Transcript

Good afternoon and welcome to a meeting of the cabinet of Sarajevo County Council here at Woodhatch Place on Tuesday, the 24th of September. We actually have a relatively short agenda today but there are a couple of important issues. But before I do anything, can I-- as we have members of the public, can I just read the firearm details. So we're not expecting a fire drill but in the event of a fire alarm sounding, would everyone present please leave by the nearest exit, it's over there, and assemble at the top car park and report to a member of the building management team. In terms of social media, you're more than welcome to use that during the course of the meeting provided it doesn't interfere with the smooth running of the meeting. And just to remind everybody and members of the public that this meeting is being webcast live and it is of course open to the public. And I just remind everybody please to make sure that you switched off your mail or switch your mobile phones to silent. Okay. Can I welcome Terence Herbert who is no longer the new chief executive but is now the chief executive of the County Council. We're delighted he joined us from Wilshire Council and I think he's in Week 6 now and thoroughly enjoying himself, he told me. And welcome to the rest of the officer team here. So we'll start with the police for absence and in the normal way, if I read out your name, could you just identify who you are and your portfolio please, starting with Claire Curran. Good afternoon leader, I'm Claire Curran, the cabinet member for children, families and lifelong learning. Thank you, David Lewis. Yes, good afternoon leader, David Lewis. I'm the cabinet member for finance and resources. Denise Turner-Stewart. Good afternoon leader, Denise Turner-Stewart, cabinet member for customer communities and deputy leader. Thank you, Jonathan Hullie. Good afternoon leader, Jonathan Hullie, deputy cabinet member, strategic highways. Thank you. Thank you, Kevin Deener. Thank you and resilience. Mark Nuti. Thank you, leader. Welcome to this National Dogs Day in politics. Didn't know we had one, did you? But I am the cabinet member for health, well-being and public health. And a great advocate of national days or whatever sort there are. Thank you, Mark. Marissa Heath. Good afternoon leader, Marissa Heath, cabinet member for environment. Matt Furness. Good afternoon, Matt Furness, cabinet member for highways, transports and economic growth. Maureen Aswell. Thank you, leader. Good afternoon, everyone. Maureen Aswell, deputy cabinet member for children, families and lifelong learning. Thank you, Natalie Bramhall. Good afternoon leader, Natalie Bramhall, cabinet member for property waste infrastructure. Thank you, Paul Deech. Paul Deech, deputy cabinet member to the leader of the council. Thank you, Sinead Mooney. Thank you, Sinead Mooney, cabinet member for adult social care. Thank you and lastly, Steve Backs. Thank you, leader. Steve Backs, deputy cabinet member for highways. Okay, thank you very much and we'll move straight on to the agenda. Then item two, minutes of the previous meeting was held on 23rd of July, 2024. Members have an opportunity to look at those minutes. Are those agreed? Three. Thank you. Item three, declarations of interest. Does any member have any interest to declare relation to the items on today's agenda? No, thank you. Item four then, procedural matters. Members' questions, there were a couple of questions actually from one of the members but it seemed more appropriate for those to be dealt with outside of this forum so they would be picked up with our member in due course. Thank you. Item 4B, there were no public questions. 4C, there were no petitions. 4D, there were no representations received on reports to be considered in private. Item five then, reports from select committees, task groups and other committees of the council of which there have been three. I'll ask Claire Curran to pick this up but we had expected the chair of one of the working groups who present the report today but unfortunately he's unavailable. So Claire Curran, would you like to just introduce those reports? Thank you. Yes, thank you, leader. The children, families and lifelong learning select committee has presented two particular reports to cabinet with their recommendations. The first is on the item that they considered in relation to home school travel assistance and the committee invited witnesses from that team to present a report on the progress made by the service and the actions that they had taken today to improve service for families, children and young people. They made a series of recommendations based on the report and what they heard from the team, particularly around communications with families and in relation particularly to those of children below statutory school age and post '16, they made some recommendations about travel allowances and asked the service to do a little more benchmarking. And you will see that I've presented here today response to all of those recommendations. I think that the team were very receptive to some of the suggestions made by the select committee are working closely with Family Voice, the official parent care forum to ensure that communications with parents and families as good as they possibly can be and that's presented here today. The second area on which the select committee has presented a report following a task group that the committee had convened to report on the parent carer experiences in relation to services for children and young people with additional needs. And you may see from the report that's presented, members, that there were a range of broad and quite far reaching recommendations made on the basis of the findings of that task group. These were only received by the service late last week and given that they are such broad recommendations and that there are so many repercussions and potential actions that could be taken such as staffing and training and communications, timeliness, processes and dispute resolutions that the service will take a little longer than a few days to respond to all of the full range of recommendations made. So