Transcript

And now we will start the meeting. Good evening and welcome to this evening's meeting. I'm Councillor Rebecca Spencer, Chair of the Committee. This meeting is being recorded and is being broadcast live. The recording of tonight's meeting may also be useful for quality and training purposes. While we hope everything runs smoothly, please be patient if we hit some challenges in this virtual environment. In the event that technical issues require the meeting to be adjourned and it can't be restarted within a few minutes, further updates will be posted on the Council's Democracy Truths account, which is @lbldemocracy. Can I just remind those joining us physically in the room that microphones are fitted since the ceiling. They're always on and can pick up what you say even if you whisper. Public speakers once called are to take a seat at the public speaker's table and once the three minutes are up should return to the gallery. Just some health and safety and housekeeping. The fire exits exit the room from either door and go up the stairs to street level. Toilets. There's an accessible toilet just outside the right hand side of the room. We have received no apologies this evening. Do any members have any declarations of pecuniary interest? Thank you. I'd also like to confirm I do not have any disclosable pecuniary interests in any matters to be considered this evening. So can I ask officers to introduce themselves and their titles when they're speaking for tonight's meeting? We're going to turn to the minutes from the last meeting. Do members agree that the minutes for the meeting on the 25th of July 2024 represent an accurate record of discussion? No, I don't agree. OK, it's a slight elaborate. I have had a bit of a discussion about this but there's two specific things I wanted to raise. One is I specifically remember the chief executive sitting down here. She promised we could have a copy of the housing improvement plan at a certain level that would be appropriate for us so we could be assured housing is on an effective improvement journey and the chief executive agreed with that. There's no mention in the minutes of that fact so it's not gone on the action list. And the second thing is about the board plan. I asked for the Tower Hamlets Environment Trust annual report to be on the annual. We need an annual report for that body because this committee are trustees and if you're trustees of any charity you always get an annual report. Nothing much has happened, you still get an annual report. So I asked for that and also asked for the disaster emergency planning annual report to be on there. I think it might be on this revised one now, I'm not quite sure, but I did talk about that in the minutes. I'll rephrase it in the minutes. Oh yes, here we've got it in January and that's been actioned but not the one about the housing improvement. Can we take that action to review the minutes from the last meeting? Members could approve them subject to those changes. Can we approve them subject to those changes? I think there was a few other points I raised. I know we've now got a new clerk who welcomed this committee. I think it's important that the comments some members make are recorded in some form. We spend quite a lot of time talking about quite a lot of the reports I recall and when we read the minutes it looks like we didn't say anything, which is not the case because we actually had to have extended time because we were talking so much. How difficult would it be to get the transcripts of the meeting? Does that happen with any other committees? Because I'm concerned that this does feel like a bit of a recurring theme where things get read in the meeting, they're not then meted or were promised items that then don't appear on a particular agenda. So I think it's getting to the point where we're going to have to ask for verbatim minutes that are being promised things that are being delivered. Is this something that happens on other committees? I don't think it does. It happens in the GLA I think. I've seen some committees where they write everything down. Please have to be very careful with your words. I see Paul Rock has his hand up. In relation to the housing improvement plan and the action arising from that, I wonder if you could clarify for me please exactly what you mean by the housing improvement plan. That's my question please. If you could clarify that then I'm certain I can arrange for it to be sent to you, but I couldn't having read the minutes and watched the audio and video recording back, which wasn't clear in that particular point unfortunately, but I couldn't work out which plan we were referring to. I think the point of this is that the request wasn't recorded in the minutes, not that it wasn't afterwards, is that correct? I don't understand why anybody's concerned about this. There is a housing improvement board of managers who sit on their report every, I don't know how often it is, and some cabinet members. So that's the board. They've got a plan that they're working to. It will be at different levels, and as we're a committee, I don't think we need to see the operational level. We need to see an appropriate level that can assure us that all the bits of housing that need improving are covered, because as councillors, we spend nearly all our time dealing with housing issues. So we just want to be assured that there have been, this committee, we don't look at automation matters, we need to be assured that these matters have been attended to. So we just need a certain level plan. There will be various levels of this plan. We don't need possibly detail or whatever senior management think appropriate. Chair, could I clarify again if I may please? Yes, you can. So thank you, councillor Meldrum. So when I ask what type of plan you're asking for, what I'm trying to understand is, is it that you're looking for a plan that the council has for improving housing services as a whole? Is it a plan, for example, to improve the quality of the housing? Is it a plan, is it the plan to build more homes across the borough? Or is it all three of those? I just, that's what I honestly couldn't understand, or what it was, so I could get you the right information. All in all, it's looking at improving the services. It meets. Right. That's fine. Now I understand. It's about operations, not about the rest of the stuff. So it may, of course, be linked into those. It's just to see how many different strands are being tackled at the same time in the housing area. I understand. So that plan is called the Housing Service Improvement and Transformation Programme. If you could, if you could record, if I perhaps ask that in the minutes, then that's what I'll make sure I get for you. Yes. So, Councillor Meldrum's right. She spoke to me about this yesterday, and I did take it up with AD Governance, who is across doing services now, and he's responded saying that he will raise with the team that the minutes should not be verbatim and that all contributions should be reflected accurately. So the point has landed. So subject to the amendments that we've agreed, can we agree on the next last, Councillor Meldrum? No, they've joined us online. I did see. Yeah, that's fine. I'm fine with it. Agreed. The agenda item 3 is the Work Programme and Action Monitoring Log. I invite Leoko Mobika, the Democratic Services Officer, to introduce the report. Hello and good evening. This is a standard report that usually comes to the corporate community. Firstly, I'd like to apologise that Appendix A of the Work Programme 2024-2025 was not included in this agenda. This has been circulated to the members this evening and it was published online. At this time, there are ten outstanding actions that will be completed, and this has been actively followed up with responses. Members will note that responses to some of the actions have been circulated since the agenda was published. This will be reflected in the report by Leoko and to the committee in November. Thank you. Now that we've had the report, do the committee have any questions they'd like to ask? Thank you, Chair. So the second item on the Work Programme, there's a spotlight item, the entity homes council tax report. Someone verify what's happened to that and why that's been struck. Childers, would you like to address that? Yeah, I'll try and address that. So I didn't know whether it was in this agenda, but I thought we were just going to go through the agenda items. So by the way, I'm going to try and address it. So with regards to the entity homes action plan, I understand that the report will go to cabinet, either on the corporate agenda or the early defender. So there is a draft report that has been prepared, but I understand that the normal process would be for it to be published as part of the cabinet and then it could come to corporate committee. Yes, I have been privy to the