briefed by the chief executive and all parties continue to be free to suggest additional content to the plan. The considerable amount of progress has been made in terms of the delivery of the actions in the plan to date. 39% of the total number of actions identified in the plan have now been completed and we are on track to have delivered 85% of the actions in the plan by August 2024. It's August that the LGA plan to return to visit the borough and to check on progress in terms of the actions and activities that we put in place to address their views and their concerns as set out in their report. It should be noted that whilst the council is moving forward this considerable body of work at pace the object of the exercise really is to ensure that the organisation improves and to that end there may be occasions where in order to get a better result the target dates that we've got in the plan are moved back and the report gives an example of a situation where we have done that. That reflects, as I said earlier, the plan is in fact a live plan and the objective is ultimately to improve the nature of the organisation going forward. It's not a tick box exercise, it's not a race to get the action plan dealt with. What it is is a body of work that we need to get right and this sets out in an accountable way how we're seeking to actually achieve that. The table that's attached to the report outlines all of the individual actions that we're committed to to date as I say to date because there may be additional actions that we bring forward and put in the plan as we go forward that address elements of the 18 core recommendations. The green marked actions are the actions that we have completed and in the end column under progress update you have a brief update of the position that we're at in relation to implementing the actions that are listed under the column called actions. Thank you, Robin. Let me take this opportunity to welcome Councillor COVID Rahman, the member for housing and also Councillor Wahid for job skills and growth. I understand Councillor COVID Rahman is here to deputise for this item as well as other items. That's correct. Thank you, Councillor Madam. Now I'm happy to open the floor up for questions. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thanks, Mr. Beattie for coming along and presenting this. So I was hoping the Mayor was going to be here but understandably he's not able to be here this evening. I was really hoping that in his absence the Chief Executive would be here and I'm not clear why the Chief Executive isn't here because my understanding is that this document would be owned by the Chief Executive. So I'm sorry if these questions feel quite tough to Mr. Beattie as the Divisional Director but this isn't really a very satisfactory way of engaging, of this Committee engaging with this. So my first, I've got a few questions and if it's okay I'd like to give me the chance to take them one at a time. So my first question is if we can have an explanation about what engagement there was between the OGA peer review finished completing its inspection in September and presenting that at the end of that week. What engagement was there with opposition Councillors or with scrutiny committee about the creation of this action plan before it was published in mid-December please. Over to you. Robin or Councillor Ahmed can take it if you so wish. May we respond? Yeah, please. Thank you. So in terms of this document, the Chief Executive took the decision that it was important to demonstrate how serious we took the recommendations of the LGA by publishing an initial action plan early. It was published three months earlier than required and on the day the LGA published their report in late December. It represented a comprehensive starting point with actions addressing every aspect of the LGA report not just the 18 core recommendation. The Chief Executive made himself available to brief the Labor Group at the end of January to explain the approach taken and answer detailed questions on the LGA report. It has been made clear at those briefings and during updates that the action plan is a live report and any suggestions for additional actions that support the recommendations can be brought forward by any Councillor for consideration. So essentially this isn't a dual and end all report and if Councillors fill or the committee feels that they need to have further input in this document, Councillors and the committee are welcome to put proposals forward. Thank you. So to interrupt you, Councillor Francis, do you mind if I take questions from somebody else? I'll come back to you. I said I have several questions. Yeah, you'll be given the chance to ask your question. I don't see how much as if I come back to you after speaking to another member, taking question from another member. Yeah, with respect, if you didn't want me to do this, you should have said when I said I'm going to do it this way, please allow me to put the questions that I think need to be asked. If you want us to ask all of our questions in one go, then you need to tell us that because this isn't a very effective way of us doing our business the way that you're suggesting right now. I'll take a question from you after having a question from another member. I don't see how it affects your questioning style or scales. Are the related questions? Follow-up questions? Okay. Who is next from here? I'll come after. Thank you, Chair. So, my question is on the recommendation to develop a comprehensive long-term strategic vision, what mechanisms are in place to ensure meaningful engagement with the community in the development process? Thank you. Yes, Robin, I'll come to that. The long-term strategic vision process has started effectively. The mayor has engaged with offices from strategy and improvement and transformation in terms of developing that. In doing so, it's drawing down on a lot of relevant consultation material that has been gained through the partnership review process. That will be a starting point. As it develops, there will be part of the process which reviews the extent to which elements of that vision have or have not already been consulted upon within a reasonable period of time. Under those circumstances, we will launch additional engagement activity to get wider input into that vision. In the draft stage, there will be a broader consultation supporting the dissemination of that draft to get people's input into that. Thank you. Next question from this side. Yes, Councillor. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you to Robin and the Councillor. LGIP review, what specific action has the Council taken to enhance its performance framework and better capture the impact of decision-making and recommendation that was made by the peer review, LGIP review, recommendation number three, if you could give us some insight. Thank you. There's a series of conversations that are on going at the moment, looking at the way in which we capture our performance information, also the way in which we present it. The strategic plan is in the process of review and as part of that review process, we revisit the KPIs to make sure that they're properly aligned and effectively provide the sort of information that you as Councillors and members of over in scrutiny would need in order to judge progress in relation to the strategic plan objectives and priorities. There is a broader piece of work that's also going on around looking at the way in which performance is reviewed and judged within the organisation. We're looking at ways in which we can bring forward more context and information for Councillors to consider performance in the round rather than just focusing on whether or not an individual key performance indicator has or hasn't been met. We think that would provide a much richer conversation and a much deeper understanding of the performance issues faced by the boroughs than we've currently got and that is a direction in which we're seeking to move and it's a sort of direction that the LJ were suggesting that we should move in terms of the report that they've written. Thank you. Sorry, one other thing, but we're also looking at how we can reinforce members of the overview and scrutiny committee and other committees in terms of providing further training and support so you can analyse and scrutinise papers and documents better in order to challenge the administration and the Council policies. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Mananiac, I'll go back to Councillor Francis and also I'd like to give every single member an opportunity to ask questions. So if you have questions then please feel free. Okay. Councillor Manani. Thank you, Chair. Good evening, everybody. Regarding the review of the Council internal governance arrangement, what a specific measure has been taken to ensure clarity of reporting and accountability. Can you clarify a bit more on this from the peer review? Well, there's a range of activities again that align with issues around internal governance. We've already touched on the additional training and support that we're looking at giving to over-inscrutiny members and members more widely. And there are a range of initiatives that sit behind that, some of which forms partly the action plan that we specified here. The points that I were making earlier about revisiting the way in which we review and report performance also links into the issue of around governance. In more broader terms, I think governance is an issue that relates to a whole range of different aspects of the 18 core recommendations. We're seeking to bring forward, as part of our response in relation to those 18 core recommendations, specific areas that deal with the whole issue of governance and accountability. Hopefully you can see that in terms of the actions that we've listed in the table. Again, we've made significant progress in relation to specific aspects of governance that were being prioritised by the OGA around the absence of annual governance statements and around issues specific to signing off of the accounts and a historic backlog of unsigned accounts. And again, it was made clear to us that that was something that we ought to prioritise as a key issue that is specific to organisational governance. So it's an all-embracing area and it's an area that the action plan covers off, I think quite comprehensively, in a range of ways. And we have prioritised some of the most important elements of governance in terms of the actions covered off by the plan. So you will see that there will be quite a number of the Greens that are specific to ensuring that we're improving the governance of this organisation, that we've already covered off and that we've already completed. So I'll just pick up on some of the areas where investment is being made around legal, around procurement, around HR, audit functions. So those who are involved with the audit committee will see as a multi-layered approach around how finance is allocated departmentally as well as centrally as well with the core. And also most importantly reinforcing the organisational memory of the Council. So things don't get left behind when members of staff leave or move around. So we're creating these centralised systems so the organisation can function and there are no gaps. Thank you very much. Next question from Councillor PRANCES. One question please at the time. I did try that last time. So in response to my last question when I asked about the engagement with opposition Councillors or overview and scrutiny prior to publication of this document, I think in summary the answer was that there wasn't any despite us having made that offer. But there was a meeting as the lead member has said in January and so with some labour Councillors. So just wondered if officers or the lead member maybe he knows can say how this action plan has been amended since that conversation, since those discussions in January to reflect the concerns that are the chief executive and he heard during that discussion. Thank you Councillor PRANCES. Over to you Councillor MARX. Robin. Well Councillor I mean we've I think we agreed at the meeting that there were a number of suggestions that were useful and that we would want to take forward. And we have approached the member of the labour group with an acknowledgement that that was something that we wanted to do and arrange an initial meeting particularly one of the suggestions that we brought forward as part of that discussion I think was a group meeting of female Councillors across party with the chief executive to raise any concerns from agendas specific angle and also bring forward the lived experience of female Councillors for the chief executive and we're waiting for a response in relation to that invitation and for a date to be set. The offer I think at that meeting I was there, that meeting was made that if you wanted to bring forward specific any specific suggestions for inclusion the action plan that that would be welcome and that would they would be considered and that's still the position. Okay so just to be clear there haven't been any changes to the actual action plan itself since the conversation at the end of January. Well to be fair nothing's come forward specifically from yourselves in Malaysia. There was quite a lot came forward in the course of the conversation but none of that was taken up and led to any changes not so far anyway. Is that right? I wouldn't say that that was an accurate reflection of where we are now I mean I think the invitation has been made from the chief executive to members of an individual member of your group and we're waiting for a response I think when that engagement actually takes place we can start to move with a broader agenda and certainly nothing as I'm aware of has come forward from your group in writing that proposes additional content to the plan. If it had we would certainly happily engage with it and that remains a commitment I give to you now. Thank you. Can I take an expression from Councillor Sabina please. Okay thank you Chair. So like Councillor MARX I would have liked to see the chief executive here today because of the whole seriousness of this peer review and the challenges that we both brought up in the review and we know we had some valuable insights into the functioning of this Council and that is crucial that we address the areas that require attention. Just how seriously I know we've seen the progress or we've got some you know data but we've done this much of completion or not. The fact that we've had one meeting with the opposition the fact that clearly in the peer review it says that really to hear all the voices in the Council one meeting with the Labour group I know you said that no one's come forward but I haven't heard an invitation to a Pacific member of our group so I'm not sure and it would be really good to have you know not just a tick box exercise getting female Councillors actually get invoices across as well. I know you've had that meeting one off that we've had which we've requested to get exact but since September to nearly just over mid-April it seems quite far off as well. It just shows the importance that we're giving to something like a review such an important review and you know we've got inspectors in now looking for best value and spaces that have been going on it just kind of shows that how important that we are taking this review and how do we not just wait around to hear voices come how do we actually take that approach and for example we've got one female Somalian we need to come to the question please. And how seriously are we taking this approach to actually complete the progress or complete this review challenge that we've got I know we've seen the breakdown but it just seems that we're not doing enough that's why I would have liked to see Chief Executive here today. Thank you, Chair. In terms of the administration we're taking it very seriously hence the report with the update on it and a time plan. Clearly noted we will hear 85% of the target by August leaving 15% we are working towards that as well so we're being transparent about it we're being open about it and we're categorically submitting both to the committee and this is reviewed on a regular basis at MAB and at Kabiner. This is brought forward so it's publicly done. There is nothing to hide away. In terms of specifics Councillor you mentioned areas if you're a bit more specific about which areas you're talking about we'll try to give you a more articulated answer. In terms of individual discussions with the labour group I appreciate I wasn't there but as an administration if there are recommendations that come forward you know we will most certainly have a look at it and consider that as an administration. Lastly you mentioned best inspection value inspectors regarding best value of course we've been totally transparent and open with the investigators they're in this room now and they have a job to do and they'll do their job. If there are any further specifics you want to raise in relation to this report we're more than happy to address those issues if later on you want to provide written statements but I think Robin's clearly stated that no formal suggestions have been given by a political party an opposition political party and I think the overview of this scrutiny committee is to scrutinise the policies there or specific issues around the LGA peer review and we're happy to address that. Okay I would just like to say that the discussion that we did some of the discussion that we did put forward was about you know women's safety in the borough and it would have been good for example opposition and the current admissions to have discussions or take voices for the you know different parties. In relation to women's safety we've got a number of programs that we've initiated the lead member for community safety is working on a new vote strategy violence against girls and women. Yeah violence against girls and women. We've also initiated a women's commission as well. We're publicly as a council following NGA recommendations in order to recruit more councillors. On a personal level in terms of aspire as the administration we would like to see more women in our cabinet and at the moment I believe the mayor has put his hands forward twice to the party or parties with women within that and they have declined to join the mayor's cabinet. Now that's individualised choices we can't pressure anybody to do anything they don't want to do but we have reached out from the first cabinet and this is all evidence within full council meetings at the annual AGM. All right next, who wants to ask next question? Councillor Cahn. Thank you chair. Thank you very much. Good evening. My question is how does the council plan to ensure that its workforce strategy align with the long-term strategies patients particularly in terms of equipment and detentions of workforce development. Thank you. Well there are specific actions in the action plan which are being pursued specific to that in terms of the workforce to reflect the community development. Unfortunately I'm not an HR expert and I don't know the details of those particular work streams but I could certainly undertake to get a written response to over inscrutening in relation to the work that's been undertaken specifically in relation to that element of the action plan for you. So if I can come in with that as well. So myself along with fellow Councillor members of the opposition set on various panels regarding appointment subcommittees. What I can say is to date we've appointed at senior level a very diverse range of people which cut across socio-economic levels across gender, across ethnicity. If I give an example we've appointed someone of Somali origin to director of finance. The first in this council's history we have officers who will present later on today at director level who come from the Bangladeshi community. Again the first in this council's history we have a corporate resources director who brings with a vast amount of skills and experience and she also comes from a socio-economic background or working class background as well as other areas that may not be prudent for me to disclose in this meeting but we can say these are all predicted characteristics that we value and we've said we will enforce. So I think it's very important to understand that the council as an entity has started diversifying in a great way and in terms of the workforce that reflects the community this policy's been with this council for over or nearly around 20 years yet those drastic changes. I have known individuals when I previously worked in the council from 2006 to 2010. Colleagues who were given excuses are you looked a bit nervous you looked this we weren't sure about your interview because of X, Y and Z. These individuals have gone on to be directors in other local authorities and we saw that churn happen on a regular basis. So one of the things we're looking to implement is how we can harness those employees who are in the council who show potential who have the capabilities by creating secondment opportunities and opportunities to step up and again you will speak to one of those individuals who's currently stepping up later on in this meeting. There are others all across the board within the council that we are proactively looking to get them to step up and cover roles and give them those opportunities creating atmosphere where they feel that they can achieve and accomplish by having mentors and so on and so forth. So we are taking a proactive approach in that. Thank you Councillor. I'll tell you everyone. Do you want to ask? Please. Thank you. So my next question is what changes have been made to the Mayor's Office since the action plan and has this led to better working with other parts of the council? Well the Mayor's Office is subject to a review process at the moment and a structural review is in the process of being brought forward which will reduce the cost and the size of the Mayor's Office. There is a commitment to reducing the Mayor's Office still further and mainstreaming functions that existed within the Mayor's Office into the broader organisation. So going forward the nature of the relationship between the Mayor's Office and the organisation I would say is being mainstreamed rather than a situation where you had a large body of people sitting within the Mayor's Office with elements, not throughout the Mayor's Office but certainly in parts of the Mayor's Office that were duplicating some functionality in the broader organisation and I think it's accepted across the piece that was leading to some confusion and to some delays. We have also introduced some new processes. So for example within CMT now there is a regular check with corporate directors to see if there are any decisions that are being held up in the Mayor's Office so that are not moving forward as quickly as they would like and that is addressed any issue that's raised a corporate management team in that respect is addressed directly by the head of the Mayor's Office. So that is speeding up decision making processes and reducing the instances where sometimes you get a bottleneck within the Mayor's Office. So the issues that were identified within the LGA CPC Action Plan around the functionality of the Mayor's Office are being directly addressed and also the issues that they've identified around potential blocks to decision making those are also being addressed and speed it up and that process as we go through the phases where the structure of the Mayor's Office is revised down. Those blockages I think are going to be less and fewer and fewer. So if I can also come in the second part of that question was about working with officers and how that was materialising. I think in terms of design and structure the meeting and appointment systems we've reshaped that and we've redesigned it so that officers as well as the Mayor and Cabinet members have a shared view of things. Things can be discussed openly and directly with streamlined services and the most important thing is created a greater synergy between political ambition, council's delivery within legal frameworks. So it's very important to understand those areas which have synced up together. So we not only have just portfolio meetings but we have away days and things like that where multi-departmental representatives will be present in order to streamline and identify where problems may occur or not occur and solutions that we can put forward in relation to those areas. So as a council overall we're getting departments to talk more to each other. We're moving away from silo working. A prime example of this is if you look at adult health and well-being so hack the hack department if you look at housing part of its mental health but then they've also got budgets around home care and supporting homelessness and so on and so forth. So one of the ways we've looked at how we can maximise that in streamlining services is putting the finance around hostels and things like that under housing so it's one person who's in charge of it so we don't make a sort of double funding in certain areas which loses money in other areas. So like that we're getting all departments to talk to one another and the other is in terms of the structure, finance is playing a key role where we've got individual finance representatives allocated within departments so that we can monitor more robustly overspends and underspends. So these are some of the ways we're strengthening both governance and the synergy of the council working together along with the mayor's office. So it's not just mayor's office and the council but internally the council's had a long history of silo working and one department doing things that the other department doesn't know about so we're trying to break away with that. Thank you very much Council Member. I'm wanted to take one more question on this item and I'm happy to take it from Councilor Francis if you thank you very much. So first of all I'm really sorry I'm going to have to leave the meeting and join online for the next section but I really appreciate you giving me a chance to ask this question in person because this is such an important part of where this council is going wrong at the moment. So we heard that earlier that apparently Labor Councillors need to make written representations to inform what goes into this action plan or to suggest changes to it. We need to put that in writing. I'm not clear whether the mayor, Aspire Councillors have also made their representations in writing for this action plan so maybe we can hear that. But my understanding of the Local Government Act is that unlike White Hall Council officers work equally for all elected members across political parties. So we're just wondered if Mr Beatty can say whether he thinks that this action plan in any way reflects the views of opposition Councillors or whether this action plan is really just an action plan which represents what the administration, what Aspire, the mayor and Aspire Councillors, believes need to be done to deal with the governance failings that the OGA identified. The action plan effectively represents what the LGA suggested we should do. So the approach that was taken to create the initial action plan which has been published was to take the suggestions, the recommendations that were in the main text of the report as well as the 18 core recommendations and turn them, just flip them into direct commitments, into actions. So where they suggested it might be useful if you looked at or you reviewed this we turned that into a specific action. The Council will commit to reviewing that and that approach was undertaken effectively to populate that action plan. So that action plan effectively is a direct commitment from this organisation to address every single recommendation or suggestion that they made in one form or another within the plan, within their report. Now added to that I would say that and I would reiterate at no point has there been any barrier to any party coming forward and making representations for specific things to be included in the action plan, which we have said consistently we were more than happy to receive and review. Now the best way to do that if you want that to be consistently addressed and understood would be to put it in writing. Sorry did the Mayor put his representations about what he wanted to see. Did he send you the Chief Executive memo with all of the changes that he wanted to see included in this action plan? No I've explained the process that we undertook in order to populate the action plan. That action plan reflects in a mirror fashion the recommendations and suggestions within the LGA report. The Mayor was informed that that was the approach we were going to take in order to get the action plan published as swiftly as possible and the Mayor was briefed as all the parties have been briefed on the reasons why the action plan looked the way that it does and what the specific actions were and how that related to the LGA action plan. So in that respect if you're suggesting that this was a part of a political conversation where Aspire candidates brought or that all the Aspire group brought forward their proposals for inclusion that that absolutely isn't what happened. What happened was technical exercise a mechanistic exercise if you will whereby the LGA report was sifted for all of the specific recommendations and suggestions for improvement and that we turned those into direct commitments from this organisation. You say that we should do this you say that it would be a good idea if we did that we are making a specific action to ensure that we do that and we're putting that in our action plan. That was the process. It's not a closed process that process is open now it's starting point it made sure that as an organisation we covered off every single aspect of the LGA report and that from that point we could build on and that's what we're more than happy to do is to build on and we would expect there to be additional things going into that action plan over the