Transcript

... Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Partnership Cabinet on the 22nd of May 2024. My name is Councillor Simon Werner and I'll be chairing this meeting. This meeting is being held in person at York House Windsor and via Zoom being streamed live to the public on YouTube. I remind all attendees in the meeting that participation indicates consent to the audio and video being streamed live and acknowledgement that after the meeting it will continue to be available in the public domain. Firstly I think it would be useful if all the cabinet members could introduce themselves. I'm Simon Werner and I'm the leader of the council. Good evening, I'm Councillor Lynn Jones, deputy leader of the council and leader for finance. Good evening, I'm Councillor Geoff Hill, cabinet member for highways and transport, customer service centre and employment from the IT. Thank you. Good evening, Councillor Richard Coe, lead member for household and regulatory services. Hello, I'm Councillor Amy Tiisi, I'm lead member for children's services, education and Windsor. Hello, I'm Councillor Karen Davies, lead member for climate, biodiversity and Wintertown Council. Good evening, I'm Councillor Adam Burman, I'm the cabinet member for planning, governance and asset management. I'm Catherine Del Campo, cabinet member for adult services, health and housing services. Good evening, Councillor Joshua Reynolds, cabinet member for communities and leisure. Thank you very much everyone. For councillors and officers who have not introduced themselves, once I've invited you to speak before you do so please state your name and capacity in which you're speaking. We've got one member of the public that's put forward to speak, Mike Singh, who wants to speak on the reform road asset sales. We'll now start with the agenda items. Do we have any apologies for absence? No apologies, chair. And do we have any declarations of interest? No, okay. Is everybody happy with the minutes from the last meeting on Wednesday the 24th of April? Helen? Thank you. In the minutes I asked about the bus consultation, because that's about five or six months overdue. I chased it last week and it's now in the public domain, but the public aren't told it's in the public domain, so there's no announcement. And I would ask that if we have asked for residents views on things that they're informed when actually the results are available. And I know that in the... Sorry, I seem to be getting an echo from some microphone in the room. I don't know. So, okay. Sorry, Helen. Yes, so if we look at the council plan and aim five, we're trying to involve the public more and that means feeding back to the results of the consultation. I think just putting it on our website is insufficient, so I would ask that actually we notify the public through our press releases. I think that makes a huge amount of sense, Helen. I'll take that up with the comes to. Good point. The other thing is that looking at the forward plan is I don't know now what happens next and it might be that the forward plan doesn't go that far forward, but it might be useful to actually for people to know, okay, what is the next step in that as well? So, if the press release is going out, could it include that? Okay, yes, it certainly can. Is it included in the next stage in the forward plan? Well, we'll talk about that when we get to the forward plan after the item. So, besides that, is everyone happy with the minutes? Yeah. Okay, we have no appointments. So, move on to the forward plan. Thank you, chair. So, bear with me because there's quite a few additions since our last meeting in April. So, firstly, the send an alternative provision capital strategy 2024 update was scheduled for today's meeting is now, well, potentially coming to the 1st of July meeting to allow further time to assess the options available following on from the completion of feasibility works. The bus service improvement plan was scheduled for today's meeting and that item has now been removed. Its cabinet approval is not required. The RBWM children's home is scheduled to come to the 1st of July meeting. The contract for the cleaning of council buildings is also scheduled for the July meeting. The updated RBWM equality policy is scheduled for the 1st of July meeting. The renewal of the council's insurance policies is scheduled for the 24th of July meeting. The quarterly performance report is now scheduled for the 24th of July meeting. The monthly budget updates have also now been included for every month up until the end of the municipal year in April and I believe, chair, you're going to speak on the last item here. Yeah, I think in light of the announcements we've just had an hour earlier, we'll be going through the list to make sure whether all those decisions can be made or whether they're better put up till after the general election. I have three speakers, I think. I've got Karen first. Thank you. I was just going to mention on the, there's a couple of air quality monitoring items on the forward plan. So the revocation of the air quality management areas that was due to come to cabinet this evening, as it shows on today's paper, the item's been postponed to allow officers more time to do some work that we've requested to take place on that item before coming back to cabinet. But I just wanted to thank the people overview and scrutiny panel members for the work that they've done and for a very useful discussion at their meeting. The minutes of that are attached to the agenda. I think we're very much of like mind and we're