document. It wasn't staged, so I just approved to be able to share it with corporate committee. Thank you. Any further questions, Councillor Brahms? OK, I mean, we've been asking for this since, I think probably way back in February, but we've been told that it has to go to cabinet first, but then it's all through. Excuse me, I sound a little bit frustrated about that. This has been deferred even further for us as a committee to understand what, you know, what impact this has on the council's council tax revenue, what more the council could be doing in terms of collecting more council tax revenue, what more the council could be doing in terms of getting those homes back in, you know, occupation as well, although that is not in our gifts. So it is incredibly frustrating that this has been pushed back again and we were meant to have that as a spotlight item at this meeting. And that, Charles, do you have a comment? I think there was two parts to this query. One was on the outstanding log, which we were due to come here with, which I've shared today. So you have a small briefing and on the number of empty properties for the last four years, we can provide a regular update. Councillor Benjamin did also ask for an understanding on how many energy properties have been included for how long. And that's something that we have provided in the past. And again, that's something that we can update. Along with that, also, I understand you're inspired into the work programme that the Empty Homes Action Plan. As far as I understand, the Empty Homes Action Plan is something that we didn't have before. So it's something that's bringing everything together, our whole strategy. So as a result, it's a fairly new document and we just need it to go through the right process to be able to come through. I do appreciate that it is taking a very long time, but it doesn't mean that there's nothing being done in terms of bringing those properties back into use, especially the empty homes. But in terms of the document, it just needs to go through the usual process before we can bring it here. That's it. I think we must have a spotlight on this because it's actually more complex than I first thought. We've got approximately 4,000 empty properties that are known to council tax. It varies up and down. We're not talking about council tax, we're talking about homes across the borough. 63 of them have been empty for 10 years or more, where they incur a premium four times council tax. So clearly, that policy didn't seem to have a desired effect. So I think those are the kind of things we can discuss during the spotlight item. At that point in February, we wanted to know how many there were, but the other question was, how do we know? And the question is, we don't find them out, they come to us. So we're not looking out for these things. It's very interesting, because in my ward, there's a lot of private sector lines, doing a lot of attention to this kind of thing. It's very interesting. You see the council tax database does not always match up to the electoral register, does not match up to all kinds of things. So I think there's actually probably an opportunity to get some, not just us, I would have thought this might be enough to do some running in the database and stuff. This is important, not just here. We've got a housing crisis in the whole country. In terms of adding this to the, so adding the empty homes as a spotlight item, the next meeting is on the 28th of November. You will see that there's a number of quite meaty items on the agenda for November, including the statement of accounts. Pardon? It's said it burns. Unless they're the statement of accounts and treasury management performance. So my concern is that we might have quite a lot of stuff to get through in November, but I'm happy to add to that as a potential spotlight item. Although we already have on there, a TBC HRA action plan. What's it supposed to be today? Yeah. We're going to put that up, we'll add it to the forward plan. I'm assuming there'll be some questions that we can ask because the thing about us councillors is we're here on the ground, we're on the doorsteps, we're actually seeing what's happening. The senior managers, well I think the lettuces can keep you welcome. But if you are here, you're in the town hall. We're out and about, we're seeing this stuff and that's why it's important that we have some input for this process. Councillor Abrams. So just to add a little bit more on this, because I do appreciate the data that was sent through about the number of empty homes, but when this does come back, the report needs to be way more detailed than just giving us the total number. We need to have a breakdown ward by ward. How many homes are in each ward? And then it needs to be broken down into length of time these homes have been emptied, because that then impacts the level of council tax that can be claimed. So I did actually, just to mention this in the meeting, because there might be some people listening that might be interested in this, so last year I did put in a member's inquiry about this and got some interesting information. This was going back over the year now, but that detailed that there was 2,955 London Borough of Lambeth owned empty homes back then, but there was also 634 London Borough of Lambeth owned empty homes, which will also be paying some kind of council tax rate. But Jackie mentioned that there was properties that are empty for over 10 years. The ones that are non Lambeth owned, there was 246 that have been empty for 10 years. Lambeth owned homes, there was

1. So you know, this data is out there, but we need it put into a proper report that this committee scrutinise, because as Jackie has mentioned, we are living through a housing emergency. You know, all our casework as local councillors is housing. The number one piece of casework we get is always housing, unless we're doing the Stratton Wells low-traffic neighbourhood. It almost always is. The number one piece of casework is housing, and we as a committee need to understand how many empty homes there are, to see if we as a council do anything more to get those back into occupation. If we can't get them back into occupation, we need to know how we can either, you know. We've added this onto the, we've asked this to this as a spotlight item, which we'll include in the detail. A lot of these properties are owned by multi-billionaires. We requested this to be added to the agenda, thank you councillors. Any other comments on the, any other comments on this agenda item, Councillor Melton? Let me know who is writing this report, so that if we've got any suggestions, we could email them. I've been told it was enforcement team, then I'm told it's council tax team, then I'm told it's corporate policy. Who is actually writing this report? Can we ask for that as an answer? Or Chad, would you like to? Yeah, I can try and answer it. So, just to clarify, it's not the council tax team. I think in my briefing, what I did try and make clear, the council tax team don't go out there and try and identify, you know, another team. But with regards to this particular report, the Homes Action Plan, it is a document that's bringing everything together and it's actually been prepared by the strategy in Helmsford. Okay, good. It is a one-lambo issue. Yeah. Any other questions relating to the item, Councillor Byron? Yeah, looking at the laundry log on page 15, the second item there, which was where we asked for a copy of the Interim Strategic Director of Finance's report into this £170,000 procurement issue. So that's been going on for a few months. Yeah, we have an update of updates. Yeah, my understanding is that we are very close to having a final report on that. I don't know if Chad has an update. I probably need to bring Paul in, as far as I understand. So I haven't been part of that document, a sensitive document. And that there was just more bits that Duncan would send out changes to. But I just don't know at what stage it is. Paul might have been barking for that conversation. If you're happy for me to answer. Yeah, so I've spoken with Duncan. The report is there. It's the approach to redact the report makes the report unreadable and unworkable for members. It's not going to help you understand the issues. So his suggestion is that he meets separately with the Chair, I think, with you, Chair, and then the committee thereafter to go through the report in some detail outside the committee to give you that opportunity to understand the issues and be reassured that those issues have now been resolved etc. Because to do so in a public arena would far release too much information. So that's my understanding of the current situation. I've been helping Duncan put that report, final touches on that report, I should say. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yes, it's there. Can you share a specific timeline for this? Can I? Can I come in? Yeah, yeah, Councillor Adam. Thank you. I'm Councillor Adam from Rags Hill. Sorry, I've got child care issues. I couldn't come in in person. I don't understand what you said, Paul, about not understanding the information. Like, if it's an identity item that is meant to come to the corporate committee, to a public scrutiny committee, what is it that we cannot understand? Sorry, Councillor Adam. I don't mean to suggest that you wouldn't understand the report, but the report, if it's redacted, if all of the personal information that would need to be redacted for the report to go in the public domain through the published agenda, means that by the time you look at the report with all of the redacted information, the report doesn't even make any grammatical sense, let alone English, because there's so much that's been redacted that it doesn't make sense to read it as a reader. It doesn't matter who you are as a reader, if you redact too much information, it becomes almost impossible to draw from the redacted report what you need in order to determine and be reassured that the issues have been managed. So the purpose of having the report outside of the committee will mean that you will have access to all of the detail rather than a redacted version, which makes it difficult to understand. So is it ever going to come to the corporate committee for public scrutiny then? In an unredacted form, no, my understanding it wouldn't be able to. If we're not able to understand it and it is brought in a redacted form, how is the member of the public supposed to understand it? Can it not be presented in a way that's accessible to members of the public so they can understand it as well? So again, my understanding is that that's been attempted and that's what's been causing the delays, is that the corporate director has been working with outside Council, I believe, to produce a redacted version that would be publishable in the public domain. But it just doesn't make, by the time you've redacted the information, it didn't make sense. So we cannot publish information that would potentially cause legal implications for the Council in terms of individuals that may or may not have been involved in the incident. But why do members not get briefed? Like why do you have to come to corporate committee two months down the line, three months, and then get all this decision that it was thought is not good? Like all the explanation that you've given, which I accept, but why are we not? Because we come with the full intention or with the understanding that we will be given this report or will be briefed on it and then like, so far, every single item so far that we've done hasn't come to the committee and they're like months overdue. So it just, yeah, it is frustrating and it feels, yeah, I don't know. I completely understand it is frustrating. Unfortunately, I don't have any, I don't have any influence over this particular action. It's something that the corporate director Duncan will need to respond to perhaps outside of the committee for you. I can't add anything further, I'm sorry. Okay, I'm going to move on from this item and ask if anyone else has any further questions on the Work Programme and Action Monitor log. If there are no further questions, can we conclude the item three by noting the report and agreeing the Work Programme? Right, so we'll move on to the next item of business, which is agenda item four, so Lambeth compliance with the CIPFA financial management code. I invite Chadus Camberlatte, Director of Finance, to introduce the item. Thank you, Chair. I'm Rob Browning, the Acting Assistant Director of Corporate Finance, and I'll just give you a brief introduction to this report. So the financial management code was released by CIPFA for the child to finance the accountancy some years ago, and it requires local authorities to undertake a self assessment to a series of high level principles which is designed to kind of develop best practice in the local government and demonstrate financial sustainability. We undertook an assessment back in 2021, I think, some years ago as part of the 2023 budget setting process and recently we've been commissioned an external third party to review the ratings that we assigned ourselves as part of that exercise, just to give some assurance in terms of the conclusions that we reached as part of that exercise. So the review, like I say, it's fairly high level. There's several principles that are set out within the code. The appendices attached to this report, I think, are actually in the wrong order, but you should have in there the original exercise which was carried out a few years ago, from the advisor, the third party, who reviewed that exercise and their conclusions of the ratings we assigned ourselves. That's the order it should be in. There's several strengths which have been brought out of that as well as several opportunities for further development. I won't go into into detail what those are now, but to say that obviously off the back of this we'll be developing, when we started developing an action plan to address those areas where we obviously can improve and which will be flagged as part of this exercise. I'll leave it at that and hand it over to you for any questions. Thank you. Now that we have heard the report, members will now hear Galin Genoa's, apologies I pronounced your name incorrectly, representation item 4. If you'd like to introduce yourself, I believe you have three minutes to make a representation. Good evening, my name is Galinda Ghanivos, I am on the Residence Board at Chrissieham Gardens. I just want to highlight, I read through your report, the whole, the item around project management is not an amber, it should be gleaming, flaming red. There is a lack of project management in this organisation. I'll give you an example. And as it's happening to date, we are trying to get a TMO live, it is a project, a programme. It is now four years behind schedule. It has spent close to half a million pounds, delivered zero services. We have raised this issue with the Fiona Connolly in person at the beginning of the year, took us two months, three months ago meeting with her to say, look, you have, there's no plan, there's no timeline here. We are trying, we have produced detailed timelines, we need Lambeth input. But as long as there's no timeline, there is no coordinated action amongst the different departments. And this project is going to keep floating. There is also no governance structure. Hence, there is no way to escalate issues to get decisions made. So, and there's also no governance structure is not there to deal with any risks or issues. We raised all this. And this is a major issue that this is one, it's one project and I can probably guess there's going to be hundreds of others. For example, trying to get, you're talking about empty homes earlier. We have not been able to get an action plan out of the council about the refurbishment of the empty homes on Crescentham Gardens, that is itself a project. But this project management and tools is non-existent. If you do have any projects of Richard running in a appropriate qualified manner, I would be indeed very surprised. So I just want to highlight to this committee, this should be flaming red. And if you'd like to use as an example, please use the Crescentham Gardens TMO project to investigate what is actually happening in this organisation, because we're tired of this. And I must say, for the first time I've actually seen councillors also getting frustrated. Normally I've been on these calls for 10 years now. And we're still trying to get at this. So, thank you.
2. Thank you, Galinda. So now that we've heard the representation, I'm going to ask if they have any questions, but I first have a question I will follow up and follow up on the point around the amber ranking for the project management piece. Is it possible to get a bit more information as mentioned from the representation? Can we get a bit more detail on that?
3. So we might be able to provide some more detail in terms of the evidence that led to that original amber rating. But I think it's important to note that the third party review highlighted the amber rating. There was limited evidence to support that rating. So obviously it's flagged that there are some issues there in terms of project management to take forward.
4. Can I ask members if they have any other follow up questions? Councillor Bryan?
5. Yes. I think you kind of alluded to this point in your presentation. I was a bit confused by the appendices and I just wondered if you could clarify what Appendix B. So we seem to have Appendix B and then we've got one and two. Team one is the original assessment a few years ago. Appendix two is the independent financial advisors review of it. And is Appendix B then the current health assessment?