next few months and you know as I said we welcome any suggestions that come forward from from any quarter for additional actions that could go into that action plan that address the 18 core recommendations that the LGA peer review team made. Can I just also add? Hopefully please. Thank you. I think I think there is a perception that was put forward or aspire Councillors being involved for actions forward. I think it's important to acknowledge that individual parties, caucus group of parties as well as individual Councillors can always have input into how or input with officers in relation to any issue they have. As a committee you can also have input into there but I think at the same time there has to be a distinction as this committee itself is made up of aspire Councillors as well as Labour Councillors yet the committee report will be in the name of the committee so you know we wear multiple hats depending on what we're representing so at full council we may be aspire Councillors as the aspire group but when I'm at audit committee I'm an audit committee member if I'm representing the cabinet I'm a cabinet member who's representing the administration and like that this council has chosen an executive mayoral model so the mayor is the postholder of the executive mayor of this council be it whatever political party he may represent and it's aspire prior to that it was Labour and so on so forth but we can't just simply interwind these areas together because it it's solely reflective of the specific committees and the groups that people sit on and it's not pandering to political ideology when you're sitting on those groups you're representing those groups and I think we should respect one another to say you have the ability to represent those individual areas that you are visiting we know to do a message it's received thank you Councillor Sabina I'm afraid I'm not able to accommodate your question on this item because we are already 15 minutes running over the schedule time so with this I'd like to thank you once again to Robin and Councillor Mazz for joining us tonight the corporate peer review was a significant external review of our performance as a council and it helps us to reflect on what our priorities should be moving forward it is encouraging to see many of the actions progressing however we know there is still more work to be delivered scrutiny will continue to review the delivery of the plan as part of its work program next year and support the council to ensure it is meeting the recommendation set up by the LGA our next item focuses on the insourcing of leisure provision which is due to commence next month council like bollison is on leave today as he completed the marathon yesterday I would like to welcome Keith Townsend insourcing leisure project director and Simon Jones head of leisure operations you have up to 10 minutes to present and then I will open the floor for questions please make yourself comfortable [inaudible] I'd like to invite Joar Ali okay is could you introduce yourself please this because I'm not familiar could you be everyone I'm Joar Ali the director of culture and leisure thank you thank you for all of you joining us and open for the presentation thank you thank you chair so if we start off the original decision was made in August 2022 in a report to cabinet which had to look at recommissioning of leisure services and we were presented with an options appraisal however we didn't agree with the initial recommendations that was put on their bi officers there's a number of reasons as to why and we will present a paper to you a presentation which will show the scope and the level was quite limited with the original sort of paper that was presented in cabinet we felt it could be far more articulated it could have been championed more it could have looked at more income generation and most importantly more access to our residents particularly the most vulnerable residents and this is all on record if you go back to the August 2022 cabinet meeting you will hear both the mayor myself and a number of my cabinet colleagues speak about those areas I want to pick up on a few areas in relation to this as you can see with this new presentation this this modeling will show you that within a matter of three years by year four we will be on a positive income generation level year on year in addition to that I would like you to focus within the presentation around health inequalities in tower hamlets and how the leisure services can support a better well-being for our residents in tower hamlets and how we can give a direct better offer for our residents in tower hamlets officers will go through details of how those health inequalities impact on individuals you will also see that every single center in that was managed under the previous contract made a loss and it was a council that would have to bail them out on a range of money including during covid and so on so forth however while all liabilities were held with the council the profits were shared 50 50 with those who are managing the contracts that didn't seem like a fair deal to me you would also see how certain decision-making processes in how the facilities were run impacted on access of women in particular and an example is the mine and sports center where the women were expected to go through the men's changing room in order to access changing rooms now while some may find that appropriate a great number of those who are on multiple scales of vulnerability couldn't find it acceptable and wouldn't access service provisions even if you offered it free to them and this was one of our most modern sports centers that we have that we paid for by this council so I would like you to really harness and sort of appreciate that the other thing is around investment and income generation again we were quite critical of the report in relation to income generation and what this report will show you is these officers who are all quite new officers to this council and have actively worked on this and have got a wealth of experience between them in working for other local authorities where they've insourced leather services have looked at how we can enhance our income generation with a wide range of areas which also works directly with our partner organizations such as public health the NHS and it was only last week where we had the adult health and well-being board that they were commending the opportunities to work with this council and they would pay for it through various different forms they would pay for it but how they can access services in order to support their patients and officers will go into detail about both areas in terms of the new structure while some may feel that it's in crisis what I can assure you is that all but two centers have service managers and again going back to the previous agenda right and we're creating these acting up opportunities where two assistant managers will act up in the roles of the center manager in center manager roles so again we have that side quite covered community benefits our officers going to detail with those areas and in conclusion we think this is a mostly welcomed approach although there will be a slight gap of closing the center for a week in order to sort out both paperwork induction and various different corporate processes of the council we think in time this will provide the best value for money for this council on a multiple range if jawa you want to add anything and our officers if you would like to add some more things please thank you council armed i think we can all see from the buildings there's been a lot of issues with the GLR contract the lack of investment the buildings aren't in the best of conditions and this insourcing project provides a huge opportunity to the borough residents i'll let my colleagues go into that in more detail i'll hand over to keith great thank you good evening um i won't repeat the presentation that's in front of you but i'll bring out a few salient highlights i think that um i'd like to leave you with this evening as i run through that the first slide really focuses on the vision and i think it's worth recapping on the vision uh the be well vision which we think it encompasses the vision for the new in-house service and the three components that sit underneath that and the health component that is really around how we can provide excellent quality and accessible leisure facilities in the borough for our residents that if you like that's the core offer um but the added value the additionality that i just wanted to point out to committee tonight is around the wellness component and that's really about how we work alongside our public health colleagues looking at the health inequalities that we're aware of within the borough but also working alongside NHS and other health partners as well and then the third component is really around the play aspect which is really about how our sport and physical activity team can work with clubs and community organizations to support a wider offer uh including with broader sports teams and schools because it isn't just about what the council can deliver it's that broader opportunity um for our residents and we think alongside that the brand is also around how we can provide a better enhanced customer experience and i'll talk in a moment about some of the feedback that we've had from residents around their experiences under the current uh service provided by GLL so moving on um the original decision as Catherine Armand has already explained i won't dwell too much on that but we think there is it you know that enormous opportunity to work through some of the barriers that customers have told us that all with the existing offer as it's run now so for example there were some concerns raised about uh the cleanliness of the centers around how effective the website was to navigate and use in order to book uh book activities um and the lack of women-only spaces and activities as Councillor Armand alluded to we want to address those concerns raised to us by residents as as quickly as we can and actually that better collaboration with services within tower hamlets is a genuine opportunity here to enhance the service significantly the health inequalities there's an entire slide showing some of the the unique health inequality issues uh that tower hamlets has and we need to take a long-term view on this uh this isn't an instant fix but we need to start now to go on a journey of improving that so under development is the um the sport and wellness strategy working alongside public health and wider partners to help us take a long-term view or how that can help us to address some of the health inequalities that we've talked about I will explain a little bit more fundamentally this is for us is around focusing on physical in inactivity and trying to work out what is the best way of supporting residents all residents to be more active more often because of the wider health um and well-being benefits um and senator you know that's the challenge for us now how to do that the center-by-center information slide is has given you some details of of what facilities are available at each center the sort of staffing levels that we're bringing on board but also the initial plan of action to improve the quality of the asset we do recognize that over an extended period of time um that we we could have been investing more over the long-term and so we're looking to address that as quickly as possible and a program is under developed to immediately start to improve some of the assets and facilities some of the things behind the scenes that we don't see that help the reliability of the building around heating and ventilation and all those important things that keep an asset going so there's a detailed plan under development and and ready to go as we take over the service in terms of people and human resources and recruitment well we do recognize there are gaps in service there were vacancies that GLL were carrying in the service and we're looking to fill those um some of you will be aware we held the jobs fair very recently which is a very successful day on a Saturday a couple of weeks ago where over 200 people expressed an interest in some of the opportunities that would potentially become available in terms of roles and responsibility so we are literally starting on a recruitment campaign now um which is going to be really really important so that's a permanent recruitment campaign and obviously targeting that to be local residents uh would be absolutely ideal and it looks as though there is a demand and an opportunity to do that so with the challenges we face what we want you have two minutes okay some of the challenges we face we've got a number of contractual relationships that we um need to work through and we're doing a major program of work to transfer contracts from GLL into the council so there's a continuity of service the transfer of staff is always the biggest challenge in one of these these situations um and just to reassure you we've done the officer team we've worked in the background to ensure as many of the managers transfer with us at the point of which we were provided the information by GLL we would have a dozen vacancies out of 15 which would be an enormous risk to us we have subsequently offered um new roles and responsibilities to those senior managers and now we have a gap of two and that too we are very confident we will be able to act up others within the existing service to fill those gaps for us in the short term while we transfer colleagues over on the first of May so I believe we've managed that risk the project there's a diagram in there just to give you some reassurance that there is a really solid governance arrangement for the program and it is genuinely a cross-cancel effort there's a small core leisure team and a cross-cancel effort and I commend how that's been put together um and it's working well in my professional opinion with support from HR and finance and IT and so on a real corporate effort there to make this work the 10 year model that Councillor Armed refers to I won't repeat it it shows that we will we predict we're going into operating surplus in the fourth year of the model and I'll explain one or two points of how we're intending to do that in a moment. Councillor Armed has already mentioned that actually in recent years under GLL there were losses experienced by the service not helped by COVID but supported by some of those national government grants and the furlough scheme for example effectively supported and bailed out that service during that difficult period but that's in your pack. The new structure I think has been alluded to we've built the new structure based on industry expertise that we have within tower hamlets now to build the right design that's fit for purpose but also providing an enhanced service for residents. We do recognise there is a long-term investment requirement and we will go through the Council's medium-term financial strategy process and develop those proposals in detail. A loss of investment is needed to bring up the standard of the assets over the next 10 years but the Council has already committed previously to a million pounds a year and forward looking a million pounds a year as well. We think that investment will need to grow and we'll go through the standard Council corporate process in order to bid for those additional funds required but a plan is in place for this financial year. The community benefits are just if I may Chair just mention because it's broader than just the financial model and the sports centres. We think the enhanced customer experience is going to be really really important so it's a more pleasant experience. There's opportunities in terms of the local economy and local employment that I've talked about. We're looking at how we can maximise the local supply chain in order to support the leisure offer as well. We think the diverse reach that we can bring into this service and that really targeted specific offer targeting specific groups that we know are underrepresented in the service at the moment we think can provide additional benefits. So it's really around building that core offer that they talked about plus the targeted offer and the specialist health offer as well. Finally the commercial opportunities I think are really really strong and there are massive opportunities for how we develop the facilities. We already know that we're investing in some Georgia's leisure centre and that's the 30 million plus investment. Secondly is your call. Your call we believe is a real real opportunity. It's the home of British boxing the heritage value of that asset in its own right is really strong and we're investing in the spa facility as well. So a real opportunity to drive the strategic direction around events and activities at your call. The business model assumes a 23% growth in our revenue income over that period of time growing steadily and sensibly and we are confident that that is achievable. For example we know that 30 seconds please. We use 12% of customers every every period of time and we're looking to address that to the industry standard. I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thank you very much very informative. Thank you. Before I open it up for the committee members to ask questions just to bring something to your knowledge unless it is already there. I have been approached by female residents who tells me that they are unable to benefit from the female-only leisure services particularly the swimming pool because they find male lifeguards are present in the female-only sessions. So that's something obviously not acceptable. So this is hopefully you are addressing this. Thank you. Members questions? Councilor Manana to start it. Thank you Chair. To the part major I've been taken to ensure that in swimming the leisure service would not only meet financial objective but also lead the improved customer experience and resident satisfaction as outlined in the community benefits section. So because it's up I just want to see how you're going to can you explain to me one that please? Okay thank you Councilor Manana. So initially there will be an investment that needs to go in there but we're hoping by the fourth year we'll be making a surplus in relation to that. So we've explored some areas of it with the business as it's running and we've also looked at other commercial elements attached to it and there's also a further element which is still at the scoping exercise which could potentially generate even more income particularly around the car parks and how we manage the car parks with EV chargers as well as looking at night time use of the centres and how we can maximise on things like that. So we've had a core approach and within that core approach we're looking at a 23% income generation sort of from a negative going into a positive and then a year and a year 23% income generation over that over a 10 year period but within that there's also potential to increase that income generation further as well. In terms of a better offer I think officers have said that and this is in one of your slides we want to make it more accessible. Councillor Ahmed clearly stated that he's personally had testimonies from residents indicating that it wasn't accessible for their needs and again that's something that our officers have picked up and have honed in on. So we will have sort of female only sessions we'll ensure that there are female lifeguards there and I think another opportunity that we may not have picked up on is the employment opportunity where there are the gaps in the service we're looking to recruit within the borough so that they can be involved in those sports services and Councillor why it is here whose role, cabinet role, covers employment and he can sort of speak would you like to say a few words around the employment fair and the level of interest we've had. Thank you Councillor Ahmed and also thank you to the officers for a really good brief. In regards to what Councillor Ahmed said I think we have a unique opportunity here to shape our facilities that we have put in the Council and I think we've had the discussion with officers and they're really fully on board in terms of again that falls under our strategy to tackle workforce to reflect the community. I think we are looking at in terms of where there's those gaps appear in terms of filling in those jobs as well as creating others such as as you know in terms of apprenticeship roles etc and things like that that we're looking at and like an officer mentioned we had a really successful job fair about two weekends ago now huge amount of interest from residents and that was really really positive and also going back to what Councillor Ahmed said that has been also across the board in terms of residents coming to ask members saying that in terms of certain services we're not delivered under TLL because of the lack of the appropriate and the right sort of staffing so for example having a woman's own decision there's a lot more to it than just that you having to have the right sort of you know female lifeguards etc so I think we're like I said we're in a unique position where as a council we can we can meet and tackle some of these inequalities that we have going forward. Female lifeguards we were hoping there's a very quick win to run a lifeguard course in May so this will be very very quickly so we're just talking to youth service at the moment and other partners about providing that so we'll get a cohort five to ten feet of female lifeguards straight away. I'm glad to hear this we're going to see the changes and it's not far hopefully it runs smoothly thank you. Yeah okay go ahead please. Sorry on the latest centers it's been reported by a lot of residents of last summer that when the human session was running made cleaners going to the women changing them to clean that when we hear from the resident that is not any standard acceptable so I echo what the chair was saying having a female guard on a swimming at the same time we're going to make sure the clean is when they have a woman session the the women cleaners the ladies cleaners are not not made cleaners going to the women changing room. Thank you thank Councillor Mulhman. Thank you Councillor Albright. Can I take another question to to at a time just to save some time hopefully. Councillor Chaudhay thank you thank you Chair. And thank you emphasis for the report. You said it talked about health inequalities in Tar Hamlets so my first of all I welcome being in the service in-house I always support you know in-house services but just what I want to understand how will the in-house structure health reduce health disparities in Tar Hamlets and could you share some key features of the new structure that support this effort. Thank you. Yeah well one of the things we've identified is the stuff and the training of stuff so we've we've spent a lot of time talking to fitness instructors for instance we've identified training courses which can upskill them so they're able to take some of the the new products and services which will be to improve the quality of alpha for local residents. That's one of the things we've done. So if I can also come in so I'm also a member of the Adult Health and Wellbeing Board so one of the other areas is to join up working around seven children getting them more active around those with disabilities also working with primary care in terms of making referrals in so that they can get that level of exercise which will tackle things like obesity, motivating them to access those facilities. So we're looking at various different service level agreements with both primary care, various different NHS trusts, London Hospital included and they are they want to be very proactive in working with us in order to create this. They do spend money on it and so there's an element of both commercialization there which will generate income but at the same time there we will be supporting our residents and some of the most vulnerable residents who don't really have or haven't really had the motivation to you know use fitness centres or who may not feel that fitness centres were previously accessible for them. As a council we'll also be saving money on the other end so as you can understand you're a social worker so there are sort of mental health issues as well as other areas that impact on people's lives and by linking up the services where health can be promoted both mental and physical using our leisure services that could potentially create a saving on the other end of various different departments and that's what I was talking about before about not having silo working between directorates and departments but us fusing together and working inclusively as a whole council. So these are some of the opportunities Councillor. It's just just to answer that council as well so I've met with different departments within the council so one of the meetings last week was with overcrowding so we met with those guys to see how we can in some of the services for those looks after children young carers we've met with the same groups or every different department which in the council we've met we've been able to have that conversation with in advance. We also part of the management team we have somebody from public health who's joined the management team so we're making sure that we're kind of future proofing that as we go. It's also in and around marketing and how we market and how we target groups so there's lots of work. Thank you. Do you want to answer the council on none's question? Yes, yes Council on none. It doesn't just go for lifeguard that was just an anecdotal example but it goes not to have male cleaners within the changing rooms while there's female only sessions but in general try to have a balanced staffing approach so that you know women getting changed don't suddenly see a man walk in there in order to change whatever so it's a systemic approach that we will be applying and officers here I'm sure will accept those conditions. Thank you Councilor Armin then officers on this are not for sure this would be a great relief, huge relief for many of our users, female users, thank you when it's implemented. Next question from Jared. Yeah I'll take two questions at a time now so next question from Jared then from this side to Councilor Sabina if you are big. Thank you. Thank you Chair. Thank you guys for your presentation. I welcome as a former GLL membership holder I really do welcome the in-house approach but I am a bit concerned about be careful what you wish for as well because it's not been tried or tested as of yet but I do welcome it. I just wanted to understand your your communication strategy around the change or the the transfer over to the in-house teams. What approach are you taking to make aware the community that this change is going to be implemented, how it's going to improve, how what's going to impact the current membership of users who currently probably hold annual membership. What's the strategy on that? I recently well not recently I've been using new facilities for a year because I just didn't like the services GLL we're providing to our hamlets and suddenly next day was GLL which was a big shock to me how that how that really happened without any columns so just wondering what your strategy or what's what your plan is to do that very thing that's it thank you. I think I although I can talk I think I want to give offices an opportunity to display the hard work that they have put into this and in terms of the research that's taken place in developing the strategy going forward so I'll give offices and also what I want to highlight to the committee is these are offices who have specialist experience in in sourcing in sort of overseeing big leisure projects in other local authorities and I think they need to put their accolades up front first just so they can get reassurance of the committee so great thanks for the question I'll start with the first comment you made about yet the careful what you wish for thing we've actually been learning from elsewhere so there are two examples in London and that's London Borough's southern and London Borough of Lambeth of both insourced their leisure operation one from GLL one from GLL's competitor everyone active for different reasons and one thing that Simon and the team have done a lot of and I have experience of is working with those councils to fight to learn from what they did how they did it things that they would have done better and differently and that's been incorporated into the program plan so we've actually learned from real examples in London in similarish sorts of circumstances and my professional background is working local government in London with responsibility for leisure and a broader set of service over the last 20 years and I can bring experience of of insourcing and outsourcing and bringing it all together hopefully that gives some reassurance but more importantly I was going to hand over to Simon just to talk about some communications work we've done with the existing customers to ensure we retain them on time yeah communication has always got to be a challenge because it's based on the relationship with GLL and they have all the email addresses and all the contact details for the customers so we we have sent comes out in terms of the to the members to let them know that there's going to be a change and when that change is going to happen but again it's going to be a joint so we are we are to do our our press to go to GLL and they would look at it and come backwards and forward so that's gone out to members there's been a pop-ups in terms of the facilities over the last three or four months we've been able to speak to staff as well so we've been able to give information to the staff and what was really interesting was when we first started to talk to about the vision and about the difference we'll make and about the communities the staff employed in those centers were so passionate about their customers about wanting to make a difference a lot of the questions