just going to delay this item to come back with some more work being done to it. I just thought I would mention, we've also got an item on the forward plan for October. That item, just because it's a bit confusing there being two items, that item is a review of the sort of first year of the additional five particulates monitors that we put into each of the AQMAs. That might actually be better. Those were actually installed in December. So we'll talk to officers about when the best time is to bring them back. It might be worth being slightly postponed to have a full year's data, but I'll talk the opposite about what data we've got and when's the best time to bring that back. But those are two separate items on air quality. Thank you very much Cameron. I've got Amy indicated. Yes, I just wanted to give a little bit of an update on the Windsor Castle ticket story that's been around this week. Obviously, we were informed of that by the Royal Collections Trust and Councillor Werner and myself obviously behind the scenes were trying very hard to reach out to them to try and resolve the issue and discuss what's going to go forward. In the interim, it turns out that the story had already been broken by members of the public who worked for the Royal Collections Trust. So obviously, it hits social media. We have now had a return letter from them. They're very willing to meet with us and we're very keen to continue that conversation. I'd just like to say in the interim thank you to Councillor Julian Teasy who raised a petition for members of the public who I know feel very strongly about this and that has had a significant number of signatures, about 2,000 or so. So obviously, that lends weight to our discussions and we hope that we can have a positive outcome. Thank you very much Amy and thank you very much to Julian Teasy if he's listening. I've got Adam next. Yeah, thank you Simon. I've got three items. I like to keep everyone busy. All due for hopefully to be placed on the forward plan for discussion at the late July meeting. July 24th, is that correct? So firstly, a few months ago now we conducted the consultation on the sustainability supplementary planning document. Since that has closed, officers have been working hard on looking and reviewing the responses. We're now at a point in time where I feel confident that we can bring a final draft of that SPD to cabinet late July for consideration for adoption. I think hopefully everyone will agree that this is a very important part of our planning policy and, you know, strengthening what is a vital area for the council and a top priority. So I'm really pleased with the work that's been going on on that. Secondly, another supplementary planning document, but one which is in a slightly earlier stage of development. This is the Ascot's placemaking supplementary planning document. There's been quite a lot of work going on behind the scenes, but also some good constructive early engagement with the public on this one. The first draft for consideration for the formal consultation is currently being worked on. And again, we're confident that we can get that to cabinet in late July for that to then be considered for formal consultation and hopefully moving forward adoption later in the adoption later in the year. Lastly, but by no means least, I'd like to propose a new item is added to the forward plan for relevant officers in the place directorate to report back to cabinet on the review of the future role of the RBWM property company and associated property services within the council. Whilst this administration has been exploring options for some time now, an external view as part of the council's transformation programme is due to commence shortly. I expect that any key recommendations arising from this review will be considered by cabinet in late July. And that's all we've done. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much, Adam. Anyone else? Nope. Okay. Now we will move on to report though, but I think we're going to just cover a financial update before we move on. So can I hand over to Elizabeth? Thank you, chair. Elizabeth Griffiths, executive director of resources and section one five one officer. So we're all aware that the council is in a difficult financial position that's been well documented, monitored and discussed. And although we have robust plans in place to deliver the required transformation to our finances, we are facing the continued erosion of our reserves. In addition to this, we're carrying out an in-depth review of our balance sheet and that has introduced a further element of risk. So for these reasons, we've taken the decision to approach central government to request exceptional financial support. This is to ensure that we have the time needed to deliver the transformation plans that we have in place. This is a step that many councils are currently taking and discussions are ongoing. Thank you, chair. Thank you very much, Elizabeth. Lynne, finance lead. Thank you. Since I took the position of lead member for finance, I have been very clear that we'll be transparent regarding the financial situation of this council. It has been massively frustrating that the financial processes we inherited were not robust and identifying the true financial position is paramount for the viability of this council. We have heard many times from senior officers regarding inadequate processes and a lack of offices to deliver the services our residents expect. The budget for 23/24 set by the previous administration was impacted by the underfunding by at least five to six million pounds within the adults and children's social care. Not even covering the cost of the clients accessing social care at that point in time, let alone the demand expected during the year. This has had a direct impact on our reserves. We have higher inflation and interest on the circuit. 