in consultation with the executive director and having spoken to the two vice chairman of the committee, it has been agreed that the service and I will draft-- finalize the responses to their recommendations and share them with the committee in writing before the date of the next meeting of cabinet and I hope that we will be able to present the finalized response and hopefully the agreed response at the time of the next cabinet meeting. Thank you, leader. Yeah, thank you very much, Claire. And obviously that's-- that hopefully feeds into the broad piece of work that's underway in terms of looking at the whole send the CMB process from end to end. So as you say, you act to and also then feed that back to the select committee. But can I thank them on our basic behalf for the work they have done. It is a detailed report and needs due consideration. So otherwise, we will minute those actions. There is then also a report from the select committee in relation to Project Libra, just report the resources and performance select committee which we will be considering in part two of this agenda. So I see the chairman is here unless there's anything you want to say. [ Inaudible Remark ] Yeah, okay, thank you very much. Okay, in that case, we'll go to item six which decisions have been taken since the last cabinet meeting. Of which there have been three and those are all four for noting. I don't think any of the cabinet members who took those decision wants to add anything, do they at this stage? No, okay. Sorry, it's in these here. Thank you. And this connects to Marissa's report on the environment. And this is just yet another example of your fund, sorry, being able to fund and support wonderful community garden projects. This is going to provide an all-weather facility and again this is really supporting our health and well-being agenda and prevention of ill health through people that can't socialize and have access to these sort of growing spaces so this is a really lovely project. I just like to draw attention to it, thank you. Yeah, so that's 114,000 pounds from your fund, sorry, to support the Farnham-- Farnham, sorry, community garden hub. And then just for clarity, the second decision taken by Natalie Bramhall was in relation to the Schicole. So those are all tests out in the agenda. Okay, thank you very much. Item, where are we now, item seven is cabinet member of the month. So each month we highlight the activities of one of the members of the cabinet. In this case, this month it is Marissa Heath, the cabinet member of the environment. So Marissa, thank you. Thank you, leader. The report I think speaks for itself in the papers and hopefully members of the public will have a read through that because we know this is an interesting issue for the environment but I just wanted to put out a few threads in that report. Over the last few months, we had a fair amount of negativity spewed out by the media, by the government I'm afraid to say and by campaign groups and it's led to a feeling settling around us that the future isn't bright and that things are only going to get worse. But I'd like to start by saying that the future in Surrey actually looks pretty good and there's some things happening that we can feel really optimistic about. We've got a new generation and because this council has done what it said and shown leadership on the environmental, we are seeing change. To give you a clear example of that, I'm thrilled to share the really fantastic news today that for the second consecutive year, Surrey has the highest number of green flag schools in England. We have an incredible 98 green flag schools across this county. The Eco Schools Program is the largest educational initiative of its kind in the world, not just the county, not just the UK but the world and it operates across 71 countries. Achieving green flag status is no small feat at all. It takes a full year or longer of hard work and dedication from students and staff and it makes the achievement even more meaningful that this program is pupil led with over 52,000 students engaging in the process of 98 schools across Surrey. Indeed there were 170 schools in total that worked towards achieving the green flag. And I think that this milestone recognizes not only the school's efforts but some really positive environmental impacts that have been created from doing so. So 1 million kilowatts in energy saved, 85.8.5 tons of waste diverted from landfill, 12,500 meters squared of natural habitats maintained, 11,580 active journeys to school and 77 grand raised for charity through the projects. So I think we've got a right to be really proud of our team that have led on this, Edward Cowley in particular. This is the future being created right in front of us and in doing that we're also improving the present. So it's not negative at all. There's something really positive happening in this county. And there's also optimism to be had around the team in Surrey County Council and their dedication to winning for the environment. Too easy-- it's often too easy to moan about what hasn't happened or things which are not even the responsibility of this council. For example, we were never given a mandate to lead on net zero. And like so many other authorities, we have statutory duties which are hugely important, social care for the elderly, looking after vulnerable children, keeping our economy going through highways and infrastructure management. But nonetheless, this council has found a way to deliver across the environmental portfolio often weaving it into the no one is left behind agenda, ensuring countryside access, social prescribing, reducing energy bills, enhancing nature. And we put resource into this. For example, we've got five ecologists working in this authority now, but actually, what it's really been about is smart working, community volunteering, creating forums that share resources. That has been absolutely fundamental to the work we've done under the environment portfolio. Now we're in these positions as elected members largely to champion this fantastic county. And so ultimately, my goal is to win funding as is yours and deliver more for our residents