we're coming back which is a fantastic place to start we've some of the feedback which has come back in terms of their decision not to remain with GLL and come across is because the things that they're hearing about what the future will look like and they want to go on this journey where there's um from from next week we'll be able to kind of ramp ramp those communication plans up and start to really really build that um what we are aware of that each center is completely unique each center is different completely different in terms of the memberships they'll um go from a membership which is which is just for one site where the we streamlined 136 different types of memberships which GLL have so we've got a new website we've got a new app so it'll be a lot easier for members to and clearer to be able to join that um so that's part of the communications which we'll be going out next week uh personally I've worked in local government I've done this the opposite way around so I've gone from working for the local authority to work with everyone active very similar to GLL and I saw the immediate differences as as a leisure service we did some incredible work with the community with the youth service reducing crime those health inequalities which have been talked about what we weren't particularly very good as an industry was actually being able to kind of reference that and be able to kind of showcase those technologies moved on a lot since those and as part of the new leisure management system we've bought in a piece of software called For Global which has been developed by Sheffield Hallam and what this software is able to do if we were to save commission services to address health inequalities it would actually give you a return on investment for that so it's quite quite powerful and a bit of a game changer for the industry um my most recent job was five years as CEO of Charity whose I it was very similar to this where we had to be very commercially focused we had to generate income we had to make sure the customers coming through are the best quality service they could get but at the same time we had to focus on what our objectives were in terms of the charity objectives working on those health inequalities and it was all about getting to that sweet spot which is now where I'm starting to talk to my team about and from next when's well from this Wednesday for the first time we can speak to the managers of the centres and start to develop those business plans going forward so sorry just one other part of the question was around the comms as well just to assure members here that we will not only have general comms but we'll also have specialist comms in Somali and Bengali and other community languages in order to get people proactive and know about it the branding itself is the be well branding and that will play a pivotal role within the council's external and internal comms so we are having a very proactive and again another service joining up which is the comms team as well so no silo working here thank you I have Halima Councillor Choudhury from this side Councillor Sabina Councillor France is four questions at least to take and accommodate and in view of that your answers doesn't have to be elaborated summary version would be fine thank you very much unless it is necessary thank you next question from Councillor Sabina thank you Chair thank you for your response on about offices speaking to other neighbouring barriers and obviously the lessons learned and you know moving on because in sourcing such a big development of changes or in terms of the cost of in source there's been some independent review saying it's going to cost you know for example 2.1 million extra a year for tire handlers because of this insourcing when doing the comparison to other barriers for example server or having a did you guys manage to see the kind of insorted cost there so we can have that comparative are you happy for me to take another question or are you on a straight answer yeah okay so Halima please thank you thank you so mine is the other cost where residents would want to know whether the prices will increase so a bit of information on that would be good thank you yeah it's over to you now thank you to answer both questions in terms of the in terms of the the prices no we're keeping we want to business continuity so everything is going to be lifted and shifted we're keeping the prices the same streamline the prices when I mentioned 136 legacy they're gonna kind of burn out behind the scenes and any new members coming through so the prices would be exactly the same what it gives us an opportunity to kind of review those ones once we're actually in and we're starting to work in terms of the the cost for the um so the and uh lums yeah I mean what I was saying we I don't have their figures to hand I'm afraid so apologies council I don't have the other boroughs figures well I do know from speaking to my counterparts that they were putting in subsidy um they were struggling with the service the service quality wasn't there so they needed to invest in the service so there was a similar profile to the cost that we've identified so in other words cost rose originally while they stabilized the service and then they started to generate more income in the latter years of the business model and that's exactly what's happened in those two particular boroughs so they invested in the short term in order to get the return back in the later years of their business model and build the stability into the service I think uh also want to add there is one other element in relation to the prices is that's on the one side of it but the other side is what we call the offer so for example free swimming for all women over the age of 16 free swimming for men over uh I think it's 50 uh 55 sorry 55 okay yeah so so so the council as an entity will also create various platforms where those services can be accessed by a wider range of people and again I spoke about earlier on about saying about those with sort of hard to reach groups and so on so forth so we'll also alongside the commercialization and memberships and everything there'll be a better offer for a wider range of people both targeted as well as uh sort of um those who have specialist needs as well thank you next question from uh councilor Francis online thank you chair thank you to um officers and the lead member for the presentation and so I have a couple of questions really about the metrics by which this would be measured uh like councilor chargey councilor mr chargey I agree that this might well be a good thing but um that experience is a bit mixed about bringing things in house or even about absolute syndrome as well so my questions are um first of all how many members of staff should be working within our sports centers at the moment and how many have been um chupied over from gll to uh to roles in the new laser service as things stand um can secondly and can you explain the reason why the centers are going to be closed for a week at the beginning of may um and then finally um uh you might not be able to do this tonight but could you provide the committee with details of all the key performance indicators that we use to oversee the performance of insourcing laser services and uh kpi data from the previous years when it's been run by gll please thank you councilor Francis uh next question from councilor chargey sorry uh thank you can you hear me yes thank you to the uh councilors and the offices thank you very much um as a chair of a scrutiny chair on education families and children i'm grateful to the mayor and uh the councilors for taking uh well the initiative that we raised from day one access to sports facilities for girls and women especially uh and the young generations it's a very young borough we have a entire hamlet so i'm grateful for that uh the timing could you have any timings the sessions will be run especially for the ladies and the girls and the men who are over 55 uh which would be nice thank you so um in terms of the kpi's of course we'll be happy to present that at scrutiny and if there are further information scrutiny needs uh as a department we we will be very very happy to do that um i will let the officers answer the questions around the specifics uh that's a level that they will deal with um and also in relation to the program that will be run officers can deal with that as well fine in terms of the the transferring numbers um approximately it's 220 people although that is split with a a large component of 60 part-time employees working on various uh as in various roles around fitness classes and so on so it's a it's a bit of a mixed bag approach but that gives you the indication um and broadly speaking the numbers transferring when we got the final list two and a half three weeks ago uh matched the number of posts that were supplied to us by gll pre christmas um but we are we do recognize there are going to be some vacancies because what information we know today isn't going to be necessarily exactly the same who transfer people be be leaving moving on to different jobs they'll choose not to transfer on the final day but that gives an indication we don't think the gaps are significant but there are some gaps um and i hand over to uh simon who can give you an indication of what we're doing in the close week yeah the joint immobilization week there's these uh a new leisure management system which staff need to be introduced to so we've we've already had six members of the gll staff we've been allowed to come across and we'll train the trainers so they they've been trained ready to train other staff there's also the corporate induction process to go through um we have a new call center as well which we've introduced there's training for sales um there's the distribution of uniform there's a cleaning of the building we've got new signage going in we need to test the barrier systems there's a whole host of things which need to happen during that first week what we have done any any bookings which were made previously for children's birthday parties or one-off schools athletics events we've incorporated that into the transition week as well to make sure that that's fine um and is covered off um that was the question in and around if we just the one of the other questions is in and around the um the free swimming so the the free swimming program will be starting in June and july um the sessions for those swimming um will be published on the website from the first of may so it'll be able to access how you can access those sessions but it's not just about the free swimming it's also about breaking down some of the barriers so it may be swim clinics swimming lessons it may be child care it may be um training up some youth female lifeguards whatever it may be so it's it's about a whole host of things which happen about on the scenes as well as marketing because we'll what we'll be able what we want to be able to do is target people who currently don't don't swim or don't swim very often and it may be family swimming sessions so yeah so there's a whole host of things which are developing but um this is going to be in conjunction with the general managers and the management teams of each site who would yet to have that first meeting with so um that's going to be happening next week but it will be on the website from the from the first of may okay thank you just a follow up from consular childry and then I'm minded to take the last question and decide them from consular unless somebody uh wants to really ask something thank thank you we need to move on thank you thank you chair sorry I forgot to add something earlier uh the booking system would the booking system change because I've always lived in the borough all my life and it's very hard to find gaps in the booking system itself corporate companies that are here on our doorstep can you dwarf and the city of london they sort of book it year in year out and there's no gap for people who live in the borough to access those facilities and I'm grateful it's it's coming in house that is one of the reason i've used gll facilities for a number of years and uh it's it's it's beggars belief how corporate get access to booking year in year out and we just get left out in between thank you yeah this will be part of the review process once we've once we've got the keys and we're actually in there next week we'll bring in all the programming across and then there's an opportunity to have a look at some of those areas protected hours as well how those other memberships will and how we communicate so that'll be from next week if you can just highlight the booking system the new one that we've got is a simplified more so yeah okay so we saw the news it's an industry one which is gll currently of their own booking system in place we bought one called gladstone which is an industry and we bought their latest version of of that so there will be a requirement for a transition so we're taking the data we're going to transfer that into the new membership card system um we will gather more data in terms of the membership so we'll have more understanding of the users and how we communicate with the users and i think just to say in terms of play previously gll as a business wanted to maximize their peak time get the you know the corporates in with the service coming in house this is where as part of the vision we've got a play agenda bringing clubs and local groups giving them the opportunity to have access to the peak time slots a lot of the times clubs can't develop their their games their teams and competitive plays reduced because they don't have access to those core hours so those are things that we'll be reviewing okay thank you just the final point is the system itself should be easier to use much more straightforward easier to navigate and the app is easier to navigate residents told us that navigating the website and the system was quite difficult previously sorry officer just sorry just one more thing i missed out sorry those sessions that will be run free obviously for the ladies and the girls and the men over 55 would they be able to book as groups or individual or is it first come first serve on the day thank you chair sorry so so those sessions will be individual sessions initially but we want to look at there may be a need for um swim clinics or swimming lessons as well so we will introduce those sessions so it's not just purely about being able to walk through because what we don't want is people who've currently swim just being able to swim for nothing it's about how we how we really target those people who don't access that at the moment okay thank you chair i think it's my colleague already a question that there's an echo on both of us say on a as a parent's governor on the school and over the two years or over the last four or five years we've been hearing from the school teachers had monsters that when they were doing youth officiality they have to go outside the bar to book it because the better was not given an access and as a work my colleague was saying corporate agencies or companies are booking the slot and there is schools especially where children need to be access of facility they did not get access and that was the one of the things that my colleague mentioned that was my question to you so knowing from the as a school governor we know the experience with teacher was sitting over the over the years that facility was not very able to do it and which is okay are we doing anything on this or to make sure that this favor everybody i think that's the opportunity by bringing it in house we can join up the services it's not just about renting out the space for as much money as you can get we will work with schools with youth groups community groups to make sure that the residents get the priority rather than those who have the most money booking out the core slots so that's what we're looking to create as part of the insul service right okay great thank you uh officers this has been a very helpful update of the council's preparedness for leisure provision coming back in house it is encouraging to hear the plans for the future services however we must now make sure that these ambitions and the improvements we hope will come as a result are delivered that's the most important thing the committee will ensure that this remains on our work program next year so we can understand the impact this has on the performance uh once again thank you very much for that and i'm going to move to our next item which is parking spotlight and would like to invite um uh just to say a couple of words before that um uh we know that parking a spotlight is a key issue in the bar and the priority for everybody who lives works and travels in the bar we have received apologies from councilor cabirous saying lead member um to a mix up with the invites and councilor Hussain had a prior engagement which you could not get out of however councilor Hussain has provided some written comments which are the offices of this committee have circulated for the members i have asked officers to ensure that this is addressed in the next municipal year i mean the engagement we are also joined by officers Michael Darby head of parking mobility and market services Ashraf Ali director of public realm and vicky allen strategy and policy officer who has i believe joined online if this is not the case yeah okay yeah right thank you for joining us and it's open for 10 minutes presentation and we take it from there. Councillor Ahmed once again i'm deputizing so this presentation uh provides you an overview uh sorry the overview is a scrutiny committee with an update on parking services there are two aspects to this update one aspect of this presentation is about the refresh of the parking enforcement plan and the other aspect is about going to consult on new parking policy areas as you're aware overview and scrutiny committee held a review about parking in december 2021 since then we have implemented a new permit transfer scheme continued to work with car clubs to improve coverage reintroduced the four parent parking zones introduced one hour free parking for customers shopping at our markets and we have halfway sorry we are halfway through delivering an additional thousand parking spaces one of the recommendations was to update the parking enforcement plan this has now been started following on from this exercise officers have identified some additional parking options that could be brought in we are working up consultation for these which will bring to overview and scrutiny's input in due force um i'll i'll refer to michael sufian and ashraf to present uh the or go over the parking plan yes over to thank you good evening um so this this as cancer said there's two phases to this phase one is updating the parking enforcement plan which was last updated in 2008 so it's 15 years old so it's quite out of date now so the parking enforcement plan is essentially what we do and why we do it so we don't need to consult on what we're already doing but we do need to go to consultation for new initiatives that we want to bring online uh and new policy areas so phase phase one which is the refresh of the parking enforcement plan uh as i said it's produced 15 years ago we've now refreshed uh up to date so uh as i said it's what we do why we do it includes cancer strategic priorities bringing existing policies to get into one document include up to date reference for parking and enforcement legislation and national and regional and local local policy and it also allows us to be flexible for regular updating as needed for example being reflective of wider transport strategy which is now due for review so the status at the moment is drafted no new content for decision-making is for internal sign-off that's here by CLT so the drivers for parking enforcement plan is uh reflected in the pep so we create and maintain safe and efficient traffic flow within the borough through the borough and enhance road user journey satisfaction contributed to cancerous clean cleaner and greener future improving air quality and supporting sustainable transport solutions we aim to create fair and easily accessible curbside parking space to meet the needs of all road users maintain the best policy best possible parking infrastructure in terms of off street parking public parking facilities deliver and deliver high quality customer focus procedures and policies that continually improve the service that we deliver so phase two areas to explore result in benchmarking exercise for the pep update new policy areas have been identified that fit in with the cancer strategic objectives and are expected to help reduce parking stress and promote effective parking mobility and enforcement activities in the borough areas fall into four broad categories simplifying the customer journey and providing excellent public services encouraging active travel and traffic management and congestion measures boosting businesses and efficiency and compliance so uh consultation and engagement plans have been prepared surveys for the whole community workshop sessions for interested groups the paper and online so face-to-face sessions across a range of accessible venues including data amulets consultation likely to last around 10 weeks so the indicative timeline permission to consult will be during July 24 consultation is circa 10 weeks as expected to finish around September uh consultation analysis and report to write by October cabinet decision December 24 and then the policy implementation January 25 so uh how we manage conflicting priorities working in partnership providing concessionary travel and parking schemes to give residents and visitors with disabilities greater opportunity for independent travel designating bays according to need so hierarchy of uh customers for example disabled drivers that they're at the top so we look at personal disabled bays and other areas where we can support them uh areas around markets which we said we've already done increasing the EV parking and charging options in the borough we're working with highways to do that ongoing work to improve car clubs options in the borough working with highways to create a more cycle infrastructure improving our public realm for residents with highways and planning installing infrastructure to make roads safer for pedestrians and highways all reflected in the pep um ideas for consultation review of control parking zone times with possible extensions in certain areas that are required by the residents so you're looking at me very strangely so that that may mean that just for example we don't expect that the whole of sea zone we're going to do monday to sunday all day after midnight it may be just your street cancer or two streets within your zone that doesn't require that additional enforcement to support again supporting the residents when they're coming home fairly late at night and they can't get anywhere to park because other people are parking here that don't necessarily have a permit so that's that sort of thing uh so creating an all zone resident permit to park in another zone all day uh there'll be a small extra cost for that but some residents do require that rather than just the three hours increasing the number of shared use bays around markets and shops introduction of an app to enable booking loading bays for large lawyers and deliveries so that's going to be scoring businesses and variable parking challenges so peaking off people around event venues that's it any questions i would do answer thank you very much for your presentation uh members uh start let's start from council member none i could see his hand and i will come into the next question i'll be taking two questions at the time if if that's okay with you okay thanks for your presentation we appreciate um one of my question is i live close to the east of the borough so as my colleague Mark Francis as well uh we tend to be seeing quite a lot these days that on a next day uh coming in and parking and residents literally know where to park they've been taking parking on double airlines as well and going away where emergency vehicle very difficult to pass through uh both both east probably know they're close to the western uh olympic park and soon to be somehow message going through and every time a big mistake happened other western or anything even happened surrounding area if you have any talk about your distribution on this at all thank you yeah so uh one of the things that we're doing to look at that is we've already got um event day for sundays when there's a match on a sunday but we're we're planning to introduce event days throughout the whole week not just at the olympic stadium but also at victoria park so um essentially we can we can enforce up to wherever time is needed to support again the residents around these two major events so once we've at the moment we we do monday to saturday in what we call the b4 area fish island um and sundays when there's a match we're planning to extend that to any time there is an event even it's during the week and it goes up to eight o'clock at night we're gonna be looking at introducing that can i just said that to the the council about the double airline and enforcement we also actually reviewing dangerous parking at junctions uh you've mentioned about double airlines so where there are uh junctions we're parking at different times which cause in safety significant safety for pedestrian crossing at juncture and also dangerous parking so that would be reviewed uh particularly around single-year airlines that junctions to ensure there's double airline and there's no parking infringement and ensure the public safety is maintained so that would be actually part of the review and consultation recovery items code up thank you thank you thank you chair um so looking at this presentation uh there's an area that you've highlighted here around simplifying the customer journey and providing that excellent public service um in my experience this has not been the case um with the uh permits um there's recent when i say recent i think in january where i tried to uh get a visitor permit where i had the visitor present i wasn't able to do that apparently because um it's expired um having logged on it looks like there's a new um system in place so yeah that's not been the case so if you can elaborate a bit more as to what's happening and um if there's any improvements and why are residents not uh consulted on this if there's going to be a change to the app um or the actual uh systems then visitors should be informed thank you yes okay so there's not a change it's a new version of the same system it's a version upgrade that was introduced that the difficulty we had is that um some some uh visitor vouchers entitlement were lost and we were not we were not we couldn't foresee this and we worked hard in the background to to reinstate that the business around accounts some accounts close after the 12 months you have to consistently review the account again the idea of this is to stop any fraudulent activity so for example a resident could move from a location from one location to another one and still claim visitor vouchers for that location they've moved from so the idea is for us to stop that entitlement or ensure that yearly we can see documentation to say that a that person is still entitled to claim a resident permit a visit a voucher scratch card whatever in terms of uh with normal permits like the resident permits we would get a notification why is there not a notification for the year the um when it expires for the resident permits or is there one have i missed something no that's about your account so that that's different from the permit it's about your your actual account expires after 12 months so you need everyone that's the same for everybody they need to redo their account okay so then residents need to be told that because clearly there's no communication it's only when we've gone on there that we've encountered this problem so if that's the case then there needs to be more comes out there to tell people that every year your account will expire and you need to and so that it gives the people the opportunity to renew it and not have a visitor waiting who then has to pay for parking hello thank you that feedback is very well received and i think we'll go back to officers to check that system out i wasn't aware of it myself but you've raised it so we we need to pull out some kind of notification to make sure that accounts or whatever the technical terminologies maybe we we so so so i'm i'm working counts and maintained for three years at a time rather than one to stop we'll reduce councilor and whilst we we do that i'll work also to ensure that notification is then sent out as well okay that's great uh questions from this side council of sciences thank you very much and thanks for the presentation and so there's lots in here that i really agree with i think like it is as you say you've made a really unclear and compelling case for why the enforcement plan needs to be refreshed and there's lots in here that i also agree with in terms of increasing the penalties and things like that so i just wanted to think about it so and i also agree with the point that's been made there but myself had these issues but also constituents raising similar issues about um renewals and things like that as well as visitors but i just wanted to ask about um the um the performance data so earlier this year i think following the scrutiny session that we had on the budget about parking asked about appeals and about the representations that were received and i got some really helpful data back so thank you to mr davi for providing that so it's kind of showed that before the pandemic it seemed to be that cancellations when we received an appeal against it in turn and a ticket internally we're running at between sort of 15 to 20 percent of them um but that that figures now dropped in the most recent year to be sort of near a 5 percent it was slightly higher the year before um and it also shows that and there's