200 million debt in place since 2019 has risen to over 13 million annually. Historical decisions taken around reductions in council tax combined with the cap on raising council tax have taken 30 million out of the base budget which means as a council we have 332 pounds per person per year less than other councils to spend on services. We are fighting against 12 years of neglect and decay of systems services and officer core. The council have put in place robust and achievable plans to transform this council. We have a new council plan, a balanced budget for the current financial year. Now this was built from the bottom up and was not based on previous figures so is as robust as when the budget was approved. We are currently undertaking a full reconciliation of bank accounts and balance sheet accounts that have not taken place for multiple years and finding errors of a magnitude that throw the opening reserves balance of 10 million pounds into question and we have a comprehensive service transformation program already in progress to achieve those savings this year and over the medium term. We are working towards a situation where the true financial position of the council at the point we became the administration of RBWM will be known and I would like to thank Elizabeth Griffiths, Julian McGowan and their small finance team for going above and beyond to investigate and resolve this unbelievable backlog of accounting queries. Exceptional financial support from government sometimes called the capitalization direction is effectively short-term support which is paid back over the medium term by capital receipts and this funding would provide the council with the time and the revenue needed in the medium term to deliver the plans that are already in place to become financially stable. After 12 years of decisions eating away at the council's capacity to deliver services and its financial viability it is down to us members and officers working together to reverse this decay to fix the mess left in May last year to ensure that the financial position is accurate to build back the residents trust in the council to deliver services to ensure our most vulnerable are not impacted by these historical decisions and to work towards a more resident focused council. Thank you. Thank you Lynn and thank you as well as well as Elizabeth and Stephen and Julian for all the work that you all do. It's an amazing mess we've got to clear up but I have complete faith in ability to sort it out. Stephen. Yeah just a couple of comments to add. So the council's financial challenges have their roots going back many years. My predecessor made public back in early 2020 the risk of the council having to issue a section 114 notice so financial resilience has been extremely weak for many years now and I think over the past year particularly we've worked hard to improve governance scrutiny of the budget by officers and councillors and it's our number one priority in the council plan. We've also been working hard to try and change the culture around spending getting on the front foot by introducing a spending control panel as Councillor Jones has said strong plans in place to transform services over the next year and beyond but we've got to a position where that that resilience is now in a position where it's it's so weak that we do need to seek support from government. We're not alone. 19 councils got exceptional financial support to set their budgets for this year only last week Lambeth in London it was announced that they've got a deal with government. There will be more coming out this is the only mechanism at the moment available to local authorities so that's why we're in this discussion to give us more time to deliver our plans. Scrutiny will be on us more so now we've really got to focus on delivering our priorities managing expectations about what we can and can't deliver and the importance of strong governance financial controls and decision making is now even greater but we continue to have confidence in in our plans and the ability of our colleagues and our councils to deliver those plans. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any comments or questions? No okay thank you very much Elizabeth for that. Appreciate it. We'll now move on to reform mode and we'll start off with Adam and then Mike's thing if you can pay us. Thank you Simon. The new council plan which was adopted with overwhelming support by full council in April set the strategic aims that this administration must work to including number one aim of putting the council on a strong financial footing to be met in part through optimizing the use of buildings and land. I spoke at Budget Council on the decisions that need to be taken as part of good asset management. Whilst we will always review how our assets can be used to generate ongoing revenue or deliver services to residents in a more efficient way, in some cases optimization will mean the option that presents the best value for money will actually be to sell to generate capital receipts in order to reduce the future burden of servicing the council's debt which we all know has been wrapped up massively by the previous administration and is now costing over 13 million pounds a year to service money