and other councils. And so there's some more good news in that too. We've had great success in winning national money for Surrey. Let's take our target of 1.2 million trees which you said we'd plant. We've just won another 270K for the fourth round of funding, which totals 1.24 million since 2021. That's pretty significant and again, makes us a leading authority in this space. Also since 2021, we've brought in 40 million, 14 million from government funding to decarbonize both our buildings and also to help residents who need support. So it's those low income, those vulnerable residents, those at risk, and we have so far used that money to help 1,264 households. Surrey is one of the most successful local authorities in delivering government-funded fuel poverty schemes. We've also been a leading authority in delivering solar together in which residents are supported by us to install solar and reduce their bills by a significant 34%. And it's important that I mention these works because recently we know the winter fuel allowance was stopped for many of our residents who now face bigger bills and a colder winter and we are going to step forward and help them. We're giving them an offer, seeing if we can help use the government grants to insulate their homes or install green energy which will be cheaper for them. And we're also of course running our warm winter hubs in 80 locations to enable people to come and spend the day somewhere warm and save on their bills. And that's why we must never see what we do under the environmental agenda existing in isolation because actually the things we do, whether it's protecting biodiversity or driving down carbon, should always mean wider benefits to residents and their well-being, ultimately reducing the health burden and resulting in better mental health outcomes. Recently the foreign secretary spoke about climate change being a more persuasive and fundamental threat than terrorism. I don't think this is the right approach to take at all. I think if we move forward successfully by positivity and showing people that it's easier than they think to change their behavior, we will have better outcomes. Scaring people hasn't worked, it won't work. Supporting them and showing leadership does and that is the approach we have taken throughout that you will see in this report. Of course there are issues that are real problems in front of us. The changing weather patterns is just one and the extensive level of rainfall that we've seen even over the last couple of days. Flooding and storm drain overflows is something that we do need to worry about as it has a huge impact on our residents, on our biodiversity, on our road networks. We've even had shopping centers flooded impacting businesses too. But I'm pleased to say this council sees tackling flooding and tackling water pollution as a priority and we've been increasingly putting resource into addressing it. We're often not responsible for many of the flooding events that happen in this county, but we are the first place to which residents turn and want to find solutions. And that's why we've invested in flood action groups and that's why we've applied for more funding for this so we can enable residents to obtain solutions and work with the relevant experts to prevent the flooding of their homes. For many of us a real nightmare if that happens. We've also invested millions into flood prevention schemes and have supported the issue of grants to those affected by flooding and we're now leading on delivering high quality sustainable drainage systems and new developments to shock the flow of water going into sewers and that will be incredibly important when you think about the housing numbers being pressed on us by the new government. Two other positive pieces of work going forward include the nature recovery strategy which is setting out a plan for the whole county on how we protect and enhance nature and wildlife and ensure we leave a beautiful county for the future. This was government mandated, but I think we want to make sure this is a leading county and that we set an example to others and actually the way it's going at the moment I feel confident this will be an excellent strategy which residents will again feel very positive about. We have the chance to work with partners like Natural England and Surrey Wildlife Trust to pull out the jewels of this county including chalk streams, ancient woodland, as well as the natural flood management and new forest to make them core considerations in our planning for this county's environment. We've also got a key piece of work on rights of way. We held a consultation earlier this year which had more responses to any other consultation we held as an authority. People are hugely interested in rights of way and access and we now have a golden opportunity to work with resident groups and parish councils to improve our rights of way, empowering them more locally as well as seeking opportunities to connect them to the local walking and cycling infrastructure plans and our sustainable travel plans. When it comes to delivering and moving forward I think I can genuinely sit here after a number of years doing this while saying this county council is doing that for the environment and there are a huge amount of reasons to feel positive and to see a bright future. We've changed the thinking within our own organization over the last few years and that has filtered out widely. Often the outcomes aren't seen in the short come but they will certainly come through in the long run and they will mean savings for our residents, protection of our green and beautiful countryside and improved health and wellbeing. Our environment is equal access to everyone and that is why it epitomizes no one left behind. So I think this report hopefully recognizes that and sets out some of those achievements. There is more to be done but I'd really like to thank our officer team because I think they have gone beyond their roles in many ways often to really make this meaningful and deliver outcomes that I think in 10, 20 or 30 years time will look back with great pride. Thank you, Lida. Thank you very much, Marissa. Who'd