quite a consistent um rate of over term when people go to the independent parking appeal adjudicator so that's sort of between 40 to 50 percent sometimes a little bit higher um those um tickets will get overturned there so my first question is as the team done any analysis to try to understand its own the the kind of the fluctuations i guess in its own cancellations of tickets um and if you have if you could share that with us and then secondly um what processes in place to make sure that we learn where the adjudicators overturned a ticket or whether there's any patterns in the the tickets that are overturned thank you so into the cancellations we've done a lot of work regarding the quality of the ticket so for for me if i'm going to issue a ticket i want to make sure i've got every single detail about a ticket the better quality of the ticket people are not going to appeal they'll just simply look out yeah i've just clearly made it out i'll pay it so firstly sat some we've done some good work around this and it's been noted that payments have gone up at the first opportunity having said that people still have the right to take it to adjudication i don't control clearly what happens is adjudication but where possible if we believe we're right we will follow that process my figures are 44 percent that get overturned adjudication when an adjudicator adjudicator makes the decision we get a report back as to that decision that is then if it's against us clearly we look at well what can be learned from that that then is sent to the relevant department by enforcement for example so as we can learn from that and we don't make the same mistake that will also be made in the beginning kind of to add to your second part of the question customer Francis about the patterns of an enforcement don't have the data in packing but from experience there are a number of areas where there are patterns and adjudicator is actually look invavable and these are in terms of looking at traffic management order the legal orders in place or not and sometimes you know they go in favor of people who received the the fpn um what penalty notices the other is wear and tear of markings and if there are not enough adequate signage in place so signage could be damaged or be removed so these are constantly sort of maintenance issues that officers need to actually ensure that they're so these are a couple of areas that we do have notice of patterns where we do get overturned by the adjudicators. Sorry Council I cannot just add in terms of cancellations we are doing a lot of work and looking at the details of the cancellations we've identified that there's been a lot of food documents being provided to us in terms of blue badges and etc which we're doing extensive work in terms of cancellations as well so the team are focusing on looking at the cancellations in a bit more detail along with adjudication cases for us to basically lessons learned in terms of improving them. That's really helpful do you mind if I just um a quick follow up so the figures that I have are for 2019-20 there were 7,330 representations there were 1,312 cancellations which is why I thought it was 15 to 20 percent but then there's a spike in the number of representations that were received after 2020 or from 2020-21 onwards goes up to 24,000 cancellations 3,200 and then there's a sort of a bit of a drop off over the course in the next couple of years so maybe I guess my question or maybe if I um so that's that's what was provided to me but maybe I need to get more data over a longer period to see whether that's that's the kind of a consistent pattern but it does seem to now be down at 5 percent of representations result in a cancellation so if that sounds about right. If I can just say there was a significant increase in the number of penalty charge notices issued as well but I mainly buy a CCTV and that's since tape it off. Thank you. Next questions. Question from Councillor Malick because Councillor Malick raised his hand a long time ago. Thank you Chair, thank you officers. Do you have any plan for increase electric vehicle charging point? Yes, I'm trying to keep it brief but I think it's about 2,000 units we're looking at over what period of time? Over the next three years we're looking at 2,000 units and they're a mixture of fast and slow charges across the borough. Just to follow up on on this point basically I have a query so how are you going to assess the areas where the points will be with the needs and provision basically. So firstly we look at the resident permits that are issued and we can tell from that data how many are for electric vehicles, where the electric vehicles essentially reside so we can look at hotspots in certain areas where needs and trains go. Thank you very much. Jaha had also raised his hand before you. Thank you Chair. Just on the the whole redesign of the website I used to recall there used to be a provision for temporary covers. They used to cover when a vehicle has been changed and especially the process of getting the registration and the proof of evidence and all that takes some time to through weeks. That cover was essential for a person a resident to have whilst the process of change takes place. That is no longer available so it has changed. It is not an improvement but well improvement may be in the aesthetics of the website but the service has dropped down a bit. Secondly for blue badge holders specifically that is essential because in a building they might require two different vehicles and now especially in my building where there is a there's a cover sorry there is a disabled person who requires two vehicles sometimes because one vehicle is not available because parents need to change they need to go to work to change they need to take the car when they're going to work so they have the other vehicle available to take the disabled child wherever they need to go. However that because of the cover not being available they can't do that anymore. Would you be able to comment on what happened there? Thank you. So the cover the temporary permit cover was being absolutely abused absolutely so much so that we had no choice but to take that offer away and this of course is impacted on people like myself or people that you know and this is unfortunate we are working with individuals on a case by case basis to try and accommodate how we can change things to support them. Initially it's clear for my finest of people using the temporary cover for their friends and their relatives that are coming into town just to work and then away they go again and this was essentially two weeks at a time they were getting a temporary cover whilst they still had cover from their permit on their own vehicle. So it is a bypass of the rules we just simply have to take it away but I am working with officers and we will work on a case by case basis to accommodate the genuine, yeah. If you'd like to contact me outside of this we'll certainly do that. Councillor CUMM, before I come to you there was Councillor MURPHY. Want to ask questions? So I'm coming next is you. Thank you Chair. So first of all I think I will make a statement, it's my question and next I'll come to my question. So increasing number of residential parking spaces are being converted into business parking and pay ASU goals spots. Especially this is very, if you look around Warchapul area there's the case that lots of space parking spaces have been taken. So residents are very much struggling and I would say the council to look into that. That's my statement. My question. Government's statutory guidance says council should not try to make a profit from parking tickets and should let drivers off with a verbal warning for minor parking offenses and take a common sense approach to parking enforcement. Authorities should not set targets for revenue or the number of penalty charge notice says day issue. Do you think London or of Tarham let's follow the guidance? For let me just explain, we certainly do not set targets and the way that this is done is on perhaps expectations of the officers daily duty. So if I had 20 officers working 1v we have to look at well the person that did the most he had a good day. Take that away I'm interested. Take away the one that had a bad day I'm not interested. What is the average that the resident got and that is what we look at. So it's not a target but it's an expectation. Now if that officer comes in it might be five in that day but he only comes in with one. Also here he comes in with one but if he comes in with one the next time we then look at that way on perhaps you're not doing something right you might need to sort of give you some assistance. That is how that is done so no targets are given. Absolutely none. There's no expectations around you must bring in 10 tickets a day. I don't have that. That's the wrong way to work and I know some private companies work that way. We certainly don't in this borough. We offer a quality service. So you will also know that the number of cancellations is fairly high. That is if you've got for example you may have a ticket you've just you know it's your first offense in some cases not all. We will look at any mitigation so if the officers decide it's worthy of mitigation I can't I'll give you an example. So right you're going into a shop. We don't see you going in that shop but you're loading and unloading but we don't see it. You'll get a ticket but that doesn't say doesn't mean to say that you can't make a representation or appeal and then you simply say well here's my loading documentation they will let you off. So we are we are more than fair I believe given the number of cancellations and reasons the cancellations that we do. Just to add to the context on the revenue that's just generated in the park is it's within the traffic regulation act section 55 where it gets reinvested back in the public realm and highways improvement so although there are fines that's generated through the parking service by sketch backs invested on the resurfacing the footwear improvement the general improvement of the public and there's a cost to the council which is actually offset in that. Also just to add on obviously part of the presentation mentioned there are areas also we're looking at avenues where we could regenerate and improve wider enforcement and one way is also we're looking at additional managing the fleet and construction traffic which has a huge impact on the asset to the council and it has a detrimental impact to the council which unfortunately we don't actually use our councils when it is actually should be really offsetted by the cost of the developer. So we are introducing construction management plan which will actually generate avenue of income to actually put back into the public highway and improve the assets. So that's another new avenue area we're looking at so we can actually improve enforcement and as well as the quality of our streets for residents of the borough. Thank you. Last question from Councillor CAND. Thank you. Thank you Chair. Give me opportunity. Before I ask you the question I would like to make a brief point Chair if you allow me. At the health and scrutiny Chair I commissioned a chair to review workforce shortage across the health care sector in 2020-23. This was the time when there was also significant industrial action by doctors, nurse and others health professionals on cost of living. We know now from now General Medical Council is published 12 April 2024. The thousands of doctors are living or considering living UK for abroad will be having impact if nothing been done. As the review we have heard that qualified doctors cost of living had a significant influence on their shows of living worked. We also heard the medical students are coming out of the access of more than 100,000 student debt which they had to pay off. At the site visit I looked at the local GP's cost of living with accommodations, parking, an app, time and time again. We know from the residents one of the key issue in them being able to access their GP's appointment. We also know that the GP's centre are struggling to recruit new GP's for their practice. Our recommendation for the Council is to make a tower homeless interactive borough so that we can influence GP's. GP's to live and work in our toilets. Just we are on the parking item. This is the parking question I'm going to ask. Is it? Okay. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So Tom it has a recommendation on the Council considering a commendation and parking support help make Torams more attractive borough to compete with the recruiting GP's to the boroughs. So just for clarification of the question subject to the scrutiny and review I think this was already discussed previously which is to give GP's park permits or boroughwide parking permits for them to park everywhere in the borough including GP students as well or medical students and so on and so forth and I believe officers have previously addressed this and have said that we can't really implement that and I know it was an outcome of one of the scrutiny meetings and GP's had requested this but GP's also have a process of Dr Bay's and everything set up all around the borough and as well as sort of various different other service provisions. In terms of the surgery the surgery can also pay for costs as a business because essentially GP surgery is primary care. I'm not finished. I haven't asked the question. I'm just breathing the points. Then I'll ask the questions. Then the Councillor can reply. How much? Just one or two minutes. How much longer is it going to take? One minutes. One minute. We would be glad to have the questions. Okay. It's made concern for the new recruitment for the local GP's coming to our borough to work and stay. Is there accommodation is too high, rent is too high and there is no parking space for them to come to our borough and this is why we make a recommendation to council to look into the make accommodations and find a policies or find a way to provide a parking space for new recruit GP's. I know it's because my question is that Mayor has agreed to increase the capacity of the parking. We know that there is a demand for the face-to-face GP appointment. Our resident and doctor identified parking as a significant, significant issues for their recruitment. Can the community agree to support the support and review recommendation using parking support provision help our partners primary care to improve their recruitment retention of the GP's ultimately help and support our residents. So I'm request cabinet member please reconsider this one again and find the way to support the parking for the new GP recruitment. Thank you. This is my question. All right. Do you have anything to say on that? Thank you. As I said we've already reviewed this and we don't feel that essential need at this stage occurs but as they're already doctor base and everything and within the planning decision-making process with housing estates and public realm we are designating specific designated doctor base. We can maybe review how many doctor base we have in terms of volume and so on and so forth but adding additional doctor and doctor student, doctor permits I don't think it's practical or feasible at this stage. Thank you for the clarity. I have to say a few things on this. This parking is like there is available for GP's but the cost is too high. So we want this cost to reduce so that GP's can apply for the parking permit. Yeah. Lead member is taking a note of that and we can do one to make a quick comment on that. That's all right. So we've said we'll review certain aspects of it going forward but we're not going to introduce further sort of GP-only permits or trainee doctor permits and so on so forth but we'll look at the debase and potentially we'll get officers to consider the cost but just also understand that GP surgeries are businesses as well and within their business structure the average GP salary is a lot more than a director in this council. A few years back I remember an average GP salary and I'm not saying the level of work they do is not great it is great but an average GP salary I think some years ago was around 130,000 pounds. That's the individual GP salary but in terms of the business the primary care business the surgery they've run that's also a business that is works directly for public health and the commission on the number of patients they have and so on and so forth. So as a business they would need to pay you know we're not talking about hundreds of thousands of pounds or tens of thousands of pounds we're talking about a few hundred pounds for a permit. I'm not sure on the exact price but so that's in relation to the permits and in relation to the car-free developments and so on so forth I suppose that's a planning matter which is away from this particular department but we can also look at having GP specific base within car-free developments within planning and that's something I can take to planning offices with my substantive portfolio. Thank you. So this is what we're asking is that because GP do make a home visit as well so if you yeah they do if you provide a way just outside the GP surgery is not what we're asking we're asking the way that they can you when the home visit GP's go go to home visit they can use that base residential bay as well so if it is a residential bay like all the residents get it the GP get a permit for residential bay they can go anywhere in Toronto do their home yeah they want to pay but they don't want to pay can I translate they want to pay yeah there's normal rate for the resident permit they want to pay. I think your thank you your message your question is been noted understood received well received and we have received an answer from the fleet member as well but we can take it further should this should you press to do that well thank you sir I would say this meeting I'm conscious I said that was the last question from Councillor Conne but I missed there is apparently a follow-up question from Halima and I would allow Halima to do the follow-up question and I'm sorry Councillor I cannot it I commented to your question because very important each I.G. please it's very quick all right thank you chair thank you my sorry apologies it is following on from what my colleague asked here so around the 10 permits I know you said that there was a lot of abuse so what will happen in a I know you you also mentioned it's dealt with case-by-case so if one was to change their vehicle how soon and how would that be actioned upon because that facility is no longer there is that correct so how would that be that is correct yeah we we we don't offer a reactive service in that in that respect have been a ticket then not necessarily as I say we will look at it on a case-by-case basis so you you can we'll ensure that people can via the context in that get in touch with some okay if you allow me to finish okay that's fine it's okay we've got the answer Halima is going to put it in writing sir yeah so we'll when we get this in writing we'll give a written response to you Halima as well so we can have all the clarifications put in correct it's for the residents it's not for individuals who you want to put pull people aside and have the conversation it it affects every resident so it shouldn't just be that because I've got a disabled child or a disabled so please let's have a bit of transparency here sure thank you okay absolutely yep sorry thank you chair yes regarding e charging points is it just especially for e charging this base will be allocated as you said earlier because from my experience some base which are residential base they are also being used as e points so someone leaves it and there's a loss of a space in between so so do you clear that thank you each charging base it's a combination so those who are which are lamppost e charging they'll be on base where anybody can park those who are sort of rapid charges and very specific designated you'll see ev written on them near the charging points as well so it's a mixture it's a mixed economy so we can't designate every single so if we suddenly took out two thousand parking spaces from circulation then other residents would also be fuming that if there isn't that volume of electric vehicles while all these empty bays being left empty for so it's a mixed economy okay with that I conclude this item and thank you for joining us and our next item is market challenge session report is a report from our consular Malik then we have pre-decision scrutiny question and action log so officers and lead member lead members you are not no longer required to continue in this meeting thank you our final substantive item this evening is to agree on the market's challenge session report as members will be aware this was a review chair by consular after Malik our scrutiny lead for environment and community safety I would like to begin by asking consular Malik to introduce his report and then I will open up to member members comments consular Malik thank you job I am pleased to bring this report to the community it is key action there can be is important market and support for the teachers the report cover key issue like tajas space toilet was crime and market and tating young people about the marking taking thank you to all member and officer for supporting on this I do like to invite our community and ask the community to agree this report thank you thank you consular Malik I was also part of this review and I echo your comments I know members and it took several site visits and engaged with many traders to hear their lived experiences and ensure we developed a robust evidence base to support our recommendations before we agree on the report do members have any comments they would like to make on the report and in an event our members happy to agree the report yeah consular man thank you chair for your opportunity thank you for your presentation I also visited with mr Malik various sites especially the heck need to comparison with the time that's one of the thing is I really liked about what the how the heck is done they a market the market traders is the half they create is each one every one of them are identical and they're more easy to control the all units so are we my recommendations will follow the step where it's already been done in technique and they've been very successful for last three years where that each market traders get their specific area and it's actually same so from Australia look nice and everyone is like the same same is also that's my recommendation when I saw it visited so I'm not sure the money mr Malik has put that in his report but I echo that with that way would it like a special vegetable would look a lot more nice and neat as well thank you thank you uh consular owner will make sure that reflects your comment reflects in the final report anybody else to say consular punches um so I wasn't able to join the session or the visits and I'm really sorry for that I really wanted to join at least one of those things and I like I welcome the report as far as it goes so I think what it's trying to do is raise some specifics but also to anticipate like wider structural changes that need to happen so there was actually a strategy and a markets improvement plan which was agreed just prior to the election in 2022 and then below that there's I think there's 10 separate plans for each of the individual main markets that are available as well and I think one of the things that would be really useful as a response to this would be to get an update on where those individual market plans are like what progress has been happened with any of the specific kind of tangible things that were proposed so the other thing that I think I wanted to flag up in this and I would encourage um new council amalek but also new chair when you present this at the cabinet is that it's been said to us before that the street trading account has to balance that that money is only there for to be spent on markets and I agree with that 100% but it's also been said to us that the only money that can ever be spent on markets comes through traders um fees pitch fees and I don't believe that that's the case I think that the council is at liberty if it chooses to do if it chooses to make markets like ramen road in the ward I represent a priority it can choose to find a way to um to subsidize activity in the market after all that's what the government did during the time of covid when pitch fees were um sort of subsidized completely I think and so I think you know this this authority has many pressures on its budget but if we really believe in in markets as having a future into our hamlets and I do and I'm sure the administration and colleagues on the committee do then I think we have to consider we should not be considering this in this in the context of trying to make this a cost neutral exercise whether it's about the spot of the last strategy this scrutiny document or about what comes in future I think we can put a little bit of extra money in if we choose to thank you council of francis that's very very useful comment and I will make sure that your comments are reflected in the report thank you now uh understand what else has got any other comments I'd like to move on to the next item which is customer stack customer stack first of all before I move then I have to agree lead member on to say something yes uh thank you chair just uh firstly um I want to thank councilor malik for this report um I was also present at the six march meeting what I want to say um as you know we have some fantastic markets uh within our borough we want to help and we know the important static plays within the local economy the recommendations that you've given uh we'll take this forward we'll have a look at it and see how we can improve on this going forward so thank you very much for this report and we will actually take a look into this and going forward thank you thank you let's remember so our members happy to agree the report subject to any changes highlighted yeah okay happy thank you next item is pre-decision scrutiny of cabinet papers we haven't received uh I've been asked almost have we received any no uh so if not are there any points members want me to take or raise at the cabinet in regards to the reports for consideration on Wednesday at the cabinet basically it's just points if there are any points to raise if not then there is no comment then let's move to next item which is action log uh I believe councilor Francis wanted to say something about action log too um thank you for the record thank you to officers for bringing the action log um back um and there is a there is a change it's a minor change from the last time so there's additional information that's been provided about incentive payments to private landlords to um not to issue section 21 eviction notice against um their tenants so that we can prevent homelessness that way so the team has been really helpful in not just giving us the sum the total sum paid but in now giving us the total number of landlords that uh the sorry the the total number of land landlords that have been um issued with a paint with an incentive payment but I was actually asking for the number of incentive payments that have actually been made and I'm not sure that this information is that so it's not a massive thing but if we could um if we could get that then it would be helpful thank you yeah thank you thanks for Francis for bringing that to our attention to be followed up just well have a sec can I also say like um so we've been given an assurance that we'll receive performance data in a number of areas including KPIs on leisure services both pre and post and also pre and post insulsing and also some uh maybe if we can come back to the data about parking appeals and cancellations as well I'd be grateful thank you good obviously taken note of that place and uh let's follow up uh the next opportunity oh if there is not a business then I'd like to just uh remind ourselves that this is our final meeting of the year so one year has gone past can I take this opportunity to thank all committee members for their work uh this year I really appreciate your hard work and support with neither business to discuss I call this meeting to your close thank you very much informally You