that cannot instead be spent on providing this valuable services to residents. On this basis review of our assets has identified the land and buildings the council owns at reform road to the east of Maidenhead town centre in the category where best value is most likely to be achieved through disposal and generation of capital receipts. Therefore I am proposing a recommendation this evening that cabinet notes the report and delegates authority to the executive director of place services in consultation with myself to prepare the sales pack market the assets outlined in appendix b for sale and evaluate subsequent offers then to prepare a report for cabinet to consider the purchase offers. Please note this is an updated recommendation compared with that published on the agenda and is supported by an updated report that was that was published later on. Regrettably there was a bit of a mix-up during the drafting process and a number of changes that I personally requested including the recommendation to the recommendation itself were omitted from the first version that was published so apologies for the confusion there. To summarise my concerns with the earlier draft I didn't think it was clear about the actual decision that cabinet is considering this evening and could have been read as agreeing to the sale to the sale no matter what. In fact this evening we are simply deciding whether to proceed with the marketing exercise with the view to inviting purchase offers. Any decision to sell the council's interest in reform road will be for subsequent cabinet meeting after careful consideration of any offers received. By agreeing to this course of action we will of course hope that we do receive one on one offers that are acceptable and allow us to maximise the value to the council but we have to but if we if we assess that we have not received any acceptable offers then we will not be compelled into accepting anything less than best value that can be obtained for the site. To be clear this is not a fire sale. Let me speak a little about the site in its current state and explain the rationale behind the recommendation to market with review to selling the council's interest. The council's ownership comprises two distinct parts there is the previously developed partially vacant employment land suitable for non-residential development which is outlined in appendix b in red and also 13 buildings left on long ground leases which are outlined in that appendix in blue. The site suitable for redevelopment is 1.35 hectares and includes a now demolished well decked house site and also Clyde House which is currently left on a flexible basis to my workspace and the project centre and car park which currently provides some people's services. I had the opportunity to visit my workspace in Clyde House a few months ago and also I was really impressed by the entrepreneurial environment they've managed to create in Clyde House. It is very clear that the building is far beyond its economic life and I know they are mindful of this too in their future plans. To retain this and the project centre building would require significant capital expenditure in the next two years to bring them up to current regulatory energy standards and remain in use. The estimated minimum cost to refurbish Clyde House alone to meet these standards and so that it could be marketable would be around three million pounds and the council simply does not have it's not in a position to commit to investing more capital into the this refurbishment and even if we could the improvement in income would not be sufficient to make to meet the additional borrowing costs so it's just simply doesn't equate to good value for money. The 13 ground lease properties are occupied by a range of trade counter, building material suppliers and light industrial businesses. Whilst the council would be forgoing an established revenue stream of around 184 000 pounds per annum there is limited scope to drive the rental income on this ground leases due to the low rental income versus long rent review periods. Turning to the anticipated capital receipts that may arise from the sale of the council's interest in Reform Road there was a valuation conducted in March 2023 which was based upon the site in its conditions at the time and at that time for example, Worldbeck House was vacant but there still would have been a cost for demolishing it which has now been borne by the council. The development site was valued at the time though at around four million pounds based upon that condition and the buildings at the time. Also the earnings related to value of the ground lease buildings added a further approximately four million to the overall valuation of the site at the time. However more recently informal commercial appraisal has suggested that the redevelopment land and ground lease portfolio sales could realise a significant capital receipt in excess of 10 million pounds to support the council's finances. This is detailed for members in the part two appendix, appendix C. The cost of the sale would include the preparation of due diligence reports, title review, sales pack, marketing and agents fees. The fees for the sale could cost up to 400,000 and the sales process is expected to last maybe up to 12 months from the initial marketing to completion of sales should we go down that route. The cost of the sale would be recovered from the proceeds of sale and the decision this evening would probably commit us to up to 130,000 of the initial work for the actual marketing exercise. So in conclusion I