6. Yes, Appendix B is the third party's assessment of our ratings. And that's why I've followed the following. There are the colours that we initially saw in part of that written exercise. His commentary indicates where he thinks those ratings are in line with the evidence. You'll see throughout it where, for example, if we've corrected ourselves green, he will comment where the evidence suggests that judgement is correct. There are other cases, for example, in project management where he flags that he suggests that those ratings aren't correct because it is the evidence to.
7. Any other questions? Councillor Adam?
8. I wanted to congratulate our finance department on an excellent result. 16% were amber, that means all the others were green, which is a very good result. I have done a lot of these self-assessment inspections in the LGA over the years and I know they're more rigorous than they appear. I'm very glad to hear that they were the third party. I can't know who it was. But my questions would be, how much did it cost through this report? A lot of work goes into these kind of things. Did you find some useful lessons anyway? Did you learn something about the service through doing this report? And then finally, I want to suggest an amendment to the ratings on the committee governance. I don't think we can be green at this point in time until we get an independent member. And we've been trying to get that sorted out since our last independent member left us a year ago, was it? A while ago. We've found his contributions very valuable. None of us stick around this table are qualified accountants are we? Oh we are, OK. We rely on you there. I don't think how we can say our governance is green when we have got an independent member and we're still having all these discussions about how we operate. So I'd just like to suggest that we move to Amber. Did the independent reviewer talk to our chair? I didn't speak to anyone and give input into this report. I know they do. I've been asking for updates on the status of the independent member. I don't know if now's the time to ask an update on that, Chad or Stuart. So just work and mention to the committee that the review that hasn't taken place. It's not a normal practice. It's not required as part of the financial management code, but what we have done is to at least ourselves have that assurance. We have commissioned a former chief executive in seeing the board. It's marked maintenance. It provided us that objective view in terms of producing the documents. This is something that the finance team corporate finance team put together on a yearly basis, but also monitor it throughout the year. This is just an additional piece of exercise that's marked maintenance has carried out in terms of the cost. We need to go back in terms of how much we paid marked maintenance to carry out this exercise. I wouldn't think it would be a lot. The bulk of the work is done by the corporate finance team. How much time do they put into it? How much did it cost in terms of the time? That's something that we probably need to go back and put the times and numbers together. Should take more time. It should be par for the course I would think. If I was in finance I would like to know the cost of everything. I'm a great fan of activity based costing by the way. I don't know why we can't do that on our own. That's an aside. Any further questions? Thanks for this report. It does put up some some areas of concern and Jackie's right. I'm not a qualified accountant and he's a details for pretty impenetrable for those that don't have a HCCA qualification perhaps. So the one item, I've got a few items actually. So item B, it says the chief finance officer should report explicitly on the affordability and risk associated with the capital strategy and I'm partly concerned that there isn't a nothing here about the current position and state of the council's HRA. As we know a state regeneration is now basically being subcontracted out the private sector and arguably that because of the state of the HRA. So there needs to be more detail on that and the glaring thing that's missing for me which I do keep bringing up in this committee is there's nothing really on the impact of bringing Homes for Lambeth and the properties that Homes for Lambeth have built back into the council. What's the question? So why is there nothing really on the state of the HRA and why is there nothing at the moment? I know we've had the Homes for Lambeth item deferred again. Why is there nothing on the Homes for Lambeth? The impact of the Homes for Lambeth being brought back in house in this report it's not something that's the whole thing. I can let Rob add if he's required but with regards to how we complete the financial management code there's a template and that template doesn't have a prescriptive preference to specific service areas. It doesn't mean we can't refer to those, we can, but as part of our risk register that's something that's an area that we can look into. But going forward this is not a rigid document that could be changed and there could be certain emphasis and going forward we could talk a bit more specific about HRA and HFL because of the risks associated with it but it is not a specific requirement of the template and the requirements of the SIP for financial management code. Question yes, further question. Let's come back on that because item G does note the challenge of Homes for Lambeth and the general financial climate but it doesn't detail what's happening. We as a committee have no idea what's happening with Homes for Lambeth. That's on the agenda item next in November. But we have been asking chair for a significant amount of time for an update as to what is happening with Homes for Lambeth. We have been asking and I've been asking for updates and I have had updates and I understand that things are being finalised at the moment and when we get the statement of accounts through November that's been addressed there and there's things we have to wait for before we get an update on that and that is something that I continue to ask for us to get an update on. This isn't something just you were asking, we are having these conversations because we all have a very much of an interest in this item. Do you have any further questions on this item? Yeah quickly the independent review which is in appendix 2 is not very extensive. It's only six pages long and you know when you cut out the introduction and the terms of reference so that's the two pages long. Sorry the actual independent so it's in the wrong order so that those six pages that he's covering later right and then the table which is labeled again is the first set of tables after the main report where it's got four columns spread across the page that's his review. Any other questions on this item? Council Adam, I think you have your hand up but you might want to take it down yeah. Yeah if there are no further questions from committee members can we conclude item 4 by approving the recommendations on page 19 of the agenda? Subjects the changes that we did. I don't think we had agreed there would be a change that would change in the RAG states of the project management. What would you like to add to the agenda? What we can do is we could monitor it as part of the process and see whether we are able to collect further evidence in relation to project management and whether it stays out there but at least for now we won't change it but we'll monitor it and see whether going forward it needs to be changed. Are you satisfied with that as an answer? I'm satisfied with that. Is that something we're able to do in this meeting to agree to? I don't think we need to be monitored anymore, we just need to get these changes done. Is that something that we can agree here in the meetings, change the status of all of the items? This was reviewed as part of our exercise and that's the assessment that was carried out. It was done as well. Our decision was agreed. It doesn't mean that it cannot be changed going forward based on everything that we've done together. I think this is a good question. At this point in time, this is our conclusion. We only note this out of the session but note when to make the voting. Yes, if we have to note the comments that we've made under these two ratings. Those add us to the minutes. Can we conclude the item by approving recommendations of changes? Thank you. Next item is business agenda item five, the key risk report for quarter one. I'll invite James Remington, risk manager, to introduce the report. Thank you, chair. Hi everybody. I'm James Remington, risk manager from finance team and this is the key risk report at the end of quarter one and it's focused on our highest rated key risks. In line with the last report in March, rather than include a lot of detail and more granular level risks, we're focused on the top 10 overarching risk themes and they're displayed in tables one and two. I think the high level approach to reporting risks keeps the report more focused and more in line with what similar organisations provide in their public facing reports as well. You'll see that top 10 risks are a mix of key areas relating to financial pressures, cyber attacks, climate emergency, workforce planning, all