Good evening and welcome to tonight's overview and the committee meeting. My name is Councillor Ms. Thagharath and I will be chairing this meeting. First item this evening was going to be a spotlight on the mayor, unfortunately due to a bereavement, family bereavement, the mayor has given his apologies. We will aim to rearrange the spotlight subject to the variability or take this at our next scheduled ONS in May 2024. The mayor was to be supported by the chief executive for this item. As this item will now not be considered the chief executive senses apologies. Agenda therefore will focus on the progress of the LGA corporate PR challenge action plan. Understand plans for insourcing our leisure provision, hold a spotlight on parking and review of findings and recommendations from our markets challenge session. Before we proceed can I remind all that this meeting is being filmed for the council's website for public viewing those participating in the meeting will be included in the footage. Thomas do you have any apologies? Good evening chair. We have two apologies this evening. We have Councillor I'm a Councillor Conne. >> Thank you Thomas. Members declarations of interest. Thank you. Moving on to the minutes our meetings on 25th of March have been circulated. Can you confirm as the minutes are through an accurate reflection of our last meeting? Thank you. Before we move on to our substantive items we need to agree appointments of co-opted members of our subcommittees. Can I ask Thomas to please provide further details of this matter? Yes chair. As the report kind of mentions we have been pointing in the co-optie as you see from our committee we have two very good co-opties so we are hoping to finish that for the subcommittees as well. As over the scrutiny committee is the main committee and the scrutiny sub-report to you it's for you to note and agree. Thank you. Thank you Thomas. Our members happy to agree on the appointment of the position of parent-governor representative on the children and education scrutiny sub committee until April 2026. Approved. Our members happy to agree the appointment of Jessica to the position of health watch representative on the health and adults as scrutiny subcommittees until April 2026. Great. Thank you. That's my one. Our next item which is substantive item is LGA corporate peer review action plan which will focus on the progress of our LGA corporate peer review action plan. We have Robin Beatty acting director strategy and improvement in attendance to update us. The plan was published in December and the chief executive committed to ensure the plan came back to this committee to discuss how it is being delivered. I would like to thank Robin for attending and open up for your presentation. You have 10 minutes and then we will open up for questions. >> Thank you chair. I will be brief. As you have already pointed out the organization was subject to an LGA corporate peer challenge review in September 2023. They reported in December and published their plan in December. They published a report in December and that report made 18 core recommendations. It's these 18 core recommendations plus around about 70 other suggestions for improvement or recommendations of areas where we might wish to review what we are doing. That form the actions that have gone into the action plan which the council published on the same day that the LGA published their report. We did have potentially up to another three months in order to publish the report but the chief executive felt that it was very important for this organization to demonstrate quickly how important we took the recommendations and the suggestions of the LGA and how seriously we took them and how important it was for us to move on them as swiftly as possible. For this reason we published the action plan early. Now it's important to stress that the action plan itself is a live document. That means that it can be added to at any given point in time and as the document moves forward there will be elements of that plan that will change. All political groups and single representatives of the political parties have been briefed by the chief executive and all parties continue to be free to suggest additional content to the plan. The considerable amount of progress has been made in terms of the delivery of the actions in the plan to date. 39% of the total number of actions identified in the plan have now been completed and we are on track to have delivered 85% of the actions in the plan by August 2024. It's August that the LGA plan to return to visit the borough and to check on progress in terms of the actions and activities that we put in place to address their views and their concerns as set out in their report. It should be noted that whilst the council is moving forward this considerable body of work at pace, the object of the exercise really is to ensure that the organisation improves and to that end there may be occasions where in order to get a better result the target dates that we've got in the plan are moved back and the report gives an example of a situation where we have done that. That reflects, as I said earlier, the plan is in fact a live plan and the objective is ultimately to improve the nature of the organisation going forward. It's not a tick box exercise, it's not a race to get the action plan dealt with. What it is is a body of work that we need to get right and this sets out in an accountable way how we're seeking to actually achieve that. The table that's attached to the report outlines all of the individual actions that we're committed to to date. As I say to date because there may be additional actions that we bring forward and put in the plan as we go forward that address elements of the 18 core recommendations the green marked actions are the actions that we have completed and in the end column under progress update you have a brief update of the position that we're at in relation to implementing the actions that are listed under the column called actions. Thank you, Robin. Let me take this opportunity to welcome Councillor COVID Rahman, the member for housing and also Councillor for job skills and growth. I understand Councillor COVID Rahman is here to deputise for this item as well as other items. That's correct. Thank you, Council Member. Now I'm happy to open the floor up for questions. Thank you, Chair. Thanks, Mr Beattie, for coming along and presenting this. I was hoping the Mayor was going to be here but understandably he's not able to be here this evening. I was really hoping that in his absence the Chief Executive would be here and I'm not clear why the Chief Executive isn't here. My understanding is that this document would be owned by the Chief Executive. So I'm sorry if these questions feel quite tough to Mr Beattie as the divisional director but this isn't really a very satisfactory way of engaging, of this committee engaging with this. I've got a few questions here and if it's OK I'd like to give me the chance to take them one at a task and one at a time. So my first question is if we can have an explanation about what engagement there was between the OGA peer review finished completing its inspection in September and presenting that at the end of that week. What engagement was there with opposition Councillors or with scrutiny committee about the creation of this action plan before it was published in mid-December please. Over to you. Robin or Councillor Ahmed can take it if you so wish. May we respond? Yeah, please. Thank you. So in terms of this document the Chief Executive took the decision that it was important to demonstrate how serious we took the recommendations of the LGA by publishing an initial action plan early. It was published three months earlier than required and on the day the LGA published their report in late December it represented a comprehensive starting point with actions addressing every aspect of the LGA report not just the 18 core recommendation. The Chief Executive made himself available to brief the labour group in the end of January to explain the approach taken and answer detailed questions on the LGA report. It has been made clear at those briefings and during updates that the action plan is a live report and any suggestions for additional actions that support the recommendations can be brought forward by any Councillor for consideration. So essentially this isn't a dual and end all report and if Councillors feel or the committee feels that they need to have further input in this document, Councillors and the committee are welcome to put proposals forward. Thank you. So to interrupt you, Councillor Francis, do you mind if I take questions from somebody else? I will come back to you. I don't see how much as if I come back to you after speaking to another member, taking question from another member. If you didn't want me to do this, you should have said, when I said I'm going to do it this way, please allow me to put the questions that I think need to be asked. If you want us to ask all of our questions in one go, then you need to tell us that because this isn't a very effective way of us doing our business the way that you suggest them right now. Sorry. I'll take a question from you after coming, after having a question from another member. I don't see how it affects your questioning the style or skills. Are there related questions? Follow-up questions? Okay. Who is next from here? I'll come after. Thank you, Chair. So my question is, on the recommendation to develop a comprehensive long-term strategic vision, what mechanisms are in place to ensure meaningful engagement with the community in the development process? Thank you. Yes, Robin, I'll come to that. Yeah. The long-term strategic vision process has started, effectively the mayor is engaged with officers from strategy and improvement and transformation in terms of developing that. In doing so, it's drawing down on a lot of relevant consultation material that has been gained through the partnership review process. That will be a starting point. As it develops, there will be part of the process which reviews the extent to which elements of that vision have or have not already been consulted upon within a reasonable period of time. Under those circumstances, we will launch additional engagement activity to get wider input into that vision. In the draft stage, there will be a broader consultation supporting the dissemination of that draft to get people's input into that. Thank you. Next question from the side. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. Thank you to Robin and Councillor. What specific action has the Council taken to enhance its performance framework and better capture the impact of decision-making and recommendation that was made by the peer review recommendation number three, if you could give us some insight. Thank you. There's a series of conversations that are ongoing at the moment, looking at the way in which we capture our performance information, also the way in which we present it. The strategic plan is in the process of review and as part of that review process, we revisit the KPIs to make sure that they are properly aligned and effectively provide the sort of information that you as Councillors and members of Overland scrutiny would need in order to challenge progress in relation to the strategic plan objectives and priorities. There is a broader piece of work that's also going on around looking at the way in which performance is reviewed and judged within the organisation and we're looking at ways in which we can bring forward more contextual information for Councillors to consider performance in the round rather than just focusing on whether or not an individual key performance indicator has or hasn't been met and we think that would provide a much richer conversation and a much deeper understanding of the performance issues faced by the boroughs than we've currently got and that is a direction in which we're seeking to move and it's a sort of direction that the LJO was suggesting that we should move in terms of the report that they've written. Thank you. Sorry, one other thing but we're also looking at how we can reinforce members of the overview and scrutiny committee and other committees in terms of providing further training and support so you can analyse and scrutinise papers and documents better in order to challenge the administration and council policies. Okay, thank you. Councillor MUNNANIA, I'll go back to Councillor FRANCIS and also, I'd like to give every single member an opportunity to ask questions so if you have questions then please feel free. Okay, Councillor MUNNAN. Thank you, Chair. Good evening, everybody. Regarding the review of the Council's internal governance arrangement, what a specific measure has been taken to ensure clarity of reporting and accountability. You know, if you please, can you clarify a bit more on this from the peer review? Well, there's a range of activities again that align with the issues around internal governance. We've already touched on additional training and support that we're looking at giving to over scrutiny members and members more widely. And there are a range of initiatives that sit behind that which, some of which forms part of the action plan that we've specified here. The points that I were making earlier about revisiting the way in which we review and report performance also links into the issue of around governance. In more broader terms, I think governance is an issue that relates to a whole range of different aspects of the 18 core recommendations. And we're seeking to bring forward, as part of our response in relation to those 18 core recommendations, specific areas that deal with the whole issue of governance and accountability. And hopefully you can see that in terms of the actions that we've listed in the table. Again, we've made significant progress in relation to specific aspects of governance that were being prioritized by the LGA around the absence of annual governance statements and around issues specific to signing off of the accounts and a historic backlog of unsigned accounts. And again, it was made clear to us that that was something that we ought to prioritize as a key issue that is specific to organizational governance. So it's an all-embracing area and it's an area that the action plan covers off, I think, quite comprehensively in a range of ways. And we have prioritized some of the most important elements of governance in terms of the actions covered off by the plan. So you will see that there will be quite a number of the Greens that are specific to ensuring that we're improving the governance of this organisation and that we've already covered off and that we've already completed. So I'll just pick up on some of the areas where investment is being made around legal, around procurement, around HR, audit functions. So those who are involved with the audit committee will see it's a multi-layered approach around how finance is allocated departmentally as well as centrally as well with the core. And also most importantly reinforcing the organisational memory of the Council. So things don't get left behind when members of staff leave or move around. So we're creating these centralised systems so the organisation can function and there are no gaps. Okay, thank you very much. Next question from Councillor PRANCES. One question please at the time. I did try that last time. So in response to my last question, when I asked about the engagement with opposition Councillors or overview and scrutiny prior to publication of this document, I think in summary the answer was that there wasn't any despite us having made that offer. But there was a meeting as the lead member has said in January and so with some labour Councillors. So just wondered if officers or the lead member, maybe he knows, can say how this action plan has been amended since that conversation, since those discussions in January, to reflect the concerns that are the chief executive and he heard during that discussion. Thank you, Councillor PRANCES. Over to you, Councillor Rabin. Well, Councillor, I think we agreed at the meeting that there were a number of suggestions that were useful and that we would want to take forward. And we have approached the member of the labour group with an acknowledgement that that was something that we wanted to do and arrange an initial meeting particularly one of the suggestions that we brought forward as part of that discussion, I think was a group meeting of female Councillors across party with the chief executive to raise any concerns from a gender specific angle and also bring forward the lived experience of female Councillors for the chief executive and we're waiting for a response in relation to that invitation and for a date to be set. The offer, I think, at that meeting, I was there, that meeting was made that if you wanted to bring forward any specific suggestions for inclusion, the action plan, that that would be welcome and that would be considered and that's still the position. Okay, so just to be clear, there haven't been any changes to the actual action plan itself since the conversation at the end of January. Well, to be fair, nothing's come forward specifically from yourselves in Malaysia. There was quite a lot came forward in the course of the conversation, but none of that was taken up and led to any changes, not so far anyway. Is that right? It's not, I wouldn't say that that was an accurate reflection of where we are now. I mean, I think the invitation has been made from the chief executive to members of an individual member of your group and we're waiting for a response. I think when that engagement actually takes place, we can start to move with a broader agenda and certainly nothing, as I'm aware of, has come forward from your group in writing that proposes additional content to the plan. If it had, we would certainly happily engage with it and that remains a commitment I give to you now. Thank you. Can I take an expression from Councillor Sabina, please? Okay, thank you, Chair. So, like Councillor MARC Francis, I would have liked to see the chief executive here today because of the whole seriousness of this peer review and the challenges that we was brought up in the review and we know we had some valuable insights into the functioning of this Council and that is crucial that we address the areas that require attention. Just how seriously, I know we've seen the progress or we've got some data about we've done this much of completion or not, the fact that, yeah, we've had one meeting with the opposition, the fact that clearly in the peer review, it says that really to hear all voices in the Council, one meeting with the Labour group, I know you said that no one's come forward, but I haven't heard an invitation to a Pacific member of our group, so I'm not sure. And it would be really good to have, you know, not just a tick box exercise getting three more Councillors, actually getting voices across as well. I know you've had that meeting one off that we've had, which we've requested to get exact, but since September to nearly just over mid-April, it seems quite far off as well. It just shows the importance that we're giving to something like a review, such an important review, and, you know, we've got inspectors in now looking for the best value, inspector that I've been going on. It just kind of shows that how important that we are taking this review and how do we not just wait around to hear voices come, how do we actually take that approach, and, for example, if we've got one female Somalian lady, would you come to the question, please? And how seriously are we taking this approach to actually complete the progress or complete this review challenge that we've got? I know we've seen the breakdown, but it just seems that we're not doing enough. That's why I would have liked to see Chief Executive here today. Thank you. In terms of the administration, we're taking it very seriously, hence the report with the update on it and a time plan. Clearly noted, we will hear 85% of the target by August, leaving 15%. We are working towards that as well. So we're being transparent about it, we're being open about it, and we're categorically submitting both to the committee, and this is reviewed on a regular basis at MAB and at a cabinet. This is brought forward, so it's publicly done. There is nothing to hide away. In terms of specifics, Councillor, you mentioned areas, if you're a bit more specific about which areas you're talking about, we'll try to give you a more articulated answer. In terms of individual discussions with the Labor Group, I appreciate I wasn't there, but as an administration, if there are recommendations that come forward, we will most certainly have a look at it and consider that as an administration. Lastly, you mentioned best inspection value, inspectors regarding best value. Of course, we've been totally transparent and open with the investigators. They're in this room now, and they have a job to do and they'll do their job. If there are any further specifics you want to raise in relation to this report, we're more than happy to address those issues. If later on you want to provide written statements, but I think Robin's clearly stated that no formal suggestions have been given by a political party, an opposition political party. I think the overview of this scrutiny committee is to scrutinise the policies there or specific issues around the LGA peer review, and we're happy to address that. The discussion that we did, some of the discussion that we did put forward was about, you know, women's safety in the borough, and it would have been good, for example, opposition and current initiatives to have discussions or take voices across the, you know, different parties. In relation to women's safety, we've got a number of programs that we've initiated. The lead member for community safety is working on a new vote strategy, violence against girls and women. We've also initiated a women's commission as well. We're publicly as a council following NGA recommendations in order to recruit more councillors. On a personal level, in terms of aspire as the administration, we would like to see more women in our cabinet, and at the moment, I believe the mayor has put his hands forward twice to the party or parties with women within that, and they have declined to join the mayor's cabinet. Now that's individualised choices, we can't pressure anybody to do anything they don't want to do, but we have reached out from the first cabinet, and this is all evidence within full council meetings at the annual AGM. Right, next, who wants to ask next question? Councillor Cahn. Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much. Good evening. My question is, how does the council plan to ensure that its workforce strategy align with the long-term strategy conditions, particularly in terms of equipment and detentions of workforce development? Thank you. Well, there are specific actions in the action plan which are being pursued, but specific to that in terms of workforce to reflect the community development. Unfortunately, I'm not an HR expert, and I don't know the details of those particular work streams, but I could certainly undertake to get a written response to over in scrutiny in relation to the work that's being undertaken specifically in relation to that element of the action plan for you. So, if I can come in with that as well, Josh. So, myself, along with fellow Councillor members of the opposition set on various panels regarding appointment subcommittees, what I can say is to date we've appointed at senior level a very diverse range of people which cut across socio-economic levels, across gender, across ethnicity. If I give an example, we've appointed someone of Somali origin to director of finance the first in this council's history. We have officers who will present later on today at director level who come from the Bangladeshi community. Again, first in this council's history we have a corporate resources director who brings with a vast amount of skills and experience, and she also comes from a socio-economic background, a working class background, as well as other areas that may not be prudent for me to disclose in this meeting, but we can say these are all predicted characteristics that we value and we've said we will enforce. So, I think it's very important to understand that the council as an entity has started diversifying in a great way. And in terms of the workforce that reflects the community, this policy's been with this council for over or nearly around 20 years, yet those drastic changes. I have known individuals when I previously worked in the council from 2006 to 2010. Colleagues who were given excuses are you looked a bit nervous, you looked this, we weren't sure about your interview because of X, Y, and Z. These individuals have gone on to be directors in other local authorities and we saw that churn happen on a regular basis. So, one of the things we're looking to implement is how we can harness those employees who are in the council, who show potential, who have the capabilities by creating secondment opportunities and opportunities to step up. And again, you'll speak to one of those individuals who's currently stepping up later on in this meeting. There are others all across the board within the council that we are proactively looking to get them to step up and cover roles and give them those opportunities, creating atmosphere where they feel that they can achieve and accomplish by having mentors and so on and so forth. So, we are taking a proactive approach in that. Thank you, Councillor I'm going to tell you one to ask, please. Thank you. So, my next question is what changes have been made to the mayor's office since the action plan and has this led to better working with other parts of the council? Well, the mayor's office is subject to a review process at the moment and a structural review is in the process of being brought forward, which will reduce the cost and the size of the mayor's office. There's a commitment to reducing the mayor's office still further and mainstreaming functions that existed within the mayor's office into the broader organisation. So, going forward, the nature of the relationship between the mayor's office and the organisation, I would say, is being mainstreamed rather than a situation where you had a large body of people sitting within the mayor's office with elements, not throughout the mayor's office, but certainly in parts of the mayor's office that were duplicating some functionality in the broader organisation. And I think it's accepted across the piece that was leading to some confusion and to some delays. We have also introduced some new processes. So, for example, within CMT now, there is a regular check with corporate directors to see if there are any decisions that are being held up in the mayor's office, so that they're not moving forward as quickly as they would like. And that is addressed, any issues that raise a corporate management team in that respect is addressed directly by the head of the mayor's office. So, that is speeding up decision-making processes and reducing the instances where sometimes you get a bottleneck within the mayor's office. So, the issues that were identified within the LGA CPC action plan around the functionality of the mayor's office are being directly addressed and also the issues that they've identified around potential blocks to decision-making. Those are also being addressed and speeded up. And that process, as we go through the phases where the structure of the mayor's office is revised down, those blockages, I think, are going to be less and less a few and fewer. So, if I can also come in, the second part of that question was about working with officers and how that was materializing. I think in terms of design and structure, the meeting and appointment systems, we've reshaped that and we've redesigned it so that officers, as well as the mayor and cabinet members, have a shared view of things. Things can be discussed openly and directly with streamlined services and the most important thing is created a greater synergy between political ambition, council's delivery within legal frameworks. So, it's very important to understand those areas which have synced up together. So, we not only have just portfolio meetings, but we have away days and things like that where multi-departmental representatives will be present in order to streamline and identify where problems may occur or not occur and solutions that we can put forward in relation to those areas. So, as a council, overall, we're getting departments to talk more to each other. We're moving away from silo working. A prime example of this is if you look at adult health and well-being, so the hack department, if you look at housing, part of its mental health, but then they've also got budgets around home care and supporting homelessness and so on and so forth. So, one of the ways we've looked at how we can maximize that in streamlining services is putting the finance around hostels and things like that under housing. So, it's one person who's in charge of it. So, we don't make a sort of double funding of in certain areas which loses money in other areas. So, like that, we're getting all departments to talk to one another. And the other is in terms of the structure, finance is playing a key role where we've got individual finance representatives allocated within departments so that we can monitor more robustly overspends and underspends. So, these are some of the ways we're strengthening both governance and the synergy of the council working together along with the mayor's office. So, it's not just mayor's office and the council, but internally, the council's had a long history of silo working and one department doing things that the other department doesn't know about. So, we're trying to break away with that. Thank you very much, Council Member. I'm minded to take one more question on this item. I'm happy to take it from Councillor Francis. So, first of all, I'm really sorry I'm going to have to leave the meeting and join online for the next section, but I really appreciate you giving me a chance to ask this question in person, because this is such an important part of where this council is going wrong at the moment. So, we heard that earlier that apparently Labour Councillors need to make written representations to inform what goes into this action plan or to suggest changes to it. We need to put that in writing. I'm not clear whether the mayor, Aspire Councillors have also made their representations in writing for this action plan. So, maybe we can hear that. But my understanding of the local government act is that, unlike Whitehall, council officers work equally for all elected members across political parties. So, we just wondered if Mr Beatty can say whether he thinks that this action plan in any way reflects the views of opposition councillors or whether this action plan is really just an action plan which represents what the administration, what Aspire, the mayor and Aspire Councillors, believes need to be done to deal with the governance failings that the OGA identified. Well, the action plan effectively represents what the LGA suggested we should do. So, the approach that was taken to create the initial action plan which has been published was to take the suggestions, the recommendations that were in the main text of the report as well as the 18 core recommendations and turn them, just flip them into direct commitments into actions. So, where they suggested it might be useful if you looked at or you reviewed this, we turned that into a specific action. The council will commit to reviewing that. And that approach was undertaken effectively to populate that action plan. So, that action plan effectively is a direct