fully endorse the recommendation to market our reform road site with a view to sale. The council must maximise the capital receipt generated by the sale and will assess bids primarily on this basis. However in considering site offers from purchasers the council will have to consider several factors such as the likelihood of conditional offers achieving planning consent. Through the delegated authority we will consider viable options for the entire site or for distinct parcels of land but the final decision on any bids received will need to prioritise maximising the benefit to the council's finances and I commend this amended report to the cabinet. Thank you. Thank you very much Adam. Can I invite Mike Singh to step up to the microphone? Press the button. I believe I've got three minutes. Yes that's right. Can you hear me? We can. Great. Thank you. Honourable councillors, ladies and gentlemen I'm Mike Singh as Sanjay just said and I'm here today on behalf of the Maiden at Gurdwara or the Sikh temple in Maiden as some of you may know it. By way of a very brief background the Sikh temple on Rutland road has been in situ for about 40 years during which period it has served the Sikh community not only as a place of worship but as our main community hub. For the Sikh community its key role in our times of joy, marriages, births or sadness, grievance is irreplaceable. It is the only hub we have in Maidenhead. Over the previous four decades the Sikh community in Maidenhead has grown in numbers both organically and with the introduction of new families from other areas. As the Gurdwara is based in a residential area parking is very congested. The nature of the Gurdwara's activities is such that they peak mainly at the weekends just when our neighbours would like a bit of peace and quiet to recharge their batteries after a hard week's work. Hence in an effort to be good neighbours we have been seeking an alternate site to relocate the Gurdwara. At this point i would like to thank the council and its officers who under Simon Wernher's leadership and guidance have worked with us over the past few months to understand our needs and identify suitable alternate sites. Two site sites are Woldeck House and Clyde House both of which are part of the reform road as it stands on the agenda today which Adam has just referred to. The officers said to us back in October 2023 that they would seek council approval to sell and they have kept their word for this I am thankful. Both the sites Woldeck and Clyde have been combined along with the project centre into a larger site referred to as the Government Land in the proposal in front of you. The Gurdwara has adequate resources to buy either Woldeck or Clyde but bidding for all as the Government Land may be a stretch too far especially as the Gurdwara does not specialise in appropriate Government expertise. Got one minute remaining. Hence we would humbly request that bids fee and detained for the individual sites such as Woldeck House or Clyde House which form part of the Government Land and that all bids be evaluated in addition to the financial basis, wider community issues as well taken to a kind of wider community issues. We feel that this de-bundling would open the market to a higher number of bidders rather than just the big boys and yet not preclude anyone wishing to bid for more than one sub-site within the Government Land. So I think it makes it a fair of playing field. In addition it may also assist in divesting sites such as Clyde House quicker and saving the council expenses refurbishment costs as Adam just mentioned. We believe that this combined with the development potential of the site which would be released by the Gurdwara which is in a highly residential area would give the potential of a much greater return to the council in the medium term. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed Mike. Adam would you like to come in then? Yeah I'm pleased and yeah thank you very much for your comments this evening Mike and also for all the hard work that you and the committee have been putting into this. I know I joined you with a couple of the meetings. I know many other meetings have gone on to talk about the future of the Gurdwara. As a Boing Hill Councillor I'm acutely aware of the need of the Gurdwara and the fact that of course you've been expanding exponentially over the number of years. I think it's a great thing for the community that you're such a vibrant community there and of course as you know speaking just from a perspective of Boing Hill I'd certainly be you know sad to lose you from the world but I understand inevitably you need more space and of course parking is at a premium. I think I take on board the comments you make about you know about wanting to be good neighbours to the local residents as well and I know it can be it can be challenging at times so it's great that you recognize that. And you know talking about the specific points about the land parcels I'd be clear that yeah I did mention right at the end of my comments that we would entertain yeah different bids and wouldn't only be looking at bids for the entire development the development site that lot one site but it's actually made it's actually comprised of three different pre-hold parcels. I mean common sense or you know so there is a thought at least within at a high level that maybe you can gain more from the site as a whole in terms of its kind of marriage value but that's not you know until we actually see the bids that come in I think you know we need to give everyone a fair