quite high profile and well-known risk areas. You may have also spotted that two recently updated risks have been added to the top 10 for this report and they relate to serious and youth violence and affordable housing delivery. So risks six and eight, which are now part of the top 10. Table one does show that four out of the 10 are on increasing trends and three risks are currently rated at a score of 32, which is our highest rating of very likely and major. I know it can be concerning to see high and increasing risks on the register, but it doesn't indicate specific failure. It's more of a kind of sign of the times and awareness of the risk environment we are in. I'm sure as you're probably aware, pretty much all of the top 10 risks in this report are not unique to Lambeth, Council or Borough and they're regarded as high risks by most business sectors at the moment. I think the key thing is that you need assurance that we're reviewing, updating, assessing, responding to and controlling risks where we can, which is part and parcel of what's happening on a day-to-day basis with these, although the scores do remain high. Just to mention, as well as the top 10 risks in this report, our central risk management system called JCAD holds another 61 approximately key risks. At paragraph 213, I mentioned that we've got risks relating to areas like contract management, health and safety, internal fraud, GDPR, all kind of areas on the system, but not in this report as most of them are rated as amber or green. In terms of assurance on the management of these risks, a number of them do feature on the audit plan, so an assurance rating will be provided based on the controls tested and the top risks which we're looking at today, they're subject to regular monitoring and review at the relevant management teams and back onto the management board agenda as well. In terms of if you'd like any more further details or assurance on any specific risks that can come from the risk owners or risks of named owners and control measure owners, or they could go on to your forward plan for spotlight items, so that's where you can do a bit more of a deeper dive and try and gain some more assurance, etc. So I'll end my summary there and take questions, thanks. Thank you. I'll start first, I have a question myself. Just out, firstly a comment, I'm glad to see those, as you said, six and eight added to this risk structure, the youth violence and the delivery of affordable homes, it's good to see that they have been added on there. One of my questions is around, we obviously have the final column that indicates a trend, is it possible to get a bit more information on how those are determined? Because just from first glance, for example, when I look at kind of the climate emergency, you know, to me, I think that should be a big red arrow, so it would be useful to understand how those trend arrows are determined. Sure, so the trends relate to either a change in the actual risk score or the general direction of travel based on the kind of insight and opinion of the risk owner. So on the climate emergency, it's high, it remains high, it's got a high current score, it hasn't, in the opinion for quarter one, gone up or down, it's maintained its level, which is a high level that we're hoping to obviously reduce in time. And the same for the other risks in there too, but yes, I can certainly try and add some more detail on that for future reports, if that would help. No, no, I think that makes sense, it's not to do with kind of external trends, it's to do with what, okay, the risk, does that make sense to me? Any other questions from members? Can I ask them out and set a hand up? Thank you, Chair, and thanks for this report. So risk number one, financial planning, it's currently got a maximum score of 32. As the committee that is responsible for audit and, you know, monitoring our financial planning, that is pretty scary. So what, what's, what's the likely effect of that going to be? Yes, I think maybe Chardash or Rob are better placed to respond if that's okay. Yeah, Chardash, right. So this is not going to, you need to, to number, but I think the, the, there is a concern of overspends within local government and local councils, and mainly driven by temporary accommodation and social care costs, so an inflationary cost, lack of funding. So as a result, there's a high risk of overspending in, in year, and that's what this risk report is referring to. And what we're doing is we are recognising high risk as a, high risk that could happen and the magnitude of the impact could be high. And so what we're doing is we're regularly monitoring it as part of our quarter one budget monitoring and various quarter budget monitoring reports, and we'll continue to do that. And what this does is it reflects that risk and for our services to take action as a result of that, trying to understand the areas that we can reduce our spend. But it is, it is actually one of the risks that I would expect most councils across London to have, and it would be a very similar position. Any further questions? It is quite scary that the litigations within the Newport talk about, you know, identifying areas to restrict their expenditure, you know, that, that could be seen as cuts to provide services if you want to work that differently. And it also, you know, coming back again, the hopes for Lambeth transition, you know, I, I'm going to keep banging on about this until I'm blue in the face, but we have not seen any detail on that. And that is going to have a massive impact on the council's finances. And we as a committee need to see it and it keeps being kicked into the long rest. And if it is having an impact on our financial planning, we need to know what impact that's having. I understand is that kind of that can't be put in the public domain right now, is that correct? So in terms of the transition, I think what we're trying to do is understand the impact on the council balance sheet. So one of the reasons, for example, I was not being able to talk about statements of the council and not being able to come here. And even though colleagues have done a really lot of hard work to produce this document in time, but queries with us at HFL have prevented us from producing statements of the council since 2/23/23/24. But I understand that there is a, and I think we had to refer back to our external monitors in terms of the transition, how that transition would happen and how it will impact our balance sheet. I think we've come to a point with our external monitors in terms of, we have an agreement on how we will move forward. I understand that, and I think the discussions that you've had with section 151 Duncan, this will come soon and I completely accept it's very frustrating, but it hasn't come any sooner. But the transition of HFL into council balance sheet, council box, isn't an easy process and that's one of the reasons why it's been delayed. Did you, was there a question Councillor Warren? Yeah, my question is, Janice has sort of alluded to it, but I'm, well the question first to James is that within the housing directorate risk register, is there a specific risk around the increase in demand for an increase in cost of temporary accommodation? Obviously, Janice is, that's one of the things that's really driving the pressure on the council's finances this year, but aside from the financial impact, there is, we're aware of there being a huge increase in demand for that in Lambeth and there's obviously knock-on effects, particularly with a number of families actually now having to be placed outside of the borough and sometimes issues about the quality of that accommodation and the knock-on effect for people, let's say young families used to have children going to Lambeth school, you now have further to travel and first of all my question is, is that risk identified separately? And secondly, I'm surprised it's not now within the top 10. Yeah sure, yes it is, we do have a specific TA demand and cost risk on the housing risk register and it is rated as a high risk, it used to feature as a specific separate risk in this report in years gone by, but with the new approach of trying to include kind of overarching themes, it now contributes to that number one risk around financial planning, so the cost of TA and social care and other areas are some of the reasons why the overall ones are 32 and the specific TA one isn't much lower than that either actually on the register. Thank you, any further questions? Cats, do you have a follow-up question? Yes I'm not totally sure about that in that we've got the number 10 on this list is the pupil place planning and that's obviously the impact of the declining number of pupils we've got of primary school age which we're all aware of and obviously is leading to the retention of the school, now that's here on the basis that it's got a huge impact on budgets about schools not being financially viable as their numbers decrease and the council has to do something about it, so I'm not quite understanding why that's here as a separate risk when it's obviously got a financial impact to it, whereas temporary accommodation which also has a financial impact is somehow deemed to be subsumed within risk number