commitment from this organisation to address every single recommendation or suggestion that they made in one form or another within the plan, within their report. Now, added to that I would say that and I would reiterate at no point has there been any barrier to any party coming forward and making representations for specific things to be included in the action plan, which we have said consistently, we were more than happy to receive and review. Now, the best way to do that, if you want that to be consistently addressed and understood, would be to put it in writing. Sorry, did the mayor put his representations about what he wanted to see? Did he send you the Chief Executive memo with all of the changes that he wanted to see included in this action plan? No, I've explained the process that we undertook in order to populate that action plan. That action plan reflects in a mirror fashion the recommendations and suggestions within the LGA report. The mayor was informed that that was the approach we were going to take in order to get the action plan published as swiftly as possible and the mayor was briefed as all the parties have been briefed on the reasons why the action plan looked the way that it does and what the specific actions were and how that related to the LGA action plan. So, in that respect, if you're suggesting that this was a part of a political conversation where aspire candidates brought or that all the aspire group brought forward their proposals for inclusion, that absolutely isn't what happened. What happened was technical exercise, a mechanistic exercise, if you will, whereby the LGA report was sifted for all of the specific recommendations and suggestions for improvement and that we turned those into direct commitments from this organisation, you say that we should do this, you say that it would be a good idea if we did that, we are making a specific action to ensure that we do that and we're putting that in our action plan. That was the process. It's not a closed process, that process is open now, it's a starting point, it made sure that as an organisation we covered off every single aspect of the LGA report and that from that point we could build on and that's what we're more than happy to do is to build on and we would expect there to be additional things going into that action plan over the next few months and you know as I said we welcome any suggestions that come forward from from any quarter for additional actions that could go into that action plan that address the 18 core recommendations that the LGA peer review team made. Can I just answer that? I think there is a perception that was put forward of Aspire Councillors being involved for actions forward. I think it's important to acknowledge that individual parties, caucus group of parties as well as individual Councillors can always have input into how or input with officers in relation to any issue they have. As a committee you can also have input into there but I think at the same time there has to be a distinction as this committee itself is made up of Aspire Councillors as well as Labour Councillors yet the committee report will be in the name of the committee. So you know we wear multiple hats depending on what we're representing so at full council we may be Aspire Councillors as the Aspire group but when I'm at audit committee I'm an audit committee member. If I'm representing the cabinet I'm a cabinet member who's representing the administration and like that this council has chosen an executive mayoral model so the mayor is the postholder of the executive mayor of this council be it whatever political party he may represent and it's Aspire prior to that it was Labour and so on and so forth but we can't just simply interwind these areas together because it's solely reflective of the specific committees and the groups that people sit on and it's not pandering to political ideology when you're sitting on those groups. You're representing those groups and I think we should respect one another to say you have the ability to represent those individual areas that you. Councillor I think we noted your message it's received thank you. Councillor Sabina I'm afraid I'm not able to accommodate your question on this item because we are already 15 minutes running over the scheduled time. So with this I'd like to thank you once again to Robin and Councillor for joining us tonight. The corporate peer review was a significant external review of our performance as a council and it helps us to reflect on what our priorities should be moving forward. It is encouraging to see many of the actions progressing. However, we note there is still more work to be delivered, scrutiny will continue to review the delivery of the plan as part of its work program next year and support the council to ensure it is meeting the recommendations set out by the LGA. Our next item focuses on the insourcing of leisure provision which is due to commence next month. Councillor Iqbalasen is on leave today as he completed the marathon yesterday. I would like to welcome Keith Townsend, insourcing leisure project director and Simon Jones head of leisure operations. You have up to 10 minutes to present and then I will open the floor for questions. Please make yourself comfortable. [inaudible] I'd like to invite Jawa Rali. Okay. Could you introduce yourself, please? Because I'm not familiar. Good evening, everyone. I'm Jawa Rali, the director of culture and leisure. Thank you. Thank you for all of you joining us and open for the presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. If we start off, the original decision was made in August 2022 in a report to Cabinet which had to look at recommissioning of leisure services and we were presented with an options appraisal. However, we didn't agree with the initial recommendations that was put on there by officers. There's a number of reasons as to why and we will present a paper to you, a presentation which will show the scope and the level was quite limited with the original sort of paper that was presented in Cabinet. We felt it could be far more articulated, it could have been championed more, it could have looked at more income generation and most importantly more access to our residents, particularly the most vulnerable residents and this is all on record. If you go back to the August 2022 Cabinet meeting, you will hear both the Mayor, myself and a number of my Cabinet colleagues speak about those areas. I want to pick up on a few areas in relation to this. As you can see with this new presentation, this modelling will show you that within a matter of three years, by year four, we will be on a positive income generation level, year on year. In addition to that, I would like you to focus within the presentation around health inequalities in tower hamlets and how the leisure services can support a better well-being for our residents in tower hamlets and how we can give a direct better offer for our residents in tower hamlets. Officers will go through details of how those health inequalities impact on individuals. You will also see that every single centre that was managed under the previous contract made a loss and it was a council that would have to bail them out on a range of money, including during COVID and so on and so forth. However, while all liabilities were held with the council, the profits were shared 50/50 with those who were managing the contracts. Now that didn't seem like a fair deal to me. You would also see how certain decision-making processes in how the facilities were run impacted on access of women in particular. An example is the mine and sport centre where the women were expected to go through the men's changing room in order to access changing rooms. Now while some may find that appropriate, a great number of those who were on multiple scales of vulnerability couldn't find it acceptable and wouldn't access service provisions, even if you offered it free to them. And this was one of our most modern sports centres that we paid for by this council. So I would like you to really harness and sort of appreciate that. The other thing is around investment and income generation. Again, we were quite critical of the report in relation to income generation and what this report will show you is these officers who are all quite new officers to this council and have actively worked on this and have got a wealth of experience between them in working for other local authorities where they've installed slalish services, have looked at how we can enhance our income generation with a wide range of areas which also works directly with our partner organisations such as Public Health, the NHS and it was only last week where we had the Adult Health and Wellbeing Board that they were commending the opportunities to work with this council and they would pay for it through various different forms. They would pay for it but how they can access services in order to support their patients and officers will go into detail about both areas. In terms of the new structure, while some may feel that it's in crisis, what I can assure you is that all but two centres have service managers and again going back to the previous agenda item we're creating this acting up opportunities where two assistant managers will act up in the roles of the centre manager roles. So again we have that side quite covered. Community benefits are let officers go into detail with those areas and in conclusion we think this is a mostly welcomed approach although there will be a slight gap of closing the centre for a week in order to sort out about paperwork, induction and various different corporate processes of the council. We think in time this will provide the best value for money for this council on a multiple range. If Jawa you want to add anything and our officers if you would like to add some more things please. Thank you Council Ahmed. I think we can all see from the buildings there's been a lot of issues with the GLO contract. The lack of investment the buildings aren't in the best of conditions and this insourcing project provides a huge opportunity to the borough residents. I'll let my colleagues go into that in more detail. I'll hand over to Keith. Great thank you. Good evening. I won't repeat the presentation that's in front of you but I'll bring out a few salient highlights I think that I'd like to leave you with this evening as I run through that. The first slide really focuses on the vision and I think it's worth recapping on the vision the be well vision which we think encompasses the vision for the new in-house service and the three components that sit underneath that and the health component that is really around how we can provide excellent quality and accessible leisure facilities in the borough for our residents that if you like that's the core offer but the added value the additionality that I just wanted to point out to committee tonight is around the wellness component and that's really about how we work alongside our public health colleagues looking at the health inequalities that we're aware of within the borough but also working alongside NHS and other health partners as well and then the third component is really around the play aspect which is really about how our sport and physical activity team can work with clubs and community organisations to somewhat a wider offer including with broader sports teams and schools because it isn't just about what the council can deliver it's that broader opportunity for our residents and we think alongside that the brand is also around how we can provide a better enhanced customer experience and I'll talk in a moment about some of the feedback that we've had from residents around their experiences under the current service provided by GLL. So moving on the original decision as Catherine Armoured has already explained I won't dwell too much on that but we think there is it you know that enormous opportunity to work through some of the barriers that customers have told us that all with the existing offer as it's run now so for example there were some concerns raised about the cleanliness of the centres around how effective the website was to navigate and use in order to book activities and the lack of women-only spaces and activities as Councillor Armoured alluded to we want to address those concerns raised to us by residents as quickly as we can and actually that better collaboration with services within Tower Hamlets is a genuine opportunity here to enhance the service significantly. The health inequalities there's an entire slide showing some of the the unique health inequality issues that Tower Hamlets has and we need to take a long-term view on this. This isn't an instant fix but we need to start now to go on a journey of improving that so under development is the sport and wellness strategy working alongside public health and wider partners to help us take a long-term view or how that can help us to address some of the health inequalities that we've talked about I will explain a little bit more. Fundamentally this is for us is around focusing on physical in inactivity and trying to work out what is the best way of supporting residents all residents to be more active more often because of the wider health and well-being benefits and that's the challenge for us now how to do that. The centre-by-centre information slide has given you some details of what facilities are available at each centre the sort of staffing levels that we're bringing on board but also the initial plan of action to improve the quality of the asset. We do recognise that over an extended period of time that we could have been investing more over the long-term and so we're looking to address that as quickly as possible and a program is under develop to immediately start to improve some of the assets and facilities. Some of the things behind the scenes that we don't see that help the reliability of the building around heating and ventilation and all those important things that keep an asset going so there's a detailed plan under development and ready to go as we take over the service. In terms of people and human resources and recruitment well we do recognise there are gaps in service there were vacancies that JLL were carrying in the service and we're looking to fill those. Some of you will be aware we held the jobs fair very recently which is a very successful day on a Saturday a couple of weeks ago where over 200 people expressed an interest in some of the opportunities that would potentially become available in terms of roles and responsibility. So we are literally starting on a recruitment campaign now which is going to be really really important so that's a permanent recruitment campaign and obviously targeting that to be local residents would be absolutely ideal and it looks as though there is a demand and an opportunity to do that. Some of the challenges we face we've got a number of contractual relationships that we need to work through and we're doing a major program of work to transfer contracts from JLL into the Council so there's a continuity of service. The transfer of staff is always the biggest challenge in one of these situations and just to reassure you the officer team worked in the background to ensure as many of the managers transfer with us at the point of which we were provided the information by JLL we would have a dozen vacancies out of 15 which would be an enormous risk to us. We have subsequently offered new roles and responsibilities to those senior managers and now we have a gap of two and that too we are very confident we will be able to act up others within the existing service to fill those gaps for us in the short term while we transfer colleagues over on the first of May so I believe we've managed that risk. The project there's a diagram in there just to give you some reassurance that there is a really solid governance arrangement for the program and it is genuinely a cross-cancel effort. There's a small core leisure team and a cross-cancel effort and I commend how that's been put together and it's working well in my professional opinion with support from HR and finance and IT and so on a real corporate effort there to make this work. The 10 year model that Councillor Ahmed refers to, I won't repeat it, it shows that we predict we're going into operating surplus in the fourth year of the model and I'll explain one or two points of how we're intending to do that in a moment. Councillor Ahmed has already mentioned that actually in recent years under GLL there were losses experienced by the service not helped by COVID but supported by some of those national government grants and the furlough scheme for example effectively supported and bailed out that service during that difficult period but that's in your pack. The new structure I think has been alluded to, we've built the new structure based on industry expertise that we have within tower hamlets now to build the right design that's fit for purpose but also providing an enhanced service for residents. We do recognise there is a long-term investment requirement and we will go through the Council's medium-term financial strategy process and develop those proposals in detail. A loss of investment is needed to bring up the standard of the assets over the next 10 years but the Council has already committed previously to a million pounds a year and forward looking a million pounds a year as well. We think that investment will need to grow and we'll go through the standard Council corporate process in order to bid for those additional funds required but a plan is in place for this financial year. The community benefits are just if I may chair just mention because it's broader than just the financial model and the sports centres. We think the enhanced customer experience is going to be really really important so it's a more pleasant experience. There's opportunities in terms of the local economy and local employment that I've talked about. We're looking at how we can maximise the local supply chain in order to support the leisure offer as well. We think the diverse reach that we can bring into this service and that really targeted specific offer targeting specific groups that we know are underrepresented in the service at the moment we think can provide additional benefits. So it's really around building that core offer that I talked about plus the targeted offer and the specialist health offer as well. Finally the commercial opportunities I think are really really strong and there are massive opportunities for how we develop the facilities. We already know that we're investing in some Georgia's leisure centre and that's the 30 million plus investment. Secondly is your core. Your core we believe is a real real opportunity. It's the home of British boxing the heritage value of that asset in its own right is really strong and we're investing in the spa facility as well. So a real opportunity to drive the strategic direction around events and activities at your core. The business model assumes a 23% growth in our revenue income over that period of time growing steadily and sensibly and we are confident that that is achievable. For example we know that you lose 12% of customers every period of time and we're looking to address that to the industry standard. I'll leave it there. Thank you very much very informative. Thank you. Before I open it up for the committee members to ask questions just to bring something to your knowledge unless it is already there. I have been approached by female residents who tells me that they are unable to benefit from the female only leisure services particularly the swimming pool because they find male lifeguards are present in the female only sessions. So that's something obviously not acceptable. So this is hopefully you are addressing this. Thank you. Members questions Councillor Mannan to start it. Thank you Chair. To the part major I've been taken to ensure that in sourcing the leisure service would not only meet financial objective but also lead the improved customer experience and resident satisfaction as outlined in the community benefits section. So because it's up I just want to see how you're going to explain the one that please. Thank you Councillor Mannan. So initially there will be an investment that needs to go in there but we're hoping by the fourth year we'll be making a surplus in relation to that. So we've explored some areas of it with the business as it's running and we've also looked at other commercial elements attached to it. And there's also a further element which is still at the scoping exercise which could potentially generate even more income particularly around the car parks and how we manage the car parks with EV chargers as well as looking at night time use of the centres and how we can maximise on things like that. So we've had a core approach and within that core approach we're looking at a 23 percent income generation sort of from a negative going into a positive and then a year and a year 23 percent income generation over that over a 10 year period. But within that there's also potential to increase that income generation further as well. In terms of a better offer I think officers have said that and this is in one of your slides we want to make it more accessible. Councillor Ahmed clearly stated that he's personally had testimonies from residents indicating that it wasn't accessible for their needs and again that's something that our officers have picked up and have honed in on. So we will have sort of female only sessions we'll ensure that there are female lifeguards there. And I think another opportunity that we may not have picked up on is the employment opportunity where there are the gaps in the service we're looking to recruit within the borough so that they can be involved in those sports services and Councillor why it is here whose role, cabinet role, covers employment and he can sort of speak would you like to say a few words around the employment fair and the level of interest we've had. Thank you Councillor Ahmed and also thank you to the officers for a really good brief. In regards to what Councillor Ahmed said I think we have a unique opportunity here to shape our facilities that we have within the Council and I think we've had the discussion with the officers and they're really fully on board in terms of again that falls under our strategy to tackle workforce to reflect the community. I think we are looking at in terms of where there's those gaps appear in terms of filling in those jobs as well as creating others such as you know in terms of apprenticeship roles etc and things like that that we're looking at and like an officer mentioned we had a really successful job fair about two weekends ago now huge amount of interest from residents and that was really really positive and also going back to what Councillor Ahmed said that has been also across the board in terms of residents coming to us members saying that in terms of certain services were not delivered under TLL because of the lack of the appropriate and the right sort of staffing so for example having a woman's own decision there's a lot more to it than just that you having to have the right sort of you know female lifeguards etc so I think we're like I said we're in a unique position where as a council we can we can meet and tackle some of these inequalities that we we have going forward. Female lifeguards we were hoping there's a very quick win to run a lifeguard course in May so this will be very very quickly so we're just talking to youth service at the moment and other partners about providing that so we'll get a cohort five to ten feet of female lifeguards straight away. I'm glad to hear this we're going to see the change soon it's not far hopefully it runs smoothly thank you yeah okay go ahead please. Sorry on the latest centers it's been reported by a lot of residents of last summer that when the human session was running made cleaners going into the human changing room to clean that when we hear from the resident that is not any standard acceptable so I echo what the chair was saying having a female guard on swimming at the same time we need to make sure the clean is when they have a human session the the woman cleaners or ladies cleaners are not not making this going to the woman changing room. Thank you thank you council of a month. Thank you. Can I take another question to to at a time just to save some time hopefully Councillor Choudhury. Thank you. Thank you chair and thank you officers for the report. You said it talked about health inequalities in tower hamlets so my first of all I welcome bringing the service in-house I always support you know the in-house services but just what I want to understand how will the in-house structure health reduce health disparities in tower hamlets and could you share some key features of the new structure that support this effort. Thank you. Yeah well one of the things we've identified is the stuff and the training and stuff so we've we've spent a lot of time talking to fitness instructors for instance and we've identified training courses which can upskill them so they're able to take some of the the new products and services which will be to improve the quality of alpha for local residents staff that's one of the things we've done. If I can also come in so I'm also a member of the adult health and well-being board so one of the other areas is to join up working around some children getting them more active around those with disabilities also working with primary care in terms of making referrals in so that they can get that level of exercise which will tackle things like obesity motivating them to access those facilities so we we're looking at various different asset service level agreements with both primary care various different NHS trusts London Hospital included and they are they want to be very proactive in working with us in order to create this they do spend money on it and so there's an element of both commercialization there which will generate income but at the same time there we will be supporting our residents and some of the most vulnerable residents who don't really have or haven't really had the motivation to you know use fitness centers or who may not feel that fitness centers were previously accessible for them. As a council we'll also be saving money on the other end so as you can understand you're a social worker so there are sort of mental health issues as well as other areas that impact on people's lives and and by linking up the services where where health can be promoted both mental and physical using our leisure services that could potentially create a saving on the other end of various different departments and that's what I was talking about before about not having silo working between directorates and departments but us fusing together and working inclusively as a whole council so these are some of the opportunities Councillor. It's just just to answer that council as well so I've met with different departments within the council so one of the meetings last week was with overcrowding so we met with those guys to see how we can in some of the services for those looks after children young carers we've met with the same groups or every different department within the council we've met we've been able to have that conversation with in advance. We also part of the management team we have somebody from public health who's joined the management team so we're making sure that we're kind of future-proofing that as we go. It's also in and around marketing and how we market and how we target groups so there's lots of work. Thank you. Do you want to answer the council on one hand question? Yes, yes Council on one hand it doesn't just go for lifeguard that was just an anecdotal example but it goes not to have male cleaners within the changing rooms while there's female only sessions but in general try to have a balanced staffing approach so that you know women getting changed don't suddenly see a man walk in there in order to change whatever so it's a systemic approach that we will be applying and officers here I'm sure will accept those conditions. Thank you Councilor Armin then officers on this are not for sure this would be a great relief huge relief for many of our users female users thank you when it's implemented. Next question from Jahad. Yeah I'll take two questions at a time now so next question from Jahad then from this side to Councilor Sabina if you are big thank you. Thank you Chair thank you guys for your presentation. I welcome as a former GLL membership holder I really do welcome the in-house approach but I am a bit concerned about be careful what you wish for as well because it's not been tried or tested as of yet but I do welcome it. I just wanted to understand your your communication strategy around the change or the the transfer over to the in-house teams what approach are you taking to make aware the community that this change is going to be implemented how it's going to improve how what's going to impact the current membership of users who currently probably hold annual membership what's the strategy on that. I recently well not recently I've been using new and facilities for a year because I just didn't like the services GLL we're providing to our hamlets and suddenly next day was GLL which was a big shock to me how that how that really happened without any columns so just wondering what your strategy of what's what your plan is to do that very think that's it thank you. I think although I can talk I think I want to give offices an opportunity to display the hard work that they have put into this and in terms of the research that's taken place in developing the strategy going forward so I'll give offices and also what I want to highlight to the committee is these are officers who have specialist experience in in sourcing in sort of overseeing big leisure projects in other local authorities and I think they need to put their accolades up front first just so they can get reassurance of the committee so great thanks for the question