shot and look at each bid on its own merits and if there's alternative ways of doing this then of course we'll be very you know very open to that. You know I think yeah I think you know certainly I will be part of part of those discussions although Andrew the executive director of praise has would be delegated authority to conduct and oversee this marketing and exercise and look at the bids. I think we'll be doing that in consultation with myself and you know I'm certainly very keen to make sure that all viable bids are given you know appropriate consideration you know I pointed out what would be our main priorities in assessing the bids but yeah we do want to yeah we do want to you know as you say potentially broaden the potential bids that are that come in to us and they actually you know in turn that may actually help us achieve achieve our outcome in a better way so yeah very very open to that very open to yeah to looking at all different kinds of bids so I hope that gives you some comfort. Thank you Adam thank you because what it does give me a lot of comfort actually everything I've heard today over here is shows me that's moving the right direction and hopefully we we are very committed to the council meeting its short-term objectives of bridging the financial gap and we would like to work with you so that it's a win-win we help you bridge that gap but also bring in a bit of long-term sustainability and some credibility that the council is moving the right direction not like the previous council just building more houses sorry I shouldn't be taking it so so yes we would just welcome the opportunity to work with you and come to a solution which which is better in the short term meet your objectives but also meets the sustainability and community objectives in the longer term. Thank you very much Mike thank you for coming. Have we got any other questions? Jack. Thank you very much. I didn't know Mr Singh was coming to speak tonight but by the same token that the Goodwaras lost him or any other that happens it would be fantastic news for St Mary's Ward which I represent. This is a wonderful good war in Reform Roads. I have a quick question about Reform Roads estate which may in fact probably prompted by Mike's comments about parking. I think no amount of parking obviously the rather roadside is very restricted but no amount of parking is enough for a really big wedding is it so I've noticed that there's a large amount of on-street parking in the former estate which is unrestricted on Sundays. It's unrestricted in the weekend in the evenings as well on the single yard lines. I just wonder if there's any kind of assurance reassurance we can give any potential but it's like the Goodwara or perhaps other community groups because I understand there's some interest from the Jubilee community church as well that we haven't got any current plans to change those restrictions. Adam. Yeah thank you very much Jack for the question. As far as I'm aware that there are no plans to change the on-street restrictions. Yeah that's not something that's come onto my radar. I don't know Jeff if you have anything to the contrary but I believe you know as it is that would be you know how we'd be looking to things you know there's always there's always views on in terms of you know safety of roads and if things yeah if there was a significant change then obviously that may need to be reviewed but I don't yeah as I say I don't have any knowledge of a need to you know to review that imminently I think it's likely you know we would say as is of course the off-road any off-road provision that arises at Reform Road after the hopeful redevelopment would be down to the you know to the freehold and occupiers of the land to manage as they see fit so I wouldn't be able to make any say you know make any comments or guarantees about that but yeah when it comes to the on-road the adopted highway I'm not aware of a pressing need to make the changes. Okay thank you very much I've got Josh. Thank you Simon. I've been to the Goodwara on a number of occasions and I've been really impressed with the work that they do for the community and it's been really clear the times I've been there that they very much are in need of a larger space with some more parking so they can do more of the work in the community that they that they want to do. I think it's important obviously that given the news that we've had tonight we've got a firm eye on the financials that we have from this but it's also important to consider some of those other benefits of the sale of the land which we can bring to Maidenhead so I'm really glad Adam that you've been able to confirm that we're able to to look at these things but also to be able to look at all of the offers that come in whether it's for the full site or parts of the site and we've already heard obviously Goodwara and Jack mentioned that the Jubilee Church might be interested in looking at some space actually what we can do by not selling that site in one potentially and potentially by splitting that up I think is a really exciting opportunity but obviously we need to look at all of the areas that we can do. I think it's also important to say that obviously we have been looking about a health hub on Riefon Road in the previous 12 months with a new GP surgery but I think due to the complications of the way the government has set up NHS property it's sort of an indicator that they can't really build a new GP surgery themselves and obviously given tonight's news it's not really going to be possible for RBWM to build