like to go first? Denise? Thank you. Thank you, Marissa. This was such an enjoyable and encouraging report to read. I think we need to recognize that Surrey has a very long and proud history of protecting our environment, particularly in the rural areas with our areas of outstanding natural beauty, Surrey Hills, et cetera. We also need to remember that we have a lot of urban areas that through this work you've been able to spread that greening, that kind of the wellbeing that comes from communities that live in rural areas that explain areas where things are more challenging. You know, we have more traffic, more pollution, we have less space but actually through this work as you've articulated through our schools creating champions in our younger generation, encouraging those even tiny spaces to be utilized just to recognize how we can improve by diversity and attract wildlife in even the smallest locations. I think that's a challenge going forward but it's something I'll read that. Thank you. Yeah, and of course, you know, we're not doing this in isolation in any sense. You know, partnership work is hugely important whether that's with the health system, you know, with the voluntary sector and so on. And last Friday we signed a civic agreement with the University of Surrey, Royal Holloway University of London and the University of Creative Arts to progress the four main themes, key themes that this council identified as part of the 2030 community vision which is, you know, to create a sustainable economy so everyone can benefit, to address health inequalities, to promote greener futures and to encourage thriving communities. And those are the four themes that have been picked up within that civic agreement. You know, the University of Surrey, you know, I know we work closely with them at the Institute of Sustainability and so on. They're all doing great work in this space as well and joining forces with them will just hopefully accelerate some of that excellent work. So I think it's, you know, there is a lot in here. I'm just going to put in a plug actually because we were talking about it this morning to encourage residents which is not absolutely related to the environment but on recycling. So Surrey has always been in the top five of authorities for recycling rates and I think we probably still are but we're only at 55 percent. There is a government target of 65 percent by 2035 and we should really be pushing hard, encouraging our residents hard to recycle as much as they possibly can because as we know landfill sites have been very damaging for our environment and indeed burning material is also not particularly environmentally friendly so the more that residents can recycle the better. Paul, I just-- I don't know if you want to just say something about the Basingstoke Canal because there's been a lot of activity there. Yeah, sure. So there's a consultation going on right now about the Basingstoke Canal Center. I think Marissa touched upon it in the report. And yeah, so we're really encouraging residents to participate in that so that we can shape the future of the Canal Center. It's an incredibly important local resource and there's a real opportunity here to, you know, future proof it so I would encourage residents to participate. Thank you. Excellent, thank you very much. Okay, there's lots of good stuff in there so thank you very much Marissa and thank you to the officers for all that you are doing. Okay, we will then-- so that report's for noting, we'll move to Item 8 which is an update on the financial situation of the county council as at Month 4 which is May. So David Lewis. Yeah, thank you Leda. So as you say, this is the financial report for Month 4 which took us to the end of July which actually seems quite a long time ago now. But at the end of the month, in terms of the revenue budget, we saw a continued overspend against the budget of 15 and a half million pounds. That did in fact for the month represent an improvement of about 2.6 million over the forecast overspend in the previous month. But I think you have to-- we have to see that in the context of-- we have a 20 million pound corporate contingency built into the budget that was-- as in previous years when we put the budget together for this year, that's part of our budget planning process. So at this level of forecast overspend, three quarters of that contingency is already accounted for. The overspend really cuts across all of the directorates in the council. The-- by far the biggest part of the forecast overspend is around the home to school travel assistance which accounts for 7.4 million of the forecast overspend. I suppose the good news there is that that forecast amount has remained steady since the beginning of the financial year. And a lot of work is taking place in that area. I chair an oversight group which Claire Curran also sits on. And a lot of work has been done looking at how we can contain the cost of the home to school transport service and get to a point where we can start reducing the cost. But if you look at the budget in totality, that is accounting for almost half of our forecast overspend. And then we've got, you know, some overspending adults and EIG. I said that, you know, this represents an improvement on month three, but I don't think there's any room for complacency in the sense that, you know, we are still facing a number of pressures within the system both in terms of, you know, the ongoing pressures from inflation which of course, you know, though the rate of inflation has come down, the cost of doing things is still high. And, you know, ongoing increased demand for our services. So at the moment the expectation is that that forecast overspend will remain high and if anything increase. And I think that that really illustrates the need for all parts of the organization and to really look at ways in which we can mitigate against that overspend in order to obviously deliver the services that we all want to deliver, but to do so within the budget that's available. On the capital side, if you recall at the start of the financial year, we rephased and reprofiled the capital budget because we