one. James, yeah that's a good question, I think at the moment I haven't got an exact answer on that to be honest, but I can take it away and to be honest we could re-include the specific TA risk again, I mean we can extend the top 10 if you'd like detail on that risk for future versions, so I think that's probably what I can say on that at the moment, so I can add it back in for the next reports if you'd like. Great, Council Mildred. I think that would be very sensible James, I mean it does feel like a housing emergency out there, we talk about crisis, it's almost tipping to the point of emergency, but we have got, it says anywhere in this report that we have got a new government and there's presumably there'll be some prospects there, we're not quite sure what they'll be, but there certainly has been a lot of discussion at the government level about housing and I think we need to see whether that mitigates these risks or not. I think the TA, it's not simply about, it's about disrupting our communities without people not being able to live where they work. London is a city, it doesn't just require professional people earning lots of money, it requires a lot of people on minimum wage jobs to keep it going and those people need to live somewhere, they need to live somewhere that's easy to get to work and it's a much bigger issue than just a TA budget. So I'd say that the housing situation is, I wouldn't say it's massive, I think it is, it should be up there as a major risk because it's got the risk of breaking up the borough as a place, we might just end up being a gentrified borough with a few council estates left. We won't be here in community if we do that, we certainly won't be helping London become a successful city. I'm glad you said we could follow up with the risk holders. The thing is, who are these risk holders? We have not got an organisation chart, I don't know who all these people are, bring some names please, people be a bit more accountable. As the chair said, good to see the serious youth violence up there but I thought we were doing a public health approach to tackling youth violence. All we seem to be talking about is more youth clubs, what we need to have is more early years, we need to get people out of TA, there's nothing worse that can do to young children. Well let's say it's slightly older than young children, junior age children to be in TA and post and know they've not got a valued position in society, that's where a lot of this stuff is coming from and I would like to see this series of youth violence go back a bit further into the beginning of childhood, not just youth clubs and jobs and things like that. I mean, James, that's not your job, that's a risk owner which is why it might be a very helpful tablet, ones that we're interested in you could follow up. I'm also interested in training the workforce. Is there a specific name for each of the risk holders? There is, yes, they've all got a named owner, yeah. Yeah okay, does that mean that we can share with the committee? I'm not sure actually, at one point we just put in the job titles rather than the names, because of the public nature of it, but yes I could check with Democratic Services on that. 100 staff who earn more than 100 grand a year and their full name and job title, if people can't have their name put in a report at corporate committee, what do you think they're going to, what's going to happen to them? What's the risk? These people are paid a lot of money and when you go to a scrutiny committee they turn up in person. This committee, they just think it's all right to go home. I just think there's an issue there, we need to know who they are. I don't see why it's secret to know who is Director of Finance and Property or Director of HR who is Assistant Director of ICT. I think it will be shared with committee members if we have questions. This is something, is this a way we will come on to this when we look at the House of Centre? Okay. I just want to know who they are, because I don't know who's your email. Okay we can note those if you'd like to know who's email. Councillor Abrahams. Thank you Chair, just one last point for me is number eight, which I'm a little bit concerned about. There seems to be a theme on housing in this committee today, because that's a failure to deliver a minimum of 500 affordable homes on council-owned land by 2030, and this has appeared in the register, but this was only announced in March, which I was very proud of as a Labour Councillor, that the council's going to start delivering and building hundreds of homes, but deeply concerned to see it in the risk register. So can anyone explain what's happened with that? James is that something that you can? I can give a brief answer on it, I don't really hold much detail, but essentially the risk owners of that one, which are the housing delivery programme team and the leads over there, feel that it's very unlikely we won't achieve this ambition of 500 by 2030. However, the impact would be if we did fail to achieve it, it would be major. So on our risk matrix, even though something's unlikely, if it's got a major impact, it results in that score of a high risk. So it's got 16, so it's not amongst the highest, but it is within the red category. But as you see, the trend's decreasing and they're very confident that this risk will be managed down to an amber over the next couple of periods actually. One last point from me, which is a bit of a follow-up from the, and thanks for that explanation, we'll be monitoring that obviously, but on the pupil place planning, which is quite difficult to say. So we're talking about creating additional secondary places, which obviously will cost the council money, but won't that ultimately mean that those places will have to close when the feed through from primary, that I'm sure all councillors and all have in this evening, rise up because we're having a real issue with school places at the moment. I think they've dropped by 30% in the last 10 years. So, you know, there's proposals and consultation about closing two primary schools in the borough at the moment. So what's the question? The question is, I don't know if there is a question actually, but I suppose it's something that, you know, as the committee that is responsible for looking at this risk, I think maybe we need to look a little bit deeper into it because it doesn't seem an appropriate use of funds to be spending stuff that seems to be necessary in the next few years. Any other comments on this item? Okay, if there are no further questions, can we conclude item five by approving the recommendations on page 73? We'll move to agenda item six, which is the corporate health and safety policy. I'll invite Alexis Carrera, head of corporate health and safety, to introduce the report. Hi, good afternoon. Alexis Carrera, head of corporate health and safety. In the call is Richard Lebrun, assistant director, but also is the chair of the Joint Health and Safety Committee, presenting. Thank you, Alexis. Good evening, committee. Apologies I'm not there in person this evening. My name is Richard Lebrun, I'm assistant director of public protection, insurance and regulatory services. And as Alexis says, I also have the role of chair of the Joint Health and Safety Committee. So this report in front of you today reviews existing corporate health and safety policy and the corporate health and safety strategy for the next five years between 2024 and 2029. It aims to build on the work already achieved to date in improving health and safety management systems across the council. To achieve this, in addition, the corporate health and safety policy provides a governance structure to implement safety arrangements, i.e. policy and organisation planning, arrangements, training, communication, and clear objectives and monitoring and performance by the corporate health and safety team to which Alexis leads. The policy is in line with the health and safety executive requirements and is a legal requirement for councils to have as well as any business. The cabinet of the council and the management board has a responsibility to provide collective and individual health and safety leadership to the organisation. The chief executive has overall responsibility to show a corporate health and safety policy and the associated strategy is implemented throughout the council. And individual corporate directors have responsibility for implementing the policy and associated strategy within the service and collectively as a management board to ensure its corporate implementation is success. In terms of governance, there is a joint corporate health and safety committee that brings together all directorates and unions to take forward health and safety and this reports into the management board. Council involvement is then cemented by health and safety governance coming to the corporate committee such as this evening. The strategy that accompanies the policy follows the precepts of health and safety executives guidance around management for health and safety and is therefore based on the principles of plan, do and check, act, approach and aims to achieve a balance between the systems and behavioural aspects of management. It also builds into management as an integral