the NHS a new GP surgery for them so obviously we what we would like is for health services to be easier for residents to access. One of my personal aims is for the new St Mark of the Walk in Central St Mark's to be reopened and that's something we've been talking about for a long time and I know Catherine and I have recently written to the NHS asking them what their plans are for the walk in to reopen but I think this is another one of those areas where we need to lobby the government persuade them to work with us for the priorities of maiden head residents and that includes health hub and GP surgeries which are in are in high demand and short supply. Thank you very much Josh wise words. Adam. Yeah just to come back on that thank you Josh for those comments I think that obviously it had been it was in the public domain the NHS had been speaking about the potential for a hub there so I'm glad you've kind of covered off where that you know what the current state of that is because otherwise it seems like a stranger mission. Clearly you know we have an infrastructure delivery plan which is to support the what we know is going to be a growing community continuously growing community in maidenhead and you know clearly as part of infrastructure delivery we need to ensure that there are sufficient GP and other primary health facilities available to people whilst this site might now not be the the right place or or the right time for it you know we will be working very hard lobbying with the NHS in the future and you know working in partnership with them when we can to to find a solution to that because I think you know the community will you know certainly acquiring out for better access to GPs even now and you know it's only going to get more and more pressing in the in the future. Thank you very much any other comments or questions? Nope so can we agree the paper? Agree thank you very much. Okay we'll now move on to our more than welcome to stay to listen to the rest of the agenda. We have school transport policy and adult social care realignment. Thank you. Okay so now we'll move over to Amy who's going to talk about school transport policy 2024 to 2065. Thank you Simon. Yeah I'm just coming to cabinet this evening to seek approval to make a change to our school transport policy specifically a change that for post 16 pupils with special educational needs or disabilities that we provide them with a personal transport budget. Just to add some context it it's there's no statutory requirement for the council to provide this transport beyond the age of 16 however in RBWM we obviously think it's really important that we do support these more vulnerable pupils wherever we can and so that's why we are intending to keep some support in place for them. What we're suggesting here is that rather than applying a sort of blanket policy of everybody being given the same on a case-by-case basis we can have a look at what individuals needs are and with this personal transport budget they can use it to to choose and select the transport that suits them and their families and that could be really wide ranging. So they could be using this personal transport budget to top up the government bursary that young people with special educational needs and disabilities are entitled to receive that's about 1200 pounds a year. They're also entitled to a free bus pass and a free companion bus pass and again in the Royal Borough we actually allow that to be used at any time not just in the morning and afternoon when they're travelling to school. So these personal budgets will top up that provision and enable a lot more flexibility for their school transport and that really could be used in a multitude of ways so it could be paying for driving lessons for some young people. It could be on a day when they can't use their school's minibus because we know that a lot of our colleges and things that young people attend have their own minibuses but perhaps if they're staying late for an activity or a club they might need to get a taxi on that day and it could be used in that way. It could be used for a carer to be able to support a young person to access a taxi or a bus and it's really down to the families and we will be supporting families to be able to access this properly and looking at each individual case. Part of our council plan is to help our residents have healthy independent lives and this really works towards that aim I believe. So yeah I'm happy to have any questions. Thank you very much Amy. Any questions at all or are we all very happy with work being done there? Thank you. I first of all really welcome in light of our financial situation that you're continuing to support such residents. I'll go through my questions and points in total. Is there any restriction to ensure that the money that you're giving them will be spent on what it's intended to be spent on? That's the first question. The next is that if somebody is living in deprivation so it's the social economics side so I've got this from the EQIA is that they may have no car, the college student may be attending some railway and the bus service is very poor or infrequent and it might not be practical for them to take public transport and they might not be able to cycle and therefore this might not work for them and is there something that can be done in such circumstances? And then with the mitigation you talked about would you consider offering families that needed perhaps some advice on how to budget and how to plan this money so it just doesn't get disappear in the first