were concerned about both the cost of the capital program and the deliverability of the capital program. And at the end of the month or at the end of July, against that reprofiled budget, our expenditure was at 300 and forecast expenditure was at 318 million. And that's just slightly more, about 3.3 million pounds more than the rephased budget. The reason for that forecast increase is partly some of the expenditure on infrastructure has been reprofiled and brought forward. So we've accelerated that spend. So in a sense it's not an overspend, it's just an accelerated spend. But against that there has been a slight underspend and forecast underspend in terms of our IT expenditure. So the same resulting in a figure at the moment, a forecast of 3.3 million over. The other part of this report relates to your fund, Surrey. And there is a proposal in the report whereby if you recall the small projects part of your fund, Surrey, when it was introduced, it was introduced in the first year and each member was given a 50,000 pound allocation. That was then doubled up to 100,000 with a further 50,000 for the second year, this current year of the small projects part of your fund. Surrey making 100,000 in total. But we didn't at that stage when we agreed that second year and second allocation, we didn't allow members to actually spend the full amount on a single project. And as we begin to look towards the end, coming towards the end of the small projects scheme, we think it's right that we should actually increase the maximum allowable value of an individual project from 50,000 to 100,000 pounds. So in cases where perhaps a member hasn't yet spent their allocation and perhaps there is a need within their community, they would, if this proposal is accepted by cabinet, be able to allocate the full 100,000 pounds to a single project. So that's the third recommendation in the report along with the necessary changes to the dedicated authorities for officers to enable that to happen. So thank you very much. Thank you David and I would ask that all members do, you know, look at spending that allocation. I mean it was absolutely intended for them to use to support good local community projects and the fourth limb of our kind of, you know, main thing that I outlined earlier. So I would hope there's no member that hasn't spent anything of that allocation but understand that a bit more flexibility may be required. And just a couple of sort of broader observations. So we will be going out for consultation to the public in relation to the budget for next year, recognizing that we have to first of all discharge our statutory duties and the funding for that has to be made available. But we would welcome resident comment on where they think that those priorities should lie. And then on a national basis there are a number of pots of money, funds that we've received from central government that expire currently at least in March 2025, including the Household Support Fund and a fund relating to domestic abuse and so on. So we are lobbying and we'll lobby, continue to lobby the government heavily to keep those funds available longer term and indeed there is a national sort of campaign from local government to seek a long term financial settlement rather than on an annual basis. So I'm hoping that October the budgets at the end of October, the financial statement at the end of October won't be suggesting any cut to local government funding and indeed quite the reverse. As we know there is something in the region for the upper tier authorities like ours, a 54 billion pound funding gap over the next three years. So to keep our services going it is already challenging as David has outlined and if we don't continue to receive an uplift or receive any uplift in our funding it's going to be almost impossible to continue to deliver all of the services in the way that we would like to do so. So we will take that up with the chance with the Exchequer and the Treasury and make out a case for that continued funding. And then secondly something for us all to be aware of that the last government and indeed out this government have said that they will look at the funding formulas right across government and called a fair funding review. It will be a funding review anyway and we need to just make sure again that we set out clearly what our funding needs are. There are people that do not necessarily recognize the level of deprivation that we have in this county, there are areas of significant deprivation, five areas at least that are in the top 20 percent nationally and it's really important that that's recognized and that any redistribution of funds across the local government system is done in a way that reflects actual need in those different localities. So again, that's something that we will be discussing with government on a regular basis. In the meantime, there are three recommendations in David's report. The first is that we note the council's forecast revenue budgets and capital budget positions for the year. Secondly, we approve the changes to your funds, sorry, small project fund allocation to increase the maximum value of a single capital project from 50,000 to 100,000. And then thirdly, approve the proposed amendments to the current delegated authority levels for your funds, sorry, large project fund to include direct to level-- to include direct to level approval presumably in consultation with a cabinet member for customer and communities for projects up to 100,000. We'll amend that wording slightly to take out the duplication at direct level, other than that, is it agreed? Okay, thank you very much. That actually brings us to the end of the first part of this agenda. So under section 100A of the Local Government Act 1972, members of the public be excluded from the meeting during consideration of the following items of business on the grounds that they involve the likely disclosure of exempt information under the relevant paragraphs of part one of schedule 12A of the act. So if I could please ask all members of the public to leave the room. Thank you very much. Thank you and on that basis, I close part one of the meeting. [BLANK_AUDIO]