I'll start with the first comment you made about yet the care for what you wish for thing we've actually been learning from elsewhere so um there are two examples in London and that's London Borough's Southwark and London Borough of Lambeth of both insourced their leisure operation one from GLL one from GLL's competitor everyone active for different reasons and one thing that Simon and the team have done a lot of and I have experience of is working with those councils to fight to learn from what they did how they did it things that they would have done better and differently and that's been incorporated into the programme plan so we've actually learned from real examples in London in similarish sorts of circumstances and my professional background is working local government in London with responsibility for leisure and a broader set of service over the last 20 years and I can bring experience of of insourcing and outsourcing and bringing it all together hopefully that gives them reassurance but more importantly I was going to hand over to Simon just to talk about some of the communications work we've done with existing customers to ensure we retain them on time yeah communication has always got to be a challenge because it's based on the relationship with GLL and they have all the email addresses and all the content details for the customers so we we have sent comes out in terms of the the to the members to let them know that there's going to be a change and when that change is going to happen but again it's got to be a joint so we had we had to do our press to go to GLL and they would look at it and come backwards and forward so that's gone out to members there's been a pop-ups in terms of the facilities over the last three or four months we've been able to speak to staff as well so we've been able to give information to the staff and what was really interesting was when we first started to talk to about the vision and about the difference we'll make and about the communities the staff employed in those centers were so passionate about their customers about wanting to make a difference a lot of the questions we come about which is fantastic place to start and we've some of the feedback which has come back in terms of their decision not to remain with GLL and come across is because the things that they're hearing about what the future will look like and they want to go on this journey with us from from next week we'll be able to kind of ramp ramp those communication plans up and start to really really build that what we are aware of that each center is completely unique each center is different completely different in terms of the memberships they'll go from a membership which is which is just for one site where the we streamlined 136 different types of memberships which GLL have so we've got a new website we've got a new app so it'll be a lot easier for members to and clearer to be able to join that so that's part of the communications which we'll be going out next week personally I've worked in local government done this the opposite way around so I've gone from working for the local authority to work if everyone active very similar to GLL and I saw the immediate differences as as a leisure services we did some incredible work with the community with the youth service reducing crime those health inequalities which have been talked about what we weren't particularly very good as an industry was actually being able to kind of reference that and be able to kind of showcase those technologies moved on lots since those and as part of the new leisure management system we've bought in a piece of software called for global which has been developed by Sheffield Hallam and what this software is able to do if we were to save commission services to address health inequalities it would actually give you a return on investment for that so it's quite quite powerful and a bit of a game changer for the industry my most recent job was five years as CEO of Charity who's I was very similar to this where we had to be very commercially focused we had to generate income we had to make sure the customers coming through the best quality service they could get but at the same time we had to focus on what our objectives were in terms of the charity objectives working on those health inequalities and it was all about getting to that sweet spot which is now where I'm starting to talk to my team about and from next Wednesday well from this Wednesday for the first time we can speak to the managers of the centres and start to develop those business plans going forward so sorry just one other part of the question was around the comms as well just to assure members here that we will not only have general comms but we'll also have specialist comms in Somali and Bengali and other community languages in order to get people proactive and know about it the branding itself is the be well branding and that will play a pivotal role within the council's external and internal comms so we are having a very proactive and again another service joining up which is the comms team as well so no silo working here Thank you I have Halima Councillor Choudhury from this side Councillor Sabina Councillor Francis four questions at least to take and accommodate and in view of that your answers doesn't have to be elaborated some reversion would be fine thank you very much unless it is necessary thank you next question from Councillor Sabina thank you chair thank you for your response about officers speaking to other neighbouring barriers and obviously the lessons learned and you know moving on because in sourcing such a big department it will change as well in terms of the cost of in source there's been some independent review saying it's going to cost you know for example 2.1 million extra a year which are harmless because of this insourcing when doing the comparison to other barriers for example saver or ham gate did you guys manage to see the kind of insourcing cost there so we can have that comparative? Are you happy for me to take another question or are you on a straight answer? Yeah okay so Halima please thank you thank you so mine is the other cost where residents would want to know whether the prices will increase so a bit of information on that would be good thank you yeah it's over to you now thank you to answer both questions in terms of the in terms of the the prices no we're keeping we want to business continuity so everything is going to be lifted and shifted we're keeping the prices the same streamline the prices when I mentioned 136 legacy they're going to kind of burn out behind the scenes and then any new members coming through so the prices would be exactly the same what it gives us an opportunity to kind of review those ones once we're actually in and we're starting to work in terms of the the cost for the um so the and uh lums don't really need to come in there but a lot lumber yeah I mean what I was saying we I don't have their figures to hand I'm afraid so apologies council I don't have the other boroughs figures well I do know from speaking to my counterparts um that they were putting in subsidy um they were struggling with the service the service quality wasn't there so they needed to invest in the service so there was a similar profile to the cost that we've identified so in other words cost rose originally while they stabilized the service and then they started to generate more income in the latter years of the business model and that's exactly what's happened in those two particular boroughs so they invested in the short term in order to get the return back in the later years of their business model and build the stability into the service I think also want to add there is one other element in relation to the prices is that's on the one side of it but the other side is what we call the offer so for example free swimming for all women over the age of 16 free swimming for men over uh I think it's 50 uh 55 sorry 55 you're sharp okay yeah so so so the council as an entity will also create various platforms where those services can be accessed by a wider range of people and again I spoke about earlier on about saying about those with sort of hard to reach groups and so on so forth so we'll also alongside the commercialization and memberships and everything there'll be a better offer for a wider range of people both targeted as well as uh sort of um those who have specialist needs as well thank you next question from uh councilor Francis online thank you chair thank you to um officers and the lead member for the presentation um so I have a couple of questions really about the metrics by which this would be measured uh like councilor chargey council mamma chargey I agree that this might well be a good thing but um that experience is a bit mixed about bringing things in house or even about absolute syndrome as well so my questions are um first of all how many members of staff should be working within our sports centers at the moment and how many have been um chupied over from gll to uh to roles in the new laser service as things stand um can secondly and can you explain the reason why the centers are going to be closed for a week at the beginning of may um and then finally um uh you might not be able to do this tonight but could you provide the committee with details of all the key performance indicators that we use to oversee the performance of insourcing leisure services and uh kpi data from the previous years when it's been run by gll please i thank you councilor francis uh next question from councilor chargey sorry uh thank you can you hear me yes thank you to the uh council members and officers thank you very much um as a chair of uh scrutiny chair on education families and children i'm grateful to the mayor and uh the councilors for taking uh well the initiative that we raised from day one access to sports facilities for girls and women especially uh and the young generations it's a very young borough we have a entire hamlet so i'm grateful for that uh the timing could you have any timings the sessions will be run especially for the ladies and the girls and the men who are over 55 uh which would be nice thank you you know so um in terms of the kpi's of course we'll be happy to present that at scrutiny and if there are further information scrutiny needs uh as a department we we will be very very happy to do that um i will let the officers answer the questions around the specifics uh that's a level that they will deal with um and also in relation to the program that will be run officers can deal with that as well fine in terms of the the transferring numbers um approximately it's 220 people although that is split with a a large component of 60 part-time employees working on various uh as in various roles around fitness classes and so on so it's a it's a bit of a mixed bag approach but that gives you the indication um and broadly speaking the numbers transferring when we got the final list two and a half three weeks ago uh matched the number of posts that were supplied to us by gll pre christmas um but we are we do recognize there are going to be some vacancies because what information we know today isn't going to be necessarily exactly the same who transfer people will be be leaving moving on to different jobs they'll choose not to transfer on the final day but that gives an indication we don't think the gaps are significant but there are some gaps um and i'll hand over to uh Simon who can give you an indication of what we're doing in the close week yeah the joint immobilization week there's a new leisure management system which staff need to be introduced to so we've already had six members of the GLL staff who have been allowed to come across and we'll train the trainers so they they've been trained ready to train other staff there's also the corporate induction process to go through um we have a new um call center as well which we've introduced there's training for sales um there's the distribution of uniform there's a cleaning of the building we've got new signage going in we need to test the barrier systems there's a whole host of things which need to happen during that first week what we have done any any bookings which were made previously for children's birthday parties or one off school's athletics events we've incorporated that into the transition week as well to make sure that that's fine um and is covered off um that was the question in and around if we just the one of the other questions is in and around the um the free swimming so the the free swimming program will be starting in June and July um the sessions for those swimming um will be published on the website from the first of May so it'll be able to access how you can access those sessions but it's not just about the free swimming it's also about breaking down some of the barriers so it may be swim clinics swimming lessons it may be child care it may be um training up some youth female lifeguards whatever it may be so it's it's about a whole host of things which happen about on the scenes as well as marketing because we want we'll be able what we want to be able to do is target people who currently don't don't swim or don't swim very often and it may be family swimming sessions so yeah so there's a whole host of things which are developing but um this is going to be in conjunction with the general managers and the management teams of each site who would yet to have that first meeting with so um that's going to be happening next week but it will be on the website from the from the first of May. Okay thank you. Just a follow up from Councillor Choji and then I'm minded to take the last question and decide them from Councillor Munnan unless somebody wants to really ask something. Thank you. We need to move on thank you. Thank you Chair. Sorry I forgot to add something earlier. The booking system with the booking system change because I've always lived in the borough all my life and it's very hard to find gaps in the booking system itself. Corporate companies that are here on our doorstep can reward and the city of London they sort of book it year in year out and there's no gap for people who live in the borough to access those facilities and I'm grateful it's it's coming in house that is one of the reasons I've used GLL facilities for a number of years and it's it's it's beggars belief how corporate get access to booking year in year out and we just get left out in between. Thank you. Yeah this will be part of the review process once we've once we've got the keys and we're actually in there next week we're bringing all the programming across and then there's an opportunity to have a look at some of those areas protected hours as well how those other memberships will now we communicate so that will be from next week. If you can just highlight the booking system the new one that we've bought it's a simplified more so. Yeah okay so the news it's an industry one which is GLL currently over their own booking system in place we've bought one called Gladstone which is an industry and we've bought their latest version of that so there will be a requirement for a transition so we've taken the data we're going to transfer that into the new membership card system. We will gather more data in terms of the membership so we'll have more understanding of the users and how we communicate with the users. And I think just to say in terms of play previously GLL as a business wanted to maximize their peak time get the you know the corporates in with the service coming in house this is where as part of the vision we've got a play agenda bringing clubs and local groups giving them the opportunity to have access to the peak time slots a lot of the times clubs can't develop their their games their teams and competitive plays reduced because they don't have access to those core hours so those are things that we'll be reviewing. Okay thank you. Just the final point is the system itself should be easier to use much more straightforward easier to navigate and the app is easier to navigate residents told us that navigating the website in the system is quite difficult previously. Sorry officer just sorry just one more thing I missed out sorry those sessions that will be run free obviously for the ladies and the girls and the men over 55 is it would they be able to book as groups or individual or is it first come first serve on the day? Thank you Chair sorry. So those sessions will be individual sessions initially but we want to look at there may be a need for swim clinics or swimming lessons as well so we will introduce those sessions so it's not just purely about being able to walk through because what we don't want is people who've currently swim just being able to swim for nothing it's about how we how we really target those people who don't access that at the moment. Okay Councilor Monann thank you. Thank you Chair I think it's my colleague already a question that there's an echo on both of us say on the as a parent's governor on the school and over the two years over the last four or five years we've been hearing from the school teachers had monsters that when they were doing youth officiality they have to go outside the bar to book it because the Becca was not given an access and as a work my colleague was saying copying agencies or companies are booking the slot and there is schools especially where children need to be access of facility they did not get access and that was the one of the things that my colleague mentioned that was my question to you so knowing from the as a school governor we know the experience with teacher was sitting over the over the years that facility was not very able to do it and which is I will do anything on this or to make sure that it's fair for everybody. I think that's the opportunity by bringing it in house we can join up the services it's not just about renting out the space for as much money as you can get we will work with schools with youth groups community groups to make sure that the residents get the priority rather than those who have the most money booking out the core slots so that's what we're looking to create as part of the insul service. All right okay great thank you officers this has been a very helpful update of the council's preparedness for leisure provision coming back in house it is encouraging to hear the plans for the future services however we must now make sure that these ambitions and the improvements we hope will come as a result are delivered that's the most important thing the committee will ensure that this remains on our work program next year so we can understand the impact this has on the performance once again thank you very much for that and I'm going to move to our next item which is parking spotlight and would like to invite just a second of words before that we know that parking spotlight is a key issue in the bar and a priority for everybody who lives works and travels in the bar we have received apologies from Councillor Kabirous saying lead member to a mix up with the invites and Councillor Hussain had a prior engagement which he could not get out of however Councillor Hussain has provided some written comments which are the offices of this committee have circulated for the members I have asked officers to ensure that this is addressed in the next municipal year I mean the engagement we are also joined by officers Michael Derby head of parking mobility and market services Ashraf Ali director of public realm and Vicky Allen strategy and policy officer who has I believe joined online if this is not the case yeah okay yeah right thank you for joining us and it's open for 10 minutes presentation and we take it from there Councillor Ahmed once again I'm deputizing so this presentation provides you an overview sorry the overview is crucial in committee with an update on parking services there are two aspects to this update one aspect of this presentation is about the refresh of the parking enforcement plan and the other aspect is about going to consult on new parking policy areas as you are aware overview and scrutiny committee held a review about parking in December 2021 since then we have implemented a new permit transfer scheme continued to work with car clubs to improve coverage reintroduced the four parent parking zones introduced one hour free parking for customers shopping at our markets and we have halfway sorry we are halfway through delivering an additional thousand parking spaces one of the recommendations was to update the parking enforcement plan this is now been started following on from this exercise officers have identified some additional parking options that could be brought in we are working up consultation for these which will bring to overview and scrutiny's input in due force I'll refer to Michael Sufian and Ashraf to present the or go over the parking plan yes over to thank you good evening so this as Councillor said there's two phases to this phase one is updating the parking enforcement plan which was last updated in 2008 so it's 15 years old so it's quite out of date now so the parking enforcement plan is essentially what we do and why we do it so we don't need to console on what we're already doing but we do need to go to consultation for new initiatives that we want to bring online and new policy areas so phase phase one which is a refresher the parking enforcement plan as I said it's produced 15 years ago we've now refreshed up to date so as I said it's what we do why we do it includes cancel strategic priorities bringing existing policies to get rid to one document include up to date reference for parking and enforcement legislation and national and regional and local policy and it also allows us to be flexible for regular updating as needed for example being reflective of wider transport strategy which is now due for review so the status at the moment is drafted no new content for decision-making is for internal sign-off that's here by CLT. So the drivers for the parking enforcement plan is reflected in the pipes so we create and maintain safe and efficient traffic flow within the borough through the borough and enhanced road user journey satisfaction contributed to cancels clean cleaner and greener future improving air quality and support in sustainable transport solutions. We aim to create fair and easily accessible curbside parking space to meet the needs of all road users maintain the best policy best possible parking infrastructure in terms of street parking public parking facilities deliver and deliver high quality customer focus procedures and policies that continually improve the service that we deliver. So phase two areas to explore result in benchmarking exercise for the PEP update new policy areas have been identified that fit in with the cancel strategic objectives and are expected to help reduce parking stress and promote effective parking mobility and enforcement activities in the borough. Areas fall into four broad categories simplifying the customer journey and providing excellent public services encouraging active travel and traffic management and congestion measures boosting businesses and efficiency and compliance. So consultation and engagement plans have been prepared surveys for the whole community workshop sessions for interested groups the paper and online so face-to-face sessions across a range of accessible venues including data hamlets consultation liney to last around 10 weeks. So the indicative timeline permission to consult will be June, July 24th. Consultation is circa 10 weeks as expected to finish around September. Consultation Analysis in report to riot by October cabinet decision December 24 and then the policy implementation January 25th. So how we manage conflicting priorities working in partnership providing concessionary travel and parking schemes to give residents and visitors with disabilities greater opportunity for independent travel designating bays according to need. So hierarchy of customers for example disabled drivers that they're at the top. So we look at personal disabled bays and other areas where we can support them. Areas around markets which we've already done. Increasing the EV parking and charging options in the borough we're working with highways to do that. Ongoing work to improve car clubs options in the borough working with highways to create a more cycle infrastructure improving our public realm for residents with highways and planning installing infrastructure to make roads safer for pedestrians and highways all affected in the pep. Ideas for consultation review of control parking zone times with possible extensions in certain areas that are required by the residents. So you're looking at me very strangely. So that may mean that just for example we don't expect that the whole of sea zone we're going to do Monday to Sunday all day after midnight. It may be just your street cancer or two streets within your zone that doesn't require that additional enforcement to support again supporting the residents when they're coming home fairly late at night and they can't get anywhere to park because other people are parking there that don't necessarily have a permit so it's that sort of thing. So creating an all-zone resident permit to park in another zone all day there'll be a small extra cost for that but some residents do require that rather than just the three hours. Increasing the number of shared use bays around markets and shops, introduction of an app to enable booking loading bays for large lawyers and deliveries so that's going to be supporting businesses and variable parking charges so peeking off people around the venues. That's it. Any questions? I have a new answer. Thank you very much for your presentation. Members, let's start from Councillor MUNAN. I could see and I'm coming to the next question. I'll be taking two questions at a time if that's okay with you. Okay, Councillor MUNANAN and then Halema, Councillor MUNANAN. Thank you for your presentation, we appreciate it. One of my questions is I'll leave close to the east of the borough. So is my colleague Mark Francis as well. We tend to be seeing quite a lot of these days that on a next day, coming in and parking and residents literally know where to park. They've been taking parking on double airlines as well and going away where emergency vehicle, very difficult to pass through. Bo East, probably north, they're close to the western Olympic park and seem to be somehow message going through and every time a big message happens, other western wind to give an event happen, surrounding area, if you have any thought about your contribution on this at all. Thank you. Yeah, so one of the things that we're doing to look at that is we've already got event day for Sundays when there's a match on a Sunday, but we're planning to introduce event days throughout the whole week, not just at the Olympic Stadium, but also at Victoria Park. So essentially we can enforce up to wherever time is needed to support, again, the residents around these two major events. So whilst we, at the moment, we do Monday to Saturday in what we call the B-4 area, Fish Island, and Sundays when there's a match, we're planning to extend that to any time there is an event, even if it's during the week and it goes up to eight o'clock at night, we're going to be looking at introducing that. Can I just add to the Councillor about the WRLA line and enforcement. We're also actually reviewing dangerous parking at junctions. You've mentioned about WRLA line, so where there are junctions where parking at different times, which cause significant safety for pedestrian crossing at juncture and also dangerous parking. So that would be reviewed, particularly around single-year lines at junctions to ensure there's WRLA line and there's no parking infringement and ensure the public safety is maintained. So that would be actually part of the review of the consultation with COVID. Thank you. Alima. Thank you, Chair. So looking at this presentation, there's an area that you've highlighted here around simplifying the customer journey and providing that excellent public service. In my experience, this has not been the case with the permits. There's recent when I say recent, I think in January, where I tried to get a visitor permit, where I had the visitor present, I wasn't able to do that apparently because it's expired. Having logged on, it looks like there's a new system in place, so yeah, that's not been the case. So if you can elaborate a bit more as to what's happening and if there's any improvements and why are residents not consulted on this, if there's going to be a change to the app or the actual system, then visitors should be informed. Thank you. Yes. So there's not a change. It's a new version of the same system. It's a version upgrade that was introduced. The difficulty we had is that some visitor vouchers in Thailand were lost and we couldn't foresee this and we worked hard in the background to reinstate that. The business around accounts, some accounts close after the 12 months, you have to consistently review the account. Again, the idea of this is to stop any fraudulent activity. So for example, a resident could move from one location to another one and still claim visitor vouchers for that location they've moved from. So the idea is for us to stop that entitlement or ensure that yearly we can see documentation to say that A, that person is still entitled to claim a resident permit, a visitor voucher, scratch card or whatever. In terms of with normal permits, like the resident permits, we would get a notification. Why is there not a notification for the yearly when it expires for the resident permits or is there one? Have I missed something? No, that's about your account. So that that's different from the permit. It's about your actual account expires after 12 months. So you need everyone, that's the same for everybody. They need to redo their account. Okay, so then residents need to be told that because clearly there's no communication. It's only when we've gone on there that we've encountered this problem. So if that's the case, then