term and then there's nothing left for the last two terms and I am conscious that there are people out there that might think oh these people have got some extra money I'll take advantage of that so they could be saying oh we'll sell you this bike this bike is fantastic but in fact it's not and then people are conned and is there any protection that you could offer people for that? And then the final comment is it was disappointing what a low response rate there was for this and are there any thoughts about if there is another consultation how could you actually increase the rate response? Thank you Helen. I'll just start with the main points which I see you're making there about more vulnerable families who perhaps might need a bit more assistance with this. This is going to be enabling us to look at every family on a case-by-case basis. There will be risk assessments done, we will know our families, we will work with them and where there are families where this would be very much a very difficult thing for them to handle it might not be the most appropriate way to to go forward and we may still need to put in more support for them to be able to manage it. The personal budget payments are made termly so they get three payments throughout the year so it's not one huge chunk and obviously we can offer some support with using that money and the best way to use it and how to access the transport that they need. Where there are the most complex cases where a bus or something just isn't going to be appropriate we will look at that in the round and it will be decided by panel and very much what the child, the young person really needs within the family context. I think your point about the response rates it's always disappointing when we get a low response rate for these sorts of consultations. Obviously the key stakeholders were approached so all of our colleges, schools, the parents who currently use transport, we do try to keep them very simple. I had a look myself at the consultation to make sure it was an easy one to understand and I felt it was fairly simple. It's council consultations but people perhaps don't just aren't interested in engaging although it's a really important subject. I think we can all just try and share things more and speak to people, our own residents in our own wards that we know might be affected by these things and urge them to participate but I know you do often on social media. And just a point I've just thought about the winners of cyclecub whether they could offer help and support to anyone who might be thinking of cycling and how to cycle and how to give us a good bite that might be on your list. Absolutely that will be a resource we can definitely direct people to. Thank you. Thank you Helen. Any other questions or are we happy with that paper? Excellent thank you. So now we'll move on to adult social care realignment. Catherine. Thank you chair. This paper shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. We've been talking about it a lot. It was one of our key manifesto pledges in the lived-in manifesto was to bring services back in-house where it's appropriate to do so. So we're now at the point where we are actually ready to bring the statutory part of our adult services back in-house. At the moment these functions are provided by Optalis which is the company we jointly own with Wokingham council and which also delivers our provider services which is the actual care delivered to residents. Our provider services are well received and have been independently highly rated. Talked about that many times before and you know in terms of the casework that lands in my inbox I'm rarely contacted by residents with concerns on the care services and when I am they're swiftly dealt with. Our statutory services and that includes social work and occupational therapy assessments, safeguarding, strategy, commissioning and procurement form a huge part of our budget and having those decisions made in a separate organisation makes it really complicated for us to have oversight and it's likely that we're the only borough in the country to have these decisions being made by a different organisation. Due to senior staffing changes in Optalis back in December we made the decision to bring the top tier of management in-house at that point. So the statutory services are already being managed from within RBWM now we intend to 2p the remaining 130 staff members over. There's already £260,000 in the budget for this year to support the cost of move and that includes the cost of enrolling staff in the enhanced local government pension scheme which should assist us with staff retention. The approximate £300,000 reduction in what we pay to Optalis will be reallocated to RBWM. Our goal is for this move to be cost neutral aside from the growth already budgeted but there is a note of caution which is that there might of course be tweaks needed to the structure in due course which you would expect to see in an organisation focused on placing itself on a strong financial footing and helping people live healthy and independent lives. Those are both key key aspects of our council plan. This move combined with our investment in the new case management system mosaic should allow us to achieve those dual aims and I commend this paper to cabinet. Thank you very much Catherine and thank you for your work on this letter it's really good to see this coming forward. Thank you. Any comments or questions? Alan? No? Okay. Can we agree on this paper then? I agree. Thank you very much. I will now close the meeting.