part of good management generally rather than a standalone system. The strategy in front of you sets out a year on year the objective necessary to achieve its aim to successfully implement the strategy the council seeks to put into place. A health and safety information management system that brings together all information, records and items around accident reporting, risk assessment, permit to work, quarterly contacts database and documents control system to have an overarching view of health and safety across the organisation. We're also looking to create a poster for schools health and safety advisor who will be the catalyst of health and safety for school service level agreement ensuring the council influences maintain schools health and safety management systems are in place and inspections and yearly audits carried out of those schools. Additionally we're looking at the recruitment of established vacant health and safety consultant posts which will lead to an operational side of the team carrying out inspections and auditing. It's expected that from year three business as usual will generate a large demand for the corporate health and safety team. Credit for both policy and strategy should be given to Alexis, head of corporate health and safety and his team for putting these in place and ensuring health and safety is a high priority for the council. Thank you now that we've heard the report do the committee have any questions they'd like to ask? Yes I've got a few, I think this is a very interesting area but first of all I'd be interested if somebody could tell us about the impact of the previous version of this strategy and how many incidents we've had where there have been some incidents that are recorded under health and safety. Then I was very pleased to see on page 130 statement of intents where it says elected members, management board, continued health, safety and workplace employees, agency staff, pupils, residents, service users, contact partners, is paramount key to managing it. I'm very pleased to see that but unfortunately when you come to the chat itself these people are not mentioned and it's great to see employees which is traditionally health and safety policies too and I think there's nothing wrong with that but I think there's this question about our residents because we have lots of residents who are suffering a lot from our practice, not our policies, it's the important situation we're in. So there's nothing in here about dampen bowl for example which is causing a lot of illness stuff like that but if it's really a report on the employees I'm fine about that but maybe you could take that a bit out at the beginning because maybe that will come out later in the strategy. I wanted to focus really on the employees because I am concerned about employees' health and well-being because social media means, maybe this is why we don't want to give the names of our senior management. I suspect most of our senior management probably got LinkedIn accounts which are quite easy to access and that tells you quite a lot about people but social media means everybody is accessible, anybody can be found, anybody could be threatened. I know where you live, I know which school your children go to and there must be quite a few front line jobs I'd say where that's quite a serious issue for people and secondly there might be some more up the line policy. How are you actually tackling that in this new environment where anybody can find you? Nobody is hidden away, they go home and that's the end of it. I mean you did raise that after you'd asked for people's names to be replaced. I'll tell you the other thing, just link the last few weeks, how members inquiries are now no longer answered by a person. Our members inquiries are answered by an anonymous job description which again is this all to do, is there something coming from the top saying to keep yourself safe people, don't give your names to the public, is that your advice? There's two questions, I mean you had the question around number of incidents on the oil policy, I don't know if we have that and then the question. The first question, I don't have the data, I would have to analyse the data, look at the figures, the strategy. I wasn't prepared because of the time so I will have to look at that and see if I can bring a certificate to the answer to this committee and I will do that for the next committee. So the second one, category bias aggregation, a division of the policy and perfectly aims to be tackling and to be within place the requirements of the health and safety that were attacked on the regulations as part of that on the money of the safety of water relations, so risk assessments and the values of risks. We are presenting to the corporate health and safety committee the division of the violence aggregation policy that goes into our members of the public having aggressive or abusive towards member staff, one of them may be by knowing names and emails and being abusive or advantageous to them. What we're trying to prevent is following on with a cautionary contact database that council members will have against members of the residents that have been aggressive or abusive towards members staff and what actions can be taken against those residents to prevent it and it could be from simply restricting access to instigating legal action against those residents to prevent this behaviour against our belief but also having in place activities and different sources of information and support that we can have for employees like this business programme like implementing visits but for example going with the police etc it would depend on case-by-case basis but the idea is that whenever an incident like that happens it is reported then actions are taking place to prevent it happening in the future so protecting employees. Do you have any follow-up questions councilor? I think this is quite a complex area, I think you need to be looking at the impact of social media, you need to think about some accounts of decisions which need not residents but people with an interest in the borough are worth a lot of money and I will sort out planning. If you prove a planning application that piece of land is worth triple the value it was before and I'm looking at private sector licensing in my ward and how people are going to be forced to pay a thousand pounds, our officers going to go knock at the door and say give us a thousand pounds. Those are the sort of situations where people are going to get quite cross, never mind the old road rage and all that stuff, the big parking tickets stuff like that. I think this is a growing area that we need to take very seriously and maybe it is about being more anonymous and it's tied up a bit with working from home. There's no mention you hear about working from home which I think is another significant area. I wonder whether what's this chair, whether we need to revisit this in six months, years time, the policy, the actual policy. I think this is a growing area and I can see what's happening where the officers are making and anonymising their work. That's a response to this I suspect but I don't know, you haven't. I know Rich has his hand up. Do you have a comment to make? Thank you chair. I just wanted to raise like emergency planning, the intention behind health safety is we actually bring a report to the committee every year so we give an annual review of health safety across the organisation. So this isn't going to be a one-off, this will be a regular reporting back to this committee to make sure actually we're doing what we need to do. We understand trends and we're putting steps in place and you are completely right about rising issues around for instance violence and aggression. We do get it already, things like parking enforcement you can imagine, littering enforcement, a lot of the services under myself. So it is something we are acutely aware of and we are constantly reviewing loan working, violence and aggression and Alexis for instance at the moment is doing a lot of work around that loan working violence and aggression policy and what training and what precautions we need to put in place for staff. And I just wanted to just quickly raise as well in terms of what does this really cover. Now the health safety work act which pretty much dictates this is around employers and employees and their safety in the workplace. So it does have an impact on residents, tenants etc. But this is more about actually the people working for Lambeth, how we make sure they are protected and their health safety is paramount. Thank you, Councillor Milne to chirp forward. Yes then it's important to get on with it and there's a lot to do but whether we could input to it or perhaps Councillors could be asked to input before you come up with the next version because as I keep saying we're the ones here on the ground every day and we're picking up stuff and we might be able to contribute to report but I'm concerned there's nothing in here about social media I'm concerned. I presume this report goes through the cabinet member to sign off. Well I know but this is a broad issue it affects thousands of people and when you're close to the ground maybe shake these things yourself. It's Councillor Abrams. Thank