there needs to be more comms out there to tell people that every year your account will expire and you need to and so that it gives the people the opportunity to renew it and not have a visitor waiting, who then has to pay for parking. Alima, thank you. That feedback is very well received and I think we'll go back to officers to check that system out. I wasn't aware of it myself but you've raised it. So we need to pull out some kind of notification to make sure that accounts or whatever the technical terminologies may be. So I'm working with accounts and maintained for three years at a time rather than one to stop. What we do is, Councillor interjecting. And whilst we do that, I'll work also to ensure that notification is then sent out as well. Okay, that's great. Questions from this side? Councillor Robinson. Thank you very much. Thanks for the presentation. So there's lots in here that I really agree with. I think like it is, as you say, you've made a really clear and compelling case for why the enforcement plan needs to be refreshed. And there's lots in here that I also agree with in terms of increasing the penalties and things like that. So I just wanted to think about it. And I also agree with the point that's been made there. Myself had issues but also constituents raising similar issues about renewals and things like that as well as visitors. But I just wanted to ask about the performance data. So earlier this year, I think following the scrutiny session that we had on the budget about parking, I asked about appeals and about the representations that were received. And I got some really helpful data back. So thank you to Mr Darby for providing that. So it's kind of showed that before the pandemic, it seemed to be that cancellations when we received an appeal against it in turn and a ticket internally were running up between sort of 15 to 20% of them. But that that figures now dropped in the most recent year to be sort of near a 5%. It was slightly higher the year before. And it also shows that there's quite a consistent rate of over term when people go to the independent parking appeal adjudicator. So that's sort of between 40 to 50%. Sometimes they're a bit higher and those tickets will get overturned there. So my first question is, as the team done any analysis to try to understand it's own the kind of the fluctuations, I guess in its own cancellations of tickets. And if you have, if you could share that with us. And then secondly, what process is in place to make sure that we learn where the adjudicators overturned a ticket or whether there's any patterns in the tickets that are overturned. Thank you. Some of the cancellations, we've done a lot of work regarding the quality of the ticket. So for me, if I'm going to issue a ticket, I want to make sure I've got every single detail about a ticket, the better quality of the ticket, people are not going to appeal. They'll just simply look, yeah, I've just clearly made it say, I'll pay it. So firstly, we've done some good work around this and it's been noted that payments have gone up at the first opportunity. Having said that, people still have the right to take it to adjudication. I don't control clearly what happens at adjudication, but where possible, if we believe we're right, we will follow that process. My figures are 44% that get overturned at adjudication. When an adjudicator makes the decision, we get a report back as to that decision. That is then, if it's against us clearly, we look at what can be learned from that. That then is sent to the relevant department by enforcement, for example, so we can learn from that and we don't make the same mistake that will also be made in the beginning. To add to your second part of the question, Councillor, Francis, about the patterns of enforcement, don't have the data in backing, but from experience, there are a number of areas where there are patterns and adjudicators actually look invaluable. These are in terms of looking at traffic management order, the legal orders in place or not, and sometimes they go in favor of people who receive the FPN. What you notice is, the other is wear and tear of markings and if there are not enough adequate signage in place, so signage could be damaged or be removed. So these are constantly sort of maintenance issues that officers need to actually ensure that's there. So these are a couple of areas that we do have notice of patterns where we do get overturned by the adjudicators. Sorry, Councillor, can I just add, in terms of cancellations, we are doing a lot of work on looking at the details of the cancellations. We've identified that there's been a lot of food documents being provided to us in terms of blue badges and et cetera, which we're doing extensive work in terms of cancellations as well. So the team are focusing on looking at the cancellations in a bit more detail, along with adjudication cases, for us to basically lessons learned in terms of improving them. That's really helpful. Do you mind if I just a quick follow-up? So the figures that I have are for 2019-20. There were 7,330 representations. There were 1,312 cancellations, which is why I thought it was 15-20%. But then there's a spike in the number of representations that were received after 2020 or from 2020-21 onwards. It goes up to 24,000 cancellations, 3,200, and then there's a sort of a bit of a drop-off over the course of the next couple of years. So maybe, I guess, my question. So that's what was provided to me. But maybe I need to get more data over a longer period to see whether that's the kind of a consistent pattern. But it does seem to now be down at 5% of representations result in a cancellation. So if that sounds about right. If I can just say there was a significant increase in the number of per-charge notes is issued as well. But I mainly buy a CCTV. And that's since tape it off. Thank you. Next questions. Question from Councillor Malick, because Councillor Malick raised this hand a long time ago. So, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Do you have any plan for increase electric because charging point? Yes. I'm trying to keep it brief, but I think it's about 2,000 units we're looking at over what period of time? Over the next three years we're looking at 2,000 units and they're a mixture of fast and slow charges across the borough. Just to follow up on this point basically, I have a query. So how are you going to assess the areas where the points will be? I have the needs and provision basically. So firstly we look at the resident permits that are issued. And we can tell from that data how many are for electric vehicles, where the electric vehicles essentially reside. So we can look at hot spots in certain areas where needs and trends go. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Just on the whole redesign of the website, I used to recall there used to be a provision for temporary covers that used to cover when a vehicle has been changed. And especially the process of getting the registration and the proof of evidence and all that takes some time to through weeks. That cover was essential for a person, a resident, to have whilst the process of change takes place. That is no longer available. So it has changed. It's not an improvement, but well, improvement may be in the aesthetics of the website, but the service has dropped down a bit. Secondly, for blue badge holders, specifically that is essential because in a building, they might require two different vehicles. And now, especially in my building, where there's a disabled person who requires two vehicles sometimes, because one vehicle is not available, because parents need to change, they need to go to work, they need to take the car, when they're going to work. So they have the other vehicle available to take the disabled child, wherever they need to go. However, that because of the cover not being available, they can't do that anymore. Would you be able to comment on what happened there? Thank you. So the cover, the temporary permit cover, was being absolutely abused, absolutely so much so that we had no choice but to take that offer away. And this, of course, is impacted on people like myself or people that you know. And this is unfortunate. We are working with individuals on a case-by-case basis to try and accommodate how we can change things to support them. Initially, it's clear from our finest of people using the temporary cover for their friends and their relatives that are coming into town just to work and then away they go again. And this was essentially two weeks at a time, they were getting a temporary cover, whilst they still had cover from their permit on their own vehicle. So it is a bypass of the rules, we just simply have to take it away. But I am working with officers and we will work on a case-by-case basis to accommodate the genuine, yeah. If you'd like to contact me outside of this, we'll certainly do that. Councillor, before I come to you, there was Councillor Muhamma-Chaudry wanted to ask questions. So I'm coming next to you. Thank you, Chair. So first of all, I think I will make a statement. It's not a question, it's such a problem. And next, I'll come to my question. So increasing number of residential parking spaces are being converted into business parking and pay-as-you-go spots. Especially this is very, if you look around Whatcha Poliria, that's the case, that lots of parking spaces have been taken. So residents are very much struggling and I would say the council to look into that. That's my statement. My question, governments' statutory guidance says councils should not try to make a profit from parking tickets and should let drivers off with a verbal warning for minor parking offenses and take a common sense approach to parking enforcement. Authorities should not set targets for revenue or the number of penalty charge notice says they issue. Do you think London borough of Tarham let's follow the guidance? For let me just explain, we certainly do not set targets. And the way that this is done is on perhaps expectations of the officer's daily duty. So if I had 20 officers working one beat, we have to look at, well, the person that did the most, he had a good day. Take that away, I'm interested. Take away the one that had a bad day, I'm interested. What is the average that the resident got? And that is what we look at. So it's not a target, but it's an expectation. Now if that officer comes in, it just so might be five in that day, but he only comes in with one. Also, here he comes in with one. And if he comes in with one, the next time we then look at that way on, perhaps you're not doing something, right? You might need to sort of give you some assistance. That is how that's done. So no targets are given. Absolutely none. There's no expectations around you must bring in 10 tickets a day. I don't have that. That's the wrong way to work. And I know some private companies work that way. We certainly don't in this borough. We offer a quality service. So you will also know that the number of cancellations is fairly high. That is, if you've got, for example, you may have a ticket, you've just, you know, it's your first offense in some cases, not all. We will look at any mitigation. So if the officers decide it's worthy of mitigation, I can't, I'll give you an exam. So you're going into a shop. We don't see you going in that shop, but you're loading and unloading, but we don't see it. You'll get a ticket. But that doesn't say, doesn't mean to say that you can't make a representation on a pill. And then you simply say, well, here's my loading documentation. They will let you off. So we are more than fair, I believe. Given the number of cancellations and reasons, the cancellations that we don't. Just to add to the context, on the revenue that's just generated in the parking, it's within the Traffic Regulation Act, Section 55, where it gets reinvested back in the public realm and highways improvement. So although there are fines that's generated through the parking service, but it gets back invested on the resurfacing, the footwear improvement, the general improvement of the public, and there's a cost to the council, which is actually offset it that. Also just to add on, obviously part of the presentation mentioned, there are areas also we're looking at avenues where we could regenerate and improve wider enforcement. And one way is also we're looking at additional managing the fleet and construction traffic, which has been a huge impact on the asset to the council. And it has a detriment impact to the council, which unfortunately we don't actually use our council's money, but it actually should be really offset by the cost of the developer. So we are introducing construction management plan, which will actually generate avenue of income to actually put back into the public highway and improve the assets. So that's another new avenue area we're looking at, so we can actually improve enforcement and as well as the quality of our streets for residents of the borough. Thank you. Last question from Councillor Cahn. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Give me opportunity. Before I ask you the question, I would like to make a brief point, Chair, if you allow me. At the health and scrutiny, Chair, I commissioned a chair to review work for shortage across the healthcare sector in 2022-23. This was the time when there was also significant industrial action by doctors, nurse and others health professionals on cost of living. We know now from now, General Medical Council is published 12 April 2024. The thousands of doctors are living or considering living UK for abroad. We will have impact if nothing has been done. As the review, we have heard that qualified doctors cost of living had a significant influence on their shows of living work. We also heard the medical students are coming out of the access of more than 100,000 student debt, which they had to pay off. At the site visit, I looked at the local GP's cost of living with accommodations, parking, an app, time and time again. We know from the residents one of the key issue in them being able to access their GP's appointment. We also know that the GP's center are struggling to recruit new GP's for their practice. Our recommendation for the council is to make a tower homeless interactive borough so that we can influence GP's. GP's to live and work in our toilets. Just we are on the parking item. This is the parking question I'm going to ask. Tom has a recommendation on the council considering a accommodation and parking support help make Torram's more interactive borough to compete with the recruiting GP's to the virus. Just for clarification of the question, subject to the scrutiny and review, I think this was already discussed previously, which is to give GP's park permits or borough-wide parking permits for them to park everywhere in the borough, including GP students as well or medical students and so on and so forth. I believe officers have previously addressed this and have said that we can't really implement that and I know it was an outcome of one of the scrutiny meetings and GP's had requested this but GP's also have a process of doctor bays and everything set up all around the borough and as well as sort of various different other service provisions. In terms of the surgery, the surgery can also pay for costs as a business because essentially GP surgery is primary care. My question is not finished. I haven't asked the question, I'm just breathing the points. Then I'll ask the questions. Councillor can reply. How much? Just one or two minutes. How much longer is going to take one minute? We would be glad to have the questions. It's made concern for the new recruitment for the local GP's coming to our borough to work and stay. Is there accommodation? Is too high? Rent is too high and there is no parking space for them to come to our borough and this is why we make a recommendation to council to look into the recommendations and find a policies or find a way to provide a parking space for new recruit GP's. I know it's because my question is that Mayor has agreed to increase the capacity of the parking. We know that there is a demand for the face-to-face GP appointment. Our resident and doctors identify parking as a significant, significant issues for their recruitment. Can the cabinet agree to support the support and review recommendation using parking support provision help our partners primary care to improve their recruitment retention of the GP's ultimately help and support our residents. So I'm request cabinet member please reconsider this one again and find a way to support the parking for the new GP recruitment. Thank you. This is my question. All right do you have anything to say on that? Thank you. As I said we've already reviewed this and we don't feel that essential need at this stage occurs but as they're already doctor base and everything and within the planning decision-making process with housing estates and public realm we are designating specific designated doctor base. We can maybe review how many doctor base we have in terms of volume and so on and so forth but adding additional doctor and doctor student, doctor permits I don't think it's practical or feasible at this stage. Thank you for the clarity. I have to say a few things on this one. This parking is like there is available for GP's but the cost is too high so we want this cost to reduce so that GP's can apply for a parking permit. Yeah lead member is taken a note of that and we can do you want to make a quick comment on that or? That's all right so we've said we'll review certain aspects of it going forward but we're not going to introduce further sort of GP only permits or trainee doctor permits and so on so forth but we'll look at the debates and potentially we'll get officers to consider the cost but just also understand that GP surgeries are businesses as well and within their business structure the average GP salary is a lot more than a director in this council. A few years back I remember an average GP salary and I'm not saying the level of work they do is not great it is great but an average GP salary I think some years ago was around 130,000 pounds that's that's the individual GP salary but in terms of the business the primary care business the surgery they've run that's also a business that is works directly for public health and the commission on the number of patients they have and so on and so forth so as a business they would need to pay you know we're not talking about hundreds of thousands of pounds or tens of thousands of pounds we're talking about a few hundred pounds for a permit I'm not sure on the exact price but so that's in relation to the permits and in relation to the car-free developments and so on so forth I suppose that's a planning matter which is away from this particular department but we can also look at having GP specific base within car-free developments within planning and that's something I can take to planning officers with my substantive portfolio thank you so so so this is what we asking what what we asking is the because GP do make a home visit as well so if you yeah they do if you provide a way just outside the GP surgery is is not what we asking we asking them very that they can you when they go home visit GP's go go to home visit they can use that base residential bay as well so if it is a residential bay like all those residents get it the GP get a permit for residential bay they can go anywhere in Toronto but do their home yeah they want to pay but they don't want to pay can I transfer they want to pay yes normal rate for the resident permit they want to pay I think your thank you your message your question has been noted understood received well received and we have received an answer from the fleet member as well but we can take it further should this should you press to do that I would say this meeting I'm conscious I said that was the last question from Councillor CUN but I missed there is apparently a follow-up question from Halima and I would allow Halima to do the follow-up question and I'm sorry Councillor I cannot get a comment into your question very important each idea please oh it's very quick all right thank you chair thank you my sorry apologies it is following on from what my colleague asked here so around the temp permits I know you said that there was a lot of abuse so what will happen in a I know you you also mentioned it's dealt with case by case so if one was to change their vehicle how soon and how would that be actioned upon because that facility is no longer there is that correct so how would that be that is correct yeah we we we don't offer a reactive service in that in that respect in a ticket then not necessarily as I say we will look at it on a case by case basis so you you can we'll ensure that people can via the context in that get in touch with some get if you allow me to finish okay that's fine it's okay we've got a dancer jalima is going to put it in writing so we'll when we get this in writing we'll give a written response to you jalima as well so we can have all the clarifications put in correct it's for the residents it's not for individuals where you want to put people aside and have a conversation it affects every resident so it shouldn't just be that because I've got a disabled child or a disabled so please let's have a bit of transparency here sure okay thank you chair yes regarding e-charging points is it just especially for e-charging these bays will be allocated as you said earlier because from my experience some bays which are residential bays they are also being used as e-points so someone leaves it and there's a loss of a space in between so so the e-charging clear that thank you e-charging base it's a combination so those who are which are lamppost e-charging they'll be on bays where anybody can park those who are sort of rapid charges and very specific designated you'll see e-v written on them or near the charging points as well so it's a mixture it's a mixed economy so we can't designate every single so if we suddenly took out two thousand parking spaces from circulation then other residents would also be fuming that if there isn't that volume of electric vehicles while all these empty bays being left empty for so it's a mixed economy okay with that I conclude this item and thank you for joining us and our next item is market challenge session report is a report from our consider Malik then we have pre-decision scrutiny question and action log so officers and lead member lead members you are not no longer required to continue in this meeting thank you our final substantive item this evening is to agree on the market's challenge session report as members will be aware this was a review chaired by counselor through Malik our scrutiny lead for environment and community safety I would like to begin by asking counselor Malik to introduce his report and then I will open up to member members comments counselor Malik thank you chair I am pleased to bring this report to the community it is key action there can be his important market and support for the teachers the report cover key issue like teachers space toilet was crime and market and taking young people about the marking taking thank you to all member and officer for supporting on this I do like to invite our community and ask the community to agree this report thank you thank you counselor Malik I was also part of this review and I echo your comments I know members and it took several site visits and engaged with many traders to hear their lived experiences and ensure we developed a robust evidence base to support our recommendations before we agree on the report do members have any comments they would like to make on the report and in an event our members happy to agree the report yeah counselor Monan thank you chair I have a good opportunity thank you for your presentation I also visited with Mr Malik various sites especially the technique to comparison with the time that's one of the things is I really liked about what the how the heck is done they a market the market traders is the half they create is each one of them identical and they're more easy to control the all units so are we my recommendations are follow the step was already been done in technique and they've been very successful for last three years where that each market traders get their specific area and it's actually same so from Australia look nice and everyone's like the same same as well so that's my recommendation when I'm sorry visit it so I'm not sure the money Mr Malik has put that in his report but I echo that with that way would it like a special vegetable would look a lot more nice and neater as well thank you thank you counselor I will make sure that reflects your comment reflects in the final report anybody else to say counselor Francis so I wasn't able to join the session or the visits and I'm really sorry for that I really wanted to join at least one of those things and I like I welcome the report as far as it goes so I think what it's trying to do is raise some specifics but also to anticipate like wider structural changes that need to happen so there was actually a strategy and a markets improvement plan which was agreed just prior to the election in 2022 and then below that there's I think there's 10 separate plans for each of the individual main markets that are available as well and I think one of the things that would be really useful as a response to this would be to get an update on where those individual market plans are like what progress has been happened with any of the specific kind of tangible things that were proposed so the other thing that I think I wanted to flag up in this and I would encourage you counselor Malik but also you chair when you present this at the cabinet is that it's been said to us before that the street trading account has to balance that that money is only there for to be spent on markets and I agree with that 100% but it's also been said to us that the only money that can ever be spent on markets comes through traders fees pitch fees and I don't believe that that's the case I think that the council is at liberty if it chooses to do if it chooses to make markets like Roman Rodin and the ward I represent a priority it can choose to find a way to to subsidize activity in the market after all that's what the government did during the time of covid when pitch fees were subsidized completely I think and so I think you know this this authority has many pressures on its budget but if we really believe in in markets as having a future into our hamlets and I do and I'm sure the administration and colleagues on the committee do then I think we have to consider we should not be considering this in this in the context of trying to make this a cost neutral exercise whether it's about the spot of the last strategy this scrutiny document or about what comes in future I think we can put a little bit of extra money in if we choose to thank you council of Francis that's very very useful comment and I will make sure that your comments are reflected in the report thank you now unless anybody else has got any other comments I'd like to move on to the next item which is first of all before I move then I have to agree lead member on to say something yes thank you chair just firstly I want to thank Councillor Malik for this report I was also present at the 6 March meeting what I want to say as you know we have some fantastic markets within our borough we want to help and we know the important static plays within the local economy the recommendations that you've given will take this forward we'll have a look at it and see how we can improve on this going forward so thank you very much for this report and we would like to take a look into this and going forward thank you thank you let's remember so our members happy to agree the report subject to any changes highlighted yeah okay happy next item is pre-decision scrutiny of cabinet papers we haven't received I mean I asked almost have we received any no so if not are there any points members want me to take or raise at the cabinet in regards to the reports for consideration on Wednesday at the cabinet basically it's just points if there are any points to raise if not then there is no comment then let's move to next item which is action log I believe Councillor Francis wanted to say something about action log

• thank you for the record thank you to officers for bringing the action log back and there is a there is a change it's a minor change from the last time so there's additional information that's been provided about incentive payments to private landlords to not to issue section 21 eviction notice against their tenants so that we can prevent homelessness that way so the team has been really helpful in not just giving us the sum the total sum paid by now giving us the total number of landlords that sorry the yeah the total number of landlords that have been issued with an incentive payment but I was actually asking for the number of incentive payments that have actually been made and I'm not sure that this information is that so it's not a massive thing but if we could if we could get that then it would be helpful thank you
• thank you Councillor Francis for bringing that to our attention to be followed up - just voila have a sec cannot also say like so we've been given an assurance that we'll receive performance data in a number of areas including KPIs on leisure services both pre and post and also pre and post insulsing and also some maybe if we can come back to the data about parking appeals and cancellations as well I'd be grateful thank you
• could officers take a note of that please and let's follow up the next opportunity oh if there is not a business then I'd like to just remind ourselves that this is our final meeting of the year so one year has gone past can I take this opportunity to thank all committee members for their work this year I really appreciate your hard work and support with neither business to discuss I call this meeting to a close thank you very much