you for this report. So my day job is working for a trade union and whatever I see a health and safety report first thing I do is look for the word trade union. There's that report and I'm actually quite encouraged that there is a fair few mentions of trade unions in that because if you're going to do a health and safety report you need to be engaging and involving the recognised trade unions within the council. I suppose my question is how much of an input the health and safety representatives have into this report and you know as Jackie said that Councillors should have an input into it you know trade union health and safety officers should absolutely have an input into it but if this is going to be brought again to the committee you know I would actually like to extend the invitation if the chair agrees to invite the trade union health and safety representatives to come and actually maybe they're the people that are on the ground they're the people that are listening to their members concerns and they're the people that will be able to you know input into our our queries and questions as well. I can't wait to say that the the revision of the policy so the policy and original strategy was brought to the corporate committee attended by the fault recognising the council and they have been putting the documents we sent them for the consultation fair before we brought it to the committee and after that is when he followed the governance process in the council going to management board and then to this committee so trade unions have been involved in the process of the of the of these arguments. I'll answer Brian's two questions. Two questions are interlinked so I'm slightly concerned if you look at on page 112 paragraph 132 you say you set out quite clearly actually quite helpfully the additional resources that you'll need to implement this strategy and then the bottom of the page in paragraph three it says there are no financial implications arising from this report so I'm really just concerned to make sure are all the resources available there to achieve the things you're going to implement in paragraph 132 and if not what impact will that have on this strategy? The implementation of the different areas that are there in the management system the advice on in the public and the positive that is my team is day-to-day planning of the council business there's no there's no extra expenditures really something that is not envisaged to continue planning the day-to-day of the council and therefore I believe that's why finance would have commented that there is no financial implications in that but however I cannot really comment for high finance. That's that's the answer. Councillor Brian Shill. Just to really follow on that I don't quite follow that because obviously one of the things which actually I think I would support I think it's a very good idea is you talk about creating the post of a school's health and safety advisor so really that's a new post in the council's staffing establishment that presumably has a cost attached to it and is there a budget available for that and then my second one link obviously the very last point you mentioned that you expect that there'll be an increase in demand on your corporate health and safety team and again presumably that means additional less everyone's going to have to work a lot more efficiently and harder is going to need additional people to manage it and again has that cost been factored in in terms of the council's sort of low B2 term financial strategy? The exclusive asset advisor will have a cost in first for the first two years it's expected that with 70 years they set a silver agreement to schools and other extended schools the post will pay for itself or even bring income to the council it will have a cost in the first two years and then the extra capacity that the team may need once they develop further their activity is uncertain at the moment but if we create more demand any team will have to grow to meet that demand but hasn't been to get an account in the report as well. Count Abrams. I can see that the person who joined us on the call earlier Galinda has had a hand up for a while I'm not sure if she's allowed to come back in but she's also put a few things in the in the chat. Yes external speakers that speak on the item that they've registered for speak on you're very welcome. So how does the health and safety team input into projects and programs for example officers working on the Cresingham Gardens TMO project do not have the necessary health and safety knowledge but also don't seem to be supported by the health and safety team so how does the health and safety team input into projects and programs? We don't have any direct input into projects because the health and safety projects are directed into the construction assignment and regulations in which the person representing the client those health and safety arrangements in place to manage the progress that's why the project will be ready and through the physical designer physical contractor are those that the physical designer works on the risk design and then the physical contractor is the responsible person you know to manage all the risk on the construction site therefore the risks of those are managed in that way. Do you have a follow-up question? Just to follow up I do think that was a really excellent question Galinda and there is a vacancy on the committee for an independent member if you are interested in joining us please please contact us afterwards because you've been asking some good questions. Okay Councillor Meldrum. I just want to come back to expand a bit more but it's important we don't just look at the organisation safely in the civic centre and in the town hall it is about being out there in the community and then our community I think not just our community but it's very noticeable here because we have got our very high levels of diversity and economic and culturally but the amount of stress that people are under out there is phenomenal and if you work from home if you stay in the town hall you won't know about that very much you might get a few angry people talk to you on the phone but there's an enormous amount of stress out there and there's this terrible statistic 40 percent of the children are now ascend oh you're saying across the country what is that because of covid. So when you're working for a community that's under a lot of pressure there's a huge amount of frustration there when people don't answer the phone they don't get response things it escalates, escalates makes things a lot worse and that's the kind of thing I would like to see the future of safety policy look at address those issues head on because they're very real out there in fact one of our members one of our Councillors had an encounter with somebody it was very distressing she was faced by somebody who was not well put it that way and very threatening and that's the kind of thing that happens when you're out there and you just got to go out in Brixton people with wheelchairs in the middle of the A23 all these kind of things you know there's all kinds of pressures out there that I don't really see addressed in this policy so I think the next version policy I find in various trade unions if I choose the managers but please get some external viewpoint on this because it's you're not just a little eggshell here in the council this is a council supporting the whole of the borough and there's a lot a lot of pressure out there and that's how safety never mind all the other bigger pressures social media people who've got friends in friends who've been shot at in other countries all this kind of thing all adds to the pressure out there and it's pressure causes this risk let's see rich has got his hand up did you have a comment to make thank you chair and just it gives some clarity this home safety policy is the one that sits above all others basically it sets out the organisation and arrangements of the council sorry I just said this this policy sits above everything sent out arrangements and organisation underneath it is numerous other policies such as a loan work policy a violence and aggression policy a DSC policy that will start to address all the issues that are being raised for instance around increased risk to staff but there's actually policy that's been brought to committee does all it does is set out basically the framework for fair home safety for the council so it doesn't go into specifics around specific risks it just basically says who's responsible for managing home safety and what the governance is in place around it so we happily bring back for instance a list of all the corporate policies etc that are in place that cover those type of things but I just want to kind of clarify that this would not include every known risk and every known approach to home safety thank you any other questions on the item if there are no further questions from committee members we can can we conclude item six by notes and recommendation set out on page 170 of the agenda that concludes the meeting for this evening and we now close the meeting so thank you good night to any viewers members officers and production team who made tonight's meeting school yeah [BLANK_AUDIO]